LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s position hung by a thread on Monday as he tried to persuade his Labour Party lawmakers not to kick him out of his job after just a year and a half in office.
Starmer’s head of communications, Tim Allan, said he was quitting Monday to allow ”a new No. 10 team to be built.” The prime minister lost his chief of staff on Sunday and is rapidly shedding support from Labour legislators after revelations about the relationship between former British Ambassador to Washington Peter Mandelson and the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Starmer is due to address Labour lawmakers behind closed doors later Monday in an attempt to rebuild some of his shattered authority.
The political storm stems from Starmer's decision in 2024 to appoint Mandelson to Britain’s most important diplomatic post, despite knowing he had ties to Epstein.
Starmer fired Mandelson in September after emails were published showing that he maintained a friendship with Epstein after the financier’s 2008 conviction for sex offenses involving a minor. Critics say Starmer should have known better than to appoint Mandelson, 72, a contentious figure whose career has been studded with scandals over money or ethics.
A new trove of Epstein files released in the United States has brought more details about the relationship, and new pressure on Starmer.
Starmer apologized last week for “having believed Mandelson’s lies.”
He promised to release documentation related to Mandelson’s appointment, which the government says will show that Mandelson misled officials about his ties to Epstein.
Police are investigating Mandelson for potential misconduct in public office over documents suggesting he passed sensitive government information to Epstein a decade and a half ago. The offense carries a maximum sentence of life in prison. Mandelson has not been arrested or charged, and does not face any allegations of sexual misconduct.
Starmer’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, took the fall for the decision by quitting on Sunday, saying that “I advised the prime minister to make that appointment and I take full responsibility for that advice.”
McSweeney has been Starmer’s most important aide since he became Labour leader in 2020, and is considered a key architect of Labour’s landslide July 2024 election victory. But some in the party blame him for a series of missteps since then.
Some Labour officials hope that his departure will buy the prime minister time to rebuild trust with the party and the country. Senior lawmaker Emily Thornberry said McSweeney had become a “divisive figure” and his departure brought the opportunity for a reset.
She said Starmer is “a good leader in that he is strong and clear. I think that he needs to step up a bit more than he has.”
Others say McSweeney's departure leaves Starmer weak and isolated.
Opposition Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch said Starmer “has made bad decision after bad decision” and "his position now is untenable.”
Since winning office, Starmer has struggled to deliver promised economic growth, repair tattered public services and ease the cost of living. He pledged a return to honest government after 14 years of scandal-tarred Conservative rule, but has been beset by missteps and U-turns over welfare cuts and other unpopular policies.
Labour consistently lags behind the hard-right Reform UK party in opinion polls, and its failure to improve had sparked talk of a leadership challenge, even before the Mandelson revelations.
Under Britain’s parliamentary system, prime ministers can change without the need for a national election. If Starmer is challenged or resigns, it will trigger an election for the Labour leadership. The winner would become prime minister.
The Conservatives went through three prime ministers between national elections in 2019 and 2024. One, Liz Truss, lasted just 49 days in office.
Starmer was elected on a promise to end the political chaos that roiled the Conservatives’ final years in power. That proved easier said than done.
Labour lawmaker Clive Efford said Starmer’s critics should “be careful what you wish for.”
“I don’t think people took to the changes in prime minister when the Tories were in power," he told the BBC. “It didn't do them any good.”
FILE - British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, right, talks with Britain's ambassador to the United States Peter Mandelson during a welcome reception at the ambassador's residence on Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025 in Washington. (Carl Court/Pool Photo via AP, file)
Britain's Prime Minister Keir Starmer talks with members of the audience after delivering a speech at Horntye Park Sports Complex in St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, England, Thursday, Feb. 5, 2026. (Peter Nicholls/Pool Photo via AP)
MIAMI (AP) — Felipe Hernandez Espinosa spent 45 days at “ Alligator Alcatraz,” an immigration holding center in Florida where detainees have reported worms in their food, toilets that don't flush and overflowing sewage. Mosquitoes and other insects are everywhere.
For the past five months, the 34-year-old asylum-seeker has been at an immigration detention camp at the Fort Bliss Army base in El Paso, Texas, where two migrants died in January and which has many of the same conditions, according to human rights groups. Hernandez said he asked to be returned to Nicaragua but was told he has to see a judge. After nearly seven months in detention, his hearing was scheduled for Feb. 26.
Prolonged detention has become more common in President Donald Trump's second term, at least partly because a new policy generally prohibits immigration judges from releasing detainees while their deportation cases wind through backlogged courts. Many, like Hernandez, are prepared to give up any efforts to stay in the United States.
“I came to this country thinking they would help me, and I’ve been detained for six months without having committed a crime,” he said in a phone interview from Fort Bliss. “It is been too long. I am desperate.”
The Supreme Court ruled in 2001 that Immigration and Customs Enforcement cannot hold immigrants indefinitely, finding that six months was a reasonable cap.
With the number of people in ICE detention topping 70,000 for the first time, 7,252 people had been in custody at least six months in mid-January, including 79 held for more than two years, according to agency data. That's more than double the 2,849 who were in ICE custody at least six months in December 2024, the last full month of Joe Biden's presidency.
