Prepared for the Office of Public Affairs (OPA)
U.S. Department of Homeland Security

Editorial Note: The DHS Daily Briefing is a collection of news articles related to Department’s mission. The inclusion of particular stories is not intended to reflect their importance, nor is it intended to endorse the political viewpoints or affiliations included in news coverage.

Bloomberg [4/12/2025 10:17 PM, Carmeli Argana, 16228K] reports a Maryland man who was wrongly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador is “alive and secure” in the facility, according to the US State Department. Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a migrant who had been lawfully living in Maryland prior to being deported, is in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, senior State official Michael Kozak said in a court declaration to the US District Court on Saturday. He cited official reporting from the US Embassy in San Salvador. The declaration comes after Justice Department lawyers missed a deadline from Maryland District Judge Paula Xinis to provide answers on Abrego Garcia’s location and status in prison. She gave them until Friday morning to answer her questions, but US lawyers said that wasn’t enough time. Abrego Garcia is being detained “pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador,” Kozak said, without providing further details. The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that President Donald Trump’s administration must take steps to return Abrego Garcia to the US. The decision establishes a limit on Trump’s deportation power amid his efforts for sweeping authority with minimal judicial review. Trump officials have said that Abrego Garcia, 29, is a member of the MS-13 criminal gang, which his lawyers and Xinis rejected. Immigration officials had arrested him on March 12 and accused him of playing a “prominent role” in MS-13, though he hasn’t been convicted of a crime or charged with one. He was flown to El Salvador on March 15 along with more than 200 other alleged gang members. Reuters [4/12/2025 9:05 PM, David Brunnstrom, 41523K] reports that aState Department court filing gave the update on Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador on March 15 despite an order protecting him from deportation, after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis made the demand for daily updates on Friday. The filing from Michael Kozak, of the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, did not, however, say what steps the government was taking to bring Abrego Garcia home, as Xinis had also demanded. "I am aware that the instant lawsuit has been filed seeking the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States from El Salvador," Kozak’s filing said. "It is my understanding based on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador," it said. "He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.” Xinis issued her demand a day after the U.S. Supreme Court upheld an order from her directing the administration to "facilitate and effectuate" Abrego Garcia’s return. However, the Supreme Court said the term "effectuate" was unclear and might exceed judge’s authority. U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration has acknowledged that Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran migrant who was living in Maryland and has had a work permit since 2019, was deported by mistake. But it has said it cannot immediately bring him back and that diplomatic relations cannot operate at the speed with which the courts are demanding. Trump is due to meet El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele at the White House on Monday. Trump told reporters on Friday his administration would bring Abrego Garcia back if the Supreme Court directed it to. ABC News [4/12/2025 7:24 PM, Laura Romero, Katherine Faulders, Fritz Farrow, and Ivan Pereira, 34586K] Video: HERE reports later Saturday evening, President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social claiming El Salvador President Nayib Bukele "has graciously accepted into his Nation’s custody some of the most violent alien enemies of the World and, in particular, the United States." "These barbarians are now in the sole custody of El Salvador, a proud and sovereign Nation, and their future is up to President B and his Government," he added. Trump did not directly mention Abrego Garcia or his case in the post. He is slated to meet with Bukele at the White House Monday. On Friday, Trump weighed in on the Supreme Court’s order while talking with reporters, claiming he wasn’t well versed in the case. However, he reiterated his respect for the Supreme Court, which had upheld a lower court’s ruling that the U.S. government should assist in returning Abrego Garcia to the U.S. "If the Supreme Court said bring somebody back, I would do that. I respect the Supreme Court," he said. Shortly before the government submitted its first status report to the court, attorneys for Abrego Garcia filed a motion for additional relief and cited Trump’s comments. "Yesterday, President Trump confirmed that the United States has the power to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s release from prison and return to the United States," the attorneys for Abrego Garcia wrote.

Reported similarly:
Politico [4/12/2025 7:40 PM, Kyle Cheney and Josh Gerstein, 430301K]
The Hill [4/12/2025 6:38 PM, Ashleigh Fields, 12829K]
NPR [4/12/2025 11:49 PM, Chandelis Duster, 29983K]
CBS News [4/12/2025 6:50 PM, Jacob Rosen, 51661K]
NBC News [4/12/2025 7:52 PM, Gary Grumbach and Rebecca Cohen, 44742K]
Telemundo [4/12/2025 6:02 PM, Staff, 2454K]

The AP [4/12/2025 6:23 PM, Bill Barrow, 2923K] reports the Trump administration confirmed to a federal judge Saturday that a Maryland man who was mistakenly deported last month remains confined in a notorious prison in El Salvador. But the government’s filing did not address the judge’s demands that the administration detail what steps it was taking to return Kilmar Abrego Garcia to the United States. The government said only that Abrego Garcia, 29, is under the authority of the El Salvador government. Abrego Garcia’s location was confirmed to the court by Michael G. Kozak, who identified himself in the filing as a “Senior Bureau Official” in the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs. The filing comes one day after a U.S. government attorney struggled in a hearing to provide U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis with any information about Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the Trump administration must bring him back. Xinis issued an order Friday requiring the administration to disclose Abrego Garcia’s “current physical location and custodial status” and “what steps, if any, Defendants have taken (and) will take, and when, to facilitate” his return. “It is my understanding based on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador,” Kozak’s statement said. “He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.” Kozak’s statement did not address the judge’s latter requirements. Xinis was exasperated Friday with the government’s lack of information. “Where is he and under whose authority?” the judge asked during the hearing. “I’m not asking for state secrets. All I know is that he’s not here. The government was prohibited from sending him to El Salvador, and now I’m asking a very simple question: Where is he?” Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 11:26 PM, Oliver O’Connell, 430301K] reports that a U.S. judge demanded updates on the Trump administration’s efforts to “facilitate” his return, per a Supreme Court ruling. Just hours later on Truth Social, President Donald Trump said he was looking forward to meeting with President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador on Monday at the White House. Despite an earlier statement claiming he would bring Abrego Garcia back if instructed by the Supreme Court, Trump appeared to deflect, saying that those deported “are now in the sole custody of El Salvador ... their future is up to President B and his Government.” A government court filing provided the update on Abrego Garcia, who was sent to El Salvador on March 15 despite an order protecting him from deportation, after U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis demanded daily updates on Friday. The filing from Michael Kozak of the State Department’s Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs did not, however, specify what steps the government was taking to bring Abrego Garcia home, as Xinis had also insisted. “I am aware that the instant lawsuit has been filed seeking the return of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia to the United States from El Salvador,” Kozak’s filing said. “It is my understanding, based on official reporting from our Embassy in San Salvador, that Abrego Garcia is currently being held in the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador,” it said. “He is alive and secure in that facility. He is detained pursuant to the sovereign, domestic authority of El Salvador.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

The Hill [4/12/2025 12:00 PM, Zach Schonfeld and Rebecca Beitsch, 12829K] reports a Supreme Court decision pushing for the return of a man mistakenly deported to a Salvadoran prison has both his lawyers and the Trump administration claiming victory, leaving unclear if and when Kilmar Abrego Garcia will return home. It’s the latest instance of the high court splitting the baby as Trump’s sweeping agenda swarms the justices, an approach that has left the administration wiggle room in its battles with district judges who’ve blocked the president’s policies. The dynamic is on full display as the Justice Department declines to step on the gas to return Abrego Garcia.

Washington Post [4/12/2025 7:22 PM, Spencer S. Hsu, 31735K] reports lawyers for a Maryland man mistakenly deported to a mega-prison in El Salvador asked a federal judge on Saturday to order the Justice Department to show by 10 a.m. Monday why it should not be held in contempt for failing to say what it has done or will do to immediately return him to the United States after a Supreme Court order. In a Justice Department filing at 5 p.m. Saturday, State Department official Michael G. Kozak confirmed that 29-year-old Kilmar Abrego García is being held in El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center under that country’s sovereign authority. However, the government did not update U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis of Greenbelt about what concrete steps it is taking to bring him home, as she had ordered Friday. Abrego García’s legal team wrote that the limited response was the latest sign of the government’s lack of urgency and failure to comply with her April 4 order for it to “facilitate” Abrego Garcia’s release from custody, a decision the Supreme Court upheld 9-0 on Thursday evening. Attorney Jonathan G. Cooper in a written motion asked Xinis to order the government to take “whatever … steps are within its power” to aid Abrego García’s release, including sending personnel to ensure his safe passage, flight and reentry to the United States. Cooper also asked the judge to order the government to disclose by the end of Monday the terms of its use of the maximum security detention facility in El Salvador to house deportees, whether it has informed prison officials that it wants Abrego García’s returned, and what else it has done or will do. Cooper further asked Xinis to order the government to show by Monday morning why it should not be found in contempt for violating the judge’s earlier orders to lay out its actions to repatriate Abrego García, a sheet metal apprentice and father of three who is married to a U.S. citizen. Xinis did not immediately respond to the request. At a hearing Friday, Justice Department attorneys said it was “impracticable” to meet Xinis’s initial 9:30 a.m. Friday deadline for an update, asking for an extension until 5 p.m. Tuesday.

Wall Street Journal [4/12/2025 1:35 PM, Victoria Albert, 646K] reports an immigration judge in Louisiana ruled that the government can deport Mahmoud Khalil, an early step in what is expected to be a long legal fight over whether the Columbia University student can remain in the U.S. Judge Jamee Comans decided Friday that Khalil was deportable under a seldom-used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act relating to foreign-policy interests. She hasn’t yet ruled on the government’s other allegation, that Khalil misrepresented several pieces of information when obtaining his green card. A letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirming he believed Khalil deportable under that section of the Act was sufficient for the government to meet its burden, she said, after about an hour and a half in court. Khalil, dressed in a blue shirt and pants and brown woven sandals, asked Comans for permission to address the room after she announced her decision. “There’s nothing more important than due process and fundamental fairness,” he said, referencing comments made by the judge at a prior hearing. “Neither of these principles were present today.” The decision from Judge Jamee Comans is a victory for the Trump administration, but doesn’t mean that Khalil, a green cardholder who was arrested early last month, will be quickly deported. His constitutional claims—that his detention violates his First Amendment and due-process rights—are still playing out in federal court in New Jersey, where a judge has ordered that Khalil remain in the U.S. as the case continues.

CNN [4/13/2025 3:30 AM, Ray Sanchez and Gloria Pazmino, 22131K] reports that, while an immigration judge’s ruling that Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil – a legal permanent resident – can be deported is a victory for the Trump administration, the legal battle against his detention and deportation is far from over. The decision by Assistant Chief Immigration Judge Jamee Comans in Louisiana on Friday came after the federal government submitted what it said was evidence alleging Khalil’s “beliefs, statements or associations” made him deportable. The judge ruled the Palestinian activist’s presence posed “potentially serious foreign policy consequences,” agreeing with a two-page memo from Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier in the week accusing Khalil of undermining “U.S. policy to combat anti-Semitism” without citing any allegations of criminal activity. A “removability finding” in immigration court means the judge has determined the individual is subject to removal from the United States due to a violation of immigration law or lack of legal immigration status. Khalil’s attorneys said they will appeal. “We don’t think this is the final word at all,” Marc Van Der Hout, an immigration attorney for Khalil, told CNN after the ruling, referring in part to a separate legal challenge in federal court in New Jersey on grounds that he is being targeted for constitutionally protected free speech. Khalil has separate court cases playing out in two states – the Louisiana case is focused on his deportation order and the New Jersey case is focused on his habeas petition challenging the legality of his detention.

Axios [4/12/2025 9:05 AM, Brittany Gibson, 13163K] reports tens of thousands of unaccompanied children who are in the U.S. illegally stand to lose legal help for their immigration hearings — and face being deported — because of a little-known Trump budget cut. The $367 million cut takes aim at the legal defense fund designed to help children and teens who’ve fled violence, lost their parents, or are victims of trafficking. Without lawyers it’s extremely difficult for such youths — about 26,000 of them now get this legal aid — to show in court why they should be allowed to stay in the U.S. Those who can’t prove their need for asylum are likely to be deported.

The Hill [4/12/2025 8:23 AM, Filip Timotija, 12829K] reports border czar Tom Homan is defending the Trump administration in the case of a Maryland man mistakenly deported to El Salvador, despite the Supreme Court ruling earlier this week that the U.S. must facilitate his return. During an interview Friday on Newsmax, Homan doubled down on the move, saying, "I think we made the right decision." The nation’s highest court ruled on Thursday that the administration must "facilitate" the return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was mistakenly deported as part of President Trump’s sweeping immigration agenda. The White House responded to the decision on Friday. In its ruling, the court also requires the administration to provide steps to the district judge overseeing the case on how the U.S. will facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return. Trump on Friday said he would follow the Supreme Court’s ruling.

