U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday threatened to send federal immigration agents to airports across the country on Monday if Democrats don’t agree to end the Department of Homeland Security shutdown, now approaching five weeks. “If the Radical Left Democrats don’t immediately sign an agreement to let our Country, in particular, our Airports, be FREE and SAFE again, I will move our brilliant and patriotic ICE Agents to the Airports where they will do Security like no one has ever seen before, including the immediate arrest of all Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country,” he wrote. “Illegal Immigrants who have come into our Country, with heavy emphasis on those from Somalia” would be targeted with an especially firm hand, the president wrote on Truth Social. Shortly thereafter, Trump followed up to say he plans to send ICE to airports in just days. “I look forward to moving ICE in on Monday, and have already told them to, ‘GET READY.’ NO MORE WAITING, NO MORE GAMES!” he wrote in a separate Truth Social post on Saturday. It’s his latest bid to push Democrats, who have refused to greenlight DHS funding without changes to how it carries out immigration enforcement, pointing to deadly incidents as Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents descended en masse on major American cities. Increased callouts among TSA agents and airport staffers are expected to roil airports in the coming weeks, with major interruptions to airport procedure likely to follow. Both sides have seemingly made progress in recent days toward ending the shutdown. The White House made several concessions on immigration enforcement policies in a proposal shared with Senate Democrats on Friday. But the ICE agent masking ban Democrats are seeking in exchange for their support on a funding package remains a bridge too far, Republicans argue. Trump’s latest threat isn’t likely to make the prospects of a truce any more viable, especially given his focus on Minnesota, where tensions flared after federal immigration agents killed two protesters during a major surge of personnel in January. In a post on X following Trump’s threat, Rep. Lauren Boebert said, “The airport in Minnesota is about to be a ghost town.” The president’s threat Saturday lands squarely in the middle of a confirmation fight over his pick to run DHS, Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.), a process that has quickly become a proxy battle over the future of ICE itself. At his hearing this week, Mullin tried to strike a more measured tone than in some of his past remarks, pledging to rein in some enforcement tactics and lower the agency’s public profile. But he repeatedly defended ICE agents amid mounting scrutiny, including backing officers involved in high-profile civilian deaths and arguing Democrats are tying the agency’s hands. Republicans — including Mullin — have instead pushed to expand ICE’s resources and authority, framing the standoff as a fight over public safety. The backdrop is the messy ouster of Kristi Noem, whose tenure was defined by aggressive deportation policies, costly PR campaigns and a series of controversies that ultimately led Trump to push her out after a bruising round of congressional hearings. The enforcement-heavy approach Trump threatened Saturday sets up a preview for what Mullin will perhaps be asked to defend — and potentially formalize — as the next head of DHS. ICE and the Transportation Security Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment from POLITICO.

The Trump administration is doubling down on its endorsement of Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán in next month’s Hungarian elections, even as Orbán’s deal-blocking in Brussels has been labeled “unacceptable” by EU peers. U.S. President Donald Trump on Saturday reiterated his “complete and total endorsement” of Orbán in the Hungarian elections. And U.S. Vice President JD Vance is reportedly due to fly to Budapest in April in support of the prime minister. The EU’s longest-serving leader, facing an election in less than a month that he is forecast to lose, has long been a thorn in the side of Brussels. In the latest stand-off against his European counterparts, Orbán held hostage a €90 billion loan to Ukraine this week over an oil dispute. “The prime minister has been a strong leader whose shown the entire world what’s possible when you defend your borders, your culture, your heritage, your sovereignty and your values,” Trump said in a video address to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) taking place in Hungary on Saturday. Trump praised Hungary’s “strong borders” and said the country will continue to “work very hard on immigration,” and said Europe has to “work very hard” to solve “a lot of problems” around immigration. The American president said that Hungary and the U.S. are “showing the way toward a revitalized West,” and would also work “hard together on energy.” Vance is planning an April trip to Budapest just ahead of the Hungarian elections in a show of support for Orbán, Hungarian Foreign Minister Peter Szijjarto confirmed in a podcast on Friday. Reuters first reported on Vance’s planned trip to Budapest.

LONDON — U.K. Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood has been warned her planned overhaul of settlement rules for migrants will not save the £10 billion she has claimed. Instead, the policy to drastically increase the length of time migrants must wait before gaining permanent residency could end up costing the Treasury billions, according to a private briefing note shared with the Home Office and obtained by POLITICO.  The document, drawn up by the IPPR think tank where Mahmood made the case for her reforms earlier this month, is being used by Labour MPs to pressure for a rethink of the policy. A leading critic said it totally “dismantles” her financial argument. In her speech, Mahmood cited increased welfare costs from the 196,000 migrants on health and social care visas and their dependents who arrived during a post-Brexit immigration spike, and who are expected to start getting settled status soon, as a key reason for the overhaul.  Under her proposals, care workers would have to wait around 15 years before being eligible for indefinite leave to remain (ILR), up from the current five years.  “If we do not, we will see a £10 billion pound drain on our public finances and further strain on public services, like housing and healthcare, already under immense pressure,” Mahmood said. But the progressive think tank, which is well-connected in Labour circles, argues the Home Office’s calculations are flawed for four reasons.  The department’s figure is based on the cost of welfare spending over the individuals’ lifetimes. But the IPPR points out that estimates from the government’s own Migration Advisory Committee (MAC) show dependents making net positive financial contributions until they stop working, claim the state pension and start having higher health costs. Though Mahmood’s proposals will lengthen the time it takes them to gain access to the welfare system, the change “will not make a significant difference to the lifetime fiscal impact” of these migrants, according to the report. “The only way this policy would significantly bring down the £10 billion lifetime fiscal cost is if it led to large numbers of care workers and dependents leaving the U.K. before they reached the qualifying period for settlement,” the IPPR says. As it stands, that’s not the case Mahmood is making. The primary reason care workers make a negative net lifetime financial contribution is because they are poorly paid. Gaining settlement would allow them to earn more by opening the door to work in any occupation. But delaying this traps them in lower-paid work for longer, the document argues. “The overall fiscal impact of the proposed earned settlement reforms should therefore consider the potential costs of lower tax contributions from the care worker cohort while they wait for settlement, as well as the fiscal benefits of restricting access to public funds for longer,” the IPPR says. If indeed the policy is to encourage care workers and their dependents to leave the U.K. in large numbers then the briefing argues it could in fact add to costs.  