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.

FOX News [8/13/2025 10:45 PM, Staff, 46878K] reports DHS Secretary Kristi Noem discusses I.C.E. recruitment efforts and the Trump administration’s deportation policies on ‘Hannity.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [8/13/2025 4:00 PM, Staff, 46878K] reports DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin discusses the three MS-13 gang members arrested in Nassau County, New York on ‘America Reports.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Caller [8/14/2025 12:16 AM, Hailey Gomez, 1010K] reports Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem said Wednesday on Fox News’ "Hannity" that 110,000 people have applied to work at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in less than two weeks. "In fact, as of today, about 110,000 applications in less than two weeks," Noem said. "That’s what I find so encouraging is it’s clear the American people are behind President Trump and these officers. They have their backs, and they want to be a part of what’s happening in this country by making it safe again. So despite what, you know, the fake news says, despite what the liberals and the socialists and the Marxists are parroting every single day out in their communities and to their supporters, it’s just not true.” "The American people are so happy, and they’re excited about the fact that the rule of law is going to apply to everybody and that Americans and citizens who follow the law should be prioritized and that President Trump is doing exactly that," Noem added. "So to have that many applications means that we’re going to hire the best of the best, and individuals who have experience can get qualified for their ICE badge as soon as possible and hit the streets so that they can make sure that these families get to live safely again.” ICE said the expansion was made possible through funding from President Donald Trump’s "Big Beautiful Bill.” With the additional funds, potential agents are offered up to a $50,000 signing bonus, student loan repayment and forgiveness options, 25% Law Enforcement Availability Pay for HSI Special Agents, Administratively Uncontrollable Overtime for Enforcement and Removal Operations Deportation Officers and enhanced retirement benefits, according to DHS.

The AP [8/13/2025 5:14 PM, Lea Skene, 4120K] reports that a judge on Wednesday questioned why it was necessary for the Trump administration to sue Maryland’s entire federal bench over an order that paused the immediate deportation of migrants challenging their removals. U.S. District Judge Thomas Cullen didn’t issue a ruling following a hearing in federal court in Baltimore, but he expressed skepticism about the administration’s extraordinary legal maneuver, which attorneys for the Maryland judges called completely unprecedented. Cullen serves in the Western District of Virginia, but he was tapped to oversee the Baltimore case because all of Maryland’s 15 federal judges are named as defendants, a highly unusual circumstance that reflects the Republican administration’s aggressive response to courts that slow or stop its policies. At issue in the lawsuit is an order signed by Chief Maryland District Judge George L. Russell III that prevents the administration from immediately deporting any immigrants seeking review of their detention in a Maryland federal court. The order blocks their removal until 4 p.m. on the second business day after their habeas corpus petition is filed. The Justice Department, which filed the lawsuit in June, says the automatic pause impedes President Donald Trump’s authority to enforce immigration laws. But attorneys for the Maryland judges argue that the suit was intended to limit the power of the judiciary to review certain immigration proceedings while the administration pursues a mass deportation agenda. FOX News [8/13/2025 4:17 PM, Ashley Oliver, Bill Mears, 46878K] reports Judge Thomas Cullen of the Western District of Virginia questioned the DOJ over the lawsuit, which alleges that the Maryland district court overstepped its authority by imposing a standing order that automatically pauses deportation cases for two days when they are first filed. Cullen, a Trump appointee, told DOJ attorneys early on in the hearing he was wary of their position. The Virginia federal judge is presiding over the case in Baltimore because the Maryland judges recused themselves. Cullen said he would issue a decision by Labor Day on whether he would block the standing order. The order requires clerks to immediately enter administrative injunctions that last two business days in cases brought by alleged illegal immigrants who are challenging their detentions or removals. The injunctions have the effect of temporarily barring the Department of Homeland Security from deporting or changing the legal status of an immigrant until a judge has time to review the case. The Washington Post [8/13/2025 4:13 PM, Salvador Rizzo, 32099K] reports that about a dozen deportations had been paused by the order as of last month, complicating the Trump administration’s efforts to ramp up immigration enforcement. Judges across the country, including Maryland’s chief federal district judge, have said the courts are scrambling to keep up with a crush of petitions from migrants, which sometimes arrive on weekends or holidays. Attorneys for the Maryland judges say the two-day pause on deportations is a triage measure that wouldn’t be needed if administration officials gave the courts enough time to conduct their work. If the executive branch were allowed to sue all the federal judges in one district, nothing would stop it from filing suits against the U.S. courts of appeals or even the justices of the Supreme Court, Cullen said. Cullen, who was assigned to hear the case by the chief judge of the Richmond-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, said opening the door to such showdowns would test the separation of powers while raising a tangle of novel legal issues.

Reported similarly:
CNN [8/13/2025 1:51 PM, Deval Cole and Katelyn Polantz, 875K]
San Diego Union Tribune [8/13/2025 1:36 PM, Jeff Barker, 1611K]

Breitbart [8/13/2025 2:53 PM, John Binder, 3077K] reports that on the same day an illegal alien MS-13 gang member was sentenced to life in prison without parole for raping and murdering Rachel Morin, a mother of five children, in Maryland, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested convicted killers, child abusers, and rapists. "Just yesterday, Rachel Morin’s murderer — an illegal alien from El Salvador — was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole. The same day, ICE arrested a murderer, pedophiles, and sexual predators," the Department of Homeland Security’s Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement: ICE law enforcement is working around the clock to protect Americans from vile criminals who should have never been in our country in the first place. Yesterday’s arrests are yet another example of how President Trump and Secretary Noem continue to prioritize Americans over criminal illegal aliens. [Emphasis added]. Among those illegal aliens arrested by ICE agents are 69-year-old Gabriel Figueroa-Gama of Mexico and 50-year-old Rodolfo Sagastume-Avolos of Guatemala. Figueroa-Gama has been convicted of murder in the sanctuary city of Chicago, Illinois, while Sagastume-Avolos has been convicted of "murder intention" in the sanctuary state of New York. ICE agents also arrested 24-year-old Francisco Perez-Gonzalez of Guatemala, who has been convicted of sodomy by force in the sanctuary state of California, and 42-year-old Juan Carlos Albardo-Relles of Honduras, who has been convicted of aggravated assault of a child in Harris County, Texas. Luis Galavis-De La Rosa, a 30-year-old illegal alien from Mexico, was arrested by ICE agents in Queens, New York City, a sanctuary jurisdiction, after having been convicted of robbery and criminal possession of a weapon.

FOX News [8/13/2025 3:58 PM, Cameron Arcand, 46878K] reports several Laotian illegal immigrants convicted of serious crimes were deported back to the Southeast Asian country on Monday, the Department of Homeland Security announced. Each of the 12 already had orders of removal placed on them by a federal immigration judge, including some dating back to 2003. "Obstructing a murder investigation, child sex crimes, and drug trafficking: These were just a few of the crimes these heinous illegal aliens committed in our country. Now—thanks to the brave men and women of ICE law enforcement—these barbaric criminals are OUT of our country and can no longer prey on American citizens," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, America is no longer a safe haven for the world’s criminals. Despite a historic number of injunctions from activist judges, ICE continues to remove criminal illegal aliens from America’s streets," McLaughlin added.

FOX News [8/13/2025 9:54 AM, Emma Colton Fox, 46878K] reports that law enforcement officials in Washington, D.C., have arrested more than 100 people since Aug. 7, Fox Digital has learned, as President Donald Trump cracks down on crime in the city. Law enforcement officials have arrested a total of 103 individuals as of Wednesday morning since Aug. 7, which includes 43 who were arrested Tuesday, a White House official told Fox Digital Wednesday morning. The arrests are part of Trump’s March executive order, which established the Making DC Safe and Beautiful Task Force, ahead of Trump’s Monday announcement federalizing the D.C. police department. "President Trump’s bold leadership is quickly making our nation’s capital safer," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox Digital. "In less than one week, over 100 violent criminals have already been arrested and taken off of the streets in Washington, D.C. President Trump is delivering on his campaign promise to clean up this city and restore American Greatness to our cherished capital." Trump announced Monday that he was federalizing the local police department under section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which allows the president to assume emergency control of the capital’s police force for 30 days. The White House reported there were roughly 30 National Guard troops on the ground Tuesday evening, which is expected to dramatically increase on Wednesday evening, Fox Digital learned. The crime crackdown operation is expected to transition to a 24/7 operating status, breaking from its previous focus of patrolling the nation’s capital on night, the White House said.

CNN [8/13/2025 2:17 PM, Michael Williams and Alayna Treene, 21433K] reports that the presence of National Guard troops in Washington, DC, is expected to expand Wednesday evening, according to a White House official, as President Donald Trump’s takeover of the city’s law enforcement continues to take shape. A "significantly higher" National Guard presence is expected to be on the ground later in the day, the official said. The guard began to appear in the capital city on Tuesday with five armored personnel carriers notably parked near the Washington Monument. The announcement of an expanded presence comes as Trump’s takeover of the city’s law enforcement enters its third day. It marks the president’s latest move in his effort to shape the city and its institutions. The National Guard’s involvement could evolve depending on how they are ordered to support law enforcement. The Army said in a Monday statement the guard will be providing administrative and logistical support and back up other law enforcement officers patrolling the city. "The National Guard is not arresting people," a White House official told CNN. The official said the guard members have been given orders to assist federal and local law enforcement, but not make arrests. They are there to "create a safe environment for other officers," the official said. But as officials continue to develop the specifics of the guard members’ mission, the public can expect to see troops establishing a presence at various places around the city, including national monuments, a National Guard spokesperson told CNN. Axios [8/13/2025 1:05 PM, Mimi Montgomery, 13599K] reports that as of Tuesday night, federal law enforcement officers have made more than 100 arrests in D.C. since the multi-agency federal crackdown began late last week, per data shared by a White House official. There have been 103 total arrests, with 43 occurring on Tuesday night — almost double the amount reported on Monday. Arrests have been for charges such as homicide, possession of narcotics or firearms without a license, per the official. 23 of the arrests were for being in the U.S. illegally. 20 arrests are categorized as "other," which the White House official says includes crimes such as driving under the influence, larceny, driving on a suspended license or dirt bike-riding in the park. 19 multi-agency teams are spread across the city as part of the takeover, says the official. 1,450 people were patrolling the city on Tuesday night, including 750 D.C. police members and 30 National Guard troops. Between the lines: All federal officers in D.C. will be identifiable by things like a jacket, badge or uniform, Mayor Muriel Bowser said during a Monday press conference. President Trump suggested on Wednesday that he plans to ask Congress to extend federal control of D.C. police beyond the initially set 30 days.

ABC News [8/13/2025 2:01 PM, Michelle Stoddart and Sarah Beth Hensley, 31733K] reports President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that he will seek more permanent federal control of the Washington, D.C., police force as he continues his efforts to ramp-up crime enforcement in the nation’s capital. Earlier this week, Trump announced his plans to deploy National Guard troops in the nation’s capital, declaring a public safety emergency in order to put the Washington police department under federal control and station the National Guard on the city’s streets. Trump’s control of the D.C. police force expires in 30 days, after which Congress would have to weigh in. Asked Wednesday whether he’d work with Congress to extend the emergency authorization allowing him to seize temporary control of local law enforcement, Trump said he’ll ask Congress for a "long-term" extension of federal control of the Washington police force. "We’re going to be asking for extensions on that -- long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days," Trump said at an event at the Kennedy Center Wednesday afternoon. Trump indicated at one point that he’d ask Congress for more funds to fight crime and to make repairs to Washington. FOX News [8/13/2025 12:56 PM, Anders Hagstrom, 46878K] reports that President Donald Trump said he may declare a national emergency to maintain control of Washington, D.C.’s police force if Congress doesn’t work with him to extend the current federalization plan. Trump made the statement during a press conference at the Kennedy Center in Washington, arguing he can maintain control over the Metropolitan Police Department indefinitely if he declares a national emergency. Under the current structure, the federal government took control over the MPD for a 30-day period on Monday. "Your federalization of the police has a 30-day limit unless Congress acts to extend it. Are you talking to Congress about extending it, or do you believe 30 days is sufficient?" asked Daily Signal White House reporter Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell. "Well, if it’s a national emergency, we can do it without Congress. But we expect to be before Congress very quickly. And again, we think the Democrats will not do anything to stop crime, but we think the Republicans will do it almost unanimously. So we’re going to need a crime bill. That we’re going to be putting in, and it’s going to pertain initially to DC. We’re going to use it as a very positive example." Trump went on to confirm that his administration would be seeking "long-term extensions" to the 30-day limit. "You can’t have 30 days," he said. "We’re going to do this very quickly, but we’re going to want extensions. I don’t want to call a national emergency, but if I have to I will."

Reported similarly:
Daily Wire [8/13/2025 8:34 AM, Zach Jewell, 3816K]
DailySignal [8/13/2025 1:24 PM, Elizabeth Troutman Mitchell, 558K]

AP [8/13/2025 7:30 PM, Lindsay Whitehurst and Ashraf Khalil, 1611K] reports that as a wary Washington waited, the White House promised a ramp-up of National Guard troops and federal officers on the streets of the nation’s capital around the clock starting Wednesday, days after President Donald Trump’s unprecedented announcement that his administration would take over the city’s police department for at least a month. The city’s Democratic mayor and police chief framed the influx as a plus for public safety, though they said there are few hard measures for what a successful end to the operation might look like. The Republican president has said crime in the city was at emergency levels that only such federal intervention could fix even as District of Columbia leaders pointed to statistics showing violent crime at a 30-year low after a sharp rise two years ago. For two days, small groups of federal officers have been visible in scattered areas of the city. That is about to change, the administration says. A "significantly higher" presence of guard members was expected Wednesday night, and federal agents will be out 24/7 rather than largely at night, according to the White House. Hundreds of federal law enforcement and city police officers who patrolled the streets Tuesday night made 43 arrests, compared with about two dozen the night before.

CBS News [8/13/2025 12:50 PM, Staff, 51860K] reports National Guard troops arrived in Washington, D.C., following President Trump’s deployment and federalization of local police to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Signal [8/13/2025 6:45 PM, Virginia Allen, 558K] reports Washington, D.C., will not operate as a sanctuary city as long the city’s police remain under federal control, according to border czar Tom Homan. Instead, police and Immigration and Customs Enforcement will work together. "I think D.C. under federal control is not going to be a sanctuary city," Homan said on Fox News Wednesday. "We’re working with the police hand-in-hand, and when we encounter criminal illegal aliens, they’ll be turned over to ICE.” "I’m not saying every illegal alien in D.C. is a criminal, but many are," Homan continued. "So these are the people we’re going to focus on. [The] illegal alien criminal safety threat in D.C. is not going to be protected. There’s no sanctuary for these people in the city of D.C.” Homan’s comments follow President Donald Trump’s decision to federalize Washington’s police force and send the National Guard into the city in an effort to address violent crime in the nation’s capital.

NBC News [8/13/2025 10:27 PM, Gary Grumbach and Zoë Richards, 44540K] reports a man accused of throwing a sandwich at a U.S. Customs and Border Protection agent in Washington, D.C., was charged Wednesday with felony assault of a federal officer. On Sunday night, Sean Charles Dunn stood close to a CBP agent who was on duty patrolling the area at the time, yelling, "F--- you! You f-----g fascists! Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court in D.C. Dunn is accused of throwing the sub-style sandwich, hitting Lairmore in the chest, minutes after shouting the obscenities. The complaint refers to a now-viral video that shows a man repeatedly shouting at the officers, before eventually throwing the sandwich and running across the street as law enforcement chased after him. During processing with the Metropolitan Police Department, Dunn allegedly told an officer, "I did it. I threw a sandwich.” U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro said in a video statement posted on X that her office was prepared to support law enforcement. "He thought it was funny. Well, he doesn’t think it’s funny today, because we charged him with a felony: assault on a police officer. And we’re going to back the police to the hilt. So there, stick your Subway sandwich somewhere else," Pirro said. Dunn faces up to one year in prison. President Donald Trump has ramped up law enforcement in the nation’s capital as part of what he has described as an effort to crack down on crime and homelessness even as the Justice Department reported that the crime rate sank to a 30-year low last year. Trump on Monday federalized D.C. police and a total of 800 National Guard troops are expected to be deployed by the end of the week, with some fanning out alongside D.C. police on Tuesday. Trump told reporters on Wednesday that he would submit a "crime bill" to Congress, asking it to extend the federal takeover which expires after 30 days. That effort is not expected to pass as it would require support from Democrats.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [8/13/2025 4:45 PM, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, 153395K]
ABC News [8/13/2025 5:33 PM, Doc Louallen and Alexander Mallin, 31733K]

NBC News [8/14/2025 12:00 AM, Nnamdi Egwuonwu, Gary Grumbach and Emilie Plesset, 44540K] reports that, steps away from a YMCA, popular bakery and local pharmacy, a group of law enforcement officers across several agencies turned a busy intersection in a mixed residential-commercial area of Washington, D.C., into a police checkpoint Wednesday night as part of President Donald Trump’s directive to crack down on crime in the nation’s capital. Uniformed officers with the Metropolitan Police Department stood alongside Homeland Security Investigations personnel and several plainclothes agents at the checkpoint in what’s known as the U Street corridor, one of the first checkpoints set up since Trump temporarily put D.C. police under federal control and deployed the National Guard. More than 100 protesters soon gathered in the Northwest D.C. neighborhood, heckling law enforcement as they stopped cars approaching the checkpoint and in some cases flagged the vehicles for additional investigation. Some protesters began warning drivers to avoid the checkpoint. Protesters, federal agents and local officers all dispersed without incident. One vehicle was towed away from the checkpoint, with witnesses telling NBC News that the driver was removed from the sedan and arrested. Members of the National Guard, roughly 800 of whom were activated this week to support law enforcement in the city, were not seen at the checkpoint. A White House official said Wednesday that the deployment of National Guard troops would be "significantly higher" throughout the week, and that the operation would expand from evening shifts to working around the clock. Including the federalized D.C. officers, more than 1,450 personnel participated in Tuesday’s effort, according to administration figures Wednesday. That count included dozens of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents who are joining personnel from the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration and Secret Service. Roughly 40 agents within the Homeland Security Investigations division, which typically focuses on long-term probes into transnational crimes, have joined federal personnel in an effort to mitigate crime in the city irrespective of whether those crimes are directly related to immigration. Combating unlawful immigration, a consistent focal point of Trump’s presidency, is also playing a role in Trump’s D.C. police takeover, with agents from ICE’s Enforcement Removal Operation carrying out "targeted" stings this week to arrest immigrants. A spokesperson for ICE said that an operation at a Home Depot "resulted in arrests of criminal illegal aliens convicted of assault, theft and gang activity.” "The President was clear, he will make DC safe and beautiful again, and ICE is proud to be a part of the solution alongside our federal law enforcement partners. This includes both immigration enforcement and efforts to combat crime in support of the US Marshals Service," the spokesperson said in a statement. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

