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The right to legal defense for detainees and the inviolability of telecommunications will remain suspended. On Tuesday night, the Salvadoran Legislative Assembly, dominated by the ruling party Nuevas Ideas (NI), approved the thirty-second extension of the “State of Emergency.”

The extension of the state of emergency was approved without debate by 57 out of 60 legislators. It means that for another 30 days, the right to legal defense for detainees, the inviolability of telecommunications, and the maximum administrative detention of three days will remain suspended. This new extension is set to last until December 6.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele requested a further extension of the state of emergency, justifying it by stating that the state still needs to carry out an extraordinary intervention to counter the threat of criminal groups regrouping, stemming from remaining gang members in neighborhoods and communities.

His administration claims that the states of emergency have enabled it to eradicate gangs and reduce the homicide rate in this Central American nation.

However, a group of 2,500 members of the Armed Forces and the National Police were deployed on October 28 to a densely populated neighborhood in El Salvador to implement a “security cordon” due to the alleged presence of gang members. This security cordon adds to others set up in different areas of the Central American country to fight gangs in the context of the state of emergency.

This measure was approved following the killing of about 80 people over a weekend in late March 2022. With over 83,100 detentions, the state of emergency has become the government’s primary and only approach against gangs, which also helped President Bukele secure immediate reelection, despite constitutional prohibition.

Meanwhile, various human rights organizations have received more than 6,400 reports of human rights violations, mainly due to arbitrary detentions and torture, and report over 300 deaths of detainees in state custody, most showing signs of violence.

According to Ukraine, North Korea has already deployed around 11,000 soldiers in Russia. On Wednesday, the Russian Senate ratified the “Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty” signed between Russia and North Korea in June, which includes a clause for mutual military assistance in the event of aggression.

According to this document, if one of the signatory parties is subjected to an armed attack, the other will immediately provide military and other forms of assistance.

Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean President Kim Jong-un signed the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty during the Kremlin leader’s first visit to Pyongyang in nearly a quarter of a century.

The ratification of the treaty by the upper chamber of the Russian Parliament comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky confirmed the first encounters between his troops and North Korean soldiers.

“The first clashes with North Korean soldiers open a new chapter of instability in the world,” Zelensky said in a message to the nation, urging the international community to “do everything possible to ensure this Russian step to expand the war fails.”

According to Ukraine and some of its allies, North Korea has already deployed around 11,000 soldiers in Russia. Some of them are said to have joined Russian troops fighting the Ukrainian Army in the Russian region of Kursk, which has been partially occupied by Ukrainian forces since August.

Russia, which has so far neither confirmed nor denied the presence of North Korean troops on its territory, maintains that the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership Treaty with North Korea is “defensive in nature and is not directed against the security of third countries.”

The MAS leader went on hunger strike to pressure for the release of social activists detained during road protests. On Friday, former Bolivian President Evo Morales ended his hunger strike after his supporters announced a temporary suspension of road blockades to begin talks with President Luis Arce’s administration.

After six days, the leader of the Movement Toward Socialism (MAS) ended a hunger strike he had started to pressure Arce into initiating discussions on the release of nearly 100 social activists who were detained during 24 days of road protests.

Morales is also demanding that the judicial proceedings against him for alleged human trafficking and statutoryremoved be stopped, and that he be allowed to run as a presidential candidate in the 2025 elections.

Next Sunday, the Pact of Unity, a coalition of social and political organizations supporting Morales, will hold a meeting to assess the progress of the dialogue with representatives of the Arce administration.

Dieter Mendoza, secretary of the Mamore Bulo Bulo Federation, which represents coca growers, stated that the Pact of Unity will reactivate the road blockades if the detained are not immediately released.

“We have always viewed Brother Morales as a leader in the struggle since his days as an activist. And this time was no exception,” Mendoza emphasized, referring to the hunger strike upheld by the MAS leader. “If our demands are not met within the next 72 hours, we will resume the road blockades,” he added.

The dialogue between the Arce administration and Bolivian social organizations began on Friday at the offices of the Ombudsman, where representatives from both sides set up working groups to address issues related to the economic and political crisis in the Andean country.

“We will not address matters related to electoral institutions or the authorization of candidacies. Those issues fall under the jurisdiction of other institutions,” said Deputy Minister of Autonomy, Alvaro Ruiz.

As politicians turn to immigration as a defining issue in the campaign, genuine solutions appear increasingly out of reach. The United States, a country built by waves of immigrants, is now grappling with a dilemma of illegal immigration, which has become both a flashpoint and a partisan weapon in American politics.

