HARARE, Zimbabwe—A television game show in Nigeria’s commercial hub of Lagos has an unforgiving rule: Speak English and you lose. For a U.S.-born millennial in the audience and a student of her parents’ mother tongue, the high-stakes setting is a perfect classroom.

Meanwhile, a 15-year-old Canadian speaks to a teacher about 8,000 miles away in Zimbabwe, learning a language her parents feared she would never speak.

“Mhoroi,” Nyashadzashe Machingura says cheerfully with a pronounced Canadian accent while greeting in Zimbabwe’s vernacular Shona.

The scenes capture a new generation of interest and entrepreneurship around African languages once pushed to the margins by decades of colonialism. Often seen as secondary to English, French and Portuguese, they are enjoying a renaissance that is also creating business opportunities.

There are between 1,500 and 3,000 languages in Africa

Africa is home to over one billion people speaking roughly a third of the world’s languages, with between 1,500 and 3,000 across 54 countries, according to UNESCO.

Experts say the revival in some of them is driven partly by second- and third-generation Africans in the diaspora finding it easier to reconnect with their roots and communicate with older relatives, thanks to social media, online learning and entertainment.

“There were times I definitely felt left out because my family around me were all speaking Shona. And I just couldn’t understand them,” Nyashadzashe said after a lesson covering traditional greetings, proverbs and ancestral clan symbols. She said she had eaten the food and worn the traditional clothing but still felt left out.

But now her conversations with her grandparents in Zimbabwe are growing longer.

“Being able to connect with them on that level makes me really proud of my heritage,” she said.

African languages were never ‘modernized’

Her Zimbabwe-based tutor, Shungu Chidovi, left her banking career in January to focus full-time on ZimbOriginal, an online platform that teaches Shona through storytelling, book clubs and “buddy pairing” exchanges.

Now she teaches about two dozen learners in Zimbabwe, Canada, Australia, South Africa, Ireland and Scotland, charging $50 a month.

The business, part of a small but growing number of online initiatives teaching African languages, emerged almost by accident. Chidovi began writing a blog about Zimbabwean traditions in 2016. Readers began asking whether she taught Shona.

“I didn’t see it at the time that I was really writing about the Shona language,” Chidovi said.

Western languages were prioritized

Like many in Africa, she grew up with the understanding that to get ahead she had to embrace Western languages instead of her mother tongue. English remains the dominant language for education, business and government affairs in the southern African nation that officially recognizes 16 mostly Indigenous languages.

“When you talk of Africa, you talk of English, French, Portuguese,” said Believe Mubonderi, a linguistics lecturer at Zimbabwe Open University. His research notes the importance of ensuring that African languages have a place in technologies shaping how people communicate, learn and trade.

“In most cases, African languages were sidelined. They were never exposed or modernized to be used in commerce, science and technology,” he said. “When a language has a very low status, there’s a danger that that language eventually becomes endangered.”

Culture and connection are driving the new interest

Governments and international organizations are trying to reverse that trend.

The African Union’s 2022 decision to adopt Kiswahili, spoken in much of east Africa, as an official working language has raised its international profile. The United Nations declared 2022-2032 the International Decade of Indigenous Languages.

And the AU continental body and UNESCO are supporting efforts to document and revitalize African languages, including using artificial intelligence to generate and translate children’s books and teacher guides.

But there’s a steep digital disadvantage. UNESCO says only 10 languages around the world dominate the “internet ecosystem,” while less than 2% of African languages have a meaningful online presence. That leaves many with too little data to train artificial intelligence systems.

Still, momentum for change is growing, with much of it from Africans abroad.

“People of African descent have come to realize that we also have our own identity which we need to embrace and be proud of. You go on Facebook, you go on TikTok, you are seeing many different efforts,” Mubonderi said. Younger diaspora Africans “are trying by all means to revive, to revitalize, to make use of these languages.”

Chindovi said she hears that desire from children and their parents.

“When people are away from home, they long for home more than when they are home,” she said.

Nigerian game show penalizes English speakers

That hunger for connection is also reshaping culture.

In Nigeria, a game show called “Masoyinbo,” meaning “Do not speak English,” has turned Yoruba, one of the country’s most widely spoken languages, into prime-time entertainment. Contestants, including diaspora Nigerians, are tested on Yoruba language and culture, with prizes reaching thousands of dollars.

