October 31, 2025: A woman walks in front of Harvard University. (Credit Image: © Kenneth Martin/ZUMA Press Wire

Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

November 28, 2025, New York City, New York, USA: Black Friday shoppers in front of the Macy’s retail store at 34th street, Herald Square in New York City. Black Friday is one of the busiest shopping days occurring each year, the days after the Thanksgiving holiday. (Credit Image: © Billy Tompkins/ZUMA Press Wire)

Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

December 11, 2014, Hong Kong, China: In Hong Kong, Jimmy Lai now aged 76, founder of Apple Daily ( now defunct ) and strong advocate for democracy who is detained and jailed under political trial in Hong Kong since 2020 appeared at the ‘ occupied zone ‘ in Admiralty Central showing support for protesters on last day of clearance of occupied Admiralty at Central on the 11th of December 2014 which marked the end of OCCUPY CENTRAL-Umbrella Revolution that lasted for 79 days, involving million of citizens in protest demanding for true democracy for Hong Kong. Tomorrow 28th of September 2024 mark 10th anniversary of Occupy Central – Umbrella Revolution ( later renamed : Umbrella Movement ). (Credit Image: © Liau Chung-ren/ZUMA Press Wire)

Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

December 18, 2025, Phoenix, Arizona, USA: RUSSELL BRAND speaks during Day One of AmericaFest 2025 at the Phoenix Convention Center in Phoenix, Arizona. (Credit Image: © Charles-McClintock Wilson/ZUMA Press Wire)

Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

December 12, 2025: In this photo illustration, a person holds a smartphone displaying popular social media apps in front of a screen showing information about Australia’s new social media age restrictions, in New Delhi, India on 12 December 2025. (Credit Image: © David Talukdar/ZUMA Press Wire)

Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

The video shows scenes from Berlin on Saturday, December 20, 2025, as the city prepares for Christmas. It opens at the Brandenburg Gate, where people gather around holiday installations as they move through the historic square. The footage continues at a busy street crossing near Kurfuerstendamm, showing pedestrians and shoppers navigating heavy foot traffic. A street musician performs rock songs on guitar as a crowd gathers to listen in a central shopping area. The video concludes with cars moving along the Autobahn 100, reflecting increased holiday travel across the German capital.

Video Credit © Michael Kuenne/Presscov/ZUMA Press

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Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

December 19, 2025, Promachonas, Greece: Greek farmers block with their tractors Promachonas border crossing to Bulgaria. Greek farmers continue their blockades and protest over rising costs and delayed subsidies.

Video Credit © Giannis Papanikos/ZUMA Press

Music © Cody Kurtz Martin/ Soundstripe

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Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

December 21- 22, 2025 , Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico: This is an English translation of an original Spanish interview with Samuel Saúl Roque García, a 22-year-old migrant recounting his perilous journey from Mexico to the United States. He describes crossing through Nuevo Laredo, being held in a migrant warehouse with around 50 others, and boarding a crowded trailer. He details encounters with checkpoints, a harsh arrest by authorities who mistook him for violating the law because of his appearance, and a lengthy detention and deportation process spanning multiple facilities and months. Samuel reflects on racism and misconceptions about migrants in the U.S., expresses emotional resolve upon returning home, and shares his hopes to reunite with family, visit loved ones, and rethink his future after the difficult experience.

Video Credit © David Peinado/ZUMA Press

Interview Transcript

(original audio in Spanish, translated to English)

Interviewee: My name is Samuel Saúl Roque García.

Journalist: How old are you?

Samuel: 22 years old.

Samuel:
I crossed through Nuevo Laredo, through the Rio Grande, and honestly it wasn’t very difficult. It took me about two minutes swimming. We arrived at a place that was kind of like a small town, I walked for about 15 minutes. There were about 10 of us, women and men, and then the pickup came. They picked us up and took us to a kind of house, they call it a warehouse, where they put everyone who is crossing the border.

We were there for about 15 or 20 days. There were around 50 people in total. I stayed about 15 or 20 days until they told us, “how do you want to get out?” and a trailer came. In that trailer there were about 189 people that they put inside.

We had to go through about two checkpoints. I don’t remember exactly where we crossed the first one, but the second one was in San Antonio. From there it was very easy to get through, they didn’t notice. Even though immigration had dogs, they didn’t smell us, they didn’t detect us.