As Republicans and Democrats turn to immigration as a defining issue in the presidential election campaign, genuine solutions appear increasingly out of reach. Instead, immigration has become a high-stakes game, with each side focusing more on how to exploit the issue than addressing its complex underlying causes.

In recent months, immigration has soared to the top of voters’ concerns. A recent survey by the Pew Research Center revealed that about 60 percent of Americans now view immigration as important to their vote, up significantly from previous years.

While Republican and Democrat politicians have both responded with intensified rhetoric, they have done little to bridge their divide on how to handle the issue. Instead, state and federal authorities are caught in conflicts that reflect the country’s deepening partisan split.

Last year, Republican-led states including Texas and Florida transported undocumented immigrants to Democratic strongholds like New York, Washington, D.C. and Chicago. Early this year, in order to deter migrant crossing, Texas deployed National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border, laid concertina wire border barriers and prevented federal agents from monitoring the border, highlighting the lack of a coordinated national approach.

As the presidential election looms, Democrats and Republicans are doubling down on immigration as a means to rally their bases. Democrats continue to advocate for policies that portray them as champions of immigrant rights, emphasizing humane treatment and protections. While the Democratic stance resonates with their core supporters, it also serves an electoral strategy: immigrants and their descendants represent a growing and potentially reliable base for the party.

However, with an increasing number of voters in favor of stronger immigration control, Democrats have started to shift their position. In June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order restricting asylum claims, limiting legal pathways at the U.S.-Mexico border in a rare departure from the party’s traditional stance. Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris has echoed this shift, advocating for both legalization pathways and stronger border enforcement.

Republicans, meanwhile, have adopted an increasingly hardline stance, framing immigration as a national security threat and opposing any form of legalization for undocumented immigrants. The Trump camp has ramped up its rhetoric, promising to conduct mass deportation if elected and blaming undocumented immigrants for issues like housing shortages and inflation, aiming to weaken support for Democrats among minority and union voters.

However, despite both parties’ claims to prioritize voter interests, neither side has developed practical, actionable solutions. Democrats and Republicans alike focus on exploiting immigration as a wedge issue, stirring up partisan animosity without tackling the root causes of the problem.

The immigration issue has exposed structural weaknesses in American governance. Historically, U.S. immigration policies were skewed in favor of Europeans, while those from Asia and Latin America faced heavy restrictions, pushing many into illegal pathways.

Undocumented immigrants have been an indispensable element in the U.S. society for decades. They have filled the need for essential yet low-paying and high-risk jobs that citizens largely passed up, promoted consumption, and brought benefits to the U.S. economy. However, the group remains marginalized and vulnerable.

A recent Pew Research Center survey revealed that three-quarters of U.S. voters believe undocumented immigrants primarily take jobs that Americans don’t want to do, with 90 percent of Harris supporters and 59 percent of Trump supporters sharing that view respectively.

Despite this wide acknowledgment of immigrants’ contributions, both legal and undocumented immigration have emerged as charged topics in the Nov. 5 election. At the forefront of the debate is a growing call for control, with some even pushing for large-scale deportations.

Why, after years of dependency on immigrant labor, has immigration become such a heated political issue in the United States? The answer lies, in part, in a shifting economic landscape that has seen newcomers painted as scapegoats.

In a time of economic uncertainties, critics argue that recent waves of undocumented immigrants now compete with low-skilled American workers, intensifying existing domestic job pressures. The decline in social mobility, as class divisions harden, compounds these anxieties.

The U.S. has seen the biggest gap between the rich and the poor since the Great Depression in 1929. As noted by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz during the 2022 James M. and Cathleen D. Stone Lecture in Economic Inequality, hosted by the Institute of Politics, the United States has “more inequality than other countries and remarkably less equality of opportunity than almost any other country.”

Locked into this tense economic environment, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle face mounting public pressure. Once willing to negotiate and collaborate on nuanced immigration reform, Republicans and Democrats now find themselves at an impasse. And miserably, immigrants have fallen victim to deepening political polarization.

Neither side can afford to alienate wealthy donors or find palatable solutions to create enough jobs, increase incomes and narrow the gap between the wealthy and the poor to alleviate voters’ frustrations. As a result, rather than seeking a bipartisan approach to address immigration constructively, they have taken to using undocumented immigrants, who cannot vote in the elections, as convenient scapegoats in the political battle.