Here are the morning’s top stories on Wednesday, May 28, 2025…
- Though the Trump administration has made it impossible to ask for asylum at the southern border, the U.S. is bound by international law to protect migrants who are likely to be tortured by their own governments if they go home. It’s called the United Nations Convention Against Torture. But it turns out that the administration has quietly dismantled access to it for thousands of people.
- Temperatures in the state are expected to sizzle this week, reaching a peak on Friday. The hot and dry conditions mean increased wildfire danger.
Abeba’s story is summarized only briefly in the document that seals her impending deportation: After she inadvertently witnessed an extrajudicial killing by members of the Ethiopian military, she was imprisoned and beaten for more than a week.
But that was only the beginning. Abeba — who asked to be called by a pseudonym due to safety concerns for herself and her family — fled Ethiopia and made her way to Mexico. She was planning to ask for protection in the United States. But by the time she made it to the banks of the Rio Grande, her options had narrowed.
President Donald Trump, on the day he was inaugurated for the second time, had declared that anyone trying to cross the southern border without prior authorization was part of an “invasion.” The order suspended their right to apply for asylum at the border. So Abeba swam across the river to Texas, where she sought out Border Patrol agents to ask for help. She didn’t know it, but there was still a way to avoid being sent home — a narrow form of protection, called the United Nations Convention Against Torture, that applies to people whose governments could torture them or allow them to be tortured. CAT is harder to qualify for than asylum and doesn’t come with the same benefits, like a path to citizenship and the possibility of bringing her family to the U.S. as well. It would, however, stop her from being deported to Ethiopia.
But under the president’s order, nearly all of Abeba’s rights as a CAT applicant — such as the right to bring a lawyer to interviews with asylum officers and to appeal denials — had been quietly and deliberately erased, and what remains of the process now takes place under a veil of secrecy. That’s according to federal guidance cited in a class-action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union, a new report by two prominent human rights organizations, and independent reporting by the California Newsroom, including nearly a dozen interviews with immigration attorneys and immigrants’ rights advocates around the country, as well as a former asylum officer.
California is forecast to see the hottest temperatures of the year later this week. With highs pushing triple digits in the warmest parts of the state on Friday, National Weather Service meteorologists are encouraging residents to prepare for wildfire risk and moderate to major heat risks.