Estimates by the MAC, which advises the Home Office, point out that their adult dependents are net positive contributors for 20 — and it’s only after around 40 years that they make a cumulative net negative financial impact to the British state. “Given the [Treasury’s] fiscal rules work to a 5-year horizon, the emigration of care workers would make it harder — not easier — for the Treasury to meet its fiscal targets,” the IPPR argues. ‘DISMANTLES THE RATIONALE’ The briefing also digs into the wider “earned settlement” policy. Estimates of the effects are hard to ascertain because behavioral impacts are uncertain. But last year’s immigration white paper was accompanied by an illustrative example of a drop of between 10-20 per cent in skilled workers, care workers and their dependents. The IPPR uses this to calculate the cost to the Treasury based on that reduction being applied to both care workers and skilled workers. They argue that this would mean a potential cost to the exchequer of £11 billion to £22 billion over the lifetimes of migrants granted relevant visas last year.  “Even if the policy is designed in such a way to minimise any direct effects on skilled workers who make a positive fiscal contribution, it is possible that the reforms will deter (and indeed may already be deterring) higher-paid workers who seek certainty for their and their family’s status,” it says. “Even a small impact on higher-paid skilled workers would counteract the savings from care workers, given the per person net lifetime fiscal contribution of skilled workers is £689,000, nearly 20 times larger than the per person net costs of care workers.”  Leading Labour critic of the policy Tony Vaughan used the findings to argue that Mahmood’s proposals “will be a fiscal cost to the U.K. for decades.” “The IPPR report dismantles the rationale for this earned settlement policy,” the MP told POLITICO. “It would also undermine community cohesion and integration, weakening the bonds that hold our society together. This is not a policy that can be trimmed around the edges. It is fundamentally flawed and should be abandoned.” POLITICO reported this week that the government is considering watering down the proposals, potentially introducing transitions to ease the retrospective nature of the changes that are proving most controversial among Labour MPs. But, as critics consider parliamentary action to force a vote on the issue, Vaughan indicated the compromises under consideration would not be enough.  “I say that as a loyal Labour MP who has never voted against the government and who desperately wants us to succeed, but cannot in good conscience stand by and see a policy as flawed as this, which is so strongly against our national interest, reach the statute books,” he said. The Home Office has yet to respond to a request for comment.

LONDON — The U.K. government is considering substantial compromises on its plan to make it harder for migrants to permanently settle in Britain, following a backlash from Labour MPs. Downing Street declined to guarantee on Wednesday that proposals to significantly extend the length of time migrants must wait for permanent residence would proceed as planned.  Angela Rayner, a frontrunner to succeed struggling Prime Minister Keir Starmer, made a major intervention on the issue Tuesday night, intensifying the existing pressure to change tack from MPs in Starmer’s center-left party. Rayner, his former deputy PM, branded the plans “bad policy,” a “breach of trust” and “un-British” in a speech. The government issued a statement on Wednesday backing the broad policy of increasing the standard route to settlement from five to ten years. But officials reiterated that they were looking at transitional arrangements for migrants already in the U.K. — suggesting that not all proposals would apply retroactively. That would address concern from Rayner and other critics that the government is “moving the goalposts” — but also be a major headache for the Home Office, which is facing the consequences of a surge in legal migration after Brexit. One senior minister, granted anonymity to discuss internal conversations, said one potential compromise was to introduce more routes for migrants to obtain indefinite leave to remain (ILR) in a shorter timeframe. They told POLITICO that the proposals had been “shifting anyway” before Rayner’s intervention. “No. 10 and the chief whip are heavily engaged with MPs, in a way that they weren’t with the welfare reforms,” they added. Critics have complained that lower-earning migrants will have to wait far longer than high earners before being granted settlement under the government’s proposed changes. Tony Vaughan, the backbench leader of a push to get Starmer to rethink the plans, told the same event that Rayner spoke at: “We cannot have a system where the child of a banker gets settlement after three years and the child of a care worker gets it after 15.” On Wednesday, officials came under intense pressure to back Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood’s plans. By the afternoon, the government released a statement insisting it would “double the route to settlement from five to ten years,” but added that “we are consulting to apply this change to those [who are] in the U.K. today but have not received settled status.” That consultation — which the government says has received 200,000 responses — gives ministers wriggle-room to water down their proposals. But if the changes aren’t applied retroactively, it risks undermining the argument that they are being introduced to target the so-called “Boriswave,” a nickname for the significant spike in migrants arriving in the U.K. following COVID lockdowns under former Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson. These people are due to start receiving settled status shortly. ‘OPEN FOR DISCUSSION’ Mahmood’s proposals are being dispersed through various pieces of legislation — making a fightback against them harder for critics. The ILR restrictions will be made via a rule change that doesn’t require legislation at all. But some Labour opponents asked whether that position is sustainable. “The big question is if politically they can do that even if they can legally,” said one Rayner ally. “The one thing that appears to unite a growing body of people is a blunt retrospective five to ten year element, with no protections.” The opponents hope they can get the PM to water the plans down himself, but failing that, they want to push for a vote. They’re yet to land on a means, but tabling an amendment to one element of the legislation is one possibility under discussion, one adviser told POLITICO. Like other critics, the same adviser had been buoyed by Rayner’s speech: “That was very helpful last night. That was a big intervention.” Vaughan, an immigration lawyer at the firm where Starmer practised, Doughty Street Chambers, has written a detailed letter to the PM calling for a rethink that has amassed more than 100 signatures from fellow Labour MPs.   One government official said: “They’re doing an awful lot of engagement with MPs. It’s been going on for weeks. I hadn’t heard that they were willing to shift, but I’ve noticed that they’ve been doing loads of engagement. Anyone who wants to talk to a minister is being put in front of one, and anything on the proposals that have been floated has been open for discussion.” Mahmood, however, thinks her plans are popular with the wider public. Her team points to research by the More in Common think tank that suggests extending the waiting period for ILR, even if applied to those already living in the U.K., is backed by Green supporters on the left of British politics. A LEADERSHIP PITCH? Rayner’s comments on the migration proposals were part of a broader swipe at the direction and strategy of Starmer’s government, from which she resigned over a tax scandal in September. She said her party was “running out of time” to show change and “cannot just go through the motions in the face of decline.”  Some of Rayner’s supporters — and critics — in Labour suggested privately that her intervention was geared toward winning the support of grassroots members in any future leadership contest. Leadership contenders generally require some support from major unions, which are formally affiliated to Labour. One of the largest, UNISON, branded the migration reforms “reckless” in February. One union official said: “Rayner’s intervention on changes to indefinite leave to remain is savvy. It’s one of UNISON’s big campaign asks right now — UNISON represents a lot of migrant social care workers. Rayner coming out publicly against Mahmood’s proposals won’t go unnoticed.” The left-wing TSSA union, which has already publicly backed Rayner to replace Starmer, praised her “sound advice” on Wednesday while Andy Burnham, the Greater Manchester mayor who had been touted as a possible leadership contender before he was blocked from running for parliament, said Rayner “needs to be listened to.” A second union official said: “She’s playing a canny game, the way she’s got the unions and Burnham on her side over this. She’s making clear that she is the default candidate.”

