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.

The Daily Signal [12/12/2025 7:30 PM, Sarah Roderick-Fitch, 549K] reports an estimated 2,000 Afghan nationals admitted to the United States following the deadly 2021 pullout of American forces from Afghanistan have ties to terrorism, according to the Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard. Gabbard made the astonishing revelation during an interview on Fox News Friday morning, following a tense House Homeland Security Committee hearing Thursday, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem highlighted national security risks to the homeland. The Center Square previously reported that the U.S. Department of Defense Inspector General released a report in January 2022 that admitted thousands of Afghan evacuees who entered the U.S. following the American military evacuation in August 2021 were not properly vetted. "[The DoD] found that Afghan evacuees were not vetted by the National Counter-Terrorism Center (NCTC) using all DoD data prior to arriving in CONUS," the report said. The report also noted, during an "analytic review, NGIC [National Ground Intelligence Center] personnel identified Afghans with derogatory information in the DoD ABIS database who were believed to be in the United States.” During the Biden administration, nearly 200,000 Afghan nationals were admitted to the U.S., including Rahmanullah Lakanwal, who is accused of shooting two National Guard members, killing one just blocks from the White House on the eve of Thanksgiving. While there have been no formal terrorism charges brought against Lakanwal as of yet, the attack is being investigated for alleged terrorism. It has been described as a terror attack by high-ranking officials such as Gabbard and Noem. During the interview, Gabbard stated that, through the National Counterterrorism Center, in partnership with the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI, the agencies will work together to re-vet "every single" Afghan individual admitted during the Biden administration, underscoring the threat to national security. Axios [12/12/2025 1:55 PM, April Rubin, 12972K] reports that the Trump administration has singled out the Afghan community in the U.S. and suspended immigration applications since the shooting of National Guard members allegedly by an Afghan refugee. The other side: "F--king prove it," Shawn VanDiver, the president of #AfghanEvac," said. "They keep lying to us over and over and over again. And we know 100% for sure that they were all vetted." Driving the news: Gabbard claims "the vast majority" of Afghan refugees who entered the U.S. after the Biden administration’s withdrawal in Afghanistan were not properly vetted. Of those, 2,000 of those "have ties to or are known or suspected terrorists," she said. They were identified based on intelligence information collected, assessed and analyzed by the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), an Office of the Director of National Intelligence official said. What’s next: Gabbard said the Trump administration is going to do another review of everyone who came from Afghanistan as a result of the withdrawal, Gabbard said. NewsMax [12/12/2025 10:15 AM, Sandy Fitzgerald, 4109K] reports "I want to point back to the summer and fall of 2021 after [then-]President [Joe] Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan," Gabbard said in a televised interview. "There were over 100,000 people who came into our country because of that disastrous withdrawal." But, she added, "the vast majority of them were not properly vetted… anywhere near the standard we require under this administration of allowing people into our country." During Thursday’s House Homeland Security Committee hearing, National Counterterrorism Center Director Joe Kent testified that approximately 18,000 "known or suspected terrorists" were allowed to enter the United States under the Biden administration. "These are individuals who under normal circumstances would never be allowed to enter our country because of ties to jihadi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida," said Kent. "Yet, the Biden administration let them into the country and facilitated their entry into the country."

FOX News [12/12/2025 3:48 PM, Louis Casiano, 40621K] reports the Trump administration is ending family reunification parole programs for immigrants from several countries, citing abuse of the humanitarian parole process. The move applies to immigrants from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti, and Honduras, and their immediate family members, the Department of Homeland Security said Friday. The agency noted that the desire to reunite families does not supersede the federal government’s responsibility to prevent fraud and abuse, as well as to ensure national security and public safety. "However, upon further review of the scope and impact of the FRP programs in their totality, and in line with Executive Orders issued by President Trump, DHS has determined that national security and fraud concerns, along with the current administration’s priorities, outweigh those interests and weigh in favor of terminating the programs," it continued. In addition to ending the program, the administration is also terminating Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for citizens of Ethiopia. "After reviewing country conditions and consulting with appropriate U.S. government agencies, the Secretary determined that Ethiopia no longer continues to meet the conditions for the designation of Temporary Protected Status," Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a notice posted in the Federal Register. Univision [12/12/2025 2:53 PM, Staff, 5004K] reports that according to the DHS, from now on this humanitarian permit would be restored to "its original use, on a case-by-case basis, as conceived by Congress." The DHS statement indicates that if a foreign national obtained parole under the FRP programs and it has not expired by January 14, 2026, it will end on that date unless they have a pending application for permanent residence or adjustment of status, which was mailed or filed electronically no later than December 15, 2025, and is still pending on January 14, 2026. If the foreign national has a pending Form I-485, his temporary stay permit will remain valid until that permit expires or until a final decision is made on his pending Form I-485, whichever comes first. If the I-485 application is denied, the parole period will end and the foreign national must leave the United States immediately, the statement said. Furthermore, they point out that when a foreigner’s parole is terminated, their work permit will also be revoked.

FOX News [12/12/2025 10:50 PM, Staff, 40621K] reports DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin discusses the death threat she received, commercial licenses for illegal immigrants and more on ‘Hannity.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Reuters [12/12/2025 11:54 AM, Jonathan Saul, Marianna Parraga, and Arathy Somasekhar, 36480K] reports that the oil supertanker Skipper that was seized by the U.S. near Venezuela this week as part of an increased pressure strategy against President Nicolas Maduro, is heading to Houston, two sources said on Friday. The Very Large Crude Carrier, which is carrying about 1.85 million barrels of Venezuela’s Merey heavy crude according to satellite images analyzed by TankerTrackers.com, is too large to enter the Houston port and will need to anchor nearby and offload the cargo to smaller ships, the sources added. The Houston-Galveston sector of the U.S. Coast Guard and Port Houston did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, the cargo’s seller, did not reply to a request for comment. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said this week the tanker was intercepted and retained under a seizure warrant. Guyana’s maritime authority said it was falsely flying the country’s flag. The seizure of the sanctioned oil tanker has sharply escalated tensions between Washington and Caracas. Washington is preparing to intercept more ships transporting Venezuelan oil, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday. NewsMax [12/12/2025 11:47 AM, Staff, 4109K] reports that the Very Large Crude Carrier, which is carrying about 1.85 million barrels of Venezuela’s Merey heavy crude according to satellite images analyzed by TankerTrackers.com, is too large to enter the Houston port and will need to anchor nearby and offload the cargo to smaller ships, the sources added. The Houston-Galveston sector of the U.S. Coast Guard and Port Houston did not immediately reply to requests for comment. Venezuela’s state oil company PDVSA, the cargo’s seller, did not reply to a request for comment. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi said this week the tanker was intercepted and retained under a seizure warrant. Guyana’s maritime authority said it was falsely flying the country’s flag. The seizure of the sanctioned oil tanker has sharply escalated tensions between Washington and Caracas. Washington is preparing to intercept more ships transporting Venezuelan oil, sources familiar with the matter said on Thursday.

NewsMax [12/12/2025 6:54 PM, Jim Thomas, 4109K] reports U.S. forces seized an oil tanker off Venezuela this week after tracking data and satellite imagery indicated the ship was falsifying and concealing its location to evade U.S. sanctions. The Treasury Department has identified the vessel as part of an illicit oil-shipping network. Publicly available satellite imagery and ship-tracking data indicate that the tanker named Skipper concealed its location, according to The Washington Times. The same tracking data suggests the Skipper has carried sanctioned oil from Iran and Venezuela. Both countries’ oil industries are under U.S. sanctions, and the Skipper has been "punished by the Treasury Department since 2022.” Treasury sanctions records from November 2022 identify the vessel ADISA, an oil products tanker linked to Triton Navigation Corp., an entity Treasury designated under executive order 13224. The Treasury release also identified Triton Navigation as a company used to arrange ownership of oil vessels and states that "the ADISA is being identified as property in which Triton Navigation Corp. has an interest.” In its Nov. 3, 2022, press release announcing the designations, Treasury said the network it targeted used shell companies and fraudulent tactics, including document falsification, to obfuscate the origins of Iranian oil and evade sanctions. The Washington Times report said that when U.S. forces captured the Skipper on Wednesday, the vessel was allegedly transporting Iranian and Venezuelan oil to Cuba. It described the ship as a "shadow vessel" that hid its position by sending fake signal locations, a practice known as "spoofing.”