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 3:32 PM, Pocharapon Neammanee, 430301K] reports border czar Tom Homan is defending the Trump administration’s decision to deport 29-year-old Maryland father Kilmar Abrego Garcia to a brutal prison camp in El Salvador, even though the administration admitted his removal was due to an "administrative error.” "The alien’s to blame. The aliens are to blame when they enter this country illegally," Homan told Newsmax’s Chris Salcedo on Saturday, claiming that if Abrego Garcia had not unlawfully entered the U.S in the first place, he would not be held at the notorious Salvadorian prison. Abrego Garcia, who is married to a U.S. citizen, was working in the country legally as a sheet metal apprentice under a permit. He was originally barred from deportation in 2019 after an immigration judge ruled that he would likely face persecution by local gangs back in his native country of El Salvador. However, Abrego Garcia was deported last month after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the MS-13 gang. Homan repeated the administration’s allegations on Salcedo’s show despite Abrego Garcia’s attorney saying there was no evidence he was in a gang. "He’s an MS-13 gang member, according to our intelligence and even that of the intelligence of El Salvador," Homan said. "He was given withholding and removal from El Salvador because of fear of gang violence.” However, ICE’s Robert Cerna testified in court last month that the agency made an "administrative error" when deporting Abrego Garcia. Justice Department lawyer Erez Reuveni also conceded in court that Abrego Garcia should not have been deported. Attorney General Pam Bondi took Reuveni off the case and put him on administrative leave shortly after the hearing. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis ordered that Abrego Garcia be returned to the U.S by midnight Monday. The Supreme Court upheld Xinis’s ruling on Thursday and ordered the administration to "facilitate and effectuate" Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. On Friday, Xinis directed the Justice Department to provide daily updates on Abrego Garcia’s whereabouts and their efforts to bring him back. "The Supreme Court said we’ll facilitate. We’ll facilitate," Homan told Salcedo. "However, we’ve got to remember, he’s an El Salvadoran national and in custody of the El Salvadoran government. So, you know, we’ll facilitate what we can, but I think we made the right decision.”

Washington Post [4/12/2025 6:00 AM, Hannah Natanson, Lisa Rein and Meryl Kornfield, 31735K] reports two days after the Social Security Administration purposely and falsely labeled 6,100 living immigrants as dead, security guards arrived at the office of a well-regarded senior executive in the agency’s Woodlawn, Maryland, headquarters. Greg Pearre, who oversaw a staff of hundreds of technology experts, had pushed back on the Trump administration’s plan to move the migrants’ names into a Social Security death database, eliminating their ability to legally earn wages and, officials hoped, spurring them to leave the country. In particular, Pearre had clashed with Scott Coulter, the new chief information officer installed by Elon Musk. Pearre told Coulter that the plan was illegal, cruel and risked declaring the wrong people dead, according to three people familiar with the events. But his objections did not go over well with Trump political appointees. And so on Thursday, the security guards in Pearre’s office told him it was time to leave. They walked Pearre out of the building, capping a momentous internal battle over the novel strategy — pushed by Musk’s U.S. DOGE Service and the Department of Homeland Security — to add thousands of immigrants ranging in age from teenagers to octogenarians to the agency’s Death Master File. The dataset is used by government agencies, employers, banks and landlords to check the status of employees, residents, clients and others. The episode also followed earlier warnings from senior Social Security officials that the database was insecure and could be easily edited without proof of death — a vulnerability, staffers say, that the Trump administration has now exploited. The warnings and Pearre’s removal have not previously been reported. This account of how the Trump administration pushed Social Security to wrongly declare thousands of living immigrants dead is based on interviews with 15 people, including current and former Social Security officials, many of whom spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation, as well as more than two dozen pages of records obtained by The Washington Post.

USA Today [4/12/2025 2:32 PM, Sudiksha Kochi, 75858K] reports the Social Security Administration this week classified more than 6,000 living immigrants as dead in a move directed by the Trump administration, according to a White House official. The move, as reported by The New York Times and The Washington Post, classified the immigrants into the Social Security Administration’s "death master file,” which contains records of deceased individuals who possessed social security numbers. Moving them in the file means that those individuals’ numbers would be invalidated and they would lose access to financial services. Both the NYT and Reuters reported that the immigrants had previously been legally admitted to the U.S., but since had their temporary status revoked. The Department of Homeland Security identified these individuals as having criminal records or on the terrorist watch list, the White House official said. The Department of Government Efficiency, headed by billionaire Elon Musk, played a role in the effort, according to the NYT and the Post. White House spokeswoman Liz Huston said in a statement to USA TODAY that, "President Trump promised mass deportations and by removing the monetary incentive for illegal aliens to come and stay, we will encourage them to self-deport. He is delivering on his promise he made to the American people.”

Reuters [4/13/2025 6:07 AM, Staff, 41523K] reports that, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration cracks down on immigration, its officials have repeatedly publicly identified detainees as gang leaders or even terrorists, without attempting to back those inflammatory claims up in court. After an FBI SWAT team on March 27 raided the home of a 24-year-old Salvadoran man living illegally in Virginia, Attorney General Pam Bondi, standing alongside FBI Director Kash Patel in a morning press conference, alleged the man was one of the top three U.S. leaders of the violent MS-13 street gang and called him a terrorist. Less than two weeks later, the Justice Department moved to drop the only charge it had brought against him -- illegal possession of a firearm by an alien -- and Bondi said he would face deportation instead. In another arrest two weeks earlier, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers pulled over a Salvadoran man in Maryland and handcuffed him while his 5-year-old son, who is autistic and non-verbal, sat in the backseat, according to a legal complaint. ICE called the man’s wife and told her she had 10 minutes to pick up her son before they contacted child protective services, she said in a court filing. When asked on Wednesday why the Trump administration would not provide details of the allegations against the Venezuelan deportees, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she trusted the U.S. government assessment and that the men should remain imprisoned "for the rest of their lives.” In a response to Reuters, U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin claimed that Venezuelans deported to El Salvador without U.S. criminal records "are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more" but did not present evidence of the accusations. "We are putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities," McLaughlin said. A separate Trump administration official said the White House could not share "sensitive information about our intelligence and intelligence-gathering operations" but had confidence in government determinations. The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.

NewsNation [4/12/2025 11:44 AM, Ashley N. Soriano, 430301K] reports attorneys general from four states, led by Washington state, submitted a document to Supreme Court justices, urging them to follow the Constitution’s directive on birthright citizenship and not the president’s. President Trump signed an executive order on day one of his presidency ending birthright citizenship, nullifying part of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. Birthright citizenship grants automatic citizenship to anyone born in the United States. Children of undocumented immigrants born on U.S. soil are legal citizens, per the 14th Amendment. But Trump is seeking to reverse the right as the case awaits a decision from the Supreme Court following previous lower courts blocking the president’s order. “Being directed to follow the law as it has been universally understood for over 125 years is not an emergency warranting the extraordinary remedy of a stay,” Attorneys General Nicholas Brown of Washington, Kris Mayes of Arizona, Kwame Raoul of Illinois and Dan Rayfield of Oregon wrote on April 4. Birthright citizenship “is beyond the President’s power to destroy,” they wrote in the 40-page response to Trump’s request for a partial stay. A partial stay is an order that suspends or halts part of a lower court’s order. In an April 7 response to the court, U.S. Solicitor General Dean John Sauer, representing Trump, argues that being born on U.S. soil does not equate to citizenship. “Respondents argue that ‘birth on our soil,’ by itself, confers citizenship. But the text of the Citizenship Clause extends citizenship only to ‘persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof,’” the document said. “Respondents’ birth-only reading effectively erases the phrase ‘subject to the jurisdiction thereof.’” The Supreme Court has yet to issue a final ruling.

CNN [4/12/2025 12:23 PM, Gabe Cohen, 22131K] reports the Department of Homeland Security has administered lie detector tests to about 50 staffers in recent weeks, including FEMA’s acting administrator and roughly a dozen officials at the disaster relief agency, as part of an intensifying effort to root out what the department alleges are leaks of national security information. Acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton, an appointee of President Donald Trump, was given a polygraph just days after taking part in a meeting with top DHS officials for a policy discussion on the future of FEMA and how to potentially dismantle the agency in the coming months. That closed-door meeting was reported by CNN and other media outlets. At least one FEMA official has been placed on administrative leave and was escorted out of the agency’s office this week after being administered a polygraph test, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. The investigations at DHS have raised concerns that the lie detector tests may be used on federal workers accused of leaking non-classified information to the media, particularly at FEMA where sources say classified information is handled in very limited circumstances. Whistleblower support organizations tell CNN it would be unusual, alarming and potentially illegal for the tests to be used in such cases. Some FEMA officials "failed" the test, McLaughlin said, declining to provide details on what information was allegedly leaked. She insisted DHS is following the law. Daily Mail [4/12/2025 10:24 PM, Alyssa Guzman, 62500K] reports that last month, it emerged that the department reportedly administered a lie detector test to Hamilton to ensure he had not leaked sensitive information from a meeting he had with one of Trump’s advisors. However, at least one FEMA official has been placed under administrative leave and was escorted from the office this week, sources told CNN. Others inside the disaster relief organization have also ‘failed’ the test, but it is unclear what happened to them. ‘We will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,’ DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told CNN. ‘We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment, or status as a career civil servant.

Daily Wire [4/13/2025 12:00 AM, Jacob Falach, 4672K] reports Homeland Security recently arrested a Tufts University student, Rumeysa Ozturk, for engaging in “activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” While the Trump administration’s arrest of Ozturk is a move in the right direction, she is just one of countless students across the country who share a radical ideology. Days after the first anniversary of the October 7 massacre which left 1,200 civilians dead, including 40 Americans, New York Times released a chilling headline: “Pro-Palestinian Group at Columbia Now Backs ‘Armed Resistance’ by Hamas.” The article claims a pro-Hamas student group at Columbia University marked the anniversary by distributing a newspaper titled “One Year Since Al-Aqsa Flood, Revolution Until Victory.” The headline was placed over an image of Hamas fighters breaching Israel’s security fence. Additionally, the student group published an essay describing the attack as a “moral, military, and political victory” and citing Ismail Haniyeh, the former political leader of Hamas hiding in Qatar who would later be assassinated. In 2024, encampments held by these same student groups multiplied on campuses across the country, from New York University to Harvard, Yale, UCLA, and many others.

Newsweek [4/12/2025 6:14 PM, Peter Aitken, 52200K] reports professors at Harvard University have filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration over its threats to cut billions in federal funding after accusing the institution of failing to address antisemitism on its campus. Newsweek reached out to the White House by email, outside of normal business hours, on Saturday afternoon for comment. The Trump administration last month announced it would review roughly $9 billion in federal funding allocated to Harvard University, widely seen as a symbolic cornerstone of higher education in the United States. The administration again cited a failure to handle antisemitism on campus as the reasoning. The Harvard Crimson first reported that the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Harvard faculty chapter of the group responded to Trump’s threat by suing the administration. In a suit filed on Friday in the Federal District Court in Massachusetts, demands an end to the funding review on the grounds that it is allegedly coercive and unlawfully undermines academic freedom. The AAUP urges the court to "permanently enjoin Defendants [the federal government] from using the power of the government to target and punish Harvard University for the viewpoints and speech of plaintiffs and their members." "This action challenges the Trump administration’s unlawful and unprecedented misuse of federal funding and civil rights enforcement authority to undermine academic freedom and free speech on a university campus," the lawsuit said. The suit added: "Harvard, like all American universities, depends on federal funding to conduct its academic research. Threats like these are an existential "gun to the head" for a university."

FOX News [4/12/2025 9:04 PM, Alexandra Koch, 46189K] reports Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber recently told a New York Times reporter he identified "serious problems" with antisemitism on Columbia University’s campus and even his own. But he noted it is "not appropriate" for the government to use its funding power to change the way universities conduct their research, teaching or admissions. Eisgruber sat down Wednesday with "The Daily" podcast host Rachel Abrams to discuss research funding freezes and antisemitism on university campuses. Colleges and universities nationwide have expressed concern about President Donald Trump investigating schools for alleged antisemitic discrimination and harassment, slashing federal funding for those that seemingly allowed on-campus anti-Israel protests since the Hamas-led attack on Israel Oct. 7, 2023. One of those schools was Columbia University, which changed its protest policies, expanded its Jewish studies program, placed the school’s Middle Eastern studies program under new supervision and altered student disciplinary procedures to avoid losing $400 million in federal funding. "We began to see precipitous threats to funding streams early on in the new presidential administration," Eisgruber told Abrams. "Then a couple of weeks ago, something happened at Columbia that introduced a new, and, in my view, very dangerous element to this, which is that the government came in, and without any due process or any apparent investigation, said … ‘We’re going to take away a bunch of your grants … and we’re not going to restore them to you unless you do things like admissions reform.’" Eisgruber discussed the importance of "academic freedom" before Abrams asked about the validity of the administration’s concerns about antisemitism on college campuses. Eisgruber acknowledged there "were some serious problems with antisemitism on that campus" and said standing against antisemitism is "a fundamental responsibility for any university president and for any university," but he accused the government of neglecting due process.

Breitbart [4/12/2025 6:52 PM, Staff, 2923K] reports Mexico plans to deliver water to farmers in drought-stricken Texas, one day after President Donald Trump threatened tariffs and sanctions for not providing water from the Rio Grande River promised under a 1944 treaty. The United States’ southern neighbor owes 1.3 million acre-feet of water after sending only 512,604, which is 30% of the required amount every five years. "For Texas farmers who are requesting water, there will be an immediate delivery of a certain number of millions of cubic meters that can be provided according to the water availability in the Rio Grande," Sheinbaum told reporters Friday. On Thursday, Trump brought attention to the issue, which has been boiling since March. "This is very unfair, and it is hurting South Texas Farmers very badly," Trump posted Thursday on Truth Social. "Last year, the only Sugar Mill in Texas CLOSED, because Mexico has been stealing the water from Texas Farmers. Ted Cruz has been leading the fight to get South Texas the water it is owed, but Sleepy Joe refused to lift a finger to help the Farmers. THAT ENDS NOW! "I will make sure Mexico doesn’t violate our Treaties, and doesn’t hurt our Texas Farmers. Just last month, I halted water shipments to Tijuana until Mexico complies with the 1944 Water Treaty. My Agriculture Secretary, Brooke Rollins, is standing up for Texas Farmers, and we will keep escalating consequences, including TARIFFS and, maybe even SANCTIONS, until Mexico honors the Treaty, and GIVES TEXAS THE WATER THEY ARE OWED!" Trump posted. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, reposted Trump’s post and spoke about the issue on his podcast Friday. Over each five-year cycle since the treaty was signed, Mexico must send 1.75 million acre-feet from the Rio Grande — the latest cycle ended in October. In return, the United States sends 1.5 million acre-feet of water yearly to Mexico from the Colorado River. An acre-foot of water is about 325,000 gallons, equivalent to an acre of land flooded with water one foot deep. On Thursday, Sheinbaum posted in Spanish on X that a comprehensive proposal has already been sent to the undersecretary of the U.S. Department of State. "This has been three years of drought, and to the extent water is available, Mexico has been complying," she wrote. "The International Boundary and Water Commission has continued its work to identify mutually beneficial solutions. … I am confident that, as with other issues, an agreement will be reached.”