The Trump administration quietly shifted its immigration messaging in the weeks after its violent operation in Minneapolis that included the fatal shooting of two Americans, largely dropping mentions of “mass deportations” as public sentiment shifted against the aggressive tactics. A POLITICO review of social media posts from major official administration accounts shows only one mention of the term in the past month, compared to more than a dozen in the four weeks prior. The analysis examined the social media accounts of top Trump officials and White House-run pages the administration has leveraged to push support for its immigration agenda. The findings suggest an administration recalibrating its message in the wake of wavering poll numbers on what had been one of President Donald Trump’s signature issues. It comes as Republicans have grown worried about the 2026 midterms, with calls for large-scale deportations — a hallmark of Trump’s campaign — now seen by some in the party as a vulnerability, particularly with Hispanic voters who had shifted toward the president just two years ago. “Deportations have a different look after Minneapolis, and we need to reclaim immigration as an issue,” said Michigan-based GOP strategist Jason Roe. “Deporting criminals remains popular, and the fact that the Democrats reflexively take the opposite side of Trump puts them, once again, on the side of criminals.” For months, calls for “mass deportation” were a frequent feature of the Trump administration’s aggressive social media strategy. On X, the White House’s prolific Rapid Response account spent days in mid-January linking “mass deportations” to lower crime, more jobs and lower housing costs. But that account hasn’t used the phrase “mass deportation” since Feb. 12, when it shared clips from a press conference during which border czar Tom Homan, who was dispatched to Minneapolis to deescalate tensions, said mass deportations were still on but emphasized more targeted enforcement. “The message focus is a reflection on where the administration’s strongest arguments have always been, which is an emphasis on border security policies that draw a contrast with the Biden-Harris administration, and a more prioritized and precise focus on illegal immigrants with criminal offenses,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who has worked for House GOP leadership and on presidential campaigns. Last week, Trump picked Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) to be the next Homeland Security secretary, moving current DHS chief Kristi Noem to a special envoy role in the face of growing frustrations with her tenure. The official White House account, along with social media accounts tied to other top Trump officials, including deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and press secretary Karoline Leavitt, have also eschewed the phrase after highlighting mass deportations in the past — even as they continue to post when immigrants accused of violent crimes are arrested. A White House official, granted anonymity to discuss internal strategy, said the rapid response page is not indicative of any policy changes. The account amplifies and engages with major news stories, the official said, noting that there has been less news coverage about immigration since early February. The official said the same applies to other officials’ X accounts. The Department of Homeland Security’s public ad campaign has also started to take a different tact: An ad that began running in February, weeks after the Minnesota shootings, sought to highlight “victims of illegal immigration,” in contrast with ads the agency had previously run that featured footage of arrests. A DHS spokesperson said the agency “remains committed to arresting and deporting the worst of the worst illegal aliens to keep the American people safe, just as President Trump promised.” The spokesperson also shared several DHS press releases from this week highlighting arrests of immigrants who had committed crimes. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the administration’s immigration enforcement isn’t changing, and that the president’s “highest priority has always been the deportation of illegal alien criminals who endanger American communities.” She also said that 70 percent of deportations to date have been unauthorized immigrants with criminal records, and said the administration has had the “most secure border in U.S. history for nine straight months.” This week, White House deputy chief of staff James Blair privately urged House Republicans at their annual policy retreat in Doral, Florida, to focus their immigration message on removing violent criminals instead of “mass deportations.” Blair’s message was first reported by Axios. A senior White House official said Blair’s comments were taken “out of context.” The official said the administration can highlight deportations but that the White House also has to tout the president’s success at the border. “Like the border numbers are astronomical — zero, right?” the senior official said. “Zero people coming in. That’s a great message to push.” A person close to the White House, granted anonymity to speak candidly about the strategy, said among crucial voting blocs, including Latino voters, moderate Republicans, Independents, and young voters, “mass deportations” is associated with sweeping round-ups in community gathering places. If candidates instead focus on criminal arrests, public safety, and the president’s success in securing the southern border, the person argued, they can turn the issue against Democrats. “Just have to message it a little bit better,” the person said. “If you can go on a campaign, and you can contrast and say, ‘OK, this person wants open borders, this person wants amnesty for criminal illegal aliens — it’s madness.’ It’s just not where the majority of the American people are.” The president, during the State of the Union address, sought to draw that contrast when he asked members of Congress to stand if they agreed that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens” — a standout moment Vice President JD Vance amplified again during a speech in North Carolina on Friday. In the February address, the president only said “deporting” once to emphasize his focus on deporting “criminal illegal aliens.” It was part of a section in which Trump introduced the mother of Lizbeth Medina, a teenager killed by an unauthorized immigrant. It was a departure from Trump’s 2025 address when the president reiterated his vow to conduct the “largest deportation operation in U.S. history.” Promises of “mass deportations” were also a recurring feature of his 2024 campaign — a vow he and his top officials repeatedly amplified during his first year back in the White House. “People know where President Trump stands on immigration, on deportation,” the senior official said, when asked about the president’s SOTU address. “It was a hallmark of his campaign. … We don’t need to explain our immigration position.” The White House’s shift in messaging is infuriating some Trump allies who have launched a lobbying effort to reverse that reversal. Those concerns underscore the GOP divide on how aggressive to be on immigration enforcement. Immigration hardliners want Trump to ramp up deportations but many Republicans worry that would risk a further loss of public support. Recent immigration polling, including a January POLITICO poll conducted before 37-year-old Alex Pretti was killed, has shown growing unease with the president’s deportation campaign. Even among his base, the poll found that more than 1 in 3 Trump voters said that while they supported the goal of his policy, they disapproved of its implementation. Eli Stokols and Alex Gangitano contributed to this report.