New York Times [12/13/2025 3:08 AM, Anatoly Kurmanaev, Nicholas Nehamas and Farnaz Fassihi, 330K] reports the oil tanker seized by the United States off the coast of Venezuela this week was part of the Venezuelan government’s effort to support Cuba, according to documents and people inside the Venezuelan oil industry. The tanker, which is called Skipper, left Venezuela on Dec. 4, carrying nearly two million barrels of the country’s heavy crude, according to internal data from Venezuela’s state oil company, known as PDVSA. The ship’s destination was listed as the Cuban port of Matanzas, the data shows. Two days after its departure, Skipper offloaded a small fraction of its oil, an estimated 50,000 barrels, to another ship, called Neptune 6, which then headed north toward Cuba, according to the shipping data firm Kpler. After the transfer, Skipper headed east, toward Asia, with the vast majority of its oil on board, according to a U.S. official briefed on the matter. President Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela and his predecessor, Hugo Chávez, have for decades sent oil to Cuba at highly subsidized prices, providing a crucial resource at low cost to the impoverished island. In return, the Cuban government over the years has sent tens of thousands of medics, sports instructors and, increasingly, security professionals on assignments to Venezuela. That exchange has assumed special importance as Mr. Maduro has leaned on Cuban bodyguards and counterintelligence officers to protect himself against the U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean. In recent years, however, only a fraction of Venezuelan oil set aside for Cuba has actually reached the island, according to PDVSA documents and tanker tracking data. Most of the oil allocated for Cuba has instead been resold to China, with the money providing badly needed hard currency for the Cuban government, according to multiple people close to the Venezuelan government. Some of that money is believed to have been used by Cuban officials to purchase basic goods, though the opacity of the country’s economy makes it difficult to estimate where that money ends up, or how it is spent, or how much goes to business intermediaries with ties to both governments. On Friday, Cuban officials condemned the American seizure of the tanker, calling it in a statement an “act of piracy and maritime terrorism” that hurts Cuba and its people. “This action is part of the U.S. escalation aimed at hampering Venezuela’s legitimate right to freely use and trade its natural resources with other nations, including the supplies of hydrocarbons to Cuba,” the statement said. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The main person managing the flow of oil between Cuba and Venezuela is a Panamanian businessman named Ramón Carretero, who in the past few years has become one of the largest traders of Venezuelan oil, according to PDVSA data and people close to Venezuela’s government. The U.S. Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Mr. Carretero on Thursday for “facilitating shipments of petroleum products on behalf of the Venezuelan government.” Mr. Carretero, through a legal representative, declined to comment on the government’s decision. He did not respond to detailed questions for this article. Mr. Carretero’s role as an economic intermediary between Cuba and Venezuela was first reported by Armando.info, a Venezuelan investigative news outlet.

Telemundo [12/12/2025 11:29 PM, Benjamin Deeter and Phil Helsel, 2218K] reports the United States on Friday released a federal court order authorizing the seizure of the M/T Skipper oil tanker this week, but the section of the affidavit that argues in favor of the measure is completely redacted. The tanker was boarded and seized by the U.S. Coast Guard on Wednesday, when the vessel was in international waters after leaving Venezuela, authorities said. U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, Jeanine Pirro, and FBI Director Kash Patel announced Friday night that prosecutors had been mandated to declassify the seizure warrant. The seizure order was issued by a trial judge on November 26, according to the documents. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Washington Examiner [12/12/2025 6:10 AM, Hugo Gurdon, 1394K] reports after news broke that U.S. armed forces seized an oil tanker off the coast of Venezuela on Dec. 10, the government in Caracas accused President Donald Trump of "piracy." Hair-trigger condemnation of Trump’s every word or action has become the dreary background noise for a president who, instead of wringing his hands, often takes decisive action against the bad guy. Add to that Trump’s determined trolling of naysayers with a tone of utter nonchalance, America keeping the ship and its oil, and you have a combustible news cycle. Both the expropriation of the black gold and its cinematic seizure had a distinctly piratical hue. Video of the air assault showed a Coast Guard boarding party dropping onto the deck down lines from helicopters. They carried modern military rifles rather than cutlasses, but you get the picture. Still, set aside the reflexive excoriation of the Trump-hating Left, and there still remains the difficult question of what action a powerful democratic nation-state may legitimately take on its own when it is moving against international thugs and criminals. In a world interconnected and entangled in international agreements, is it still OK for the United States, which has taken police actions around the globe on its own cognizance since its founding, to enforce a sanctions policy with what the Pentagon calls a "kinetic" operation? Some people argue that it needs permission from an international body such as the United Nations. But the U.N. has become a body that, in its structure and intentions, shows it is determined to thwart good when it tries to act against evil. There is a commensurately strong case that America, a force for good in the world, must be free of unwonted restrictions imposed by pariah states that have gained authority within the international body.

CBS News [12/12/2025 12:47 PM, Eleanor Watson, 39474K] reports that the admiral overseeing U.S. military forces in South America relinquished command Friday, as the U.S. continues its buildup of ships and military assets off Venezuela and carries out strikes against alleged drug boats. "We have worked hard and tirelessly to build relationships and understand requirements across the region," Adm. Alvin Holsey said during a relinquishment of command ceremony at U.S. Southern Command Headquarters on Friday. "That work must continue across the whole government to deliver at the point of need to respond to shared threats in our neighborhood — the time is now." Holsey, who has served in the Navy for 37 years, stepped down as the head of U.S. Southern Command after announcing in October he’d retire early, just one year into what is typically a three-year term leading a combatant command. He gave no reason, but at the time, CBS News reported there had been tensions between Holsey and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over deployment decisions in the Caribbean. During Friday’s ceremony, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine awarded Holsey the Defense Distinguished Service Medal with a citation signed by Secretary Hegseth. In remarks, Caine thanked Holsey and his whole family, saying, "know how deeply, deeply grateful we are as a nation and as a joint force for all you’ve done for us." NewsMax [12/12/2025 1:30 PM, Phil Stewart, 4109K] reports that, speaking between rows of palm trees at Southern Command headquarters in Miami, he called on the United States to keep standing by fellow democracies that share U.S. values. "We must always be there for like-minded partners, like-minded nations who share our values: democracy, rule of law and human rights," Holsey said. Some officials have privately speculated that he opposed the recent U.S. strikes on suspected drug vessels in the Caribbean. CNN [12/12/2025 1:22 PM, Haley Britzky, 18595K] reports that Adm. Alvin Holsey, the commander of US Southern Command who reportedly clashed with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the legality of US military strikes in the Caribbean, officially retired on Friday in a ceremony in Florida where he handed the reins of the command to his deputy. Holsey thanked his wife, his sons — one of whom is a currently deployed Naval aviator — and others who attended the event. "I’m reminded that in life, we don’t remember days, we remember moments. Those we lead don’t follow titles, they follow courage, and they remember the moments and how you made them feel," Holsey said. "They remember those who listen and treated them with dignity and respect.” Holsey will be replaced by Air Force Lt. Gen. Evan Pettus, who has been serving as his deputy at Southern Command since Holsey was elevated to the role last year. Southern Command is responsible for managing US military operations in most of Latin America and the Caribbean Sea. Holsey’s retirement was announced in October by Hegseth, less than a year into Holsey’s command and just days after the US conducted its fifth attack on an alleged drug trafficking boat off the coast of Venezuela. Hegseth and Holsey had disagreements over US operations in the region, two sources familiar with the matter previously told CNN. Hegseth felt Holsey was not moving aggressively enough to combat drug traffickers in the Southern Command area of operations, CNN has reported, while Southern Command officials were concerned about the legality of the strikes.

Reported similarly:
Los Angeles Times [12/12/2025 12:59 PM, Joshua Goodman, 14862K]
Breitbart [12/12/2025 1:13 PM, Staff, 2416K]
AP [12/12/2025 2:21 PM, Joshua Goodman, 1538K] r

Reuters [12/12/2025 10:31 AM, Staff, 36480K] reports Venezuela’s interior ministry said in a statement late on Thursday that the United States has suspended a migrant repatriation flight which had been set to arrive on Friday, amid months of high tensions between the two countries, though a U.S. administration official said flights will continue. The U.S. is executing a large-scale military build-up in the southern Caribbean as President Donald Trump campaigns for the ouster of Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro. This week the U.S. off the country’s coast. "This Thursday, we have received the decision of the government of the United States to suspend, unilaterally, the return of Venezuelan citizens who had been scheduled to return on December 12," the interior ministry said in a statement late on Thursday night, saying the suspension interrupted a coordinated process and was contradictory to previous agreements. The ministry added it is confident the U.S. will "rectify" the situation "sooner rather than later". But a U.S. administration official contradicted the Venezuela statement, telling Reuters "There is no truth to this. Deportation flights to Venezuela will continue." Repatriation flights, which this year have returned more than 18,000 Venezuelans, mostly from the U.S., were briefly halted earlier this month after Trump said Venezuelan airspace should be considered closed. Venezuela later said it had received a U.S. request to resume them.

Reported similarly:
CNN [12/12/2025 12:30 PM, Stefano Pozzebon, Lauren Kent, and Alejandra Jaramillo, 18595K]

Reuters [12/12/2025 6:30 PM, Staff, 36480K] reports Venezuelan opposition leader Maria Corina Machado on Friday promised political change after slipping out of the country in secret to collect the Nobel Peace Prize, as the shock waves intensified from the Trump administration’s seizure of an oil tanker earlier this week. That escalation came on the heels of a large-scale U.S. military buildup in the southern Caribbean as President Donald Trump campaigns to oust Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro, pushing relations to their most volatile point in years. The effects could ripple through the region, with Venezuelan oil exports falling sharply and crisis-stricken Cuba, already straining to power its grid, at risk of losing supply. The U.S. seizure of the Skipper tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday marked the first U.S. capture of Venezuelan oil cargo since sanctions were imposed in 2019. The vessel is now heading to Houston, where it will offload its cargo onto smaller ships, Reuters reported. The Trump administration does not recognize Maduro, in power since 2013, as Venezuela’s legitimate leader. Washington has signalled more seizures are planned as part of efforts to choke off sanctioned oil flows, and subsequently imposed new sanctions on three nephews of Maduro’s wife and six tankers linked to them. The U.S. military presence in the Caribbean has grown as Trump in recent weeks has discussed potential military intervention in Venezuela, based on accusations that the country ships narcotics to the United States. The Venezuelan government has denied the accusations.