The Washington Post [8/14/2025 12:27 AM, Emma Uber and Lauren Morello, 32099K] reports tensions over President Donald Trump’s deployment of federal law enforcement erupted on a busy Northwest Washington street Wednesday night as a mix of local and federal authorities pulled over drivers for seat belt violations or broken taillights while nearly 100 onlookers chanted: “Go home, fascists.” The checkpoint, which appeared to begin around 8 p.m., included more than 20 law enforcement officers, many wearing face coverings and vests labeled “HSI” — Homeland Security Investigations. Some vests indicated agents were with Enforcement and Removal Operations, a branch of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement that arrests and removes undocumented immigrants. They stopped dozens of cars at the busy intersection of 14th and W streets NW, in front of a popular chain bakery, a veterinary clinic and a high-end outdoor apparel store. At least two people were detained — one man speaking Spanish was loaded into an unmarked black pickup, while a D.C. police truck towed the red Kia he had been driving. A woman was handcuffed while the crowd gathered on the sidewalks booed and yelled at officers to “read the Constitution.” A D.C. police spokesperson confirmed Wednesday night that the agency had helped transport a man who had been arrested, but directed further questions about the checkpoint to the White House. The show of federal force comes days after Trump deployed federal law enforcement and the National Guard onto D.C. streets. During a Monday news conference, he characterized the nation’s capital as a lawless wasteland, though violent crime is at 30-year lows. Federal presence began to ramp up Tuesday night; National Guard troops stationed Humvees near the Washington Monument, the U.S. Border Patrol assisted in the arrest of a dirt-bike driver in the Columbia Heights neighborhood and, according to a White House official, 43 arrests were made by federal law enforcement teams. An officer at the scene told shouting onlookers that agents were checking for “driving eligibility” and “status.” When a ride-share vehicle was stopped, the passengers seated in the back of the car rolled down the windows and shouted to the crowd the questions law enforcement was asking their driver, which they said included questions about immigration status. The White House did not immediately respond to questions Wednesday night about how many people had been charged or whether people were questioned about their citizenship. A group darted into a CVS store near the checkpoint and emerged with hastily made signs that read “Police checkpoint ahead” and “ICE,” then headed a few blocks south to warn people. A speaker blared “Ice Ice Baby” from the sidewalk. Some people shouted advice at the drivers, encouraging them to ask for badge numbers or remain silent. “Sir, you don’t want to do this,” one woman shouted at law enforcement. “You do not want this role in history. You did this job to protect and serve. Look what they’re doing to you. This is the community.” Police left the area around 10 p.m. The New York Times [8/14/2025 2:39 AM, Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Darren Sands and Ashley Ahn, 138952K] reports that with about 800 National Guard members, 500 federal law enforcement agents and Washington’s municipal police department, under his command, Mr. Trump, who announced the federal crackdown on crime in the capital on Monday, has vowed that the city would be “essentially crime-free” under his watch. In the next day or two, the D.C. National Guard will build up to sending out about 100 to 200 soldiers at any given time in support of federal law enforcement officials, Col. Dave Butler, an Army spokesman, said Wednesday. City officials have said the National Guard troops would not have the authority to make arrests. They began arriving on the streets Tuesday evening. Speaking at the Kennedy Center earlier Wednesday, Mr. Trump appeared to suggest that he could maintain oversight of crime-fighting in Washington beyond the 30 days that the law allows his administration to be in control of the D.C. police. While the president has described the city in apocalyptic terms as a crime-infested wasteland, violent crime in Washington fell to a 30-year low last year and has continued to fall sharply this year. At least 66 people have been arrested in Washington since Monday, according to federal officials. A federal task force that includes some local officers made 23 arrests on Monday evening, said Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary. On Tuesday, 43 more people were arrested, according to Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director. He said that the F.B.I. had assisted in 18 arrests so far this week, on charges that included unlawful gun possession, assault with a dangerous weapon and theft. By comparison, in the first 10 days of August 2024, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department made 635 arrests, or about 63 per day, according to department statistics. About 10 percent of those arrested were juveniles. The number of crimes recorded during the first 10 days of August was virtually the same this year as last year.

New York Times [8/14/2025 2:09 AM, Staff, 153395K] reports the police and federal agents set up a vehicle checkpoint on 14th street, drawing protesters who directed drivers away from the block. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NewsMax [8/13/2025 12:45 PM, Solange Reyner, 4622K] reports that Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser called President Donald Trump’s order to deploy 800 National Guard members to help law enforcement fight crime in the city an "authoritarian push" and urged community members to vote for a Democrat House in the midterm elections. "This is a time where community needs to jump in and we all need to, to do what we can in our space, in our lane, to protect our city and to protect our autonomy, to protect our Home Rule, and get to the other side of this guy, and make sure we elect a Democratic House so that we have a backstop to this authoritarian push," Bowser said during a virtual conversation with community leaders Tuesday. "We are not 700,000 scumbags and punks," she added. "We don’t have neighborhoods that should be bulldozed. We have to be clear about our story, who we are, and what we want for our city.” It’s a stark change in tone from Bowser, who hours earlier appeared to support Trump’s actions. Trump’s directive Monday for Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to activate the National Guard is just the latest example of the president sending the National Guard into cities to support immigration enforcement or fight crime over the objection of local and state officials.

Washington Post [8/13/2025 5:10 PM, Meagan Flynn, Jenny Gathright, Emma Uber, and Erin Cox, 32099K] reports a split screen emerged in the first 48 hours of President Trump’s deployment of federal law enforcement and the National Guard onto D.C. streets: rhetoric from the president painting the city as a crime-addled wasteland, which D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser condemned, and, on the ground, a surge in federal resources bolstering D.C. police — which she and the police chief welcomed. The impact of Trump’s federal actions came into view Tuesday night, with National Guard troops on the ground in D.C. and agents from numerous federal agencies roaming D.C. streets. The White House said the overnight operation would soon become a 24/7 affair, with significantly greater National Guard presence — and Trump said he intended to ask Congress to extend the emergency allowing him to federalize D.C. police beyond 30 days. “We’re going to be asking for extensions on that — long-term extensions, because you can’t have 30 days,” Trump said on Wednesday at the Kennedy Center in Washington, adding that his administration would be pushing a crime bill involving D.C. to use the city as “a very positive example.” As the federal presence came into clearer focus, Bowser began deploying dual messaging: hardening her tone against Trump’s executive action in a community forum Tuesday night while on live television Wednesday morning still projecting optimism in cooperating with federal partners. Speaking to community leaders on Zoom on Tuesday night, Bowser called Trump’s actions an “authoritarian push” in her firmest condemnation yet, as she began to more forcefully dispute the disparaging characterization of the nation’s capital Trump has repeatedly painted.

CNN [8/14/2025 3:00 AM, Holmes Lybrand, Evan Perez, Josh Campbell, 875K] reports FBI agents – thrust into yet another role for which they are not trained – have been put on patrol duties with local police as part of President Donald Trump’s declaration of a crime emergency in Washington, DC. In the past several months, the agency’s rank-and-file, who specialize in complex threat investigations, have been assigned to fulfill a bevy of roles outside their lanes of expertise, spending overnight and weekend shifts poring over old Jeffrey Epstein files looking for necessary redactions, assisting ICE in finding and removing illegal immigrants and now patrolling the streets of the nation’s capital. While federal agencies including the FBI often link up with local police departments to help with specific investigations and task forces or to build out certain tools they may need, such as gun tracing, agents are not trained or equipped for community policing, multiple federal law enforcement officials told CNN. FBI Director Kash Patel took office vowing to “let cops be cops.” But in recent years, the FBI has touted how many new agents don’t come from former police backgrounds and instead come from backgrounds in technology, law and other disciplines. One 2024 class of new agents included more than 44% with advanced degrees, according to an internal newsletter. “FBI agents are not police officers,” Former FBI deputy director and CNN law enforcement analyst Andrew McCabe said Tuesday. “Most of them don’t come to the FBI from a background as a police officer. So they don’t have the training and the skillset and the experience of doing that work, which can be dangerous both for them and for the people they would be policing.” For many FBI agents, much of the job is done largely at a desk, and training necessary to de-escalate situations in the field, or what beat cops are looking for when trying to identify threats or potential hostile situations, are not comprehensively part of training for agents. What’s more, the FBI use-of-force policy generally has a much lower threshold for when agents are allowed to use their firearms to protect themselves than most police departments – in the case of Washington, DC, officers, have options to use tasers and pepper spray before using lethal force, not standard equipment for agents. Federal agents are also typically only minimally trained in conducting vehicle stops, which remains one of the most dangerous aspects of a police officer’s job. Unlike routine police encounters with suspects, which may only involve one or two officers, when agencies like the FBI conduct an arrest, they typically plan out the operation methodically in advance and execute it with a complement of agents that far outnumbers the suspect. Several law enforcement officers told CNN that many agents now tasked with patrolling the streets of DC alongside the Metropolitan Police Department are in a wait-it-out posture, hoping they’ll be able to turn their complete focus back to the cases they were investigating previously when Trump’s 30-day period of controlling the MPD is currently set to come to an end. “This isn’t hard: If we’re doing (policing) we’re not covering down on those other threats,” said one person.

Wall Street Journal [8/13/2025 3:04 PM, Natalie Andrews, Lindsay Wise, and Jasmine Li, 646K] reports President Trump’s apocalyptic portrait this week of Washington, D.C.—a city awash in “bloodshed, bedlam and squalor and worse”—aired one of his longest-running grievances and political tools. The familiar riff has been honed over years by Trump, who memorably pledged to “drain the swamp” in his first presidential campaign and made promises to address D.C. crime a centerpiece of his second. Now the heavily Democratic capital has become both a potent symbol and a test case for using federal troops for domestic law enforcement in other cities. The effort isn’t born from Trump’s personal experiences in Washington’s neighborhoods. He rarely leaves the White House to see the city; most of his drives through the nation’s capital are to Trump National golf course in Sterling, Va., outside of the city. The graffiti he sees from his motorcade irks him, however, and he has expressed outrage at stories of administration officials and congressional aides who have been local violent-crime victims. Trump brought up graffiti at his first meeting with Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser since being elected. Beyond cutting crime, Trump has involved himself in the cultural aspects of the city. He has taken charge of the Kennedy Center and called on the city to change the professional football team’s name back—from the Washington Commanders to the Redskins. The administration’s effort to reduce the federal workforce and move agencies out of Washington has led to higher unemployment. On Monday, he made his most aggressive foray into the city’s civic life, announcing he would take command of the district’s police force and use more federal resources to address the city’s crime. The National Guard officially deployed into the city Tuesday, according to a Defense Department official, and small numbers of unarmed troops were seen patrolling near landmarks, including the National Mall.

AP [8/13/2025 3:50 PM, Alanna Durkin Richer, 56000K] reports Attorney General Pam Bondi is effectively in charge of the police department in Washington, D.C. — so says the White House. But the city’s police force already has a Pam at the helm — Chief Pamela Smith — and she says she only reports to the mayor. D.C. and federal officials say they are working together after President Donald Trump announced he was placing the police department in the nation’s capital under federal control to crack down on violent crime. But despite the unified tone, the unusual arrangement is raising questions about who gets to make decisions about D.C. police resources, personnel and policy and — in the event of a disagreement — which Pam gets the final say. According to D.C. leaders, the attorney general can request services of the mayor, but nothing has changed when it comes to the chain of command and the department’s funding. Yet hours later, the White House struck a different tone, suggesting the ultimate authority lies in the hands of Bondi and Terry Cole, the Drug Enforcement Administration director whom Trump has tapped to serve as interim federal administrator of the police force. Justice Department officials have not answered questions about whether the Trump administration believes it has the authority to make decisions about D.C. personnel, and whether the attorney general has issued any new orders for the police force.

Breitbart [8/14/2025 1:03 AM, Olivia Rondeau, 3077K] reports that, Harmeet Dhillon, Assistant Attorney General for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said she was nearly the victim of a thief in Washington, DC, on Tuesday as the Trump administration cracks down on crime in the capital. "A malodorous homeless person attempted to swipe my phone today while I was walking in DC back to the DOJ from an appointment — but he was not in his right mind and I artfully dodged the attempt. It’ll be a while till things feel safe in this city, so everyone stay alert!" Dhillon wrote on X: She added that she was "ok" in a follow-up post, reporting that she was "faster" than the wannabe phone swiper: "For those asking, I’m ok, nothing happened. I was faster than the homeless guy," the attorney wrote. "It was next to the NY Ave Presbyterian Church. Several other homeless and mentally fragile people around. Close to the WH and tourist stuff.” In order to combat the crime crisis in Washington, DC, Trump placed the Metropolitan Police Department under "direct federal control" and activated the National Guard on Monday. "This is Liberation Day in D.C., and we’re going to take our capital back," the president said during a press conference. "We’re taking it back. Under the authorities vested in me as the President of the United States, I’m officially invoking section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act — you know what that is — and placing the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department under direct federal control.” Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem was robbed in April while sitting in a Washington, DC, restaurant, Breitbart News reported. Noem’s purse, containing $3,000 in cash, her passport, makeup bag, DHS access card, apartment key, and other belongings, was snatched from her table by a masked man. Law enforcement later arrested 49-year-old Mario Bustamante Leiva and 51-year-old Cristian Rodrigo Montecino-Sanzanaat in connection with the crime, BBC reported.

FOX News [8/13/2025 5:20 PM, Alexandra Koch, 46878K] reports amid the Trump administration’s sweeping crackdown on crime in the nation’s capital, a woman was shot to death in broad daylight in northeast Washington, D.C.—an area most locals consider safe. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) officers found a woman who was shot multiple times just after 11 a.m. Wednesday on the 3300 block of 15th Street. D.C. Fire and EMS took the unconscious woman to a local hospital where she was pronounced dead. Homicide detectives are investigating, though no suspects have been identified. President Donald Trump on Monday federalized the MPD under section 740 of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act, which allows the president to take emergency control of the police force for 30 days. Within hours of the announcement, a man was gunned down in D.C.’s Logan Circle neighborhood, according to a report from local affiliate FOX 5 D.C. The victim, Tymark Wells, 33, was shot multiple times and pronounced dead shortly after the attack, according to the report. Hundreds of National Guard members have been deployed to the city, joining agents from federal law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), U.S. Capitol Police and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF). While D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser noted violent crime in the capital is at its lowest level in 30 years, city records show violent crime, including robberies and homicides, skyrocketed post-pandemic. Certain neighborhoods were highlighted as particular concerns, with violent gun crimes from 2022 to 2023 rising by 460% downtown, 240% in Golden Triangle, and 216% in Brightwood, according to D.C. records.

AP [8/13/2025 7:24 PM, Olga R. Rodriguez, 56000K] reports a federal judge in San Francisco is weighing whether the Trump administration violated federal law by sending National Guard troops to accompany immigration agents on raids in Southern California. A three-day trial on the matter concluded Wednesday. California has argued the troops violated the Posse Comitatus Act, which generally prohibits military enforcement of domestic laws. Lawyers for the administration said the law doesn’t apply because President Donald Trump called up the National Guard under an authority that allows their deployment if "the president is unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.” Federal and military officials were called to testify, and the trial’s third day largely focused on weedy arguments about the 1878 law and whether the court even had a role in determining the limits of presidential power. Trump deployed 4,000 National Guard members and later 700 Marines to Los Angeles in June after protests in response to immigration raids around the city. They were originally deployed to protect federal property, including a detention center targeted by protesters. The Guard members later began guarding agents as they continued arresting people suspected of being in the U.S. illegally. Between 250 and 300 Guard troops remain and have been activated through November. Deputy Assistant Deputy Assistant Attorney General Eric Hamilton said Wednesday that the Posse Comitatus Act does not apply because the Guard was deployed under a section of U.S. Code that allows the president to call any state’s guard into federal service when the country "is invaded," when "there is a rebellion or danger of a rebellion against the authority of the Government," or when the president is unable "to execute the laws of the United States.” He said Guard members weren’t engaged in law enforcement and were just providing backup security for federal agents. "If the purpose is the protection of law enforcement officers, it isn’t law enforcement in the first place," he said. "On top of that, there’s the fact that a (president’s) constitutional inherent protective power is at work. That is itself an exception to the Posse Comitatus Act.” California Deputy Attorney General Meghan Strong argued the troops’ role went beyond providing protection to federal agents and buildings. The troops, she said, had "an active, direct role" enforcing the law when they detained people at least in two occasions and set up roadblocks and perimeters blocking access to public streets. California is asking Judge Charles Breyer to order the Trump administration to return control of the remaining troops to the state and to stop the federal government from using military troops in California "to execute or assist in the execution of federal law or any civilian law enforcement functions by any federal agent or officer.”

Reported similarly:
CNN [8/13/2025 4:40 PM, Molly Reinmann, Julia Vargas Jones]

The Daily Caller [8/13/2025 11:28 AM, Jason Hopkins, 1010K] reports the Trump administration extradited dozens of fugitives from Mexico as the White House tightens a noose around criminal syndicates south of the border. Federal law enforcement took custody of 26 individuals, many of them leaders of dangerous drug cartels and human smuggling organizations that the Trump administration has deemed to be foreign terrorist organizations, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ). The Tuesday announcement came in the aftermath of President Donald Trump reportedly authorizing the use of military force against drug cartels. Among those handed over to U.S. authorities were top leaders of the Sinaloa Cartel, Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generation and Los Zetas cartels, according to the DOJ. Nearly every individual faces up to life in prison on various charges ranging from hostage-taking, drug-trafficking, kidnapping, human smuggling and a slate of other crimes. "Today is the latest example of the Trump administration’s historic efforts to dismantle cartels and foreign terrorist organizations," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a public statement. "These 26 men have all played a role in bringing violence and drugs to American shores — under this Department of Justice, they will face severe consequences for their crimes against this country." "We are grateful to Mexico’s National Security team for their collaboration in this matter," Bondi continued. The Daily Wire [8/13/2025 11:19 AM, Leif Le Mahieu, 3816K] reports that almost all of the fugitives face life in prison if convicted in federal court. The Justice Department said the men were collectively responsible for smuggling tons of cocaine, meth, fentanyl, and heroin into the United States. "This transfer is yet another example of what is possible when two governments stand united against violence and impunity," U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ronald Johnson said. "These fugitives will now face justice in U.S. courts, and the citizens of both of our nations will be safer from these common enemies.”

AP [8/13/2025 5:12 PM, Fabiola Sánchez and Megan Janetsky, 56000K] reports Mexico sent 26 alleged cartel figures to face justice in the United States because the Trump administration requested them and Mexico did not want them to continue running their illicit businesses from Mexican prisons, officials said Wednesday. The mass transfer was not, however, part of wider negotiations as Mexico seeks to avoid higher tariffs threatened by U.S. President Donald Trump, the officials said. The 26 prisoners handed over to American authorities on Tuesday included figures aligned with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel among others. They were wanted by American authorities for their roles in drug trafficking and other crimes. It comes months after 29 other cartel leaders were sent to the U.S. in February. In the exchange, the U.S. Justice Department promised it would not seek the death penalty against any of the 55 people included in the two transfers, which experts say may help avoid any violent outburst by the cartels in response. Authorities said the operation involved nearly a thousand law enforcement officers, 90 vehicles and a dozen military aircraft. Mexico President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier Wednesday that the transfers were “sovereign decisions,” but the move comes as the Mexican leader faces mounting pressure by the Trump administration to crack down on cartels and fentanyl production.

