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.

NBC News [8/8/2025 12:01 AM, Monica Alba, Laura Strickler and Zoë Richards, 44540K] reports federal agents are expected to have a much stronger and visible presence on the streets of Washington starting Friday following several days of President Donald Trump’s bashing the city’s crime rate. "President Trump has directed an increased presence of federal law enforcement to protect innocent citizens," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Thursday, calling the city "plagued by violent crime for far too long.” "Starting tonight, there will be no safe harbor for violent criminals in D.C. President Trump is committed to making our Nation’s capital safer for its residents, lawmakers, and visitors from all around the world," she added. A White House official said the seven-day effort, led by the U.S. Park Police, will focus on high-traffic tourist areas and other hot spots in the nation’s capital. Federal officers "will be identified, in marked units, and highly visible," the official said, adding that the operation beginning at 12 a.m. ET on Friday could extend beyond the weeklong period. Participating agents and officers will come from the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI, the U.S. Capitol Police, the Metropolitan Police Department and the U.S. Marshals Service, among others, the official said. The number of participating agents was not specified. It’s also unclear whether they have been directed to engage in "activity" beyond typical duties or what their role would be beyond being present on federal property, a Washington official said. Trump signed an executive order this year known as "Making the District of Columbia Safe and Beautiful," which directs a task force to ensure federal involvement in enforcing U.S. immigration law, shifting available resources toward deporting undocumented immigrants in the Washington area and reviewing federal prosecution policies tied to pretrial detention, among other matters. Trump in recent days has decried "crime" in the district, even though local police data shows violent crime is down 26% compared with last year. Trump has specifically cited a recent attack on Edward Coristine, a former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency also known by his online name, "Big Balls," who was the victim of a carjacking and an assault last weekend, a police report said. Police later arrested two 15-year-olds from Maryland. CBS News [8/7/2025 8:35 PM, Nicole Sganga, 51860K] reports that after the alleged attack on the ex-DOGE staffer, President Trump on Wednesday said in a Truth Social post that he might put the District of Columbia under federal control if the city doesn’t "get its act together, and quickly.” "If this continues, I am going to exert my powers, and FEDERALIZE this City," he wrote. Three sources briefed on the D.C. deployment said the additional officers will come from the D.C. National Guard, FBI, U.S. Marshals, ICE, U.S. Secret Service and additional components of the Department of Homeland Security. One source added that officials from the relevant law enforcement agencies met Thursday to review plans for deployment. A White House official later confirmed to CBS News that the increased federal law enforcement presence on D.C. streets would begin at midnight Thursday and would focus on tourist areas and other known hotspots. Along with the FBI and U.S. Marshals Service, the official said the operation would involve multiple federal agencies — including U.S. Capitol Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, among others. The official disclosed the increased police presence would be part of a seven-day operation that could be extended as needed. The federal officers on patrol would be highly visible in marked units, the official said. "Washington, DC is an amazing city, but it has been plagued by violent crime for far too long," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement Thursday night. "President Trump has directed an increased presence of federal law enforcement to protect innocent citizens. Starting tonight, there will be no safe harbor for violent criminals in D.C. President Trump is committed to making our Nation’s capital safer for its residents, lawmakers, and visitors from all around the world.” Overnight Wednesday, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser was notified of an increased federal law enforcement presence in the nation’s capital, and she approved the request by the White House to put additional officers on the streets, according to an official in the mayor’s office. The Hill [8/7/2025 9:10 PM, Regina Zilbermints, 18649K] reports that among the priorities laid out in Trump’s executive order, he directed the task force to deploy a more robust federal law enforcement presence and coordinate with local law enforcement in the District of Columbia, including the National Mall and Memorial Parks, museums, monuments, Lafayette Park, Union Station, Rock Creek Park, Anacostia Park, the George Washington Memorial Parkway, the Suitland Parkway, and the Baltimore-Washington Parkway. The order also instructs the task force to review and, if needed, revise federal prosecutorial policies on pretrial detention of criminal defendants to ensure individuals who pose a threat to public safety are detained to the maximum extent permitted by law. Additionally, the order instructs the task force to direct maximum enforcement of federal immigration law, redirecting federal, state or local law enforcement resources to apprehend and deport illegals throughout the area. The source said the additional law enforcement will be devoted to protecting D.C. residents and visitors from the "scourge of violent crime plaguing" the city. FOX News [8/7/2025 11:18 PM, Peter Pinedo , Patrick Ward, 46878K] reports that the order also instructs the task force to review and, if needed, revise federal prosecutorial policies on pretrial detention of criminal defendants to ensure individuals who pose a threat to public safety are detained to the maximum extent permitted by law. Additionally, the order instructs the task force to direct maximum enforcement of federal immigration law, redirecting federal, state or local law enforcement resources to apprehend and deport illegals throughout the area. The source said the additional law enforcement will be devoted to protecting D.C. residents and visitors from the "scourge of violent crime plaguing" the city

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New York Post [8/7/2025 2:29 PM, Diana Nerozzi, 49956K]
The Hill [8/7/2025 9:10 PM, Regina Zilbermints, 18649K]
Reuters [8/7/2025 10:36 PM, Staff, 51390K]
CNN [8/8/2025 12:30 AM, Samantha Waldenberg, Kristen Holmes, Holmes Lybrand, 875K]

Bloomberg [8/7/2025 3:10 PM, Taylor Mills, 88K] reports that further construction of a temporary migrant detention center in the Florida Everglades was temporarily halted by a federal court Thursday after conservation groups said state and federal agencies violated environmental law while quickly building the facility within an ecologically sensitive area. Judge Kathleen Williams of the US District Court for the Southern District of Florida issued a temporary restraining order finding Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Florida Division of Emergency Management likely violated the National Environmental Policy Act in not conducting an environmental review. ICE has already moved migrants into the center and conducted deportation flights. The court order allows detainees to remain there, but bars workers from adding new infrastructure for two weeks. Friends of the Everglades and the Center for Biological Diversity moved for an expedited court order, arguing the government was working at a "breakneck pace" and judicial intervention was needed to prevent harm to an ecologically fragile area. Thursday’s court order bars work including paving and light installation while the hearing on the groups’ motion for a preliminary injunction continues next Tuesday. The plaintiffs’ injunction motion also asks the court to stop the flow of new detainees to the facility. The Department of Homeland Security rebuked environmental advocates and the ruling by Williams in a statement to Bloomberg Law, saying the order hinders the Trump administration’s immigration agenda. "This lawsuit ignores the fact that this land has already been developed for a decade," said Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at DHS. Reuters [8/7/2025 6:30 PM, Jack Queen, 51390K] reports "It is another attempt to prevent the President from fulfilling the American people’s mandate for mass deportations," McLaughlin said in a statement. Trump has made Alligator Alcatraz emblematic of his hardline immigration policies, boasting of its location in a vast tropical wetland teeming with alligators, crocodiles and pythons. Officials have estimated the facility could cost $450 million annually and house some 5,000 people. In their lawsuit seeking to block construction at the site, environmental and tribal groups say it threatens sensitive wetland ecosystems, endangered species and essential waterways. The AP [8/7/2025 5:51 PM, David Fischer, 21433K] reports that the order doesn’t include any restrictions on law enforcement or immigration enforcement activity at the center, which is currently holding hundreds of detainees. Williams issued the temporary restraining order during a hearing and said she would issue a written order later Thursday. Environmental groups and the Miccosukee Tribe have asked Williams to issue a preliminary injunction to halt operations and further construction. The suit argues that the project threatens environmentally sensitive wetlands that are home to protected plants and animals and would reverse billions of dollars’ worth of environmental restoration. “We’re pleased that the judge saw the urgent need to put a pause on additional construction, and we look forward to advancing our ultimate goal of protecting the unique and imperiled Everglades ecosystem from further damage caused by this mass detention facility,” said Eve Samples, executive director at Friends of the Everglades. A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis decried the ruling but said it “will have no impact on immigration enforcement in Florida.”

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New York Times [8/7/2025 4:46 PM, Patricia Mazzei, 138952K]
The Hill [8/7/2025 4:03 PM, Zach Schonfeld, 18649K]
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USA Today [8/7/2025 5:34 PM, Staff, 75552K]
Daily Caller [8/7/2025 4:20 PM, Jason Hopkins, 1010K]

FOX News [8/7/2025 12:42 PM, Greg Norman, 46878K] reports Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents "are now facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them as they risk their lives to arrest the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens." Noem said in a post on X that these "acts of violence are fueled by sanctuary politicians’ rhetoric vilifying our law enforcement." "We will not and have not let this violence stop us or slow us down. Everyday our law enforcement continues to enforce the law and arrest the most depraved criminals including pedophiles, terrorists, murderers, gang members, and sexual predators," she added. It is unclear what the time period is for the 1000% increase in assaults. The Department of Homeland Security did not clarify the matter when asked about it by Fox News Digital. In July, Fox News Digital reported that ICE officials faced an 830% increase in assaults between Jan. 21, 2025 and July 14, 2025, compared to the same period in 2024. That timeframe began the day after President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office. Noem made the announcement Thursday as the Trump administration is removing the age cap for ICE law enforcement positions, opening up roles to many who may have aged out of the force. Noem said Wednesday they are looking to make 10,000 hires, and she said ICE has already received 80,000 applications. "We are ENDING the age cap for ICE law enforcement. Qualified candidates can now apply with no age limit," Noem wrote on X. NewsMax [8/7/2025 12:34 PM, Nicole Weatherholtz, 4622K] reports that on Saturday, ICE agents escaped an arson attack on their Yakima, Washington, office after an unidentified suspect threw a rock through the window before setting fire to the back of the building. The weekend attack follows another in Los Angeles, where two rioters in June threw concrete blocks at federal officers working at the downtown immigration detention facility. The rioters in that incident launched their assault on the federal agents in response to an immigration raid at a local Home Depot store. In July, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at DHS, told Newsmax the then-830% increase in assaults against DHS agents was "despicable."

DailySignal [8/7/2025 2:20 PM, Bradley Devlin, 558K] reports that this article is a preview of Politics Editor Bradley Devlin’s interview with acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons on "The Signal Sitdown." Watch the full episode on YouTube by clicking on the video above. Two months ago, violent riots broke out in America’s second-largest city after immigration enforcement officers served legal warrants, signed by a judge, to individuals in this country illegally. The rioters, which the media assured you were "mostly peaceful," laid siege to federal buildings, attacked law enforcement officers, lit cop cars on fire, and looted businesses for days—all while flying the flag of a foreign country. Of course, we’re talking about the Los Angeles riots, so we’ll let you guess what flag they were flying. These anarchists seemed well-organized and well-funded. Things got so out of control in Los Angeles, in fact, that the president called in 2,000 National Guardsmen and hundreds of Marines. Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons comes on "The Signal Sitdown" this week to do just that. Lyons is an Air Force veteran with over 25 years of law enforcement experience, and almost 20 of those years have been with ICE. He knows what he’s talking about when it comes to enforcing federal law. And for Lyons and the agents under his command, the LA riots were just the tip of the iceberg. Since the Trump administration entered into office, attacks on ICE agents have increased over 800%. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

USA Today [8/7/2025 5:54 PM, Carlie Procell, Ramon Padilla, and George Petras, 75552K] reports that you can be as young as 18, older than 40 if you pass the physical fitness test, and you’ll get a signing bonus of $50,000 to join the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, which has revised its hiring standards to boost deportations. The ICE budget rose to $75 billion over four years after President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act into law on July 4. Those funds came from the $170 billion allocated to the Department of Homeland Security for immigration and border enforcement. ICE is using some of that money to hire 10,000 recruits, for a total staff of about 30,000. The move comes as the administration seeks to fulfill a goal to deport 1 million immigrants every year. The federal spending plan will help make ICE the single-largest law enforcement agency in the country, larger than the FBI, Drug Enforcement Administration, Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and other agencies combined, USA TODAY reported. For comparison, the FBI has only about 13,700 special agents, according to the Department of Justice. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem now says anyone over 18 can apply to work for ICE, as the Trump administration ramps up immigration enforcement across the country, according to USA TODAY. Noem told Fox News on Aug. 6 that the DHS had already received 80,000 applications.

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New York Times [8/8/2025 3:46 AM, Patricia Mazzei, 330K] reports an immigration detention center built in the Florida Everglades threatens protected lands and wildlife, and violated federal laws when the government failed to study potential harms before construction, environmentalists argued in federal court in Miami on Wednesday. Witnesses testified that they worried that the detention center known as “Alligator Alcatraz” would pollute environmentally sensitive wetlands, hurt endangered species and undo decades of Everglades restoration. “We are very concerned about potential impacts of runoff,” said Eve Samples, the executive director of Friends of the Everglades, a nonprofit group and one of the plaintiffs. The suit is one of two federal cases filed against the remote detention center, which Florida erected last month to house federal immigration detainees. The environmental suit argues that the federal and state governments failed to conduct a review process required by the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which would have allowed for some public input before any construction. Environmentalists are seeking a preliminary injunction to stop operations and any additional construction while their lawsuit moves forward. State officials have tried to portray the environmental impact as minimal. They have said the detention center was necessary to assist the Trump administration with illegal immigration enforcement, because federal authorities did not have enough capacity in existing facilities to hold detainees. Florida has taken an especially aggressive stance in assisting with the illegal immigration crackdown, and is considering erecting a second detention center in North Florida. In legal filings, Florida has also suggested that the detention center is not subject to federal environmental regulations because it is state-run. But what was perhaps most striking during the daylong hearing was how many significant questions remained unanswered about the Everglades detention center, more than a month after the first detainees began to arrive there. Among those questions was the relationship of authority between the Florida Division of Emergency Management, which is in charge of the detention center, and the Department of Homeland Security, which is in charge of immigration detainees. The judge presiding over the environmental case, Kathleen M. Williams of the Federal District Court in Miami, asked the state and federal defendants last week to provide any legal agreement related to the detention center’s operations. No such document was provided during Wednesday’s hearing or in the days leading up to it.

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NewsNation [8/7/2025 3:38 PM, Xavier Walton, 5801K]

The Washington Post [8/7/2025 8:30 PM, Dan Merica and David Nakamura, 32099K] reports President Donald Trump said Thursday that he plans to conduct a census that would not count people present in the country illegally, an order that clashes with the Constitution and would face legal challenges. Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social, that he had “instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures.” The census takes place every 10 years by law, and it was last held in 2020. It is meant to provide a full accounting of everyone present in the United States, including people living in the U.S. without authorization. It is unclear if Trump is ordering a new census to be conducted immediately, or if he is saying he wants to redesign the process ahead of the planned 2030 Census. Neither the White House nor a spokesperson for the Census Bureau responded to a request for comment. The new census, Trump wrote, would use the “results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024” and would not count “people who are in our Country illegally.” he order is part of Trump’s broader fight over redistricting. Typically, redistricting — the process that allocates congressional representation — follows a census. The census, which is mandated by Article 1, Section 2 of the U.S. Constitution, is used to determine how many seats in the House of Representatives each state receives, as well as the disbursement of billions of dollars in federal funding. Trump has recently spearheaded an attempt by Texas Republicans to force a mid-decade redistricting effort that would consolidate Republican power in the state and probably add seats to the House that are guaranteed to be held by Republicans. Adriel I. Cepeda Derieux, the deputy director of the American Civil Liberties Union’s voting rights project, said the organization is prepared for a legal fight if Trump tries to go forward with dropping the undocumented population from the census count. The ACLU successfully sued to block the first Trump administration’s 2019 attempt to add a citizenship question to the Census. “Our reaction is, ‘We’ve been here before with President Trump trying to weaponize the Census against immigrant communities and particularly against undocumented immigrants,’” Derieux said. “The goal, of course, is erasing millions of immigrants from the country with the idea they would take political power away from diverse communities where they live. Any attempt to threaten these communities in the way the first administration did … we would be ready to meet them in court.” None of this means that Trump will not attempt to conduct a new census or that a protracted fight couldn’t happen, but because Congress codified the census in the 1950s, the legislative body probably would need to be involved, too. The AP [8/7/2025 2:26 PM, Josh Boak, Mike Schneider and Joey Cappelletti, 56000K] reports that Trump stressed that as part of the changes people in "our Country illegally" will be excluded from census counts. Experts said it was unclear what exactly Trump was calling for, whether it was changes to the 2030 census or a mid-decade census, and, if so, whether it would be used for a mid-decade apportionment, which is the process of divvying up congressional seats among the states based on the population count. Any changes in the conduct of a national census, which is the biggest non-military undertaking by the federal government, would require alterations to the Census Act and approval from Congress, which has oversight responsibilities, and there likely would be a fierce fight. While the Census Act permits a mid-decade census for things like distributing federal funding, it can’t be used for apportionment or redistricting and must be done in a year ending in 5, said Terri Ann Lowenthal, a former congressional staffer who consults on census issues. "He cannot unilaterally order a new census. The census is governed by law, not to mention the Constitution," Lowenthal said. "Logistically, it’s a half-baked idea.” It would be almost logistically impossible to carry out a mid-decade census in such a short period of time, New York Law School professor Jeffrey Wice said. "This isn’t something that you can do overnight," said Wice, a census and redistricting expert. "To get all the pieces put together, it would be such a tremendous challenge, if not impossible.” NBC News [8/7/2025 1:16 PM, Alexandra Marquez, 44540K] reports that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution expands the qualifications for being counted in the census and in reapportionment to "the whole number of persons in each state." A census plan that leaves undocumented immigrants out of the count would likely face legal challenges. In a statement, John Bisognano, president of the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, condemned Trump’s statement and predicted the proposal would be blocked by federal courts.