BRUSSELS — The EU is braced for a wave of refugees fleeing the war in Iran, according to four national migration ministers, and is hoping that the rules it spent a decade working on will be up to the challenge. More than a million people sought asylum in Europe in 2015, many of them fleeing civil war in Syria, and Europe’s scramble to respond to it exposed deep divisions in the bloc. In its wake, the EU spent years in tough negotiations on reforming its migration policy by allowing migrants to be dispersed more evenly among countries and accelerating deportations of failed asylum-seekers. Just weeks before those rules come into force, the escalating violence in the Middle East has raised the possibility of an early stress test.  The EU “cannot overlook the possibility of a new refugee crisis,” said Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister of Cyprus, the EU country that’s closest to the Middle East. Such a crisis “might test [the] effectiveness of the bloc’s new rules, and that’s something we need to be prepared for,” he warned. Cyprus currently holds the rotating EU presidency. The violence in the Middle East shows no sign of slowing, two weeks after U.S.-Israeli strikes on Iran began, with Tehran launching its own attacks in the region, including on the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and Israel saying it would expand its attacks in Lebanon. The EU “cannot overlook the possibility of a new refugee crisis,” said Nicholas Ioannides, deputy migration minister of Cyprus, the EU country that’s closest to the Middle East. | Dursun Aydemir/Anadolu via Getty Images In addition to the hundreds of people who have been killed, hundreds of thousands have been forced out of their homes, with IOM’s Regional Director for the Middle East Othman Belbeisi saying Thursday that Lebanon is now nearing one million displaced people. For the time being, there’s no sign of large numbers of people fleeing to Europe to escape the violence, according to the U.N. migration agency (IOM) — but in a region long battered by conflicts, the seeds for a large-scale displacement are there, with some 19 million displaced people in the Middle East before the war even began. In a report written before the war, the EU’s agency for asylum warned that in Iran, a country of 90 million, “even partial destabilization could generate refugee movements of an unprecedented magnitude.” “We will see how things turn out if [the EU’s migration policy] comes under pressure again,” Dutch Migration Minister Bart van den Brink, who only took up his role last month, told POLITICO on the sidelines of a meeting of migration ministers in Brussels last week.  Van den Brink was optimistic, however, saying that “there has been much more solidarity and relaxation in the relationship between different member states” since the EU agreed on the migration pact and that “the willingness to cooperate is also far greater” now that migration is so high on the political agenda. The Migration and Asylum Pact, the product of years of negotiations between national governments, is due to be implemented on June 12 and will introduce stricter procedures to process asylum applications at the border, special measures for crisis situations, and a mechanism to support countries that receive the bulk of migrants by providing financial aid or by accepting relocations.  “We will see how things turn out if [the EU’s migration policy] comes under pressure again,” Dutch Migration Minister Bart van den Brink told POLITICO last week. | John Beckmann/DeFodi Images/DeFodi via Getty Images The new measures show the EU has “come a long way since 2015, when the refugee crisis erupted,” Cyprus’s Ioannides said. WIR SCHAFFEN DAS The desire to come up with new migration rules was spurred by the events of 2015, when an estimated one million people sought asylum in Europe, half of them fleeing Syria. Europe’s response tested the EU’s unity, as countries criticized the way Greece, which received the vast majority of the refugees, was handling the crisis; reinstated border controls to stop refugees from traveling onward within the bloc; and dragged their feet over an emergency relocation plan. The European Commission’s response was to step up collaboration with Turkey, with Ankara agreeing to take back Syrian migrants who reach Greece illegally in return for financial support and the relocation in Europe of Syrian refugees in Turkey. The bloc would go on to agree migration deals with countries, including Tunisia, Egypt and Lebanon. But it would take the EU years to find an agreement that bridged the positions of border countries, which demanded more support in handling asylum seekers, and inland countries, which said too many people were arriving and moving around Europe without permission or oversight. As far-right anti-migration parties amassed support in the wake of the crisis, centrist parties in EU countries increasingly embraced a tougher approach to migration. Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement in 2015 that Europe would be able to manage the influx of refugees — “Wir schaffen das” — is regularly brought up as evidence of Europe’s missteps. Spain, which recently announced plans to regularize 500,000 undocumented migrants, appeared to stand by Merkel’s approach at the time.  “In 2015, we were able to face an important movement of refugees coming from Syria,” Home Affairs Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told POLITICO. “So if it’s necessary, it’s not going to be any kind of problem to receive refugees coming from the East.”  Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s statement in 2015 that Europe would be able to manage the influx of refugees is regularly brought up as evidence of Europe’s missteps. | Thomas Kienzle/AFP via Getty Images Other ministers, however, treated 2015 as a cautionary tale. “A new refugee crisis … is not an option for us,” Sweden’s Migration Minister Johan Forssel said. Forssel argued that “we are still seeing the consequences of what happened 10 years ago. And that’s not just the situation in Sweden, but I would say elsewhere in Europe too.”  A DROP IN THE OCEAN The “status quo … is not an option,” the Commission said after the 2015 influx, as it sought to shepherd new migration rules. Agreement on the new migration pact was finally found in 2023 and will be applied from June. Additional rules that will allow countries to detain and deport failed asylum seekers to a country with which the person doesn’t have ties, and which have led to an outcry from NGOs, are still under negotiation. “The rules took a long [time] to reform because the EU needed to fill up a vacuum of trust with legislation,” said Alberto Horst Neidhardt, head of the European Policy Centre’s migration program. “Today, that trust remains very fragile.”  The new rules, which are meant to promote solidarity, “would be a drop in the ocean if we were to witness mass displacement,” Neidhardt said, adding that crisis provisions would not prevent countries from resorting to border closures if there was mass migration into Europe, putting the EU’s asylum system, and also its free-travel Schengen zone and even EU integration as a whole, at risk. He argued that, whether over “genuine concern about the humanitarian situation in the region” or over fears about its impact on Europe, the EU’s best bet is to support efforts to stabilize and offer protection in the Middle East.