San Diego Union Tribune [8/13/2025 10:17 PM, Alex Riggins, 1611K] reports a son-in-law of one of Mexico’s most storied drug kingpins and a man who Mexican officials had described as one of the "main generators of violence" in the Tijuana region both made initial appearances Wednesday in San Diego federal court, a day after they were expelled from Mexico as part of a deal with the Trump administration. Juan Carlos Félix Gastelum, son-in-law of jailed Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada, and Pablo Edwin Huerta Nuño, who was arrested in June in Tijuana, both face indictments alleging international drug importation conspiracies, among other counts. Attorneys representing both men asked the court to enter not guilty pleas to all counts. The attorneys also declined to comment on the allegations against their clients. "Those who export dangerous drugs and smuggle aliens to the United States while seeking to evade capture will find no place to hide," San Diego-area U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a statement. "Today is a win, but justice is not satisfied. The work of the Homeland Security Task Forces ensures that the indictment of high-level targets will remain a top priority nationally, but especially, in the Southern District of California.” The two men were among 26 alleged cartel figures that Mexican authorities expelled to the United States on Tuesday. Mexican officials said Wednesday that the Trump administration had requested those individuals, but their mass expulsion was not part of the wider negotiations involving higher tariffs threatened by President Donald Trump. Instead, Mexican Security Minister Omar García Harfuch said in a news conference that their removal to the U.S. was designed to "prevent these criminals from continuing to operate from within prisons and to break up their networks of influence.” Ilan Katz, a Mexico City-based defense attorney who specializes in white-collar crime, said that reasoning made sense from Mexico’s point of view. "There has been a proven ability by very, very high-profile drug lords to maintain influence in Mexican prisons," Katz said. "One of the best ways to make sure that stops is to transfer them to American prisons.” Katz said Mexico’s government was taking its toughest stance by sending those individuals to be prosecuted in the U.S. "The worst-case scenario for most of these men is not being in prison, it’s being in prison in the U.S.," he said. Huerta, who is known as "El Flaquito" and allegedly rose to power in Tijuana by deploying extreme violence, was arrested in June during an early morning operation in Tijuana’s Fundadores neighborhood. An indictment unsealed Wednesday revealed that a federal grand jury in San Diego had indicted Huerta one month earlier on charges related to the importation and distribution of methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine, as well as a charge related to money laundering.

FOX News [8/13/2025 8:49 PM, Peter Pinedo, 46878K] reports a former high-ranking Venezuelan military officer is urging the Trump administration, particularly Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, to look to South America for best strategies in fighting against the migrant gangs and cartels that flooded the U.S. under the Biden administration. José Gustavo Arocha, a former lieutenant colonel in the Venezuelan army and now national security expert at the Center for a Secure Free Society, told Fox News Digital that South American countries’ varied responses to organized crime groups hold the key to what the U.S. should do and not do. He said the region especially teaches valuable lessons on how to respond to Tren de Aragua, also known by its acronym "TdA," a brutal transnational criminal group with alleged ties to Venezuelan socialist dictator Nicolás Maduro. The gang’s name means "Train from Aragua," indicating its origin as a prison gang in Venezuela’s Aragua region. Following Noem’s visit to Chile and Peru in late July, Arocha said the U.S. should "think of the region as a living laboratory.” In line with this laboratory analogy, Arocha said that while countries like Chile and Ecuador "grabbed the scalpel early; Colombia left the petri dish wide open.” Overall, he said the lesson for Washington is "act fast, act in unison, or spend years mopping up a disaster.” He said that Chile acted decisively to unite all aspects of government together to fight the migrant gangs spilling over its borders, fusing police, tax and customs intelligence with one another. This enabled the Chilean government to quickly identify hundreds of members of a Tren de Aragua offshoot gang known as the "Los Gallegos clique" and march them into prison. "Chile turned intel into jail time," explained Arocha. "Every migrant-shelter interview, every crypto-remittance slip, every fingerprint goes into one national fusion hub; detectives then launch ‘mega-operativos’ that knock out stash houses, mules, and shell companies in the same forty-eight-hour punch.” "That stops the gang before it can splinter and re-spawn," he said. Likewise, he explained that if Noem similarly connects U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the FBI and Homeland Security Investigations into a shared, real-time biometric feed, typical gang tactics like using a fake ID won’t outrun the database and "our prosecutors can bring bundle indictments the way Chile bundled Los Gallegos.” It is Ecuador, however, that Arocha said "set the gold standard hands down.” He explained that the Ecuadorian government "went one step further" by labeling Tren de Aragua a terrorist group, something the U.S. has also done under the Trump administration. Ecuador also unleashed joint police-military sweeps of prisons and border posts for gang activity so that today he said the country "still reports no major TdA enclave on its soil.” "By stamping TdA as a terrorist outfit before bodies piled up, Ecuador unlocked instant asset freezes and extradition-on-sight rules," he said. "We already have the Foreign Terrorist Organization label; now we need the Treasury-FinCEN [Financial Crimes Enforcement Network] sledgehammer, so every crypto hop tied to TdA or its Venezuelan sponsors, the Maduro Regime, trips an automatic choke." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [8/13/2025 10:16 AM, Charles Creitz, 46878K] reports New York City’s last remaining "migrant hotel" will soon cease to be an emergency shelter, following the Trump administration’s border crackdown that eased pressure on Texas – which had previously bused waves of migrants to the Big Apple under former President Joe Biden. The Row, a prominent hotel in the Times Square district, will wind down its operations over the next eight months, as about 3,400 people remain within its 1,300-room confines, according to NY1. New York City Mayor Eric Adams told the network in a statement that his administration "successfully helped more than 200,000 migrants leave our shelter system and take the next step toward self-sufficiency.” "The migrant population in our care continues to decline, and we have closed 64 emergency migrant sites, including all of our tent-based facilities," he said, as hotels around the city, like the Row and the Roosevelt, and large areas like Floyd Bennett Field in Marine Park, Brooklyn were crammed with migrants during the heat of the crisis. Adams said the operations were necessary in order to ensure "no family slept on the street." He said that the city’s Asylum Application Help Center has processed 111,000 such applications for federal protected status and authorization to work in the U.S. The outlet reported that New York City has expended resources for a total of 65,000 travel tickets to other cities in an effort to save city taxpayers in the long run. There was no immediate indication of where the immigrants currently at the Row will go if they are still there when the program runs its course by April 2026.

Wall Street Journal [8/13/2025 5:20 PM, Mariah Timms and Victoria Albert, 646K] reports the Trump administration is facing increasing pressure over the conditions at immigration detention centers, including at the newly constructed Florida facility known as Alligator Alcatraz. In a legal filing Wednesday, detainees at Alligator Alcatraz and their lawyers allege the tent camp on an airstrip in the Everglades has become a squalid place with limited access to the outside world. The allegations come on the heels of another decision earlier this week by a federal judge ordering U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement to improve conditions at a holding center in Manhattan where lawyers said migrants were subject to unsafe and unsanitary conditions. At Alligator Alcatraz, detainees report the unchecked spread of illness, flooding and a lack of food and of a place to bathe or clean their teeth, according to the lawsuit. Detention officials go “cell to cell” pressuring detainees to sign documents agreeing to drop their immigration cases and leave the country voluntarily. At least one man was coerced to sign such a document in exchange for a blanket, the lawsuit alleges. Unlike at other immigration detention facilities, lawyers say they can’t see their clients’ locations on regular ICE databases to confirm they are being held at Alligator Alcatraz. Lawyers say they have struggled to access their clients in person to exchange legal documents, meaning they sometimes miss key deadlines, the lawsuit says. In the new filing, detainees are asking the court to allow meaningful access to lawyers and to identify the court where they can challenge detentions at Alligator Alcatraz. Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said the facility is clean, meets federal detention standards and has a physical space for detainees to visit with their attorneys. Any allegations of inhumane conditions are false, she said. “No lawbreakers in the history of human civilization have been treated better than illegal aliens in the United States, and yet all they do is complain,” she said in a statement Wednesday.

CBS News [8/13/2025 6:48 PM, Kiki Intarasuwan, 51860K] reports New Mexico Gov. Lujan Grisham has declared a state of emergency in the city of Española and nearby areas in response to what she calls "a significant surge" in violent crime and drug trafficking. The governor’s order, which also covers the area of Rio Arriba County, Santa Clara and Ohkay Owingeh, authorizes $750,000 in emergency funding for the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management to provide resources to those community, Grisham said in a news release on Wednesday. Grisham cited police calls in Española and surrounding areas having more than doubled in the past two years, with police dispatches to businesses also quadrupling. Rio Arriba County has the highest overdose death rate in the state, the governor said. It is just north of Santa Fe County and east of Taos County, and is also home to Abiquiu, most famous for being the home of Georgia O’Keeffe. The AP [8/13/2025 8:39 PM, Morgan Lee, 56000K] reports that the emergency declaration by Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham makes $750,000 available in response to calls by local governments and tribal officials in Rio Arriba County for reinforcements against violent crime as well as other crime and hardships associated with illicit drugs. The vast area stretches from the city of Española, 25 miles (40 kilometers) north of Santa Fe, to the Colorado state line and has long been afflicted by opioid use and high drug-overdose death rates, with homeless encampments emerging in recent years in more populated areas. "The surge in criminal activity has contributed to increased homelessness, family instability and fatal drug overdoses, placing extraordinary strain on local governments and police departments that have requested immediate state assistance," Lujan Grisham said in a statement. In April, Lujan Grisham declared a state of emergency in New Mexico’s largest city, Albuquerque, saying that a significant increase in crime in Albuquerque warrants the help of the New Mexico National Guard. There were no immediate calls for troop deployments in Rio Arriba County, though the new emergency declaration allows for authorities to call up the National Guard.

NBC News [8/13/2025 5:03 PM, Suzanne Gamboa, 44540K] reports the Trump administration’s expanded ban on immigrants’ access to social services, such as Head Start and Meals on Wheels, could have a "devastating" impact on children of immigrants, including U.S. citizens, hundreds of opponents told the federal government Wednesday. A total of 372 organizations have coalesced to oppose the administration’s decision to make more federally funded health and human service programs off-limits to immigrants with some form of permission to be in the country. The groups say the administration wrongly promotes the expanded restrictions as part of its efforts to target illegal immigration. The policy actually "directly targets lawfully present immigrants" by turning early learning centers, community health centers and mental health and addiction treatment programs "into immigration checkpoints" where providers would have to check a person’s immigration status, according to the groups. The deadline for public comment on the new restrictions was set for 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.

Bloomberg Government [8/13/2025 6:02 PM, Ellen M. Gilmer, 111K] reports the Department of Homeland Security scrapped another contract with an employee union, the latest hit on federal worker rights as agencies cancel collective bargaining agreements in the name of national security. Officials for the American Federation of Government Employees Local 918, which represents employees in DHS’s Federal Protective Service and chemical security inspectors at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, received notice late last week that their contract was canceled, according to a memo obtained by Bloomberg Government.

Breitbart [8/13/2025 2:55 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 3077K] reports Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) apparently believes that President Donald Trump is leading the U.S. into "civil war" for delivering on his promises — namely, cracking down on illegal immigration. Waters made the remarks upon visiting the Metropolitan Detention Center and Department of Homeland Security Field Office in Los Angeles, California, on Monday. She was not alone, as Democrat Reps. Brad Sherman, Judy Chu, and Jimmy Gomez also went. And they did, in fact, get to tour the facility. Despite that, Waters believes that Trump is attempting to lead the country into civil war for cracking down on illegal immigration — a very basic campaign promise that Americans overwhelmingly voted for in the 2024 presidential election. "Words mean nothing, actions mean everything. Watch this, watch it very closely, ask a lot of questions. Focus those cameras on everything that is going on, because this president is trying to lead us into what could be called a civil war," the 86-year-old congresswoman — who turns 87 this week — ranted. This is not the first time Waters has used such rhetoric. In March, Waters stated that she was "worried that Trump is on the edge of creating a civil war.” "He alluded to it more than once. He alluded to the fact that if he did not get re-elected, there could be a civil war," Waters said at the time.’

Washington Examiner [8/13/2025 3:30 PM, Jenny Goldsberry, 1934K] reports Rep. Maxine Waters’s (D-CA) prediction of a "civil war" in the United States was rebuffed by the White House and the Department of Homeland Security. Waters visited the Metropolitan Detention Center and DHS Field Office in Los Angeles, California, on Aug. 10 with her colleagues, Reps. Brad Sherman (D-CA), Judy Chu (D-CA), and Jimmy Gomez (D-CA). "Focus those cameras on everything that’s going on because this president is trying to lead us into what could be called the civil war," Waters said in a press conference following the tour. DHS clarified in a statement to the Washington Examiner that the B-18 field office visited by the House members "is a processing center where illegal aliens are briefly processed to be transferred to an ICE detention facility," where "no individual was detained for 12 days at a processing center.” DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin responded to complaints from the members that the center was "sanitized" before their visit. "Now, politicians are complaining about [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] processing facilities being TOO CLEAN. I guess they were just shocked that allegations they have all peddled about bugs in food, lack of proper medical care, and lack of quality water were FALSE," McLaughlin said. "The truth is most ICE facilities have higher detention standards than most U.S. prisons that hold actual U.S. citizens. Ensuring the safety, security, and well-being of individuals in our custody is a top priority at ICE.” McLaughing credited the new ICE facilities in Florida and Indiana for preventing "overcrowding.”

FOX News [8/13/2025 1:57 PM, Deirdre Heavey, 46878K] reports that New York City’s Democratic mayoral nominee, Zohran Mamdani, brought his anti-Trump campaign swing to Staten Island on Wednesday, blasting President Donald Trump’s signature immigration reform agenda. Trump was once again front-and-center in the race for Gracie Mansion on Wednesday as Mamdani continued his "Five Boroughs Against Trump" tour at the Istanbul Bay Authentic Mediterranean Restaurant on Staten Island. "As we gather here on an island, where nearly 1 in 4 were born outside of this country, an island where 30% of its residents speak a language other than English, it’s an island that we know is not immune from this horrific crackdown. We are seeing from the Trump administration. We are seeing it and feeling it," Mamdani said. "And we know that it has nothing to do with safety. It has to do with punishment." While Trump campaigned for president last year on securing the border and deporting illegal immigrants, Mamdani is campaigning for mayor this year on protecting New York immigrant communities amid Trump’s deportation rollout. Joined by Staten Island District Staten Island District Leader, Jasmine Robinson, Immigration Rights Activist, Yesenia Matas, and President of the Staten Island Democratic Association, Ali Ansari, Mamdani focused Wednesday’s event on Trump’s "horrific attacks on New York City’s immigrant communities" in which he continues to "rip New Yorkers off the street without due process." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Axios [8/14/2025 4:49 AM, Brittany Gibson and Marc Caputo, 13599K] reports Corey Lewandowski doesn’t want to clock out of his temporary government gig. So, administration officials believe, he’s avoiding clocking in. Lewandowski, a longtime and controversial Trump adviser, is wielding outsized influence at the Department of Homeland Security as a "special government employee" whose work is supposed to be temporary. But administration officials tell Axios they believe Lewandowski — a constant presence with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who acts as her de facto chief of staff — has gamed the system by undercounting his work hours to avoid leaving his unpaid job when he should have. White House officials began monitoring Lewandowski’s time at work in recent weeks, Axios has learned. On July 3, the White House Counsel’s Office issued a memo reminding SGEs of the 130-day limit and included guidance on how workdays are to be computed. A White House official said the memo was issued "government wide," and "not directed to any specific individual." After the memo was sent, sources say, the White House Counsel’s Office and the counsel for DHS had discussions about the nature of Lewandowski’s work at DHS. Two sources with knowledge of Lewandowski’s work said he has been seen entering government buildings with other employees to avoid swiping his own badge. That way, he could work without clocking in. They said he doesn’t always use his government email or phone number for official business, avoiding digital paper trails on government systems. Those observations were relayed to White House officials, one of whom told Axios: "We’re hearing that Corey’s doing everything — failing to swipe in, working from home, whatever — to undercount his days. It’s fair to say his work is being watched now." "Mr. Lewandowski’s time is kept by a career DHS employee who submits the paperwork on a biweekly basis," another White House official said.

ABC News [8/13/2025 7:14 AM, Diana Paulsen, 31733K] reports Department of Homeland Security (DHS) social media feeds have seen major tone and style shifts since President Donald Trump returned to office in January, prompting criticism from some artists and musicians. On X, the department regularly tweets out mugshots of arrested immigrants to their 1.7 million followers, interspersed with memes and art depicting classic Americana. On July 1, the department posted an image of the late artist Thomas Kinkade’s painting "Morning Pledge," which depicts an idyllic small-town American street at sunrise, with the caption "Protect the Homeland." The Kinkade Family Foundation responded to the X post in a statement on their website. "The use of his artwork was unauthorized, and we have requested that DHS remove the post, and we are consulting with our counsel on our options," they wrote. "At The Kinkade Family Foundation, we strongly condemn the sentiment expressed in the post and the deplorable actions that DHS continues to carry out." As of publication, the post is still up. On Instagram, where the pages for DHS, CBP, and ICE have a combined audience of over a million followers, there has been a focus on short video content. In the seven months since former South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem was sworn in as DHS secretary, the department has posted 167 instagram reels. That’s more than the Biden administration posted in the entire year of 2023. The department’s Instagram posts have taken on a very different tone to its X ones, interspersing highly produced recruitment videos scored by rock and rap music with humorous videos using the "audios" popular on TikTok and Reels. In its response to ABC News’ request for comment, the department did not address questions about use of copyrighted material or artists’ objections. "The Department of Homeland Security is bypassing the mainstream media to give Americans the facts, debunk the lies, and unapologetically celebrate our homeland, heritage, and the rule of law," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. "We are pleased that the media is highlighting DHS’s historic successes in making America safe again.".

The Hill [8/13/2025 10:15 AM, Dominick Mastrangelo, 18649K] reports the creators of "South Park" released an alternative ending to a recent episode making fun of Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem after she called the show’s depiction of her "lazy." The show published a clip on the social platform X showing an animated Noem walking into a pet store, taking out a gun and firing several shots while dogs yelped. "Didn’t see this on TV?" the show asked. "Here’s the Paramount+ version of the end credits scene.” Noem took heat in 2024 for describing how she killed a dog she owned after a family hunting trip, details she revealed in her memoir. The "South Park" post came in lieu of a new episode Wednesday. The show has taken direct aim at President Trump and his allies with its first several episodes of this season, mocking Noem in its most recent episode, making fun of her appearance and the immigration operations conducted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "It’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look. Only the liberals and the extremists do that," Noem said, responding to last week’s episode. "If they wanted to criticize my job, go ahead and do that, but clearly they can’t, they just pick something petty like that.”

