Trump Refuses to Provide Ukraine with Anti-Air Missile Licenses
President Trump has walked back a promise made to Ukraine in early July to license them to build Patriot anti-air missiles. At a cabinet meeting on Friday, he informed reporters: “we have not agreed to that. We’re talking about it. But it’s a hard thing to give away, that kind of technology.”
This comes after the president made several remarks at the NATO summit in Ankara claiming that Ukraine would be able to figure out the manufacturing process “quickly.” Licensed or not, building Patriots is no light task for Ukraine. The interceptors are notoriously difficult and expensive to make, with the average cost per unit being $3 million. The US itself only produces approximately 50 per month for itself and all its allies. That is compared to the average 100 missiles fired per month by Russia.
Beyond the pure logistics, this is a political sign of the times with Ukraine increasingly taking the back burner for US foreign policy with focus mainly on the Middle East. Despite on-and-off truces with Iran, the US is still burning military resources, and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed, leading some to speculate a US strategic defeat.
Sources:
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/31/trump-cabinet-camp-david-ukraine
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c86n0336082o
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/31/us/politics/trump-ukraine-patriot-missiles.html
Haitians and Syrians Targeted by ICE following Removal of Temporary Protected Status
Following the Supreme Court’s decision to end Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Haitians and Syrians, over 300,000 people suddenly lost their ability to legally work and live in the US. Now ICE is targeting Haitians and Syrians by increasing arrests and deportations.
The same Ohio community of Haitians who were violently harassed by pogroms in 2024 following President Trump’s false claims that Haitians were eating residents’ pets, are now reporting that ICE is mandating them to report to field offices where they are shackled with ankle monitors. This practice of putting ankle monitors on immigrants is not a new practice – Behind Enemy Lines hosted a series of street teams and a speak out outside of an ICE field office in the Bronx that is known for this dehumanizing practice that aligns ICE with the US’s eighteenth-century slave catchers.
The State Department continues to report conditions in Haiti and Syria as not just unsafe, but the highest-level travel advisory for Americans stating that travel poses a risk of terrorism, unrest, kidnapping, hostage taking, crime, armed conflict, and limited health care. When asked about these advisories in relation to the deportations, Markwayne Mullin, who took over for Kristi Noem as Department of Homeland Security Secretary in March, said that the State Department travel advisory had Americans in mind and not Haitians.
Jean Négot Bonheur Delva, director-general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration, reported that based on conversations he has had with the US embassy, they are expecting weekly deportation flights with 250 former TPS status grantees.
Caribbean nations like Puerto Rico, Cuba, and Haiti have long been the testing ground for brutality that the US later deploys to larger populations. Immigration rights advocates report concerns that the nearly million people from 17 other countries with TPS status could be next.
Deporting US residents after they have built their lives here for 14-16 years, knowing that they face extreme danger from gang and political violence as well as displacement from natural disasters while under the economic suffocation of US and France is a cruel tactic of imperialism.
Sources:
https://time.com/article/2026/07/27/haitian-immigrants-ice-operations-temporary-protected-status/
https://travel.state.gov/en/international-travel/travel-advisories/haiti.html
https://travel.state.gov/en/international-travel/travel-advisories/syria.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/29/us/politics/haitians-internal-emails-tps.html
US Military Base in Korea Denies Leaking White Phosphorus
South Korean authorities sent a message ordering civilians around the Osan Air Base in Pyongtaek, South Korea to evacuate due to suspected white phosphorus detection. Pyongtaek is a city with a population of over 600,000 people and is located only around 60 kilometers (or 40 miles) away from Seoul, the capital of South Korea, and around 100 kilometers (or around 50 miles) away from the Demilitarized Zone, the zone established as a border between North and South Korea.
White phosphorus munitions have been used by the US military against the people of Iraq and Syria, and is actively being used by the IDF, a military proxy of the US, against Palestine and Lebanon. While not necessarily banned in warfare by the conventions of international law, the effects of white phosphorus are devastating to humans. White phosphorus ignites once it touches oxygen; and it can cause severe burns that pierce through the bone. Once inhaled, white phosphorus forms harmful compounds in the body that can lead to cardiovascular failure. The storage of white phosphorus at the Osan Air Base suggests that the US military is willing to cause this damage to the people of the world again.
The US 51st Fighter Wing, a branch of the US Air Force that runs the Osan Air Base, claimed that the alarm was due to white phosphorus crystallization in a munitions tank and denied that residents of Pyongtaek were at any risk due to the situation. The base commander, Colonel Ryan Ley, claimed that “‘[t]he safety of our service members, their families, and our Pyeongtaek neighbors remains our absolute highest priority.’” As the US military bases all over the world only serve to fuel the interests of the US empire, it makes sense that Koreans who live around the base are the US military’s stated last priority when something dangerous happens. The US constantly threatens the welfare of the people of the world, whether it be on purpose through the wars they wage or in “accidents” like this.
Sources:
https://apnews.com/article/south-korea-us-air-base-white-phosphorus-33085a09c2a1b06e7dd310250a4ef72f
https://thehill.com/policy/defense/5994058-osan-air-base-south-korea-evacuation-ground-mishap/
https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/white-phosphorus
ICC Arrest Warrant Against Netanyahu Seemingly Symbolic Passing Through Airspace of Four ICC Member States
Though the International Criminal Court (ICC) has issued an arrest warrant in 2024 against Netanyahu for war crimes inflicted against Palestinians in Gaza, the Israeli Prime Minister continues to gallivant across the world, seemingly unbothered. Recently in the US for the funeral of staunch conservative and close friend of Trump, Senator Lindsey Graham, it was reported that Netanyahu flew through the airspace of Greece, Italy, France and Canada en route.
All four nations are members of the ICC and, in theory, are required to carry out the arrest of the genocidal leader if in their jurisdiction; yet two years after the warrant was issued, over 1,000 days into the continuous genocidal onslaught in Gaza, on top of the violence Palestinians face in the occupied West Bank, Netanyahu remains a free man.
This isn’t the first time since 2024 that the Wing of Zion, the name given to the official state aircraft of Israel, has evaded accountability. According to Canadians for Justice and Peace in the Middle East, in the past seven months, Netanyahu has managed to fly through Canadian airspace three times.
While intercepting a criminal target on land is easier to imagine, it is still the duty of ICC participating member states to carry out an arrest if said target enters its airspace; according to the Chicago Convention on international civil aviation states, a state aircraft may not fly over another state’s territory without authorization.
While little has gotten in the way of Netanyahu’s international travel, the ICC arrest warrant has had an impact, if one could call it that, on his travel logistics. Recently on Fox News, Netanyahu eased the concern of the interviewer wondering what would happen if an emergency landing was required on a country who recognizes the ICC arrest warrant as anything more than symbolic, sharing that he travels with “special forces” for his protection.
Last year, Francesca Albanese, the UN special rapporteur on the human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, criticized Italy, France, and Greece for allowing Netanyahu to safely travel on his way to the US. The route the Wing of Zion took avoided the airspace of Ireland, Iceland, and the Netherlands, three nations that have agreed to carry out the arrest of Netanyahu.
Sources:
https://truthout.org/articles/asked-about-icc-warrant-netanyahu-says-he-travels-with-special-forces/
https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/unts/volume%2015/volume-15-ii-102-english.pdf
Behind Enemy Lines 