CNN [12/12/2025 11:08 AM, Lauren Kent and Pau Mosquera, 18595K] reports Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado said Friday that she is focused on an orderly transition of power in her country should President Nicolás Maduro leave power and that she is confident Venezuela’s police and armed forces would not oppose such a transition. Speaking as the US government ramps up pressure on Venezuela’s authoritarian leader, Machado said the crisis in her home country is a key national security consideration for the United States. "It has become very clear that the Venezuelan conflict is absolutely a priority in matters of national security for the United States and in matters of hemispheric security," Machado told reporters in Oslo, Norway, where she collected her Nobel Peace Prize this week. The US administration has been working on day-after plans in the event Maduro is ousted, according to senior administration officials. CNN has previously reported that there have been informal conversations inside the US administration regarding Machado and fellow opposition leader Edmundo Gonzalez leading a post-Maduro Venezuela. "Maduro will leave power, whether it is negotiated or not negotiated," Machado said Friday. "We are fundamentally focused on how we can ensure that it is an orderly, peaceful transition, where the results of the country’s reconstruction are felt as soon as possible by Venezuelans." "I am confident today that the vast majority of the Venezuelan armed forces and police, as soon as the transition begins, will obey orders, guidelines and instructions from superiors who will be appointed by the civil authority duly elected by Venezuelans," she added. Asked what role she might play in the US administration’s plans, Machado told CNN: "Not only the American government, I think many other governments around the world are preparing for a democratic transition in Venezuela for several reasons. One is because they realize that the largest migration crisis in the world today is certainly Venezuelans that have been forced to flee." "So, this will have impact in many countries, including the United States. I’m talking about hundreds of thousands of people that will come back home," Machado said. "And I will be where the Venezuelan people already mandated. We won an election by a landslide, and our president-elect has asked me to join the government as vice president. So I will accompany him in this new and challenging era that starts — or I would say that has already started," she added.

Bloomberg [12/12/2025 6:33 PM, Justin Sink, 18207K] reports President Donald Trump said the US would be “starting” land strikes on drug operations in Latin America, though again declined to provide details on when and where the escalation of his military campaign would actually begin, or if countries could still do anything to avert the threatened action. “We knocked out 96% of the drugs coming in by water, and now we’re starting by land, and by land is a lot easier, and that’s going to start happening,” Trump told reporters Friday in the Oval Office. The US president for days has been pledging to broaden the effort, which comes after the Pentagon has launched a series of attacks on what it has called drug-smuggling boats in international waters off the coast of South America. While Trump’s posturing has largely been seen as a pressure campaign against Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, he on Friday insisted the land targeting may not only impact Venezuela. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be in Venezuela,” he said, adding that “people that are bringing in drugs to our country are targets.”

CBS News [12/12/2025 9:36 AM, Charlie D’Agata, 39474K] reports President Trump is weighing in on what’s next for U.S. operations surrounding Venezuela.

Washington Examiner [12/13/2025 5:00 AM, Elizabeth Stauffer, 1394K] reports the U.S. seizure of a massive oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast on Wednesday signaled a sharp escalation in the Trump administration’s pressure campaign against Nicolas Maduro. The Cuba-bound vessel was intercepted in a coordinated operation involving the U.S. Coast Guard, the Department of War, the FBI, and the Department of Homeland Security. "We’ve just seized a tanker on the coast of Venezuela, large tanker, very large, largest one ever seized, actually, and other things are happening, so you’ll be seeing that later, and you’ll be talking about that later with some other people," President Donald Trump told reporters. He added that the tanker "was seized for very good reasons" which he did not specify. Elaborating on the seizure in a post on X, Attorney General Pam Bondi said the vessel had been transporting "sanctioned oil from Venezuela and Iran.” "For multiple years," she wrote, "the oil tanker has been sanctioned by the United States due to its involvement in an illicit oil-shipping network supporting foreign terrorist organizations.” This ratcheting up of hostilities comes after nearly two dozen U.S. military strikes on suspected Venezuelan drug boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific over the past three months, as well as the deployment of significant American military assets to the region. Trump has also indicated that a ground invasion of the South American nation remains a possibility. So, what might explain this heightened U.S. aggression toward Venezuela? If the allegations contained in a letter addressed to Trump and "the People of the United States" by Hugo Carvajal Barrios — whom The Miami Herald describes as "a former three-star Venezuelan general and once one of the most powerful figures within the Caracas socialist regime" — are accurate, then the narco-state’s leadership has effectively been at war with the United States for decades, engaging in drug trafficking, organized criminal activity, and espionage operations on American soil. According to the Miami Herald, Carvajal, who once served as Venezuela’s director of Military Intelligence, "defected from the Maduro government in 2017 and fled" to Spain before being extradited to the U.S. in 2023. He recently pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and narco-terrorism charges and is now awaiting sentencing in a U.S. federal prison. Carvajal’s letter was published by The Dallas Express last week. It had been provided to the media outlet by his attorney, former federal prosecutor Robert Feitel. Remarkably, the letter has received almost no attention in the U.S. media. The Dallas Express introduced it by noting that Carvajal — nicknamed "El Pollo" by Maduro’s inner circle — had "dealt directly" with the top leadership of both Hugo Chavez and Maduro. Carvajal said he wrote the letter to "atone" for his role in Venezuela’s deliberate targeting of Americans. After publicly breaking with the Maduro government in 2017 and fleeing to Spain, he explained, "I acted with the strongest conviction to dismantle Maduro’s criminal regime and bring freedom to my country.”

Breitbart [12/12/2025 12:52 PM, Pam Key, 2416K] reports that Friday on CNN’s “The Situation Room,” Rep. Jason Crow (D-CO) said the Trump administration’s military strikes on alleged drug boats and the U.S. Coast Guard seizing an oil tanker in the Caribbean were “exactly how wars start.” Host Wolf Blitzer said, “Where do you stand on the Trump administration’s latest moves against Venezuela, especially as there’s new reporting right now that the U.S. potentially could wind up seizing more Venezuelan oil tankers?” Crow said, “As somebody that did three combat tours in Iraq and Afghanistan, our nation’s longest wars that went unchecked with very little accountability, very little debate, I am deeply troubled that we are in this cycle again. This is exactly how conflicts escalate, how they spin out of control. Nobody in Congress knows what’s going on with Venezuela, Democrat, Republican doesn’t matter nobody’s been getting the briefs.” Blitzer said, “As you mentioned, Congressman, you’re a former combat veteran. You understand war. Do you believe we’re headed in the direction of war with Venezuela, or does this get resolved?” Crow said, “Well, what I know is that this is exactly how wars start and escalate, which is why I’m so worried about it and why we need to make sure that we stop this. This is Congress’ role, right? The founders gave Congress this power because we are the ones who are most accountable to the people.”

NewsMax [12/12/2025 1:21 PM, Staff, 4109K] reports that Rep. Brian Babin, R-Texas, told Newsmax on Friday that he supports releasing unedited Pentagon video of a U.S. airstrike against alleged Venezuelan drug smuggling boats, arguing the public has a right to see military action taken against what he called narcoterrorist enemies of the United States. Babin made the remarks on "National Report" after the House recently passed a sweeping defense-related bill by a 312-112 vote. The legislation would withhold 25% of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s travel budget until the Pentagon provides Congress with unedited video of airstrikes conducted against suspected drug trafficking vessels. "I’m willing to see the videos of these airstrikes on these boats," Babin said. "These are bad guys that are killing 100,000-plus Americans a year by funneling drugs into our country incessantly.” The Texas lawmaker said the groups targeted by the strikes are no longer just criminal organizations but now fall under the category of designated terrorist organizations. "These are narcoterrorists," Babin said. "They’re enemies of our country." The Pentagon has not publicly commented on whether or when the unedited footage would be released if the measure becomes law.

The Washington Times [12/12/2025 6:15 PM, Stephen Dinan, 852K] reports a federal appeals court put on hold Judge James Boasberg’s plans to hold hearings next week to see if he should hold Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in criminal contempt, with the judges saying they need more time to figure things out. The three-judge panel voted 2-1 to issue a “stay” of the hearings, which were to begin Monday and go into Tuesday. They said it will last until they can more fully consider the issues. It’s at least a temporary win for the Justice Department, which hours earlier had pleaded with the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to step in and shut down Judge Boasberg’s effort. Justice Department lawyers said Judge Boasberg is upending the separation of powers between government branches with the hearings, which he called to get to the bottom of the events of March 15, when, despite the judge’s directives, Ms. Noem continued three deportation flights to El Salvador. In addition to crossing constitutional lines, it also trods on attorney-client privilege, Tiberius Davis, another DOJ lawyer, told the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. “This court must take action to stave off a looming and entirely unnecessary ‘constitutional confrontation’ between the Executive and Judicial Branches,” Mr. Davis wrote in his brief urging the appeals court to get involved. Judge Boasberg had planned to hear from a fired Justice Department lawyer who turned whistleblower, and he has also said he wants to hear from a current Justice Department lawyer. Politico [12/12/2025 4:16 PM, Josh Gerstein and Kyle Cheney, 13586K] reports that the months-long clash began in March, when Boasberg ordered officials to halt a series of deportation flights, which were not halted. The Justice Department on Friday also asked to have Boasberg removed from that case altogether. Boasberg “is engaged in a pattern of retaliation and harassment, and has developed too strong a bias to preside over this matter impartially,” DOJ lawyers wrote in an emergency petition filed with the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. The judge’s planned hearing on whether officials intentionally violated his orders “portends a circus that threatens the separation of powers and the attorney-client privilege alike,” DOJ attorneys said. “The forthcoming hearing has every appearance of an endless fishing expedition aimed at an ever-widening list of witnesses and prolonged testimony. That spectacle is not a genuine effort to uncover any relevant facts,” DOJ lawyers wrote, complaining that Boasberg is “doggedly pursuing an idiosyncratic and misguided inquiry.” The appeals court stepped in Friday evening with a divided three-judge panel issuing an “administrative” order pausing the hearing Boasberg planned to convene Monday. D.C. Circuit Judges Neomi Rao and Justin Walker, both Trump appointees, joined in granting the pause sought by the government. Judge Michelle Childs, a Biden appointee, dissented. No detailed explanation was offered, but the court’s order contained boilerplate language saying the ruling was intended to “allow the court time to render a decision” on the legal issues involved. The fight stems from an order Boasberg issued in March after President Donald Trump invoked a two-century-old law, the Alien Enemies Act, to try to rapidly deport more than 130 alleged gang members to a notorious, high-security prison in El Salvador. During a hearing held by video-conference, Boasberg gave an oral order that the deportees not be unloaded and that the planes be turned around, if necessary. But the flights continued and the men were led from the planes to the Salvadoran prison in shackles in an operation choreographed for TV cameras. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a recent court filing that she made the decision to carry on with the controversial deportations, based on legal advice from lawyers at DOJ and her department. Boasberg is working to determine whether Noem’s decision amounted to criminal defiance of his order. ABC News [12/12/2025 7:58 PM, Armando Garcia, 30493K] reports that [Boasberg] ordered the DOJ testimony after he said the Trump administration failed to provide enough information to determine if Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem willfully violated his order when she decided to continue transporting the detainees to El Salvador. "This long-running saga never should have begun; should not have continued at all after this Court’s last intervention; and certainly should not be allowed to escalate into the unseemly and unnecessary interbranch conflict that it now imminently portends," DOJ attorneys said in their filing seeking the pause.

