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Spain's government announced Tuesday it will grant legal status to potentially hundreds of thousands of immigrants living and working in the country without authorization, the latest way the country has bucked a trend toward increasingly harsh immigration policies imposed in the United States and much of Europe.

The extraordinary measure will be implemented by expediting a decree to amend immigration laws, according to Spanish Minister of Migration Elma Saiz, bypassing a similar bill that has stalled in parliament. Eligible immigrants will be granted up to one year of legal residency as well as permission to work.

In contrast to other nations that have moved to restrict immigration and asylum, many emboldened by the Trump administration's policies, Spain has moved in the opposite direction with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and his ministers often extolling the benefits of legal migration to the country's economy and aging workforce.

Spain "will not look the other way," Saiz told journalists during a press conference. The government is "dignifying and recognizing people who are already in our country," she said.

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An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent attempted to enter Ecuador’s consulate in Minneapolis, but was turned back by an employee, prompting an official complaint to the US embassy in Quito, the country’s foreign ministry said.

The Tuesday incident came as ICE and other federal agencies continue their aggressive campaign of arresting people in Minnesota’s largest city suspected of being in the United States illegally, despite outrage over the deaths of two US citizens in the operation dubbed “Metro Surge”.

“This morning, the Ecuadorian consul in Minneapolis reported that, at around 11.00am, an agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attempted to enter the Consulate premises,” Ecuador’s foreign ministry said in a statement posted on Tuesday evening.

“Consulate officials immediately prevented the ICE officer from entering the consular headquarters, thus ensuring the protection of the Ecuadorians who were at the consular headquarters at that time,” the statement continued.

In response, Ecuador’s foreign minister “immediately submitted a note of protest to the US Embassy in Ecuador so that acts of this nature would not be repeated at any of Ecuador’s consular offices in the United States”.

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A federal judge has blocked the Trump administration from detaining refugees in Minnesota, following a spate of arrests in the state.

More than 100 refugees who had lawfully resettled in the state had been arrested in recent weeks, according to attorneys and advocacy groups. Some were flown to detention centers in Texas, according to attorneys representing the cases, and then were abruptly released – and left to find and pay their own way back home.

On Wednesday, US district judge John R Tunheim ordered the administration to temporarily halt the arrest and detention of lawfully resettled refugees, while a lawsuit about the administration’s policy of “re-vetting” this population continued. The judge mandated the immediate release of all detained refugees in Minnesota and the release of those taken to Texas within five days.

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A high-ranking Catholic leader and prominent ally to Pope Leo XIV offered a strongly worded condemnation of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on immigrants this week while encouraging more people of faith to speak out against it.

Cardinal Joseph Tobin of Newark, New Jersey, was one of several religious leaders to take part in an online prayer service organized by Faith in Action in response to the Jan. 24 shooting of Minneapolis resident Alex Pretti.

In excerpts of his remarks, Tobin urged Congress to “vote against renewing funding for such a lawless organization,” referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE.

“We mourn for a world, a country that allows 5-year-olds to be legally kidnapped and protesters to be slaughtered,” he said. “How will you say no to violence? Because as the great teacher Martin Luther King said, ‘Hate cannot drive out hate. Only love can do that.’”

Elsewhere in the service, Tobin referenced Ignazio Silone’s 1936 novel “Bread and Wine,” which was written while the author was living in exile from his native Italy during dictator Benito Mussolini’s regime.

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Bruce Springsteen seems equal parts outraged and inspired by the unrest and violence in Minneapolis.

So much so that on Saturday — the same day that Alex Pretti, the 37-year-old intensive care nurse who was fatally shot by federal agents during an Immigration and Customs Enforcement protest — the Boss began writing a song “dedicated to the people” of the city, Springsteen said Wednesday in a post on Bluesky.

“Recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis,” he wrote on the social media platform. “It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. Stay free”

Pretti and Good, who was killed earlier this month by an ICE officer, are both name-checked in the lyrics of the song, “Streets Of Minneapolis.” So is “King Trump,” his “federal thugs,” White House senior adviser Stephen Miller and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem.

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A framed picture of President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin hangs in the White House, a photo taken by Bloomberg photographer Kent Nishimura in the Palm Room on Tuesday shows.

The Palm Room connects the West Wing to the White House residence and primarily serves as a lobby, according to the New York Times.

The Palm Room connects the West Wing to the White House residence and primarily serves as a lobby, according to the New York Times.

The eyebrow-raising framed photograph in question hangs above a photo of Trump and one of his grandchildren.

Given Trump’s obsession with photos of leaders, it’s almost certainly not an oversight.

According to HuffPost White House correspondent S.V. Dáte, Trump hung up a picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un in the West Wing in his first term. When he vacated the residence, Trump found a new home for the photo: the bar at Trump Tower in New York.

Last year, Trump had staffers move former President Barack Obama’s official portrait to a corner where most people wouldn’t be able to see it. He did the same with the portraits of former Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush.

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While canceling Friday's hearing in which acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons was required to appear, a judge in Minnesota gave a scathing review of the agency.

In a court order Wednesday, Chief U.S. District Judge Patrick Schiltz listed 96 instances in 74 cases in which ICE had violated court orders this month.

"This list should give pause to anyone -- no matter his or her political beliefs -- who cares about the rule of law," Schiltz said in the court order. "ICE has likely violated more court orders in January 2026 than some federal agencies have violated in their entire existence."

The judge added that future noncompliance could lead to court-ordered “personal appearances of Lyons or other government officials.”

The hearing was canceled because Ecuadorian national Juan Tobay Robles, the petitioner in the case, was released from a Minnesota immigration detention center on Tuesday.

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The FBI on Wednesday searched the election office of a Georgia county that has been central to right-wing conspiracy theories over President Donald Trump’s 2020 election loss, acting just one week after the Republican leader predicted prosecutions over a contest he has baselessly insisted was tainted by widespread fraud.

The search at Fulton County’s main election facility in Union City sought records related to the 2020 election, county spokesperson Jessica Corbitt-Dominguez said. It appeared to be the most public step by law enforcement to pursue Trump’s claims of a stolen election, grievances rejected time and again by courts and state and federal officials, who found no evidence of fraud that would have altered the outcome.

It also unfolds against the backdrop of FBI and Justice Department efforts to investigate perceived political enemies of Trump, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

Trump has for years focused on Fulton, Georgia’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold, as a key example of what he claims went wrong in the 2020 election. His pressure campaign there culminated in a sweeping state indictment accusing him and 18 others of illegally trying to overturn the vote.

An FBI spokesperson said agents were “executing a court authorized law enforcement action” at the county’s main election office in Union City, just south of Atlanta. The spokesperson declined to provide any further information, citing an ongoing matter.

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