• Police stop protesters from marching towards Indian diplomatic mission.
• New Delhi says it examining Bangladesh’s requests on Hasina’s extradition.
• Protestors demand Hasina, others’ repatriation during sit-in outside mission.
  

Bangladesh police on Thursday stopped protesters from marching towards an Indian diplomatic mission, a day after India’s foreign ministry conveyed its concerns over the “deteriorating” security environment in the country.

Ties between the two countries have been frosty since former prime minister Sheikh Hasina fled to India following a student-led uprising last year.

Dhaka has repeatedly asked for her extradition so that she could stand trial for her alleged crimes, with Delhi responding that it was examining the requests.

On Thursday, dozens of demonstrators began marching towards the assistant Indian high commissioner office in Rajshahi district, which borders India.

Miftahul Jannat, one of the protesters, said the plan was to carry out a sit-in, demanding the “repatriation of all the killers, including Sheikh Hasina”.

The protest was stalled by the police, who said they “listened to their demands and promised to forward them to the authorities”.

“We are not aware of any further plans (for demonstrations) and hope the issue will be resolved peacefully,” Nashid Farhad, a senior officer with the Rajshahi Metropolitan Police, told AFP.

On Wednesday, a group of protesters tried to march towards the Indian High Commission in Dhaka.

India’s foreign ministry on Wednesday summoned Bangladesh’s top diplomat in New Delhi to convey its concerns about the actions of some “extremist elements”.

In a statement, the ministry also said it expected the interim government under Muhammad Yunus to “ensure the safety of missions and posts in Bangladesh in keeping with its diplomatic obligations”.

Hasina, 78, was sentenced to death in absentia by a Bangladesh court last month for crimes against humanity.

The country of 170 million people goes to the polls on February 12, with Hasina’s former ruling party, the Awami League, banned from running.

Days after a terrorist attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that left at least 15 people dead, a mosque in Australia’s Brisbane was vandalised, sparking further tensions in the country.

The wall of the mosque, named Masjid Taqwa, at Bald Hills — a northern Brisbane suburb — was sprayed with Islamophobic comments and white supremacist symbols.

In the Bondi attack, a father and son duo, identified as Sajid Akram and Naveed — who originally hailed from India — opened fire during a Jewish event on December 14, in an attack that shook the nation and intensified fears of rising antisemitism and violent extremism.

One of the mosque’s directors, Kambiz Koshan, said he received countless calls from worried community members after the vandalism. “Our message to the community has always been to keep peace,” Koshan said.

“It’s unfortunate that we have people that do such things in it. We do understand people’s frustration but this is not a solution.

“We’re all Australians. We shouldn’t be pointing to a specific community for the fault of someone who doesn’t even know what they’re doing. Our message is peace. It’s always peace,” he said.

Bisma Asif, who represents Sandgate in the Legislative Assembly of Queensland, shared the photo of the vile vandalism and strongly condemned the incident.

“Overnight, the local Bald Hills Mosque was vandalised with white supremacist symbols and the subject of death threats,” she wrote on Instagram.

“This, on the back of 15 innocent people losing their lives at the hands of extremists in an anti-Semitic attack on Sunday,” she said, adding: “I’m sick of the constant anti-Semitic, Islamophobic and racist incidents we’ve had in our community.”

“This is not the way forward. This is not how we get through this. Not with more hate. Not with retaliation. Not by tearing each other apart,” Asif said, calling for the community to stand together against divisiveness and for the state government to pass racial vilification laws.

“Everyone in our community deserves to feel safe in their homes, places of worship and at work. Now more than ever, it is important we stand together against divisiveness,” she added.

Meanwhile, Australian cricketer Usman Khawaja, a South East Queensland resident, also condemned the incident.

“Don’t let the haters divide us,” he posted in an Instagram story with an Australian flag emoji.

• Target would sharply expand modern denaturalisation efforts.
• USCIS to prioritise unlawfully obtained US citizenship.
• About 26 million Americans are naturalised citizens.

WASHINGTON: The Trump administration intends to increase its efforts to strip some naturalised Americans of their US citizenship, the New York Times reported on Wednesday, citing internal guidance.

The US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) guidance, which was issued on Tuesday, asks its field offices to “supply Office of Immigration Litigation with 100-200 denaturalisation cases per month” in the upcoming 2026 fiscal year, according to the newspaper.

That would mark a dramatic increase in denaturalisation cases, which, according to the Immigrant Legal Resource Centre, stood at about 11 per year between 1990 and 2017.

Under US law, a person can be denaturalised for several reasons, including illegally gaining US citizenship and misrepresenting a material fact during the naturalisation process.

But the Trump administration has shown a zeal for using every tool at its disposal to target legal and illegal immigrants, leading activists to warn that such a campaign could sweep up people who had made honest mistakes on their citizenship paperwork and sow fear among law-abiding Americans.

The timeline for denaturalisation cases varies, but they can take years to resolve.

A USCIS spokesperson said it was not a secret that the agency’s “war on fraud” prioritised people who unlawfully obtained US citizenship, particularly under the previous administration.

“We will pursue denaturalisation proceedings for those individuals lying or misrepresenting themselves during the naturalisation process,” the spokesperson said.

The guidance comes as Trump has spent much of this year closing loopholes in the immigration system and throwing up roadblocks for people seeking to enter and stay in the country.

US President Donald Trump has carried out an aggressive immigration agenda, including imposing travel bans and an attempt to end birthright citizenship since January.

His administration most recently paused immigration applications, including green card and US citizenship processing, filed by immigrants from 19 non-European countries.

The Justice Department previously also said it would make denaturalisation a priority this year. In a memo distributed in the summer, officials laid out their approach, saying they would target individuals in an array of categories beyond committing fraud in obtaining citizenship.

Categories of eligible people include gang members, those who committed financial fraud, individuals connected to drug cartels and violent criminals, according to the department.

There are about 26 million naturalised Americans in the country, according to the Census Bureau. More than 800,000 new citizens were sworn in last year, most of whom were born in Mexico, India, the Philippines, the Dominican Republic or Vietnam, USCIS statistics show.

Most people stripped of their citizenship revert to being legal permanent residents.

Experts said that despite the ramp-up in referrals, the process to actually denaturalise someone would likely remain quite difficult, raising questions on whether the government will actually be able to get many cases through.