Host Olalekan Fabilola, who started the show in 2024, sees its popularity as part of a wider shift.

“If ‘Masoyinbo’ had started like 10 years ago, it wouldn’t have been what it is now,” he said. “But we are in the age of cultural resurgence. People want to go back to their roots. Everyone wants to know why, where they are from, and so it’s timely.”

Tomi Adeshokan, a New Jersey resident who is learning to perfect her Yoruba with Fabilola as a tutor, was part of the audience during a recent recording of the show. She said she lost daily exposure to Yoruba after moving out of her father’s home before the COVID-19 pandemic. During the pandemic, she joined Clubhouse just to hear the language and later began taking classes. Now she was back visiting family.

“It’s very important for us to immerse ourselves in our culture and not to fully identify with other cultures, like the American, the Western culture,” Adeshokan said.

Dan Ikpoyi reported from Lagos, Nigeria

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Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said Sept. 14 that the U.S. has fielded “on-orbit space control weapons capable of defending the Joint Force against hostile adversary action.”

Meink did not detail what the weapons were, how they work or if they were targeting other objects in space or on Earth. The U.S. had warned two years ago that Russia was developing a new space-based, anti-satellite weapon, though the White House said the danger wasn’t imminent at the time.

But reports of the anti-satellite weapon reflected longstanding worries about space threats from Russia and China, given that much U.S. infrastructure is dependent on satellite communications. The U.S. has also previously demonstrated its own abilities to shoot down satellites from Earth.

In his remarks to the Air and Space Forces Association’s Air, Space & Cyber Conference, Meink also said the Air Force was adding more autonomous systems to its capabilities and predicted the service would look “radically different” by 2032. For example, he foresaw one-way attack drones replacing artillery as the “primary killer.”

“We are increasing readiness against existing threats,” he said. (AP)

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In Hawaii, fierce winds downed trees and caused widespread power outages on the island of Kauai, home to 73,000 residents. The Kauai Island Utility Cooperative reported that nearly all of its roughly 35,000 members were without power early Sept. 8.

Emergency officials asked residents to conserve water and stay off the roads as authorities assessed the damage.

Waves that crashed onto Kauai’s southern coast tore apart a road along the coast and pushed piles of sand and lava rocks into a beachside park, said Rochelle Ballard, a former professional surfer who runs a surf school across from the park.

It will take weeks of cleanup, she said. Her family’s surf shop and neighboring restaurant came away without damage, but she said a friend’s house was destroyed.

Hurricane Lowell didn’t make a direct hit on Hawaii

The center of the storm passed West of the islands in the overnight hours Sept. 8 and moved farther away throughout the day.

The storm’s tropical storm-force winds extended well beyond the center, the National Hurricane Center said. On Kauai, sustained winds measured just above 50 mph at Lihue Airport, the island’s only commercial airport that was closed after the storm.

Hurricane warnings for Kauai and the tiny island of Niihau, which has less than 100 permanent residents, were no longer in place by Sept. 8 morning local time. A tropical storm warning was also lifted for Oahu, the state’s most populated island with close to one million residents.

Some wind gusts reached 80 mph, according to the hurricane center. But the force of the sustained winds had decreased by early Sept. 8 and later the storm weakened and was no longer a hurricane.

Storm left a mess on Kauai and Oahu

There was extensive damage across Kauai, and crews were using heavy equipment to push trees and debris off the roads, said Derek Kawakami, mayor of Kauai County. About 300 people were staying in shelters on Kauai.

Kauai real estate agent Lori Benkert, who lives in Lihue, said she endured a loud, windy night after her power went out Sept. 7 evening. The storm downed trees next to her house, and the community’s main road was closed because of fallen trees, she said. “We’re fine. My house did great with no boarded-up windows,” Benkert said. “But there are a lot of downed power lines.”

On Oahu, road crews were clearing sand and rocks from a major route along the island’s western edge after floodwaters topped a coastal highway, North of Honolulu.

Hawaii Gov. Josh Green closed schools and government offices on the three islands for Sept. 8 ahead of the storm.

Last month (August), Tropical Storm Lala brushed past Hawaii and stirred up landslides, washing away about 100 homes and causing widespread power outages.

Marie downgraded but still being felt in California

What’s left of Hurricane Marie was downgraded again and is no longer considered a tropical storm.

But it was still creating dangerous surf conditions along the coast of Mexico’s Baja California and Southern California. Swells with life-threatening surf and rip current conditions will continue for the next few days, the hurricane center said.