ROME — Facing possible defeat in an important referendum, Italy’s right-wing Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni on Thursday put herself at front of the campaign, throwing her full political weight behind a vote that is increasingly shaping into a test of her authority. The March 22-23 referendum on judicial reform is a decisive showdown for Meloni. The Italian right has long looked for an opportunity to remold a legal system that it sees as skewed to favor the left. But the national plebiscite has evolved beyond a vote on the rules governing the careers and oversight of judicial officials and into a broader vote of confidence in her and her government. The latest polls suggest she may be facing the first major reversal of her premiership, just as she appeared to be on a roll at home and in Brussels. Meloni’s tone was combative on Thursday, as she accused the current judicial structure of committing numerous miscarriages of justice, and calling some judgments “surreal.” Speaking at the Franco Parenti theater in Milan, Meloni doubled down on the central arguments of her campaign, insisting judges are unaccountable and out of control. She is also increasingly casting the judiciary as run by left-wing opposition “factions” and accusing judges of blocking her key goal of clamping down on illegal migration and crime. “If the reform doesn’t pass this time, we will probably not have another chance. We will find ourselves with even more powerful factions, even more negligent judges, even more surreal sentences, immigrants, rapists, pedophiles, drug dealers being freed and putting your security at risk,” she said. “When justice doesn’t work you can’t do anything, no-one can do anything,” she said. “Except this time,” she added, urging people to get out and vote later this month. ENTERING THE RING In the months leading up to the vote, Meloni largely kept her distance from the campaign, encouraging allies and ministers to deliver the message while she limited herself to occasional remarks and sporadic attacks on judges. But with the final public polls last week suggesting her side will lose by around five points, the prime minister has now decided to step in more directly. Opposition figures say the move shows the government fears defeat. “The prime minister, in contradiction to her commitment not to involve the government in the referendum, has thrown herself headlong into the campaign,” said parliamentarian Alfredo D’Attorre, a senior figure in the opposition center-left Democratic Party,. “It is clear that she is very worried about the result.” He added voters might not be impressed if Meloni “spends the next two weeks being an influencer for the ‘yes’ vote” rather than governing Italy “at a moment of international tension.” Indeed, Meloni is having to weather political headwinds at home related to her alliance with U.S. President Donald Trump, who is highly unpopular in Italy, and the war in Iran that Italians fear will increase their already steep power bills. POLITICAL GAMBLE The challenge for Meloni is that the referendum campaign revolves around technical institutional changes that are difficult to explain, and even harder to mobilize voters around. “The arguments are very technical and abstract which doesn’t win hearts,” said Giovanni Orsina, a political historian at Luiss University in Rome. “The opposition has a solid core of voters who will turn out against Meloni regardless. How can she mobilize her supporters? By creating an enemy and a clash between good and evil.” Meloni has tried to frame the referendum around issues that resonate more strongly with her electorate, particularly migration and public security. Orsina said Meloni’s cautious entry into the campaign made political sense. “As prime minister, you cannot expose yourself too much,” he said. “If you become the face of the campaign and lose, you pay the price.” “She will be monitoring private polls and testing the waters. If she enters the campaign and the polls move in her favor, she will become a stronger presence. If not, she may step back to avoid taking the full blow.” The dilemma is clear: without Meloni’s direct involvement, the campaign risks losing momentum. But the more closely the referendum becomes associated with her personally, the greater the political damage a loss would inflict on her. “The referendum has turned out to be an unnecessary risk for Meloni,” said Orsina. “This was selected as the easiest of the reforms she planned to carry through, but even so, it much less easy than expected.”  Italians know all too well that former Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had to step down after a failed referendum on constitutional reform in 2016, but Meloni insists she’s going nowhere, whatever the result. “There’s no way I’ll resign under any circumstances. I want to see the end of this legislature,” she said.

FAVERSHAM, U.K. — Frank Furedi, one of the European populist right’s intellectual darlings, has a nagging anxiety. What if they gain power, then blow it? A Hungarian-born sociologist who spent decades on the political fringes himself, Furedi now runs MCC Brussels, a think tank backed by Viktor Orbán’s Budapest government. It aims to challenge what he calls the European Union’s liberal consensus — and help sharpen the ideas of a rising populist right. Speaking in his home office in the English market town of Faversham, where he was recovering from a recent illness, the 78-year-old professional provocateur — who has risen to prominence in Europe’s right-wing circles — hailed what he sees as the impending collapse of Europe’s political center. But he also questioned whether the insurgent movements benefiting from that upheaval have the discipline needed to govern if they win. “You can win an election, but if you’re not prepared for its consequences, then you become your worst enemy,” he said during a two-hour conversation in his paper-strewn office. “You basically risk being doomed forever.” Across Europe, the movements Furedi is talking about are already testing the political mainstream. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is surging in Britain, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has a real shot at the French presidency, and the Alternative for Germany is consistently at or near the top of polls. In Italy and Hungary, Giorgia Meloni and Orbán have already shown what populists in power can look like. Inside his house in Faversham, the conversation turned from Europe’s populist surge to the ideas that might shape what comes next. As Furedi led the way up the stairs, a yapping cockerpoo was hauled away into some back room. At the top of the staircase was a framed poster of Hannah Arendt, the philosopher who understood the attraction of radical political movements for the disenfranchised and alienated — and the potential for those movements to veer into evil. Nigel Farage’s Reform Party is surging in Britain, Marine Le Pen’s National Rally has a real shot at the French presidency, and the Alternative for Germany is consistently at or near the top of polls. | Nicolas Guyonnet/Hans Lucas/AFP via Getty Images But Furedi isn’t worried about a return of European totalitarianism — if anything, he thinks the current regime is where freedom of thought and speech are being crushed. His real fear is that Europe’s right-wingers arrive in power unprepared — failing to learn from the experience of the U.S. MAGA movement, which almost blew its chance after Donald Trump won power in 2016 but couldn’t execute a coherent vision for government.  “There’s a real demand for something different,” he said. “It’s the collapse of the old order, which is really what’s exciting.” But while Furedi is eager to watch it all burn down, he’s unconvinced by the right-wing parties carrying the torches.  “At the moment, all politics is negative,” he said, noting two exceptions where the right has managed to govern with stability: Meloni and Orbán.  “It’s a fascinating moment in most parts of Europe, but it’s a moment that isn’t going to be there forever,” he said. “But whether these movements have got the maturity and the professionalism to be able to project themselves in a convincing way still remains to be seen.”  