The United States will continue to accept migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela under a humanitarian program after May 11, when the COVID-19 health policy known as Title 42 is set to end, the U.S. and Mexican governments said on Tuesday.

Mexico, for its part, will continue accepting back migrants returned to the country on humanitarian grounds, both nations said in a joint statement.

The announcement comes as the U.S. prepares for the end of the Title 42 policy and a possible subsequent spike in illegal border crossings.

The U.S. has said it plans to ramp up deportations after May 11.

Mexico has been accepting migrants deported from the United States under the Title 42 policy, which allows the U.S. to rapidly expel migrants including Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans illegally entering the U.S.

A U.S. official said last week that the U.S. intends to continue expelling migrants of those four nationalities back to Mexico after the program’s end date.

The statement came after Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador met with White House Homeland Security Advisor Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall earlier in the day to discuss migration ahead of Title 42’s impending end.

Tuesday’s announcement indicates that a U.S. humanitarian parole program providing legal migration pathways for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, and Venezuelans will continue after May 11.

Sherwood-Randall told Mexican authorities “that the humanitarian parole program will continue,” Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard told journalists following the meeting.

Mexico also pushed for the further expansion of the program, as well as other legal pathways to entering the United States, Ebrard added.

The two countries also said the United States would accept some 100,000 people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras under a family reunification program announced last week, but did not give a time frame for that number.

Additionally, the countries agreed to boost efforts to combat human smuggling following a U.S. agreement with Colombia and Panama to curb migration through the dangerous jungle region separating the two nations.

A Palestinian hunger striker died in Israeli custody on Tuesday, sparking an exchange of fire between Israel and armed groups in Gaza, before three Palestinian officials said the sides had agreed to a ceasefire.

Earlier, Israeli jets struck in Gaza as armed groups there fired rocket barrages toward Israel in response to the death of Khader Adnan, a prominent political leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad faction, following an 87-day hunger strike in an Israeli prison.

Adnan, who was awaiting trial, was found unconscious in his cell and taken to a hospital, where he was declared dead after efforts to revive him, Israel’s Prisons Service said. He was the first Palestinian hunger striker to die in Israeli custody in more than 30 years.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in the occupied Palestinian territories to rally and mourn Adnan’s death, which Palestinian leaders described as an assassination.

In Gaza, an umbrella group of armed Palestinian factions including Hamas and Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility for a series of rocket salvoes fired towards Israel during the day.

The Israeli military said it identified at least 30 rocket launches that set off sirens in southern Israel including in Ashkelon, about 14 km (9 miles) north of Gaza, and sent people running to bomb shelters.

Two rockets landed in the small Israeli city of Sderot just east of Gaza, wounding three people, including a 25-year-old foreign national who Israel’s ambulance service said sustained serious shrapnel wounds.

Late on Tuesday, plumes of smoke spiralled into the night sky and explosions could be heard as the Israeli military said it hit targets across Gaza including weapons manufacturing sites and training camps of Hamas, the Islamist group that governs Gaza.

Islamic Jihad spokesman Tareq Selmi said fighting had ended by dawn Wednesday. Two Palestinian officials said Egypt, Qatar and the United Nations helped secure a “reciprocal and simultaneous” ceasefire that largely seemed to hold.

In the West Bank city of Hebron, shops observed a general strike. Some protesters burned tyres and hurled stones at Israeli soldiers who fired tear gas and rubber bullets at them. There were no reports of injuries.

Since 2011, Adnan conducted at least three hunger strikes to protest detention without charges by Israel. The tactic has been used by other Palestinian prisoners, sometimes en masse, but none had died since 1992.

Adnan’s lawyer Jamil Al-Khatib and a doctor with a human rights group who recently met him accused Israeli authorities of withholding medical care.

“We demanded he be moved into a civilian hospital where he could be properly monitored. Unfortunately, such a demand was met by intransigence and rejection,” Al-Khatib told Reuters.

Adnan, 45, was a baker and a father of nine from Jenin in the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Islamic Jihad has a limited West Bank presence but is the second most powerful armed group in Gaza, where Israeli forces fought a brief war against it last August.

Lina Qasem Hassan of Physicians for Human Rights in Israel said she saw Adnan on April 23, at which point he had lost 40 kg (88 pounds) and was having trouble moving and breathing but was conscious.

“His death could have been avoided,” Qasem Hassan told Reuters, saying several Israeli hospitals had refused to admit Adnan after he made brief visits to their emergency rooms.

The Prisons Service said hospitalisation had not been an option as Adnan had declined “even a preliminary inspection”.

Physicians for Human Rights said Israeli authorities had denied requests by Adnan and his family to visit him in prison.

Speaking from the family’s home in the northern West Bank town of Arraba near Jenin as mourners arrived to pay their respects, Adnan’s wife, Randa Musa, said: “Our message to all the resistance groups is, we do not want the weapons that were not used to free the sheikh (Adnan) to be used after his death. We do not want to see any bloodshed.”