In Malibu, where big waves were pounding the shore, the driveway of a beachfront home that sits on pylons collapsed into a sinkhole Sept. 8 morning, the Los Angeles County Fire Department said. (AP)

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Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford submitted his resignation the same day, but the city’s board of aldermen declined to acknowledge it and instead voted unanimously to fire the chief, according to the city clerk, who did not elaborate on their reasons.

The firing followed reporting by The New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News last month that alleged Vanderford used racist slurs in private text conversations with a colleague. It also comes amid the aftermath of the child’s shooting and other incidents.

The toddler Wiley was fatally shot and another woman was wounded June 14 after a Senatobia police officer fired into a vehicle while investigating a shoplifting call at a Walmart. The boy’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, denied that she or a friend accompanying her had stolen anything, and no charges have been filed against them.

The officer who shot Wiley and the woman driving the car the child was in has been placed on administrative leave while the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation looks into the shooting.

The child’s death stirs anger in the small Mississippi city

Kohen Wiley was Black, as is his mother. The death ignited anger in a small city where tensions between Black residents and the police have boiled over in recent years. Senatobia, with a population of more than 8,000, is about 40 miles south of Memphis.

“I believe the Board has a responsibility to protect the integrity and trust of the Senatobia Police Department,” Alderman Demetrius Garrett wrote in a Facebook post. “I still believe in unity. But unity does not mean ignoring serious issues; it means standing together for what is right.”

The city had previously addressed the reporting about Vanderford’s texts, saying in a statement on Aug. 25 that he had appeared before the mayor and board to answer questions and that he would continue to serve as police chief.

A Senatobia alderman calls for an independent investigation

Senatobia Alderman Chris McConnell called for an independent investigation of the police department. “We need answers about departmental leadership, internal culture, the handling of complaints and misconduct, financial practices.

And whether the Board has been receiving the information necessary to provide proper oversight,” McConnell said in a statement. “Our citizens deserve a police department they can trust.”

National civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Kohen Wiley’s family, called the chief’s firing the “right decision.”

“The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is exactly why this family cannot simply be told to trust the process,” Crump said in a statement calling for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations to release body-camera footage of the shooting. “Give this family the facts they have been owed since the day Kohen died.”

The Senatobia Police Department declined to comment on the firing, and Vanderford could not be immediately located for a response Sept. 2.

Kohen Wiley’s shooting death was one controversy among others

Vanderford was appointed police chief on Sept. 29, 2025, after the board of aldermen declined to reappoint the previous chief, Richard Chandler, in July of that year.

Chandler led the police department through several controversies. They included the 2023 arrest of a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in public and an incident in which an officer threatened a woman with a Taser and pulled her from her car during a dispute over a handicapped parking space outside the same Walmart where the child was shot.

“You removed Richard Chandler,” said Senatobia community activist Patrick Lumumba. “But you did not remove the culture of racism, and that’s what Vanderford harbors.”

Following the child’s death, Lumumba formed the Senatobia Committee for Accountability and Transparency, a community watchdog group that is demanding answers about the June shooting and advocating for better policing.

He voiced confidence in Lt. Angelica Maze, who will serve as the department’s interim police chief, calling her a “good person.”

—Sophie Bates, The Associated Press

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Besides the money, which will be paid out over a decade, Meta has agreed to strengthen its age estimates to keep kids under 13 off its platforms and teens in age-appropriate accounts, enact a hard limit of two hours a day for users under 18, block kids from the apps from midnight to 6 a.m., and hide “like” counts, among other changes.

Meta said the new safeguards will only apply in the United States, with most in place for 10 years.

While acknowledging the changes go further than Meta has ever gone when it comes to child safety, critics and children’s advocates cautioned it will not solve its myriad problems overnight.

Arturo Béjar, a former Meta engineering director, said the settlement is a “significant milestone,” but parents should not see Instagram as suddenly safe for children.

“The agreement has a big problem in that it allows Meta to define harm,” Béjar said in an interview Aug. 26. “It’s one thing to say, ‘Yeah, you only get like two hours of alcohol or two hours of cigarettes a day,’ but it’s still as bad for you because of what’s getting delivered.”

Béjar, the first witness to testify during the federal trial cut short by the settlement, would like to see Meta address the effect of content recommendations to teens, which he says can prove addictive. While teens might put their phone down when they hit the two-hour limit, they can be distressed about it because the way the platform is designed leaves them craving more.