FOX News [4/12/2025 8:00 AM, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, 430301K] reports a suspected member of the radical "Zizian" cult was forcibly removed from a California courtroom after claiming an officer said she should be killed for being transgender. Alexander "Somni" Leatham, a 29-year-old trans woman from Agoura Hills, California, was one of five alleged members of the group of radical vegans, many of whom identified as trans, who were in Solano Superior Court Tuesday. Leatham alleged that an officer told her she "deserved to be shot for being transgender while he had a gun, and I was in chains," according to SFGate. Leatham, and others in the group, face charges in connection with a string of killings across the country that culminated in the January killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent along the northern border. The 29-year-old reportedly went on a profanity-laden rant in the courtroom Tuesday, accusing authorities of attempting to de-transition her. "The court has been hormonally detransitioning me for quarter of a decade as part of a state-sponsored conversion therapy program," she said, according to SFGate. "I am not suicidal. I have never been suicidal." "If I am killed in police custody, it was murder!" Leatham said. Judge John B. Ellis ordered Leatham to be taken to an isolation room prior to the hearing, saying that she could appear via camera due to her behavior, SFGate reported. "If defendant Leatham can’t behave herself, she can be moved to the isolation booth," Ellis said. Members of the Zizians have been charged or named as persons of interest in connection with six deaths across the country, including the stabbing of an 82-year-old landlord in January, the shooting of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Vermont in January and the 2022 double homicide of an elderly Pennsylvania couple. Leatham and Suri Dao face attempted murder charges after a rent dispute with landlord Curtis Lind that ended with Zizian follower Emma Borhanian being fatally shot by Lind in self-defense. Lind was injured by a samurai sword during the altercation. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Newsmax [4/12/2025 11:28 AM, Jim Mishler, 5000K] reports U.S. Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin told Newsmax that Mexico is "getting better" in the area of border control methods with the US. McLaughlin told America Right Now, "I think we are seeing some progress. They’re sending in their National Guard to the southern border to make sure it’s more secure. But we would like to see them actually guarding their own southern border with Guatemala so that we see less migration moving up to the U.S. through that route. That has been a problem where we like to see further cooperation." McLaughlin said the big picture on cooperative border control measures with Mexico, however, is improving. "I think that we’re seeing much better cooperation than we were just four months ago." On the larger question of how to manage millions of people allowed to enter the U.S. illegally, McLaughlin said they have an easy choice to make, like using the app offered by Customs and Border Control, "Which gives illegal immigrants a tool to leave now and self-deport and potentially come back to live the American dream." McLaughlin said failure to comply means arrest, deportation, and hefty fines. "We are going to start fining illegal immigrants a thousand dollars a day if they remain in the country."

Telemundo [4/12/2025 6:43 PM, Yuniesky Ramírez, 171K] reports Huber Argueta’s story may seem like just another in the complex web of immigration cases in the United States, but it has become the focus of an unprecedented federal lawsuit that could lay the groundwork for class-action litigation. From Guatemala, where he was abruptly deported on March 19, Argueta claims his removal violated key legal processes, and his legal team accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of acting outside the law. Argueta arrived in the United States in 2007. On U.S. soil he started a family with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and they had two daughters. Although his immigration status was not regularized in his first years, in 2021 he received a federal pardon, which put him on the verge of obtaining an immigrant visa through marriage. All that was missing was a consular appointment. Everything changed on January 26, 2024, when he was arrested for a DUI case. Although he had legal representation, an arrest warrant was mistakenly issued in that process. According to his attorney, Alexandra Friz García, the warrant was later annulled, but ICE proceeded with his detention anyway, "He had an appointment for his immigration bond hearing on March 19, but that same day he had already been deported," explained Friz. "ICE could not do that without a judge’s order. Argueta was arrested on March 10, just after dropping his daughters off at school. As detailed in his court filing, he never signed a request for voluntary deportation. Nor was he allowed to call his lawyer or family. In a matter of days, without a court hearing or explanation, he was transferred to the Krome detention center in South Florida, "They didn’t let me do anything... they just took me to the plane," he said, his voice cracking from Guatemala. His memories of the detention center also reflect undignified conditions: "We were so many people that whoever found a space on the floor was accommodated. The case has already reached federal court in the Southern District of Florida, where attorney Friz Garcia is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE, requesting that her client be brought back to the U.S. to continue with the legal process that was underway, and is also seeking to lay the groundwork for a class action, under the suspicion that Argueta is not the only one to whom this has happened. She also seeks to lay the groundwork for a class action, under the suspicion that Argueta is not the only one to whom this has happened. "Our theory is that this is not an isolated case," says Friz. For now, Huber remains in Guatemala, facing the absence of his daughters and wife, who have remained in Miami, without answers or comfort.

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 9:19 PM, Staff, 430301K] reports US President Donald Trump will host his El Salvador counterpart Nayib Bukele at the White House on Monday, highlighting the central American leader’s role as a top ally in Washington’s crackdown on undocumented immigration. Bukele has agreed to accept migrants deported from the United States, locking up more than 250 in a notorious Salvadoran prison. The vast majority are Venezuelans, accused by Trump’s administration of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, though rights organizations have decried what they called "forced disappearances and arbitrary detention.” Relatives of some deportees deny their loved ones are gang members. Political scientist Napoleon Campos said the meeting between Bukele and Trump had become oversimplified to "the issue of a heavy-handed security approach.” "There are other topics that could be discussed, such as investments and trade, but it all comes down to talking about a prison," he said. Trump posted on his Truth Social platform Saturday that the US and El Salvador are "working closely together to eradicate terrorist organizations, and build a future of Prosperity.” He added that future of the deported migrants in Salvadoran custody "is up to President B and his Government. They will never threaten or menace our Citizens again!". White House spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Trump and Bukele "will discuss El Salvador’s partnership on using their supermax prison for Tren de Aragua and MS-13 gang members and how El Salvador’s cooperation with the United States has become a model for others to work with this administration.” Trump’s Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem even visited the 40,000-inmate CECOT prison last month, posing in front of a cell overflowing with seemingly dead-eyed and heavily tattooed men. Aside from political benefits for both Bukele and Trump in sending deportees to El Salvador, there is a potential security and economic boon for Bukele. His government received $6 million for taking deportees, which Bukele described as "a very low fee for them, but a high one for us.”

Breitbart [4/12/2025 8:54 PM, Alana Mastrangelo, 2923K] reports Franklin Camargo, a young refugee fighting Tren de Aragua after escaping Venezuela, warned Breitbart News editor-in-chief Alex Marlow, that the criminal gang is "completely and entirely linked" to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro’s government, and Camargo is still receiving threats from the criminal gang. "Right now, even here in the U.S. I still receive threats from the government very often because of course I create content about Venezuela, I create content about the U.S. as much as I can," Camargo, who is a commentator at PragerU, told Marlow during Friday’s episode of The Alex Marlow Show. "I have denounced Tren de Aragua multiple times," Camargo continued. "A police officer and a detective from Dallas, Texas, contacted me to get some information about Tren de Aragua — and because I knew someone who has really studied cases about Tren de Aragua — he contacted me seeking some information. He said, ‘Be careful’ — because at that moment, I was in Miami — ‘And Tren de Aragua is in Miami, you have been speaking out a lot.’". "Before working at PragerU, I was working at Univision as a conservative panelist, and I would denounce Tren de Aragua on a daily basis," Camargo said. "Something that people need to understand in America, is that Tren de Aragua, when we talk about the Tren de Aragua, we’re talking about a criminal gang that has the support of the Maduro regime," he explained. "This is really important," Marlow agreed. "I want to emphasize this because this is part of why the Alien Enemies Act worked as well as it did. [It] is because the Maduro regime does support Tren de Aragua, and this is something that people really miss.” "Yes," Camargo replied, adding, "To put it into perspective, Tren de Aragua started as a criminal gang in a prison in our state. In a normal country where the government has nothing to do with criminal gangs, how would a criminal gang actually start inside of a prison?". "The reason why it did in Venezuela is because it had the direct collaboration of the Maduro regime. It’s not just that the Maduro regime allows them to do whatever they want to do. No, it’s even more than that. They work together," Camargo revealed.

FOX News [4/12/2025 6:34 AM, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, 46189K] reports visiting America is not an entitlement. It is a privilege extended to those who respect our laws and values. U.S. law lays out clear rules about who can and cannot come to the United States. The State Department’s consular officers are required to apply these rules to each of the millions of visa applicants around the world each year. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), aliens who endorse or espouse terrorist activity or persuade others to endorse or espouse terrorist activity or support a terrorist organization – such as Hamas – are ineligible for U.S. visas. What’s more, the INA gives us broad authority to revoke a visa. This authority is fundamental to safeguarding our national security, as well as protecting Americans and lawful visitors within our borders.

Washington Post [4/12/2025 2:45 PM, Maria Sacchetti and Jacob Bogage, 31735K] reports that, as the Trump administration aggressively pushes to deport more immigrants during the president’s first year back in office, one aspirational number keeps coming up in private conversations, according to four current and former federal officials with direct knowledge of the plans: 1 million. Deporting 1 million immigrants in one year would ostensibly surpass previous statistics, as the highest number thus far was more than 400,000 a year when Barack Obama was president. But officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the internal goal, said Trump officials aren’t revealing how they are counting the numbers. Analysts say the available statistics make that target appear unrealistic, if not impossible, given funding, staffing levels and the fact that most immigrants have the right to a court hearing before being removed from the country. White House adviser Stephen Miller has been strategizing with officials from the Department of Homeland Security and other federal agencies on an almost daily basis to meet that goal, two of the current and former officials said. One strategy to quickly increase numbers, officials have said, is to find ways to deport some of the 1.4 million immigrants who have final deportation orders but cannot be deported because their home countries won’t take them back. The administration is negotiating with as many as 30 countries to take deportees who are not their citizens, two officials said. In a recent court filing, the administration said it hopes to send “thousands” of immigrants to these destinations, known as third countries. Though administrations have tried to deport people to third countries for years, this would be the most ambitious effort yet as Trump tries to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in U.S. history. Officials have already begun deporting people to countries where they are not citizens, including Mexico, Costa Rica and Panama. At least one immigrant was sent to Rwanda this month, though that was after extensive negotiations between his lawyers and the Biden administration.

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Univision [4/12/2025 5:23 PM, Staff, 5325K]

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 1:24 PM, Trevor Hughes and Lauren Villagran, 430301K] reports a British backpacker. A Harvard researcher. A Canadian actress. An Australian mixed martial arts coach. Dozens of international college students. The Trump administration’s sweeping immigration-and-visa crackdown has begun ensnaring a class of people long-accustomed to being welcomed with open arms into the United States. And those uncommon detainees are bringing new attention to the often-harsh U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention system, where people can be held without charge indefinitely, sometimes in shocking conditions, or abruptly removed from the country. This type of treatment has long been the case in ICE detention, but the people held by the government often didn’t have the resources ‒ the access, language or middle-class expectations ‒ to denounce the conditions. Now, with Trump’s crackdown, native English speakers, people with PhDs, and others are getting the word out to a broader public about a system they describe as arbitrary and punishing ‒ although ICE detention is not supposed to resemble prison. "It’s insane how easily someone can take away your freedom, lock you in a federal prison, without a clear reason. No explanation. No warning," Australian MMA coach Renato Subotic wrote in an Instagram post after being detained in early April. "Just like that, you’re treated like the worst criminal.” Tourists staying away: International travel is declining, and it’s costing the US: ‘It’s shaking everything up’. Like the other detained travelers, Subotic said he was trying to enter the U.S. with a visa and was handcuffed after customs officers identified a paperwork problem. Instead of being refused entry to the United States and put on a flight back home, Subotic said he was taken to a chaotic federal detention center for 24 hours.

Breitbart [4/12/2025 10:52 AM, Randy Clark, 2923K] reports an Irish national illegally present in the United States is now in federal custody after being initially arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The 28-year-old man has been ordered detained on criminal wire fraud and conspiracy charges related to an alleged scheme to defraud homeowners in Rhode Island and Massachusetts. Authorities announced the arrest of John O’Brien by ICE Agents in late March for immigration violations related to overstaying his visa and violating the terms of his admission from Ireland into the United States. After further investigation from law enforcement authorities, a federal criminal complaint was filed alleging that O’Brien defrauded numerous Rhode Island and Massachusetts residents in a fraudulent home repair scheme. On April 3, O’Brien was arraigned in U.S. District Court on the federal criminal complaint charging him with wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He is now in the Department of Justice’s custody and will face trial on criminal charges.

