KHAN YOUNIS, Gaza Strip (AP) — As December's chill settled over Gaza, the family's nylon tent offered little refuge. So each night, Eseid Abdeen covered his frail newborn son with four blankets, periodically shining a flashlight on the baby’s eyes to confirm he was all right.
Until Wednesday night, when 29-day-old Saeed, his tiny body wracked by the cold, did not respond.
The infant, who had been born prematurely and very underweight, became the second baby to die of hypothermia in recent days at Nasser Hospital, doctors said Thursday. They warned there could soon be others if conditions in the tent camps housing thousands of Palestinians are not improved.
“I always feared for him and tried to keep him warm. But it is very cold,” the child’s mother, Rawya Abdeen, told The Associated Press on Thursday. When doctors reported her son had died, her screams of anguish drew the neighbors. “Why him?” she cried.
Dr. Ahmed al-Farra, the director of pediatrics at Nasser, said the baby arrived at the hospital late Wednesday night with a body temperature of 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), well below the level where hypothermia sets in. Medics did everything they could to revive the child, but he died early Thursday, al-Farra said.
Overnight temperatures in Gaza have reached 6 degrees Celsius (43 degrees Fahrenheit) in recent days.
“We are warning that this tragedy will happen again unless there is a permanent solution for babies, and specifically premature babies, because they are more vulnerable to the dropping temperatures,” al-Farra said. “They live in worn-out tents that are exposed to winds and cold weather and lack all means to stay warm in these tents.”
The doctor said cold is a particular threat to premature babies because their fat tissues are underdeveloped and their bodies lose energy quickly.
The infant’s death raises to 13 the number of people killed in Gaza since a strong storm hit the strip last week, the health ministry said. They included 11 people killed when heavy rains collapsed already damaged buildings, as well as the two children who perished because of the cold. The first baby lost to hypothermia, two-week-old Mohamed Khair, had been born after a full-term pregnancy.
Though the current ceasefire has been in place for two months, not enough shelter materials have been allowed into Gaza, aid groups say. Recently released Israeli military figures suggest it hasn’t met the ceasefire stipulation of allowing 600 trucks of aid into Gaza a day, though Israel disputes that finding. American officials with the U.S.-led center coordinating aid shipments into Gaza also say deliveries have reached the agreed-upon levels.
The vast majority of Gaza’s 2 million people have been displaced, and most people live in tent camps stretching along the coast or set up among the shells of damaged buildings. The buildings lack adequate flooding infrastructure and people use cesspits dug near tents as toilets.
The Abdeens said their makeshift tent, in southern Gaza's Muwasi, is regularly inundated by rainwater.
Rawya Abdeen said her son had weighed just 1.3 kilograms (2.9 pounds) at birth and spent two weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit.
When the boy’s father shone a light on him at around 10 p.m. Wednesday, the baby did not respond with his usual squint. An examination under the light revealed the child was throwing up, his mother said, and the family rushed him to the hospital. His father said he had prayed for Saeed's survival, before doctors called in the morning to tell them the infant had perished.
“I was willing to trade my soul to save him,” Eseid Abdeen said.
The Abdeen family performed the funeral prayer for their 29-day-old infant son, Saeed Abdeen, who, according to health authorities, died due to the cold weather, at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Eseid Abdeen, 42, the father of the 29-day-old infant, Saeed, who, according to health authorities, died due to the cold weather, sits in his tent while receiving condolences from family members and friends in a temporary camp for displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, on Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
Eseid Abdeen, 42, carries the body of his 29-day-old infant son, Saeed, who, according to health authorities, died due to the cold weather, as he stands outside Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, southern Gaza Strip, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)
MIAMI (AP) — A U.S. Army Reserve lawyer detailed as a federal immigration judge has been fired barely a month into the job after granting asylum at a high rate out of step with the Trump administration’s mass deportation goals, The Associated Press has learned.
Christopher Day began hearing cases in late October as a temporary judge at the immigration court in Annandale, Virginia. He was fired around Dec. 2, the National Association of Immigration Judges confirmed.
