More than 14,000 migrant children in U.S. custody

MEXICO: U.S. Border Patrol fired tear gas on migrants who crossed the Tijuana River Sunday to enter the United States, and for several hours the busiest U.S. border crossing was closed.

A chaotic year of Trump immigration policy may be symbolized by 3-year-old Immers, arrested and separated by U.S. authorities from his father, an asylum seeker from Honduras who presented himself legally at the U.S. border—part of a dangerous family separation policy that went into effect without review or preparation last spring. More than 14,000 minors are in U.S. custody—a record high—as a result of new policies, despite an overall drop in the number of child arrivals this year at U.S. borders.

UKRAINE: Russia ignored calls to release three Ukrainian naval ships it fired upon and captured near Crimea over the weekend but reportedly has reopened the Kerch Strait to civilian shipping. The latest episode of Putin regime aggression prompted an emergency UN Security Council session Monday, with U.S. Ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley calling it an “outrageous violation of sovereign Ukrainian territory.”

INDIA: “You guys might think I’m crazy in all this but I think it’s worth it to declare Jesus to these people,” wrote missionary John Allen Chau shortly before his final mission to the outlawed North Sentinel Island. “Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed—rather please live your lives in obedience to whatever He has called you to and I’ll see you again.” In a message to his parents, the 26-year-old—who attended a Christian high school in Vancouver, Wash.—wrote, “This is not a pointless thing. … The eternal lives of this tribe is at hand.” But his zeal hasn’t stopped controversy over his death as the Hindu press labels him a “willful intruder.”

GLOBAL: With the approach of Red Wednesday this week, religious freedom advocates in the West plan to light their buildings red in solidarity with Pakistani Christian Asia Bibi and others who suffer for their faith. In the United States, our friends at Breakpoint have compiled helpful information on petitioning U.S. officials to grant Bibi asylum. Germany may be the latest country to enter discussions over granting asylum to Bibi and her family.

NIGERIA: In a memoir scheduled for release Tuesday in Nigeria, former President Goodluck Jonathan charges former U.S. President Barack Obama with direct interference in Nigeria’s 2015 presidential election. Jonathan lost to Muslim opponent and current President Muhammadu Buhari, whose All Progressives Congress Party hired Obama campaign strategist David Axelrod—part of a web of troubling ties to the Obama administration we investigated in 2016.

AFGHANISTAN: A U.S. Army Ranger was killed Saturday in combat operations against al-Qaeda fighters—the 10th American service member killed in Afghanistan in deadly weeks of a deadly year of war.

SWITZERLAND: Swiss voters rejected Sunday a national referendum allowing cows to keep their horns (at taxpayer expense).

ISRAEL: Black Friday isn’t just for Americans, and the shopping frenzy overwhelmed Israel’s credit card system—with more than 10,000 transactions per minute in the country of 8 million people.

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