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Axios [8/7/2025 1:24 PM, Herb Scribner, 13599K]

Federalist [8/7/2025 3:43 PM, Brianna Lyman, 1142K] reports President Donald Trump announced Thursday he instructed the Commerce Department to begin working on a census that does not include illegal aliens. It’s a long-overdue correction to a system that Democrats have exploited for years to tip the balance of power in Washington. "I have instructed our Department of Commerce to immediately begin work on a new and highly accurate CENSUS based on modern day facts and figures and, importantly, using the results and information gained from the Presidential Election of 2024. People who are in our country illegally WILL NOT BE COUNTED IN THE CENSUS. Thank you for your attention to this matter!" Trump said. Trump previously signed a memo in 2020 that barred illegal aliens from being counted in the census. The memo was challenged and made its way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately did not rule on the merits as to whether all residents — regardless of their legal status — must be counted and if the president has the authority to exclude nonresidents. The high court however did rule in the 1976 decision Mathews v. Diaz, a case regarding the Social Security Act, that while illegal immigrants are entitled to due process protections under the Fifth and 14th Amendments, they are not entitled to the benefits of citizenship. Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the unanimous court: “Neither the overnight visitor, the unfriendly agent of a hostile foreign power, the resident diplomat, nor the illegal entrant, can advance even a colorable constitutional claim to a share in the bounty that a conscientious sovereign makes available to its own citizens and some of its guests.”

AP [8/7/2025 12:27 PM, Staff, 56000K] reports the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), America’s largest public interest organization advocating for immigration enforcement and sensible migration policies, has filed a brief in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois supporting DHS’s decision to terminate Shelter and Services Program (SSP) funding to sanctuary jurisdictions—including the City of Chicago, Pima County (Arizona), and the City and County of Denver. FAIR’s brief argues that the plaintiffs lack standing and cannot demonstrate irreparable harm because their alleged injury—loss of SSP funds—stems directly from their own unlawful sanctuary policies. These policies violate the Supremacy Clause of the U.S. Constitution by obstructing federal immigration enforcement objectives enshrined in the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), and by impeding federal officers in their duties. The plaintiffs’ policies, such as Chicago’s Welcoming City Ordinance, Pima County’s restrictive measures, and Denver’s Public Safety Enforcement Priorities Act, prohibit cooperation with federal immigration authorities (like sharing defendants’ release dates or honoring ICE detainers). These sanctuary policies contravene federal mandates requiring information sharing, and risk violating federal anti-harboring laws. FAIR contends that there is no legally protected interest in perpetuating such unlawful conduct, and that equity bars the relief plaintiffs seek because such relief would preserve policies that frustrate federal law.

Blaze [8/7/2025 11:55 AM, Julio Rosas, 1805K] reports the Department of Homeland Security has given its side of the story after several House Democrats said they were denied access to a detention facility in New York, even claiming they were "trapped" by a masked officer. Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-N.Y.) posted video of their attempted visit showing media members outside of the fenced area to the facility. The site is run by the Federal Bureau of Prisons. The Democrats said they were there to provide "oversight" to the holding facility. "This blatant lack of respect towards the Legislative Branch is a deterioration of checks and balances, all while they hide their atrocities from the public. The people demand answers, and immigrants deserve humanity," Espaillat said. New York Democratic Reps. Dan Goldman and Nydia Velazquez were present for the incident as well. DHS called the visit "deeply unserious," claiming the representatives "were not trapped and were free to leave whenever they would like, in fact the BOP, which manages this facility, had to close the gates to prevent the media from trespassing.” "Here are the facts: These members did not follow proper protocol and schedule their visit. Instead, they brought a gaggle of media to drive clicks and fundraising emails," DHS continued.

Telemundo51 [8/7/2025 11:38 AM, Staff, 177K] reports the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) denied on Wednesday night the death of Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez, a Venezuelan influencer known as "Luis Cold," arrested in the center known as Alligator Alcatraz. Rivas Velásquez fainted and was taken to the hospital as a precaution. ICE takes its commitment to protecting those in their custody very seriously. We make sure that illegal foreigners have access to adequate medical care, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in written statements. McLaughlin reacted to complaints from relatives of Rivas Velásquez, who claimed to have received information about his death. On Thursday morning, upon learning of the reaction of the authorities, Rivas Velásquez’s sister and girlfriend demanded in a public post on their Instagram accounts, to provide them with proof of life. If this information they gave us this morning is false and he’s fine and he’s alive I apologize to everyone and the U.S. government, we just want proof of life, and stop playing and don’t speculate things that aren’t. "We want good news," they wrote. The detainee’s girlfriend told Telemundo 51 that her immigration lawyer confirmed to authorities that Rivas Velásquez was transferred to a hospital, but she has no details of what happened. The medical examiner’s offices in Miami-Dade and Collier counties indicated that they have no records of any person killed under the name Luis Manuel Rivas Velásquez.

USA Today [8/7/2025 5:35 PM, Cybele Mayes-Osterman, 75552K] reports that the Pentagon said it wants to make Fort Bliss the "largest federal detention center in history" to hold migrants, and will have the Texas Army base prepared to hold 1,000 detainees within weeks. The military began building a detention center at the base in mid-July with the goal of an "initial operating capacity" of 1,000 detainees by mid to late August, Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson told reporters on Aug. 7. "We will finish construction for up to 5,000 beds in the weeks and months ahead," she said. "Upon completion, this will be the largest federal detention center in history for this critical mission." The Trump administration has gestured towards a sweeping plan to jail migrants awaiting deportation at United States military bases. Military officials have screened bases across the country at possible migrant detention centers, USA TODAY previously reported. Around 100 migrants are already detained at Fort Bliss, an Army base just outside El Paso, and Pentagon officials have hinted for months that they planned to increase that number to thousands. Army Sec. Dan Driscoll announced the plan during a visit to the base in late March, the El Paso Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, previously reported. The Defense Department awarded a contract to a Virginia company to run the detention center on July 18.

Univision [8/7/2025 8:50 AM, Staff, 4992K] reports in May, President Donald Trump’s administration began a new judicial effort to end an immigration rule, known as the Flores Agreement, which since the 1990s has provided protection for migrant minors in federal custody. Federal District Court Judge Southern California Dolly Gee will issue a ruling on the government’s motion after a hearing scheduled for August 8. According to the government, the protections stipulated in the Flores Agreement not only encourage immigration but also interfere with their ability to establish migration policies. The Flores Agreement is a court transaction dating back to 1997 reached between the parties of a trial initiated in 1985 by the American Civil Liberties Association (ACLU) against Ronald Reagan’s government. The ACLU woman flaunted the rape by the migratings of the due process of a 15-year-old migrant girl named Jenny Flores, who arrived in the United States fleeing El Salvador’s civil war. According to the plaintiffs, Flores was subjected to harsh treatment by immigration authorities, including naked body searches and confinement in a juvenile detention center for months without education, or recreation, while awaiting deportation. The case lasted for more than a decade to the Supreme Court, such as Reno v. Flowers during Bill Clinton’s administration, which culminated not in a decision but with an agreement between the parties known as the Flores vs. Transfer Agreement. Reno or Flores Agreement, which contains the rules governing the treatment of children detained by the migration authorities on suspicion of portability.

The Hill [8/7/2025 12:28 PM, Filip Timotija, 18649K] reports "South Park" on Wednesday night continued its satirical attacks on the Trump administration, with its latest episode taking aim at figures including the president, Vice President Vance and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem. The episode, dubbed "Got a Nut," depicts the school counselor, Mr. Mackey, who is terminated from his job at an elementary school, eventually joining Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mackey watches a recruitment video where Noem refers to shooting her dog, then shows her shooting multiple dogs. Later in the episode, Noem is shown leading an immigration raid on a "Dora the Explorer" live concert, where she shoots a dog, and then a raid in heaven, where she tells agents to "only detain the brown ones.” Mackey is later invited to Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, where the president offers to make him Noem’s replacement, then invites the former school counselor into his bed with Satan. Vance is depicted as a minisized Trump servant. After Trump gets annoyed with Vance in the episode, the president kicks him. "Well, I’ve finally made it," Vance said in a Thursday morning post on the social platform X, commenting on an image of his portrayal in the episode. The Washington Examiner [8/7/2025 12:42 PM, Harry Khachatrian, 1934K] reports that there’s a scene in the latest South Park episode, "Got a Nut," in which Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem leads a squad of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents through the pearly gates of heaven. "Only the brown ones. If it’s brown, it goes down," she instructs. It’s a depiction so grotesque and absurd it could only come from the show’s creators, Matt Stone and Trey Parker, who revel in taking real-world figures and dialing their worst traits up to cartoonishly sociopathic extremes. But before conservatives rush to denounce South Park as the latest casualty of "wokeism," it’s worth remembering that this is tame compared to past episodes skewering liberal sacred cows. When she isn’t zealously shooting dogs, a recurring gag riffing on her real-life memoir, Noem leads hordes of ICE agents into Dora the Explorer productions to round up Latinos, all while shouting jingoistic commands with sadistic glee. Meanwhile, in a separate plotline, Clyde Donovan launches a podcast and adopts the persona of an unhinged right-wing shock jock, a sardonic blend of Matt Walsh’s deadpan delivery and Alex Jones’s conspiratorial mania. He spouts lines such as, "You can’t trust Jews, white people are the underprivileged, and women belong at home," all while posturing as a crusader for Christianity and truth. The targets, including ICE, conservative grifters, Noem, and even President Donald Trump (still Satan’s lover), are low-hanging fruit. And while the show still lands more punches than most, one can’t help but start to wonder whether Stone and Parker are just trying to make their nut.

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Washington Examiner [8/7/2025 1:22 PM, Asher Notheis, 1934K]
Chicago Tribune [8/7/2025 1:10 PM, Christine Ricciardi, 3987K]

NewsNation [8/7/2025 10:03 PM, Patrick Djordjevic, 5801K] Video: HERE reports Border czar Tom Homan does not appreciate "South Park’s" latest parody of the Trump administration. Homan joined "CUOMO" on Thursday night to discuss the animated sitcom’s satirical critique of ICE’s hiring incentives, which previously included bonuses up to $50,000. "Look, it’s just in bad form, especially right now," Homan told "CUOMO.” "I know the [DHS] Secretary announced today we’re up over an 830% increase on assaults on ICE agents. Now we’re up over 1,000%," Homan said. The border czar said the comedy was "certainly bad timing" given recent assaults on ICE agents. "A lot on the left don’t like what ICE does, but there’s a small percentage that take it too far … they feel emboldened the more and more they see this bad rhetoric coming out," he added. Homan told NewsNation he had to shut his LinkedIn account down amid interest from "thousands and thousands" of people in becoming an ICE agent. "Last month, Border Patrol had a record number of recruiting numbers, the highest the agency’s ever seen. So there’s no shortage of people who want to come and join the ranks," Homan said of both agencies. While ICE has received some criticism for its arrests, Homan says some of it is due to the opposite approach taken by the Biden administration. "For four years, ICE wasn’t able to do its job because Secretary Mayorkas told ICE, ‘You can’t arrest somebody for simply being here illegally.’ They had to be convicted of a serious crime, so ICE wasn’t doing their job," Homan said.

New York Times [8/7/2025 1:05 PM, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Derrick Bryson Taylor is a Times reporter covering breaking news in culture and the arts., 138952K] reports that when the new season of “South Park” premiered last month with a scene showing President Trump in bed with Satan discussing Jeffrey Epstein, the White House attacked the series as a “fourth-rate show” and said that it “hasn’t been relevant for over 20 years.” But the episode drew strong ratings, and when the series returned on Wednesday night some of the Trump administration officials and allies who were skewered — including Vice President JD Vance — took a different tack, and tried to show they could take a joke. “Well, I’ve finally made it,” Mr. Vance wrote on social media as he reposted a scene from the show that imagined Mar-a-Lago as “Fantasy Island” and the vice president as Tattoo, the short sidekick who was played in the original series by the actor Hervé Villechaize. In the episode, “Got a Nut,” Mr. Mackey, a school counselor, loses his job because of budget cuts and takes a position with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The show portrays Kristi Noem, the Homeland Security secretary, who wrote in her memoir about shooting her dog, as a serial dog shooter. “A few years ago I had to put my puppy down by shooting it in the face, because sometimes doing what’s important means doing what’s hard,” her character says in a training video. The second episode also briefly portrays Charlie Kirk, the founder and chief of the pro-Trump, youth-focused Turning Point USA. The real Mr. Kirk embraced the parody and approvingly shared several clips on his social media accounts, including a segment where Cartman fiercely debates “woke liberal students.” “Not bad, Cartman,” he wrote on X, where he changed his avatar to an image of Cartman sporting a Kirk-like haircut.

Blaze [8/7/2025 1:09 PM, Carlos Garcia, 1805K] reports that Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem responded to a cartoon parody of her on "South Park" when she spoke to Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck on Thursday. The popular show is taking political themes head-on in its 27th season, which has already shown very unflattering portrayals of President Donald Trump in the first two shows. Noem said she had not had a chance to watch the show because she was so busy, but she appeared to have heard that they mocked her appearance. "Yeah, it never ends. But it’s so lazy to just constantly make fun of women for how they look," she responded. "It’s always the liberals and the extremists [who] do that," she added. The White House previously responded to South Park by calling it irrelevant. The show was also critical of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which is shown as so desperate for recruits that it drops its standards to accept anyone. In a training video for ICE, a song proclaims: "If you’re crazy or fat and lazy, we don’t care at all!" The show also has Noem shooting many dogs in different scenes, which refers to her admission in 2024 that she shot a hunting dog that had killed her chickens, claiming the dog had become "untrainable" and "dangerous" to people. "South Park" also has a scene showing Noem barging into heaven with ICE agents to detain and deport Latino angels after hearing that many illegal aliens are sure to go to heaven. "No more brownies in heaven!" the cartoon Noem says before her face melts. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Blaze [8/7/2025 1:04 PM, Joseph MacKinnon, 1805K] reports that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem spoke on Thursday with Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck about the current phase of the administration’s deportations as well as about the Department of Homeland Security’s successful new recruitment campaign. Noem emphasized that while there are opportunities for patriots to directly help U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement round up criminal noncitizens, it is essential that "hardworking, everyday Americans" assist by publicly signaling their support for ICE — especially in the face of mounting attacks on federal agents. President Donald Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act allocates $76.5 billion to ICE. Roughly $30 billion of the funds are intended for the recruitment of 10,000 more staff so that the agency can achieve 1 million annual deportations. To fill some of these roles, the DHS launched an ICE recruitment campaign last week offering eligible applicants a maximum $50,000 signing bonus, student loan repayment, and other perks. On Wednesday, the agency announced it was also waiving age limits "so even more patriots will qualify to join ICE.” Noem told Beck, "We already have over 80,000 applicants for those 10,000 positions, so we’re going through that and getting them through the process to see who qualifies." "Words have consequences," continued Noem, referring to the rhetoric pushed by some politicians. "What you say matters. And the consequences of using dangerous language like that is that people take action on them. Anybody who has a tendency to be unstable or to be violent, that almost gives them permission to go out there and take action against these individuals."

New York Times [8/7/2025 5:04 PM, Adam Goldman, Devlin Barrett, Glenn Thrush, and William K. Rashbaum, 138952K] reports that the Trump-appointed leaders of the F.B.I. deepened their purge of employees this week, forcing out senior agents including the former acting head of the bureau and another top official whose ascent angered Trump supporters, according to people familiar with the matter. Brian Driscoll, who briefly served as the acting director in the early days of the Trump administration, was among those being forced out and told to leave by Friday, according to the people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe personnel decisions that have not yet been made public. Steven J. Jensen, the head of the F.B.I.’s Washington field office, was also ousted this week, these people said. Mr. Jensen had been a target of conservatives because in overseeing the bureau’s domestic terrorism operations section at the time, he played a key role in responding to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Driscoll, a charismatic F.B.I. veteran with extensive experience in domestic and international investigations, became an unlikely champion of the bureau after being accidentally catapulted — through an administrative foul-up — to the director’s chair on Inauguration Day. He resisted demands to turn over the names of F.B.I. agents who had worked on the investigation into the Capitol attack, fighting off what was seen as a possible purge. Those actions earned him folk-hero status among the rank and file, and the enmity of President Trump’s former enforcer at the Justice Department, Emil Bove III, which ultimately sealed his fate. His continued reluctance to accede to requests contributed to his dismissal, according to people familiar with the decision. A bureau spokeswoman at the Washington field office declined to comment. The F.B.I.’s national press office also declined to comment.

