Repubblika is holding a Vigil in response to the killings and other cruelties being perpetrated in the United States with the excuse of enforcing immigration laws. The Vigil is being held tomorrow, Tuesday, 27 January 2026, at 18:30 in front of the Embassy of the United States in Ta’ Qali. Everyone is invited.
Here follows the text of a letter written this morning by Repubblika’s President, Vicki Ann Cremona, to the Ambassador of the United States, Somers Farkars.
Her Excellency
Somers Farkas
United States Ambassador to the Republic of Malta
U.S. Embassy Ta’ Qali
Your Excellency,
I write to you as President of Repubblika, a civil society organisation committed to the defence of democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. We address you with respect for your office, but also with deep alarm at recent developments in the United States, particularly concerning the conduct of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the wider direction of U.S. public policy on immigration and civil liberties.
We have followed with horror the growing number of deaths associated with immigration enforcement and detention, and the credible reports of systemic abuse, medical neglect, and excessive use of force. These are not isolated incidents. They point to a pattern of state conduct that has already cost lives and continues to place thousands of vulnerable people at serious risk.
Most distressing of all is the treatment of children. The detention of minors, the separation of families, and the exposure of children to fear, uncertainty, and institutional violence represent a moral failure of the gravest kind. No democratic society can justify policies that traumatise children in the name of border control.
These practices are widely described by human rights organisations, legal scholars, and civil society actors in the United States as cruel, disproportionate, and incompatible with the rule of law. Many have gone further, warning that what we are witnessing resembles the methods of authoritarian regimes: the normalisation of exceptional powers, the erosion of due process, and the treatment of entire groups of people as disposable.
Against this backdrop, we have taken note of your public statement that you would not hesitate to promote President Trump’s political agenda in Malta. We must state frankly that we are profoundly disturbed by this agenda as it is currently unfolding in practice. What is being implemented in the United States today cannot be reconciled with the democratic values that the rest of the world has long associated with American leadership.
For generations, the United States was held up as a “city on a hill” — imperfect, but aspiring to liberty, justice, and the dignity of the individual. Today, it risks becoming something very different: a model for strongmen, a source of legitimation for repression, and a warning rather than an inspiration.
Yet this letter is not written in hostility towards the American people. On the contrary, it is written in solidarity with them.
We stand with the millions of Americans who are resisting these policies; with lawyers defending constitutional rights; with journalists exposing abuse; with communities protecting migrants; and with all those who refuse to accept that cruelty and lawlessness are the new normal. We affirm our belief that the rule of law, human dignity, and democratic accountability must ultimately prevail, even in times of deep political division.
Repubblika was born out of resistance to impunity and abuse of power in our own country. We know from experience that silence in the face of injustice only strengthens those who govern through fear and force. As we have done before, we will not hesitate to stand in resistance to tyranny, even when it comes from the most unexpected and painful of places.
We therefore call on you, as the representative of the United States in Malta, to use your office not to defend or export policies that undermine fundamental rights, but to uphold the principles that once made American democracy a global point of reference: the rule of law, the protection of the vulnerable, and respect for human dignity.
Our protest is not against America. It is against injustice. And it is motivated by the hope that the United States can still return to the values it once taught the world to admire.
Respectfully,
Vicki Ann Cremona
President, Repubblika