Reported similarly:
NewsMax [8/13/2025 1:07 PM, Nicole Weatherholtz, 4622K]

Reuters [8/13/2025 8:16 PM, Alvaro Murillo, 51390K] reports Costa Rica will begin construction this year on a new maximum-security prison inspired by the El Salvador mega-prison at the center of that country’s crackdown on crime, Costa Rica’s Justice Minister Gerald Campos said on Wednesday. Costa Rica, long considered to be the safest nation in Central America, is grappling with a wave of homicides that have been attributed to drug gang violence. In 2023, it registered its highest-ever homicide rate, and opinion polls rank insecurity as the public’s top concern, positioning the issue as a central theme for national elections coming in 2026. The Salvadoran government is providing technical assistance for the project, Campos said. The new prison is necessary because current facilities are nearly 30% overpopulated, creating conditions that allow incarcerated leaders to continue running criminal enterprises, he said. "If we don’t do this, the system is going to collapse, and we risk internal conflicts, hostage taking, and riots," Campos told a congressional committee. The new facility, named the Center for High Containment of Organized Crime (CACCO), has been designed to hold 5,100 inmates, increasing Costa Rica’s prison capacity by 40%. The government has budgeted the project at $35 million, with Campos saying El Salvador collaborated on blueprints and security technology. Specific details of the project have been declared confidential. The model for the new prison, El Salvador’s 40,000-inmate Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT), is the centerpiece of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s war on gangs. While Bukele’s crackdown is credited with a sharp drop in El Salvador’s murder rate, human rights organizations report abuses within CECOT, describing inhumane conditions and deaths within the prison. El Salvador’s government denies those allegations.

Federalist [8/13/2025 6:00 AM, Helen Raleigh, 1142K] reports in a troubling case unfolding in California, police have removed 21 children from a couple with connections to China. This complicated situation highlights profound ethical, moral, and legal dilemmas that demand our attention. The couple at the center of this case is Silvia Zhang, 38, and Guojun Xuan, 65. Originally from China, they became naturalized U.S. citizens and now reside in a sprawling multimillion-dollar mansion in a suburb of Los Angeles. Zhang has a daughter from a previous marriage. She and Xuan have been having children through surrogacy since 2021. Zhang operated a surrogacy agency called Mark Surrogacy from their mansion. The agency purportedly marketed itself as an institution assisting American and international couples struggling to conceive through surrogacy. However, investigations revealed a startling truth: The only couple the agency served was Zhang and Xuan themselves. They are the biological parents of 21 children born through surrogacy. Of these children, fifteen lived with them in the mansion under the care of a few nannies, while friends and family supposedly looked after the other six in different locations. Mark Surrogacy’s sham operation would have continued if not for one of the children, a two-month-old infant, who had to be rushed to the hospital in May. After hospital staff determined the infant exhibited signs of child abuse, they contacted social services and the police. Police searched Zhang and Xuan’s mansion and found 15 children, none of whom is more than three years old. The police also uncovered home surveillance videos showing that some children were "subjected to physical and emotional abuse" by their nannies. Therefore, the police removed all children and put them under foster care. The revelations surrounding Mark Surrogacy have left many of the surrogate mothers in a state of disbelief and anger. "It was kind of like they preyed on my vulnerability, being a first-time surrogate," Kayla Elliott told CBS News. "We were lied to about so much, that I mean it’s disgusting." Compounding this injustice is the fact that two surrogate mothers are currently pregnant with the couple’s children, unsure if their babies will be placed into the foster care system. Some of these mothers are contemplating legal action against Zhang and Xuan. Additionally, the couple is entangled in two lawsuits from former employees of their real estate business, raising further questions about their integrity.

The Hill [8/13/2025 1:00 PM, William Liang, 18649K] reports President Trump this week moved from rhetoric to action in his push for more federal control of Washington, D.C. Citing a "public safety emergency," he is deploying National Guard troops to support federal officers already in place, taking direct control of the city’s police department under a provision of the 1973 Home Rule Act, and pledging to "get rid of the slums.” Democrats’ reaction has been swift and condemnatory. They cast the move as the latest instance of his authoritarian overreach. "This is what dictators do," California Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed on X. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said the move had "no basis in law." The New York Times ran the headline: "Trump threatens federal takeover of Washington after Member of DOGE is Assaulted." In reality, the Constitution not only allows this but anticipates federal intervention in the capital’s affairs, at least in some circumstances. That’s because the District of Columbia was created precisely so that the seat of government would not depend on any state for its security, funding or order.

Houston Chronicle [8/13/2025 5:44 PM, Staff, 1982K] reports regarding "‘Even Texas doesn’t really want this’: Dreamers can stay, but they can’t work | Opinion,"(Aug. 8): Please call your U.S. representative to support The American Dream and Promise Act of 2025. It is a bipartisan legislative proposal to provide a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers who are undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children. Passing this legislation is one, if not the only, way to fix the travesty that could cause the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program recipients of Texas to lose their work permits and driver’s licenses. The bill is currently still in the judiciary committee. Many of these young people have university degrees or are working to get them. They are employed in jobs that contribute to our economy. We can’t allow our Texas Dreamers to be unfairly singled out. My experience with DACA Dreamers began with a student who asked me to help her get home internet and computer access in 2013. This was one of my talents as a school librarian. Home access brought her grades back up. This student was well-respected. She was captain of her basketball team, while also working 20 to 25 hours a week to help support her family. She was accepted to Texas A&M University but didn’t attend because the 2016 election caused A&M to rescind their DACA-friendly grant program. For years, she attended Houston Community College until she finally made the move to the University of Houston. She got some student aid, but also worked two jobs to cover tuition, which meant it took her until just last year to graduate. I was able to offer her some financial help. I saw it as an investment. She graduated from the school of engineering, summa cum laude, and now works in IT. I cried during the ceremony.

(B) CNN News Central [8/13/2025 1:30 PM, Staff] reports that as the speed and scale of ICE deportation flights skyrocket, the airplanes carrying the detainees are now harder than ever to track. There have been more than 1,000 deportation flights since President Trump took office. A few months ago, major companies that are flying the ICE flights for the federal government have started requesting that their tail numbers be hidden. Private aviation companies are operating the majority of these ICE flights with a small number of military flights.

Washington Post [8/13/2025 1:37 PM, Ben Brasch, 32099K] reports that the Trump administration must improve conditions at a Lower Manhattan immigration holding facility where a government lawyer acknowledges detainees are sleeping on the floor, a federal judge ruled Tuesday. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is packing detainees into a holding area without beds, showers or medical support, according to a class-action lawsuit filed by the ACLU on behalf of detainees. For more than a week, people go to sleep each night on a concrete floor next to toilets without medication nor a way to bathe, and they receive “at most only two small meals a day,” attorneys for the detainees wrote. Conditions in the holding area in a federal building at 26 Federal Plaza became widely known after a video from inside the facility was released last month by the New York Immigration Coalition, an advocacy group. The video showed rooms packed with people sleeping on aluminum blankets on the facility’s floor. Judge Lewis A. Kaplan of the Southern District of New York ordered Tuesday that holding rooms must have at least 50 square feet per person, be cleaned three times a day and have a clean bedding mat for each detainee. The lawsuit names ICE, the Department of Homeland Security and four top officials at those agencies as defendants. “This order and this lawsuit are driven by complete fiction about 26 Federal Plaza,” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Wednesday in an email to The Washington Post. She added, “Any claim of subprime conditions at ICE facilities are categorically false.” DHS will appeal the order, she said, and “ICE enforcement operations will continue at full speed.”

New York Times [8/14/2025 3:27 AM, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, 330K] reports a federal judge ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to swiftly remedy conditions inside migrant holding cells in New York City where detainees have complained of squalid and overcrowded conditions. The judge, Lewis A. Kaplan, ordered the Immigration and Customs Enforcement to hold fewer people in the 10th-floor holding cells of its Lower Manhattan offices at 26 Federal Plaza. ICE has been accused of detaining dozens of migrants for days or weeks there in tight quarters meant to hold detainees for just a few hours. The judge also ordered ICE to allow migrants to place calls to their lawyers and to ensure access to proper medical and hygienic care following allegations that detainees were deprived of showers, given meager meals and forced to sleep on the concrete floor without any bedding. The ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed in Manhattan federal court on Friday by legal organizations representing a Peruvian immigrant, Sergio Alberto Barco Mercado, who was arrested by ICE and held at 26 Federal Plaza last week. Judge Kaplan issued a temporary restraining order while he fully reviews the case and considers whether to issue a longer-lasting order. ICE has repeatedly denied that the cells at 26 Federal Plaza are overcrowded or that conditions are inadequate, and indicated on Wednesday that it would appeal the judge’s order. The ruling is a short-term victory for immigration activists who have spent months denouncing the conditions in the holding cells. They have filled up as ICE has increased arrests in New York’s immigration courts, straining the agency’s detention capacity. Many of the more than 3,200 people ICE has arrested in the New York City area since Jan. 20, when President Trump’s second term began, have been detained at 26 Federal Plaza at some point, according to new federal data released this week. The holding cells emerged as a flashpoint this summer, as migrants shared details of overcrowding so severe that some of them slept sitting upright or on the floor by the toilets, which filled the cells with a “horrific stench,” according to the lawsuit. A cellphone video recorded by a detainee last month offered the first glimpse of the conditions, escalating criticism by congressional Democrats who have been denied access to inspect the cells. The lawsuit argued that ICE was violating its own policies and the Constitution by holding detainees in the cells for longer than 72 hours and by depriving access to lawyers. The legal groups representing Mr. Barco Mercado are: the American Civil Liberties Union; the New York Civil Liberties Union; Make the Road New York, an immigrant advocacy group; and Wang Hecker, a law firm.

Daily Wire [8/13/2025 5:22 PM, Leif Le Mahieu, 3816K] reports ICE arrested on Tuesday an illegal alien who raped and sodomized his 9-year-old stepdaughter, the agency told The Daily Wire. The Department of Homeland Security released the names of five more criminal illegal aliens, whom it referred to as "the worst of the worst." The arrests came as the Trump administration has ramped up deportation efforts, and ICE has faced protests from Democratic lawmakers and leftist activists. One of the men arrested was Michael Kabiona, an illegal alien from the Democratic Republic of the Congo who was convicted of sexual conduct against a child. "Thanks to ICE, this depraved pedophile is not in our communities to hurt and victimize more children," Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Daily Wire. "It’s disgusting that ICE law enforcement is experiencing a 1000% increase in assaults against them while they are removing creeps like this who commit unforgivable crimes against children. Our ICE agents are heroes, end of story.” Kabiona was convicted in 2015 for raping and sodomizing his 9-year-old stepdaughter over a two-year period, according to Erie County, New York, prosecutors. He was sentenced to just 12 years in prison, much less than the maximum 25 years he faced. Kabiona was convicted after testimony from the young girl whom he victimized. The victim was left with chronic injuries to her genitalia. He first came to America as a refugee, his lawyer said after the trial, claiming that the whole incident was a "shame" because Kabiona "fought for so long to get here from a war-torn country.”

The Washington Post [8/14/2025 5:01 AM, Dana Munro and Erin Cox, 32099K] reports two weeks after most of Maryland’s congressional delegation staged a sit-in at a controversial immigration enforcement facility in Baltimore, lawmakers returned for a guided tour on Wednesday and said they were still being stonewalled about how detainees are being treated inside. “We leave here with more questions than we came in with,” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-Maryland). Immigration Customs and Enforcement officers have been using rooms in the agency’s Baltimore field office as a holding area for people arrested amid President Donald Trump’s ramped-up immigration enforcement. In Maryland, where a 2021 state law bars privately run immigration detention centers, the field office functions as the agency’s primary holding facility for detainees awaiting transfer out of state. Civil rights groups have filed lawsuits in three states — including Maryland — alleging the holding facilities are not equipped for days-long detentions. And as arrests have increased, so too have concerns from immigrant rights groups and Democrats about a lack of adequate facilities. Worries about conditions in the Baltimore holding facility and other ICE detention facilities prompted a dozen Democratic lawmakers from across the country, including Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland), to file a federal lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security and ICE last month, saying each had been blocked from conducting oversight at federal detention facilities. That lawsuit came two days after six members of Maryland’s congressional delegation tried to visit the Baltimore field office, only to be turned away. At the time, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said that “these Members of Congress could have just scheduled a tour; instead, they’re running to court to drive clicks and fundraising emails.” Mfume said the lawmakers did request a visit in advance. Earlier this summer, DHS tightened rules for congressional oversight visits, arguing field offices — such as the one in Baltimore — fall outside congressional purview to inspect detention facilities. Three Democratic lawmakers representing Maryland — Mfume, Sen. Chris Van Hollen and Rep. Sarah Elfreth — returned Wednesday after ICE reached out and the parties scheduled a visit. During the tour, the three lawmakers said, they were able to observe three large rooms and two small ones, which held a handful of people. CBS Baltimore [8/13/2025 5:53 PM, JT Moodee Lockman and Janay Reece, 51860K] Video: HERE reports Wednesday’s tour comes after a federal class-action lawsuit criticized the conditions at the George H. Fallon federal building. ICE has denied those allegations, saying the agency is "committed to enforcing immigration laws fairly, safely and humanely," and complies with federal laws and ICE policies. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen and U.S. Representatives Kweisi Mfume and Sarah Elfreth participated in a guided tour of the facility on Wednesday morning. The group said they left with more questions after being denied the opportunity to speak with detainees and being told that ICE officials would get back to them with answers. "We leave here with more questions than we came in with, and it was that way the last time we were here," Mfume said. "They’ve promised to get back to us on at least 20, 25 issues that have come up.” "We just want answers, we want the truth, the facts, and we want to find a way to make sure that’s public and transparent," he added. According to Van Hollen, the group was told they could not talk to detainees at the ICE facility under Maryland law. However, the senator said the state law that the agency referred to does not prohibit members of Congress from talking with detainees. "Clearly, they don’t want us talking to the people who are detained here today or in the future," he said.

CBS Baltimore [8/13/2025 5:53 PM, JT Moodee Lockman and Janay Reece, 51860K] Video: HERE a group of Maryland lawmakers toured a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Baltimore on Wednesday after they were denied a visit in late July. A spokesperson for the agency said the lawmakers initially arrived without giving advanced notice and were denied a tour for the safety of those in custody and ICE employees. Wednesday’s tour comes after a federal class-action lawsuit criticized the conditions at the George H. Fallon federal building. ICE has denied those allegations, saying the agency is "committed to enforcing immigration laws fairly, safely and humanely," and complies with federal laws and ICE policies. U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen and U.S. Representatives Kweisi Mfume and Sarah Elfreth participated in a guided tour of the facility on Wednesday morning. The group said they left with more questions after being denied the opportunity to speak with detainees and being told that ICE officials would get back to them with answers. "We leave here with more questions than we came in with, and it was that way the last time we were here," Mfume said. "They’ve promised to get back to us on at least 20, 25 issues that have come up.” "We just want answers, we want the truth, the facts, and we want to find a way to make sure that’s public and transparent," he added. According to Van Hollen, the group was told they could not talk to detainees at the ICE facility under Maryland law. However, the senator said the state law that the agency referred to does not prohibit members of Congress from talking with detainees. "Clearly, they don’t want us talking to the people who are detained here today or in the future," he said.

FOX News [8/14/2025 2:32 AM, Landon Mion, 46878K] reports Immigration and Customs Enforcement said on Wednesday that an illegal migrant was detained in Washington, D.C., after he was stopped by agents and subsequently motioned that he would harm himself with a butcher knife. Jimmy Anderson Ayala Mayuri, of Peru, was stopped by federal officers on Wednesday as he was driving his food truck in the nation’s capital, according to ICE. "Capital city cleanup continues!" ICE wrote on X. "Illegal Peruvian alien Jimmy Anderson Ayala Mayuri presented a large butcher knife to federal officers and motioned that he’d harm himself with it when we stopped his food truck on National Park Service property in D.C. today," the post continued. ICE said the man briefly barricaded himself in the truck before he was apprehended. He will be detained until a deportation decision is made, according to the agency. This comes after President Donald Trump’s recent move to increase the presence of federal law enforcement in Washington in an effort to cut down on crime in the district, although the mayor has said crime had already been on the decline in the city. The federal takeover of D.C. would also include the deployment of the National Guard and the U.S. Justice Department taking control of the city’s police department. The arrest on Wednesday also comes amid the Trump administration’s mass deportation policies targeting migrants in cities across the country.

CNN [8/13/2025 6:00 AM, Rene March and Renée Rigdon, 21433K] reports amid the hubbub of passengers and planes shuttling in and out of the international airport in Richmond, Virginia, each week there’s also a steady stream of flights bearing men and women in handcuffs. Last week, CNN was there to see some of these passengers — detainees in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement — being unloaded from unmarked white vans, lined up under the wing of a Boeing 737. One by one, some 50 detainees were told to board the aircraft. According to data from immigrant advocacy group Witness at the Border, Richmond is one of about 70 domestic hubs that the Trump administration has used as stoppage points for ICE flights that shuttle detainees in its custody between detention centers around the country, with the goal of eventually deporting them. As President Donald Trump moves to remove as many as 1 million immigrants a year from the US, putting more detainees on more airplanes, and with more frequency, has become a key feature of carrying out that endeavor. Though flights have been a part of US immigration operations for years, the speed and scale of the ICE program today is unprecedented. Since Trump’s inauguration, there have been more than 1,000 deportation flights to other countries, up 15% over the January to July period last year, according to Witness at the Border. The flights are operated by a mix of private charter companies and at least one commercial airline, who are subcontractors to ICE, with a smaller portion carried out by military aircrafts. But recently, experts have noticed a new trend. Beginning in March, major companies operating the flights began requesting that their tail numbers — identifiers for planes akin to license plates on cars — be removed from public flight-tracking websites, according to Ian Petchenik of Flightradar24, one such website. This means that even as more flights are carrying ICE detainees, they have become much harder to track, raising accountability concerns.