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Los Angeles Times [12/12/2025 2:45 PM, Michael Kunzelman, 14862K]
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AP [12/12/2025 2:30 PM, Michael Kunzelman, 2416K]
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Washington Examiner [12/12/2025 4:05 PM, Kaelan Deese, 1394K]
Daily Caller [12/12/2025 2:07 PM, Katelynn Richardson, 835K]
Washington Times [12/12/2025 1:47 PM, Stephen Dinan, 852K]

NewsMax [12/12/2025 4:17 PM, Jim Mishler, 4109K] reports the Trump administration on Friday asked a federal appeals court to block U.S. District Judge James Boasberg from holding contempt hearings next week and to remove him from the deportation case. The Hill reported that the request escalates a dispute between the administration and Boasberg that began in March after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act to speed the deportation of alleged Venezuelan gang members. In a new filing, the Department of Justice argued that Boasberg has shown bias and should no longer oversee the matter. The DOJ said Boasberg has created "a strong appearance that the district judge is engaged in a pattern of retaliation and harassment, and has developed too strong a bias to preside over this matter impartially."

The AP [12/12/2025 12:33 PM, Michael Kunzelman, 31753K] reports a federal judge blocked U.S. immigration authorities on Friday from re-detaining Kilmar Abrego Garcia, saying she feared they might take him into custody again just hours after she had ordered his release from a detention center. The order came as Abrego Garcia appeared at a scheduled appointment at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office roughly 14 hours after he walked out of immigration detention facility in Pennsylvania. His lawyers had sent an urgent request to the judge, warning that ICE officials could immediately place him back into custody. Instead, Abrego Garcia exited the building after a short appointment, emerging to cheers from supporters who had gathered outside. Speaking briefly to the crowd, he urged others to “stand tall” against what he described as injustices carried out by the government. The Department of Homeland Security sharply criticized Xinis’ order and vowed to appeal, calling the ruling “naked judicial activism” by a judge appointed during the Obama administration. “This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the department’s assistant secretary. Abrego Garcia has also applied for asylum in the U.S. in immigration court. The Washington Post [12/12/2025 3:29 PM, Jeremy Roebuck, Dana Munro, and Teo Armus, 24149K] reports “Everyone is extremely, extremely happy about this,” said Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of his lawyers. “Obviously everyone knows that it’s not the end of the story. That, as long as the government keeps coming after him, we’re going to keep having to defend him.” In her ruling Thursday, Xinis said Justice Department lawyers and ICE witnesses had “misled” the court at a hearing last month when they said Costa Rica had reneged on that offer. The judge, citing reporting by The Washington Post and other media outlets, noted that Costa Rica had “never wavered” in its commitment to accept Abrego. But the Xinis decision to order Abrego released hinged on a separate matter: the fact that at no point in his years of immigration proceedings — from 2019 to today — had there ever been a final deportation order entered in his case. Because immigration officials are only allowed to detain migrants to facilitate their imminent removal from the country, Xinis concluded that Abrego could no longer be detained. “Although respondents may eventually get it right, they have not as of today,” she wrote. “Thus, Abrego Garcia’s detention … cannot continue.” A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson assailed the ruling as “naked judicial activism” and vowed it would “continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”

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The Hill [12/12/2025 8:30 AM, Zach Schonfeld, 12595K]
Reuters [12/12/2025 8:08 AM, Mike Scarcella, 36480K]

Daily Wire [12/12/2025 8:16 AM, Jennie Taer, 2494K] reports that alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia was back on the streets Friday as he vowed to "fight" the Trump administration. A federal judge ordered Abrego Garcia’s release from ICE custody at the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg, Pennsylvania, on Thursday, arguing that the federal government had no legal basis for holding him. Abrego Garcia was appearing for a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Baltimore when he delivered remarks before a crowd of activists. "I stand here today with my head held up high. And I will continue to fight and stand firm against all of the injustices this government has done upon me," Abrego Garcia said. Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the judge’s decision "naked judicial activism," pledging "to fight this tooth and nail in the courts." Abrego Garcia’s legal team condemned the Trump administration, saying they need to face "consequences." "This is not about one man or one family or one community — this isn’t even about the issue of immigration. This is about power over law," Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg said. "The Trump administration has always chosen to use Mr. Abrego Garcia to try to stand for the principle that they get to do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want — with no consequences. There need to be consequences for the government, and that’s what we as his legal team are fighting for," he added.

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(B) NBC News Daily [12/12/2025 3:31 PM, Staff]
DailySignal [12/12/2025 10:46 AM, Virginia Allen, 549K]
Washington Examiner [12/12/2025 9:19 AM, David Zimmermann, 1394K] r

CBS News [12/12/2025 6:34 PM, Staff, 39474K] Video: HERE reports months after being mistakenly deported to El Salvador, returned to the U.S., then arrested and held in ICE custody, Kilmar Abrego Garcia is now home with his family in Maryland. CBS News immigration and politics reporter Camilo Montoya-Galvez is following the story.

CBS Baltimore [12/12/2025 9:23 AM, Staff, 39474K] reports Kilmar Abrego Garcia appeared for a check-in at the Baltimore Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office shortly after he was released from custody on a judge’s order. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AP [12/13/2025 12:02 AM, Staff, 30493K] reports Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, was released from immigration detention on Thursday, and a judge has temporarily blocked any further efforts to detain him. Abrego Garcia currently can’t be deported to his home country of El Salvador thanks to a 2019 immigration court order that found he had a “well founded fear” of danger there. However, the Trump administration has said he cannot stay in the U.S. Over the past few months, government officials have said they would deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia. Abrego Garcia is fighting his deportation in federal court in Maryland, where his attorneys claim the administration is manipulating the immigration system to punish him for successfully challenging his earlier deportation. When Abrego Garcia was deported in March, he was held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record. The Trump administration initially fought efforts to bring him back to the U.S. but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. He returned to the U.S. in June, only to face an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia was held in a Tennessee jail for more than two months before he was released on Friday, Aug. 22, to await trial in Maryland under home detention. His freedom lasted a weekend. On the following Monday, he reported to the Baltimore immigration office for a check-in and was immediately taken into immigration custody. Officials announced plans to deport him to a series of African countries, but they were blocked by an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland. On Thursday, after months of legal filings and hearings, Xinis ruled that Abrego Garcia should be released immediately. Her ruling hinged on what was likely a procedural error by the immigration judge who heard his case in 2019. Normally, in a case like this, an immigration judge will first issue an order of removal. Then the judge will essentially freeze that order by issuing a “withholding of removal” order, according to Memphis immigration attorney Andrew Rankin. In Abrego Garcia’s case, the judge granted withholding of removal to El Salvador because he found Abrego Garcia’s life could be in danger there. However, the judge never took the first step of issuing the order of removal. The government argued in Xinis’ court that the order of removal could be inferred, but the judge disagreed. Without a final order of removal, Abrego Garcia can’t be deported, Xinis ruled. The only way to get an order of removal is to go back to immigration court and ask for one, Rankin said. But reopening the immigration case is a gamble because Abrego Garcia’s attorneys would likely seek protection from deportation in the form of asylum or some other type of relief. One wrinkle is that immigration courts are officially part of the executive branch, and the judges there are not generally viewed as being as independent as federal judges. “There might be independence in some areas, but if the administration wants a certain result, by all accounts it seems they’re going to exert the pressure on the individuals to get that result,” Rankin said. “I hope he gets a fair shake, and two lawyers make arguments — somebody wins, somebody loses — instead of giving it to an immigration judge with a 95% denial rate, where everybody in the world knows how it’s gonna go down.” Alternatively, the government could appeal Xinis’ order to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and try to get her ruling overturned, Rankin said. If the appeals court agreed with the government that the final order of removal was implied, there could be no need to reopen the immigration case.