The Trump administration is offering plane fare and $2,600 for people who leave the country voluntarily. Yet Hernandez and others are told they can't leave detention until seeing a judge.
The first three detainees that attorney Ana Alicia Huerta met on her monthly trip to an ICE detention center in McFarland, California, to offer free legal advice in January said they signed a form agreeing to leave the United States but were still waiting.
“All are telling me: ‘I don’t understand why I’m here. I’m ready to be deported,’” said Huerta, a senior attorney at the California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice. “That’s an experience that I’ve never had before.”
A Chinese man has been held for more than a year without seeing an immigration judge, even though he told authorities he was ready to be deported. In the past, Huerta said, she encountered cases like this once every three or four months.
The Department of Homeland Security did not address questions from The Associated Press about why more people are being held longer than six months.
“The conditions are so poor and so bad that people say, ‘I’m going to give up’,” said Sui Cheng, executive director at Americans for Immigrant Justice.
The waiting time may depend on the country. Deportations to Mexico are routine but countries including Cuba, Nicaragua, Colombia and Venezuela have at times resisted accepting deportees.
Among those detained for months are people who have won protection under the United Nations Convention Against Torture, who cannot be deported to their home country but may be sent elsewhere.
In the past, those migrants were released and could get a work permit. Not anymore, said Sarah Houston, managing attorney at Immigrant Defenders Law Center, who has at least three clients with protection under the U.N. torture convention who have been in custody for more than six months. One is from El Salvador, detained for three years. He won his case in October 2025 but is still in custody in California.
“They’re just holding these people indefinitely,” said Houston, noting that every 90 days, attorneys request the release of these migrants and ICE denies those requests. “We’re seeing people who actually win their immigration cases just languishing in jail.”
Hernandez, who doesn't have a lawyer, said he signed documents requesting to be returned to his country or Mexico at least five times. An Oct. 9 hearing was abruptly canceled without explanation. He waited months with no news, until early February, when he learned his new hearing date.
Hernandez, who has allergies and needs a gluten-free diet that he says he hasn’t been getting since November, was arrested in July on a lunch break from his job installing power generators in South Florida. His wife was detained with him but a judge allowed her to return to Nicaragua without a formal deportation order on Aug. 28.
Both crossed the Mexican border in 2022 and requested asylum. He said he received death threats after participating in marches against co-presidents and spouses Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
If he returns, they plan to go to Panama or Spain because they fear for their lives in Nicaragua, he said. His files say only that his case is pending.
Yashael Almonte Mejia has been detained eight months since the government sought dismissal of his asylum case in May 2025, said his aunt, Judith Mejia Lanfranco.
Since then, he has been transferred from a detention center in Florida to Texas to New Mexico.
In November, Almonte married his pregnant American girlfriend via a video call and became the father of a daughter he hasn't seen in person. He was unable to attend the funeral of his sister who died in November.
“He has gone through depression. He has been very bad,” his aunt said. “He is desperate and he doesn’t even know what’s going to happen.”
Almonte, 29, came to the U.S. in 2024 and told authorities he cannot return to the Dominican Republic because he fears for his life. In January, he passed his initial asylum screening interview.
Some detainees are finding relief in federal court.
A Mexican man detained in October 2024 in Florida was held for a year even though he won a protection under the U.N. torture convention in March 2025.
“Time was passing and I was desperate, afraid that they would send me to another country,” said the 38-year-old, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of being detained again.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen to me,” he said, noting that immigration officials weren’t giving him any answers.
The man said he had lived illegally in the United States from age 10 until he was deported. In Mexico, he ran his own business, but in 2023 decided to return and illegally crossed the border into the United States. He said he was looking for safety after being threatened by drug cartels who demanded monthly payments.
He was taking antidepressants when he found an attorney who filed a petition in federal court alleging he was being held illegally. He was freed in October 2025, seven months after a judge ordered his release.
But for Hernandez, the Nicaraguan asylum-seeker, desperation led him to request to be returned to the country he had fled.
“I’ve experienced a lot of trauma. It’s very difficult,” Hernandez said from Fort Bliss. “I’m always thinking about when I’m going to get out.”
FILE - Trucks come and go from the "Alligator Alcatraz" immigration detention center in the Florida Everglades, Thursday, Aug. 28, 2025, in Collier County, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell,File)
FILE - Migrants wearing face masks and shackles on their hands and feet sit on a military aircraft at Fort Bliss in El Paso, Tx., Jan. 30, 2025, awaiting their deportation to Guatemala. (AP Photo/Christian Chavez, File)
FILE - Cars wait to enter Fort Bliss in El Paso, Texas, Sept. 9, 2014. (AP Photo/Juan Carlos Llorca, File)
FILE - President Donald Trump tours "Alligator Alcatraz," a new migrant detention facility at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility, on July 1, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)
FILE - Work progresses on a new migrant detention facility dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz," at Dade-Collier Training and Transition facility in the Florida Everglades, on July 4, 2025, in Ochopee, Fla. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell, File)