Meta said people over 18 also can adopt versions of the new controls individually, such as daily time-limit reminders, but there will not be an option for them to opt into the overall settings for what teens experience on the platform.

Stronger age checks

To protect kids, first Meta has to know who they are. While the company has already been using artificial intelligence to determine if kids are lying about their age—either to sign up if they are under 13, which is not allowed, or to use adult accounts when they are 13 to 17—it did not always work.

Under the proposed settlement, Meta agreed to strengthen its technology to check kids’ ages, using its own as well as third-party tools, with regular outside audits on how well it is working. The agreement also includes specific goals around false positive rates—that is, minors who are identified as over 18. And if a user is identified as under 13 and kicked off the platforms, Meta will check the ages of their friends, too.

“The age assurance section is reasonably good because it has measurement, has independent testing, has goals,” Béjar said. “Because I think Meta should be measured on effectiveness, not effort.”

Meta requires users to be at least 13 years old to create an account, in line with federal child privacy law.

In his testimony last week, Béjar said Meta took a “don’t ask, don’t tell” approach on kids under 13 on its platforms.

“Meta has one of the most sophisticated infrastructures in the world to detect fake accounts,” he said. But despite that, he added, there were “no goals, no metrics” to detect and check kids’ ages who were suspected to be under 13.

Some safety features will be on by default

Critics have faulted Meta over many of its safety features that users have to manually turn on, or opt into themselves.

Of the host of safeguards listed in the settlement, many are on as a default. This includes the two-hour time limit, which can only be turned off with a parent’s permission, as well as the night mode that blocks use between midnight and 6 a.m.

Still, under the agreement other features, such as turning off video autoplay or showing posts in chronological order rather than having algorithms decide what to show kids scrolling through their feeds, will be opt-in.

Josh Golin, executive director of online safety nonprofit Fairplay, said the deal appeared to be too focused on offering tools to parents rather than restricting harmful features altogether.

“We are disappointed that the settlement does not turn off by default recommendation algorithms that connect kids to predators and send young people down dangerous rabbit holes,” Golin said.

Questions around default settings came up at the trial earlier this week when a lawyer for the states suing Meta pressed Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, on the low adoption rate among teens for the “take a break” feature, which prompts users to step away if they have been scrolling a while.

Very few teens used the feature when Instagram first introduced it, but since launching separate teen accounts in 2024, Meta has made it the default setting for teenage users. Still, if a teen didn’t want to take a break, they could simply swipe away the notification.

It may take time to see the results

Some researchers have found that many past protections Meta has rolled out are ineffective or don’t work as advertised.

“It is a little premature, unfortunately, to tell if exactly all the changes we want to see are going to happen,” said Yaël Eisenstat, director of policy and impact for the Cybersafety Research Center, which recently audited dozens of safety tools offered by both Meta and other social media companies and said most fell short.

Still, Eisenstat said, the Aug. 26 settlement is monumental in showing that alternative approaches are possible.

For years, Meta “decided to go against the advice of some of their own internal employees and continue to ignore the fact that these design features were unsafe in search of profit,” said Eisenstat, who also previously worked at Meta, then Facebook, before leaving the company in 2019.

The measures outlined August 26 at the very least show that there are technically-feasible options that can make the platform safer, she said—something whistleblowers and others have already “been saying very loudly.”

Like others, Eisenstat stressed that there was a lot of work left to be done—and that it will require a combination of technical solutions, market forces and government regulation.

“There’s no singular silver bullet for fixing all of this,” she said. “I’m just glad that at least we are catching up a little bit now.”

The settlement, which also includes the District of Columbia and U.S. territories, must still be approved by a judge. (AP)

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The 87-year-old MV Barima capsized in Atlantic waters on June 18 after it departed the capital, Georgetown, en route to Port Kaituma, an Indigenous community near Venezuela.

Authorities have said they believe 179 passengers were aboard, but divers so far have found only 73 bodies, with another 76 people rescued. International teams are still trying to recover the vessel so experts can inspect it.

President Irfaan Ali said in a state address July 26 that the investigative team has been given widespread powers and is expected to operate independently.

Belize’s former attorney general, Phillip Godfrey Smith, was appointed chairman of the five-person team tasked with the investigation, including whether professional negligence is to blame. Other members include an attorney, a naval architect and maritime experts from Jamaica and Trinidad and Tobago.