Hamas radio said an Israeli tank shelled one of the group’s observation posts in Gaza.

“Our fight is continuing and the enemy will realise once again that its crimes will not pass without a response,” Islamic Jihad said in a statement.

According to the Palestinian Prisoners Association, Adnan was arrested by Israel 12 times, spending around eight years in prison, mostly under so-called “administrative detention” – or detention without charges.

Israel says such detentions are required when evidence cannot be revealed in court due to the need to keep intelligence sources secret. Palestinians and rights groups say Israel routinely uses such detentions, which deny due process, to hold hundreds of Palestinians for prolonged periods of time.

This time, Adnan was arrested and indicted in an Israeli military court on charges that included links to an outlawed group and incitement to violence, the Prisons Service said.

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Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Tucker Carlson once sent a text saying he wanted a group of white men to kill an “Antifa kid.”
• Carlson texted a producer about the moment he felt blood lust seeing a “kid” being hurt.
• He also reflected on the moment, saying he realized he’s “becoming something I don’t want to be.”

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson once sent a disturbing text to a producer, where he described in stark detail how he found himself wanting a group of white men to hurt and kill an “Antifa kid,” per a new report from The New York Times.

The redacted text obtained by The Times showed Carlson reflecting on a moment where “a group of Trump guys” were “pounding the living shit” out of someone who shared different political views from them. 

In the text — sent on January 7, 2021, one day after the Capitol riot — Carlson said that he found himself “rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him.” 

“I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it,” Carlson told the producer.

In an apparent moment of self-reflection, Carlson then tells the unnamed producer: “Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be.” 

He goes on to describe how he realized that he “shouldn’t gloat” over the suffering of another human being.

“I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed,” Carlson told the producer. “If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?” 

The text message was included — but redacted — as evidence in Dominion Voting Systems’ defamation lawsuit against Fox News. Dominion accused the network of harming its business by pushing baseless claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election. The Times obtained the redacted Carlson text message from several unnamed sources who were granted anonymity to share the message. The text remains redacted in public court filings, per The New York Times. 

In April, the Fox network agreed to pay Dominion $787.5 million to settle the defamation lawsuit. Carlson was abruptly ousted from his primetime spot a week after the settlement. 

For his part, Carlson in January 2022 downplayed the Capitol riot during his show on Fox News.

“But actually if you take three steps back as historical events go, if we are being honest now, January 6 barely rates as a footnote,” Carlson said on Fox News on January 6, 2022, the first anniversary of the Capitol riot. “Really, not a lot happened that day if you think about it.”

And in 2023, the Fox News host aired selectively edited January 6 footage on his show, making the argument that the riot was not violent. His cherry-picked footage of the riot drew scorn and criticism from the members of the GOP and the Democratic Party. 

A lawyer for Carlson did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment sent outside regular business hours.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• A leaked text shows Tucker Carlson describing a video that showed a “group of Trump guys” jumping an “Antifa kid.”
• In the text, obtained by The New York Times, he said, “It’s not how white men fight.”
• Carlson was abruptly ousted from Fox News last week.

A text message shows Tucker Carlson describing a video that showed a “group of Trump guys” jumping an “Antifa kid,” lamenting that “It’s not how white men fight.” 

The text, which was obtained by The New York Times from interviews with people who have knowledge of the suit, remains redacted from public court documents in Dominion’s defamation lawsuit against Fox News that was settled last month for a record $787.5 million.

Carlson sent the text to one of his producers the day after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, according to the Times.

Though many messages between the former prime time show host and his colleagues were made public during the Dominion lawsuit, several texts between Carlson and other Fox executives sent on the day of the riot remain redacted from public filings.

The settlement, the largest public settlement ever in a defamation case, allowed Carlson and other Fox staff to avoid answering questions under oath about those texts on the stand.

However, Fox executives were made aware of the messages before the trial was set to begin last month and were concerned that it could come to light in the course of the proceedings, according to the Times. 

The full message was published by the Times on Tuesday. In it, Carlson explained the video he had watched showed at least three guys against one. The race of the person who was being beaten is unclear.

“Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight. Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it,” the text said, according to the Times.

“Then somewhere deep in my brain, an alarm went off: this isn’t good for me. I’m becoming something I don’t want to be. The Antifa creep is a human being. Much as I despise what he says and does, much as I’m sure I’d hate him personally if I knew him, I shouldn’t gloat over his suffering. I should be bothered by it. I should remember that somewhere somebody probably loves this kid, and would be crushed if he was killed,” Carlson continued, according to the Times. “If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?”

Carlson, who has been repeatedly accused by critics of promoting white nationalist talking points — such as the racist “replacement theory”  — and downplaying white nationalist violence on his show, was abruptly ousted from the network last week. 

People familiar with Carlson’s firing told The Los Angeles Times that Rupert Murdoch himself made the call to fire Carlson, in part due to the host’s conspiracy theories about the 2021 riots at the Capitol, which he regularly amplified on his show. 

An attorney representing Carlson did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. Fox News did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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