First Thing: Huge climate cost of emissions from US immigration enforcement flights
Trump’s mass deportation campaign is accelerating the climate crisis. Plus, US students on why they booed their pro-AI graduation speakers
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Nicola Slawson
Tue 26 May 2026 08.26 EDT Last modified on Tue 26 May 2026 09.42 EDT
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Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has spurred at least an 80% increase in immigration flights year over year, accelerating the climate crisis by emitting massive amounts of carbon dioxide, according to data analysis shared exclusively with the Guardian.
“We’ve seen a staggering increase of all US immigration [enforcement] flights,” including “the number of flights as well as the locations that the flights are going to,” said Savitri Arvey, the director of research and analysis for refugee and immigrant rights at Human Rights First, a US advocacy group.
- How much carbon is ICE emitting through deportation flights?US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) air operations pumped out an estimated 335,876 tonnes (370,240 US tons) of carbon emissions in 2025, up 88% from the year before. The first four months of 2026 show the federal agency is on track to contribute even more to global heating this year from such flights, the Guardian can reveal.
US strikes Iranian missile sites and mine-laying vessels as Trump’s promised peace deal remains elusive
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An anti-US billboard in Tehran. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA
The US has launched strikes on southern Iran, in a test of the seven-week long ceasefire, as both sides played down hopes for an imminent peace deal even as negotiators from Tehran began new talks in Qatar.
US forces targeted missile launch sites and boats attempting to lay mines, US Central Command (Centcom) said on Tuesday, but it stressed that the strikes did not indicate the ceasefire with Iran was over.
Centcom “continues to defend our forces while using restraint during the ongoing ceasefire”, said navy captain Tim Hawkins, who characterised the action as “defensive”.
- Why is Trump facing criticism from his own party over Iran? Loyalists are concerned over reports that billions of dollars in frozen assets could be made available to Tehran, with senior Republicans saying the reported details of the peace deal appear too close to the nuclear deal negotiated in 2015 by the Obama administration, which Trump scrapped.
Spread of Ebola in DRC outpacing response efforts, warns WHO
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Health workers transporting the body of an Ebola victim for a safe burial at a hospital in Bunia, Ituri province, DRC. Photograph: EPA
The World Health Organization (WHO) has warned that the Ebola outbreak is outpacing response efforts and that countries neighbouring the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) are at high risk from the disease.
“We are urgently scaling up operations, but at the moment the epidemic is outpacing us,” said the WHO’s director general, Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, as he urged neighbouring countries to take immediate action.
Addressing an online meeting of the African Union about the outbreak, he announced there had been 220 deaths so far suspected to be linked to the outbreak and that he would travel to the DRC on Tuesday with Chikwe Ihekweazu, the executive director of the WHO’s health emergencies programme.
- What is the cause of the outbreak? The rare Bundibugyo ebolavirus, which has no approved treatment or vaccine.
In other news …
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Japan’s prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, called the situation an ‘embarrassment for Japan’. Photograph: Kyodo/Reuters
- Sanae Takaichi, the Japanese prime minister, has said her pledge to suspend an 8% sales tax on food is being thwarted by an unexpected opponent – uncooperative cash registers, which retailers say aren’t designed for a tax of 0%.
- Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, pressed the US to evacuate staff from its embassy in Kyivduring a phone call with the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio. Russia has threatened “systematic strikes” on the Ukrainian capital and demanded that foreigners leave.
- Seven years after a German woman, Lisa Wiese, went missing, a police raid on a UK-based sect has given her family a glimmer of hope.Wiese was 30 when she vanished during a trip to Kerala, India, in March 2019.
Stat of the day: Remains of US soldier killed in WW2 returned to Pennsylvania after 80 years
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Wreaths are laid during the Memorial Day ceremony at the World War II Memorial in Washington DC. Photograph: Matthew Kaminsky/EPA
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