FOX News [8/13/2025 11:00 AM, Charles Creitz, 46878K] reports three new states have signed agreements of varying intensity and substance, with one governor 1,700 miles away from Mexico saying his is effectively a "border state" due to its major fentanyl crisis. On Wednesday, West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey will announce one of the most wide-ranging agreements a state has forged with ICE yet, enlisting the West Virginia State Police, Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation and National Guard to aid immigration enforcement through the "287(g)" authority heralded by President Donald Trump. West Virginia has long ranked among the states with the highest rates of drug-related deaths, a crisis that Morrisey says underscores the need to work with ICE to combat fentanyl trafficking. "Under the Biden administration, millions of people poured into our country unlawfully and we had no knowledge about who they were, or whether they were a threat to our nation," Morrisey told Fox News Digital ahead of his expected Wednesday mid-morning announcement in Parkersburg. "West Virginia became an effective ‘border state’ due to the massive fentanyl problem caused by illegal immigration," he said. The National Guard and state police will have "task force" authority to interrogate any person believed to be an illegal immigrant as to his right to remain in the U.S. – under the supervision or direction of the feds. Farther west, South Dakota Gov. Larry Rhoden recently announced cooperation with ICE to a lesser extent with his "Operation Prairie Thunder" public safety crackdown. Rhoden, who rose to the governorship upon the departure of now-Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, announced earlier this month that Operation Prairie Thunder would be a "comprehensive, targeted public safety initiative" in the state – with a focus on the Sioux Falls metro area. In Arkansas, a state law took effect this week that increases penalties for illegal immigrants committing "serious felonies involving violence," among other stipulations. The "Defense Against Criminal Illegals Act," signed by Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, also allowed Arkansas sheriffs to engage with ICE. It allows law enforcement to apply via 287(g) to be authorized to serve immigration warrants on illegal immigrants already in custody for other offenses. Those states join Florida and Wyoming, the first two to sign substantive 287(g) agreements with ICE.

FOX News [8/13/2025 9:02 AM, Rachel Wolf, 46878K] reports the small town of Mason, Tenn., has approved plans to turn a former prison into a migrant detention facility. CoreCivic, a private company, is set to operate the site following the approval of its contract, the Associated Press reported. The facility, which is now slated for conversion into a migrant detention center, was shuttered in 2021 after then-President Joe Biden ordered the Justice Department to halt the renewal of contracts with private detention facilities. On Jan. 20, President Donald Trump rescinded Biden’s order. The Tuesday night meeting was attended by dozens of protesters and the scene frequently devolved into shouting matches, according to Fox 13 Memphis. Mason Vice Mayor Reynaldo Givhan told the outlet that while he voted in favor of CoreCivic, he "really had to do some soul searching" and ultimately decided to abstain from the second vote, which concerned ICE’s contract. Census data shows that Mason has a population of just 1,337 and has a median household income of just over $47,000. Mason Mayor Eddie Noeman told Action News 5, an NBC affiliate, that the town saw this as a business opportunity and that it has "nothing to do with" anything going on inside the facility. The mayor, who is an Egyptian-American immigrant, also said that he is "looking for the best interest of the town," which in his view is to bring back jobs. However, some of the townspeople’s ire may be because CoreCivic has faced $44.7 million in fines across multiple prisons, with the latest case happening in February, but it has had problems since 2022, including understaffing violations, the Associated Press reported. The outlet said it had reviewed documents showing that the company spent over $4.4 million to settle 80 lawsuits and out-of-court complaints about mistreatment, which included at least 22 inmate deaths. "Thanks to Governor Braun for his partnership to help remove the worst of the worst out of our country. If you are in America illegally, you could find yourself in Indiana’s Speedway Slammer. Avoid arrest and self deport now using the CBP Home App," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a statement.

Reported similarly:
AP [8/13/2025 7:35 AM, Adrian Sainz, 56000K]
Washington Examiner [8/13/2025 11:31 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 1934K]

Univision [8/13/2025 5:41 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports the small town of Mason, Tennessee, approved a vote of local officials Tuesday to convert the former Western Detention Facility into a federal immigration detention center. The new prison will be operated by the private company CoreCivic Inc., despite complaints from local residents and at least one city council member. Mayor Eddie Noeman justified the transformation by saying it will help create jobs for Mason, a town of just 1,300 people about 40 miles northeast of Memphis. There was no information on when the detention facility will reopen.

Detroit Free Press [8/13/2025 3:15 PM, Niraj Warikoo, 4241K] reports Catholic leaders in Michigan and U.S. House Rep. Shri Thanedar, D-Detroit, met Tuesday, Aug. 12, for one hour with leaders of the Detroit field office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), pressing them to improve how they treat immigrants. "It was an open discussion where we expressed continued concern for how ICE at times prioritizes its arrests and the fear that has been created in communities in the last few months, which was not there before," the Rev. David Buersmeyer, a Catholic priest who is the chaplain for Strangers No Longer, a Catholic group in metro Detroit that advocates for immigrants, told the Free Press. The meeting was held at the headquarters for ICE Detroit and organized by Thanedar, who was at the discussion along with some of his staffers, three other members of Strangers No Longer that included two Catholic sisters, and several ICE Detroit leaders, including Kevin Raycraft, the acting field office Director for ICE Detroit. Thanedar called for "basic human decency or fair treatment of migrants within Detroit." During Tuesday’s meeting, participants expressed their concerns, Thanedar said. "We were able to have a long conversation," the representative told the Free Press. "We asked questions, we expressed our concerns about the issues, and we demanded some answers, and we talked about a few specific cases." It was "a meaningful dialog with the ICE field officers" and Strangers No Longer, he said.

FOX News [8/13/2025 7:52 AM, Ryan Gaydos, 46878K] reports the mother of former WNBA player Sophie Brunner was identified as the victim of a head-on collision involving an illegal immigrant, Illinois officials said on Tuesday. Darcy Connolly-Brunner, 61, and Rolando Ico-Choc, 30, both died when Ico-Choc drove his Nissan Altima crossed the center line on Illinois Route 26 in Stephenson County into Connolly-Brunner’s Ford Edge on Aug. 9, Stephenson County Sheriff Steve Stovall said at a press conference. Both were killed in the crash. Stovall said it was believed that Ico-Choc was a Guatemalan national who had lived in Freeport once before and that alcohol may have played a role in the crash, according to WIFR-TV. Stovall also revealed that Ico-Choc had a criminal past. Records show that he was charged with aggravated DUI with a license suspended or revoked in 2023. Officials said there was no indication that Connolly-Brunner was under the influence. Illinois state Sen. Andrew Chesney, R-Freeport, said Homeland Security officials confirmed with him that Ico-Choc was in the country illegally. He called for the repeal of the TRUST Act and the SAFE-T Act, which he said contributed to Ico-Choc being in the country in the first place. "Additionally, it was confirmed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that he was in this country illegally, having crossed the border a few years ago during the Biden administration. Yet, thanks to Illinois’ TRUST Act and the SAFE-T Act, he remained in this country and was free to get back behind the wheel of a car and kill an innocent woman. It’s unacceptable, and I am sickened by it."

Federal Newswire [8/13/2025 3:40 PM, Staff] reports in January 2025, Katie Abraham, a 20-year-old from Illinois, and her friend Chloe Polzin died in a hit-and-run crash in Urbana. Authorities say the driver, Julio Cucul-Bol, an undocumented immigrant from Guatemala, was charged with leaving the scene of a crash resulting in death, aggravated driving under the influence resulting in death, and reckless homicide. The Department of Justice also filed charges against Cucul-Bol for possession of false identification documents and making false statements on a bank application. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) released a video to honor Abraham’s life and share her story. This release coincided with Secretary Noem’s visit to Chicago to highlight recent arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) involving individuals described as serious offenders in sanctuary cities.

NBC News [8/14/2025 5:00 AM, Laura Strickler, Julia Ainsley, and Didi Martinez, 44540K] reports later this week, the Trump administration is set to open a sprawling new immigration detention facility at Fort Bliss in Texas that is slated to eventually become the largest in the nation. The opening comes after months of setbacks, including two investigations into possible improper bidding, two canceled contracts and, most recently, a death on the construction site. The facility, which will open with capacity to hold 1,000 people, is a key part of Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s moves to more than double the space it has nationwide to detain immigrants as the Trump administration pushes for more arrests and the agency prepares for a historic influx of cash. Once seen as the answer to ICE’s detention space crunch — after a previous attempt at an answer, the naval base at Guantánamo Bay, failed — Fort Bliss is now also an example of the complications that can arise when ICE scrambles to expand detention. The agency has been under intense pressure from White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and others in the Trump administration to quickly ramp up the number of immigrants it arrests. It is currently holding a record 60,000 immigrants in detention, according to an ICE official. And it is out of space. “It’s safe to say all ICE field offices are looking for more ICE detention space,” another ICE official told NBC News. In order to expand detention capacity, though, ICE needs money. And though the Republican tax and spending act known as the “One Big Beautiful Bill” provides $45 billion for that purpose, those dollars have not yet started to flow. Once they do, there may still be obstacles. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, under whose purview ICE falls, has instituted a new guideline at ICE that requires any expenditure over $100,000 to be personally approved by her, which may also slow new construction, according to a private prison industry executive. In a statement to NBC News about the approvals, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the department is “rooting out waste, fraud, abuse, and is reprioritizing appropriated dollars.” “Secretary Noem is delivering accountability to the U.S. taxpayer, which Washington bureaucrats have ignored for decades at the expense of American citizens,” McLaughlin said. But a current DHS official, three former DHS officials and the private prison industry executive all told NBC News that, while tent facilities are faster to build, they cost more in the long run. The federal government’s cost per immigrant in a typical brick and mortar single adult detention center is roughly $125-$165 per night, according to one of the former DHS officials and the private prison industry executive. But the cost per detainee in a tent facility can be more than double that because of the added expenses related to providing things like food, laundry, air conditioning and running water in the remote areas where tent facilities are being built.

Houston Chronicle [8/13/2025 10:58 AM, Julián Aguilar, 1982K] reports Deon Lewis has lived in the United States for more than three decades. Now he’s begging to be sent thousands of miles away. He’s not fleeing law enforcement, and he’s not orchestrating a self-imposed exile to protest the federal government. Instead, he and his attorneys said he’s clamoring to be sent back to his native Trinidad because of the chronic pain he’s suffering inside a federal immigration detention center in Houston, where he says no medication has been provided to treat sickle cell disease. "It’s only a matter of time before something really bad happens to me," he told the Houston Chronicle in an interview. "Why haven’t I been deported yet? I’ve been begging these people to deport me.” Lewis, 43, has been a legal permanent resident, or green card holder, since 1993. He was born with a disorder that disrupts blood flow, causes severe pain and can lead to organ damage and failure, or a stroke. He’s had lung surgery and used to have access to medication that helped him live as normal a life as possible. He’s been detained in Houston since June 30 after being held in a detention facility in Louisiana. Since he’s been in Texas, he’s been denied medication and has even passed out from the pain brought on by his disease, his attorneys said. In mid-July, he agreed to a stipulated order of removal, which relinquished his rights to appeal his deportation or ask a judge to review his case. He just wants out. "I’m not sure what’s going to happen, but I’m thinking that I’ll have a better chance of getting medical attention there than I am here," he said. A spokesperson for ICE in Houston said in a statement that federal officials provide medical care to all detainees, and that Lewis is an example of the criminals President Donald Trump promised to deport after taking office. "He is the definition of a threat to public safety and will remain in ICE custody until his removal can be carried out," the spokesperson said, listing Lewis’ arrest history on drug and gun charges.

New York Times [8/13/2025 10:21 PM, Edgar Sandoval, 138952K] reports a federal jury on Wednesday found a Texas couple who owns a bakery on the Texas-Mexico border guilty of harboring undocumented workers, months after their beloved shop became snared in President Trump’s aggressive immigration crackdown. Federal authorities had accused the couple, Leonardo Baez, a father of seven, and his wife, Nora Alicia Avila, both immigrants from Mexico and green card holders, of knowingly employing and giving shelter to undocumented workers. The case was one of the first brought against business owners as Immigration and Customs Enforcement was ramping up arrests of undocumented workers. On Wednesday, a jury in the border city of Brownsville, Texas, sided with the federal government after a three-day trial that pitted two pillars of the community in Los Fresno, a small border town, against the Trump administration and its immigration policies. In addition to the harboring charge, the couple was found guilty of conspiring to transport undocumented immigrants. Sentencing was set for November. The two face up to 10 years in prison and the loss of their legal status. Their “actions not only violate federal immigration laws but also exploit vulnerable individuals for profit,” said Craig Larrabee, the special agent in charge with Homeland Security Investigations in San Antonio, in a statement. “This conviction sends a clear message: those who engage in human smuggling and harboring for financial benefit will be investigated, prosecuted and held accountable.” Sylvia Gonzalez-Gorman, a political scientist and immigration expert at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, worried about the precedent for what she called a selective prosecution. “What is unsettling is that this case went to trial in the first place,” she said. “Historically, large corporations found employing undocumented immigrants have had fines levied against them, not potential incarceration.”

Breitbart [8/13/2025 8:37 AM, Bob Price, 3077K] reports federal authorities in Nebraska carried out a series of raids, leading to the arrest of a group of Indian nationals who were allegedly engaged in an elaborate scheme involving sex, labor, and drug trafficking. In addition to multiple businesses owned by the suspected traffickers in Nebraska, the scheme also involved companies in Georgia and Texas. In an announcement on Tuesday, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nebraska Lesley A. Woods reported the arrest of five Indian nationals and the unsealing of a 65-page indictment alleging that the suspects operated a series of hotels, motels, and "Brow and Lash" salons that were allegedly used to traffic other illegal aliens. The aliens were allegedly forced to provide labor and sex to pay for rooms in the hotels where they were forced to live, the indictment obtained by Breitbart Texas alleges. Arrests took place at 14 business locations and two homes associated with the suspects, a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed. The indictment alleges the trafficking of illegal aliens, sex trafficking, and drug trafficking. United States Attorney Lesley Woods said, "There is no evil greater than the evil that seeks to trap, oppress, and exploit human beings for profit or pleasure. Where that evil exists, Nebraska law enforcement working together at the federal, state, and local levels, as occurred in this case, will seek it, find it, root it out, and ensure every rescued victim has an opportunity to obtain justice and freedom from their captors." Investigators with the FBI and ICE Homeland Security Investigations rescued ten minors from an alleged labor trafficking conspiracy. The indictment describes a 12-year-old female who was forced to work as a housekeeper at one of the properties for long hours with little pay.

CBS Colorado [8/13/2025 6:09 PM, Jennifer McRae, 51860K] reports the sheriff of Mesa County in Western Colorado has filed a counter-lawsuit against Gov. Jared Polis and Attorney General Phil Weiser after the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainment of a 19-year-old Utah college student following a traffic stop earlier this summer. She was detained by ICE in Aurora for 15 days. Mesa County Sheriff Todd Rowell, Mesa County Undersheriff Matthew King, and Mesa County Sheriff’s Office Investigations and Special Teams Captain Curtis Brammer are plaintiffs in the lawsuit, Rowell et al. v. Weiser et al., which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Colorado on Aug. 7. They claim state immigration law is too vague. Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office, said in a statement Wednesday to CBS Colorado, "Colorado law is clear that law enforcement does law enforcement and not federal civil immigration enforcement. It’s unfortunate that Mesa County filed this lawsuit. The Department of Law has a responsibility to follow facts and defend and enforce state law. We’ll continue to take this duty seriously.” On June 5, Deputy Alexander Zwinck pulled over Caroline Dias Goncalves for allegedly following another vehicle too closely, and he let her go with a warning. Zwinck reportedly shared the personal information of Dias Goncalves, who is originally from Brazil, in a Signal chat, which included ICE officials, leading to her later detainment by ICE agents.[This track is repeated later. I think it makes more sense to remove this one.]. A few weeks ago, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser filed a lawsuit against a Mesa County sheriff’s deputy, who Weiser claims led federal immigration officers to a woman allegedly in the U.S. on an expired visa after a traffic stop. That deputy was allegedly using an encrypted Signal chat with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

NewsNation [8/13/2025 9:00 AM, Shaul Turner, 5801K] reports a new immigration detention center will open in Colorado as President Donald Trump strengthens his immigration enforcement plan. The new facility will open in Hudson, about 30 miles northeast of Denver, at a state prison that is currently closed. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tells FOX31 it has run out of room in the Aurora detention center after making more arrests so far this fiscal year than in all of 2024. The 1,250-bed facility in Hudson was privately owned and closed in 2014. It was operated by the GEO Group, which also runs ICE’s Aurora detention facility. Hudson has approximately 1,600 residents. NewsNation affiliate KDVR spoke with some who fully support the use of the closed prison as an ICE facility. "If they can use it for something good, then I’m good with that," said one resident. Others say they do not want to have an immigration detention facility near their homes. Those who support the use of the closed prison say ICE should utilize any resources that are available. An ICE spokesperson issued the following statement to KDVR. "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s enhanced enforcement operations and routine daily operations have resulted in a significant number of arrests of criminal aliens that require greater detention capacity. While we cannot confirm individual pre-decisional conversations, we can confirm that ICE is exploring all options to meet its current and future detention requirements."

Los Angeles Times [8/13/2025 6:02 PM, James Queally, 14672K] reports federal immigration agents arrested a man outside Los Angeles’ largest courthouse on Wednesday. Attorneys and court officials have warned such tactics will discourage people from attending court hearings and serving as witnesses. A man pleaded for help as federal agents carried him by his arms and legs away from Los Angeles’ largest criminal courthouse Wednesday morning, marking another instance of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement using a tactic that has been repeatedly condemned by the legal community. The man, identified by two sources and court records as Steven Rony Reyes, was charged late last month with possession of drugs with intent to sell. He was in court on Wednesday for a preliminary hearing, records show. Near the end of the video, it appears someone throws water at a federal law enforcement officer wearing a camouflage University of Alabama hat. It was not clear whether anyone else was arrested. The incident marked at least the second time ICE has conducted arrests at an L.A. County courthouse since the Trump administration launched raids targeting undocumented immigrants in Southern California.

San Francisco Chronicle [8/13/2025 3:33 PM, Jessica Flores, 4120K] reports federal immigration officers raided an East Oakland home on Tuesday and detained at least six people, including a minor and a person with a severe disability, according to an immigration attorney. ICE officers made the arrests at a home near 79th Avenue and Hillside Street on Tuesday morning after a person inside slightly opened the door, said Nikolas De Bremaeker, an attorney at Centro Legal de la Raza and the Alameda County Rapid Response Network. Six people, including a 17-year-old, from multiple Central American countries were arrested and taken to the ICE field office in San Francisco. Some of them were siblings, De Bremaeker said. It was not immediately known if the detainees had any criminal histories, he said. De Bremaeker condemned ICE officials for detaining the 17-year-old at its field office because he said it does not meet the criterion of the Flores Settlement Agreement, which established decades-long standards for detaining children in safe and sanitary facilities. De Bremaeker said the minor was taken to a hotel late Tuesday night but was brought back to an ICE field office Wednesday morning. The child remained at the field office on Wednesday morning despite De Bremaeker alerting ICE officials of the Flores Settlement Agreement’s standards and being told that the child would be transferred to another location, De Bremaeker said.