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NBC News [8/7/2025 4:16 PM, Michael Kosnar and Dareh Gregorian, 44540K]
USA Today [8/7/2025 5:20 PM, Josh Meyer, 75552K]

ABC News [8/7/2025 5:25 PM, Bill Hutchinson, 31733K] reports that as President Donald Trump continues to rail against crime in the nation’s capital, saying violence is out of control and that Washington, D.C., should be federalized, the mother of a Congressional intern gunned down in June told ABC News on Thursday that she agrees with the president. Since beginning his second term in the Oval Office, Trump has slammed local leaders, claiming they have not done enough to crack down on violent crime in the district. The president ramped up his criticism after a 19-year-old former employee of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) was left beaten and bloodied early Sunday during an attempted carjacking in northwest Washington, D.C. Trump said in a social media post that the incident showed that "crime in Washington, D.C., is totally out of control." The president also suggested that minors involved in such crimes should be prosecuted as adults, "starting at 14." "If D.C. doesn’t get its act together, and quickly, we will have no choice but to take Federal control of the City, and run this City how it should be run, and put criminals on notice that they’re not going to get away with it anymore," Trump said in his post. Two 15-year-old suspects were arrested in Sunday’s assault of the former DOGE employee, identified in a police incident report as 19-year-old Edward Coristine, but investigators said up to eight other perpetrators remain at large.

AP [8/7/2025 5:11 PM, Eric Tucker, 2346K] reports that the FBI is forcing out more senior officials, including a former acting director who resisted Trump administration demands to turn over the names of agents who participated in Jan. 6 Capitol riot investigations and the head of the bureau’s Washington field office, according to people familiar with the matter and internal communications seen by The Associated Press. The basis for the ouster of Brian Driscoll, who led the bureau in the turbulent weeks after President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, were not immediately clear, but Driscoll’s final day at the FBI is Friday, said the people, who were not authorized to discuss the personnel move by name and spoke to the AP on the condition of anonymity. "I understand that you may have a lot of questions regarding why, for which I have no answers," Driscoll wrote in a message to colleagues. "No cause has been articulated at this time." Another high-profile termination is Steven Jensen, who for months had been the assistant director in charge of the Washington field office, one of the bureau’s largest and busiest. He confirmed in a message to colleagues Thursday he had been told he was being fired effective Friday. "I intend to meet this challenge like any other I have faced in this organization, with professionalism, integrity and dignity," Jensen wrote in an email.

AP [8/8/2025 12:01 AM, Valerie Gonzalez, 24051K] reports a federal judge on Friday will hear a Trump administration request to end a nearly three-decade-old policy on ensuring safe conditions for immigrant children held in federal custody. U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee in Los Angeles will hold a hearing to consider dissolving a policy that limits how long Customs and Border Protection can hold immigrant children and that requires them to be kept in safe and sanitary conditions. The policy also allows third-party inspections of CBP facilities that hold immigrant children to ensure compliance. Advocates for immigrant children have asked the judge to keep the protections and oversight in place and have submitted firsthand accounts from immigrants in family detention who described adults fighting children for clean water, despondent toddlers and a child with swollen feet who was denied a medical exam. In its motion, President Donald Trump’s administration said the government has made substantial changes since the Flores agreement was formalized in 1997. The government said it has created standards and policies governing the custody of immigrant children that conform to legislation and the agreement. Conditions for immigrant children who enter the U.S. without a parent “have substantially improved from those that precipitated this suit four decades ago,” the government wrote in its motion. The agreement, named for a teenage plaintiff, governs the conditions for all immigrant children in U.S. custody, including those traveling alone or with their parents. It also limits how long CBP can detain child immigrants to 72 hours. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services then takes custody of the children. The Biden administration successfully pushed to partially end the agreement last year. Gee ruled that special court supervision may end when HHS takes custody, but she carved out exceptions for certain types of facilities for children with more acute needs. Advocates for the children say the government is holding children beyond the time limits set out in the agreement. In March and April, CPB reported that it had 213 children in custody for more than 72 hours and that 14 children, including toddlers, were held for over 20 days in April. As part of their court filings, they included testimony from several families who were held in family detention centers in Texas. If the judge terminates the settlement, the detention centers would be closed to third-party inspections. The federal government is looking to expand its immigration detention space, including by building more centers like one in Florida dubbed “Alligator Alcatraz,” where a lawsuit alleges detainees’ constitutional rights are being violated.

AP [8/7/2025 6:24 PM, Lindsay Whitehurst, 56000K] reports that the Trump administration on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to halt a court order restricting immigration stops that swept up at least two U.S. citizens in Southern California. The emergency petition comes after an appeals court refused to lift a temporary restraining order barring authorities from stopping or arresting people based solely on factors like what language speak or where they work. The move is the latest in a string of emergency appeals from the Trump administration to the high court, which has recently sided with the Republican president in a number of high-profile cases. The Justice Department argued that federal agents are allowed to consider those factors when ramping up enforcement of immigration laws in Los Angeles, an area it considers a “top enforcement priority.” Trump officials asked the justices to immediately halt the order from U.S. District Judge Maame E. Frimpong in Los Angeles. She found a “mountain of evidence” that enforcement tactics were violating the U.S. Constitution in what the plaintiffs called “roving patrols.” Department of Homeland Security attorneys have said immigration officers target people based on illegal presence in the U.S., not skin color, race or ethnicity.

USA Today [8/7/2025 8:10 PM, Josh Peter, 75552K] reports about 70 miles north of the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home of the Indianapolis 500, a new immigration detention center got a noteworthy and controversial name. "The Speedway Slammer’’ is what the Trump administration is calling it. "COMING SOON to Indiana: The Speedway Slammer,’’ Kristi Noem, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, wrote on her X account Aug. 5. "Today, we’re announcing a new partnership with the state of Indiana to expand detention bed space by 1,000 beds.’’. In her post, Noem also thanked Indiana governor Michael 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.’’. Homeland Security also issued the image of an Indy car emblazoned with the letters ICE – U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement – and No. 5, which belongs to NTT IndyCar Series driver Pato O’Ward, the only Mexican in the Indy 500 and the series this year. The car appears to be driving past a prison. O’Ward, who drives for Arrow McLaren, is ranked second in points in the 2025 season and has won two races this year. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the use of the 5 was purposeful to point to O’Ward or if it was just a coincidence. Outside the number, the car lacked any other connections to O’Ward’s traditional black-and-papaya-colored chassis. A spokesperson for Arrow McLaren declined to comment when reached by the Indianapolis Star, part of the USA TODAY Network, regarding the matter. Border Czar Tom Homan, asked about requests not to use the name Speedway, said he didn’t know who specifically was behind the name. "I don’t want the names [to detract from] the great work they’re doing," Homan said. "This is serious work and it’s dangerous work.” The Speedway Slammer joins "Alligator Alcatraz,’’ a detention center in Florida that marked the only other partnership with a state to expand ICE detention capacity. "We are proud to work with President Trump and Secretary Noem as they remove the worst of the worst with this innovative partnership," said Braun, Indiana’s governor, said in news release issued by DHS. "Indiana is taking a comprehensive and collaborative approach to combating illegal immigration and will continue to lead the way among states.”

Washington Examiner [8/7/2025 12:52 PM, Mabinty Quarshie, 1934K] reports that Senior White House officials are set to fan out across the nation to tout key aspects of the "big, beautiful bill," President Donald Trump’s signature domestic policy legislation. Nine Cabinet secretaries will champion the legislation during events in the coming weeks, a White House official told the Washington Examiner. Vice President JD Vance has already begun appearances touting the bill to the public and is set to visit another state this week, according to his office. "Vice President Vance will visit Indianapolis on Thursday, where he will be headlining an RNC fundraiser," Vance communications director William Martin said. "He will also meet with Governor [Mike] Braun and other state officials to discuss a variety of issues.” The other officials who will travel soon include Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, Energy Secretary Chris Wright, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, Education Secretary Linda McMahon, EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner, and Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler.

USA Today [8/7/2025 4:50 PM, Rex Huppke, 75552K] reports that do you enjoy carrying guns, hiding your face from the public, and jumping out of the back of rented moving vans into Home Depot parking lots to chase people going about their daily lives? Have you been spending your days at a boring, dead-end job where you never hear the panicked screams of mothers seeing their children forcibly stuffed into unmarked vans? If so, maybe it’s time you considered a career with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s your chance to help Make America Great Again while also ensuring you will live in infamy, which is a good thing as long as you don’t Google it. You might recognize ICE from its recent appearance on the popular cartoon "South Park." Don’t watch that episode. It might turn you into a lib. But rest assured, it proved our brave agents and our fearless leader, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, are now a huge part of the popular culture, meaning they are very popular. You want to be very popular, don’t you? DON’T YOU? To show how bad we want you to be part of our always-doing-the-right-thing team, Homeland Security recently posted a link to apply to ICE on X along with these words: "Serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!"

NPR [8/7/2025 5:45 PM, Chloe Veltman, 37958K] reports Actor Dean Cain, best known for his starring role in the 1990s Superman TV spinoff Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, has announced he is planning to join U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The 59-year-old actor shared his decision in an interview on Wednesday with Fox News’ Jesse Watters. " This country was built on patriots stepping up, whether it was popular or not, and doing the right thing. I truly believe this is the right thing," Cain said. "President Trump ran on this. This is what people voted for. It’s what I voted for. He’s gonna see it through, and I’ll do my part and help him make sure it happens.” Cain’s news came after he took to Instagram to promote ICE’s efforts to hire new recruits. "You can defend your homeland and get great benefits, like a $50,000 signing bonus," the actor said. "So if you wanna help save America, ICE is arresting the worst of the worst and removing them from America’s streets.” The video begins with a statement that may have misled some into thinking the actor had already joined ICE: " I felt it was important to join with our first responders to help secure the safety of all Americans, not just talk about it," said Dean on Instagram. "So I joined up.” But Cain went on to tell Watters that the decision to join ICE came after his Instagram post. "I’m actually a sworn deputy sheriff and a reserve police officer," he said. "I wasn’t part of ICE. But once I put that [the Instagram video] out there and you put a little blurb on your show, it went crazy. So now I’ve spoken with some officials over at ICE.” Cain "will be sworn in as an honorary ICE Officer in the coming month," according to a statement from Tricia McLaughlin, U.S. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs. Cain has spoken in the past about his law enforcement affiliations as a reserve police officer in Idaho’s Pocatello Police Department and as a sworn sheriff’s deputy in Frederick County, Va. NPR has reached out to the Frederick County Sheriff’s Department and the Pocatello Police Department as well as to Cain’s legal and entertainment representatives to confirm. On Wednesday, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced that ICE would remove age limits for applicants. "In the wake of Biden’s open borders disaster, our country needs dedicated Americans to join ICE to remove the worst of the worst out of our country," a news release said. Previously, ICE applicants had to be at least 21 years old and, depending on the role, no older than 37 or 40.

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New York Times [8/7/2025 5:42 PM, Claire Moses, 138952K]
AP [8/7/2025 3:57 PM, Staff, 56000K]
CBS News [8/7/2025 4:05 PM, Adam Hudacek, 32092K]

NewsMax [8/7/2025 6:50 PM, Jim Mishler, 4622K] reports actor Dean Cain told Newsmax Thursday that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have his full support. Cain told "Carl Higbie FRONTLINE" that he has such a strong belief in the work of ICE that he has begun working in the department. He said he is concerned that ICE agents are wrongly portrayed by some Americans. "The way they’re going after our ICE agents now is causing me to step up and stand shoulder to shoulder with them," he said. Cain said ICE agents are on the front line of protection for America. "These are wonderful, hardworking, everyday Americans of all ethnicities and all religions, and they do an incredible job keeping us safe. They’re being attacked and vilified now, and people need to step up and stand shoulder to shoulder with them, and that’s exactly what I’m doing," he said. Cain posted on social media about his decision to seek employment with ICE, which was made easier since he was already a sworn law enforcement officer. "I felt it was important to join with our first responders to help secure the safety of all Americans, not just talk about it. So I joined up.” Best known for his portrayal of Superman in the hit TV series "Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman," Cain responded to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s call for Americans to join ICE. He said detractors paint the wrong picture of enforcement agents. "These are not monsters. They’re not the gestapo. They’re none of that ridiculousness," he said. "These are great people doing law enforcement that our Congress has written the laws for.” Cain said he supports immigration to the U.S. But like in every other country in the world, it must be done properly, and new immigrants to the U.S. need to assimilate, he said.

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [8/7/2025 8:55 AM, Bob Price, 3077K]

FOX News [8/7/2025 1:31 PM, Charles Creitz, 46878K] reports that as President Donald Trump and his Department of Homeland Security have ramped up enforcement of U.S. immigration law after the Biden-era deluge at the border, some Democrats have come under fire for their responses to the situation. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., has held "Know Your Rights" webinars and disseminated guides to constituents concerned about ICE conducting operations in her Queens and Bronx district. "ICE raids are political tactics, and they’re often intended to create fear," one proctor in an Ocasio-Cortez webinar advised. "Do not open your door," an Ocasio-Cortez-branded document read elsewhere – advising residents to demand to see ICE’s judicially signed warrants. Such efforts by the "Squad" member drew the attention of Border Czar Thomas Homan, who told Fox News he had sent a letter to the Department of Justice questioning whether she may have broken the law. "At what level is that impediment [of federal law enforcement operations]?" Homan asked "Ingraham Angle" host Laura Ingraham. "If so, what are we going to do about it?... Maybe AOC is going to be in trouble now." At the state government level, Arizona state Sen. Analise Ortiz came under fire for her response to ICE operations. Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Tricia McLaughlin countered in comments to Fox News Digital: "Arizona state Senator Analise Ortiz is siding with vicious cartels, human traffickers, and violent criminals over American citizens," she said.

Axios [8/8/2025 4:30 AM, Brittany Gibson, 13599K] reports as it ramps up mass deportations, the Trump administration is pushing to become its own watchdog on the well-being of children in immigrant detention. Trump officials say they’ve met the requirements in the Flores Settlement Agreement, which has guaranteed extra scrutiny for young detainees since 1997. But legal advocates say the oversight is needed more than ever. The Flores Settlement Agreement was made to limit the time children spend in detention, improve the conditions for children in the system and allow lawyers to inspect detention facilities. The Trump administration submitted a court motion to end the agreement in May. The next hearing is August 8. Border czar Tom Homan told The Washington Post last December that the Trump administration would ramp up family detention and would construct more facilities to hold families and their children. The government is arguing that Flores should end because a lower court doesn’t have the jurisdiction to enforce the nationwide settlement, the government has met the necessary standards and because the settlement improperly gives power to the judiciary instead of the executive branch. The White House declined an interview request for Homan. "We’ve consistently found violations of the agreement and some of those conditions and violations are really egregious," said Mishan Wroe, co-counsel on the case and directing attorney at the National Center for Youth Law. "They are being arrested by border patrol or by other federal agencies that are ill equipped to care for individuals once they are in their custody," said Sergio Perez, executive director at the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, one of the legal groups on the Flores case. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement: "For years, the Flores consent decree has been a tool of the left to promote an open borders agenda. It is long overdue for a single district in California to stop managing the Executive Branch’s immigration functions. The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our immigration system."

Chicago Tribune [8/7/2025 11:08 AM, Alicia A. Caldwell, 3987K] reports that the Trump administration is ramping up a massive hiring spree at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, offering up to $50,000 signing bonuses, waiving age limits and invoking wartime-style imagery in a bid to lure thousands of new officers. The campaign is part of a broader White House effort to dramatically scale up deportations, backed by a $150 billion border-security package signed into law last month by President Donald Trump, including $30 billion for ICE. More than 80,000 people have applied to join the agency since the recruitment drive began last week, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Posters with images like Uncle Sam or Trump have blanketed college campuses, social media and federal job boards, emblazoned with phrases such as "Defend the Homeland" and "America has been invaded by criminals and predators. We need YOU to get them out." ICE is targeting first-time applicants with promises of student-loan relief and trying to entice retired US employees back into service. In a post on X this week, DHS linked to an ICE hiring website and said, "Serve your country! Defend your culture! No undergraduate degree required!" This week, ICE offered agents cash bonuses to speed up deportations before abruptly canceling what was supposed to be a 30-day pilot program hours later, underscoring the pressure to meet Trump’s immigration goals, the New York Times reported. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman, said that no such policy had ever been in effect.