Newsweek [4/12/2025 5:44 PM, Mandy Taheri, 52200K] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested Gilberto Avila-Jara, an Ecuadorian man without valid documentation who has been charged with more than 20 counts of sex crimes against a minor, outside of Boston in the sanctuary city of Lawrence, Massachusetts, earlier this month. Newsweek has reached out to the Boston mayor’s office and Lawrence’s mayor for comment via email on Saturday. ICE publicized the arrest on Friday via its website and social media, alongside comments from Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem who pointed fingers at sanctuary cities. ICE said that local authorities "refused to honor the ICE detainer" it had issued for Avila-Jara in late 2020, raising concerns over jurisdiction and sanctuary city policies. Avila-Jara’s detention comes amid an ongoing immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, which has pledged to launch the largest mass deportation operation in U.S. history and has detained and deported thousands of people in recent months. Noem shared the update and called out sanctuary cities, and specifically Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, citing Avila-Jara’s "pedophile" record. Noem wrote in a post on X, formerly Twitter: "ICE Boston has arrested an illegal Ecuadoran national charged with more than 20 sex crimes against a MINOR. Does Boston’s Mayor Michelle Wu think these pedophiles are above the law? Imagine what our ICE officers could do without Sanctuary City policies that protect illegal alien criminals including child predators, murders, and rapists." The majority of sanctuary policies protecting immigrants are in blue cities and states. In March, Wu, along with three other mayors, testified to Congress over their different sanctuary laws and policies. Wu repeatedly called Boston the "safest major city in America" during the hearings and noted the essential nature of immigration to the city’s "key industries."

New York Post [4/12/2025 4:47 PM, Jack Richards, 54903K] reports an alleged sushi-slinging spy is in ICE custody. Ming Xi Zhang, known as “Sushi John,” the 61-year-old owner of Ya Ya Noodles in Montgomery Township, NJ, was arrested March 24 by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Newark. Zhang was convicted in April 2024 of acting as an unregistered agent of the Chinese government and sentenced to three years’ probation. In May 2021, he pleaded guilty to having served as an agent of China in 2016 without notifying the U.S. Attorney General. ICE says he legally entered the U.S. in 2000 but later “violated the terms of his lawful admission.” “Any illegal alien conducting activities related to espionage, sabotage or export control against the United States is subject to deportation,” said ICE Newark Field Office Director John Tsoukaris. Zhang met with Chinese security officials in the Bahamas in 2016 and delivered $35,000 to an unnamed individual in New Jersey, according to NJ.com. He also admitted to twice hosting a Chinese government agent at his Princeton home that fall. He’s being held at the Elizabeth Detention Center awaiting immigration proceedings, a worker at his restaurant told the Post on Saturday. “He’s doing good, I mean, given the circumstances,” the worker said. “But yeah, he’s just kind of waiting… to get let out.” The community surrounding Zhang’s restaurant has apparently rallied around him and his restaurant in the days since his arrest. “The whole town has been really supportive,” the worker said. “Everyone’s been coming in, offering phone numbers, talking to his family . . . everyone’s really supportive.” His arrest comes as ICE ramps up deportations under President Donald Trump’s renewed enforcement push for mass removals and expanded detention authority over illegal immigrants. The legal landscape remains in flux: just last week, the Supreme Court on Thursday sided in part with Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a noncitizen who had been deported despite an active appeal — instead sending the case back to the lower courts to clarify whether the government has “facilitated” or intends to facilitate his return. U.S. District Judge Paul Xinis chastised Justice Department lawyers Friday over the government’s stubbornness to comply, while the Trump administration has alleged Abrego Garcia has MS-13 gang ties and has disputed the scope of the words “facilitate” and “effectuate” in the judge’s order. Meanwhile, in a separate case, an immigration judge ruled that Mahmoud Khalil — flagged by the State Department as a national security concern stemming from his pro-Palestine picketing on Columbia’s campus — can be deported, though his case also remains under review. The Post did not receive a response from Zhang’s attorney Robert Hazzard.

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [4/12/2025 8:36 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2923K]
NewsMax [4/12/2025 5:51 PM, Solange Reyner, 4998K]

CNN [4/12/2025 5:00 AM, Polo Sandoval and Linh Tran, 22131K] reports to Karen Cruz Berrios, her mother is a hard-working, devoted single parent. To the Department of Homeland Security, she is “ … an associate of the vicious MS-13 gang.” However, nearly two weeks after Elsy Noemi Berrios, 52, was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody, DHS has yet to disclose any evidence to substantiate its claim against the Salvadoran woman to the public or, her attorneys say, to them. Noemi Berrios was arrested by federal agents in Westminster, Maryland, on the morning of March 31 as she drove to work with her daughter, according to her family. Noemi Berrios’ attorneys said they have not seen any detention order nor received any explanation from DHS about why their client is in custody. Her attorneys told CNN they only became aware of DHS’ allegations that she was an affiliate of MS-13 through news reports. Her attorneys requested a bond hearing, scheduled for Monday, to seek her release from detention and compel the government to hand over any evidence they have against their client. “DHS has not provided us with any evidence to substantiate their allegations that our client is associated with MS-13 and our client denies any association or involvement,” said Raymond Griffith, one of the lawyers representing Noemi Berrios.

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 3:24 PM, Staff, 430301K] reports a teen girl is found safe and a man is in custody awaiting Homeland Security after deputies said they found them together Wednesday in a hotel in Sanford. According to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office, deputies launched an investigation when a 14-year-old teenager did not return home after going to school at East Lee Middle School. Deputies said they discovered that 41-year-old Victor Alfonso Villalba Bustamante picked the teen up from school. Deputies found them at a hotel later that day. Bustamante was charged with two counts of statutory rape, abduction of a child, felony conspiracy to commit abduction, second-degree kidnapping and solicitation of a minor by computer. “We have recovered several electronic devices that we will be obtaining search warrants for,” Sheriff Brian Estes told CBS 17. “I do expect additional charges.” Deputies said Bustamante was not a legal resident and will additionally be held on a federal detainer, meaning an additional investigation is being sought for either more criminal proceedings or immigration purposes. “Thank you to the NC SBI, Homeland Security, Broadway Police Department, and Sanford Police Department for their assistance in locating this child predator and ensuring the safe return of the juvenile to her family,” Sheriff Estes said. A Lee County judge set Bustamante’s bond at $3 million Wednesday. Due to his immigration status, he is being held on a federal retainer. John Webster, the executive director of the Child Advocacy Center in Fayetteville who works with criminal investigators in Cumberland County on child crimes, said adults targeting teens is happening more often than it used to with the evolution of smart devices and social media. “This is a dark reality,” Webster said. “This is the dark side of the web. “You’re not safe anywhere if you get into the wrong chatroom or if you get into the wrong gaming room,” he said. According to Webster, teens’ access to mobile devices around the clock is putting them more at risk. “I think a lot of this happens late at night when parents are gone to bed,” he said. “Kids still have access to their phones and their equipment late at night, even during the day, in the afternoons when parents are still at work.” North Carolina lawmakers have filed a bill pushing to ban children younger than 14 from social media. It would also require parental control on social media for teens ages 14 and 15. Webster said adding parental controls on a child’s smart devices may help manage the problem. “Parents just need to be careful and diligent,” Webster said. “Kids just need to be aware when they’re talking to someone or chatting with someone online, they may or may not know that person’s real reality.”

Alabama Reflector [4/12/2025 10:10 AM, Alander Rocha] reports Gov. Kay Ivey touted in a post on X Friday that a Honduran man in the state without authorization was arrested in a string of traffic stops intended to reduce violent crimes. Roberto Steven Martinez Benavides was charged with second-degree forgery in Montgomery on Tuesday in "an operation concerning the delivery of a vehicle for purchase with a fraudulent VIN and fraudulent title." Amanda Wasden, director of external affairs for the Alabama Law Enforcement Agency, said in an email that the Metro Area Crime Suppression Unit (MACS) helped the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) by conducting a traffic stop on the vehicle with the alleged fraudulent VIN. Benavides is being held in the Montgomery County Jail. He has a hold for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) so that HSI can determine if he is eligible for deportation or further action.

CBS News [4/12/2025 2:30 PM, Staff, 51661K] reports the University of Florida has joined the list of higher education institutions in that state partnering with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to carry out immigration enforcement on campus, officials told CBS News on Saturday. "We can confirm that we have signed the 287(g) agreement," a University of Florida spokesperson told CBS News. The agreement, which Gov. Ron DeSantis issued in February, allows law enforcement to act as immigration officers. It was not immediately clear who at the University of Florida would act as immigration officers under this agreement and the school’s spokesperson did not provide additional comment. They did, however, confirm that eight students have had their visas revoked. The agreement allows local officers to question those they suspect of being in the country illegally and "to serve and execute warrants of arrest for immigration violations," according to a February statement from DeSantis. Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton and the University of South Florida in Tampa are all seeking to deputize their campus police for immigration enforcement, representatives for the schools confirmed to The Associated Press. Joshua Glanzer, a spokesperson for FAU, said "all state schools" in Florida are expected to pursue the expanded immigration enforcement authority. "We are simply following guidance from the Governor’s Feb. 19 directive to state law enforcement agencies, of which FAUPD and other state university police departments are included," Glanzer said in a statement.

Reported similarly:
CNN [4/12/2025 2:55 PM, Kathleen Magramo, 22131K]

Tampa Free Press [4/12/2025 5:45 PM, Jake Grissom, 67K] reports a targeted enforcement operation focused on enhancing public safety led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and federal partners resulted in the arrest of three undocumented immigrants with significant criminal histories in the Phoenix area on April 8th. The operation, joined by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, involved collaboration between ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), the FBI Phoenix Field Office, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Phoenix Division, and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Phoenix. Officials concentrated their efforts in and around Phoenix, utilizing intelligence-driven investigations. The joint operation successfully apprehended three Mexican nationals. “By leveraging our federal partnerships and intelligence-driven investigations, ICE continues to carry out its mission in a way that best serves national security, public safety and border security,” said John Cantu, ICE ERO Phoenix Field Office Director. He praised the cooperation between the agencies involved.

Telemundo Amarillo [4/12/2025 5:56 PM, Staff, 2K] reports former Tamaulipas Governor Tomás Yarrington is back in Mexico after being deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Yarrington, 68, was serving a nine-year sentence in an Illinois prison after pleading guilty to money laundering and other crimes in 2021 for accepting more than $3.5 million in illegal bribes and using them to fraudulently acquire property in the United States. U.S. authorities handed Yarrington over to Mexican officials last Wednesday at a border crossing in California. He is currently being held in a federal prison in the State of Mexico. Yarrington, who governed Tamaulipas between 1999 and 2004, was arrested in 2017 in Florence, Italy, and extradited to the United States in 2018, where he faced charges of organized crime, drug trafficking, money laundering and bank fraud. The former governor was also a presidential candidate for the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) in 2005. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum said this week that Yarrington’s transfer had been requested "for some time" and that the former state governor "is now in one of the country’s prisons. US prosecutors accused him of having received millions of dollars in bribes from the Gulf Cartel since 1998 in exchange for allowing traffickers to smuggle large quantities of cocaine into the United States. He began receiving the payments when he was a gubernatorial candidate and they continued after his term ended in December 2004. Yarrington is one of several Mexican governors, many of them PRI governors, accused of corruption and ties to organized crime. His successor in Tamaulipas, Eugenio Hernandez, was also extradited to the United States on money laundering charges. One of the most high-profile cases was that of Javier Duarte, the former governor of Veracruz, a state located south of Tamaulipas on the Gulf of Mexico, who was convicted of organized crime and money laundering. [Editorial note: consult video at source link] Breitbart [4/12/2025 7:34 PM, Lowell Cauffiel, 2923K] reports Yarrington was accused in a federal grand jury in Texas of taking millions of dollars in bribes from the Gulf Cartel and other traffickers as governor. He started in local office. Beginning in 1998, U.S. authorities have said, Yarrington took money from the illegal drug trade when he was mayor of Matamoros on the U.S. border. U.S. Immigration reported that ICE ERO Mexico City and Security Alliance for Fugitive Enforcement Initiative were instrumental with providing essential documentation regarding Yarrington’s history during his immigrations proceedings that resulted in his removal to Mexico. Stated ICE: "According to court documents, Yarrington accepted bribes from individuals and private companies in Mexico to do business with the state of Tamaulipas while he served as governor. Yarrington used the bribery money he received while governor to purchase properties in the U.S. He had nominee buyers buy property in the U.S. to hide his ownership of the properties and the illegal bribery money used to purchase them. Yarrington laundered his illegally obtained bribe money in the United States by purchasing beachfront condominiums, large estates, commercial developments, airplanes and luxury vehicles.”

Los Angeles Times [4/12/2025 6:00 AM, Kevin Rector, 1330K] reports one after another in recent weeks, Maria’s accounting clients raised the same fear: immigration agents finding and detaining them using information from their tax filings. “I heard it from everybody,” said the 40-year-old consultant for undocumented small-business entrepreneurs in Southern California. “They come to me and they say, ‘Hey, should I do my taxes this year? Because they’re going to come find me.’” Maria, who asked to be identified only by her first name for fear of being targeted by the Trump administration, said she understood well. Maria has been in the U.S. for decades, has earned multiple degrees at California universities, has U.S. citizen children and has been applying for legal residency for years. But like many of her clients, she said, she lacks legal status. Also like many of her clients, she has routinely paid U.S. taxes in the past using what’s known as an individual taxpayer identification number, or ITIN, in lieu of a Social Security number. The process seemed pretty straightforward, she said, until recently, when Trump administration officials announced that IRS data would be shared with ICE agents and used to target undocumented taxpayers for the first time. Maria said she decided she would still pay her taxes, and advised clients who have paid in the past to do the same. After all, the IRS has most of their information already, she said, and paying this year would only show they are committed to doing the right thing. Still, she felt betrayed, she said — as though the system for undocumented taxpayers was built on their trust, but constructed of lies. “They’re trying to criminalize us,” Maria said. “They’re trying to make it that we did it wrong, but really the government did it wrong.”

