Palestine Action and Defend Our Juries protesters outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court, London, July 30, 2026
AT LEAST 50 people were arrested outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court today as they demanded the ban on Palestine Action be lifted.
An estimated 200 protesters prepared to read a statement inviting support for the proscribed group as a review hearing began for the prosecution of 1,579 people under section 13 of the Terrorism Act 2000, for holding signs in support of Palestine Action during mass silent vigils in Parliament Square last year.
It is understood that at least four arrests were made before the action started, two under section 13 for articles of clothing and two for setting up a small stage.
From midday, a programme of speakers took place, with many being arrested while speaking.
Among them was Sir Jonathan Porritt, a campaigner and author who served as director of Friends of the Earth and was an adviser to current King Charles III for more than 30 years
Ahead of the protest, deputy assistant commissioner Andy Valentine said: “The law is clear. Expressing support for proscribed organisations is a criminal offence and anyone doing so can expect to be arrested.”
Protesters wore red to echo the jumpsuits worn during direct actions organised by Palestine Action, many of which targeted weapons factories to disrupt arms supply to Israel amid its genocide.
A Defend Our Juries spokesperson said: “We had hoped to see a different response from the Met Police today, but yet again they are embarking on making hundreds of arrests of regular people who refuse to do nothing as the judiciary criminalised those who act to save lives as terrorists.
“These arrests, like that of thousands of others, 1,855 of whom were listed as needing to appear in court today, are an assault on our democracy, our civil liberties and our moral obligation to step in to prevent genocide.
“We urge the new PM to stop this insanity, at a time when there is so much positive work to be done in our country, Andy Burnham needs to put a stop to huge sums of taxpayer money being used for these arrests and prosecutions that the public at large do not support.”
As arrests continued, court records revealed that Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori will be permitted to challenge the proscription at the Supreme Court.
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
Dozens of protesters gathered near the White House on July 28, 2026, in Washington, DC. They gathered in opposition to Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu’s visit to Washington. (Photo by Finn Gomez/Getty Images)
Israel’s prime minister has been met with relentless chants and jeers of “war criminal” and “genocide” around the US capital.
As Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has traversed Washington, DC this week amid talks with US President Donald Trump, scores of angry protesters have rarely been far behind.
American support for Israel has only continued to curdle as Trump has plunged deeper into a war with Iran that Netanyahu has goaded him to escalate; Israeli settlers have rampaged across the West Bank committing what have been described as “pogroms” against Palestinians; and the Israel Defense Forces have flattened entire neighborhoods in Lebanon, displacing over a million people.
Polls from YouGov earlier this week found that Americans believe Israel is committing genocide by a 19-point margin. By a margin of 22 points, they said they wanted to see American authorities arrest Netanyahu in accordance with the ICC warrant.
As Netanyahu’s motorcade arrived near the White House on Monday, protesters were there to let him know, waving Palestinian flags and pepper him with expletives.
“That’s our tax dollars going right there, to protect a fucking war criminal!” shouted one man as a squadron of black SUVs escorted Netanyahu, one video from Al Jazeera shows.
Outside his government-provided residence, Blair House, more protesters gathered, pounding drums, blowing whistles, and holding signs calling to “expose Israel’s control of Washington” and “stop the US/Israel war machine.”
İsrail Başbakanı Binyamin Netanyahu'nun Washington ziyaretine tepki gösteren aktivistler, Washington'daki Blair House önünde protesto gösterisi düzenledihttps://t.co/E8PDTn62wrpic.twitter.com/8TR0qtPapd
One keffiyeh-clad protester, identified as Joey, said he was taking part because “the only place [Netanyahu] belongs is locked up at the ICC.” He said he did not want his tax dollars being used by the US government “to defend someone like that.”
While he appears immune from legal justice on US soil, protesters have taken it upon themselves to remind him that he’s still on trial in the court of public opinion.
‘Bibi, Bibi, you can’t hide! You’re committing genocide!’
Activists protested at a hotel where Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was having dinner in Washington, DC. pic.twitter.com/PqKM8tJDeS
As the prime minister joined members of Congress for a dinner at the Four Seasons hotel honoring the late war hawk Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) on Monday night, more protesters stormed the hotel lobby.