Daily Caller [12/13/2025 12:20 AM, Harold Hutchison, 835K] reports Chief Border Patrol Agent Greg Bovino told Fox News host Jesse Watters Friday that adjudicated MS-13 member Kilmar Abrego Garcia would be removed from the United States as soon as "he becomes deportable.” United States District Judge Paula Xinis of the District of Maryland, an Obama appointee, ordered the Trump administration to release Garcia, claiming he was "held in ICE detention to effectuate third-country removal absent a lawful removal order." Bovino told "Jesse Watters Primetime" host Jesse Watters that ICE would work to put Garcia and other illegal immigrants "where they need to be." (RELATED: Rainbow-Clad Female Reverend Compares ICE Supporters To Judas). "Once he becomes deportable, for the second time, remember, he was deportable the first time and actually got deported," Bovino told Watters. "When he becomes deportable the second time, we’re going to deport this individual. It’s too bad that we have these activist judges that legislate from the bench and put MS-13 gang members back out on the streets to harm Americans. That’s what we’re doing in these American cities, taking individuals like this ‘Maryland dad’ out of circulation and putting them back where they need to be, and that’s in their country of record.” Garcia is currently under indictment for human trafficking charges in Tennessee and had initially been deported to El Salvador, where he was held in a high-security prison used to jail MS-13 members, leading Democrats to take up his cause and demand his return to the United States. A 13-page dossier detailing the evidence against Garcia was released by the Trump administration in April, including findings from immigration judges that he was a member of MS-13. MS-13 is an El Salvadoran prison gang designated a foreign terrorist organization by President Donald Trump. Abrego Garcia was detained in 2022 by the Tennessee Highway Patrol on suspicion of human trafficking but was released at the behest of the Biden administration FBI, according to the Tennessee Star.

Blaze [12/12/2025 11:45 AM, Cooper Williamson, 1442K] reports that the high-profile deportation case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia is once again in the spotlight after an "activist" judge once again temporarily threw a wrench in the Department of Homeland Security’s work. On Friday, U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis issued an order barring immigration enforcement officials from detaining and deporting Garcia. Judge Xinis, who was appointed by former President Barack Obama, upheld requests from Garcia’s lawyers for a temporary restraining order against Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, Newsweek reported. Garcia was freed from immigration detention on Thursday after months of being in limbo, the Associated Press reported. "For the public to have any faith in the orderly administration of justice, the Court’s narrowly crafted remedy cannot be so quickly and easily upended without further briefing and consideration," Xinis wrote. Garcia’s attorney, Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, celebrated the news of the restraining order and his client’s release. "Yesterday’s order from Judge Xinis and now the temporary restraining order this morning represent a victory of law over power," Sandoval-Moshenberg said. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who allegedly faced death threats from twin brothers from New Jersey earlier this week, told Newsweek that the decision was "naked judicial activism." "This order lacks any valid legal basis, and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts," McLaughlin added.

Breitbart [12/12/2025 1:32 PM, Lowell Cauffiel, 2416K] reports U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA), the congresswoman who has called federal immigration agents a "terrorist force," is celebrating the release this week of illegal migrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody. "This is a huge step towards justice in the case of Mr. Abrego Garcia, someone who should have never been detained in the first place," Jayapal said in an official statement following Abrego Garcia’s release on Thursday. She continued, "He has endured a months-long smear campaign against him by this administration after being kidnapped in front of his young child in March and wrongfully deported. He deserves to be home with his family, not in an ICE facility.” As Breitbart News reported, many Democrats have supported the illegal migrant, despite credible accusations that he beat his wife several times, served as a street hustler for the dangerous MS-13 gang, and worked as an illegal labor trafficker over several years. Maryland District Federal Judge Paula Xinis, who was appointed to the bench by President Barak Obama in 2016, ordered Garcia’s release, also adding an order preventing agents from taking him into custody again. Abrego Garcia became the left’s poster boy against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown earlier this year when he was deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador, reportedly the result of an "administrative error.” He was returned from the prison and last taken into custody in August. Despite his release Thursday, in October another judge confirmed the final deportation order for the Salvadoran illegal immigrant, which his lawyers are trying to prevent. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) does not appear been deterred by lawyers’ efforts to have the Salvadoran national remain in the United States. "This is naked judicial activism by an Obama-appointed judge," Tricia McLaughlin, the top DHS spokeswoman said of the recent ruling. "This order lacks any valid legal basis and we will continue to fight this tooth and nail in the courts.”

Breitbart [12/12/2025 3:21 PM, Christian K. Caruzo, 2416K] reports the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) on Thursday imposed sanctions on Efrain Antonio Campo Flores and Franqui Francisco Flores de Freitas, Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro’s convicted drug-trafficking nephews. Flores and Flores de Freitas were arrested and convicted of drug trafficking crimes in the United States, but released and sent back to Venezuela by former U.S. President Joe Biden in 2022. OFAC also reinstated U.S. sanctions on Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, another of Maduro’s nephews. Malpica was originally sanctioned by President Donald Trump in his first term but had his sanctions lifted by the Biden administration. OFAC pointed out that, as of 2025, both Campo Flores and Flores de Freitas "have continued their drug trafficking activities." In addition to the narco-nephews, OFAC reinstated sanctions on a third nephew of the Venezuelan dictator, Carlos Erik Malpica Flores — who previously served as Maduro’s national treasurer and occupied key positions at the Venezuelan Foreign Ministry at a time when Maduro served as late dictator Hugo Chávez’s top diplomat. OFAC also imposed sanctions on Thursday against Panamanian Businessman Ramon Carretero Napolitano for his involvement in lucrative contracts with the Maduro regime and business dealings with the dictator’s family. OFAC also sanctioned six different shipping companies involved in the transport of sanctioned Venezuelan oil.

NPR [12/12/2025 1:46 PM, Staff, 28013K] reports that the Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against four more states as part of the Trump administration’s attempt to access sensitive voter data. The DOJ is also suing one Georgia county, seeking records from the 2020 election. The department has now filed suit against 18 states — mostly Democratic-led, and all states that President Trump lost in the 2020 election — as part of its far-reaching litigation. For months, the Justice Department has been demanding certain states turn over complete, unredacted copies of their voter registration lists, including any driver’s license numbers and parts of voters’ Social Security numbers. In court filings, the DOJ says it wants this personal information to check if states are following federal law on keeping accurate voter rolls. But most states have refused, citing privacy restrictions. The latest states to be sued are Colorado, Hawaii, Massachusetts and Nevada, the Justice Department announced Friday. "At this Department of Justice, we will not permit states to jeopardize the integrity and effectiveness of elections by refusing to abide by our federal elections laws," Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon said in a statement. "If states will not fulfill their duty to protect the integrity of the ballot, we will.” In recent days, Dhillon has additionally touted the number of voter records run through a citizenship lookup tool housed within the Department of Homeland Security.

New York Times [12/12/2025 4:45 PM, Hamed Aleaziz, 135475K] reports the Trump administration is providing the names of all travelers passing through U.S. airports to immigration officials in search of people with deportation orders, a substantial expansion of government efforts to draw on data to hunt down immigrants it wants to expel. Under the previously undisclosed program, the Transportation Security Administration provides a list multiple times a week to Immigration and Customs Enforcement of travelers who will be coming through airports. ICE can then match the list against its own database of people subject to deportation and send agents to the airport to detain those people. It’s unclear how many arrests have been made as a result of the collaboration. But documents obtained by The New York Times show that it led to the arrest of Any Lucía López Belloza, the college student picked up at Boston Logan Airport on Nov. 20 and deported to Honduras two days later. A former ICE official said 75 percent of instances in that official’s region where names were flagged by the program yielded arrests. “The message to those in the country illegally is clear: The only reason you should be flying is to self-deport home,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security.

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Univision [12/12/2025 7:28 PM, Staff, 5004K] r

NewsMax [12/12/2025 8:19 PM, Solange Reyner, 4109K] reports that, in a significant escalation of interior immigration enforcement, the Transportation Security Administration has routinely been providing full airline passenger lists to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, according to a New York Times report. The practice began in March and involves several transfers per week of traveler data from TSA to ICE. It is part of a broader effort by federal authorities to identify and detain people subject to deportation orders before they board flights. Under the arrangement, TSA supplies the full names of passengers flying into, out of, or within the United States. ICE agents then match those lists against their own databases of noncitizens with outstanding deportation orders. If a traveler appears on ICE’s list, agents may be dispatched to an airport to detain them, potentially preventing them from traveling and initiating removal proceedings. Documents reviewed by the Times show that the cooperation between TSA and ICE has produced real-world consequences. One such example in the reporting is 19-year-old college student Any Lucía López Belloza, who was reportedly detained at Boston’s Logan International Airport on Nov. 20 when her name was flagged as she attempted to board a flight home. Two days later, she was deported to Honduras. A former ICE official quoted in the report noted that in that official’s region, about 75% of the cases flagged through the program resulted in arrests — a striking figure that suggests the data sharing has become a powerful enforcement tool. The Times reporting comes amid a broader crackdown on immigration by the Department of Homeland Security. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently touted "historic progress" in deportations, asserting that more than 600,000 deportations and nearly 2 million voluntary departures have occurred since early 2025. The disclosure has sparked debate about civil liberties and privacy. Critics argue that handing over passenger lists to an enforcement agency without individualized warrants or judicial oversight raises serious constitutional concerns, particularly regarding unreasonable searches and seizures. They also warn of the risk of mistaken identity and the potential for ICE to detain people with tenuous ties to the deportation system. Proponents of the data-sharing arrangement defend it as a logical use of information to enforce immigration laws and remove those with final orders of removal. Still, the program’s long-term implications for travel privacy, government surveillance, and civil liberties are likely to remain at the center of public debate.