POLITICAL PROGRAM Like Farage, Meloni and many of their ilk, Furedi is riding a political wave after a lifetime spent far from power or relevance. Since the 1960s he has been an agitator at the obscure edge of politics, first on the left as a founder of the Revolutionary Communist Party and its magazine Living Marxism, which attacked the British Labour Party for its centrism, later to become a writer for Spiked, an internet magazine that attacked Labour from the right.  His real fear is that Europe’s right-wingers arrive in power unprepared — failing to learn from the experience of the U.S. MAGA movement. | Heather Diehl/Getty Images He’s pro-Brexit, but thinks the EU should remain intact (albeit with diminished power). He despises doctrinaire multiculturalism, is a defender of women’s right to have an abortion, and thinks Covid and climate change reveal an undesirable timidity in the face of danger. He’s an implacable supporter of Israel, but thinks freedom of speech should extend even to abhorrent ideas, including Holocaust denial. He thinks the far right should support trade unions.  “I don’t see myself as right-wing. So even though other people might call me far-right, right, fascist or whatever, I identify myself in a very different kind of way,” he said. That evening he planned to watch Wuthering Heights. The best thing he’s seen recently? Sinners.  Under Furedi, MCC Brussels has gained notoriety — and some level of mainstream acceptance — as a far-right counterweight to the hefty centrist institutes that dot the city’s European Quarter.  The think tank promotes Hungary’s brand of right-wing nationalism and its rejection of European federalism, immigration policy and LGBTQ+ inclusion. But he insists the project isn’t about being a mouthpiece for Budapest so much as creating a place where right-wing ideas can be tested and hardened. Across all of politics, he laments, “ideas are not taken sufficiently seriously.”  MCC Brussels is fully funded by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a private higher education institution that has received massive financial backing from Orbán’s government. While Furedi acknowledges that the think tank’s publications frequently echo the Hungarian government — “we have our sympathies” — he denies that Orbán calls the shots.  MCC Brussels is fully funded by the Mathias Corvinus Collegium, a private higher education institution that has received massive financial backing from Orbán’s government. | János Kummer/Getty Images Hungary’s upcoming election, which threatens to end the prime minister’s 16-year rule, is unlikely to affect its funding. The college is floated by assets permanently gifted by the government, said John O’Brien, MCC Brussels head of communications.  OTHER MOVEMENTS’ WEAKNESSES In his eighth decade, Furedi worries he will run out of time to see “something nice happening.” But he’s convinced the political order he has spent his life attacking is ready to fold. To illustrate why, he points to Faversham. He arrived in the area in 1974 to study at the University of Kent, where he later became a professor. In the last few years the town has become a flash point for anti-immigration protests after a former care home was converted to house a few dozen refugee children.  Last summer and fall, left and right protest groups clashed over a campaign to hang English flags across the town. One Guardian reader reported hearing chants of “Sieg Heil” in the streets at night. To Furedi, the anger behind the clashes is the inevitable consequence of a narrow politics that has not only lost touch with the people it represents, but actively shut them out. “Our elites adopted what are called post-material values and basically looked down on people who were interested in their material circumstances,” he said. YouGov’s most recent seat-by-seat polling analysis in September put Farage’s Reform easily ahead in Faversham. But Furedi doesn’t give the party a lot of credit for winning people’s backing with a positive program for government. “I think Reform recognizes the fact that they have to be both more professional,” he said. But, he added, “You cannot somehow magic a professional cadre of operators.”  YouGov’s most recent seat-by-seat polling analysis in September put Farage’s Reform easily ahead in Faversham. | Ben Birchall/PA Images via Getty Images The successes of the right are, in Furedi’s view, primarily based on being “beneficiaries of other movements’ weaknesses.”  The same was also true for Trump, he said. “It wasn’t like a love affair or anything of that sort. The U.S. president just happened to act as a conduit for a lot of those sentiments.” Is this a recipe for good government? “No,” he said. “One of the big tragedies in our world is that democracy in a nation requires serious political parties.”

When U.S., Mexican and Canadian soccer officials fanned out across the globe nearly a decade ago to sell the 2026 World Cup, they traveled in threes — one representative from each country — to underscore a simple message: North America’s three largest countries were in lockstep. “It was so embedded into everything we did that this was a united bid. Our success was tied to the joint nature of the bid. That was the anchor regarding the premise of what we were trying to do,” said John Kristick, former executive director of the 2026 United Bid Committee. The pitch worked. In 2018, FIFA members awarded the tournament to North America, marking the first time three countries would co-host a men’s World Cup. Bid strategists were delighted when The Washington Post editorial page approvingly called it ”the NAFTA World Cup.” The North American Free Trade Agreement is no more, a victim of President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw during his first term, and the successor U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement is now teetering. At almost exactly the midway point of the 39-day tournament, trade ties that link the three countries’ economies will expire. The trilateral relationship is more frayed than it has ever been, tensions reflected in this year’s World Cup itself. Instead of one continental showcase, the 2026 World Cup increasingly resembles three distinct tournaments, with different immigration regimes, security plans and funding models, all a function of different policy choices in each host country. Soccer governing body FIFA “is the only glue that’s holding it together,” said one person intimately involved in the bid who was granted anonymity to speak candidly about the sensitive political dynamics. The “United” in the United Bid, once the anchor of the entire project, now competes with three national agendas, each running on its own track. POLITICO spoke to eight people involved in developing a World Cup whose path from conception to execution reflects the crooked arc of North American integration. “When these events are awarded, they’re concepts. They’re ideas. They feel good,” said Lee Igel, a professor of global sport at NYU who has advised the U.S. Conference of Mayors on sports policy. “But between the award and the event itself, the world changes. Politics change. Leaders change.” THE TRUMP TOURNAMENT At the start of the extravagant December event that formally set the World Cup schedule, Trump stood next to Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney to ceremonially draw the first lottery ball. FIFA officials touted the moment at the Kennedy Center as a milestone: the first time the three leaders had appeared together in person, united by soccer. The trio also met for 90 minutes off stage in a meeting — facilitated by FIFA as part of World Cup planning. That novelty was notable. While each national government has named a “sherpa” to serve as its lead, those officials — including Canadian Secretary of State for Sport Adam van Koeverden and Mexican coordinator Gabriela Cuevas — have met only a handful of times in formal trilateral settings. At a January security summit in Colorado Springs, White House FIFA Task Force director Andrew Giuliani did not mention Canada or Mexico during his remarks. Only when FIFA security officer GB Jones took the stage was the international nature of the tournament acknowledged. “We have been and continue to work very closely with officials from all three host countries on topics including safety, security, logistics, transportation and other topics related to hosting a