“Bibi, Bibi, you can’t hide! You’re committing genocide!” they chanted before they were escorted out by armed security.
The protests continued the next day as Netanyahu met with Trump at the White House, where they reportedly discussed negotiations with Iran regarding its nuclear program and its control over the Strait of Hormuz, US attempts to increase economic pressure on Iran, and the possibility of Israel once again joining US attacks.
An unreal scene right outside of the White House: pro Palestine protestors opposing Netanyahu’s visit have blocked off a major roadway (16th and I) at the height of rush hour and police have created a barricade during a massive downpour. pic.twitter.com/tX8z8BahD7
At the height of rush hour, a group of protesters braved the pouring rain to occupy a roadway in an attempt to block Netanyahu’s motorcade.
According to Bloomberg reporter Emily Birnbaum, the “unreal scene” occurred “because the White House erected extra black fencing that prevented the protest from setting up where they usually do, in front of Lafayette Square.”
Protesters defied torrential rain and police repression on Tuesday to oppose Benjamin Netanyahu's White House visit. Despite an ICC war-crimes warrant, the Trump administration and local authorities allowed his free movement, fencing off a sprawling section of the city to shield… pic.twitter.com/cf3eS9ZapX
Video posted by the social media account Eye on Palestine shows police forming a barricade and forcibly dispersing the protesters.
“Despite an ICC war crimes warrant,” the account said, “the Trump administration and local authorities allowed his free movement, fencing off a sprawling section of the city to shield him from demonstrators’ arrest demands.”
Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.
Israeli forces intervene in a commemoration ceremony held by foreign and Israeli activists for Palestinian activist Awde Hadalin in Masafer Yatta, south of Hebron, West Bank, Palestine, on July 28, 2026. (Photo by Wisam Hashlamoun/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Settler attacks are now the leading cause of Palestinian injuries in the West Bank,” said the Carter Center.
United NationsHuman Rights Office spokesperson Ravina Shamdasani on Wednesday issued a dire warning about violence being carried out in the occupied West Bank by both Israeli armed forces and Israeli settlers, which she said is “only getting worse.”
Noting that eight Palestinians, including a boy, have been killed in the West Bank in just the last week, Shamdasani decried actions taken by the Israeli government to tighten control of the occupied territory and expand illegal settlements.
“Settlers and Israeli security forces, often acting together, have attacked local communities, assaulting families, destroying and confiscating property, and burning mosques,” said Shamdasani. “Movement restrictions are now tighter, blocking Palestinians from reaching essential services.”
The UN Human Rights spokesperson also expressed alarm at “open calls by Israeli leaders for revenge and collective punishment against Palestinian communities, accompanied by threats to turn the West Bank into another Gaza.”
Shamdasani encouraged the international community to “act urgently and in unison to halt the continuing killing and dispossession of the Palestinian people, and to bring an end to the Israeli occupation.”
In a Tuesday statement, the Carter Center similarly highlighted rising Israeli settler violence in the West Bank, pointing to a recent report from the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimating an average of six settler attacks per day against Palestinians.
“Settler attacks are now the leading cause of Palestinian injuries in the West Bank,” the center explained, “and more than 3,200 Palestinians have been displaced by settler attacks and home demolitions this year—double the daily rate of the previous three years.”
The center likewise urged the international community to “take urgent diplomatic, legal, and economic action to pressure Israel to fulfill its obligations under international law to curb settler violence, ensure accountability, protect civilians, and end policies that enable settlement expansion and annexation.”
According to the anti-occupation Israeli group Peace Now, officials on the Higher Planning Council on Wednesday were scheduled to discuss authorizing more than 1,200 housing units in four West Bank settlements, which would bring the cumulative number of housing units approved this year to over 8,000.
This comes on top of the nearly 28,000 housing units approved by the council last year, which Peace Now described as “an unprecedented record and the highest annual figure since the establishment of the settlement enterprise in the West Bank.”
Peace Now added that the Israeli government has significantly sped up the process for approving new settlement construction in recent years after scrapping earlier rules requiring the Israeli defense minister to sign off on new building projects in the occupied territories.