FOX News [12/12/2025 6:17 AM, Staff, 40621K] reports Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testifies at a worldwide threats hearing, defending Trump’s immigration policies and highlighting concerns about unvetted individuals entering the country. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [12/12/2025 12:55 PM, Marc Tamasco, 40621K] reports that after referring to the shooting of two West Virginia National Guard soldiers in Washington, D.C., as an "unfortunate accident" during a hearing Thursday, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said Friday that he misspoke, and was attempting to make an entirely separate point. Thompson appeared on "CNN News Central," where he was asked by co-host Kate Bolduan whether he stood by his prior assertion that the shooting was an "unfortunate accident.” "Oh, absolutely not," he replied. "And obviously, let me be clear, I was moving toward the discussion that [Kristi Noem] could not blame Joe Biden on the situation because she approved this person’s asylum application and that’s where we were headed and so the issue is..." Bolduan then interrupted the congressman, asking him, "You’re saying you misspoke?" "Oh, absolutely. Absolutely," he responded, before she shifted to a conversation about healthcare. Thompson — the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee — was criticized almost immediately after his comments at the hearing. During the "Worldwide Threats to the Homeland" hearing, Thompson turned to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem after sparring with FBI Operations Director Michael Glasheen about the whereabouts of Antifa’s headquarters, to ask who approved Lakanwal’s vetting. The secretary shot back: "You think that was an unfortunate accident? It was a terrorist attack.”

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Daily Caller [12/12/2025 11:20 AM, Jason Cohen, 835K]

New York Post [12/12/2025 1:43 PM, Josh Christenson, 42219K] reports that Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard said Friday it was absolutely "infuriating" that a Democratic House member referred to last month’s DC shooting, which killed one National Guard member and critically wounded another, as an "unfortunate accident" in a hearing on Capitol Hill. "This is someone who is a very, very senior leader in Congress, who for a long time has led the Homeland Security Committee," Gabbard erupted during a "Fox & Friends" interview when discussing Rep. Bennie Thompson’s remarks before the House Homeland Security Committee. "He cannot and refuses to directly identify this attack for what it was: a terrorist attack on our own soil, against our National Guard men and women in this case, who are putting their lives on the line." In Thursday’s hearing with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Thompson (D-Miss.) referred to the murder of West Virginia Guardswoman Sarah Beckstrom, 20, as an "unfortunate accident.” "It was an unfortunate situation," Thompson told Noem. "But you blamed it solely on Joe Biden." "Unfortunate accident? It was a terrorist attack. He shot our Guardsmen in the head," Noem corrected Thompson.

Los Angeles Times [12/12/2025 1:27 PM, Seema Mehta, 14862K] reports that a Los Angeles Army veteran who was wounded in combat self-deported to South Korea earlier this year after facing detention and removal by the Trump administration. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was questioned by lawmakers Thursday over how many military veterans have been deported during the administration’s immigration crackdown. Purple Heart recipient Sae Joon Park, who chose to voluntarily leave the country after getting his affairs in order rather than face immediate deportation, is separated from his elderly mother who is suffering dementia. The saga of a Los Angeles Army veteran who legally immigrated to the United States, was wounded in combat and self-deported to South Korea earlier this year, became a flashpoint during a testy congressional hearing about the Trump administration’s immigration policy. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem was grilled Thursday on Capitol Hill about military veterans deported during the immigration crackdown launched earlier this year, including in Los Angeles. "Sir, we have not deported U.S. citizens or military veterans," Noem responded when questioned by Rep. Seth Magaziner (D-R.I.). An aide then held up a tablet showing a Zoom connection with Purple Heart recipient Sae Joon Park in South Korea. The congressman argued that Park had "sacrificed more for this country than most people ever have" and asked Noem if she would investigate Park’s case given her discretion as a cabinet member. Noem pledged to "absolutely look at his case."

NBC News [12/12/2025 5:12 PM, Staff, 34509K] reports NBC News Senior Homeland Security Correspondent Julia Ainsley reports on the turmoil within the Department of Homeland Security over implementing President Trump’s immigration agenda. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NewsMax [12/12/2025 8:19 AM, Staff, 4109K] reports Democrat lawmakers’ conduct during Thursday’s hearing on Capitol Hill involving Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, particularly when one lawmaker downplayed the shootings of two National Guard soldiers as an "accident," shows them being in the "party of violence," Rep. Mike Rulli told Newsmax on Friday. "They elected an attorney general in Virginia who condones the assassination of the speaker of the House of Virginia," the Ohio Republican told Newsmax’s "Wake Up America Early.” "They elected a mayor in New York who wants to defund the police," he added. "They are the party of violence." Rulli also said it is "disgusting" that the Guard shootings were not seen as an act of terrorism being carried out in Washington, D.C., "the nation’s crown jewel.” Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., the ranking member of the House Homeland Security Committee, called the ambush-style shootings of the two National Guardsmen on the night before Thanksgiving an "unfortunate accident," drawing fire from Noem and House Republicans. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Wire [12/12/2025 10:43 AM, Leif Le Mahieu, 2494K] reports as Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem clashed with Democrat lawmakers on Thursday over the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) were continuing to arrest illegals convicted of horrific crimes. Noem testified before the House Homeland Security Committee on Thursday, where she was heckled by anti-ICE protesters and questioned by lawmakers about security threats facing the United States. While she was being protested, ICE was picking up illegals convicted of sex crimes and other violent charges, DHS told The Daily Wire. "Some of the disgusting animals arrested yesterday sexually abused children and disabled victims," a Department of Homeland Security spokesman told The Daily Wire. "Sanctuary politicians protect these criminal illegal aliens and allow them to terrorize the citizens of this country. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, we are prioritizing AMERICAN CITIZENS. We are getting the worst of the worst out of our neighborhoods and out of our country.” On Monday, DHS launched a new searchable "worst of the worst" website to showcase at least 10,000 illegal aliens nabbed as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. "This new Worst of the Worst webpage allows every American to see for themselves the criminal illegal aliens that we are arresting, what crimes they committed, and what communities we removed them from. This is all about transparency and showing results," Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said.

Breitbart [12/12/2025 2:08 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 2416K] reports that there are "multiple deportations coming" in relation to the Somali fraud scandal, Trump border czar Tom Homan revealed, noting that a fraud investigator informed him there was certainly immigration fraud involved with Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) as well. Homan, who appeared on Newsmax, was asked about President Donald Trump’s claims that Omar allegedly married her brother. "I just got advised by fraud investigator the other day that I asked the question, ‘Who reviewed the file?’ Says, ‘No, there was immigration fraud involved.’ This statue of limitation became an issue in the last four years when this was first brought up. ‘Who was president? Who runs DOJ?’ So pulling the records now, pulling the files, and we’re looking at it," he confirmed. "But this fraud investigator, who I know personally, one of the best fraud investigators in HSI Homeland Security Investigations, said there’s no doubt," Homan said of the potential of Omar immigration fraud. "He reviewed the file. So I’m running that down this week, matter of fact, and we’ll see." Further, Homan was asked about the reports that nearly 50 percent of the visas in the Somali community are fraudulent. He said people will certainly have their visas stripped, given this reality.

AP [12/12/2025 12:57 PM, Fatima Hussein, 2416K] reports that the Treasury Department is targeting businesses that people use to wire money to family members abroad as the Trump administration rachets up investigations into fraud within Minnesota’s Somali community, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Friday. President Donald Trump has targeted the Somalian diaspora in Minnesota with immigration enforcement actions and has made a series of disparaging comments about the community. He has said the state is "a hub of fraudulent money laundering activity," though there has been little evidence to support that claim. The new action was prompted in part by a series of fraud cases, including a nonprofit called Feeding Our Future accused of stealing pandemic aid meant for school meals. Prosecutors have put the losses from that case at $300 million. Bessent has pointed to a report by conservative news outlet City Journal, which claimed that taxpayer dollars from defrauded government programs flowed to al-Shabab, an al-Qaida-linked militant group that controls parts of Somalia. The report cites unnamed sources and the allegations have not been substantiated. Federal prosecutors have not charged any defendants with supporting terrorists. On Friday, Bessent said on social media that the Treasury Department will soon issue an order requiring money wire services that people use to send money to Somalia to submit additional verification to Treasury.

Breitbart [12/12/2025 12:22 PM, Amy Furr, 2416K] reports that Minnesota’s leftist governor, Tim Walz (D), is apparently trying to manage the massive fraud case that has brought heavy criticism from government leaders. Walz will reportedly announce Friday a director of a statewide fraud prevention program, who will be called the "Director of Program Integrity," Fox 9 reports. "According to U.S. Department of Justice figures, there has been about $822 million in fraud from Minnesota services," the outlet said, "including $300 million from Feeding Our Future, the possibility of nearly $220 million in autism program fraud and $302 million from the Housing Stabilization Program." Breitbart News reported December 1 that more than 400 employees in the Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS) have accused Walz of being responsible for the fraud, claiming the group alerted him to it in the early stages of its discovery. The Minnesota Department of Human Service Employees X account wrote: Tim Walz is 100% responsible for massive fraud in Minnesota. We let Tim Walz know of fraud early on, hoping for a partnership in stopping fraud but no, we got the opposite response. Tim Walz systematically retaliated against whistleblowers using monitoring, threats, repression, and did his best to discredit fraud reports. The scandal, involving the state’s Somali community, could hurt Walz’s political career, according to an article in the Hill. Walz announced in September he was running for re-election.