Local authorities have so far arrested three people, including the rescued captain, who was accused of testing positive for marijuana, along with another crew member.

Ali said the team will be asked to scrutinize the “passenger management including embarkation, manifest preparation, the possible overcrowding of the vessel, the storage of cargo, the availability and use of life-saving equipment and adherence to passenger safety requirements.”

Dozens of people rescued after clinging to debris for hours have claimed that the ferry was overloaded with passengers and cargo, including vehicles and large pallets. They also asserted that the MV Barima was taking in water but that crews had dismissed this as “normal.”

Ali said his administration wants the commission to determine whether there were “any acts of negligence, misconduct, dereliction of duty and other failures by any individual, entity or institution contributed to or caused the disaster, including neglect of its condition, maintenance history, sea tides, functioning navigation and communication equipment and other operational factors.”

Ali said authorities hope the commission will recommend institutional and operational reforms as well as any other measures necessary to strengthen maritime safety, “improve emergency preparedness and response and reduce the likelihood of similar tragedies occurring in the future.” (AP)

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The agreement, which the Brazilian government said is expected to be published in the coming weeks, has been under negotiation since 2024. It will establish a framework for sharing information and coordinating protection efforts, the ministry said.

The announcement comes after a group of Ashaninka Indigenous leaders began meetings with federal officials in Brasilia, Brazil’s capital, seeking urgent protection for their territory.

Earlier this month, five armed men carrying machine guns invaded their land, threatened families and searched for their main leaders. The Ashaninka territory spans the Brazil-Peru border in the western Amazon.

The ministry said that safeguarding Indigenous territories and the communities living there requires a “coordinated response to shared threats, such as invasions, illegal activities and pressure on traditional lands.”

Peru’s Ministry of Culture could not immediately be reached for comment.

Gangs and drug traffickers are increasingly encroaching on Ashaninka land and using the rivers in the Amazon and adjacent land for drug routes. The recent invasion is part of a broad transformation of the Amazon border as criminal routes expand, through what experts call the Solimoes River route.

Indigenous territories are key to this route. Experts say protecting Indigenous land is one of the most effective ways to curb deforestation in the Amazon, the world’s largest rainforest and a key regulator of global climate.

But the very forests these communities help protect leave them vulnerable: Dense tree cover in remote, hard-to-reach areas offers attractive hiding sites for drug traffickers.

The ministry also said the federal police opened an investigation into the attacks on Ashaninka territory. On July 20, they launched an operation in the region alongside state authorities.

“The operation aims to prevent and combat incursions into Indigenous territories, criminal organizations, drug trafficking, environmental crimes and other cross-border offenses,” it said.

In a separate statement, the Brazilian Army said it had reinforced its presence along the border by deploying about 30 troops to the area. Various Indigenous groups have previously criticized these deployments for being temporary while the threats remain permanent.

The Army said it continues to patrol the region and that preliminary information from Indigenous leaders and government agencies suggests the armed men were Peruvians who entered the Indigenous territory from across the border. (AP)

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Fire managers try to anticipate nature’s next move, placing thousands of firefighters, hundreds of engines, batteries of bulldozers, and fleets of helicopters and air tankers where they’ll make the biggest difference.

This year, they’re dealing with persistent drought made worse by record-low snowpack levels and consecutive days of hot, dry and windy weather. Hundreds of homes have burned, three firefighters were killed battling flames in Colorado, and a helicopter helping with another Colorado fire crashed into a reservoir, killing the pilot.

National preparedness has yet to reach its highest level, but resources are getting stretched as new fires pop up daily.

“The U.S. Wildland Fire Service is prioritizing pre-positioning of crews, engines and aircraft in areas with the highest likelihood of wildfire activity,” the agency said in an email to The Associated Press when asked about available resources. “This allows for quicker initial attack when new wildfires ignite, which is often the most effective way to keep fires small.”

U.S. preparedness level ratchets up

The National Interagency Fire Center, a collection of federal and state agencies that support on-the-ground wildfire fighting efforts, sets the preparedness level at 1 to 5 based on fire activity, resource demands, weather and conditions on the ground that can be fuel for a fire. By late June, surging wildfire activity prompted coordinators to move the needle to level 4 and begin funneling more crews to the hottest spots.