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Bloomberg [8/7/2025 11:08 AM, Alicia A. Caldwell and Myles Miller, 19320K]

Univision [8/7/2025 12:07 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports Maiker Espinoza Escalona and Luis Chacón Gómez had deportation orders to their country, Venezuela. But without informing them, the U.S. government sent them to Guantanamo Bay and from there to the Confinement Center for Terrorism (Cecot) in El Salvador. Espinoza made the journey with an overnight night in Cuba until he arrived at the gangland prison on March 31, 2025; Chacón stepped on the bay for hours, until he was mounted on a plane that landed in El Salvador on April 13. Maiker and Luis have something else in common: they were expelled from the United States in violation of the order of a district judge, who had stopped deportations of immigrants to third countries without being notified beforehand and allowed to object to the decision. Upon leaving the detention centers of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE) in which they were located, none were informed of their transfer to Guantanamo or that they would spend the next few months locked up in Cecot. They discovered it on the way. On 15 March 2025, the first 238 expelled to El Salvador had arrived. Maiker and Luis had seen the news from their detention centers in Texas and Wisconsin. They were scared to be the next. Maiker already accumulated anguish. He says that he and his family - his partner Yorely Bernal Inciarte and his one-year-old daughter, Maikelys, had been kidnapped on their immigration journey through Mexico: "We were afraid to be in Mexico (...) We got to the border and handed ourselves in," he told Univision News by phone. It was in El Paso, Texas: on May 14, 2024, they began their trial in the United States. They were left in detention and on 19 May 2024, the husbands were told to separate them momentarily from the girl, who could not accompany them to the court, "who in two hours handed her back to us," she recalls. But Maikelys went to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed, and for months they could not hug her again. Univision News asked ICE and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for information about these two Venezuelans identified by the U.S. government to be members of the Aragua train criminal gang, designated as a terrorist organization by President Donald Trump. Names and details of the other 12 expelled to Cecot on these two planes that made scales at Guantanamo were also requested. At the close of this story we got no answer.

Univision [8/7/2025 5:20 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports deaths in custody, physical and sexual abuse, ill-treatment of pregnant women and children, inadequate medical care, unhealthy living conditions and other abuses have been frequent in immigration detention centers, according to a new report. An investigation by the office of Democratic Senator Jon Ossoff claims that since Donald Trump returned to power, there have been more than 500 credible allegations of human rights abuses and dozens of allegations of physical and sexual abuse in those centers. The report published in late July indicates that the senator’s office also confirmed the death of immigrants in the custody of immigration authorities, however, he did not specify the number. According to the report, the abuses have been committed against immigrants in the custody of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the Federal Prisons Agency (BOP) and the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) in 25 states of the United States, Puerto Rico, as well as in U.S. military bases, including those in Guantanamo, in Cuba, and Camp Lemonnier, in Djibouti. For investigation, the senator’s office interviewed dozens of witnesses and sources, including staff from the centers, agents, lawyers, detainees and their families, doctors and nurses who have conducted inspections inside facilities run by DHS, HHS and BOP. According to the report, the senator’s office identified 41 credible allegations of physical and sexual abuse within immigration detention centers. The investigation indicates that it had access to at least two 911 calls from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Processing Center in Advance, California, where sexual assault or threats of sexual assault were reported. While at the ICE Processing Center in South Texas, there have been records of at least four emergency calls since January this year with reference to sexual abuse. Detained immigrants have also reported being beaten by detention centre staff and detained in solitary confinement after reporting their abuses, the investigation says.

Washington Examiner [8/8/2025 4:06 AM, Staff, 1934K] reports the Department of Homeland Security denied any wrongdoing after Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) claimed he had evidence of abuse occurring at detention centers. DHS issued a press release on Thursday refutations stating his claims were “debunked,” providing a summary of realities as rebuttals to several of Ossoff’s most egregious claims. Ossoff announced on Wednesday that he had a report that identified more than 500 incidents of “credible reports of human rights abuse” in detention centers throughout the country. The senator announced the report contained evidence of widespread mistreatment of those detained, stemming from “deaths in custody” to “mistreatment of children” to “denials of legal representation.” “To date, the Senator’s office has received and identified 510 credible reports of human rights abuse against immigrants since January 20, including those described in this publication,” read the report. “The Senator’s staff has received or identified 41 credible reports that individuals have been physically and/or sexually abused while in DHS custody,” noted the investigation.

ABC News [8/7/2025 12:07 PM, Jack Date and Nadine El-Bawab, 31733K] reports an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainee died by suicide while in custody after he was found hanging by his neck in the shower room at the Pennsylvania facility where he was being held, according to officials. Chaofeng Ge, a 32-year-old citizen of China in ICE custody, was pronounced dead by the Clearfield County coroner at approximately 6 a.m. on Tuesday, according to ICE. Ge was found hanging by the neck and unresponsive in the shower room of his detention pod, ICE said. Ge’s death was determined to be a suicide after investigators discovered a handwritten note and no foul play was found, according to Pennsylvania State Police. Staff who discovered Ge immediately lowered him to the ground, began CPR and contacted emergency medical services, state police and the coroner’s office, according to ICE. Ge had been in ICE custody for only five days and was awaiting a hearing before the Department of Justice’s Executive Office for Immigration Review, ICE said. Ge was detained at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania. He was arrested in January at a CVS after the store reported him for fraudulently using a credit card to buy gift cards, according to Lower Paxton Township police. "An investigation was initiated, where Ge was found to be in possession of numerous stolen credit card numbers located within his cell phone," police said. ICE Philadelphia’s Enforcement and Removal Operations York sub-office lodged an immigration detainer with the Dauphin County Prison one day after he was arrested. "ICE remains committed to ensuring that all those in its custody reside in safe, secure, and humane environments," ICE said in a statement. "Comprehensive medical care is provided from the moment individuals arrive and throughout the entirety of their stay.” The Department of Homeland Security acknowledged in a statement there was an in-custody death at the processing center. "This morning, one detainee passed away at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center. All in-custody deaths are tragic, taken seriously, and are thoroughly investigated by law enforcement," a senior DHS official told ABC News. "ICE takes its commitment to promoting safe, secure, humane environments for those in our custody very seriously," the official said.

Univision [8/7/2025 5:43 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports that a 32-year-old man died in Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Pennsylvania, the agency reported Wednesday. According to ICE, Chaofeng Ge, a Chinese national, was found hanging in the shower of his unit at 5:21 a.m. Tuesday. Despite resuscitation efforts, his death was certified at 6:03 a.m. Ge had been in custody for five days and was awaiting an immigration hearing. He had been arrested in January for alleged computer crimes and turned over to ICE for immigration processing. ICE notified federal authorities and the Chinese Embassy and is assisting in the investigation.

Reuters [8/7/2025 4:23 PM, Ted Hesson, 51390K] reports friends and family of an Alabama social worker detained by U.S. immigration authorities are pushing for her release days after she was pulled over for an alleged speeding violation, a case that reflects the broad sweep of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. Giovanna Hernandez, 24, was stopped by local police while driving on Tuesday morning in her hometown of Leeds, near Birmingham, according to her brother, Dilan Hernandez. She was taken to a county jail and is now in U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody there, ICE’s detainee locator showed. Hernandez’s parents brought her to the U.S. from Mexico at age 7, her brother said. She was valedictorian of her high school class, has bachelor’s and master’s degrees in social work, and works with young people applying for college through a local non-profit organization, he said. Trump, a Republican, has vowed to deport millions of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, saying it is needed after high levels of immigration under his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden. While the Trump administration frequently highlights the cases of immigrants with serious criminal records, the number of people picked up by ICE with no previous criminal charges or convictions has skyrocketed since Trump took office in January. State and local police have played a key role in Trump’s deportation pipeline, arresting people and holding them for ICE to take into custody. U.S. Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said Hernandez was driving recklessly when she was pulled over by ICE and local police. "On August 5, Giovanna Hernandez Martinez was tailgating a law enforcement vehicle, passed them erratically at 80 MPH, and cut them off," McLaughlin said. "Upon witnessing this reckless driving, ICE and local police initiated a traffic stop and discovered she was an illegal alien from Mexico. Unlike the Biden administration, we are not going to ignore the law.”

Breitbart [8/7/2025 7:01 PM, Warner Todd Huston, 3077K] reports Gov. Bill Lee (R-TN) has called up the Tennessee National Guard to help overcome the paperwork barriers that slow the deportation of illegal migrants. Lee’s office says the governor is responding to requests by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to fulfill President Trump’s immigration policies. "As Gov. Lee has said many times, Tennessee stands ready to support President Trump’s efforts to secure our Nation’s borders and remove the most violent criminals from our streets," said Lee spokesperson Elizabeth Johnson, according to WKRN-TV. "In response to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s request for assistance, the Governor authorized Tennessee National Guardsmen under Title 32 status to assist with administrative and clerical duties at Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facilities within the state. These service members will assist with tasks including data entry, case management, and logistical support," Johnson added. Lee himself added, "America wants to be certain that criminals, especially illegal immigrant criminals that are on our streets, that are in gangs, that are drug traffickers, that are human traffickers, that they’re taken, they’re removed, and they’re deported. America has been really clear about that, President Trump has been clear about that, part of the reason he got elected was to carry that out, and Tennessee wants to be a partner.”

CNN [8/7/2025 8:00 AM, Michael Williams, 21433K] reports armed with tens of billions of dollars in funding, Immigration and Customs Enforcement is working fervently to expand its ranks. But some of the Florida law enforcement agencies that closely partner with ICE aren’t happy with the way the federal agency is going about its recruitment push: sending email blasts to local law enforcement who had been trained to work with ICE – a practice one department deemed "wrong." At the end of July, hundreds – possibly thousands – of sheriff’s deputies and police officers working at departments that partner with ICE received an email from the agency’s deputy director, Madison Sheahan, imploring them to consider joining ICE during a "critical time for our nation." "Your experience in state or local law enforcement brings invaluable insight and skills to this mission—qualities we need now more than ever," said the email, a copy of which was obtained by CNN. "ICE is actively recruiting officers like you who are committed to serving with integrity, professionalism, and a deep sense of duty." In addition to police officers, ICE is also looking to recruit military veterans and retired ICE employees. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Fox News on Wednesday that ICE had removed upper age limits for applicants. Prospective employees are being offered eye-popping incentives from what is now the most well-funded federal law enforcement agency in the United States, including a recruitment bonus of $50,000 paid out in increments in exchange for five years of service. That’s a figure that less-funded local departments cannot compete with. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, said in a statement: "ICE is recruiting law enforcement, veterans, and other patriots who want to serve their country and help remove gang members, child pedophiles, murderers, terrorists, and drug traffickers." "This includes local law enforcement, veterans, and our 287(g) partners who have already been trained and have valuable law enforcement experience," said the statement, which did not address questions about criticism from law enforcement officials who described the agency’s recruitment tactics as heavy-handed. ICE says their recruitment push is working. Noem said on Wednesday that the agency has received more than 80,000 applications since Trump signed his "big, beautiful bill" into law on July 4. ICE said on social media it has extended 1,000 tentative job offers. The agency has not said how many of those offers have been accepted.

Telemundo51 [8/7/2025 11:58 AM, Staff, 177K] reports In response to the growing concern of the immigrant community that has denounced operations by alleged masked or armed ICE agents and without visible identification, a group of Democratic congressmen are seeking to make drastic changes in this area. In this new guide to Immigration and your rights, we explain what the "Visible Act" bill is about. Any immigration officer who participates directly in operations must carry a visible identification. This identification should be: the name or initials of the agency (e.g. ICE or CBP) and the agent’s surname or plate number. Immigration officers will not be able to use non-medical face coverings, including masks or ski masks, that make it difficult to view the visibility of the identification information or hide the officer’s face, unless such facial covers are operationally necessary. This information should be used in a size and format that is clearly readable from a minimum distance of 25 feet. The bill was introduced in the Senate by Democratic Senator Alex Padilla of California and backed by Cory Booker of New Jersey, Adam Schiff of California, among other congressmen.

The New York Post [8/7/2025 9:12 PM, Anna Young, 49956K] reports US Immigration and Customs Enforcement is moving to detain an illegal migrant accused of killing a Louisiana man who was mowing his lawn when the Mexican national’s car allegedly ran him over in a drunken crash. Roberto Romero-Hernandez, 34, was hit with a federal arrest detainer after being thrown behind bars and charged with vehicular homicide and driving while intoxicated in the Aug. 3 death of 59-year-old Rickey Maddox, according to the Department of Homeland Security. The feds said they acted immediately to ensure the plastered alien — who was also driving without a license or valid plates — wouldn’t walk free following any local proceedings. “This criminal illegal alien’s reckless decision to drink and drive killed an innocent man,” Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “The senseless tragedy should have never happened because Romero-Hernandez should have never been in our country… Every death caused by an illegal alien is preventable.” FOX News [8/7/2025 11:39 AM, Andrew Mark Miller, 46878K] reports DHS announced in a Thursday press release that a detainer has been lodged against Roberto Romero-Hernandez, who they say is a criminal illegal immigrant from Mexico, after he was arrested by the Louisiana State Police after 59-year-old Rickey G. Maddox was struck and killed by a car in Alexandria, Louisiana. Police say Romero-Hernandez was driving that car while intoxicated and without a license. "An arrest detainer was immediately issued following his arrest to ensure he is not released back into the community following any local proceedings," DHS said. Romero-Hernandez, according to local media outlets, was driving a Chevrolet Silverado on the night of Aug. 3, before he left the road on Highway 1 and struck Maddox on his 2013 Kubota lawnmower on the northbound shoulder. Maddox was taken to the hospital with severe injuries where he later died.

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [8/7/2025 9:03 AM, John Binder, 3077K]

Chicago Tribune [8/7/2025 4:31 PM, Sophie Levenson, 3987K] reports the man in a blue Hawaiian shirt paced up and down the line of fellow protesters outside the Congress Plaza Hotel on South Michigan Avenue, shouting into a megaphone with the fervor of someone leading the sermon at a megachurch. "They are not welcome in this city!" he yelled. "This is an immigrant city!" The "they" he meant were three U.S. Department of Homeland Security representatives inside the Loop hotel at the BestHire career fair looking to recruit new hires. The man with the megaphone was one of a small but loud group of around 20 protesters who gathered on Thursday, responding to the presence of the DHS workers. A news release from DHS on Wednesday announced that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would offer $50,000 signing bonuses, as well as student loan forgiveness and "enhanced" retirement benefits. The incentives, pushed forward by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, continue the Trump administration’s promises to reinvigorate border security in the U.S., and the $30 billion that President Donald Trump budgeted for ICE in the "Big, Beautiful Bill" last month. Thursday’s protest exemplified the frustration many Americans expressed towards the Trump administration’s immigration policies, but in doing so, it clashed with Chicagoans searching for jobs. "We’re hoping to make this space as inhospitable (for Customs and Border Protection) as possible," said Johnny, 33, a protester from Chicago who asked that his last name not be used. "It seems like it’s working." The protesters stood in front of the DHS table in an attempt to block the agents present from recruiting. They held up poster boards and hand-painted banners. A neon-yellow sign read, "Trump, ICE, & CBP blame migrants so you don’t blame billionaires." They passed around a megaphone for a series of well-rehearsed slogans. "No ICE, no KKK, no fascist USA," they chanted.

FOX News [8/7/2025 5:12 PM, Charles Creitz, 46878K] reports Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds announced Wednesday that members of the state’s National Guard have been prepped to work alongside ICE, citing a mutual aid authorization from the Pentagon reported by the Quad City Times. Reynolds, a Republican, said that no mission directive has been received from Arlington but that the Iowa National Guard stands ready to deploy members to assist in clerical and administrative functions. Reynolds told reporters at an appearance in Cedar Rapids that she was one of several governors privy to a recent call with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in which the idea of state militias assisting with detention and deportation operations was discussed, according to the Des Moines Register. "What we really looked at was logistics and processing is probably the way that we would look to help from a state perspective," Reynolds said, according to the paper.

FOX News [8/7/2025 8:23 PM, Greg Wehner and Liz Friden, 46878K] reports the Department of Defense plans to build the largest federal migrant detention facility in the U.S. to date, at Fort Bliss in Texas, which is expected to have up to 5,000 beds for illegal aliens. Pentagon Press Secretary Kingsley Wilson announced the project during a press briefing Thursday, stating that construction began in July. "Since then, work has begun for initial detainment capacity of 1,000 illegal aliens with initial operating capacity likely to be achieved by mid to late August," Wilson said. "Once DOD achieves initial stand up, we will finish construction for up to 5,000 beds in the weeks and months ahead.” Wilson said the facility will become the largest of its kind in U.S. history, serving what she called "this critical mission: the deportation of illegal aliens.” The new facility is being established to support President Donald Trump’s executive order to protect Americans against an invasion. The announcement follows Indiana Gov. Mike Braun’s recent statement that the state will build a facility dubbed the "Speedway Slammer" at the Miami Correctional Center, located between Indianapolis and Fort Wayne. Named in reference to Indiana’s racing heritage, including the Indianapolis 500, the "Speedway Slammer" will house up to 1,000 migrants once operational. "We are proud to work with President Trump and Secretary Noem as they remove the worst of the worst with this innovative partnership," Braun said in a statement on Tuesday. "Indiana is taking a comprehensive and collaborative approach to combating illegal immigration and will continue to lead the way among states.” Funding for the project comes from a reconciliation bill signed by Trump last month, which he referred to as the "one big, beautiful bill.” The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said the legislation funds the 287(g) program, which facilitates cooperation between Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and local authorities, as well as 80,000 ICE detention beds. According to DHS, individuals who voluntarily leave the country are eligible for a $1,000 incentive and free travel, potentially allowing for legal reentry in the future.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [8/7/2025 4:04 PM, Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart, 51390K]
NewsMax [8/7/2025 7:33 PM, Jim Thomas, 4622K]

New York Post [8/7/2025 2:59 PM, Jennie Taer, 49956K] reports that the Department of Homeland Security is moving to deport an accused killer and Tren de Aragua gangbanger who was let into the US under the Biden administration, The Post has learned. The feds lodged a detainer on Thursday, requesting Colorado authorities hand over Michel Jordan Castellano Fonseca so they can send him back to Venezuela. Castellano Fonseca was arrested after he allegedly broke into an apartment in Aurora, Colorado, on Sunday and shot his wife and sister-in-law — while five terrified children cowered in the corner watching, Homeland Security sources told The Post. The Venezuelan migrant’s sister-in-law was killed in the heinous attack. Aurora cops nabbed Castellano Fonseca on Monday and charged him with homicide. The DHS has now lodged a detainer request so they can take him into custody for deportation once he is no longer in the custody of local authorities, agency officials said. However, Aurora cops may not play ball due to sanctuary laws. "Aurora, Colorado — a sanctuary city — has given cover to Tren de Aragua gang members to terrorize our communities," Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Post. "The brave men and women of ICE will be relentless in their efforts to ensure Tren de Aragua terrorists are removed from our country for good," she added.