FOX Business [12/12/2025 7:56 PM, Staff, 10085K] reports DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin discusses I.C.E. operations in Minnesota on ‘The Bottom Line.’[Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Caller [12/12/2025 9:41 PM, Harold Hutchison, 835K] reports White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller told Fox News host Laura Ingraham Friday that the welfare fraud scandal in Minnesota centered around Somali immigrants could make for the "greatest financial fraud" in the history of the United States. United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is surging into the Minneapolis area to target illegal immigrants from Somalia after revelations into at least $1 billion in fraud, prompting a probe by the Treasury Department into allegations that some of the stolen funds went to the radical Islamic terrorist group Al-Shabaab. Miller observed during an appearance on "The Ingraham Angle" that almost all of the Somalis who immigrated to Minnesota were on welfare programs. (RELATED: Stephen Miller Says CNN Refusing To Book Him On Their Airwaves). "The Somali community have been engaged in systematic defrauding of the government for years," Miller told Ingraham. "We’re going to discover, ultimately, we are in the throes right now of a full-throated, all-hands-on-deck federal investigation, is that the scope, scale, size and sheer magnitude of the fraud eclipses anybody’s worst nightmare.” "According to official government records, 90% of Somali households with children are on federal welfare. The real number is probably 100% because federal records always undercount," Miller said. "You’re talking about a population that has been imported into Minnesota in which virtually every single member of the population is receiving welfare from the federal government. This could very well end up, Laura, being the greatest financial fraud scandal in American history.” State employees accused Democratic Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota of engaging in "systemic" retaliation against whistleblowers who warned of the fraud schemes as the Justice Department prosecutes multiple federal cases. Walz admitted during a Nov. 30 appearance on NBC’s "Meet the Press" that the state "attracts criminals," but he also demanded that Somali residents not be demonized. Walz also attacked Trump Friday for highlighting the fraud, claiming the president was "indiscriminately targeting immigrants." Trump announced he would end "Temporary Protected Status" for Somalis in Minneapolis in response to the allegations and also said that the influx of refugees had "destroyed our country.”

FOX News [12/12/2025 3:49 PM, Charles Creitz, 40621K] reports as Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz faces a burgeoning fraud scandal involving the Twin Cities’ Somali community, the Department of Homeland Security announced it had made 400 arrests as part of its "Operation Metro Surge" in Minneapolis and St. Paul. Walz recently urged DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to review recent arrests and pointed to reported incidents of U.S. citizens being swept up in the raids. DHS has rejected those claims, noting that a woman named "Sue" whom Walz highlighted had been arrested on charges of assaulting a federal officer. "Tim Walz and Jacob Frey failed to protect the people of Minnesota," Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News Digital in regard to the hundreds of illegal immigrants who have been arrested. "They let these monsters and child predators roam free." McLaughlin said that among the 400 arrests were illegal immigrants charged with or convicted of rape, pedophilia and other violent crimes.

NewsMax [12/12/2025 3:37 PM, Michael Katz, 4109K] reports the Department of Homeland Security denied claims by Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz that Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents unlawfully arrested U.S. citizens in Minneapolis, saying agents may have been responding to people interfering with federal law enforcement. In a post on X Friday, DHS defended ICE officers and rejected accusations that agents targeted citizens for merely observing enforcement actions, emphasizing that federal officers are authorized to act when operations are obstructed or compromised. The response followed a letter Walz — a Democrat and 2024 vice presidential nominee — sent Noem on Wednesday accusing ICE of unlawful conduct and civil rights violations during enforcement activity in Minneapolis. Walz pointed to two encounters involving U.S. citizens, arguing they demonstrated a pattern of overreach by federal agents. DHS, however, signaled in its X response that the encounters cited by Walz might have involved interference with active law enforcement operations, a situation in which agents are permitted to take action to secure an enforcement scene.

CBS News [12/12/2025 8:33 PM, Kati Weis, 39474K] reports the federal immigration crackdown in Louisiana continued on Friday as Border Patrol agents arrest undocumented immigrants. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [12/12/2025 2:41 PM, Madison Colombo, 40621K] reports that Border Patrol Chief Gregory Bovino says threats against ICE and border agents have surged more than 1,200%, ranging from doxxing to death threats. But in Louisiana, the violence is almost nonexistent – a model Bovino is urging Democrat-led states to adopt. "It’s like turning a light switch on and off," Bovino told "Hannity" Thursday. "We haven’t had one use of force against a violent protester or a mob, and also we’ve not had a Border Patrol agent assaulted for the entire time that we’ve been here in Louisiana." The Department of Homeland Security recently launched Operation Catahoula Crunch in New Orleans, targeting illegal immigrants convicted of crimes who were released into the country. Those taken into custody so far include individuals convicted of rape, human smuggling, strangulation and domestic abuse. Bovino credited the lack of violence to local leaders and police working alongside federal agents, in contrast to places like Chicago, where enforcement operations were met with major demonstrations that led to confrontations between protesters and agents that resulted in injuries and arrests. "The amount of death threats or doxxing or other types of threats against our agents does continue to rise," Bovino said. Bovino has placed the blame for the uptick in violence in some states on Democrat leaders, claiming their anti-ICE rhetoric put federal agents at greater risk. Bovino urged officials like Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker to follow Louisiana’s example to help reduce potential violence. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Post [12/12/2025 3:26 PM, Dana Sauchelli, 42219K] reports more than 10,000 illegal immigrants — including suspected murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators and carjackers — have been arrested in Los Angeles since a federal crackdown was launched in June, the DHS said Thursday. The operation is part of a calculated effort by the federal government to weed out "the worst of the worst" undocumented immigrants in cities across the country. Over the past six months, ICE officials, along with DHS and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), have carried out thousands of such arrests in the midst of a surge in protests throughout the city. "This success of this operation is in spite of violent rioters who assaulted our law enforcement, threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at them, and attempted to obstruct lawful arrests of criminal illegal aliens," the DHS said.

Reported similarly:
Univision [12/13/2025 1:50 AM, Staff, 5004K]

FOX News [12/12/2025 7:00 AM, Peter Pinedo Fox, 40621K] reports over 10,000 illegal immigrants, including murderers, kidnappers and sexual predators, have been arrested in Los Angeles since June, despite anti-ICE riots and pushback from sanctuary politicians, the Department of Homeland Security said. The agency told Fox News that its enforcement operations, which began in June, were a "success" despite "violent rioters who assaulted our law enforcement, threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at them, and attempted to obstruct lawful arrests of criminal illegal aliens." The operations were carried out despite Los Angeles and California being sanctuary jurisdictions with laws inhibiting local and state authorities from cooperating with ICE. The agency also received significant pushback from Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass. The California legislature passed measures attempting to restrict federal agents from carrying out immigration enforcement arrests at schools, hospitals and courthouses and another banning agents from wearing masks, both of which were signed by Newsom. Federal officials were also faced with large anti-ICE demonstrations in Los Angeles, which at times broke into violent confrontations and riots. The worst of these erupted in June, with mobs blocking streets, vandalizing businesses and clashing with police. The chaos prompted a massive federal deployment and sharp pushback from California leaders, underscoring the escalating national showdown over immigration enforcement. Despite this, DHS said that arrests continued in full force in Los Angeles. "In the face of violence from rioters and demonization by sanctuary politicians, DHS law enforcement has made over 10,000 arrests in Los Angeles since operations began in June. Some of the most heinous criminal illegal aliens arrested include murderers, kidnappers, sexual predators, and armed carjackers," said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. McLaughlin called out Newsom and Bass, saying they "failed the people of California."

NewsMax [12/12/2025 12:35 PM, Staff, 4109K] reports that Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., on Friday criticized Democrat-led states for what she described as a persistent refusal to enforce federal immigration laws, arguing that those policies are contributing to preventable tragedies, including the death of an Illinois woman killed this year in an Urbana drunken-driving crash, allegedly by a Guatemalan man who lacked legal status and fled the scene. Miller, appearing on Newsmax’s "National Report," called the incident "very upsetting," linking it to what she characterized as a broader pattern of sanctuary policies that undermine public safety. "I want to tell people that President [Donald] Trump is completely committed to restoring law and order and safety and security in our country," she said. "States like Illinois and other blue states that are flouting our federal immigration laws, that are providing protection and sanctuary and making taxpayers pay the bill in tragedies like this — and financially." Miller asserted that permissive immigration policies enable criminal activity, and she placed responsibility on state and local governments that have resisted federal enforcement efforts. According to her, the lack of cooperation creates an environment where dangerous offenders remain at large. "These states are making choices that have real consequences for innocent Americans," she said. Miller also highlighted what she described as aggressive new steps from the Trump administration to crack down on illegal immigration in Chicago and other major cities.

CNN [12/12/2025 6:00 AM, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Haley Britzky, Nicky Robertson, and Jeff Zeleny, 18595K] reports less than six months after President Donald Trump deployed the National Guard to Washington, DC, the mission is becoming more perilous and complex — and perhaps more permanent. After last month’s shooting near the White House left one National Guard member dead and another critically wounded, some troops are now conducting joint patrols with local police, a move intended to provide more security to the very people sent to make the city safer. Yet, even as the price tag is mounting – officials estimate the DC mission costs roughly $1.5 million per day – and the impact on reducing overall crime is mixed, officials say expectations are rising that the deployment of troops will continue. In a win for the Trump administration, a US appeals court last week froze a judge’s previous ruling that the deployment was unlawful — potentially paving the way for a mission that is likely months, if not years longer. National Guard leaders are recruiting for a smaller full-time unit that will include military police deployed to DC as part of a two-year plan, according to a federal military official. Another source familiar with the planning compared a potential long-term guard presence in DC to the New York National Guard’s anti-terrorism task force, stationed at transit hubs since the September 11 terror attacks.