Yahoo! News [4/13/2025 1:09 AM, Jack Molmud, 430301K] reports several members of the group Gays without Borders protested in San Francisco on Saturday. They’re demanding the release of a Venezuelan man seeking U.S. asylum who reportedly ended up in a prison in El Salvador. The group now worries he’s unsafe there — where many gang members are being held. Andry Hernandez Romero reportedly wanted to come to the U.S. because he’s gay and was facing prosecution at home. The group says Romero was detained at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego. "Andry Romero is a gay man. He is not a member of a gang," said Michael Petrelis of Gays without Borders. "He was illegally deported.” With signs in support of Romero — and others targeting the Trump administration — the group stood in front of the Consulate of El Salvador near Civic Center Plaza while chanting, "Gay hairdressers aren’t terrorists.” The organization Gays without Borders says Andry Hernandez Romero was detained at the San Ysidro Port of Entry in San Diego. Patrick Connors wore a crown to the protest. He said that’s what Romero was arrested over — that his tattoos of crowns made the U.S. government suspicious he was in a Venezuelan gang. "There is a lot of talk about what’s going on in the country, and now we’re getting concrete examples," said Connors. "Andry is being tortured.” Romero’s case has sparked national interest, including in California, where Governor Gavin Newsom asked the Trump administration in a letter to revisit and revise its asylum-seeking procedures. In a social media post on X (formerly Twitter), Governor Newsom demanded Romero’s release and a review of his case. Jenny Worley, a teacher in San Francisco, said Romero’s story resonates with her. "If we don’t stand up for each other than none of us feel safe," said Worley. "So many of them come here for a better life and I just feel like he could have been one of the kids sitting in my classroom.” KRON4 reached out to immigration representatives Saturday about Romero’s case but did not hear back in time for this report. "Once the new work week starts, we will be coming back here," said Petrelis. Until then, this group has no plans of slowing down. "When a gay person is harmed around the world, it is the duty of gays in San Francisco to make a loud noise and demand justice," added Petrelis.

Telemundo [4/12/2025 6:43 PM, Yuniesky Ramírez, 171K] reports Huber Argueta’s story may seem like just another in the complex web of immigration cases in the United States, but it has become the focus of an unprecedented federal lawsuit that could lay the groundwork for class-action litigation. From Guatemala, where he was abruptly deported on March 19, Argueta claims his removal violated key legal processes, and his legal team accuses Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of acting outside the law. Argueta arrived in the United States in 2007. On U.S. soil he started a family with his wife, a U.S. citizen, and they had two daughters. Although his immigration status was not regularized in his first years, in 2021 he received a federal pardon, which put him on the verge of obtaining an immigrant visa through marriage. All that was missing was a consular appointment. Everything changed on January 26, 2024, when he was arrested for a DUI case. Although he had legal representation, an arrest warrant was mistakenly issued in that process. According to his attorney, Alexandra Friz García, the warrant was later annulled, but ICE proceeded with his detention anyway, "He had an appointment for his immigration bond hearing on March 19, but that same day he had already been deported," explained Friz. "ICE could not do that without a judge’s order. Argueta was arrested on March 10, just after dropping his daughters off at school. As detailed in his court filing, he never signed a request for voluntary deportation. Nor was he allowed to call his lawyer or family. In a matter of days, without a court hearing or explanation, he was transferred to the Krome detention center in South Florida, "They didn’t let me do anything... they just took me to the plane," he said, his voice cracking from Guatemala. His memories of the detention center also reflect undignified conditions: "We were so many people that whoever found a space on the floor was accommodated. The case has already reached federal court in the Southern District of Florida, where attorney Friz Garcia is suing the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE, requesting that her client be brought back to the U.S. to continue with the legal process that was underway, and is also seeking to lay the groundwork for a class action, under the suspicion that Argueta is not the only one to whom this has happened. She also seeks to lay the groundwork for a class action, under the suspicion that Argueta is not the only one to whom this has happened. "Our theory is that this is not an isolated case," says Friz. For now, Huber remains in Guatemala, facing the absence of his daughters and wife, who have remained in Miami, without answers or comfort.

FOX News [4/12/2025 4:50 PM, Brie Stimson, 46189K] reports the Trump administration is ending the protected status for thousands of Afghans who entered the U.S. after its chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021 under the Biden administration. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security doesn’t plan to renew Afghans’ Temporary Protected Status (TPS), which lasts six to 18 months and applies to people from countries that are war-torn or have a natural disaster or some other event that makes returning dangerous. The U.S. military evacuated more than 82,000 Afghans from the country when the U.S. withdrew in 2021, and the Taliban took over. Thousands of Cameroonians are also expected to lose their status. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Reuters that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has determined that the situation in Afghanistan and Cameroon no longer meets the standard for the Afghans and Cameroonians to have TPS protections renewed. "The Secretary determined that Afghanistan no longer continues to meet the statutory requirements for its TPS designation and so she terminated TPS for Afghanistan," McLaughlin said in a statement, according to NPR. Shawn VanDriver, who served in the military and is president of #AfghanEvac, disagreed with the administration’s assessment on Afghanistan. "The conditions on the ground haven’t improved — they’ve worsened," he told NPR. "Afghans who were invited here, who built lives here, are now being told they don’t matter. It’s cruel, it’s chaotic, and it undermines everything America claimed to stand for when we promised not to leave our allies behind.” More than 14,000 Afghans and 7,000 Cameroonians are expected to lose their TPS protections. The Biden administration renewed TPS protections for Afghans in 2023. Afghan TPS protections end in May and Cameroonian protections in June. At that time, foreign nationals will be eligible for deportation. Fox News Digital has reached out to DPS and the White House for comment. Last month, a judge delayed a Trump administration effort to end TPS protections for Venezuelans. Both Afghanistan and Venezuela are listed by the U.S. State Department as "Level 4: Do Not Travel" because of the risk of terrorism, unlawful detention, civil unrest and kidnapping. Cameroon is listed as "Level 2: Exercise Increased Caution" due to the risk of terrorism, kidnapping and armed violence. Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 6:14 PM, Mike Heuer, 430301K] reports that many Afghanis assisted the U.S. government and military and allied military forces during the war in Afghanistan that began when coalition forces invaded in 2001 and lasted until August 2021. The war’s 20-year duration makes it the longest in U.S. history. The war began after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the hijackings of several U.S. airliners on 9/11. The United States’ withdrawal from Afghanistan was marred by a suicide bomber who killed 13 U.S. service members and killed and injured many others at the Kabul airport on Aug. 26, 2021. The United States arrested alleged ISIS-K attack planner Mohammad "Jafar" Sharifullahon on March 2 and charged him with providing and conspiring to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization resulting in death.

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UPI [4/12/2025 6:14 PM, Mike Heuer, 1500K]

NewsMax [4/12/2025 1:34 PM, Solange Reyner, 4998K] reports some international students are trying to take steps to avoid deportation, including deleting social media, keeping their views to themselves and avoiding demonstrations, reports Washington Post. More than 1,000 students, faculty and researchers have had their visas revoked this year, or their federal record terminated, often without any warning or recourse for appeals. "With the way I see everyone’s social media being scrutinized, it’s not worth the risk," said one junior at Georgetown University, where six scholars’ visas have been revoked. According to Higher Ed, over 80 universities have reported revoked visas. And as of April 12, over 170 colleges and universities have identified 950-plus international students and recent graduates who have had their legal status changed by the State Department. "I am not an extremist in any sense, but I don’t know what is considered freedom of speech and what is considered a threat to the government," Bernardo De Oliveira Geissmann, a Brazilian international student studying mechanical engineering at Arizona State University, told the Post. "I believe that the entire community feels that way.” Veena Dubal, the general counsel at the American Association of University Professors and a law professor at the University of California at Irvine, told the Post that the feeling "is that everyone could potentially be targeted, creating an extraordinary chilling impact across the U.S.” "The net that is being cast by the government is extremely broad," said Jeff Joseph, the incoming president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on March 27 said the State Department had revoked 300 or more student visas, claiming the individuals were "lunatics.” "Here’s why: I’ve said it everywhere, and I’ll say it again," Rubio said. "If you apply for a student visa to come to the United States and you say you’re coming not just to study, but to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos, we’re not giving you that visa.” An immigration judge on Friday ruled that the Trump administration could deport Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil after lawyers argued the legality of deporting the activist who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations.

NPR [4/12/2025 8:03 AM, Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, 29983K] Audio: HERE reports a Venezuelan was told to self-deport this week. She instead pushed for an asylum hearing, something many migrants are doing.

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 6:36 PM, Russ O’Reilly, 430301K] reports the United States has 40 newly naturalized citizens living in the Johnstown region as of Friday. Men and women hailing from 24 different countries had their petitions for U.S. citizenship granted Friday in a federal court proceeding conducted at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown in Richland Township. Pitt-Johnstown President Jem Spectar said the event moved him because the nation is coming up to its 250th anniversary next summer. "To me, the symbolism of this event reminds me about this incredible miracle of a life we all have in the United States," he said before the ceremony. U.S. District Judge Stephanie L. Haines, of the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Pennsylvania, presided over the ceremony. For those petitioning for citizenship, the ceremony ended seven months of studying for the citizenship test. Many of them have been living and working in the U.S. for years with permanent residency cards, but without the rights of citizenship, including the right to vote. Friends and family of the new citizens packed Pitt-Johnstown’s John P. Murtha Center for Public Service and National Competitiveness for the ceremony. Katrina and Mike Karamidas, of Altoona, attended the ceremony for their father, Theodoros Karamidas, 68. "He came here when he was 15 years old on a cruise ship and started working at restaurants," Katrina Karamidas said. "He built his life around that.” Her father was always busy working at the restaurant he owns in Altoona, the Athenian Cafe. But since retiring two years ago, he decided to take the steps necessary for naturalization, she said. After the petitioners recited the Oath of Allegiance to the United States, Haines called the new citizens by name and gave each a certificate of citizenship along with a small American flag, which Theodoros Karamidas happily waved. Maria Smith, formerly of Costa Rica, said she was "excited and proud" to become a U.S. citizen after 13 years living in Somerset County, where she works in health care along with her husband Mike Smith, originally of Johnstown. "Now I can vote and I just feel more confident," she said.

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 3:25 PM, Halie Kines, 430301K] reports at least a dozen international students in Centre County have had their student visas revoked in the last two weeks, the county’s district attorney said Saturday. Penn State Global’s interim vice provost confirmed on April 3 that some Penn State international students have had their lawful status revoked. At the time, Penn State would not share more information, including how many students have been impacted. Centre County District Attorney Bernie Cantorna said from his office, they’ve seen 12 students whose visas were revoked due to retail theft. He said each of those students was placed in a diversion program and was not convicted of any crimes. A 13th person had their status revoked due to a DUI; they participated in a DUI diversion program for first offenses, Cantorna said. None of them had any prior criminal records, he said, and most have already returned to their home countries. “This is just a small snapshot over the last two weeks, but it’s something that we have never seen before,” Cantorna wrote in an email to the Centre Daily Times. “We are tracking what comes through the legal system but it is a small percentage.” State Rep. Paul Takac (D-College Township), in a statement Friday, said he is alarmed by these reports at Penn State and called the Trump administration’s actions “Un-American.”

Univision [4/12/2025 9:18 AM, Staff, 5325K] reports that, after receiving a letter from the Department of Homeland Security notifying him that he must leave the United States in less than 7 days, this undocumented immigrant recounts his frustration with the Trump Administration’s new immigration policies. The immigrant, who preferred to remain anonymous, explained how he and his family received, on April 11, a letter asking them to leave the country. Although the Department of Homeland Security has not confirmed whether the message is true, attorney Haim Vasquez told Univision that the message is legitimate, although it could have been sent by mistake. The immigrant man said that the message arrived to the email address he has registered in the CBP One application and with which he has done several procedures since he requested asylum in the U.S. last year. "We feel a little frustrated because the situation for us when we left our country was not the best, because it is an unpleasant experience. And we arrived here and we thought that we arrived in a country where we could be protected, where we could be welcomed," said the man. The immigrant assured that he came to the United States by legal means. He came to the country requesting asylum through the CBP One application and after being granted, he was granted a work visa. His next hearing would be in November, "We came here asking for asylum because we really need it. We thought everything was perfect until last night, at about 1 a.m., the mail arrived telling us that they give us 7 days to vacate or that we enter their page and look for a voluntary departure, but we can’t go back," he added overwhelmed. "I am in a group of immigrants and everyone who entered through CBP One got the same mail, saying the same situation," he revealed. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Reuters [4/12/2025 11:42 PM, Danielle Broadway, 41523K] reports Brazilian DJ Alok brought a beaming blend of electronic dance beats to the stage on Saturday at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival despite the growing fears of international artists about the future of performing in America. "For me as a Brazilian, it’s always been hard to get a visa. So, for us, it didn’t change much," Alok told Reuters during an interview backstage at Coachella, held in Southern California. "But, of course, for Europe and others, they changed the rules, right?" he added. He heard about other Coachella performances being cancelled in 2025 due to visa issues and feels fortunate that he made it to the festival when other international artists could not. In the first week of April, British singer FKA Twiggs, who was scheduled to perfom at Coachella, cancelled her performance. She said that she was bowing out due to "visa issues" on the social media platform Instagram. She also cancelled her entire North American tour. With the Trump administration rapidly cancelling the international student visas of pro-Palestinian activists as well as revoking the legal status for 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans, international music artists have also found that they are not immune. In March, British punk rock band member of UK Subs, Alvin Gibbs, shared on the social media platform Facebook that they were allegedly denied entry into the United States while traveling to their performance at LA Punk Invasion 2025. Despite evolving visa policies looming, the music producer Alok did not fret about the future during his set. He moved his music to the next level. While Alok traditionally uses LED projections to create rows of artificial background dancers for his music sets, for his Coachella set, he evolved the performance with live performers dancing to his beats. "It was very challenging. I’m very used to doing a lot of crazy stuff in the shows, very integrating with new technology, but this one for sure was the most difficult," Alok said.