It’s unclear why Day was fired. Day and the Pentagon did not comment when contacted by the AP, and a Justice Department spokeswoman declined to discuss personnel matters.
But federal data from November shows he ruled on asylum cases in ways at odds with the Trump administration’s stated goals.
Of the 11 cases he concluded in November, he granted asylum or some other type of relief allowing the migrant to remain in the United States a total of six times, according to federal data analyzed by Mobile Pathways, a San Francisco-based non profit.
Such favorable outcomes for migrants have become increasingly rare as the Trump administration seeks to slash a massive backlog of 3.8 million asylum cases by radically overhauling the nation’s 75 immigration courts.
As part of that drive, the Trump administration has fired almost 100 judges viewed as too liberal and over the summer eased rules allowing any attorney, regardless of their legal background, to apply to become what recent recruitment ads refer to as a “Deportation Judge.”
In response, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in September approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to hear asylum cases. The goal, migrant advocacy groups say, is to redefine a judge’s traditional duties as a fair, independent arbiter of asylum claims into something akin to a rubber stamp in a robe for the White House’s mass deportation goals.
The American Immigration Lawyers Association has decried the influx of military officers lacking expertise in immigration law, likening them to cardiologists attempting to do a hip replacement. But Pentagon and White House officials have defended the move, saying that a campaign to rule on pending asylum claims was something that all federal workers — as well as migrants sometimes in limbo for years — should rally behind.
So far, only 30 members of the military have been detailed to the immigration courts and for the most part appear to have lived up to the administration’s expectations. Nine out of every 10 migrants whose asylum cases were heard by such judges in November were either ordered removed or requested to self-deport, according to federal data. Overall, the military judges ordered removal 78% of the time compared to 63% for all other judges.
But those like Day, whose rulings countered that trend, are especially vulnerable if it is determined they violated their military duties, said Dana Leigh Marks, a retired immigration judge.
“It is hard to imagine someone being fired so quickly, after five weeks on the bench, unless it was for ideological reasons,” said Marks, the former head of the National Association of Immigration Judges. “It’s especially unfair to military judges because they don’t have the same civil service protections and could face severe consequences for failing in their assignment.”
The Uniform Code of Military Justice, which governs service members, forbids senior military leaders from interfering or retaliating against military attorneys for their actions in a military tribunal. Army regulations also require JAG attorneys to proceed with candor and honesty much like all licensed lawyers are expected to do in civil courts.
But whether those standards apply to military lawyers working outside of the normal confines of a military tribunal is untested.
Brenner Fissell, a Villanova University law professor, said that there are a number of personnel actions that can be taken — letters of counseling or reprimand — that, even if found to be baseless later, would affect one’s potential for promotion and impact their discharge. Appealing such decisions, he said, is a byzantine process that can take years and require hiring a costly lawyer.
“The process can be the punishment,” said Fissell, who helps run the Orders Project, which helps provide counsel to military personnel who believe they are being asked to carry out illegal orders.
A graduate of American University law school, Day has held multiple jobs in the federal government over the past two decades while simultaneously serving as a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve’s Judge Advocate General’s Corps. His last job was as an attorney for the Federal Communications Commission during the Biden administration.
Unlike federal judges, who have lifetime tenure, immigration judges are employees of the Justice Department, which runs immigration courts, and can be fired by the attorney general with fewer restraints.
That message was driven home during a two-week training course in October held for new judges, including those assigned by the Pentagon, according to someone who attended the training on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private sessions.
The Pentagon has offered extra incentives to military officers signing up for temporary detail on immigration courts. Those volunteering were promised their choice of assignments, according to an email sent by the JAG Corps leadership in the fall, a copy of which was shared with the AP. But if enough officers didn't come forward, officers might be required to relocate up to six months away from home to fulfill the mandate, according to the email.
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Associated Press writer Michael Biesecker in Washington contributed to this report.
FILE - A man holds his immigration paperwork while handcuffed after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents outside an immigration courtroom, June 17, 2025, at the Jacob K. Javits federal building in New York. (AP Photo/Olga Fedorova, File)