CBS Los Angeles [8/14/2025 1:16 AM, Laurie Perez, 51860K] reports the presiding judge of the LA County Superior Court denounced Immigration and Customs Enforcement after agents arrested a man after his hearing in downtown. "I am deeply disturbed by such actions," Presiding Judge Sergio C. Tapia II said in a statement. "These intimidating and unnecessary displays undermine public trust in the justice system, deter people from seeking justice, and send a dangerous message to immigrant communities that they are not safe to fully and freely participate in the legal process.” A video of the arrest showed the name, Stephen Reyes, screaming for help as immigration agents picked him up by his arms and legs before placing him in an unmarked car. Reyes had just attended a preliminary hearing on drug charges after police arrested him last month. The Alternate Public Defender’s Office, which represents Reyes, called the arrest a violent abduction that threatened the "integrity of the court system.” "It shocks the conscience to see any human violently abducted by a gang of mostly masked unidentified individuals," APD’s spokesperson wrote in a statement. "Such aggressive ICE abductions threaten the integrity of the court system and discourage participation.” Defense attorneys, such as Lou Shapiro, stated that similar immigration operations encourage people to miss their court dates. "They’re afraid just to come to court to show progress on community service, because they realize that could result in a trip to Mexico instead," said Shapiro. "It’s sad because people feel that there’s no hope. That nothing good can come of this for them, even if they try to do the right thing.” The LA County District Attorney’s Office said the operations also interfere with their ability to prosecute cases. "Our ultimate goal is to seek justice for victims and hold criminals accountable," the District Attorney’s Office wrote in a statement. "Detaining a defendant before the judicial process has concluded interferes with our ability to prosecute cases and is not to the advantage of the pursuit of justice.” ICE did not immediately respond to KCAL News for comment. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

USA Today [8/13/2025 5:36 PM, Josh Peter, 75552K] reports the Los Angeles Dodgers offered no timeline on June 20 when they announced they had committed $1 million "toward direct financial assistance for families of immigrants impacted by recent events in the region." Almost eight weeks later, with protests over the Dodgers’ response to the immigration raids having ended, a non-profit group working with the team provided new details. The $1 million will be distributed to 1,000 households, each which will receive $1,000 by the end of the month, according to California Community Foundation (CCF), a philanthropic organization in Los Angeles. "The Dodgers’ generous gift of $1 million to the CCF LA Neighbors Fund will provide relief to 1,000 Los Angeles households struggling to meet their basic needs due to the immigration raids," CCF said in a statement provided to USA TODAY Sports. "Each will receive $1,000 in direct cash relief, delivered before the end of August 2025, as cash cards through trusted community partners in partnership with the City of Los Angeles."

Los Angeles Times [8/13/2025 6:00 AM, Howard Blume, 14672K] reports Los Angeles public schools are opening Thursday for the new academic year confronting an intense and historically unique moment: They will be operating in opposition to the federal government’s immigration raids and have set in motion aggressive moves to protect children and their immigrant parents. School police and officers from several municipal forces will patrol near some 100 schools, setting up "safe zones" in heavily Latino neighborhoods, with a special concentration at high schools where older Latino students are walking to campus. Bus routes are being changed to better serve areas with immigrant families so children can get to school with less exposure to immigration agents. Community volunteers will join district staff and contractors to serve as scouts — alerting campuses of nearby enforcement actions so schools can be locked down as warranted and parents and others in the school community can be quickly notified via email and text. L.A. Mayor Karen Bass spoke about "how profound this moment is in U.S. history" during a Monday news conference with local officials. "Here you have an entire array of elected officials, appointed officials, education leaders, people committed to our children, and we are gathered here today to talk about protecting our children from the federal government," Bass said. L.A. schools Supt. Alberto Carvalho said recently that the nation’s second-largest school system will oppose "any entity, at any level, that seeks to interfere with the educational process of our children. We are standing on the right side of the Constitution, and years from now, I guarantee you, we will have stood on the right side of history. We know that." The worries among school officials and parents are not without cause.

Federal Newswire [8/13/2025 12:42 PM, Staff] reports Federal authorities conducted a recent operation at an underground nightclub in El Monte, California, as part of a narcotics trafficking investigation. The action was carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), with support from the FBI and DEA. According to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), agents arrested several individuals during the July 19 search, seizing narcotics, drug paraphernalia, and thousands of reencoded gift cards believed to be linked to an illegal financial scheme. “In July, ICE and CBP agents worked together with the FBI and DEA to dismantle criminal drug operations in Los Angeles, California, which resulted in the arrest of multiple illegal aliens," said Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. “Unfortunately, sanctuary politicians in California give cover to criminals to run an underground club filled with drugs and illegal financial schemes. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, DHS law enforcement is protecting Americans and keeping our communities safe.”

NBC News [8/13/2025 3:46 PM, Daniella Silva, 44540K] reports despite being American citizens, three children — a 4-year-old boy with Stage 4 kidney cancer, his 7-year-old sister and a 2-year-old girl — were swept up along with their families by immigration authorities in Louisiana and quickly sent to Honduras, according to a lawsuit filed on behalf of the families. The suit alleges that despite the government’s own directives, the parents "were never given a choice as to whether their children should be deported with them and were prohibited from contacting their counsel or having meaningful contact with their families to arrange for the care of their children." The mothers, named in the suit as Rosario and Julia, allege they wanted their children to remain in the U.S. Instead, the families were "illegally deported without even a semblance of due process," the lawsuit states. The suit was filed on behalf of the two mothers and their children in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana on July 31. The plaintiffs’ names in the lawsuit are pseudonyms to protect their identities and safety, attorneys said. The case against the federal government is in its early stages, and plaintiffs are seeking a jury trial and damages, and for their arrests and removals to be found unlawful and to be returned to the United States. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that U.S. children were not being "deported" and denied that the parents were not given a choice regarding the care of their children before being sent to Honduras.

Breitbart [8/13/2025 10:12 AM, Neil Munro, 3077K] reports top Trump administration officials are drafting plans to restrict both temporary visits and legal immigration by Muslims affiliated with the revolutionary Muslim Brotherhood and other extremist groups. "We are taking a new look at sections within the INA [Immigration and Nationality Act] that have never been used before to really get a better sense of who these applicants are, and then we’ll be able to assess" what can be done to exclude militant Muslims, said Joe Edlow, director of the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. "We’ve got to make sure that [would-be immigrants] do not espouse ideology that is incredibly detrimental to the safety and security of this country," he told Breitbart News on Monday. Officials are preparing to apply the terrorist label to some Islamic groups linked to the sprawling Muslim Brotherhood movement, Secretary of State Marco Rubio told radio host Sid Rosenberg on Tuesday. "All of that is in the works — obviously, there are different branches of the Muslim Brotherhood, so you’d have to designate each one of them.”

Breitbart [8/13/2025 4:06 PM, John Binder, 3077K] reports United States Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) Director Joseph Edlow tells Breitbart News in an exclusive interview that former President Joe Biden’s "long-term plan" for immigration policy was a "mass amnesty" for illegal aliens in the hopes of drastically shifting the nation’s demographics, likely in favor of Democrat political power. Most recently, as Breitbart News reported, President Donald Trump’s administration has started ending a so-called "quiet amnesty" loophole called administrative closure, whereby immigration courts were instructed to dismiss deportation cases or close deportation cases for illegal aliens rather than adjudicating their asylum claims, used by the Biden administration. The Trump administration is now reopening those closed cases to adjudicate whether such illegal aliens ought to be in the U.S. In an exclusive interview, Edlow said the federal government must return "to limiting administrative closure."

FOX News [8/13/2025 9:26 AM, Charles Creitz, 46878K] reports a Venezuelan civic group and several migrants sued federal immigration agencies this week, alleging the Trump administration unlawfully ended Biden-imposed "Temporary Protected Status" for Venezuelans. The Venezuelan Association of Massachusetts, a progressive group called Democracy Forward, and three migrants filed suit in Boston federal court against the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services challenging what they called President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s "sudden and unlawful termination" of temporary protected statuses. In a statement, Democracy Forward said the plaintiffs objected to an alleged April mass email from DHS to TPS migrants stating: "It is time for you to leave the United States." The plaintiffs suggested the recipients of the blunt missive have the legal right to remain in the U.S. given their work-permitting and other related documentation they may have applied for. They further argued that TPS revocation requires case-by-case determinations and wrongly disrupts lives and occupations and risks becoming subject to deportation. In comments to Fox News Digital, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the lawsuit is "a desperate attempt to keep half a million poorly vetted illegal aliens in this country and undermine President Trump’s constitutional authority to enforce America’s immigration laws." "The Biden administration abused its parole authority to create an industrial-scale catch-and-release scheme, and the Trump administration is correcting that," she added. "This lawsuit is an insult to the tens of millions of Americans who gave this president a mandate to restore safety and common sense to our immigration system.".

FOX News [8/13/2025 9:36 AM, Lindsay Kornick Fox, 46878K] reports former Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) clerk Melissa Moorman sued her old employers for allegedly firing her because she reported on co-workers selling driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. According to court documents obtained by Fox News Digital, Moorman discovered in 2024 that two co-workers from the Department of Vehicle Regulation were selling documents to "nonresidents" without proper immigration screenings or testing. Her lawyers argued that she knew of the crime after being invited to participate. "The employees were being paid under the table," Moorman told WDRB News on Monday. "I immediately let my supervisor know about it." She also informed WDRB News that these co-workers would sell licenses for $200 per person approximately four to five times a day, for over two years. Moorman said that every case she encountered involved an illegal immigrant. After she reported the crime, the co-workers were fired, and a federal investigation was launched into KYTC. Moorman allegedly met with federal investigators in January after learning those employees were using her credentials and log-in information without her knowledge at the time. She has said that she was instructed by her supervisor to provide the employees with this information as they waited for their own credentials when they first started. KYTC fired Moorman the day of her interview but, according to Moorman’s lawyers, has kept her supervisor despite the "mismanagement, fraud, abuse of authority, and violations of law and statute in which he engaged that Moorman disclosed and reported." "I was angry, hurt and depressed," Moorman told WDRB News. "I did the right thing. I told the truth. I should not have been fired." Moorman filed the lawsuit in April, claiming that KYTC violated the Kentucky Whistleblower Act, which protects public whistleblowers who come forward with information about misconduct. She has asked for her job and benefits to be reinstated along with back pay.

Los Angeles Times [8/13/2025 10:46 AM, Rebecca Boone, 14672K] reports the Congolese woman’s search for safety sent her on a terrifying trek of nearly 2,300 miles through southern Africa on foot when she was just 15. Reuniting with her family has been a more difficult journey. For eight years, she clung to hope through delays and setbacks as she navigated a U.S. program that reconnects refugees with family members already in the country, and her dream of seeing them again seemed close to becoming a reality. But President Trump signed an executive order halting the refugee program just hours after he took office on Jan. 20, leaving her and thousands of other refugees stranded. "It was horrible. I would never wish for anyone to go through that, ever. When I think about it, I just ..." she said, pausing to take a long breath. "Honestly, I had given up. I told my mom maybe it was just not meant for us to see each other again.” During a brief block on the order, the woman made it into the U.S., one of only about 70 refugees to arrive in the country since Trump took office. She asked that her name not be used because she fears retaliation. "It’s been a really devastating roller coaster for those families, to be stuck in this limbo of not knowing whether their hope of being resettled in the United States will ever come true," said Melissa Keaney, an attorney with the International Refugee Assistance Project.

(B) Today [8/13/2025 9:26 AM, Staff] reports that a Venezuelan man living in northwest Montana says he was unlawfully detained and racially profiled after a routine traffic stop. He is suing the City of Whitefish and its police department. Whitefish Police pulled over Beker Rengifo Del Castillo on April 24th for a broken taillight. Despite showing officers valid vehicle insurance registration and a REAL ID verifying his lawful presence under a Department of Homeland Security humanitarian parole program, officers took him into custody. The federal lawsuit seeks a court declaration, punitive damages, and reimbursement of legal fees.

Los Angeles Times [8/13/2025 2:38 PM, Kevin Rector, 14672K] reports that if the Trump administration succeeds in barring undocumented immigrants from federally funded "public benefit" programs, vulnerable children and families across California would suffer greatly, losing access to emergency shelters, vital healthcare, early education and life-saving nutritional support, according to state and local officials who filed their opposition to the changes in federal court. The new restrictions would harm undocumented immigrants but also U.S. citizens — including the U.S.-born children of immigrants and people suffering from mental illness and homelessness who lack documentation — and put intense stress on the state’s emergency healthcare system, the officials said. Head Start, which provides tens of thousands of children in the state with early education, healthcare and nutritional support, may have to shutter some of its programs if the new rules barring immigrants withstand a lawsuit filed by California and other liberal-led states, officials said. In a declaration filed as part of that litigation, Maria Guadalupe Jaime-Milehan, deputy director of the child care and developmental division of the California Department of Social Services, wrote that the restrictions would have an immediate "chilling effect" on immigrant and mixed-status families seeking support, but also cause broader "ripple effects" — especially in rural California communities that rely on such programs as "a critical safety net" for vulnerable residents, but also as major employers. The judge presiding over the case has yet to rule on the preliminary injunction.

Reuters [8/13/2025 8:24 PM, Jasper Ward and Kanishka Singh, 51390K] reports U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday took steps to revoke or restrict visas for some African, Caribbean and Brazilian officials who Washington alleges have ties to a Cuban program that sends medical workers overseas. The State Department revoked the visas of Brazilian Ministry of Health official Mozart Julio Tabosa Sales and former Pan American Health Organization official Alberto Kleiman, Rubio said in a statement. Rubio did not name the other officials who were affected but said they were from Africa, Cuba and Grenada. The Cuban government has blasted U.S. efforts to stop the medical missions, calling them a cynical excuse to go after its foreign currency earnings. Caribbean leaders have previously rejected U.S. accusations of Cuban labor exploitation. "Cuba’s medical cooperation will continue," Johana Tablada, Cuba’s deputy director of U.S. affairs, said on social media platform X. "His (Rubio’s) priorities speak volumes: financing Israel genocide on Palestine, torturing Cuba, going after health care services for those who need them most," Tablada wrote.

Breitbart [8/13/2025 2:00 PM, Frances Martel, 3077K] reports that the U.S. State Department will announce on Wednesday that it had imposed visa restrictions on unnamed government officials from Grenada and several African states, in addition to members of the Cuban Communist Party, in relation to Havana’s longstanding Cuban health worker slavery scheme. The individuals targeted, the State Department said in its official statement on the sanctions, stand accused of being "complicit" in "the Cuban regime’s medical mission scheme in which medical professionals are ‘rented’ by other countries at high prices and most of the revenue is kept by the Cuban authorities." "This scheme enriches the corrupt Cuban regime while depriving the Cuban people of essential medical care," the State Department noted. The visa restrictions, which will prevent the officials from entering America, is the fulfillment of a policy Secretary of State Marco Rubio affirmed in February, announcing an expansion of visa restrictions "directed at the linking of forced labor with the Cuban Worker Export Program." The secretary of state explicitly listed foreign government officials outside of Cuba as eligible for such visa restrictions if they actively aided Cuba in selling doctors and other health workers to their countries as part of the Communist Party’s expansive forced labor scheme. The United Nations recognizes forced labor as one of several forms of modern-day slavery.

NewsNation [8/13/2025 4:03 PM, Ali Bradley, Jeff Arnold, 5801K] reports five new high-tech surveillance camera towers are being rolled out in the U.S. Border Patrol’s Del Rio, Texas, sector, which will allow agents to spot migrant "gotaways" who have previously eluded federal immigration officers’ line of sight after entering the United States illegally. White House border czar Tom Homan has boasted that the number of gotaways has dropped significantly since President Donald Trump took office in January. However, Border Patrol agents assigned to work in the Del Rio sector say the real concern is the unknown of what they can’t detect. Although the sector’s acting chief, Desi De Leon, told NewsNation that the number of "gotaways" is limited to single figures each day in Del Rio, the camera system will assist the agency in moving closer to achieving the goal of dropping that number to zero. The region has seen illegal migrant crossings drop to less than 500 a day after the area, which includes Eagle Pass, was among the most heavily trafficked areas along the U.S.-Mexico border in previous years. The camera system feeds live video footage to Border Patrol agents, and if and when a migrant crosses the border illegally, the system sends real-time alerts to agents. But officials said that the presence of the towers will also serve as a deterrent to those considering trying to enter the United States illegally. The towers will replace those that have not been in use.

FOX News [8/13/2025 8:19 PM, Staff, 46878K] reports CBP El Centro chief patrol agent Gregory Bovino discusses efforts to stop illegal immigration on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Breitbart [8/13/2025 12:00 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 3077K] reports that border enforcement under the Trump administration resulted in historic record lows in the month of July, according to the latest data shared by the Trump White House as well as U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). The Trump White House told Breitbart News that illegal crossings in July 2025 dropped to what was described as the "lowest level ever recorded – just a fraction of what they were under the previous administration." Overall, there were 24,628 total encounters nationwide, which CBP described as the "lowest monthly total in CBP history for the second consecutive month." Additionally, there were 6,177 U.S. Border Patrol apprehensions nationwide, which is 23 percent lower than the previous record made the month prior. In June, there were 8,018 apprehensions nationwide. Overall, this represents a significant decrease from July of last year — when former President Joe Biden was still at the helm. In July 2024, CBP saw 59,655 illegal alien apprehensions nationwide. The southwest border, specifically, saw 4,601 border apprehensions in July 2025, which — again — is lower than the previous record made in June, which saw 6,070 border apprehensions. That reflects a decrease of 24 percent. Again, this is significantly lower than the figures seen last year under Biden, as there were 56,400 illegal alien apprehensions on the southwest border in July 2024.

DailySignal [8/13/2025 3:59 PM, Virginia Allen, 558K] reports for three months in a row, no illegal aliens have been released into the U.S., according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Simultaneously, CBP is recording record-low illegal alien encounters at the border. In July, there were just 24,628 total encounters at the U.S. border, down from 170,180 in July 2024, marking the lowest monthly number of encounters in CBP history, according to the White House. No illegal aliens were paroled into the U.S. in July, compared to 12,365 in July 2024. Border Patrol encountered 4,601 illegal aliens between ports of entry at the southern border in July, marking a 23% decline from June and a 90% decline from July a year ago.

NBC News [8/13/2025 8:09 PM, Staff, 44540K] Video: HERE reports Customs and Border Protection gave NBC News rare access inside the narrow tunnels that cartels use to smuggle drugs from Mexico to the US.

Telemundo 48 El Paso [8/13/2025 1:59 PM, Claudia Moreno, 9K] reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations (AMO) helicopter crews conducted two rescues this weekend in the Franklin and Organ Mountains. On August 9, the El Paso Air Sector of CBP/AMO received a rescue request from the El Paso County Search and Rescue team to assist a severely dehydrated hiker in the Franklin Mountains. A certified hoist crew was activated, and a UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter with a hoist system was deployed with a rescue specialist on board. The helicopter positioned itself approximately 50 feet above the scene, where the hiker was being treated by two members of the rescue team. The specialist was lowered, and the four were subsequently hoisted into the helicopter and transported to a nearby road, where an ambulance was waiting to transport the patient to a local hospital. While returning from that mission, the crew received another request for assistance from the New Mexico State Police, seeking assistance for a hiker with chest pain and numbness in his fingers in the Organ Mountains, near Las Cruces. En route, the helicopter picked up an emergency medical technician from the local fire department to assist with treatment. After a 30-minute search, the hiker was located at 4:43 p.m. in a mountain valley approximately 8,000 feet above sea level. The specialist was lowered approximately 130 feet to secure the patient, and both were lifted into the helicopter. After a medical evaluation, it was decided to land on a road to transfer the patient to an ambulance.