Newsweek [4/12/2025 4:21 PM, Peter Aitken, 52200K] reports the USS Stockdale will deploy to the southern border between the U.S. and Mexico to support border security objectives, replacing the USS Spruance after only a few weeks. Newsweek reached out to the U.S. Navy by email for comment on Saturday afternoon. The Navy had deployed the Spruance in mid-March to assist the USS Gravely, each carrying Coast Guard Law Enforcement Detachment (LEDET) teams to assist with missions. However, it returned to Naval Base San Diego on April 10. Now, the Arleigh Burke-class guided-missile destroyer Stockdale has departed from Naval Base San Diego and will take over from the Spruance. This follows a seven-month independent deployment to the U.S. 3rd, 5th and 7th Fleet areas of operations. Previous Navy-Coast Guard collaborations have yielded significant results, with joint operations preventing nearly 15 tons of cocaine from entering the U.S. last year alone. Criminal organizations increasingly use sophisticated vessels, including remote-operated submersibles, to smuggle drugs into the country. U.S. Fleet Forces command (USFFC) reported that the Stockdale will "respond to national priorities and a Presidential declaration emphasizing the military’s role in securing U.S. borders." The U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) said this deployment continues the force’s commitment to "support critical Department of Homeland Security capabilities gaps," to which the Stockdale would prove a "vital" contribution.

CNN [4/12/2025 7:02 PM, Alaa Elassar, 22131K] reports nearly 300 passengers on board two international flights heading to Atlanta on Thursday were stuck for hours on an Alabama tarmac after their flights were diverted, amid severe weather, to a small airport without Customs and Border Protection staffing. Delta Air Lines flights 1828 from Cabo San Lucas and 599 from Mexico City were both on their way to Atlanta when flight crews had to divert due to inclement weather and selected Montgomery, Alabama, for their diversion point, a Delta spokesperson confirmed to CNN. Both planes landed at the Montgomery Regional Airport in Alabama because Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport was not considered suitable as a diversion airport due to thunderstorms and dangerous conditions in the region, including wind shear, according to the Delta spokesperson. Because of severe lightning activity that went on throughout the evening, Delta flight crews "ran over their permitted duty times," the Delta spokesperson said. International flights are obligated to arrive at an airport with Customs and Border Protection staffing and facilities for processing, which wasn’t possible until early Friday morning "when a special accommodation was reached with Montgomery airport officials and CBP," the spokesperson said. "We sincerely apologize to our customers for this experience," the spokesperson told CNN. "We fell short of how we aspire to serve and care for our customers amid thunderstorms in the Southeast U.S. Thursday evening. We are reaching out to each customer with a full refund of their booking.” Lauren Forbes, from Boston, Massachusetts, was on board one of the flights with her boyfriend, CNN affiliate WCVB reported. Initially, the pair had a layover in Atlanta before resuming their journey to Boston’s Logan International Airport, according to Forbes. "(The pilot) was really trying to make it to Birmingham, but we were going to run out of gas," Forbes told WCVB. For hours, the 147 passengers aboard Flight 599 and the 150 customers aboard Flight 1828 – both which landed in Montgomery around 10:30 p.m. local time – were stuck on the plane until about 5:30 a.m., according to the Delta spokesperson. Passengers were given water and cookies as they waited for updates, according to Forbes. A passenger on board one of the planes posted a video to social media showing people huddled inside the airport as security officials stood nearby. "These folks got us roped off," Samuel Sears said in the Facebook post. "Now we’re under security until we can go through customs, which won’t be for another three hours. I’m hungry, I’m sleepy.” Customers continued to Atlanta the next morning as new flight crews were brought to Montgomery to operate the flights, according to Delta.

Reported similarly:
New York Post [4/12/2025 4:10 PM, Gabrielle Fahmy, 54903K]

CBS News [4/12/2025 5:19 PM, Paulina Smolinski, Kierra Frazier, 51661K] reports President Trump on Friday night authorized the military to take control of a strip of public land along the southern border. The president justified the use of the military by saying the United States is "under attack from a variety of threats.” "The complexity of the current situation requires that our military take a more direct role in securing our southern border than in the recent past," the order reads. A memorandum released by the White House directs the Secretaries of Defense, Interior, Agriculture and Homeland Security to transfer the jurisdiction of federal land along the southern border to the Department of Defense. The order details that the military will be tasked with building a border wall and implementing detection and monitoring equipment. But the military’s mandate is broad and defined as activities that are "reasonably necessary and appropriate to accomplish the mission.” The order references the Roosevelt Reservation, a swath of land along the border that goes through California, New Mexico and Arizona. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth is directed to start with the phased implementation of the military on limited sections of public land. But Hegseth has the authority to expand beyond that to any of the public land on the southern border. During a cabinet meeting with Mr. Trump this week, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Kristi Noem touted low numbers of illegal crossings at the southern border. Noem said that for the second month in a row, the U.S. broke the record for the lowest number of encounters at the border. Mr. Trump issued a blitz of executive actions, when he took office in January to start reshaping federal immigration and border policies. On his first day, he declared a national emergency at the southern border. In March, preliminary government data obtained by CBS News showed that the number of migrants crossing the U.S. southern border illegally in Mr. Trump’s first full month in office plunged to a level not seen in at least 25 years. The Washington Examiner [4/12/2025 4:12 PM, Jack Birle, 2296K] reports that the latest order from the president continues his administration’s sweeping efforts to combat illegal immigration through deterrence, border security, and deportations. The Trump administration has touted improved numbers on illegal immigration, with illegal border crossings in February dropping to the lowest on record. Trump’s order authorizing the "Military Mission for Sealing the Southern Border of the United States and Repelling Invasions" came on the same day a federal judge allowed his administration to proceed with its rescinding of a Biden-era DHS policy prohibiting immigration enforcement activities at "sensitive locations," including places of worship. Other forms of combatting illegal immigration from within the U.S. borders by the Trump administration have included partnerships with the IRS and Social Security Administration for information sharing.

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Breitbart [4/12/2025 6:21 AM, Ian Hanchett, 2923K]
Breitbart [4/12/2025 4:09 PM, Bob Price, 2923K]
Axios [4/12/2025 8:31 AM, Andrew Childers, 13163K]
FOX News [4/12/2025 7:10 PM, Staff, 46189K]
NewsNation [4/12/2025 8:16 PM, Jorge Ventura, 6866K]

Miami Herald [4/12/2025 11:17 AM, Milena Malaver, 430301K] reports a Cuban woman was sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by a federal district judge in Miami on Friday for her role in a tragic human smuggling operation that left 16 people dead, many of them children. On Nov. 16, 2024, a small fishing boat carrying 18 Cuban migrants departed Playa Jaimanitas, Cuba, en route to South Florida. About 30 miles into the Florida Straits, the overloaded vessel sank. Sixteen people drowned; only two survived. According to the two survivors, the boat was overcrowded, lacked life jackets and was captained by someone with little to no navigation experience. Three of the victims’ bodies later washed ashore in Monroe County. The official cause of death was drowning. Federal prosecutors say 25-year-old Yaquelin Dominguez-Nieves and her boyfriend partially organized the smuggling trip. According to a press release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Florida, Dominguez-Nieves had entered the United States unlawfully just a month earlier. Dominguez-Nieves pleaded guilty on January 21, 2025, to conspiracy to smuggle aliens resulting in death, along with other related charges. Court documents state that Dominguez-Nieves collected more than $11,500 from relatives of the passengers living in South Florida. Federal court records also reveal that Dominguez-Nieves had been in a long-term abusive relationship with a man 12 years her senior, beginning when she was just 15. According to the documents, the relationship was marked by escalating violence. Her boyfriend physically assaulted her multiple times—dragging her by her hair, slamming her into walls, strangling her to the point of unconsciousness, and once holding a knife to her throat, saying, “If you’re not mine, nobody can have you.” In 2022, the boyfriend instructed Dominguez-Nieves to travel from Cuba to the United States. Once here, she was to collect money from relatives of the migrants for a smuggling trip he was organizing. When she questioned him, he threatened to have her deported—back to Cuba and back to his control.

New York Post [4/13/2025 6:00 AM, Gabrielle Fahmy, 54903K] reports US officials are pleading for help at the Canadian border, claiming the "most dangerous people are coming through" the largely unchecked crossing. The number of illegal entries from the often-overlooked northern border have plummeted since President Trump’s election in November, but the gains have mostly stalled in recent months as Customs and Border Patrol has turned its full attention to Mexico. "They had to shift manpower to the southwest border which opened up an even greater opportunity for terrorists to come through our northern border," said Rep. Mike Kelly (R-PA), who co-chairs the Northern Border Security Caucus. "The numbers aren’t as big as the southern border — I get that, but the most dangerous people are coming through the northern border.” Crossings from the Great White North into the US are down from the 12,085 illegals nabbed in November to 4,098 caught in February, a 66% drop, the latest available data from CBP showed. As CBP redeployed border patrol agents and resources to the southern border, the numbers coming over the border with Canada have dropped. February’s numbers reflect a major drop — 78% — from a peak of 18,944 captured entering the US illegally in August. It’s a stark contrast to the US-Mexico border, which has seen a stunning drop of more than 90% in illegal crossings, from a peak of 301,981 in December 2023 to 11,709 in February. The northern border is the largest land border in the world, spanning more than 5,500 miles of wilderness and largely unguarded territory outside of official border-crossing points. But it lacked the attention that the US-Mexico border routinely gets, until it became the subject of a brewing trade war between the northern neighbors. North of the border, Canadian Mounties are also dealing with limited resources to patrol the wide swath of space between the neighboring countries. "The varied terrain and unpredictable climate at the vast Canada-US border can certainly present challenges on both sides," the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told The Post.

Politico [4/12/2025 7:00 AM, Emily Ngo, 2100K] reports marketers for top U.S. destinations are trumpeting a reminder to Canadians amid a dive in tourism: You’re welcome here regardless of who’s president. But some northern neighbors predict their deep freeze on spending in America could last as long as President Donald Trump is in office. Tour buses to New York City are being canceled. Cross-border day trips for shopping are thinning out. And travel agencies are seeing a steep drop-off, too. Among them, the Vancouver-based Travel Group reports that future bookings are down 90 percent; Travac Tours, based in Ottawa, has canceled all its tours to the United States through July; and Maple Leaf Tours, headquartered in Kingston, Ontario, has seen its business plummet 70 to 80 percent.

“It was always such a happy time whether we were going to Myrtle Beach or Florida or Boston or the Cape,” Maple Leaf Tours founder Kristine Geary said in an interview. “And now it’s anxiety and apprehension and nerves. It’s ‘will I be safe?’ And it’s hesitation. Some people are saying, ‘I’m not going to support that guy.’” Businesses in both the U.S. and Canada are bracing for even bleaker months ahead. There’s no sign that U.S.-Canadian relations will thaw anytime soon, either. The century-plus alliance has veered into hostility after Trump’s threat to annex Canada and his tariff whiplash, which included the president levying a 25 percent tariff on Canadian goods not covered by an existing trade deal. Also concerning, travel advisers said, is the possibility tourists could be detained at the border by U.S. Customs officials, a prospect bolstered by reports of Europeans and Canadians held at northern and southern crossings.

The New York Times [4/12/2025 10:46 AM, Tripp Mickle and Ana Swanson, 153395K] reports after more than a week of ratcheting up tariffs on products imported from China, the Trump administration issued a rule late Friday that spared smartphones, computers, semiconductors and other electronics from some of the fees, in a significant break for tech companies like Apple and Dell and the prices of iPhones and other consumer electronics. A message posted late Friday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection included a long list of products that would not face the reciprocal tariffs President Trump imposed in recent days on Chinese goods as part of a worsening trade war. The exclusions would also apply to modems, routers, flash drives and other technology goods, which are largely not made in the United States. The exemptions are not a full reprieve. Other tariffs will still apply to electronics and smartphones. The Trump administration had applied a tariff of 20 percent on Chinese goods earlier this year for what the administration said was the country’s role in the fentanyl trade. And the administration could still end up increasing tariffs for semiconductors, a vital component of smartphones and other electronics. The moves were the first major exemptions for Chinese goods, which would have wide-ranging implications for the U.S. economy if they persist. Tech giants such as Apple and Nvidia would largely sidestep punitive taxes that could slash their profits. Consumers — some of whom rushed to buy iPhones this past week — would avoid major potential price increases on smartphones, computers and other gadgets. And the exemptions could dampen additional inflation and calm the turmoil that many economists feared might lead to a recession. Breitbart [4/12/2025 5:44 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2923K] reports White House deputy press secretary Kush Desai explained that "companies are hustling to onshore their manufacturing in the United States as soon as possible.” The outlet explained that "the 20 product categories listed in the CBP guidelines are apparently exempt from" the 125 percent tariff Trump had imposed on Chinese imports: The 20 product categories listed in the CBP guidelines are apparently exempt from the 125% tariff imposed by Trump on Chinese imports and the 10% baseline tariff on imports from other countries. A 20% tariff on all Chinese goods remains in effect.