Federalist [8/7/2025 7:24 AM, M.D. Kittle, 1142K] reports Arizona Republican lawmakers are calling for a federal investigation into a leftist state senator who tipped off her community about an Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation. It’s the latest case of a left-winger spouting incendiary rhetoric about ICE, a federal agency that has seen an 830 percent increase in assaults. Arizona State Sen. Analise Ortiz shot back at a LibsOfTiktok post accusing the Phoenix Democrat of "actively impeding and doxxing" immigration enforcement officials. The far-left lawmaker has posted alerts from local groups sharing locations of ICE agents attempting to apprehend illegal immigrants. The LibsOfTiktok post, which copied ICE Director Tom Homan and the Department of Homeland Security, urged federal officials to charge Ortiz. Ortiz defiantly responded, "Yep. When ICE is around, I will alert my community to stay out of the area, and I’m not f***king scared of you nor Trump’s masked goons," the lawmaker wrote. As of Wednesday evening, the post had received 10.7 million views. Among those watching was Arizona state Senate President Warren Petersen, who called Ortiz’s comments "deeply troubling." Tricia McLaughlin, assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, told Fox News Digital that Ortiz’s conduct "looks like obstruction of justice." "Arizona state Senator Analise Ortiz is siding with vicious cartels, human traffickers, and violent criminals over American citizens," McLaughlin told the news outlet. Make no mistake, sanctuary politicians like Arizona Sen. Analise Ortiz are contributing to the surge in assaults of our ICE officers through their repeated vilification and demonization of ICE." DHS reports that assaults on ICE agents have spiked by 830 percent. The most recent incidents include alleged arson at a Washington state ICE facility and an illegal immigrant with a history of child abuse accused of trying to drive over ICE agents rounding up illegals in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

CNN [8/7/2025 7:21 PM, John Fritze, 875K] reports President Donald Trump’s administration urged the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow immigration enforcement officials to continue what critics describe as "roving patrols" in Southern California that lower courts said likely violated the 4th Amendment. At issue were a series of incidents in which masked and heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulled aside people who identify as Latino – including some US citizens – around Los Angeles to interrogate them about their immigration status. Lower courts found that the agency likely had not established the "reasonable suspicion" required to justify those stops. A US District Court last month ordered the Department of Homeland Security to discontinue the practice if the stops were based largely on a person’s apparent ethnicity, language or their presence at a particular location, such as a farm or bus stop. The 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals largely upheld that decision, which applied only to seven central California counties. The Trump administration urged the high court to block that decision as it continues to aggressively crack down on illegal immigration. "No one thinks that speaking Spanish or working in construction always creates reasonable suspicion," the Justice Department told the Supreme Court. "But in many situations, such factors – alone or in combination – can heighten the likelihood that someone is unlawfully present in the United States.” Immigration agents, the Justice Department said, should be "entitled to rely on these factors when ramping up enforcement of immigration laws.” Five individuals and three immigration advocacy groups sued over the patrols.

Reported similarly:
Los Angeles Times [8/7/2025 7:08 PM, Sonja Sharp, 14672K]

San Diego Union Tribune [8/7/2025 1:35 PM, Staff, 1611K] reports that inside immigration courts around the country, immigrants who crossed the border illegally and were caught and released are required to appear before a judge for a preliminary hearing. But in a new twist, the Trump administration has begun using an unexpected legal tactic in its deportation efforts. Rather than pursue a deportation case, it is convincing judges to dismiss immigrants’ cases — thus depriving the immigrants of protection from arrest and detention — then taking them into custody. The practice, affecting immigrants released at the border and given a "notice to appear" in court under both the Trump and Biden administrations, sometimes leads to people being quickly deported by Immigration and Customs Enforcement through a process called expedited removal. Many of the immigrants had requested asylum, as allowed under U.S. law. Late last month, advocates filed a lawsuit on behalf of a dozen immigrants unexpectedly arrested by ICE, often after having their cases dismissed. When an immigrant crosses the border illegally and is caught, they may be given a "notice to appear," or NTA, ordering them to appear before an immigration judge. It can sometimes take years, however, before their case comes up. After a courthouse arrest in New York City in July, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told CBS News that the new policy "is reversing [President Joe] Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets."

San Diego Union Tribune [8/7/2025 1:48 PM, Alexandra Mendoza, 1611K] reports that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested a parent outside a Chula Vista school on Wednesday morning, officials said. School officials said the incident occurred outside Enrique Camarena Elementary School during the morning drop-off period, but not on school property. "The Chula Vista Elementary School District is committed to supporting every student, regardless of immigration status, and our highest priorities are our students’ safety, education, and well-being," the school district said in a statement. "The district remains committed to reassuring families that CVESD remains a safe space for all students." One of the Trump administration’s first actions upon being sworn in was to rescind a Biden-era guidance that restricted immigration enforcement operations "in or near" places deemed "protected areas," including schools, places of worship and medical facilities. At the time, the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the Trump administration "will not tie the hands of our brave law enforcement, and instead trusts them to use common sense." Patrick Divver, the field office director of ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations in San Diego, confirmed the arrest of the woman. He said that an immigration judge had ordered her deportation in absentia on July 15, 2022. "The arrest was part of ICE’s ongoing enforcement efforts and was resolved promptly, safely, and not on the school grounds," he said Thursday.

(B) Today in LA @ 4:30AM [8/7/2025 7:36 AM, Staff]
A U.S. citizen whose house was raided by ICE agents in Huntington Park has been released from custody. Sabrina Medina, who is five and a half months pregnant, says she was taken into custody along with her mother. In June, the 28-year-old was showering when ICE agents entered her home. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was also there. The agents said they wanted her undocumented husband who served time for a violent offense. Sabrina says she was questioned and taken away by ICE agents but not arrested. It is unclear why Sabrina was taken to a hospital.

Los Angeles Times [8/7/2025 9:05 AM, Jenny Jarvie, 14672K] reports arrests of undocumented immigrants have dropped significantly across the Los Angeles region two months after the Trump administration launched its aggressive mass deportation operation, according to new figures released Wednesday by Homeland Security. Federal authorities told The Times on July 8 that federal agents had arrested 2,792 undocumented immigrants in the seven counties in and around L.A. since June 6. Homeland Security updated that number Wednesday, indicating that fewer than 1,400 immigrants have been arrested in the region in the last month. "Since June 6, 2025, ICE and CBP have made a total of 4,163 arrests in the Los Angeles area," Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement provided to The Times. While 1,371 arrests across the L.A. region since July 8 is still a much higher figure than any recent month before June, it represents a notable drop from the 2,792 arrests during the previous month. The new figures confirm what many immigration experts suspected: The Trump administration’s immigration agenda in L.A. has faltered since federal courts blocked federal agents from arresting people without probable cause to believe they are in the U.S. illegally. McLaughlin said Wednesday that Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem’s agenda remained the same. "Secretary Noem unleashed ICE and CBP to arrest criminal illegal aliens including terrorists, gang members, murderers, pedophiles, and sexual predators," McLaughlin said in a statement Wednesday. "We will continue to enforce the law and remove the worst of the worst.". White House top border policy advisor Tom Homan suggested federal officials adopted the strategy of raiding streets and workplaces to get around "sanctuary" jurisdictions, such as Los Angeles, that bar municipal resources and personnel from being used for immigration enforcement. "If we can’t arrest them in jail, we’ll go out to the communities," Homan told CBS News.

FOX News [8/7/2025 6:00 AM, Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi, 46878K] Video HERE reports encompassed in vibrantly-hued cerulean water with sandy beaches drying up to a tropical coast with year-round sunshine and ocean breeze swaying palm trees lies the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico, where Homeland Security wages the border crackdown that doesn’t make any headlines. "We received new enhancements when the big beautiful bill was approved. And we’re looking forward to bring additional resources to just work everything," Rebecca González-Ramos, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, told Fox News Digital. "The smuggling loads have gone down drastically since President Trump took over, and we’re being stronger [with] immigration enforcement in the island," she continued, before citing that new funding has allowed the HSI to address a previously "high vacancy rate" through various recruitment initiatives. "We don’t only work immigration enforcement, but we also investigate transnational organizations that are behind narcotic smuggling and human smuggling, and money laundering," González-Ramos, who made history as the first Puerto Rican woman selected as agent in charge to lead the HSI, added. She also touched on the island of enchantment’s proximity to Haiti and the Dominican Republic, and how that location in the Caribbean combined with the isle’s U.S. territory status makes Puerto Rico an increasingly popular route for smugglers to target – a reality exacerbated by the increased security measures along the U.S.-Mexico border. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Times [8/8/2025 2:08 AM, Bhadra Sharma and Mujib Mashal, 138952K] reports that, for Gopal Dahal, it’s a life of never-ending displacements. When he was barely 1, his family was forced out of Bhutan, the small Himalayan country where they were a discriminated minority facing ethnic cleansing. After spending over a decade in a refugee camp in neighboring Nepal, Mr. Dahal and his family made their way to Pennsylvania for a new beginning, after the United States initiated a program to resettle tens of thousands of Bhutanese refugees. But this spring, as part of the crackdown on immigrants by the Trump administration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents picked him up from his apartment as his aging parents watched. He was detained for weeks based on felonies for which he had already served time in jail, and then deported to the country of his birth, which did not want him. So began a saga of deportations with no clear end in sight. Upon his arrival in Bhutan, Mr. Dahal, who belongs to the Lhotshampas ethnic minority in Bhutan, was deported again. Security agents picked him up at the country’s international airport, put him in a car and arranged for him to be taken through India to the border with Nepal. Then he was pushed across. Mr. Dahal is now at a refugee camp, effectively stateless. He is hiding out there because Nepal is fining deportees like him for entering the country illegally and preparing documents to deport them again. “I have no home to stay at, no food to eat and no work to survive,” he said at the refugee camp. “I don’t know how long this will continue.” Mr. Dahal is one of at least two dozen Bhutanese refugees who had settled in the United States, but who were picked up and deported to a life of uncertainty, interviews with Nepali officials and community elders at the refugee camp suggested. The men had criminal records and had spent time in jail. Mr. Dahal said he spent three months in jail related to two charges he faced in the United States — one of domestic violence and another of physical assault. While felonies by immigrants in the United States can lead to deportation, the administration of former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had decided against deporting those refugees who were practically stateless. According to an official of the U.N. refugee agency, Bhutan had agreed to take back the deportees under pressure from the Trump administration, which threatened the tiny kingdom with a travel ban — only to then push them across the border into Nepal. While some deportees like Mr. Dahal are now in hiding in Nepal, others have been detained by Nepali forces, confined to the refugee camps and slapped with fines as they await deportation.

AP [8/7/2025 3:50 PM, Staff, 56000K] reports the United States on Thursday announced a pause on all routine visa applications for citizens of Zimbabwe, the latest restriction on travelers from Africa. It came days after the U.S. unveiled a pilot project requiring citizens of two other African countries, Malawi and Zambia, to pay a bond of up to $15,000 for tourist or business visas. The bond will be forfeited if the applicant stays in the U.S. after their visa expires. The State Department said the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe would pause all routine visa services starting Friday "while we address concerns with the Government of Zimbabwe.” The embassy described the measure as temporary and part of the Trump administration’s efforts to "prevent visa overstay and misuse." Most diplomatic and official visas would be exempt from the pause, the U.S. said. The U.S. has enforced new travel restrictions on citizens from several African countries under President Donald Trump’s broader immigration enforcement policies. In June, the U.S. put in place travel bans on citizens from 12 countries, seven of them in Africa. It applied heightened restrictions on seven other nations, three of them African. The U.S. has also demanded that 36 countries, the majority of them in Africa, improve their vetting of travelers or face a ban on their citizens visiting the United States. Zimbabwe, Malawi and Zambia were all on that list of 36 countries asked to improve their citizens’ travel documentation and take steps to address the status of their nationals who are in the U.S. illegally. "The Trump Administration is protecting our nation and our citizens by upholding the highest standards of national security and public safety through our visa process," the U.S. State Department said Thursday.

Washington Post [8/8/2025 5:01 AM, David Nakamura, 32099K] reports President Donald Trump hailed the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in June to limit nationwide court injunctions as a “great win,” one that could open a path for his administration to begin enforcing an executive order to end birthright citizenship that had been enjoined by three lower court judges. Six weeks later, the ruling has turned into something less celebratory for his administration. Since the Supreme Court’s decision, courts in all three of those jurisdictions have issued fresh rulings maintaining nationwide blocks on Trump’s order, which seeks to deny automatic citizenship to the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and foreign visitors. The latest came Thursday when U.S. District Judge Deborah L. Boardman in Maryland joined judges in Massachusetts and Seattle in preventing the administration from moving forward as litigation continues regarding whether the executive order is constitutional. Additionally, a federal judge in New Hampshire last month expanded his narrower injunction against Trump’s directive to apply across the country after certifying the case as a class-action lawsuit on behalf of all children who could be denied citizenship. The upshot is that the president is facing injunctions from more lower courts than he was before the Supreme Court’s ruling, and federal judges have demonstrated, at least for now, that they maintain significant authority to slow down the implementation of the administration’s most consequential policies.

NBC News [8/7/2025 1:18 PM, Albinson Linares, 44540K] reports that Domingo Mendoza Méndez’s eyes fill with tears as he says he hasn’t seen his family since July 10, when he went to an appointment with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and was detained. "I’m in the process for a U visa and they detained me, but I don’t know why they’re detaining me. I’m following all their rules," Mendoza Méndez, a 45-year-old Mexican immigrant, said in a video call with Noticias Telemundo from the Freeborn County Correctional Facility in Minnesota. In 2013, Mendoza Méndez, who had crossed the border 13 years earlier, was the victim of a violent robbery in Minnesota, which was recorded and investigated by police. The type of assault he suffered is included in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) list of crimes that qualify for a U visa, a measure designed for victims of criminal acts in the U.S. who agree to help authorities investigate the crime. However, as part of the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign, some immigrants who’ve applied and are in the process of waiting for a U visa have been detained. "I feel sad. I’m trying to gather my strength, but there are so many things happening here. Many of us are having our rights violated," said the married father of three children, adding that he’s been in the process of obtaining a visa since 2021.

Houston Chronicle [8/7/2025 7:00 AM, Julián Aguilar, 1982K] reports a Houston immigration attorney is challenging the Trump administration over a mandate that requires immigrants to register with the federal government within 30 days of entering the country or face possible criminal and civil charges. In a federal lawsuit filed last week in Houston, attorney Raed Gonzalez alleges the new federal rule violates protections against self-incrimination. "You have to admit that you have been illegally in the country, and the Immigration and Nationality Act says that it’s the government’s burden to prove alienage," Gonzalez said. "And everybody has a right against self-incrimination." In addition to the registration component, the Alien Registration Requirement also mandates that immigrants provide the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services with fingerprint information. It applies to immigrants 14 years or older. Gonzalez filed the lawsuit in federal court in Houston on behalf of "John Doe," Gonzalez’s client who is in the country without authorization. Gonzalez said he will subsequently expand the list of plaintiffs and file a class action lawsuit. The defendants include Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, USCIS chief financial officer Kika Scott and U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi, and other DHS officials.