successful FIFA World Cup,” a FIFA spokesperson wrote via email. “This is one World Cup presented across all three host countries and 16 host cities, while showcasing the uniqueness of each individual location and culture.” The soccer federations behind the United Bid have been largely sidelined, with FIFA — rather than national governments — serving as the link between them. It has brought personnel of local host-city organizing committees for quarterly workshops and other meetings, and situated nearly 1,000 of its own employees across all three countries, according to a FIFA spokesperson who says they are “working seamlessly in a united effort.” (The number will swell to more than 4,000 when the tournament is underway.) But those FIFA staff are forced to navigate wildly varied fiscal conditions depending on where they land. Mexico, which will have matches in three cities, has imposed a tax exemption to stimulate investment in the World Cup and related tourist infrastructure in its three host cities. The Canadian government has dedicated well over $300 million to tournament costs, with more than two-thirds going directly to host-city governments. “The federal government are contributing significantly to both Vancouver and Toronto in terms of funding,” said Sharon Bollenbach, the executive director of the FIFA World Cup Toronto Secretariat, which unlike American host committees is run directly out of city hall. American cities, however, have been left to secure their own funding, largely through the pursuit of commercial sponsorships and donations to local organizing committees. Congress has allocated $625 million for the federal government to reimburse host cities in security costs via a grant program. But the partial government shutdown and an attendant decision by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to stop approving FEMA grants is exacerbating a logjam for U.S. states and municipalities — including not only those with World Cup matches but hosting team training camps — that rely on federal funds to coordinate counterterrorism and security efforts. That has left American host cities in very different financial situations just months before the tournament starts. Houston and Dallas-area governments can count on receiving a share of state revenue from Texas’ Major Events Reimbursement Program. The small Boston suburb of Foxborough, Massachusetts, however, is refusing to approve an entertainment license for matches at Gillette Stadium because of an unresolved $7.8 million security bill. Because of the budget squeeze, American cities have cut back on “fan festival” gatherings that will run extend during the tournament’s full length in Canadian and Mexican cities. Jersey City has canceled the fan fest planned at Liberty State Park in favor of smaller community events, and Seattle’s fan fest will be scaled down into a “distributed model” spread cross four locations. The tournament has become tightly intertwined with Trump, as FIFA places an outsized emphasis on courting the man who loves to be seen as the consummate host. Public messaging from the White House has focused almost exclusively on the United States’ role, and Trump rarely mentions Canada or Mexico from the Oval Office or on Truth Social. Since returning to office, Trump has had eight in-person meetings with FIFA President Gianni Infantino — besides the lottery draw at the Kennedy Center — whereas Sheinbaum and Carney have only had one each. While taking questions from the media during a November session with Infantino in the Oval office, Trump did not rule out the use of U.S. military force, including potential land actions, within Mexico to combat drug cartels. Guadalajara, which is set to host four World Cup matches, this weekend erupted in violence after Mexican security forces killed the head of a cartel that Trump last year labeled a “foreign terrorist organization.” A White House spokesperson wrote in a social-media post that the United States provided “intelligence support” to the mission. It is part of a more significant set of conflicts than Trump had with the United States’ neighbors during his first term. In January, Trump claimed that Sheinbaum is “not running Mexico,” while Carney rose to office promising Canadians he would “stand up to President Trump.” Since then, Trump has regularly proposed annexing Canada as the 51st state, as his government offers support to an Alberta separatist movement that could split the country through an independence vote on the province’s October ballot. The July 1 renewal deadline for the five-year-old USMCA has injected urgency into relations among the three leaders. Without an extension, the largely tariff-free trade that underpins North America’s economy would come into question, and governments and businesses would begin planning for a rupture. Trump, who recently called the pact “irrelevant,” has signaled he would be content to let it lapse. Suspense around the free trade zone’s future will engulf preparations for the World Cup, potentially granting Trump related in unrelated negotiations. “In the lead-up to mega-events, geopolitical tensions tend to hover in the background,” Igel said. “Once the matches begin, the show can overwhelm everything else, unless something dramatic like a boycott intervenes. But in the months before? That’s when you see the friction.” THE ORIGINS OF THE UNITED BID It was not supposed to be this way. When North American soccer officials first decided, in 2016, to fuse three national campaigns to host the World Cup into one, they saw unity as the strategic advantage that would distinguish their bid from any competitors. Each country had considered pursuing the World Cup on its own. Canada, looking to build on its success as host of the 2015 Women’s World Cup, wanted to host the larger men’s competition. Mexico, the first country to host it twice, wanted another shot. The United States dusted off an earlier bid for the 2022 tournament, which was awarded to Qatar. Sunil Gulati, a Columbia University economist serving as the U.S. Soccer Federation’s president, envisioned an unprecedented compromise: Instead of competing with one another they would work together — with the United States using its economic primacy and geographical centrality to ensure it remained the tournament’s focal point. The three countries’ economies had been deeply intertwined for nearly a quarter-century. Their leaders signed NAFTA in 1992, lowering trade barriers and snaking supply chains across borders that had previous isolated economic activity. But the trade pact triggered a broad backlash in the United States that allied labor unions on the left and isolationists on the right. That political disquiet exploded with the candidacy of Donald Trump, who called NAFTA “the worst trade deal” and immediately moved to renegotiate it upon taking office. Gulati, meanwhile, was pitching Emilio Azcárraga Jean, CEO and chair of Mexican broadcaster Grupo Televisa, and Canada Soccer President Victor Montagliani, on his own plan for regional integration. They agreed to sketch out a tournament that would have 75 percent of the games held in the U.S. with the remainder split between Canada and Mexico. “I’d rather have a 90 percent chance of winning 75 percent of the World Cup than a 75 percent chance of, you know, winning all of it,” Gulati told the U.S. Soccer board, according to two people who heard him say it. Montagliani and Mexico Football Federation President Decio de María joined Gulati to formally announce the so-called United Bid in New York in April 2017. The three federation presidents knew that the thrust of their pitch had to be more emotional and inclusive than “we are big, rich and have tons of ready-built stadiums,” as one of the bid organizers put it. Kristick laced a theme of “community” through the 1,500-page prospectus known to insiders as a bid book. “In 2026, we can create a bold new legacy for players, for fans and for football by hosting a FIFA World Cup that is more inclusive, more universal than ever,” declared a campaign video that the United Bid showed to the organization’s voting members. “Not because of who we are as nations, but because of what we believe in as neighbors. To bid together, countries come together.” It was a sentiment increasingly out of sync with the times. The same