“In recent weeks, we have witnessed a change where the Higher Planning Council meets every week and approves several hundred housing units in each meeting,” explained Peace Now. “In this way, the government seeks to normalize planning in settlements and attract less public and international attention and criticism.”
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone object to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities, mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel. New Labour UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham continues Labour party policy of active support and complicity in Israel’s genocide.
A person holds a sign outside the Delaney Hall Immigration Detention Center, where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is housing detained immigrants, on June 2, 2026 in Newark, New Jersey. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
“They knew this stuff was going to happen and are sending people back anyway.”
“Deportation is a life-or-death matter.”
That was one immigration attorney’s response to the news this week that a couple who had lived in the St. Louis suburb of Overland, Missouri was found fatally shot in a sugarcane field near Retalhuleu, Guatemala, after the husband, Nixon Giovanni Pérez Paz, was deported there last year.
The couple’s 14-month-old baby, Giovanni, was found crying next to the body of Pérez Paz’s wife, Glendy Marisol González de la Cruz.
Pérez Paz, 43, and González de la Cruz, 25, showed signs of physical trauma and had apparently been bound and gagged before being killed. Police in Guatemala, where officials declared a state of emergency earlier this year over gang violence, are investigating the killings. Reuters reported that murders have spiked in the Central American country over the past week, with the government blaming organized crime.
14-month-old Giovanni was found crying beside her mother’s body in a sugarcane field in southern Guatemala. Her parents were tortured and killed before her just weeks after her mother self-deported to be with her father—who was deported by ICE last year.https://t.co/HthLFHVF78
In the US, observers including US Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) directed anger at the Trump administration, which has overseen a mass deportation campaign in which roughly 28,000 people were deported to Guatemala in the first six months of 2026, while hundreds of thousands more have been sent to other countries, including ones where they may face persecution, violence, and other security concerns.
“This is not immigration enforcement,” said Moulton of President Donald Trump’s deportation of Pérez Paz. “This is a body count. And every member of Congress and Senate enabling MAGA’s mass deportation police state owns it too.”
According to St. Louis Public Radio, Pérez Paz and his brother were stopped by US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents in Overland as they were driving to their roofing jobs. The two brothers were “swarmed” by agents before being handcuffed and shackled and taken to a local jail.
The agents told them they had no warrant for their arrest, but that they were being deported for entering the country without authorization.
Pérez Paz’s brother, Rolando Pérez Paz, told St. Louis Public Radio from Guatemala, where he was also deported, that they did not have legal status in the US and had fled poverty and violence in their home country.
A spokesperson for ICE told the outlet that Pérez Paz had been convicted twice for drunk driving in Overland and had a 2010 open-container charge in Palm Beach, Florida, which had been dropped by prosecutors. No records were found in Missouri’s court database to support the claim about the drunk driving conviction.
Court records show Pérez Paz had pleaded guilty to driving without a valid driver’s license in May 2024 and had paid a fine for the traffic violation.
“This isn’t due process,” said Moulton. “This isn’t deporting the worst of the worst or whatever lies MAGA campaigned on.”
González de la Cruz was pregnant when Pérez Paz was deported and remained in Overland, giving birth to Giovanni in June 2025; they also had two older daughters. She eventually returned to Guatemala to reunite the family after financial struggles and fears of deportation mounted, according to a local immigrant rights group called Missouri Workers Center Fuerza—even though she had a court date set for 2027 for her asylum case.
“Glendy came to our Fuerza meetings three weeks after giving birth. She was working two jobs, bringing new members, showing up—even as her world was being torn apart,” said the group in a Facebook post inviting community members to a candlelight vigil for the couple on August 2. “The cruelty of this administration meant her husband could not be by her side for the birth.”
The couple was reported missing on July 20 after leaving their home to register a motorcycle. They had faced “several months of struggles with financial hardships, run-ins with the federal government, and violence” before their deaths.
Reuters reported that a red striped motorcycle was found at the scene outside Retalhuleu. Their children are in the custody of Pérez Paz’s brother.