NewsMax [8/7/2025 9:27 PM, Michael Katz, 4622K] reports that, Tom Homan, President Donald Trump’s point man for mass deportations and border security, defended the administration’s immigration policies after its first 200 days Thursday on Newsmax. He also skewered first-term Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., a former three-term congresswoman who said during a town hall in Benton Harbor, Michigan, on Aug. 4 that Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Homan, whom she misnamed as Holgren, "have been a disaster" and "un-American.” "I guess she just proved that she’s not very smart, obviously," Holman told "Finnerty." "But bottom line is, what we’re doing is making this country safe again. What we’re doing is correct. And here’s a congressperson, elected official who buried her head in the sand under the Biden administration, [when] we had the highest level of sex trafficking of women and children in the history of this nation. "We had the highest level [of] national security threats coming across that border. We had over 500,000 children smuggled into the country, and they lost track of 300,000 sex [trafficked] women and children, [an] all-time high. The migrant deaths [were] over 4,000, a historic high. Historic high of Americans dying from fentanyl, a quarter million. And she hid her head in the sand [and] didn’t say a damn thing. "President Trump has fixed this in seven weeks. Overdose deaths down, sex trafficking down. Known terrorists coming across the border. Nonexistent number of releases to the United States, zero. The most secure border in history of this nation. "We’re doing exactly what the American people voted for. And [if] there’s any distraction from Trump voters that what we’re doing [is] too much, it’s because of the fake media. The fake media says we’re arresting more noncriminals than criminals and that we’re separating families. We’re deporting U.S. citizens. It’s ridiculous.” Homan said he looks at the numbers every morning that show 70% of arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement are known criminals, with the rest national security threats and those who have final orders of deportation. "And we found over 13,000 of the children she didn’t care about under the Biden administration," he said. "Some we actually rescued out of sex trafficking and forced labor trafficking. So, we’re doing what exactly the American people voted for. "And if she doesn’t understand that, then she’s an embarrassment to the position she holds because her first responsibility is protection of her communities, protection of the citizens of this nation. That’s exactly what we’re doing.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

(B) Good Morning America [8/7/2025 10:23 AM, Staff] reports ustoms and Border Protection agents took more than a dozen people in custody during an immigration raid at a Los Angeles Home Depot Wednesday. The video shows agents getting into the back of a rented Penske truck in a parking lot. The LA Times reported that the truck’s driver pulled up to day laborers in the parking lot, telling them he was looking for workers. Then Border Patrol agents exited the back of the truck and arrested 16 people. This all comes less than a week after a federal appeals court upheld an order blocking the Trump administration from indiscriminate immigration stops and arrests.

Telemundo52 [8/7/2025 10:15 PM, Christian Cazares and Clara Ramirez, 103K] reports a migration operation was carried out on Thursday morning at the Inland Empire, according to pro-immigrant activists. Video footage recorded during the time of the arrests shows federal agents arriving outside a Home Depot store located in the 1055 block of 21 West Street. Witnesses say the incident started shortly after 9 a.m. and finished 25 minutes later. At least one person was caught on camera being arrested. According to activists, more than 12 day laborers were arrested by armed migrant agents. Alexis Teodoro, director of workers’ rights at the Pomona Economic Opportunity Center, said during a noon news conference that "federal agents pulled out their weapons without warning, used excessive force and arrested multiple workers, turning a peaceful gathering into a military zone." Teodoro also said the federal actions "appearmark a federal court ruling prohibiting indiscriminate immigration operations, without an arrest warrant and based on racial profiling." For her part, Claudia Bautista, director of the same organization, said that "Home Depots are becoming the number one target for Border Patrol and ICE agents to show their dominance over the community." Relatives of detainees can call 909-361-4588 for legal advice. "We need the full name of the person, their country of origin and the date of birth," said Laura Moreno, director of Immigrant Rights for the Pomona Jornalero Center. He also asked witnesses to what happened to call the same phone to give details of the actions that were taken by federal agents to investigate whether the federal restraining order was violated.

ABC News [8/7/2025 3:56 PM, Meredith Deliso, 31733K] reports that Los Angeles officials said they are considering "all legal options" after federal agents were seen jumping out of a Penske rental truck during a controversial immigration raid. More than a dozen undocumented immigrants were arrested near a Home Depot in Westlake on Wednesday, federal officials said, in what was dubbed "Operation Trojan Horse." The operation came days after a federal appeals court upheld a temporary restraining order against indiscriminate federal immigration stops and arrests in seven Southern California counties, including Los Angeles. Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said the city is "considering all legal options" following the raid, which she claimed "looks like the exact same thing that we were seeing" before the temporary restraining order was issued. "It’s hard for me to believe that that raid was consistent with the court order that said you cannot racially profile, you cannot racially discriminate," the mayor said during a press conference Wednesday. "We are not going to accept this situation, which was why we had a court decision and a temporary restraining order, and now that needs to be enforced and that needs to be upheld," she said. A DHS spokesperson said Border Patrol agents conducted a "targeted raid" at the Home Depot. The operation, dubbed Trojan Horse, "resulted in the arrest of 16 illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras and Nicaragua," the spokesperson said. When reached for comment on the pushback to the raid, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesperson referred ABC News to the DHS spokesperson’s statement and said no additional information was available at this time. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

The Hill [8/7/2025 10:47 AM, Tara Suter, 18649K] reports Penske Truck Rental said Wednesday it "did not authorize" the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to use its trucks in an immigration raid. "Penske Truck Rental is aware of recent reports and videos regarding a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operation in Los Angeles," Penske said in a statement posted on the social platform X. "Penske strictly prohibits the transportation of people in the cargo area of its vehicles under any circumstances. The company was not made aware that its trucks would be used in today’s operation and did not authorize this. Penske will reach out to DHS and reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future," the statement continued. The Los Angeles Times reported that a Wednesday immigration raid in L.A. involved a Penske truck driver at a Home Depot saying he was seeking workers, according to a day laborer. Multiple Border Patrol agents leaped from the back of the truck while workers surrounded it and more than a dozen were arrested, according to the L.A. Times. "This week, Border Patrol conducted a targeted raid, dubbed Trojan Horse, in Los Angeles at a Home Depot that resulted in the arrest of 16 illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua. Federal law enforcement will continue utilizing all resources to arrest criminal illegal aliens and keep Americans safe," a DHS spokesperson told The Hill in an emailed statement Thursday.

Blaze [8/7/2025 5:20 PM, Julio Rosas, 1805K] reports that Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass (D) is voicing her anger at the Department of Homeland Security’s recent operation in her city that utilized a rented box truck to conceal U.S. Border Patrol agents. As previously reported, Border Patrol agents arrived at a Home Depot parking lot in the box truck and jumped out to catch illegal aliens off guard. DHS said 16 illegal aliens from Guatemala, Mexico, Honduras, and Nicaragua were arrested in Operation Trojan Horse. Bass said the raid was "not acceptable" and that she will work hard to make sure the Trump administration follows the federal temporary restraining order put in place to end alleged discrimination and racial profiling during enforcement operations. Bass also explained that the deportation operations have taken a toll on the local economy, as illegal immigrants are not leaving their houses like they used to, according to KABC-TV. "When one breadwinner, one wage-earner, is gone and disappears — to survive in our city, economically, you need two, three, and four wage-earners to keep housing, to keep food on the table, to keep clothes on your kids," Bass said. "When that is taken away from you, that just doesn’t destabilize a family, that destabilizes a neighborhood. It destabilizes businesses. It destabilizes a community." A senior DHS official said in a statement to Blaze News in response to Bass’ comments, "What makes someone a target for immigration enforcement is if they are illegally in the U.S.— NOT their skin color, race, or ethnicity. America’s brave men and women are removing murderers, MS-13 gang members, pedophiles, rapists—truly the worst of the worst from Golden State communities. 70% of ICE arrests are of criminal illegal aliens who have been convicted or have pending charges. President Trump and Secretary Noem are putting the American people first by removing illegal aliens who pose a threat to our communities."

ABC News [8/7/2025 7:25 AM, Staff, 31733K] reports video shows federal agents using a Penske rental truck to raid during an operation at a Los Angeles, California, Home Depot. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [8/7/2025 3:49 AM, Jack Brook and Lisa Baumann, 56000K] reports a technology issue prompted United Airlines to ground planes at major U.S. airports Wednesday and more than 1,000 flights were delayed. The impacted system, called Unimatic, houses flight information that is fed to other systems including those that calculate weight and balance and track flight times, according to United. It’s not clear what caused the problem, which was resolved late Wednesday, though some service disruptions continued into Thursday. An alert on the Federal Aviation Administration website said all United flights destined for Chicago were halted at their departing airports. Flights to United hubs at Denver, Newark, Houston and San Francisco airports also were affected. "Safety is our top priority, and we’ll work with our customers to get them to their destinations," an emailed statement from the Chicago based-airline said. The system outage, as the company described it, lasted several hours, the statement said. It wasn’t related to recent concerns about airline industry cybersecurity.

NPR [8/7/2025 5:03 AM, Rebecca Hersher, 37958K] reports in the week after floods tore through Texas Hill Country, most survivors were unable to get through to a federal aid hotline because the Department of Homeland Security let funding lapse, according to publicly available contract records and internal FEMA call center logs obtained by NPR. The call center staffing meltdown appears to have happened because of an administrative bottleneck created by the Trump administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem personally signs off on all funding requests for more than $100,000, according to House testimony by FEMA acting administrator David Richardson earlier this month. The Federal Emergency Management Agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security. Under previous administrations, the FEMA administrator was able to personally sign off on large expenditures, according to Deanne Criswell, who led the agency under the Biden administration. The FEMA call center staffing agreements with private vendors cost millions of dollars each month. Usually, FEMA renews such funding before it lapses, Criswell says. "There should have been some kind of request long before they expired," she says. But the day after the July 4 flash floods in Texas, the call center funding lapsed, contract records show. The next day, FEMA staff filed contract-related paperwork with DHS that stated that the funding had lapsed, according to publicly available contract records and internal FEMA records obtained by NPR. But the money did not arrive for another five days, contract records and call logs show. Over that period, a surge of flood survivors called the agency looking for help with temporary housing, money for basic food and clothing, and other time-sensitive assistance.

AP [8/8/2025 3:02 AM, Claudia Lauer, Gene Johnson, Jamie Stengle and Mark Thiessen, 11859K] reports cries for help came from the pitch-black woods, from rooftops and from attics that shifted unsteadily as the water rose. Firefighters and police raced to help, having little guidance on where or how. Top emergency leaders were asleep or out of town. Using recordings of first responder communications, weather service warnings, survivor videos and official testimony, The Associated Press has assembled a chronology of the chaotic rescue effort as a flash flood barreled east through the Hill Country of Central Texas before dawn on July 4. The flooding killed at least 136 people — including more than two dozen children and counselors at Camp Mystic, a century-old summer camp for girls that was among the first areas inundated. In a Slack chat, a National Weather Service forecaster tells emergency managers, meteorologists and news media that the agency is monitoring Kerr County, but so far there has been little rain. Within 40 minutes, two weather cells combine, creating a dramatically more dangerous situation. A flash flood warning goes out at 1:14 a.m. With the storm making already spotty cellphone service worse, some people report receiving the first National Weather Service notification on their phones, while others say they never received it. The water rises quickly at Camp Mystic. A spokesperson for the camp would later say staff began evacuating campers and counselors between 2 and 2:30 a.m. The girls leave their cabins and try to wade to safety. None of the emergency communications between midnight and 6 a.m. reviewed by the AP were about responses to the camp. Kerr County emergency dispatchers request the first water rescue at 3:35 a.m. Emergency calls come in for homes flooding along Highway 39. "Caller’s house flooded," a dispatcher radios. "All the residents are on their house.” A later call from Camp La Junta staff reports dozens of boys are in the water after a cabin flooded. Several volunteer fire departments and other law enforcement officers respond to areas around the Guadalupe River after realizing the severity of the situation. Frantic calls would come from people on rooftops and in attic rafters who say they felt the cabins moving under them. Calls would also come from people who scrambled up trees after it was too late to leave by car. A U.S. Geological Survey river gauge about a half mile (0.8 km) east of Hunt is already recording almost 24 feet (7.3 meters) of water – considered major flood stage for the Guadalupe River. As the water rises in a home near the river, Jane Towler captured video on her phone of the muddy water in the kitchen. "Everything in our yard has floated away," she told her son and a family friend. "I want us to be prepared to go up in the attic." They wound up surviving the night on the roof. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Times [8/8/2025 3:46 AM, Ian Austen and Amy Graff, 330K] reports that, with wildfires forcing evacuations from Vancouver Island on the Pacific Coast to Newfoundland in the North Atlantic, Canadian officials were mustering additional resources on Thursday to help provinces cope with the blazes and the disruption. Eleanor Olszewski, Canada’s emergency management minister, announced on social media Thursday morning that the armed forces and the Coast Guard would assist the island province of Newfoundland in fighting blazes. Three out-of-control fires forced the evacuation of 900 people in the province on Thursday. Some provinces have moved this week to limit activities like hiking that could spark additional blazes, with forecasts indicating it is unlikely that sufficient rain would fall in regions plagued by out-of-control fires. Canada’s national fire threat level has been at 5, the highest danger rating, since late May. About 7.1 million hectares, or 27,000 square miles, of forest have burned so far this season in the country, spreading smoke through parts of Ontario and Quebec, the most populous provinces, and down into the eastern United States, although not with the same intensity as two years ago. There are 725 active wildfires in Canada, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, the national firefighting coordinating body. “Twenty twenty-five seems to be the second-highest number of hectares burned after 2023,” Awa Cissé, a spokeswoman for the center, said on Thursday. The extent of this year’s fires, she added, has overwhelmed Canada’s fire fighting capability. “Domestic resources are maxed out,” Ms. Cissé said. “We’ve asked for help from our international partners.” Manitoba, where about 14,000 people have evacuated, continues to be the province most affected by fires this season, and it remains under its second state of emergency of the year. In May, a couple died in Manitoba after being trapped by fire. The province said in a statement on Thursday that this fire season “is now the worst on record in the last 30 years.” Scientists have shown that warming global temperatures have greatly increased the chances of extreme fire weather, with more frequent and more intense wildfires as a result. The largest current wildfire in Canada is in Saskatchewan, Manitoba’s neighbor to the west, Ms. Cissé said.

FOX News [8/7/2025 5:13 PM, Ashley J. DiMella, 46878K] reports as the White House prepares to begin construction on the addition of a New State Ballroom, tours for the public have been put on a pause. Nicholas Clemens, communications director for the first lady, told Fox News Digital that no tours have been canceled. "Instead, new tour bookings were paused proactively while a collaborative group of White House, U.S. Secret Service, National Park Service and Executive Residence staff work to determine the best way to ensure public access to the White House as this project begins and for the duration of construction," said Clemens. The State Ballroom is intended to provide a dedicated space for hosting official events, state dinners and large ceremonial gatherings. The new 90,000-square-foot addition will accommodate approximately 650 seated guests. It will stay true to the classical design of the White House. "The White House tour route has evolved over presidencies, and we look forward to near-term updates about the new State Ballroom," said Clemens.

The New York Times [8/7/2025 7:29 PM, Lisa Friedman and Eileen Sullivan, 138952K] reports military engineers raised the levels of a river in Ohio so the Secret Service could provide security to Vice President JD Vance during a family boating trip, agency officials said Thursday. Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said the vice president had not been aware the request had been made to alter the water flow into the Little Miami River on Aug. 2. The Vances took the boat excursion on the vice president’s 41st birthday. “The Secret Service often employs protective measures without the knowledge of the vice president or his staff, as was the case last weekend,” Ms. Van Kirk said. Ohio Democrats and others criticized the trip after The Guardian reported that river levels were raised for it. Anthony Guglielmi, a Secret Service spokesman, said that for security reasons, the agency asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to temporarily increase water flow from Caesar Creek Lake, which is connected to the river. The boats used by the Secret Service for security or an emergency evacuation are usually motorized and need deeper waters to operate, he said. Smaller boats like the ones the Vances were using, such as kayaks and canoes, can operate in shallower waters. Mr. Guglielmi also said that the Service and local public safety officials conducted a scouting mission ahead of the excursion. During that time, one of the local public safety boats ran aground, an indication that the water level was too low for that vessel. Eugene Pawlik, a spokesman for the U.S. Army Corps, said changes to water outflows are a “recurring process” throughout the year depending on the weather and other factors. “The Secret Service request did not fall outside our normal operating parameters,” he said. Mr. Pawlik added that no waivers were needed, and that the outflow change did not have an adverse effect on downstream or upstream water levels. The Hill [8/7/2025 2:40 PM, Tara Suter, 18649K] reports that the Army Corps of Engineers said in an emailed statement to The Hill that its Louisville district "received a request to temporarily increase outflows from Caesar Creek Lake to support safe navigation of U.S. Secret Service personnel." The Little Miami is fed by the lake. Social media posts indicated the vice president was seen Saturday — his birthday — around southwestern Ohio, including on the Little Miami River, The Guardian reported. U.S. Geological Survey data shows a drop in lake elevation for Caesar Creek between Friday and Saturday and a rise for the river that day. The Army Corps’s statement said the Secret Service request "met the operational criteria outlined in the Water Control Manual for Caesar Creek Lake and did not require a deviation from normal procedures. It was determined that the operations would not adversely affect downstream or upstream water levels." The Secret Service said in an email to The Hill that it "in close coordination with the Ohio Department of Natural Resources and Army Corps of Engineers conducted operational planning to ensure that motorized watercraft and emergency personnel could operate safely with appropriate water levels during a recent visit."