Telemundo 48 El Paso [8/13/2025 2:31 PM, Claudia Moreno, 9K] reports a federal judge has awarded $45.6 million in compensation to the family of Special Agent Anthony Salas, who died during a joint operation between the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) and U.S. Border Patrol in Eagle Pass in January 2022. On January 21, 2022, Salas was participating in an operation as part of the DPS Special Operations Group when he was involved in an accident. He was transported by helicopter to San Antonio, where he later died. His body was taken to his hometown of El Paso for funeral services. Salas’s family filed a civil lawsuit against Customs and Border Protection (CBP), alleging that CBP officers conducted the operation in an unsafe manner, violating several internal policies that resulted in the fatal crash. After a seven-day trial, Judge Briones found CBP responsible for its conduct and awarded Salas’s family $45,600,000 in compensation. This verdict sets an important precedent for holding federal agencies accountable in joint security operations.

Telemundo 48 El Paso [8/13/2025 4:57 PM, Alyssa A. Méndez, 9K] reports the driver of a Chicago-based semi-truck was arrested in Texas on charges of trafficking several undocumented immigrants, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). According to DPS, the man, identified as Miguel Guerrero, was driving a Freightliner semi-truck on I-35 in Webb County, South Texas, where he was allegedly transporting six undocumented immigrants. The incident, according to DPS, occurred on Monday, August 4. DPS said one of its agents attempted to stop the semi-truck Guerrero was driving and, after evading the patrol car, began "a high-speed chase, crashing and driving through several ranch fences before fleeing with several undocumented immigrants." Guerrero allegedly abandoned the truck at a ranch and fled with six other people in the vehicle before being located and apprehended with the assistance of Border Patrol agents. According to DPS, the six undocumented immigrants were handed over to Border Patrol, while Guerrero faces six counts of human smuggling, one count of evading arrest, and one count of reckless driving. Telemundo Chicago verified Guerrero’s arrest record and, according to Webb County records, Guerrero was jailed on August 5 and released the next day on $75,000 bail for the eight charges against him.

Telemundo Amarillo [8/13/2025 3:45 PM, Marissa Rodríguez Limón and Abithsua Rubio, 4K] reports a large police mobilization occurred Monday night in Laredo, Texas, as Border Patrol agents discovered a case of human trafficking inside a cargo truck. On the evening of Monday, August 11, 2025, at approximately 9:20 p.m., Border Patrol agents (BPA) conducted a patrol stop on Loop 20 in front of the Laredo International Airport. According to the report, agents intercepted a red semi-truck with a white trailer traveling northbound. The driver stopped the vehicle after the agents signaled for help; however, he and several suspected undocumented migrants got out of the vehicle and attempted to flee. Following a search operation in the area, agents captured 11 people, including the driver. All were taken into Border Patrol custody for processing. The nationalities of the detainees have yet to be confirmed. The investigation is being conducted by the Department of Homeland Security (HSI).

FOX News [8/13/2025 4:09 PM, Staff, 46878K] Video: HERE reports Fox News correspondent Danamarie McNicholl discusses new TSA efforts to make air travel for families easier and more efficient on ‘America Reports.’

FOX Weather [8/13/2025 5:43 PM, Steven Yablonski, Emilee Speck] reports preparations for potential impacts from Tropical Storm Erin are underway in the U.S. Virgin Islands as the system continues to become better organized and remains on track to become the first hurricane of the 2025 Atlantic hurricane season. Officials in the U.S. Virgin Islands said territory-wide sandbag distribution for hurricane season was set to begin in a matter of days, but with Tropical Storm Erin spinning across the Atlantic Ocean, those plans were accelerated. Officials said this accelerated distribution represents the only sandbag distribution for the 2025 hurricane season. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said Tropical Storm Erin had maximum sustained winds of 45 mph, and strengthening was set to begin later on Wednesday afternoon or on Wednesday night. It’s expected to become a hurricane by Friday. Tropical Storm Erin is located more than 1,300 miles to the east of the northern Leeward Islands and is moving off to the west at 17 mph. The NHC said that general motion was expected to continue into Thursday, with a west-northwestward motion starting on Thursday night and continuing into the weekend. On that track, the NHC said the center of Tropical Storm Erin is likely to move near or just north of the northern Leeward Islands over the weekend. The Chicago Tribune [8/13/2025 7:59 PM, David Schutz, 3987K] reports Erin’s forecast path will take it close to some island in the Caribbean before arcing to the northwest, beginning Thursday night. "Erin could move close enough to the northern Leeward Islands, Virgin Islands, and Puerto Rico over the weekend to produce some impacts on those islands. However, the magnitude of those impacts is still not known," the Hurricane Center said. The hurricane center’s cone of uncertainty was just north of the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, according to the center’s 5 p.m. Wednesday update. Tropical-storm-force winds could arrive at the island as early as 8 p.m. Saturday. High winds could spur power outages.

Washington Post [8/13/2025 11:55 AM, Brady Dennis and Scott Dance, 32099K] reports deadly flash floods inundated the Chattanooga region Tuesday night, and more heavy rain was falling Wednesday, threatening to produce more dangerous conditions across Tennessee and other parts of the southern Appalachian region. “Tropical heavy downpours” dropping rain at rates of as much as 2 inches per hour Wednesday morning prompted the National Weather Service to issue flash flood warnings west of Chattanooga along the Tennessee-Alabama border. Copious amounts of moisture that have returned to the eastern United States meanwhile threatened to produce heavy rainfall across a wide swath of the eastern half of the country. In Tennessee, Hamilton County Office of Emergency Management said Wednesday morning that at least three people had died amid the severe weather that struck the Chattanooga area the previous night. A tree killed two adults and a child when it fell on a car in East Ridge, southeast of Chattanooga. Authorities said they were still searching for a man who disappeared after passing through floodwaters on foot in Chattanooga. “I’ve seen flooding throughout my career all over the county,” Sheriff Austin Garrett said Tuesday evening at the county’s emergency operations center. “It’s typically concentrated in one area. This is extremely widespread. It made it difficult for us to even get here ourselves to try to help other people.” The Weather Service warned of a risk of excessive rainfall Wednesday across parts of seven states in the southern Appalachians, including along the North Carolina/Tennessee border where Hurricane Helene dumped devastating amounts of rain last September. The risk of heavy rain and flooding was forecast to be Level 2 out of 4 in those areas through Wednesday night, the Weather Service said.

Houston Chronicle [8/13/2025 11:54 AM, Abby Church, 1982K] reports that the Houston City Council on Wednesday approved a sweeping plan to spend $314 million in U.S. Department of Urban Development funding meant to help Houstonians recover from the May 2024 derecho and Hurricane Beryl. That plan includes $100 million for housing – which will be split to give $50 million each to build and repair housing – as well as money to complete Mayor John Whitmire’s backup generation initiative for city facilities and post-storm debris clean up. The plan initially provided $0 for housing following advice from federal officials who allegedly didn’t trust the way Houston spends its housing money. Whitmire switched course from the original plan following outcry from residents and advocates for low-income housing, and at first said the city would allocate $50 million to housing. Council Member Tiffany Thomas then put forward an amendment to the plan to add another $50 million for housing, which Whitmire supported. Council Members Fred Flickinger, Amy Peck and Mary Nan Huffman voted against both Thomas’ amendment and amended action plan. Under the new plan, more than $101 million will go to providing backup power to critical city facilities, a decrease from the original $151 million allocated. Another $15.3 million is for emergency response and public safety, $41 million is earmarked for Whitmire’s plan to end street homelessness in Houston, $32.7 million will go toward debris removal and $8.2 million will go toward vegetation management.

AP [8/13/2025 11:31 AM, Gabriela Aoun Angueira, 56000K] reports after a few frightening incidents seeing family and friends collapse in Phoenix’s grueling heat, Ashton Dolce, 17, began to wonder why his country’s leaders were not doing more to keep people safe from climate change. "I was just dumbfounded," Dolce said. He became active in his hometown, organizing rallies and petitions to raise awareness about extreme heat and calling for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to make such conditions eligible for major disaster declarations. Just before his senior year of high school in 2024, Dolce got the chance to really make his concerns heard: He became one of 15 students across the United States selected to join the FEMA Youth Preparedness Council, a 13-year-old program for young people to learn about and become ambassadors for disaster preparedness. "It was this really cool opportunity to get involved with FEMA and to actually have a specified seat at the table where we could develop resources by and for youth," Dolce said. Then came signs of trouble.

FOX Business [8/13/2025 8:07 AM, Staff, 9940K] reports National Association of Insurance Commissioners President Jon Godfread discusses the growing threat of weather-related tragedies on ‘Monrings with Maria.’[Editorial note: consult video at source link]

ABC News [8/13/2025 1:33 PM, Julia Jacobo, 31733K] reports one of Alaska’s most populated cities is bracing for potentially catastrophic flooding as a basin dammed within the Mendenhall Glacier has started to release rainwater and snowmelt downstream, according to officials. Suicide Basin, a side basin within the Mendenhall Glacier that sits above the city of Juneau, regularly releases glacier lake outburst floods, according to the National Weather Service. A glacial lake outburst flood occurs when a dam containing a glacial lake breaks. But recent measurements suggest the basin could release enough water to overwhelm the Mendenhall River and Mendenhall Lake, according to officials. By 7 a.m. local time, the Mendenhall River had reached a major flood stage at 16.51 feet and was continuing to rise -- surpassing the record flood stage set in 2024 of 15.99 feet, according to the NWS. Flood warnings have been issued for the lake and river due to the release. Residents along the flood zones have been urged to evacuate the area, with the peak flooding expected Wednesday around 8 a.m. local time. "Don’t Wait. Evacuate TONIGHT," the City of Juneau wrote in a Facebook post Tuesday night. City officials were warning residents early Wednesday to avoid driving on roads within the flood zone already inundated by water. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski posted to X on Wednesday, warning of how dire the situation could become. "This is likely to become a life-threatening situation," Murkowski said. "If you are told to evacuate, stop what you are doing and immediately go to an emergency shelter or another safe location.”

CBS News [8/13/2025 7:16 PM, Staff, 51860K] reports a melting glacier pushed the Mendenhall River to a record-high crest of more than 16 feet, prompting a major flood threat to the Alaskan state capital. But more than two miles of newly installed barriers protected neighborhoods from a repeat of the severe flooding of the past two years. "CBS Evening News" co-anchor Maurice DuBois spoke to Katie Koester, the city manager of Juneau.

New York Times [8/13/2025 8:12 PM, Talya Minsberg and Amy Graff, 138952K] reports thousands of people in Eastern Canada are under evacuation orders and thousands more have been warned to be on high alert as quick-moving wildfires burn out of control during what has become Canada’s second-worst wildfire season on record. There are over 700 active fires in Canada, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, the national firefighting coordinating body, and many large wildfires are occurring in parts of the country where fires typically stay small. A total of 18.5 million acres of forested land have burned since the beginning of the year, making this the second-worst year on record. The worst year was 2023, when 31.3 million acres had burned by this point in the summer, and 42.5 million acres were scorched by the end of the year. Fewer acres may have burned this year compared with 2023, said Awa Cissé, a spokeswoman for the center, but the fire season can continue through September or October, she warned. While parts of Canada experience wildfires each year, this season has been particularly bad because of persistently hot, dry weather. Much of the country is experiencing drought conditions, and the winter snowpack that usually keeps the landscape moist into spring was meager this year in many areas. As a result, the vegetation was parched and ready to burn. The provinces in the western half of the country, especially Saskatchewan and Manitoba, have seen the most intense wildfires in the country this year, Ms. Cissé said. The largest fire is the Shoe fire, in Saskatchewan, which has been burning since May 7. At 1.4 million acres, it’s larger than Grand Canyon National Park in Arizona.

Breitbart [8/13/2025 11:11 AM, Frances Martel, 3077K] reports Canada is facing hundreds of "out of control" fires this week, prompting tens of thousands of evacuations from British Columbia to Newfoundland and Labrador — but climate change "experts" say the government can do nothing to stop the fires and locals should abandon dreams of mitigation protocol. Critical context to these calls to let the fires burn out is the fact that Canada has no national-level emergency management agency, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in the United States, or a national firefighting agency. Provinces must scramble to share resources such as firefighting aircraft and firefighters trained to handle wildfires, often leaving burgeoning fires to spread for days with minimal response. Canada has an agency called "Natural Resources," which is tasked with an expansive list of responsibilities including managing mineral resources, fossil fuels, and indigenous territories, as well as forest management. Contrary to academics specializing in climate change, some of Canada’s top firefighting officials are demanding Ottawa establish these agencies — even if only manned by one or two people — to facilitate more rapid responses to the fires when they begin, typically in the spring season. According to the left-wing British newspaper The Guardian, the 2025 wildfire season is Canada’s second-worst on record, trailing only the disastrous 2023 season that affected over 100 million Americans with plumes of dangerous wildfire smoke reaching as far south as New York City. Canadian authorities have documented the burning of 7.3 million hectares of land in 2025 as of this week. Outside of Canada, the fires have blanketed much of the United States in dangerous smoke, particularly Midwestern states such as Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Lawmakers from the region have repeatedly demanded that Canada clarify exactly what its government is doing to limit the widespread impacts of these fires, with minimal response. In July, a group of Republican Congressmen led by Rep. Tom Tiffany (R-WI) sent a letter to Canadian Ambassador to Washington Kirsten Hillman requesting such information, emphasizing the significant negative effects of Canadian wildfire smoke on their constituents.

Blaze [8/13/2025 5:43 PM, Joseph M. Hanneman, 1805K] reports the Florida federal judge overseeing the case against accused would-be presidential assassin Ryan Wesley Routh has denied the government’s motion to exclude Routh’s sniper expert witness, who found that Routh’s weapon jammed twice out of four test shots earlier this year. Judge Aileen M. Cannon issued an eight-page ruling denying federal prosecutors’ request to prevent testimony from Michael McClay, a former instructor in the U.S. Marine Corps Scout Sniper School. Judge Cannon, noting that the U.S. Department of Justice plans to call an FBI sniper expert during Routh’s trial, said: "As of [sic] a result of that significant overlap, and mindful of the general principle of equal treatment in the context of expert witnesses, the court is not in a position to declare that McClay’s proposed testimony is wholly irrelevant and warranting full exclusion.” Routh, who faces a Sept. 8 trial on five charges related to the alleged attempted assassination of President Donald J. Trump at his Florida golf resort, earlier sought subpoenas for McClay and two mental health experts expected to testify about Routh’s alleged lack of intent on Sept. 15, 2024. Routh, 58, of Greensboro, N.C., is charged with the attempted assassination of a major presidential candidate, brandishing a firearm in furtherance of the assassination attempt, intentionally assaulting a Secret Service officer, illegally possessing a firearm as a felon, and possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number. He faces possible life in prison if convicted. The FBI said Routh set up a sniper’s nest just outside the fence near the sixth green of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla. Routh allegedly possessed a "military-grade" SKS rifle with a magazine containing 19 rounds with one in the chamber, ready to fire on President Trump, prosecutors said.

CBS Boston [8/13/2025 5:14 PM, Victoria D., 51860K] Video: HERE a Tennessee man was arrested after police said he used fake money to buy more than $100,000 in jewelry from a store in Boston. According to the Suffolk County District Attorney, 20-year-old Devin Johnson and another man purchased numerous pieces of jewelry from Victoria Jewelry on Temple Place in Downtown Crossing back in April. They allegedly bought a rose gold and diamond bracelet worth $15,000, a rose gold and diamond chain worth $50,000, two Rolex watches worth $45,000 and $23,000 and a gold and diamond tennis chain worth $30,000. The items together were worth $160,000. An employee of Victoria Jewelry told police he had made contact with one of the men via Instagram and text message, who told him he wanted to purchase the items. The two men allegedly paid in cash and two days later, store employees put the cash through a money counter and learned it was fake. Detectives said the bills had "In Prop We Trust" written on them and were similar to money used on movie sets or for toys. Johnson and the other were identified through video surveillance. Detectives said they also tracked social media pages used by the men, which featured photos and videos of them displaying the items identical to those purchased at Victoria Jewelry. In one Instagram post, the second man allegedly displayed a watch and tagged Johnson with the caption, "We made history bro.”

Yahoo! News [8/13/2025 1:47 PM, Rebecca Heath, 47007K] reports that a woman was rescued off the coast of Sandy Hook on Monday morning after being stranded floating in the water for about 12 hours. According to officials from the U.S. Coast Guard, the woman was riding on a personal watercraft with a man when the pair went missing in New York’s Lower Bay at about 8 p.m. on Sunday. A search operation began after a friend of the man, who he had been jet skiing with earlier in the evening, notified authorities at about 1 a.m. that he had not heard from the man in five hours, and his phone was now going straight to voicemail. A Coast Guard spokesperson told Patch.com that the couple became separated from the jet ski while trying to repair its engine, which stopped working Sunday evening. At around 5:40 a.m. on Monday, a good Samaritan alerted officials that they had found the missing personal watercraft with no one on board near Chapel Hill South Channel, according to a news release. The New York City Fire Department marine division found the woman in the water near Romer Shoal, a lighthouse just north of Sandy Hook, shortly before 8 a.m., officials said. The woman was conscious and alert, and told authorities she had been floating since 8 p.m., according to Patch.com. The man was found on Great Kills Beach in Staten Island while the woman was being taken to the shore. According to Rodger Krass, a Coast Guard official who coordinated the search and rescue mission, wearing life jackets and having a float plan "directly saved their lives."

CNN [8/14/2025 1:47 AM, Brad Lendon, 875K] reports a US Navy guided-missile destroyer performed a Freedom of Navigation operation (FONOP) near disputed Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Wednesday, just two days after two Chinese military vessels collided while chasing a Philippine Coast Guard ship in nearby waters. The presence of the US ship in the area prompted China’s military to accuse the US Navy of violating it’s territorial sovereignty, but the US Navy said it had the right to be there. "USS Higgins (DDG 76) asserted navigational rights and freedoms in the South China Sea near Scarborough Reef, consistent with international law," US Navy 7th Fleet spokesperson Lt. Sarah Merrill said in a statement to CNN. China, the Philippines and Taiwan all claim sovereignty over Scarborough Shoal, which is about 140 miles (222 kilometers) west of the main Philippine island of Luzon and within the Philippines exclusive economic zone. But China has effectively controlled the uninhabited shoal since 2012 by maintaining an almost constant coast guard presence in nearby waters, according to the Asia Maritime Transparency Initiative. China and Taiwan each require advance notification of passage within the territorial waters of the reef, in violation of international laws guaranteeing the right of "innocent passage" by foreign warships, Merrill said. The Philippines does not impose this requirement, she added. Merrill denied an earlier claim by China’s Southern Theater Command that it "organized its forces to track, monitor, warn and expel" the US warship as it "violated China’s territorial sovereignty.” "China’s statement about this mission is false," Merrill said. "The United States is defending its right to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as USS Higgins did here. Nothing China says otherwise will deter us," Merrill said. According to the Philippine Coast Guard, the USS Higgins wasn’t the only US warship in the vicinity of Scarborough Shoal on Wednesday. The littoral combat ship USS Cincinnati was also nearby, spokesperson Jay Tarriela said in a statement on X. Merrill would only confirm to CNN that the Cincinnati was operating in the South China Sea. Wednesday’s FONOP was the first near Scarborough Shoal in more than six years, according to Collin Koh, a research fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS) in Singapore, who keeps a database of US Freedom of Navigation operations. It was also just the second FONOP in 2025, after one in the Spratly Islands in May. The US performed two FONOPs in the South China Sea in 2024 after executing five in 2023, according to Koh’s database. China says such missions by the US threaten its sovereignty and peace and stability in the South China Sea.