month that Gulati had stood with his counterparts in New York announcing the joint bid, Trump was busy demanding that Congress include funding for a wall along the border with Mexico. He told then-Mexico President Enrique Peña Nieto and then-Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that he wanted to renegotiate NAFTA, using aluminum and steel tariffs as a cudgel. Carlos Cordeiro, who displaced Gulati as U.S. Soccer president during the bid process in 2018, became the driving force of the lobbying effort to sell the idea to 211 national federations that would vote on it. In Cordeiro’s view, according to two Americans intimately involved in the bid at the time, the bid’s biggest challenge was assuring voters that the tournament would be more than a U.S. event dressed up with the flags of its neighbors. Teams fanned out across each of soccer’s six regional confederations to make their pitch, each presentation designed to paint a picture of tri-national cooperation, and returned to a temporary base in London to debrief. “It was very pragmatic. It was like Carlos, or another U.S. representative, would say this and talk about this. The Canada representative will then talk about this. The Mexico representative will talk about this. And it was very much trying to be even across the three in terms of who was speaking,” one person on the traveling team said. When the United Bid finally prevailed in June 2018, defeating a rival bid from Morocco, Trump celebrated it as an equal triumph for the three countries. “The U.S., together with Mexico and Canada, just got the World Cup,” he wrote on Twitter, now known as X. “Congratulations — a great deal of hard work!” THREE DIFFERENT TOURNAMENTS What began with a united bid is turning into parallel tournaments: with different fan bases, security procedures and off-field programs, all a function of different policy choices in each host country. Fans from Iran and Haiti are barred from entering the United States under travel restrictions imposed by Trump, while other World Cup countries are subject to elevated scrutiny that could block travel plans. (Official team delegations are exempt.) Canada and Mexico do not impose the same restrictions, creating uneven access across the tournament: fans traveling from Ivory Coast will likely find it much easier to reach Toronto for a June 20 match against Germany than one in Philadelphia five days later against Curaçao. “FIFA recognizes that immigration policy falls within the jurisdiction of sovereign governments,” read a statement provided by the FIFA spokesperson. “Engagement therefore focuses on dialogue and cooperation with host authorities to support inclusive tournament delivery, while respecting national law.” A fan who does cross borders will encounte a patchwork of security régimes depending on which government is in charge. Mexican authorities draw from deep experience policing soccer matches, with a mix of traditional crowd-control tactics and advanced technology like four-legged robots. The United States is emphasizing novel drone defenses and asked other countries for lists of its most problematic fans. Ongoing immigration enforcement actions in the U.S. have also prompted concern among the international soccer community and calls for a boycott of the tournament. The White House this month issued clarifying talking points to host cities to buttress the “shared commitment to safety, hospitality, and a successful tournament experience for all.” The document confirms that U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement “may have a presence” at the tournament to assist with non-immigration-related functions like aviation security and anti-human trafficking efforts. No where is the fragmentation more glaring among countries than on human rights. After previous World Cups were accused of “sportswashing” autocratic regimes in Qatar and Russia, the United Bid made “human rights and labor standards” a centerpiece of its proposal to FIFA. The bid stipulated that each host city by August 2025 must submit concrete plans for how the city would protect individual rights, including respect for “indigenous peoples, migrant workers and their families, national, ethnic and religious minorities, people with disabilities, women, race, LGBTQI+, journalists, and human rights defenders.” “Human rights were embedded in the bid from the beginning,” said Human Rights Watch director of global initiatives Minky Worden, who worked closely with Mary Harvey, a former U.S. goalkeeper and soccer executive who now leads the Centre for Sport and Human Rights, on the language. Harvey consulted with 70 civil-society groups across the three countries while developing the strategy. That deadline passed without a single U.S. city submitting their plan on time. Now just months before the kickoff, host cities have finally started to release their reports, creating a patchwork of approaches. While Vancouver’s report makes multiple references to respecting LGBTQ+ populations, Houston’s has no mention of sexual orientation and identity at all. The FIFA spokesperson says the organization has embedded inclusion and human rights commitments directly into agreements signed by host countries, cities and stadium operators, and that dedicated FIFA Human Rights, Safeguarding and Anti-Discrimination teams will monitor implementation and hold local organizers to account for violations. “All of these standards were supposed to be uniform across these three countries,” said Worden. “It wasn’t supposed to be the lowest common denominator with the U.S. being really low.”

BRUSSELS — Right-wing political groups in the European Parliament on Thursday sealed an agreement on EU rules to deport migrants staying illegally in the EU after negotiations within the centrist coalition collapsed.  The compromise deal, obtained by POLITICO, gives countries greater flexibility to establish deportation hubs in non-EU countries; allows detention for up to 24 months; broadens the definition of people considered security risks, along with provisions to deport and detain them; and allows the belongings of non-EU nationals to be searched and seized during deportations.  The text also says that filing appeals against the procedure doesn’t automatically halt the deportation process. It’s the latest in a series of laws aimed at streamlining and firming up EU migration rules following the 2024 EU election, which delivered a shift to the right. That includes a push to boost deportations and to allow countries to deport migrants to non-EU countries that aren’t the person’s country of origin.  Swedish lawmaker Charlie Weimers, lead negotiator for the right-wing European Conservatives and Reformists group, said the compromise resulted from negotiations it held with the center-right European People’s Party and the far-right Patriots and Europe of Sovereign Nations groups.  “Now we see this cooperation taking form over time in different negotiations, we can accept that we have a stable majority on the center-right on migration issues,” Weimers said.   The lead negotiator on the law, Dutch liberal MEP Malik Azmani, had tried to find a compromise within the centrist coalition that gave Commission President Ursula von der Leyen a second term (the EPP, the liberals of Renew Europe, and the center-left Socialists and Democrats).  But on Wednesday evening Azmani halted negotiations and sent a compromise proposal to all political groups, igniting fury on the left and right. A Greens official referred to Azmani’s handling of the issue as “chaotic.” “Half of the text, we didn’t really negotiate it,” said the Patriots’ lead negotiator, Marieke Ehlers. “In the end, he [Azmani] presented his own ‘compromise’ that is not good enough for those on the right, but I would wager that it’s also not good enough for S&D.” On Thursday, EPP negotiator François-Xavier Bellamy circulated a new compromise text that relies on the support of right-wing and far-right groups. The text will be put to a vote in the civil liberties committee on Monday and will likely be ratified by the Parliament’s plenary at the end of March. The Parliament will then need to negotiate a deal with EU countries.  “Our compromise is very close to the Council, so I am very optimistic,” Weimers said of the prospect of a quick deal with member countries.