Reported similarly:
AP [8/7/2025 6:26 PM, Julie Carr Smyth, 24051K]
USA Today [8/7/2025 10:39 AM, Haley BeMiller, 75552K]
Washington Examiner [8/7/2025 9:07 PM, David Zimmermann, 1934K]

Washington Examiner [8/7/2025 1:00 PM, Steve Wilson, 1934K] reports passage of the "Big, Beautiful Bill" this summer has provided a jolt to the U.S. Coast Guard’s shipbuilding program as it seeks to replace most of its aging fleet. The service’s most important shipbuilding program, the Heritage class Offshore Patrol Cutter, is years behind schedule and its cost has ballooned from $12.5 billion in 2012 to $17.6 billion by 2022. The "Big Beautiful Bill" provides $4.3 billion for OPC procurement. Austal USA, located in Mobile, Ala., announced on Wednesday that it had received a $273 million option for the second of 11 possible OPCs, the future USCGC Icarus. Its first OPC, the future USCGC Pickering, is already under construction along with six other ships and if all of the contract options are taken up, it could be worth $3.3 billion. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security cancelled a contract last month with Eastern Shipbuilding in Panama City, Fla. for the third and fourth OPCs. The department says it still plans to build 25 of the ships, which will replace medium endurance cutters that, in some cases, date from the mid-1960s. The first ship, the Argus, was due to be commissioned by June 2023 but the department says it will now be completed by the end of 2026 at the earliest. It was launched in October 2023. The second OPC was supposed to be delivered by April 2024, but no delivery date has been revealed. The 360-foot ships are a step below the service’s largest white hulls, the National Security Cutters, and will be used for maritime law enforcement, fisheries, drug and migrant interdiction, search and rescue and other core Coast Guard missions. The "Big Beautiful Bill" appropriated $4.3 billion for icebreaker procurement, along with $3.5 billion for a smaller, yet-to-be awarded Arctic Security Cutter icebreaker and $816 million for light and other medium icebreakers. Bollinger’s shipyard in Pascagoula, Miss. announced this week will lead a partnership with several international shipyards with decades of experience building icebreaking ships in Finland and Canada to design and construct a new class of smaller icebreakers than the three-ship Polar Security Cutter class. The shipyard said the strategic partnership would transfer knowledge, technology and experience from Finland’s Rauma Shipyards and two builders in Canada, Seaspan Shipyards and Aker Arctic, to Bollinger.

Reuters [8/7/2025 5:39 PM, Staff, 51390K] reports two people died on Thursday after a helicopter they were on board crashed into a barge on the Mississippi River, shutting the waterway to traffic near Alton, Illinois, the U.S. Coast Guard said. Preliminary information indicated the MD 369 helicopter hit power lines before the crash, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. The Federal Aviation Administration said there were two people on board when the helicopter crashed and the NTSB would lead the investigation. An NTSB investigator was expected to arrive on site on Friday, the agency said. Power company Ameren Corp (AEE.N), said a contractor and subcontractor were repairing and replacing tower lighting and marker balls on transmission lines. "We are saddened about today’s tragic incident," Ameren said, adding that it would cooperate with investigators.

Reported similarly:
USA Today [8/7/2025 3:10 PM, Fernando Cervantes Jr, 75552K]

San Diego Union Tribune [8/7/2025 7:36 PM, Staff, 1611K] reports two suspected smugglers aboard a high-performance water scooter fled when a U.S. Coast Guard vessel approached them in the ocean south of Point Loma this week, resulting in a maritime pursuit that ended with both suspects in custody and one injured, officials reported Thursday. Personnel aboard the Coast Guard cutter Sea Otter detected the personal watercraft crossing into U.S. waters about 5:45 a.m. Wednesday and sent out a boat crew to intercept it, according to Coast Guard officials. Spotting the government vessel, the pilot of the water scooter accelerated away, "conducting erratic and dangerous maneuvers," and the Coast Guard crew gave chase, officials said. During the pursuit, the Coast Guard personnel fired two flashbang-style stun grenades in an attempt to gain the suspects’ compliance, leaving one of them with an arm injury, according to the agency. The Coast Guard crew eventually caught up with the personal watercraft, took the suspects into custody and provided first-aid to the injured one. Upon reaching shore, the personnel transferred the patient to paramedics, who took the suspect to a hospital in undisclosed condition. Both suspects were released to the custody of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

San Diego Union Tribune [8/7/2025 8:04 PM, Gary Robbins, 1611K] reports the public will have a free opportunity this weekend to tour the U.S. Coast Guard cutter Eagle, which will arrive in San Diego Bay early Friday afternoon for its first port call in San Diego since 2008. The 295-foot training vessel — widely referred to as America’s tall ship — is scheduled to tie up at the B Street Pier, 1140 North Harbor Drive, San Diego. The Coast Guard says the square-rigger ship will be open to the public from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Friday and from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Saturday and Sunday.

The Hill [8/7/2025 3:37 PM, Ella Lee, 18649K] reports a judicial branch agency tasked with supporting federal courts announced Thursday the federal judiciary’s electronic case filing system has faced escalating cyberattacks, prompting efforts to enhance security. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, which manages the system, said in a news release a series of "sophisticated and persistent" attacks have led to increased efforts to strengthen protections for sensitive case documents and block future attacks. The agency noted the "vast majority" of documents filed with the system are not confidential, but some filings contain important information sealed from public view. "These sensitive documents can be targets of interest to a range of threat actors," the release reads. "To better protect them, courts have been implementing more rigorous procedures to restrict access to sensitive documents under carefully controlled and monitored circumstances.” The announcement follows a Politico story on Wednesday that revealed the sweeping breaches, which it said are believed to have exposed sensitive court data across several states. The hack could have compromised the identities of confidential informants involved in criminal cases at several district courts, Politico reported, citing two anonymous sources. Other court documents often filed under seal include arrest and search warrants as well as indictments that might include nonpublic information about alleged crimes. The breaches affected the federal judiciary’s core system, according to Politico. It includes two components: Case Management/Electronic Case Files, or CM/ECF, which is used by legal professionals to upload court filings; and PACER, which lets the public have limited access to that data. The Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts determined the severity of the issue around July 4 but is still assessing the incident’s scope, Politico reported. In its statement, the office said it is collaborating with Congress, the Justice Department, the Department of Homeland Security and other partners to mitigate the risks and impacts of the attacks. "In tackling cybersecurity threats, the Judiciary embraces its security obligations and remains committed to leveraging all available resources to include collaboration with law enforcement, national security and cybersecurity organizations, and other information sharing entities," the statement reads.

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Bloomberg Law [8/7/2025 5:06 PM, Suzanne Monyak and Jacqueline Thomsen, 1707K]
CNN [8/7/2025 4:05 PM, John Fritze, 875K]

FedScoop [8/7/2025 9:35 PM, Madison Alder, 56K] reports the U.S. judiciary announced plans to increase security for sensitive information on its case management system following what it described as “recent escalated cyberattacks of a sophisticated and persistent nature.” In a Thursday statement, the federal judiciary said it’s “taking additional steps to strengthen protections for” that information. It also said its “further enhancing security of the system and to block future attacks, and it is prioritizing working with courts to mitigate the impact on litigants.” The statement from the third branch comes one day after a Politico report revealed that its case filing system had recently been breached. That report cited unnamed sources who were concerned that the identities of confidential court informants may have been compromised. While the federal courts’ statement acknowledged a recent escalation in cyberattacks on its case management system, it didn’t confirm details of the reported breach. In response to a FedScoop request for additional information about the reported attack, a spokesman for the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts declined to comment and pointed back to the statement. The reported hack and statement come after a cyberbreach of the same system in 2020. In early 2021, during a hack of SolarWinds’ Orion products, the federal courts disclosed that it found “apparent compromise” of the Case Management/Electronic Case Files system (CM/ECF) and was investigating the matter. Its statement after that breach similarly indicated that “federal courts are immediately adding new security procedures to protect highly sensitive confidential documents filed with the courts.”

The Federal News Network [8/7/2025 2:05 PM, Justin Doubleday, 2346K] reports that the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency is giving agencies through the weekend to patch a critical vulnerability in hybrid configurations of Microsoft’s widely used Exchange product. In an emergency directive issued early Thursday afternoon, CISA is giving agencies until 9 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 11, to mitigate the Microsoft Exchange vulnerability. CISA said it was not aware of active exploitation of the vulnerability, but that it could "severely impact an organization’s identity integrity and administrative access across cloud-connected services" if left unaddressed. "As America’s cyber defense agency and the operational lead for federal civilian cybersecurity, CISA is taking urgent action to mitigate this vulnerability that poses a significant, unacceptable risk to the federal systems upon which Americans depend," CISA Acting Director Madhu Gottumukkala said as part of a statement. "The risks associated with this Microsoft Exchange vulnerability extend to every organization and sector using this environment. While federal agencies are mandated, we strongly urge all organizations to adopt the actions in this Emergency Directive." CISA said the vulnerability "poses a grave risk" to organizations operating Exchange hybrid-joined configurations that haven’t yet followed patch guidance released by Microsoft in April. "Although exploitation of this vulnerability is only possible after an attacker establishes administrative access on the on-premises Exchange server, CISA is deeply concerned at the ease with which a threat actor could escalate privileges and gain significant control of a victim’s M365 Exchange Online environment," the agency wrote in its alert. CyberScoop [8/7/2025 3:40 PM, Matt Kapko] reports that the vulnerability affects Entra ID, Microsoft’s identity and access management service, potentially exposing a path for attackers to move from a compromised on-premises Exchange server to a connected cloud-based counterpart. The Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued an emergency directive Thursday requiring all federal agencies to run Microsoft’s Exchange Server Health Checker script, update all servers eligible for the hot fix updates and disconnect all end-of-life Exchange servers by 9 a.m. EDT Monday. Microsoft said it already addressed the vulnerability in April when it introduced changes to improve the security of Exchange Server hybrid deployments. The company and CISA urged organizations to apply Microsoft’s April 2025 Exchange Server hot fix updates to on-premises Exchange servers, implement configuration changes and clear certificates from the shared service principals.

ABC News [8/7/2025 4:46 PM, Luke Barr, 31733K] reports that in November 2023, hackers with ties to the Iranian government hacked into the Municipal Water Authority of Aliquippa in Pennsylvania. The breach demonstrated how vulnerable medium to small municipalities water systems are to hacking. Now, one group of "white-hat" hackers is volunteering to help protect those systems. "We’ve seen both the urgency of the threat and the potential of a community-driven solution," said Jake Braun, co-founder of the DEF CON hacker convention of security experts and Executive Director at the University of Chicago’s Cyber Policy Initiative, first told ABC News. "This next phase brings together top minds from DEF CON, academia, industry, and philanthropy to provide support in ways that are designed specifically for the unique realities of the water sector." Experts say that an attack on a water utility facility could have devastating consequences, from shutting off access to water to creating a chemical imbalance in the water and potentially poisoning people. The goal is to provide "hacker-volunteers" to water utilities in an effort to shore up their cybersecurity systems. The volunteers are ethical hackers who help run through vulnerabilities in an effort to strengthen the cybersecurity system. "This isn’t just about protecting networks," Braun said. "It’s about protecting drinking water, public health, and national resilience." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [8/7/2025 6:44 PM, Staff, 56000K] reports in the face of escalating cyberattacks by hostile actors like China and Iran, DEF CON Franklin today unveiled the next phase of its mission: scaling a free, volunteer-powered cybersecurity model to protect thousands of U.S. water systems. The announcement—made at the DEF CON 2025 conference in Las Vegas—comes after a successful nine-month pilot pairing DEF CON hackers with small water utilities across four states. “We’ve seen both the urgency of the threat and the potential of a community-driven solution,” said Jake Braun, co-founder of DEF CON Franklin and Executive Director at the University of Chicago’s Cyber Policy Initiative. “This next phase brings together top minds from DEF CON, academia, industry, and philanthropy to provide support in ways that are designed specifically for the unique realities of the water sector.” More than 50,000 U.S. water utilities operate with limited cyber capacity. Many lack the staff, resources, or tools to defend themselves against today’s threats. With little federal funding or enforcement in place, Franklin is stepping into the gap. “This isn’t just about protecting networks,” Braun said. “It’s about protecting drinking water, public health, and national resilience.” Franklin is deploying skilled hacker-volunteers to help the most at-risk utilities—offering hands-on support for operational technology (OT) mapping, password protocols, and vulnerability assessments. It’s cybersecurity as public service—no mandates, no red tape. “While Congress debates and agencies sound the alarm, Franklin is already in the field,” said Braun. “We’re creating real protections, one utility at a time.”

Federal News Network [8/7/2025 2:56 PM, Jacob Johnson, 2346K] reports that as part of its policy agenda, the current administration has made one of its priorities crystal-clear: cutting spending and downsizing government at the federal level. Those efforts have drawn strong reactions of all kinds during such a politically polarizing moment, but reasonable minds can also agree: Reducing waste while preserving functionality, in nearly any enterprise, is a worthy goal. The difficulty, of course, is in determining how that gets accomplished. It’s a central tension playing out in real time across numerous departments of the federal government, including the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), whose budget in June was cut by $135 million from fiscal 2025. That’s not exactly a trim, but it’s also significantly less than the $495 million slashing (amounting to an 18% cut) the Trump administration had initially proposed. At a time when cyberattacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated and more frequent in general — International Monetary Fund (IMF) studies anticipate a 175% increase in cybercrime losses from 2022 to 2027 — deep cuts to the federal government’s main cybersecurity arm and watchdog group would seem antithetical. Can CISA continue to perform its core functions with a compromised budget in a climate of heightened cybercrime risk?

EdScoop [8/7/2025 2:45 PM, Staff] reports Columbia University on Tuesday announced that a cyberattack that it disclosed to the public last month has in fact compromised the personal information of employees and students. In a post to the university’s website, administrators announced that an investigation uncovered that the cyberattack announced on July 2 had compromised “information about students and applicants related to admissions, enrollment, and financial aid processes, as well as certain personal information associated with some Columbia employees.” The information included Social Security numbers, contact details, demographic data, academic histories, financial aid data, insurance details and health information. Columbia University Irving Medical Center patient records were not affected, the school said. “Beginning August 7, we will begin notifying individuals, on a rolling basis, whose personal information may have been affected, via U.S. Postal Service mail,” the notice reads. “We will be offering affected individuals two years of complimentary credit monitoring, fraud consultation, and identity theft restoration services through a well-known vendor. Regardless of whether you are affected, we encourage all members of the University community to remain vigilant and continue to monitor your accounts for suspicious activity as you normally would.” Such incidents have become commonplace among universities, which operate computer networks often designed for collaboration, but that also represent enticing targets for bad actors. A report published last summer by the cybersecurity firm Zscaler showed that ransomware threats were growing fastest in the health care and education sectors.

CyberScoop [8/7/2025 3:20 PM, Matt Kapko] reports the Russian cybercrime group behind BlackSuit and Royal ransomware was more prolific and successful at extorting payments from its victims than previously known, according to an update Thursday from an investigative unit inside the Department of Homeland Security. “Since 2022, the Royal and BlackSuit ransomware groups have compromised over 450 known victims in the United States, including entities in healthcare, education, public safety, energy and government sectors,” said a report from Homeland Security Investigations, which operates out of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “Combined, the groups have received more than $370 million in ransom payments, based on present-day valuations of cryptocurrency.” BlackSuit’s technical infrastructure, including servers, domains and tools used to deploy ransomware, extort victims and launder proceeds, was seized and dismantled in a globally coordinated takedown operation last month. BlackSuit’s leak site has displayed a seizure notice since July 24, but U.S. officials waited two weeks to publicly acknowledge the international takedown. German officials involved in the takedown previously said they identified 184 BlackSuit victims. The group’s combined take from victim extortions was unknown, but in an advisory last year the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency said BlackSuit’s total extortion demands surpassed $500 million by August 2024. “Disrupting ransomware infrastructure is not only about taking down servers — it’s about dismantling the entire ecosystem that enables cybercriminals to operate with impunity,” Michael Prado, deputy assistant director of HSI’s Cyber Crimes Center, said in a statement.

FOX News [8/7/2025 4:46 PM, Diana Stancy, 46878K] reports President Donald Trump has taken a much harsher approach to address the rise of antisemitic violence in the U.S. in comparison to his predecessor, from launching task forces to penalizing academic institutions who have become embroiled in anti-Israel protests. For example, Trump’s Justice Department cracked down on Palestinian militant group Hamas, establishing a new task force in March aimed at providing justice to the victims of Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Attorney General Pam Bondi said the group, known as Joint Task Force October 7, would focus on identifying, charging and prosecuting those who conducted the 2023 attacks, which took the lives of roughly 1,200 people — including 47 U.S. citizens. Hamas also took more than 250 people hostage that day, including eight U.S. citizens. "The President and his administration have been crystal clear: antisemitism has no place in America, and those who harbor or advance this insidious behavior will be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law," White House spokesperson Harrison Fields said in a statement to Fox News Digital. Meanwhile, the Biden administration recently came under fire in a House Judiciary Committee memo in July that claims his administration directed taxpayer funding to protests in Israel against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. "The Committee’s oversight has revealed that the Biden–Harris Administration provided grant funds to groups that contributed directly and indirectly to the judicial reform protests that sought to undermine the Israeli government," the committee wrote in the memo. Meanwhile, lawmakers on the House Homeland Security Committee are cautioning that antisemitic attacks are becoming "alarmingly more frequent" in the U.S. as the FBI launches an investigation into antisemitic graffiti outside the home of a former Israel Defense Forces (IDF) soldier in Clayton, Missouri.