From there they took us to another kind of house, and people started coming to pick others up. Each smuggler who had his people would pick them up and take them north.

(Samuel refers to an internal system used in detention where people are given a code so someone outside can send them money.)

There was no mistake. He asked for my driver’s license and I only had an international license. Some officers accept an international license, others don’t. When he saw that my license was international, he opened the door, pulled me out by force, grabbed me, handcuffed me, and slammed me against the car. I told him, “let me just grab my things,” and he didn’t let me take anything—only my phone and the clothes I was wearing.

Then he smiled and told me, “I’m going to call immigration because you’re illegal and you have no right to be here.” And I hadn’t done anything wrong—I didn’t crash, I wasn’t drunk, I wasn’t high, I wasn’t smoking, nothing. The reason was that I look Hispanic.

He arrested me. I stayed there with him for about an hour while he did the paperwork, and then he handed me over to immigration.

When they told me, “you’re leaving,” at the second-to-last jail I was in, I thought they were going to… They took me from Kentucky to Louisiana by plane, fully chained, completely restrained. I couldn’t even eat. When they gave us food, we couldn’t lift our hands because they were chained to our waist.

When they told me, “you’re being deported,” I thought it was going to be fast, that they would send us by plane right away, but that wasn’t the case. They took us off the plane, sent us to another jail, and kept us standing in the cold for a long time.

Then they said, “okay, you’re on the list,” they put us back on the plane and sent us to Texas. In Texas they put us in places they call iceboxes. There are a lot of immigrants there. That’s where most of the people who are going to be deported are held.

In the last immigration jail I was in, almost everyone was Mexican. They dropped me off through Ciudad Juárez–El Paso. We arrived at the migration center and there were more than 500 people there—men and women, children, mothers with their kids, families. There were many people who weren’t leaving and stayed there because they had nowhere else to go.

I spent more than a month in detention just for not having legal status. There are many others who had already been there for a year and a half, two years, eight months, seven months, who had signed their deportation papers and still weren’t released.

It’s impotence and it’s racism, because the president is deporting people who may not be from that country but go there to work honestly and earn clean money. We work, we try to do everything almost by the rules, we don’t commit crimes like he says.

In the United States they think we’re criminals, that we go there to steal, to kill, to extort, when that’s not true. We go to work, to earn our daily bread, to help our families back home.
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Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

Feb 25, 2024 – Death Valley National Park, California, U.S. – Badwater Basin, which lies at the very bottom of Death Valley, is the remnant of a vast ancient lake that once existed tens of thousands of years ago. It normally averages a paltry 2in (5.08cm) of rain each year. But during the past six months, the valley floor has received nearly 5in (12.7 cm). According to the National Park Service, most of that rain came from two events: 2.2in (5.59 cm) back on 20 August and another 1.5in (3.81cm) during the record-setting ”atmospheric rivers” that have recently drenched much of California. Rain generally evaporates very quickly in Death Valley, but the billions of gallons of water is now a six-mile-long by three-mile-wide lake known as Lake Manly. (Credit Image: © Katrina Kochneva/ZUMA Press Wire)

Scott Mc Kiernan, Founder & Editor-in-Chief, ZUMA Press

• BONDI TERROR ATTACK KILLS 15 • BELGIAN FARMERS VS POLICE • USA NW HISTORIC FLOODING •

Scott Mc Kiernan presents “The Pictures Of the Week” highlighting the best images from around the world by ZUMA Press contributors, curated by ZUMA Editor-at-large Jim Colton.

Enjoy thepicturesoftheweek.com 51, showcasing images from December 13-19, 2025 “The best two minutes you’ll spend on the internet today!”
#zumapress #photojournalism

ZUMA PHOTOGRAPHERS Featured:
Andrea Alfano, Thomas Bachun, M. Scott Brauer, Marcin Cholewinski, Justin Cooper, David Davies, Alexander Demianchuk, Daniel DeSlover, Muhammad Amdad Hossain, Kathy Hutchins, Bernd Von Jutrczenka, Michael Kappeler, Bob Karp, Didier Lebrun, Joel Marklund, Doug Mills, Naoki Nishimura, Igor Onuchin, Ma Ping, Godfrey Pitt, Habboub Ramez, Javier Rojas, Vladimir Smirnov, Ben Whitley, Hou Zhaokang