AP [8/13/2025 11:23 AM, Jim Gomez, 12876K] reports that the U.S. deployed two warships Wednesday in a disputed South China Sea shoal where two Chinese ships collided earlier in the week while trying to drive away a smaller Philippine ship in a high-seas accident that raised alarms about maritime safety. Both China and the Philippines claim Scarborough Shoal and other outcroppings in the South China Sea. Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan also lay overlapping claims in the contested waters. The USS Higgins, a guided missile destroyer, and USS Cincinnati, a littoral combat ship, were shadowed by a Chinese navy ship while sailing about 30 nautical miles (55 kilometers) from the Scarborough Shoal. There were no reports of any untoward incident, Philippine coast guard Commodore Jay Tarriela said, citing information from U.S. officials and a Philippine surveillance flight. The U.S. Navy has staged what it calls freedom-of-navigation voyages and overflights in the South China Sea for years to challenge China’s restrictions and its demand for entry notifications in virtually the entire stretch of the disputed waters that it claims. That has angered China and its forces have had close runs-in with U.S. warships and aircraft on such patrols in international waters and airspace. The deployment happened after Washington’s ambassador to Manila, MaryKay Carlson, on Tuesday condemned “the latest reckless action by China directed against a Philippine vessel” in Scarborough.

Daily Caller [8/13/2025 12:32 PM, Melissa O’Rourke, 1010K] reports American and Chinese naval vessels clashed near Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea on Wednesday, escalating tensions in the disputed waters, a Navy spokesperson confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation. China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) accused the USS Higgins, a guided missile destroyer, of encroaching on its waters surrounding Scarborough Reef, while the Navy called the claim false and vowed to operate wherever international law allows. The U.S. warships were deployed for a freedom of navigation operation (FONOP) following a Monday confrontation between Chinese vessels and the Philippine coast guard in the South China Sea. "USS Higgins conducted this FONOP in accordance with international law and then continued on to conduct normal operations," U.S. Seventh Fleet spokesperson Commander Megan Greene told the DCNF. "The operation reflects our commitment to uphold the freedom of navigation and lawful uses of the sea as a principle. The United States is defending its right to fly, sail and operate wherever international law allows, as USS Higgins did here." While attempting to chase and corner a patrol boat with the Philippine Coast Guard near Bajo de Masinloc in the West Philippine Sea on Monday, a ship with the China Coast Guard (CCG-3104) collided with a Type 052D Destroyer of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Navy (DDG-164).… pic.twitter.com/D1Ph8zkO7W. The Chinese military said it tracked and expelled the USS Higgins after it "illegally intruded" into its territorial waters, according to Bloomberg.

Reuters [8/13/2025 6:59 AM, Adrian Portugal, 51390K] reports a Chinese jet fighter "intercepted" a Philippine aircraft carrying journalists during a patrol flight over the Scarborough Shoal on Wednesday, the Manila government said, days after two Chinese vessels collided in the area while allegedly trying to block a Philippine supply mission. A Reuters journalist aboard the Philippine Coast Guard flight watched as the Chinese fighter closed in on the small Cessna Caravan turboprop. At one point the Chinese fighter came within about 200 feet (61 metres) as it manoeuvred behind, above, and alongside the plane, PCG spokesperson Jay Tarriela said. It was the latest sign of the persistent tensions between the two nations in the disputed South China Sea atoll. "While they were conducting the flight, they have been intercepted by a Chinese fighter jet," Tarriela told a press conference held afterwards. The encounter lasted 20 minutes, during which radio demands from one of two Chinese navy ships spotted below ordering the Philippine plane to "leave immediately" could be heard from the cockpit. The same day, two U.S. warships - littoral combat ship USS Cincinnati and the destroyer USS Higgins - were spotted about 30 nautical miles away from the shoal, Tarriela said. China’s military claimed it "drove away" the U.S. destroyer after it entered the area without permission, but Washington said its ships were conducting lawful freedom of navigation operations.

CyberScoop [8/13/2025 9:15 AM, Patrick D. Gaul] reports every chief information security officer understands that unresolved vulnerabilities can eventually become entry points for threats. In the private sector, we don’t ignore gaps in leadership when they pose security risks. However, that’s precisely the risk our nation faces with the ongoing vacancy at the head of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. As the executive director of the National Technology Security Coalition (NTSC), a nonpartisan organization representing chief information security officers and senior security technology leaders from across the country, I can confidently say that this vacancy presents a national cybersecurity risk and must be addressed immediately. The appropriate corrective action is for the Senate to confirm Sean Plankey as the next director of CISA. Our members live and breathe cybersecurity every day. They are responsible for protecting America’s leading enterprises from cyber threats, building resilient systems, and responding to incidents that could disrupt operations, damage reputations, or compromise the personal data of millions of Americans. These challenges are not just theoretical; they are immediate, complex, and constantly evolving. That’s why public-private collaboration is essential, and why a strong, capable leader must be at the helm of CISA. Sean Plankey is precisely that kind of leader.

Federal News Network [8/13/2025 6:14 PM, Justin Doubleday, 2346K] reports the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has rolled out new guidance to help deal with what some cyber experts say is a rising concern: a lack of visibility into threats to operational technology. CISA on Wednesday published "Foundations for OT Cybersecurity: Asset Inventory Guidance for Owners and Operators." CISA developed the guidance in conjunction with other agencies, including the Environmental Protection Agency, the National Security Agency, the FBI and several international partners. The guidance focuses on operational technology, which refers to hardware and software that monitor and control physical processes in industrial settings. "OT systems are essential to the daily lives of all Americans and to national security," Acting CISA Director Madhu Gottumukkala said in a press release. "They power everything from water systems and energy grids to manufacturing and transportation networks. As cyber threats continue to evolve, CISA through this guidance provides deeper visibility into OT assets as a critical first step in reducing risk and ensuring operational resilience.” The new guidance describes how to inventory OT systems across multiple sectors and categorize them using different taxonomy, depending on the sector in question. For instance, oil and gas organizations may use different terms for systems compared to water and wastewater operators. Inventorying systems is a key first step in building a "modern defensible architecture," CISA explains in its guidance. Policymakers are increasingly concerned that hackers have been targeting OT systems, which could derail or otherwise dangerously impact the operation of physical systems at industrial plants or in other critical settings.

CyberScoop [8/13/2025 3:12 PM, Tim Starks] reports two executive orders President Donald Trump has signed in recent months could prove to have a more dramatic impact on cybersecurity than first thought, for better or for worse. Overall, some of Trump’s executive orders have been more about sending a message than spurring lasting change, as there are limits to their powers. Specifically, some of the provisions of the two executive orders with cyber ramifications — one from March on state and local preparedness generally, and one from June explicitly on cybersecurity — are more puzzling to cyber experts than anything else, while others preserve policies of the prior administration which Trump has criticized in harsh terms. Yet others might fall short of the orders’ intentions, in practice. But amid the flurry of personnel changes, budget cuts and other executive branch activity in the first half of 2025 under Trump, the full scope of the two cyber-related executive orders might have been somewhat overlooked. And the effects of some of those orders could soon begin coming to fruition as key top Trump cyber officials assume their posts. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Mark Montgomery said the executive orders were “more important” than he originally understood, noting that he “underestimated” the March order after examining it more closely. Some of the steps would be positive if fully implemented, such as the preparedness order’s call for the creation of a national resilience strategy, he said.

FedScoop [8/13/2025 3:15 PM, Rebecca Heilweil, 56K] reports Anthropic and OpenAI, two of the country’s leading AI companies, recently announced that they’re offering their powerful models to federal agencies for $1 for the next year. But the new deals, which are both available through a General Services Administration OneGov contract vehicle, don’t on their own clear the way for widespread government adoption of artificial intelligence. Instead, the new financial incentive seems to be daring government officials to move quickly and approve the technology as soon as possible. Currently, no major AI provider is authorized under FedRAMP, a critical security program that allows agencies to use a company’s cloud services — including software or models offered on a cloud service — across government. While several companies — including Anthropic, xAI and OpenAI — have released government-focused product suites, they’re still somewhat dependent on cloud providers like Microsoft and Amazon that have already cleared the FedRAMP process. If AI companies want to sell much of their technology directly to the government, they need their own authorization-to-operate or ATO. What’s changed, though, is that federal officials now have a new reason to move through security review processes more quickly, a former GSA employee and another person familiar with the matter both told FedScoop. That strategy could involve going through an authorization-to-operate process through an agency’s authorizing official — typically, their chief information officer — as well as the security review process explicated by FedRAMP, both people said. GSA is now looking at strategies to speed up the process. An agency spokesperson confirmed that these companies still need to seek FedRAMP authorization if they want to offer their technology directly. But to make that happen faster, GSA is now consulting with the Chief Information Officers Council and the board that oversees FedRAMP about “prioritization for AI companies” that are added to GSA’s multiple award schedule. Any criteria for prioritization will eventually be published on the FedRAMP website, the person added. This work is happening parallel to the new financial incentives offered by leading AI companies, progress the GSA touts.

Politico [8/13/2025 4:11 PM, Maggie Miller, 16523K] reports President Donald Trump on Wednesday said that he could potentially bring up the recent hack of U.S. federal court databases with Russian President Vladimir Putin during their meeting in Alaska later this week. Investigators believe that hackers, including Russian actors, breached the court’s electronic filing system, potentially exposing sensitive court data across multiple U.S. states. The major hack was first reported by POLITICO last week. “I guess I could, are you surprised?” Trump said during a press conference Wednesday in response to a question from a reporter on whether he would bring up the hacking activity with Putin during their planned meeting on Friday. “They hack in, that’s what they do. They’re good at it, we’re good at it, we’re actually better at it.” This marks the first time Trump has publicly acknowledged the hack since it was brought to light last week. The president has previously avoided public confrontations with Russia about its digital influence activities. During a meeting with Putin in 2018, Trump went against U.S. intelligence findings and asserted that Russia did not meddle in the 2016 presidential elections, despite evidence to the contrary. The latest hacking effort compromised the judiciary’s Case Management/Electronic Case Files — or CM/ECF — which allows legal professionals to upload and manage case documents, along with the public-facing PACER system that provides some general access to the same data. Officials fear that this breach might allow Latin American drug cartels to identify and target witnesses involved in criminal trials against them. Officials believe the hackers exploited basic and unresolved vulnerabilities in the court filing system that were first discovered in 2020. Following POLITICO’s initial report, the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts announced that it is stepping up cybersecurity measures and is working with impacted courts to mitigate the impact of the attacks. Congress is also keeping a close eye on the incident. Lawmakers on relevant House and Senate committees were briefed on the hack in July, and will receive a further classified briefing on the incident when Congress returns from its August recess after Labor Day. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.), a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, on Wednesday blasted the judiciary for not doing more to protect their networks since 2020, telling POLITICO in a statement that “like many Americans, I am sick of learning about hacks that could have been prevented with cybersecurity 101.” “It is long past time to require federal courts to meet the same minimum cybersecurity standards as federal agencies,” Wyden said.

The AP [8/13/2025 1:59 PM, Staff, 56000K] reports the U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions Wednesday on more than a dozen Mexican companies and four people it says worked with a powerful drug trafficking cartel to scam elderly Americans in a multimillion-dollar timeshare fraud. The network of 13 businesses in areas near the seaside tourist destination of Puerto Vallarta were accused of working with the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, a group designated by the U.S. government as a foreign terrorist organization. In a scheme dating back to 2012, four cartel associates are accused of defrauding American citizens of their life savings through elaborate rental and resale schemes, according to a Treasury statement. In the span of six months, officials said they were able to document $23.1 million sent from mostly people in the U.S. to scammers in Mexico. The sanctions imposed by the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump would prohibit Americans from doing business with the alleged cartel associates and block any of their assets in the U.S.. "We will continue our effort to completely eradicate the cartels’ ability to generate revenue, including their efforts to prey on elderly Americans through timeshare fraud," U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. Reuters [8/13/2025 1:27 PM, Staff, 51390K] reports that the Treasury said the cartel obtained information about U.S. timeshare owners in Mexico through insiders at resorts and used this data to perpetrate resale, re-rent, and investment scams. According to FBI data, victims reportedly lost nearly $300 million to timeshare fraud schemes in Mexico between 2019 and 2023. The sanctions target assets from four Mexican individuals and 13 Mexican companies used to support the cartel’s enterprise, the Treasury said. "We are coming for terrorist drug cartels like Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion that are flooding our country with fentanyl," said U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Reported similarly:
FOX News [8/13/2025 4:43 PM, Brooke Singman, 46878K]

NPR [8/13/2025 1:32 PM, Rob Schmitz, 37958K] Audio: HERE European leaders met virtually with President Trump on Wednesday, urging him to press Russian President Vladimir Putin for a ceasefire and security guarantees for Ukraine before any peace talks begin. The Trump-Putin meeting is set for Friday in Alaska — without Ukraine’s president at the table. At a joint news conference with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz in Berlin, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Trump agreed that Russia must commit to those terms before negotiations start. Merz said Europe, NATO and Trump were "in broad agreement" on next steps — including rejecting legal recognition of Russian-occupied territory. Merz warned that Europe’s security and democracy are at stake if Russia’s invasion goes unchallenged, saying Putin could target other nations if allowed to keep land taken by force. "The strategy is based on supporting Ukraine and putting pressure on Russia. So, if in Alaska there’s no movement on the Russian side, then the U.S. and the Europeans need to increase the pressure.” Speaking later at the Kennedy Center in Washington, Trump called the meeting "friendly" and rated it "a 10." He said there’s "a very good chance" of a follow-up summit with Putin and Zelenskyy "almost immediately" if Friday’s talks go well — but he also warned that "very severe consequences" await Russia if there’s no ceasefire deal.

The Hill [8/13/2025 1:30 PM, Brett Erickson, 18649K] reports that on July 31, the Trump administration announced that it would raise tariffs on Canadian imports to 35 percent, citing Canada’s failure to meaningfully address the growing use of its territory by fentanyl traffickers. Canada’s response has been fractured. Federal officials called for renewed dialogue, while Ontario Premier Doug Ford demanded retaliatory tariffs. If that sounds like an overreaction from the U.S., it’s not. It’s a reaction to a real and mounting problem: Cartels are using Canada — not in theory, but in practice. Fentanyl super-labs have been discovered in British Columbia. Precursor chemicals from China are entering Canadian ports before making their way into domestic markets or rerouted across the U.S. border. The numbers are still small compared to the southern border. Fentanyl seizures along the northern corridor comprise less than 1 percent of total U.S. interdictions, but they’re rising. And while the raw volume was low, the potency was not. According to White House estimates, the fentanyl seized from Canada in the past year was sufficient to kill more than 9 million Americans. The question isn’t whether Canada is the dominant trafficking route. It’s whether it’s increasingly being utilized. And it is. The reason is structural. Canada has long been exploited by criminal networks due to regulatory blind spots, fragmented enforcement and opaque corporate formation laws.

Breitbart [8/13/2025 4:41 PM, John Hayward, 3077K] reports a federal grand jury in the District of Columbia has indicted one of Haiti’s most notorious gang bosses, Jimmy "Barbecue" Cherizier, for conspiring to violate U.S. sanctions. The grand jury indictment, issued on July 17 but not unsealed until Tuesday, named Cherizier and a North Carolina resident, Bazile "Fredo Pam" Richardson, as the leaders of a massive conspiracy to circumvent U.S. sanctions and finance Cherizier’s criminal activities. Two other unnamed co-conspirators were described in the document. The conspiracy included soliciting money from Haitians living in the United States and using it to pay for guns and salaries for Cherizier’s foot soldiers.

Reuters [8/13/2025 12:36 PM, Barbara Erling, Alan Charlish and Marek Strzelecki, 51390K] reports Russia wants to include the topic of a reduction of NATO troops presence in any conversations about the future of Ukraine, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk told reporters on Wednesday. "We are hearing for the past several days that the Russians would very much like to include talks about reducing NATO’s presence, for example in Poland, in talks about the future of Ukraine," he said. "That is why it is so important that we build such a strong and united group of states, both in relation to Russia, but also in relation to other allies, like the United States.”

Reuters [8/13/2025 5:18 PM, Jonathan Landay, 51390K] reports Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers divert international aid by force and other means, block minority communities from receiving aid and may collude with U.N. officials to seek kickbacks, a U.S. watchdog said on Tuesday. The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) said its findings were based on input from nearly 90 current and former U.S. officials, U.N. officials and others. The sources included Afghans in Afghanistan, the report said. "In Afghanistan, SIGAR found that the Taliban use every means at their disposal, including force, to ensure that aid goes where they want it to go, as opposed to where donors intend," the report said. Taliban spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat denied the allegations. He said international aid is distributed independently in Afghanistan and government agencies cooperate "to ensure transparency" and prevent diversion.

CNN [8/13/2025 2:58 PM, Phil Mattingly, 21433K] reports that the United States and China have settled into a steady state of pragmatic, if uneasy, détente. Tariffs sit at unprecedented, but not economically debilitating levels. Three rounds of bilateral talks have steadily developed and expanded, with a fourth expected this fall. President Donald Trump and Chinese leader Xi Jinping are circling an in person meeting before the end of the year. "I don’t think anyone wants to see those tariffs snap back to 84%," US Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said ahead of Trump’s decision to sign off on a 90-day extension of the trade truce agreement put into place in May. But beneath the surface, Trump’s trade war has dramatically accelerated efforts to find and demonstrate an ability to exploit vulnerabilities that will define the future of the relationship and shape the potential conflict for years ahead. China’s grip on rare-earth elements, critical for electronics, defense equipment and other crucial products, has triggered an urgent scramble across the US government and its allies. Despite an agreement that China would unlock the supply of rare earths, US officials and corporate executives with knowledge of the acquisition and export process say there remain difficulties for critical industries, exceedingly granular demands for corporate data and a seemingly implicit effort to choke off some national security related purchases. "It was a wakeup call to the world," a senior White House officials said. "That was a major thing in world geopolitics." Xi’s ability the choke off western access to essential components has become the dominant topic of discussion during all three rounds of bilateral talks so far.

{End of Report} RETURN TO TOP