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Washington Post [4/12/2025 2:40 PM, Tobi Raji, Shira Ovide and Maegan Vazquez, 31735K]
Politico [4/12/2025 1:41 PM, Ali Bianco]
Bloomberg [4/12/2025 2:14 PM, Debby Wu, Josh Wingrove, and Shawn Donnan, 16228K]
NPR [4/12/2025 2:02 PM, Juliana Kim, 29983K]
AP [4/12/2025 1:42 PM, Mae Anderson and Michael Liedtke]
Axios [4/12/2025 10:28 AM, Andrew Childers, 13163K]
CNN [4/12/2025 2:19 PM, Auzinea Bacon, 22131K]
Washington Examiner [4/12/2025 2:05 PM, Jack Birle, 2296K]
Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 2:11 PM, Staff, 430301K]

CNN [4/12/2025 12:23 PM, Gabe Cohen, 908K] reports the Department of Homeland Security has administered lie detector tests to about 50 staffers in recent weeks, including FEMA’s acting administrator and roughly a dozen officials at the disaster relief agency, as part of an intensifying effort to root out what the department alleges are leaks of national security information. Acting FEMA Administrator Cameron Hamilton, an appointee of President Donald Trump, was given a polygraph just days after taking part in a meeting with top DHS officials for a policy discussion on the future of FEMA and how to potentially dismantle the agency in the coming months. That closed-door meeting was reported by CNN and other media outlets. At least one FEMA official has been placed on administrative leave and was escorted out of the agency’s office this week after being administered a polygraph test, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter. “We are agnostic about your standing, tenure, political appointment, or status as a career civil servant — we will track down leakers and prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in an email to CNN.

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 4:46 PM, Mike Heuer, 430301K] reports that, more than six months after the remnants of Hurricane Helene devastated much of western North Carolina, federal officials have ceased providing full funding for storm recovery efforts there. "Today, I learned that [the Federal Emergency Management Agency] refused our request to extend its 100% reimbursement period for another 180 days," North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said Friday in a news release. "I got this news while I was in Newland with families who lost their homes in the storm," Stein said. "The need in western North Carolina remains immense -- people need debris removed, homes rebuilt, and roads restored." He said he is "extremely disappointed" and urged President Donald Trump to reconsider FEMA’s decision. "The people of western North Carolina are working hard to get back on their feet," Stein added. "They need FEMA to help them get the job done." Stein said even a 90-day extension of FEMA funding would help. The Biden administration in late September authorized FEMA to reimburse North Carolina for its full disaster recovery costs for debris cleanup and other recovery efforts. North Carolina’s Office of State Budget and Management in December estimated Helene inflicted damage $59.6 billion in damage costs within the state after the storm passed through the state on Sept. 27. The state’s damage cost estimate includes $44.4 billion in direct damage, $9.4 billion in indirect damage and $5.8 billion for storm mitigation and strengthening efforts. Former North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and OSBM officials in December sought an additional $25.6 billion in federal assistance. Helene caused historic flooding in North Carolina and neighboring states as torrential rains from the storm slowly moved through the Southeast. Helene reached Category 4 storm status with sustained winds of 140 mph before making landfall in the Big Bend area of Florida on Sept. 26. The storm caused 107 deaths in North Carolina and a total of 233 in southeastern states and caused floods and wind damage across many states. FEMA officials did not respond to a request for comment as of Saturday afternoon. Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 12:29 PM, Anna Roman, 430301K] reports that more than 100 people died in the storm that caused more than $60 billion in damage to Western North Carolina. In December, the Biden administration approved the state’s request to cover 90% for some Helene recovery efforts and 100% for others, including debris cleanup, The News & Observer previously reported. With the state’s extension not granted, the reimbursement match goes to 90%. "It has been determined that the increased level of funding you have requested for major disaster (Helene) is not warranted," according to a letter from interim FEMA head Cameron Hamilton to Stein on Friday. Hamilton was appointed by President Donald Trump in January. The FEMA letter, obtained by the Asheville Citizen-Times, says the state has 30 days to appeal the decision. In February, more than 153,000 households were being helped by FEMA, according to a federal news release. In February, the Trump administration denied Georgia’s FEMA extension request for Hurricane Helene recovery. FEMA did not respond to an email from The News & Observer.

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NC Newsline [4/12/2025 7:00 AM, Galen Bacharier]

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 1:14 PM, Trevor King, 430301K] reports Michigan will receive out-of-state support from the Indiana Department of Transport (INDOT) after an ice storm devastated northern lower Michigan two weeks ago. Michigan State Police (MSP) say the support was secured via the Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC). This is the first time the state has requested this type of support. The Michigan State Police Emergency Management and Homeland Security Division (MSP/EMHSD) is working alongside the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) to bring in four debris removal teams from Indiana. MSP says each team consists of nine personnel and will assist in clearing downed trees and other debris from critical roadways. Michigan State Police cruiser after severe ice storm (Michigan State Police). "This unprecedented EMAC request underscores the scope of the damage and the urgency of returning impacted communities to safe, functioning conditions," said Capt. Kevin Sweeney, deputy state director and commander of the MSP/EMHSD, in a news release sent to 6 News. INDOT crews are scheduled to arrive today and stay for seven days. MDOT has already deployed maintenance workers and equipment from operations facilities in Kalkaska, Atlanta, Hillman, and Mio in the northern Lower Peninsula, as well as from facilities in the Upper Peninsula and across the central and southern Lower Peninsula. "Those dedicated men and women have made amazing progress in the recovery operations following the ice storm that struck this area two weeks ago, but we’re so grateful for the additional assistance from our partners at INDOT to help accelerate the process," said MDOT North Region Associate Region Engineer for Operations Bill Wahl in a news release sent to 6 News.

KFOR [4/12/2025 7:15 AM, Tanner DeLeon] reports a popular FEMA program that helps communities and tribes across Oklahoma has come to a halt. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program has helped pay for projects to reduce damage caused by flooding and tornadoes. The City of Stillwater had hoped the grant would help improve its water pipeline system, but not anymore. The program, launched during President Donald Trump’s first term, is now being canceled for allegedly being a "wasteful, politicized grant program." Stillwater Mayor Will Joyce says without it, their water infrastructure may be in jeopardy. Mayor Joyce was confused and frustrated after FEMA’s BRIC program was canceled. He says this strips cities like Stillwater, which were prepared to receive funds, and already had plans in place for them to complete their project.

NewsMax [4/12/2025 12:54 PM, Jim Mishler, 4998K] reports a man from Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of an infamous campaign rally assassination attempt against then-presidential candidate Donald Trump, has been charged with making threats against the lives of Trump and Elon Musk. The Department of Justice said 32-year-old Shawn Monper, who used an account labeled "Mr Satan" on YouTube, was arrested this week and faces a court hearing on Monday. The DOJ has accused Monper of making online threats, specifically naming Trump, Trump adviser Elon Musk, and unnamed ICE agents as potential targets for violence. The DOJ released information about several of the threats it was made aware of when the "FBI National Threat Operations Section (NTOS) received an emergency disclosure regarding threats posted to YouTube by user - Mr Satan.” Among those posts identified by the DOJ and connected to Monper’s address: February 17, 2025: "Nah, we just need to start killing people, Trump, Elon, all the heads of agencies Trump appointed, and anyone who stands in the way. Remember, we are the majority, MAGA is a minority of the country, and by the time its time to make the move, they will be weakened, many will be crushed by these policies, and they will want revenge too. American Revolution 2.0". March 4, 2025: "im going to assassinate him myself." This threat was made in a YouTube video titled "Live: Trump’s address to Congress.” March 18, 2025: "ICE are terrorist people, we need to start killing them.” April 1, 2025: "If I see an armed ice agent, I will consider it a domestic terrorist, and an active shooter and open fire on them.” A local newspaper in Butler posted a photo it identified as showing the arrest in progress. The DOJ did not refer to the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt against Trump in the town where the accused Monper has resided. Nor was there any reference to a potential connection between Monper and another Butler, Pennsylvania would-be assassin, Thomas Crooks, who was killed at the scene by agents with the Trump security team. Crooks lived in the Pittsburgh area, about an hour away from Butler by vehicle.

CNN [4/13/2025 4:21 AM, Dalia Faheid, 22131K] reports a Wisconsin teenager allegedly killed his parents as part of a plot to assassinate President Donald Trump, federal authorities said in newly unsealed court documents. Nikita Casap, 17, called for the assassination of the president and overthrow of the US government in written documents and text messages found by investigators, according to a federal affidavit obtained by CNN affiliate WISN. The alleged killing of his parents appeared to be an effort to attain the “financial means and autonomy” to carry out his plan, investigators said. Casap faces nine felony charges, including two counts of first-degree murder and two counts of hiding a corpse, according to the Waukesha County court docket. Investigators are also pursing three federal charges: presidential assassination, conspiracy and use of weapons of mass destruction, according to the affidavit. CNN has reached out to Casap’s attorneys for comment. He has not entered pleas on any of the charges yet, according to county records. His mother, Tatiana Casap, and his stepfather, Donald Mayer, were both found dead inside their home from gunshot wounds. Authorities believe they were killed on February 11. The WaKeeney Police Department in Kansas initially arrested Casap for stealing his stepfather’s SUV and possessing a firearm. The Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant and found material on Casap’s phone related to the “The Order of Nine Angles,” which is “a network of individuals holding new-Nazi racially motivated extremist views,” according to court documents. They also found photos and communications referencing a self-described manifesto regarding assassinating the president, making bombs and terrorist attacks, according to investigators. In the vehicle, the sheriff’s office found an open safe, women’s jewelry, electronics, about $14,000 and banking documents. A three-page document the FBI found called for Trump’s assassination to create a political revolution in the US and “save the white race.”

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 3:14 PM, Matthew Sockol, 430301K] reports an American living in Thailand pleaded guilty Wednesday to threatening to kill North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis and his staff, federal prosecutors said. According to the Office of the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of North Carolina, 53-year-old Eric Charles Welton made multiple harassing and intimidating calls to the offices of Republican elected officials and GOP organizations in the United States. He said he made the threatening calls because he was angry about the large number of unsolicited political emails he received. In September 2021, according to federal prosecutors, Welton spoke with a staff member at Tillis’ Raleigh office and threatened to show up and “put a bullet through each of [their] heads.” Welton also threatened to come to North Carolina and “mow…down” the “whole [expletive] state,” and find the person who emailed him and cut off his hands. “Threatening to kill a public official and his staff is not only despicable, but also an affront to our democratic system of government,” acting U.S. Attorney Daniel P. Bubar said in a statement. “Our office will continue to work closely with our law enforcement partners to investigate and prosecute threats or intimidation against public officials, so they can properly carry out their important duties.” Robert M. DeWitt, the Special Agent in Charge of FBI in North Carolina, said in a statement, “It is unacceptable to make violent threats against anyone. But when threats are directed at elected officials, it can impact their ability to effectively serve their constituents and their country. The FBI will not tolerate this type of intimidation for any reason especially when it comes to those who help run our democracy.” Welton pleaded guilty to one count of threatening to kill a federal official on account of his duties. He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison when he is scheduled to be sentenced in July, according to federal prosecutors.

NBC 10 Providence [4/12/2025 9:02 AM, Staff] reports three people are rescued but the Coast Guard after their boat ran aground. Thankfully no one was hurt, but there is about 4000 gallons of diesel that needs to be cleaned up. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

PostGuam [4/13/2025 4:15 AM, Jolene Toves, 40K] reports a search by local and federal authorities is under way for Jeffery Hattori, 58, a boater who, according to U.S. Coast Guard Force Micronesia, is missing near Guam. On Sunday, the Coast Guard said in a post on its Facebook page that Hattori was due back on Saturday. “His 14-foot skiff, Lady G (GU 325 PU, blue Bimini Top), was due back at Hagåtña Boat Basin by 4 p.m. April 12,” the Coast Guard reported at around 3 p.m. on April 13. At the time of the social media post, nearly 24 hours had passed since Hattori was due back. The Coast Guard is working with Guam Fire Department Rescue and the U.S. Navy to search for Hattori. “We’re mobilizing every available resource to find Mr. Hattori and bring him home safely. Our long-standing partnership with Guam Fire Rescue, strengthened through joint training like the recent (National Association of State Boating Law Administrators) course, ensures seamless coordination. Together, with the additional support from (Helicopter Sea Combat Squadron)-25, we’re leveraging decades of shared expertise to cover vast areas efficiently and effectively,” USCG search and rescue mission coordinator Cmdr. Patton Epperson said in a release on Sunday. In the release, it was noted that GFD Rescue personnel alerted watchstanders at the USCG Force Micronesia Sector Guam’s Joint Rescue Sub-Center, or JRSC, and a response was “promptly coordinated.”

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DVIDS [4/13/2025 12:05 AM, Chief Warrant Officer Sara Muir, 777K]

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 8:42 PM, Thomas Tracy, 430301K] reports detectives have arrested a 46-year-old woman recorded dumping trash on a Tesla Cybertruck parked on a Brooklyn sidewalk in an apparent swipe against the company’s controversial CEO Elon Musk, police said Saturday. Natasha Cohen, who lives around the block from where the vandalism took place, is also accused of leaving a brick with a swastika drawn on it atop the Tesla outside a yeshiva on Ditmas Ave. near Ocean Parkway in Kensington at about 5:50 p.m. on Monday. Hate Crimes detectives arrested Cohen on Friday evening, charging her with aggravated harassment and criminal mischief, as well as aggravated harassment and criminal mischief as hate crimes since a swastika, the symbol of the Nazi party, was left at the scene. It was not immediately disclosed how detectives identified Cohen as the vandal. Her arraignment in Brooklyn Criminal Court was pending. If one is convicted of a hate crime, they could be sentenced to more prison time than the standard charge calls for. Monday’s vandalism was the fourth time in a month someone has vandalized a Tesla found parked on a New York City street in opposition to Musk and his role as head of the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency under President Donald Trump, New York Police Department officials said. The 38-year-old owner of the Tesla Cybertruck had left his electric vehicle on a sidewalk parking spot outside the Yeshiva next to a pile of garbage bags. A few moments later, Cohen, riding a Razor kick scooter, allegedly rolled up on the Tesla, emptied one of the garbage bag’s contents onto its roof and hood and then etched a swastika on a brick, which she placed on the car. Cohen, who was wearing a pink hooded jacket, blue jeans and black rainboots, allegedly rode off before the owner returned to the car. The NYPD Hate Crimes Task Force investigated the incident and released surveillance images of a suspect in the hopes someone would recognize her.