The national fire center has confirmed more than 2,100 fires since the beginning of July. The explosion of fire activity across the West led to the assignment of more highly skilled and experienced incident management teams. Some have traveled from Alaska and California to help with fires in the Great Basin region.

As of July 14, 17 such teams were overseeing nearly 17,000 people spread across more than a dozen states. It’s typical to see preparedness increase in July and August, but fire managers are hopeful they can juggle resources to avoid maxing out.

Over the past decade, fire managers have reached the top preparedness tier an average of 25 days annually, with the longest stretch happening in 2021, according to federal statistics. The earliest the designation ever occurred was June 21, 2002.

The most recent outlook shows above normal wildfire potential in July from the Four Corners region—where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet—North to Oregon, Idaho and Washington. It’s not expected to simmer down until September.

Christopher Dunn, an assistant professor of wildfire risk science at Oregon State University, said those outlooks help determine how and where to mobilize resources. Those resources shift as the fire season moves from region to region.

In a busy year, states must weigh whether to free up resources to help elsewhere or pressure federal officials to keep crews in reserve in case of increased risk. That’s what Dunn describes as hoarding resources. (AP)

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The 84-page report issued jointly July 15 by Human Rights Watch and the American Civil Liberties Union also says men and women held at Camp East Montana, located at the U.S. Army’s Fort Bliss in El Paso, recounted being denied necessary medical care, forced to live in filthy conditions and fed inedible meals. Detainees also said they were prevented from contacting their lawyers or family members.

Of the 71 detainees contacted over a five-month period, 64—about 90% of those interviewed— said they had either personally been assaulted by the staff or had seen others physically abused, according to the report.

“ICE’s Camp East Montana is a human rights disaster,” said Angélica César, a fellow at Human Rights Watch and the ACLU who was a lead researcher for the report. “The U.S. government should shut it down, conduct independent investigations into all abuses and deaths in custody, and put an end to mass deportations and mandatory immigration detention.”

The Department of Homeland Security issued a statement saying reports of inhumane conditions at its desert tent camp were “categorically false,” that no detainees are being beaten or abused, and that “ICE takes seriously the health and safety of all those detained in our custody.”

The new accounts of violence and substandard living conditions inside Camp East Montana are consistent with earlier reports by The Associated Press and others. At least three detainees held at the facility since it opened in August have died, including a 55-year-old Cuban migrant who was handcuffed and stopped breathing earlier this year after being held down by guards.

A local medical examiner later ruled that death a homicide and a federal report issued last month said evidence in the case was “missing or destroyed.” That report by the Government Accountability Office found mismanagement by the Department of Homeland Security had created unsafe conditions that contributed to detainee deaths and suffering even as millions of wasted tax dollars enriched contractors.

In March, ICE replaced Acquisition Logistics, LLC, the prime contractor that had been awarded a deal last year worth up to $1.3 billion to build and manage the camp, which was originally intended to hold up to 5,000 people. The Virginia company had no prior experience running an ICE detention facility, had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million and lacked a functioning website.

The change came as an internal ICE review documented 49 deficiencies, which it defines as violations of detention standards or policies, in areas including the use of force and restraints, security and medical care.

Despite the change in contractors, interviews conducted by Human Rights Watch and the ACLU as recently as last month found serious problems at the camp have persisted.

Detainees recounted degrading and inhumane living conditions that included bathrooms covered in feces, flooded housing units and no access to soap or other basic hygiene supplies, according to the report. They also reported being held indoors for weeks without meaningful access to recreation, sunlight or fresh air.

People also described receiving spoiled food and inconsistent meal schedules, with delays of up to 12 hours between meals. The report recounts detainees saying that guards beat detainees in response to hunger strikes, requests for medical attention and complaints regarding detention conditions.

Several people said that guards imposed collective punishment, striking or assaulting multiple people after accusing one detainee of violating rules, according to the report.

Researchers found that staff pressured and coerced those held there into abandoning immigration claims and accepting removal to third countries if they could not be sent back to their own country. The detainees said they were threatened with violence, criminal prosecution, and indefinite detention if they refused deportation.

In some cases, the report concluded, the circumstances of ICE detention could amount to enforced disappearances, a potential violation of international human rights law.

Human Rights Watch and the ACLU called on the Trump administration to close Camp East Montana and to allow independent investigations into deaths in custody, excessive force, medical neglect and enforced disappearances.