New York Times [8/7/2025 5:06 PM, Michael Levenson, 138952K] reports that a neo-Nazi leader who was convicted of plotting to attack Baltimore’s electrical grid in what federal law enforcement officials described as a plan motivated by his white supremacist beliefs was sentenced on Thursday to the maximum possible term of 20 years in prison. The man, Brandon C. Russell, 30, of Orlando, Fla., is a founding member of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group, prosecutors said. In December 2022, a federal complaint said, Mr. Russell used encrypted messaging apps to detail his plans to damage the electrical grid, telling a confidential F.B.I. informant that he had recruited Sarah Beth Clendaniel of Catonsville, Md., as a possible accomplice. Ms. Clendaniel identified five electrical substations in Baltimore to target, and Mr. Russell tried to help Ms. Clendaniel get a gun and pointed out vulnerabilities in the grid, prosecutors said. He wrote in text messages that it would be best to strike “when there is greatest strain on the grid,” such as “when everyone is using electricity to either heat or cool their homes,” according to prosecutors. Ms. Clendaniel said that striking five substations in rapid succession with a “good four or five shots” would “completely destroy this whole city” by setting off a cascade of power failures and prompting destructive civil disturbances, according to a federal complaint. Both were arrested and charged in February 2023 with conspiring to destroy an energy facility.

Reported similarly:
AP [8/7/2025 5:25 PM, Lea Skene, 875K]

NBC News [8/7/2025 2:14 PM, Priya Sridhar, Dan Gallo and David K. Li, 44540K] reports an unarmed soldier tackled the gunman who opened fire at Fort Stewart before five others leaped into action to subdue the shooter and render lifesaving medical care to victims, officials said Thursday. Decisive action by Sgt. Aaron Turner and his fellow soldiers quickly brought Sgt. Quornelius Samentrio Radford, the suspected shooter, under control and helped get victims to the hospital in time to save their lives, officials said. "One of the soldiers tackled the person," Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll told reporters. "So just think about this: They were unarmed and ran at and tackled an armed person who they know knew was actively shooting their buddies, their colleagues, their fellow soldiers. Another soldier jumped on top of the person to subdue them until federal law enforcement was able to arrive.” Turner is an automated logistical specialist from Farmington, New Mexico, the Army said. Master Sgt. Justin Thomas, a senior enlisted maintenance supervisor from Kingwood, Texas, then helped "Sgt. Turner restrain the assailant, working as a team to prevent additional harm during the dangerous situation," according to an Army statement. The Army credited 1st Sgt. Joshua Arnold, Staff Sgt. Melissa Taylor, Sgt. Eve Rodarte and Staff Sgt. Robert Pacheco with rendering immediate medical care to the wounded. "We talked to doctors and one of the things that I can say, unequivocally, is that the fast action of these soldiers, under stress and under trauma and under fire, absolutely saved lives from being lost," Driscoll said. All of the victims survived their wounds and are expected to recover. Three of the victims were released from hospitals on Wednesday while two more, both women, were still being treated on Thursday, officials said.

Reported similarly:
New York Post [8/7/2025 12:46 PM, Emily Crane, 49956K]
AP [8/7/2025 10:55 AM, Russ Bynum and Jeff Martin, 56000K]
Washington Examiner [8/7/2025 12:53 PM, Mike Brest, 1934K]

NewsMax [8/7/2025 3:09 PM, Sandy Fitzgerald, 4622K] reports that Rep. Richard McCormick on Thursday on Newsmax commended the bravery of soldiers who subdued an active shooter at Fort Stewart, calling the outcome a "miracle," considering nobody was killed. The Georgia Republican, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and emergency room physician, told Newsmax’s "Newsline" that he is proud of the swift medical response, as well as the heroic efforts of those involved. The shooting left several soldiers injured, three of whom have since been released from the hospital. No fatalities were reported. Soldiers quickly intervened to neutralize the threat after one of their own began firing, with unarmed soldiers tackling the assailant and holding him until federal law enforcement arrived. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll confirmed that medals have already been awarded for the soldiers’ bravery. McCormick emphasized the medical response as particularly critical. "As an ER doc, I’m very proud of how they were able to triage, get people to help within the golden hour," he said. "Three of them had surgeries [that] could have saved their lives.” The congressman also said he was concerned about the psychological aspects of the shooting. McCormick stressed the need to understand what led the suspect, identified as a fellow service member, to commit the attack, and to address deeper mental health challenges in the military community.

NBC News [8/7/2025 4:17 PM, Melissa Chan, 44540K] reports the soldier accused of opening fire Wednesday at his Army base in Georgia, wounding five people, had endured relentless bullying over his stutter almost as soon as he joined the military, former co-workers said. Sgt. Quornelius Radford, 28, was picked on during the roughly two months in 2018 he spent at the Army’s Advanced Individual Training (AIT) school at Fort Lee in Virginia, according to two people who served with him there. "He got bullied a lot," said Sgt. Cameron Barrett, 28, who became friends with Radford during that time. "It was very bad to the point where he could barely talk.” Barrett said people would mock Radford by also pretending to have a stutter. He said the apparent speech impediment was a "trigger" for Radford, who endured the mocking by being silent. Still, Radford showed no signs of anger, resentment or deeper issues, Barrett and other fellow soldiers said. And to those who got to know him, the reserved Radford shared a goofier and playful side, they said. So, they said, the Wednesday morning shooting at Fort Stewart came as a complete shock. When reports of an active shooter on base first surfaced, Barrett said he sent Radford a message on Snapchat, asking if he was OK. Radford did not respond. Hours later, Army officials identified Radford as the man suspected of using his personal handgun to allegedly shoot five of his co-workers shortly before 11 a.m. The wounded soldiers were in stable condition Wednesday and are expected to recover. Three of the victims were released from hospitals on Wednesday, while two more, both women, were still being treated on Thursday, officials said. It’s unclear whether the victims were subordinates or superiors of Radford. Army officials said a motive was unclear, as the investigation is ongoing.

CBS News [8/7/2025 10:24 PM, Staff, 51860K] reports the Trump administration is doubling to $50 million a reward for the arrest of Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro, accusing him of being one of the world’s largest narco-traffickers and working with cartels to flood the U.S. with fentanyl-laced cocaine. "Under President Trump’s leadership, Maduro will not escape justice and he will be held accountable for his despicable crimes," Attorney General Pam Bondi said Thursday in a video announcing the reward. Maduro was indicted in Manhattan federal court in 2020, during the first Trump presidency, along with several close allies on federal charges of narco-terrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. At the time, the U.S. offered a $15 million reward for his arrest. That was later raised by the Biden administration to $25 million—the same amount the U.S. offered for the capture of Osama bin Laden following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. Despite the big bounty, Maduro remains entrenched after defying the U.S., the European Union and several Latin American governments, who condemned his 2024 reelection as a sham and recognized his opponent as Venezuela’s duly elected president. Last month, the Trump administration struck a deal to secure the release of 10 Americans jailed in the capital, Caracas, in exchange for Venezuela getting home scores of migrants deported by the United States to El Salvador under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Shortly after, the White House reversed course and allowed U.S. oil producer Chevron to resume drilling in Venezuela after it was previously blocked by U.S. sanctions. Bondi said the Justice Department has seized more than $700 million in assets linked to Maduro, including two private jets, and said 7 million tons of seized cocaine had been traced directly to the leftist leader. Venezuelan Foreign Minister Yvan Gil released a statement characterizing the reward as "pathetic" and accusing Bondi of orchestrating a "crude political propaganda operation.” "We’re not surprised, coming from whom it comes from. The same one who promised a nonexistent ‘secret list’ of Epstein and who wallows in scandals for political favors," Gil said, referring to the backlash Bondi faced after the Justice Department announced last month that a long-rumored "client list" of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein does not exist. "Her show is a joke, a desperate distraction from her own misery.” The Washington Post [8/8/2025 3:08 AM, Frances Vinall, 32099K] reports the U.S. has not recognized Maduro as Venezuela’s president since 2019, citing a "deeply flawed" election in 2018 and evidence of election fraud in 2024. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that Maduro "is the head of the vicious Cartel de Los Soles, a narco-terror organization which has taken over Venezuela," adding that "Maduro MUST be brought to justice.” The indictment against Maduro alleges that he and others conspired with organized crime groups to traffic cocaine into the United States. Bondi on Thursday accused him of working with Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa cartel and Cartel of the Suns (Cartel de los Soles) to "bring deadly drugs and violence into our country." She said the U.S. to date has seized 30 tons of cocaine linked to Maduro and his associates and nearly seven tons directly linked to Maduro. Maduro has long denied that he is connected to drug trafficking. "It makes me laugh," he said of the suggestion in a 2020 interview with Washington Post. Foreign Minister Yvan Gil on Thursday released a social media statement accompanied by a picture of a yawning emoji above Bondi’s announcement, calling it a distraction from domestic issues for the Trump administration. The first Trump administration also subjected Venezuela to sanctions that blocked it from the U.S. financial system and halted Venezuelan oil imports, a key source of income for the nation with the world’s largest proven oil reserves. The Biden administration briefly eased some sanctions in a deal with Maduro to allow for free and fair elections but reimposed them after it said this did not happen and increased the bounty to $25 million. Maduro became president in 2013, following the death of Hugo Chávez, and the nation under his leadership experienced a devastating economic crisis and mass emigration. At least 7.7 million Venezuelans have left the country since Maduro came to power, with hundreds of thousands entering the U.S. in recent years.

Reported similarly:
The Hill [8/7/2025 10:56 PM, Ashleigh Fields, 18649K]
Univision [8/8/2025 12:19 PM, Staff, 4992K]

Bloomberg [8/8/2025 12:06 AM, Philip Heijmans, 19320K] reports the Federal Communications Commission on Thursday approved new rules to accelerate the deployment and security of subsea data cables, citing growing threats from China and other foreign adversaries. The move aims to strengthen US leadership in artificial intelligence and next-generation technologies by targeting the vast global network of subsea cables that carry about 99% of the world’s Internet traffic and support more than $10 trillion in financial transactions daily. Long critical to global communications, these undersea networks are increasingly viewed as strategic assets vulnerable to sabotage and espionage. “We not only want to unleash the deployment of new undersea cables — we want to make sure those cables are secure,” FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in an accompanying statement. “In recent years, we have seen submarine cable infrastructure threatened by foreign adversaries, like China.” The new regulations streamline the cable licensing process, tighten security requirements and restrict participation from foreign entities deemed national security risks. Certain license applications from companies controlled by adversarial governments will now face a presumption of denial — meaning they are unlikely to be approved unless applicants can prove the project poses no threat to US national security. Additional cybersecurity and physical security measures will also be required for cables landing on US shores. The changes are part of a broader US effort to reduce China’s role in sensitive technologies. Subsea cables stretching more than 1.4 million kilometers (870,000 miles) globally are frequently damaged by natural disasters or human activity, such as dragging ship anchors. “Subsea cables are uniquely vulnerable to espionage, sabotage, and surveillance,” FCC commissioner Olivia Trusty warned in a statement. “Our global adversaries understand this.” She added that while China is rapidly expanding its investments in undersea infrastructure, Russia’s military has shown it can track and map cable routes. “These trends cannot be ignored, which is why today’s order is so important,” she said.

The Hill [8/7/2025 3:43 PM, Ellen Mitchell, 18649K] reports Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) is pressing Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to immediately ban non-U.S. citizens from accessing U.S. military computer systems. In a letter sent to Hegseth on Wednesday, Cotton praises the Pentagon chief’s "ongoing actions" to eliminate Chinese engineers’ access to Department of Defense (DOD) systems, while pushing him to immediately change current Pentagon policy that allows some non-U.S. citizens to access the military’s systems. "Foreign persons should never be allowed to access DoD systems, regardless of whether a U.S. citizen is supervising," Cotton writes. "The Department, particularly the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence and Security, has the authority to immediately make these policy changes. I urge you to do so now.” Hegseth last month signaled he agreed with Cotton’s thinking after the senator in a separate letter pointed to a ProPublica investigation that revealed Microsoft, which has a contract with the Pentagon to maintain its computer systems, was using engineers in China for such work with minimal supervision by U.S. personnel. "Spot on Senator. Agree fully. Our team is already looking into this ASAP," Hegseth wrote in a July 18 post to the social platform X that included the image of Cotton’s letter. "Foreign engineers — from any country, including of course China — should NEVER be allowed to maintain or access DoD systems.” In addition to urging an immediate policy change, Cotton also plans to offer language to the annual defense authorization bill that would codify Hegseth’s potential actions into law. "Congress must prohibit non-U.S. citizens from accessing DoD systems under any circumstances and mandate DoD to revise its policies to comply with this prohibition," the letter says.

Washington Post [8/7/2025 2:44 PM, Tobi Raji, 32099K] reports a U.S. soldier has been arrested for attempting to share classified information about vulnerabilities in the Army’s main battle tank with Russia in exchange for citizenship, the Justice Department announced Wednesday evening. Spec. Taylor Adam Lee, 22, a tank crewman stationed at Fort Bliss in Texas, was charged under the Espionage Act and the Arms Export Control Act, according to the arrest warrant dated Tuesday. Lee joined the Army in March 2021, according to Maj. Arturo Rodriguez, an Army spokesman. Lee had no combat deployments but served for a time in South Korea, Rodriguez said. Prosecutors and the FBI accuse Lee, an active-duty service member with a top-secret security clearance, of attempting to send classified information on the M1A2 Abrams tank to Russia’s Ministry of Defense through an intermediary whom Lee allegedly believed to be a Russian intelligence officer. In June, after transmitting the information online, Lee allegedly wrote, “The USA is not happy with me for trying to expose their weaknesses,” adding, “At this point I’d even volunteer to assist the Russian federation when I’m there in any way.” During an in-person meeting in July between Lee and the man he believed to be a Russian agent, prosecutors allege that Lee turned over documents and information on an SD card. The information provided details on the M1A2 Abrams tanks and an armored fighting vehicle used by the U.S. military, as well as combat operations, federal authorities said. “Several of these documents contained controlled technical data that Lee did not have the authorization to provide,” the Justice Department said in a news release Wednesday. “Throughout the meeting, Lee stated that the information on the SD card was sensitive and likely classified.” Lee also discussed sharing “a specific piece of hardware inside the M1A2 Abrams tank” with Russia during and after the July meeting, federal authorities alleged. On July 31, Lee delivered that hardware to a storage unit in El Paso, they said. After doing so, Lee messaged the individual he believed to be a representative of the Russian government, stating, “Mission accomplished.” Lee was arrested Wednesday.

Reported similarly:
CBS News [8/7/2025 4:0\9 PM, Doug Myers, 51860K]

Reuters [8/7/2025 11:58 AM, Gleb Bryanski and Yuliia Dysa, 51390K] reports Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump will meet in the coming days, the Kremlin said on Thursday, as the U.S. president seeks a breakthrough to end the Ukraine war after voicing mounting frustration with his Russian counterpart and threatening him with new sanctions. The announcement came a day after Trump’s envoy, Steve Witkoff, held three hours of talks with Putin in Moscow. Trump has threatened new sanctions against Russia and countries that buy its exports from Friday unless Putin agrees to end the 3-1/2 year conflict, the deadliest in Europe since World War Two. On Wednesday he imposed higher tariffs against India for buying Russian oil and said similar additional duties may follow on China, the other top buyer of Russian crude oil. It was not clear if he would announce further steps once his Friday deadline expires. Kremlin aide Yuri Ushakov said Russia and the U.S. had agreed to hold a Putin-Trump summit "in the coming days".

Breitbart [8/7/2025 12:24 PM, Lucas Nolan, 3077K] reports President Donald Trump has called on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign because of his past ties to China, the latest challenge to hit the troubled chip maker. The Wall Street Journal reports that President Donald Trump has demanded the resignation of Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan over his ties to China, adding to the challenges facing the struggling chipmaker. In a post on his Truth Social platform on Thursday, Trump stated, "The CEO of INTEL is highly CONFLICTED and must resign, immediately. There is no other solution to this problem.” Trump’s call for Tan’s resignation comes on the heels of scrutiny from Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas. Earlier this week, Cotton penned an open letter to Intel’s board, questioning Tan’s connections to the Chinese government, including apparent links to the country’s military and investments in other semiconductor companies. Cotton, who chairs the Intelligence Committee and holds a senior position in Republican leadership, expressed concerns about Tan’s longtime role as CEO of Silicon Valley software company Cadence Design Systems. Cadence recently agreed to pay $140 million for violating U.S. export restrictions by selling to China’s National University of Defense Technology. In his letter, Cotton emphasized that companies receiving government grants, such as Intel, which is set to receive billions in federal funding to boost domestic chip production in Ohio, must be responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars and adhere to strict security regulations. He called on Intel’s board to provide Congress with an explanation regarding Tan’s ties to China. Intel has defended Tan and dismissed suggestions that the company poses a threat to U.S. national security. Tan, who took over as CEO in March, has been tasked with turning the company around by cutting costs and improving performance in existing business lines. However, his previous ties to China as a venture capitalist who invested in Chinese tech companies before entering the semiconductor industry have invited scrutiny from lawmakers.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [8/7/2025 4:10 PM, Aditya Soni, 51390K]
ABC News [8/7/2025 1:07 PM, Alexandra Hutzler and Max Zahn, 31733K]

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