“They knew this stuff was going to happen and are sending people back anyway,” said one St. Louis resident of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign.
The deaths were reported as the White Housedirected ICE to ramp up operations targeting Haitians; Temporary Protected Status expired for Haitian refugees this week following a Supreme Court ruling last month. Hundreds of people could be forced onto deportation flights to the poverty-stricken country each week, according to the director-general of Haiti’s National Office of Migration. Like Guatemala, Haiti faces a crisis of violence by armed gangs.
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
US Rep. Joaquin Castro (D-Texas) joins other members of Congress, FWD.us, and Families Belong Together for a press conference about the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas on July 28, 2026. (Photo by FWD.us/Facebook)
“There’s a 2-month-old baby there and four pregnant women there,” said the Texas Democrat. “It’s no place for a 2-month-old baby to be, or even a 1- or 5-year-old kid.”
Democratic Texas Congressman Joaquin Castro appeared on MS NOW early Wednesday to discuss his recent trip to and persistent efforts to shut down what he called a “trailer prison” where US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is holding families in Dilley.
After leading a letter signed by over 100 other Democrats calling for the closure of the Dilley Immigration Processing Center, Castro on Tuesday conducted a congressional oversight visit of the facility with members of the Democratic Women’s Caucus, including Reps. Yassamin Ansari (Ariz.), Lizzie Fletcher (Texas), Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), and Luz Rivas (Calif.).
During the interview on “Morning Joe,” Castro said that Americans have watched in horror as ICE has killed and brutalized US citizens and immigrants in the streets, “but there’s a brutality behind the prison walls of these detention centers that almost no one gets to see except for members of Congress who have an opportunity to go inspect them.”
While touring the Dilley center seven times recently, “I’ve seen a lot of desperate children. I’ve seen traumatized children. There is a system there that is abusive of people,” Castro said, citing complaints of worms in food, yellow drinking water, and inadequate medical care.
“When I asked, they said the youngest person there is 2 months old—so there’s a 2-month-old baby there and four pregnant women there right now. And, you know, I can tell you that it’s no place for a 2-month-old baby to be, or even a 1- or 5-year-old kid,” he said.
Noting that the Texas facility is run by a private prison company—CoreCivic—and condemning the “commodification of child imprisonment,” Castro declared that “we want the Dilley detention center shut down.”
His comments on MS NOW mirrored those he and other lawmakers delivered outside the facility, also known as the South Texas Family Residential Center, and during a press conference with the organizations FWD.us and Families Belong Together.
The Trump regime is traumatizing children and families with your tax dollars. I can’t shake what I saw and heard at Dilley this week.#ShutDilleyDownhttps://t.co/PG77bYwmiM
The center is currently detaining 539 individuals, from 84 families, according to Pressley. She said that “these are law-abiding people that are our neighbors—people we love, people we live next to, we work and worship with, who were just going about their lives and met with such an aggressive disruption that they will be recovering from for the rest of their lives.”
“Dilley must be shut down. We have to abolish ICE. And then I’m gonna take it one step further and say any of those agents that have contributed to and caused the injury, the harm, and even fatalities, they must also be held accountable, and we should abolish qualified immunity for these federal law enforcement officers,” she argued.
— Congresswoman Luz Rivas (@RepLuzRivas) July 29, 2026
FWD.us president Todd Schulte also called for “shutting down Dilley and releasing these children and families immediately.”
“Dilley reflects a broader pattern that should not be expanded with additional, unprecedented taxpayer funding,” he stressed, denouncing the hundreds of thousands of dollars that the Republican-controlled Congress has poured into President Donald Trump’s mass detention and deportation campaign, led by ICE and US Customs and Border Protection.
“This will only cause irreparable harm to children and communities,” Schulte warned. “Thank you to the members who continue to call for the release of families, and we join them in their calls for Dilley’s closure.”
Donald Trump sings and dances, says that it’s fun to kill everyone … unless he gets distracted or falls asleep.Orcas discuss how Trump was re-elected and him being an obviously insane, xenophobic Fascist.
Palestine Action and Defend Our Juries protesters outside Westminster Magistrates’ Court, London, July 30, 2026