CNN [4/13/2025 4:23 AM, Lex Harvey and Emma Tucker, 22131K] reports police in Pennsylvania have arrested a 20-year-old man accused of plotting a mass shooting at a high school later this month, one day after the anniversary of the Columbine massacre. Braeden Phillips is accused of conspiring with another individual “to commit murder(s) by planning a coordinated school shooting on April 21, 2025, at the State College High School,” according to a criminal complaint obtained by CNN. Police say the suspect, a former State College resident, also planned to place bombs inside the school’s bathrooms and that he and another individual had compiled a “hit list” of people to target. The attack was planned for 8:40 a.m., a high traffic time at the school, according to the complaint. Staff at a youth community center in State College called police after learning of the threat from one of the center’s residents, according to a probable cause affidavit. That initial report led to interviews with others who told police the suspect had discussed the planned attack with them, the affidavit says. The suspect first intended to carry out the attack on April 20, the 26th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting, but witnesses indicated the date was moved because the anniversary fell on a Sunday, according to the affidavit. The 1999 Columbine massacre left 12 students and one teacher dead in one of the deadliest mass shootings in US history. Phillips is charged with conspiracy to commit murder and unlawful possession of a firearm, police said in a statement Saturday. Individuals must be 21 to possess handguns in Pennsylvania, and police say the 20-year-old was seen with a black, Glock-style pistol on multiple occasions. CNN is working to identify an attorney for Phillips. He is being held in Centre County Prison awaiting his preliminary hearing, which is scheduled for April 16. He was denied bail after being deemed an “extreme danger to the community,” according to Pennsylvania court records.

FOX News [4/13/2025 6:30 AM, Chris Massaro, 46189K] reports Ecuadorians go to the polls today in a runoff election between incumbent President Daniel Noboa and leftist challenger Luisa González. Noboa is seen as a pro-Trump conservative, while González is viewed as an ideological ally of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro. Noboa refused to recognize Maduro as the legitimate president of Venezuela after his staged 2024 election and is also committed to fighting criminal gangs with all available resources to restore peace and security in Ecuador. It’s expected González will follow in the footsteps of her mentor, former president Rafael Correa, and seek stronger ties with Latin America’s leftist governments of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silval, Gustavo Petro of Colombia and Gabriel Boric of Chile. "Security has been his principal mandate as the president of Ecuador. He’s dedicated a lot of time, effort and resources to deal with the security situation," Joseph Humire, executive director of the Center for a Secure Free Society and senior fellow of the America First Policy Institute, told Fox News Digital. "However, there’s been only marginal improvements in the security situation, and it’s compounded with other problems," Humire added. González is running on a platform calling for an increase in the military’s role in fighting gang violence but also strongly condemns excessive use of force and abuse of human rights. She "appears to have a softer perspective on the issue of crime, meaning she has not stated her willingness to chase drug cartels but, most probably, would intend to negotiate with them," Mathias Valdez Duffau, visiting fellow at the Center for International Studies at Catholic University of Argentina, told Fox News Digital. Valdez Duffao said a policy of negotiation is similar to the policy of former President Correa’s administration and would focus on whole-of-government crime reduction approaches that would look to integrate criminal gangs into civil society. "The reality is that negotiating with criminal gangs might give the government a short-term space to maneuver, but the gangs become stronger and end up co-opting government officials, which eventually leads the country to the brink of becoming a narco-state," ValdezDuffao warned. Violence and insecurity remain at the top of voters’ minds. Ecuador has the highest murder rate in Latin America, with 6,986 recorded homicides in 2024, making it the second most violent year in Ecuador’s history. Some 95,000 people fled the country in 2024 as many communities became focal points of turf wars between rival gangs competing for territory.

CNN [4/12/2025 2:43 PM, Andrew Carey and Victoria Butenko, 908K] reports that, when US Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink resigned her post two days ago, she was both under pressure from President Volodymyr Zelensky’s office in Kyiv, and feeling the strain of working for her ultimate boss in Washington, President Donald Trump, according to people who knew her. At the same time, she was almost three years into a posting in a war zone away from her family – a situation that had also taken an inevitable toll, people said. An "extraordinary performance," said a State Department spokesperson, paying tribute. Her sudden departure marks the latest upheaval in Washington’s relations with Kyiv since the Trump administration took office and began a dramatic re-orientation of US policy away from Ukraine and toward Russia. A former Ukrainian official with a positive view of Brink told CNN the ambassador felt she could no longer do what was right under the new administration. "She was a very systematic supporter of Ukraine during her three years (in Kyiv). She did everything her position allowed her to do in order for Ukraine to succeed. Her principles would not allow her to do the opposite," the former official said. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he said he had communicated with the ambassador following her decision to leave and stressed it was not an emotional decision she had taken, but one that was carefully considered. "She took a very rational decision about what she can do right now, in a new environment, under new circumstances," the official said. Brink began her stint in May 2022, just a few months after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. While Kyiv’s key interlocutors were inside the White House – National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan in particular played a central role during the Biden era – Brink maintained a high visibility in country and on social media, promoting the Biden administration’s policy of military and humanitarian aid transfers. Western ambassadors who worked alongside her in Ukraine spoke of her work ethic and professionalism. "Tough as nails, almost a machine sometimes, but with a kind of authentic engagement and real kind of fire," one told CNN approvingly. That toughness was tested throughout her posting, people who know her told CNN, but was challenged to breaking point by Trump’s return to power.

Yahoo! News [4/12/2025 5:29 PM, Sonya Bandouil, 430301K] reports U.S. President Donald Trump signed an executive order extending for one year the sanctions against Russia originally imposed by former President Joe Biden in April 2021 over Russia’s harmful foreign activities, according to an April 10 document from the U.S. Federal Register. "Specified harmful foreign activities of the Government of the Russian Federation continue to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States. For this reason, the national emergency must continue in effect beyond 15 April 2025," the document says. The extension cites continued Russian actions such as interference in democratic institutions, cyberattacks, repression of dissidents and journalists, and violations of international law, including threats to territorial integrity. In recent days, the U.S. president has renewed his push for a ceasefire. Axios reported on April 11, citing an undisclosed source, that Trump could impose additional sanctions on Russia if a ceasefire with Ukraine is not reached by the end of April. Despite this, the Trump administration has not yet imposed any major sanctions on Russia. At the same time, the White House previously paused military assistance to Ukraine in March, pressuring Kyiv to agree to a mineral resource deal. U.S. representatives have also recently met on numerous occasions with their Russian counterparts to discuss renewed economic and diplomatic cooperation between the countries after ties were severed in recent years.

New York Post [4/12/2025 4:35 PM, Deirdre Bardolf, 54903K] reports the cruel release of a Hamas propaganda video on Saturday shows signs of life for the last living US hostage, Edan Alexander — but also comes at the beginning of Passover, mocking the freedom-themed Jewish holiday. Alexander, the Israeli-American solider from New Jersey, states in the three-minute-long video that he’s been held in captivity for 551 days, indicating it was filmed recently. Alexander, 21, was taken hostage on Oct. 7, 2023 during Hamas’ attack on Israel. "When you sit down to mark Passover, remember that this is not a holiday of freedom as long as Edan and the other 58 hostages are not home," Alexander’s family said in a statement released by the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, referencing the holy day commemorating the Israelites liberation from slavery in Egypt. The family authorized the publication of a still image of Alexander, but asked Israeli media not to share the latest video. Since the war began, Hamas has routinely released propaganda videos of Israeli hostages. The release of the video also comes as IDF troops continue to exert increasing control in Gaza. The military entered the strategic city of Rafah, a last remaining Hamas stronghold, from either side of the Morag Corridor, cutting the hub off from neighboring Khan Younis. The Israeli forces converged overnight, according to reports, successfully capturing the entire corridor and surrounding the city, which is bordered by Egypt to the south. "During the past week and a half in which IDF forces have been maneuvering in the area, dozens of terrorists have been eliminated, underground hideouts and Hamas terror infrastructures have been destroyed, and the Rafah siege has been completed," the military said in a statement Saturday. The IDF is now inside parts of Rafah that it had not previously been able to enter, the military said, and plans to eventually control the region stretching from Egypt to the outskirts of Khan Younis as it looks to escalate pressure on Hamas in hopes of securing the release of the remaining 59 hostages. Only 24 of the hostages are believed to still be alive. Israel will intensify and expand its offensive into other parts of Gaza, including in the north, Defense Minister Israel Katz said in a statement Saturday. The offensive aimed to "crush and clean the area of terrorists and terrorist infrastructure" while expanding Israeli security zones, Katz added. "I call on the residents of Gaza to act now to remove Hamas and return all the hostages," he said. The military discovered a miles-long Hamas tunnel under a school in Rafah, with an entrance located in the playground of a daycare, it announced on Friday. Members of the specialized engineering unit Yahalom found that the tunnel – booby-trapped with explosives – led to a "central axis" for Hamas. At least 11 terrorists who participated in the Oct. 7 attack have been killed since the IDF ordered civilian evacuations and began its incursion into Gaza on April 2, according to the military.

The Wall Street Journal [4/12/2025 9:49 PM, Benoit Faucon, Michael R. Gordon, and Laurence Norman, 646K] reports Iran sought sanctions relief from the U.S. in exchange for limits on its nuclear program during indirect talks Saturday that have opened the way to more serious negotiations next week, people briefed on the meeting said. The meetings in the Omani capital represented the highest-level talks between the U.S. and Iran in years, and both sides issued relatively positive statements afterward. The White House said the Oman meeting was a “step forward” while Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the next round of talks, scheduled for next Saturday, would include discussion on a timeline for negotiations and potentially a general framework for a new nuclear accord. “We are seeking an agreement as quickly as possible, though reaching a deal will not be easy,” Araghchi told Iranian state TV. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One, President Trump said of the talks: “I think they’re going OK. Nothing matters until you get it done. So I don’t like talking about it.” The Iranian proposals were largely based on the 2015 nuclear deal negotiated by the Obama administration, some of the people said, an agreement that Trump withdrew the U.S. from in 2018, calling it “one of the worst and most one-sided transactions the United States has ever entered into.” U.S. officials wouldn’t comment on the details of Saturday’s talks. U.S. Special Envoy Steve Witkoff has said the Trump administration’s red line is to prevent Iran being able to produce a nuclear weapons. Both sides said the main purpose of the Oman meeting to build trust and lay a foundation for further negotiations. “It’s about talking about why it is so important for us to get to a deal, not the exact terms of the deal, Witkoff, told The Wall Street Journal earlier this week. He said in that interview that the goal of the Oman meeting was to “set the parameters” for future talks. The AP [4/12/2025 9:11 PM, Jon Gambrell, 6866K] reports Iran’s state-run broadcaster revealed that U.S. Mideast envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi “briefly spoke” together — the first time the two nations have done that since the Obama administration. Tehran’s declaration that the two sides spoke face-to-face — even if briefly — suggests the negotiations went well even to Iranian state TV, which long has been controlled by hard-liners. In a statement released Saturday afternoon, the White House described the discussions as “very positive and constructive,” while conceding the issues that need to be resolved “are very complicated.” “Special Envoy Witkoff’s direct communication today was a step forward in achieving a mutually beneficial outcome,” the White House said. Trump told reporters on Air Force One on Saturday while flying to Miami for a UFC event that the talks are “going okay.” “I can’t tell you because nothing matters until you get it done so I don’t like talking about it but it’s going ok. The Iran situation is going pretty good, I think,” he said. The next round of talks will take place Saturday, April 19, according to the Iranian and American statements. This first round of talks began at around 3:30 p.m. local. The two sides spoke for over two hours at a location in the outskirts of Muscat, Oman’s capital, ending the talks around 5:50 p.m. local time. The convoy believed to be carrying Witkoff returned to Muscat before disappearing into traffic around a neighborhood that is home to the U.S. Embassy.

AP [4/12/2025 10:43 PM, Staff, 48304K] reports U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters that talks with Iran are “going okay”, further comments on reciprocal tariffs will be made on Monday and how talks on the war in Ukraine “might be going okay”. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Wire [4/12/2025 12:11 PM, Tim Pearce, 4672K] reports U.S. officials met with Iranian diplomats in Oman on Saturday in an effort to begin talks to reach a new nuclear deal, the Iranian state-owned news outlet IRIB reported. IRIB reported that the U.S. and Iranian officials met “in a constructive atmosphere based on mutual respect,” according to CNN. The talks were the first direct contact between a member of the Trump administration and the Iranian regime. Officials plan to meet again next week. “After more than two and a half hours of indirect negotiations, the heads of the Iranian and American delegations spoke for a few minutes in the presence of the Omani foreign minister as they left the talks,” IRIB reported. The White House confirmed the talks and meeting between Middle East Envoy Steve Witkoff and Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. “Special Envoy Witkoff underscored to Dr. Araghchi that he had instructions from President Trump to resolve our two nations’ differences through dialogue and diplomacy, if that is possible,” the White House said in a statement. “These issues are very complicated, and Special Envoy Witkoff’s direct communication today was a step forward in achieving a mutually beneficial outcome. The sides agreed to meet again next Saturday.” The talks follow President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for a new nuclear deal and for Iran and its proxies, including the Houthis, to cease causing mayhem in the region. Trump announced the talks on Monday, warning that if they are not successful, Iran would be “in great danger.” “I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger.” Trump said. “It’s not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, that’s all there is.” The talks follow President Donald Trump’s repeated calls for a new nuclear deal and for Iran and its proxies, including the Houthis, to cease causing mayhem in the region. Trump announced the talks on Monday, warning that if they are not successful, Iran would be “in great danger.” “I think if the talks aren’t successful with Iran, I think Iran is going to be in great danger.” Trump said. “It’s not a complicated formula. Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon, that’s all there is.”

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