“The abuses documented at Fort Bliss are the predictable outcome of the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda, its brutal expansion of immigration detention, and the erosion of federal oversight mechanisms,” said César, the lead researcher. “People at Camp East Montana are human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and protected from harm.” (AP)

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“Without any doubt, if I had been alone I wouldn’t have made it here, 12 years later,” she said, at a recent event at her son’s old school marking the anniversary of his death. “We need one another to cry together, to smile together and to fight together.”

Oliveira and other Brazilian mothers turn to activism to ensure that their sons are remembered as more than a statistic. Now, they are demanding a nationwide policy to support relatives of victims of state violence and are seeking public funding to finance their activities.

The nonprofit Crossfire Institute said 460 people died during police operations in Rio last year, the highest number since 2016 and a 52% increase from the previous year. Much like the Mothers of Plaza de Mayo, a human rights organization created by women whose children were kidnapped by the military dictatorship that ruled Argentina from 1976 to 1983, Oliveira and her group draw attention to the pain generated by police killings and seek judicial accountability—sometimes successfully.

Last year, they traveled to the capital Brasilia and met with the judiciary, legislative and executive branches to present their project, developed with the support of Raave, a network of organizations supporting people affected by police killings in Rio.

“Raave is negotiating with the federal government to implement a pilot project … developed by the mothers, so that we can provide care and guarantee the rights of this population,” said Guilherme Pimental, a coordinator for Raave.

Turning grief into struggle

As in other Latin American countries, including Peru and Colombia, crime is a key issue for voters in Brazil’s elections in October. Supporters and allies of presidential hopeful Sen. Flávio Bolsonaro, son of former President Jair Bolsonaro, argue that police must be given full support in their fight against heavily armed gangs in favelas, or impoverished sprawling urban communities.

But grieving mothers and nonprofits contend that Brazil’s police too often use excessive force, sometimes ending in death. Oliveira’s son Johnatha was shot in the back as he passed through a street in Manguinhos favela in Rio after visiting his grandmother, his mother said. He later died of his injuries.

“Police officers allege that they shot him to disperse a crowd” that was protesting, said Oliveira, who wants the law enforcement official who fired the shot convicted of intentional homicide. In 2024, a jury convicted the official of manslaughter without intent to kill. Prosecutors successfully appealed, but a new court date for a second trial hasn’t been set.

Like Oliveira, Monica Cunha also transformed her pain into activism. After her 20-year-old son was killed by police in 2006, she became a councilwoman and this month will launch her pre-candidacy to run for state lawmaker in the upcoming October elections.

“I fight for memory, truth, justice, reparations and guarantees of non-repetition—not only for myself, but so that no other family has to endure this pain,” Cunha said in an Instagram post on the 18th anniversary of her son’s death. “The racism that kills our children and loved ones is not an isolated problem, and it must be confronted through state policies.  I will keep going, turning grief into struggle.”

Brazilian police have killed more than 6,000 people every year since 2018, according to the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety, a prominent nonprofit. The largest number of victims are age 18 to 24, while 82% of victims of lethal police violence are Black, the nonprofit said in its 2025 annual publication on violence in Brazil.

‘We need solutions’

Nadia dos Santos’ sons Cleyton and Cleyverson were both killed by police: the former in 2015 when he was 18 and the latter when he was 17 in 2022. Police also killed the son of her sister, Glaucia dos Santos, Fabricio, in 2014 when he was 17.  A memorial honoring and depicting the three boys covers the front wall of the family’s home in Rio’s Chapadao complex of favelas.

The sisters founded support groups and began the long work of investigating the circumstances of each boy’s death, seeking accountability through the courts.

In 2023, the police officers involved in the death of Fabricio were sentenced to nine years in prison, a decision that was celebrated by other mothers and gave them hope, Glaucia dos Santos said.

“We want others to stay alive, so we have to stay upright” despite the immense toll of the grief, said Glaucia dos Santos.  Her sister Nadia said the mothers need a nationwide public policy on restitution that she went to Brasilia to demand.

“The state should have the obligation to give us mothers who lose our sons because of the state’s violence reparations. … We fight, we work, but we become ill. We need solutions,” she said.

Oliveira suggested restitution could take the form of placing victims’ names in public places and naming facilities after them, such as schools, hospitals and daycare centers.

“There are other forms of reparation as well, such as building other public policies of non-repetition that would help prevent new cases. … Many things need to be done, repaired, so that this barbarity does not continue,” she said. (AP)

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