First Thing: Thousands of displaced Palestinians begin journey to northern Gaza

Families start returning home after first major crisis of ceasefire overcome

Good morning.

Palestinians displaced from their homes in northern Gaza began to return to the region early on Monday, the territory’s interior ministry said, after the first major crisis of the truce between between Israel and Hamas.

The mediating party, Qatar, said the two sides had reached an agreement over the release of an Israeli civilian hostage, Arbel Yehoud, who is to be freed along with two other hostages before Friday. The deal meant that on Monday, Israeli authorities allowed Palestinians to return to northern Gaza.

Social media showed thousands of people walking along sandy roadways surrounded by the total destruction of more than a year of Israeli strikes. Learning they could begin to move north on Monday, displaced families broke out in cheers. “No sleep, I have everything packed and ready to go with the first light of day,” Ghada, a mother of five, told Reuters.

• What has Donald Trump said about Gaza? In comments strongly rejected by the Palestinians, Egypt, and Jordan, for fear that Israel will not let refugees return, he said Gaza’s people should at least temporarily be resettled elsewhere.

Trump firing government watchdogs is ‘clear violation of law’, says Adam Schiff

Donald Trump acted in “clear violation of the law” by firing more than a dozen independent federal government inspectors, US senator Adam Schiff has said, his voice joining a chorus of criticism against the sweeping actions taken by the president in his first week.

“Yeah, he broke the law,” the California Democrat said Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press. “And not just any law – but a law meant to crowd out waste, fraud and abuse.”

Trump dismissed the inspectors general at agencies including the departments of state, defense and transportation with immediate effect by email late on Friday. But federal law requires the president to give both the House and Senate reasons for the dismissals and 30 days’ notice.

• What have others said about the firings? Republican senator Lindsey Graham brushed off their unlawfulness. He acknowledged that Trump violated the law (telling Meet the Press that “technically yeah”, he did), before adding: “I’m not losing a whole lot of sleep that he wants to change the personnel out.”

Immigration raids in Chicago begin as Trump directs Ice to increase arrest rate to hit quota of 1,500 daily

Authorities have started deportation raids in Chicago, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) statement confirmed Sunday, days after the incoming “border czar”, Tom Homan, claimed officials were “reconsidering” after details about the raids were leaked.

Trump administration officials have said the city, home to many of the state’s estimated 400,000 undocumented people, would be the epicenter of immigration enforcement actions.

The raids came after the Washington Post reported that the Trump administration has directed Ice to ramp up their daily arrests from a few hundred to 1,200 to 1,500. Citing four people close to the proceedings, the outlet reported that Trump was unhappy with the pace of deportations so far, and wanted Ice field offices to make 75 arrests daily. Ice managers are to be held accountable for quota targets, it reported.

• What new powers does Ice have? Trump last week issued an executive order allowing immigration enforcement action at locations such as schools and churches, where it had previously been blocked.

• How are undocumented people responding? Many are believed to have stayed home to avoid possible interactions with federal law enforcement.

In other news …

• Colombia, which prevented two repatriation flights from the US from landing, has since agreed to accept airplanes carrying deported migrants after Donald Trump threatened the country with tariffs.

• Bulgarian authorities have been accused of obstructing efforts to rescue three Egyptian teenagers who later froze to death near the Bulgarian-Turkish border in late December.

• Syrian fighters linked to its new leaders have executed 35 people, mostly Assad-era officers, in three days, according to a war monitor.

• Intimacy coordinators said that Blake Lively’s legal dispute shows that consultants are vital for certain scenes, comparing the role to that involved in stunt coordination.

Stat of the day: 46% of French 18- to 29-year-olds ‘said they have not heard of the Holocaust’, survey finds

A recent eight-country survey of the US, UK, France, Austria, Germany, Poland, Hungary and Romania reported that significant proportions of 18- to 29-year-olds said they had not heard, or did not think they had heard, of the Holocaust. This figure was close to half – 46% – among young adults in France. The poll also found that 48% of Americans could not name a single concentration camp.

Don’t miss this: 80 years after Auschwitz’s liberation, three survivors tell their stories

On the 80th anniversary of Auschwitz’s liberation, Albrecht Weinberg, Mindu Hornick, and Eva Clarke, share their memories of being Jewish in Europe before Adolf Hitler’s rise to power, the devastation of their loved ones being killed, surviving the concentration camp and witnessing its liberation. “I asked when we were likely to see our mother,” remembers Hornick. “We were told by other prisoners: ‘You’re not going to see your mother again.’”

Last Thing: Tax havens and playing your guilty favorites on Spotify

What have offshore tax havens and playing a guilty favorite on Spotify’s private mode have in common? Both are “shamefully obscuring the truth of the situation”, according to Edith Pritchett’s cartoon this week. And here’s why billionaires are acting like desperate cat owners...

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