FOX News [12/12/2025 7:36 AM, Staff, 40621K] reports former counterterrorism official Nathan Sales warns about the risks of inadequate vetting for refugees entering the U.S. after DHS Secretary Kristi Noem testifies on Capitol Hill. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NBC News [12/12/2025 6:33 PM, Julia Ainsley, 34509K] reports White House pressure to ramp up deportations has sparked rising tension and finger-pointing inside the Department of Homeland Security, with the agency’s secretary, Kristi Noem, and her top adviser blaming subordinates for not hitting arrest quotas and undermining their relationships inside the West Wing, according to two DHS officials with direct knowledge of the matter. Noem and her close adviser Corey Lewandowski have sought to deflect blame from themselves for any White House frustration with the pace and scope of the deportations, pinning it instead on the leaders of the agencies in charge of immigration enforcement — acting ICE Director Todd Lyons and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott, the DHS officials said. Underscoring the turmoil, Scott recently expressed concern to colleagues that Lewandowski is able to monitor his emails, the two officials and another DHS official said, sparking concern among other top staffers that their messages were being reviewed. "Everyone in leadership is so worried about what they say in email and text," one of the top staffers said. As the agency that carries out President Donald Trump’s mass deportations policy — a core tenet of his agenda — DHS is often under intense scrutiny both inside and outside the White House. The rising tensions within DHS come as deportation numbers continue to lag behind the administration’s goals, with Trump nearing the one-year mark of his second term. White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson praised Noem’s performance when asked about the finger-pointing. "Secretary Noem is doing a great job implementing the president’s agenda and making America safe again," Jackson said. "President Trump’s entire immigration team is on the same page when it comes to implementing the president’s agenda and the results speak for themselves — the border is secure, and deportations continue to increase.” Neither the White House spokesperson nor DHS assistant secretary for public affairs, Tricia McLaughlin, responded to requests for comment on the finger-pointing and rising tensions inside the agency.

USA Today [12/12/2025 12:13 PM, Natalie Neysa Alund, 67103K] reports that Sae Joon Park is back in the global spotlight. Park, a U.S. Army veteran who lived in America for nearly five decades, self-deported to South Korea after immigration officials said he would otherwise be forcefully removed from the country back this summer. "I just feel that this is unfair for those who fought for our country to be treated this way," Park said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY on Friday, Dec. 12. Less than 24 hours earlier, during a hearing on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem faced a barrage of questions related to the department’s immigration efforts, including whether U.S. military veterans have been deported under the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Park joined the hearing at the invitation of Rep. Seth Magaziner, D-Rhode Island, after the congressman asked Noem how many U.S. military veterans had been deported. "We have not deported U.S. citizens or military veterans," Noem replied. When Magaziner introduced Park, a U.S. Army combat veteran and Purple Heart recepient shot twice while serving in Panama in the late 80s, and asked whether Noem would review Park’s case, the secretary said she would look at his case. Speaking nearly half-way around the world on Friday, Park told USA TODAY his status had not changed, and although he wants to return to the states, he said he is not sure whether it will happen. "No one has reached out to me," Park said.

Raw Story [12/12/2025 8:40 PM, Erik De La Garza] reports chaos is mounting inside the Department of Homeland Security as rising tensions over Trump’s deportation agenda have sparked internal finger-pointing and threatened to derail top leadership, with officials even fearing their emails and messages are being monitored, according to a new NBC News exclusive. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and her top advisor, Corey Lewandowski, have reportedly pinned blame on subordinates for falling short of White House deportation goals. Acting ICE Director Todd Lloyd and Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott have found themselves at the center of criticism, with Scott expressing concern to colleagues that Lewandowski may be monitoring his emails. “Everyone in leadership is so worried about what they say in email and text,” one DHS official told NBC News. The pressure at DHS comes as deportation numbers lag far behind administration targets, leading to “rising tensions and finger-pointing” inside the department. “The two DHS officials said Scott has been left out of conversations about Border Patrol operations in major U.S. cities as well as social gatherings that have included other top DHS leaders,” NBC News reported Friday. “DHS leaders also have told Scott he may soon be out of a job, the officials said, despite record-low border numbers during his tenure.” Despite the turmoil, the White House praised Noem. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said, “Secretary Noem is doing a great job implementing the president’s agenda…the results speak for themselves — the border is secure, and deportations continue to increase.” But internal rumblings remain. Sources told NBC News that Noem’s deputy, Troy Edgar, may soon be reassigned as U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador, further reshuffling the department’s upper ranks. ICE is currently arresting fewer than 1,000 people per day on average, far below the 3,000 daily goal set by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller in May, according to NBC News.

FOX News [12/12/2025 6:16 PM, Gabriel Hays, 40621K] reports singer SZA slammed the White House on social media Wednesday for using her song in an X post promoting the Trump administration’s deportation agenda. The official White House X account shared a video compilation of Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents rounding up illegal immigrants set to SZA’s tune "Big Boy" Monday, earning rebukes from both SZA and her former manager, Terrence "Punch" Henderson. "White House rage-baiting artists for free promo is PEAK DARK… inhumanity +shock and aw tactics… Evil n Boring," SZA wrote on the platform. SZA, whose real name is Solána Imani Rowe, posted her comment on Henderson’s X post from Tuesday, which stated, "Trying to provoke artist to respond in order to help spread propaganda and political agendas is nasty business. Knock it off.” The White House’s video flashed imagery of ICE officers handcuffing illegal immigrants set to SZA’s lyric, "It’s cuffing season, and all the girls are leaving to get a big boy.” The government account played into the lyrics with the post’s caption, stating, "WE HEARD IT’S CUFFING SZN. Bad news for criminal illegal aliens. Great news for America.” When asked for comment on SZA’s response, White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson told Variety, "Thank you, SZA, for drawing even more attention to the tremendous work America’s ICE officers are doing by arresting dangerous criminal illegal aliens from American communities.” SZA’s response is just the latest celebrity rebuke of the Trump administration’s social media posts.

Washington Post [12/13/2025 6:00 AM, Staff, 32099K] reports your papers, please – and tweets, too. This could soon be a new requirement if you want to visit the United States. Customs and Border Protection filed notice this week that it plans to require tourists from the 42 countries who otherwise can enter without a visa to start sharing their social media activity from the last five years, as well as any email addresses that have been active for the past 10 years. That’s in addition to the names, birth dates, places of residence and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings and children. Giving extra scrutiny to visitors from dangerous countries is defensible, but why does the government need to conduct background checks on every visitor from the U.K., Australia, Japan and South Korea? This move flows from President Donald Trump’s order that visitors coming into the country, and those already here, must “not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.” No one wants to open the door to visitors who mean to harm Americans upon arrival. But what exactly are the criteria for “hostile attitudes”? Is the Department of Homeland Security screening for X users who frequently share “Death to America,” critical memes of Trump – or both? Does advocating for election interference weigh against a visitor as heavily as lamenting an election result? These distinctions matter, not least because the current administration has shown repeatedly it is willing to blur speech it does not like with over-torqued claims of national security threats. Prime examples include Turkish Tufts student Rumeysa Ozturk and Algerian-Palestinian Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, who were detained earlier this year after criticizing Israel’s conduct in its war with Hamas. DHS may not be violating any constitutional rights by requiring visitors to hand over their social media history when applying for a travel visa, but it certainly breaks with the spirit of the founding principles the administration claims it wants to protect. America’s support for free speech has long been part of what makes the country such a beacon. In contrast, China or Russia have long been in the business of doing deep dives into the social media posts of visitors and refusing entry to people thought to be too critical of those governments.

Washington Post [12/12/2025 6:30 AM, Ramesh Ponnuru, 24149K] reports through the magic of the law, all the passion of immigration politics is about to come to bear on the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction thereof.” That’s because on the first day of his second term, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aiming to deny citizenship to any children born in the United States to illegal immigrants. The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case challenging that order, and the legal dispute turns on the meaning of those five words. The 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, says that “all persons born” in the U.S. and subject to its jurisdiction are citizens. That has generally been taken to include illegal immigrants’ children: American courts can prosecute them and American police often protect them from crime. On this view, the exceptions — the reason the contested “jurisdiction” phrase is there — were Native Americans on tribal lands (Congress later made them citizens) and the children of diplomats and of invading soldiers. The contrary theory, advanced in a bill sponsored by several Republican senators, led by Tom Cotton of Arkansas, holds that the phrase grants birthright citizenship only to the children of people who have “allegiance and obedience” to our government — which illegal immigrants don’t have. Supporters of this theory say the people who drafted and ratified the 14th Amendment were trying to ensure citizenship for Black Americans, not the children of illegal immigrants. They are surely correct about that. Nobody was thinking about illegal immigrants at the time, when the U.S. didn’t have immigration restrictions. They’re right, too, that the Supreme Court has never issued a ruling directly affirming birthright citizenship for illegal immigrants. And they also have a point when they say the policy has some serious costs. It creates an incentive for unlawfully coming to the U.S. and then impedes deportation. The president and his allies are, however, wrong about the Constitution. The meaning of a law is, in the first place, not limited to what its authors mainly had in mind. The equal protection clause, also in the 14th Amendment, was motivated principally to ensure that state governments protected ex-slaves. Because it was written in general language, though, it extends to other groups and it doesn’t apply only to racial discrimination. “Subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a legal term of art that requires some historical research to unpack. Cotton’s theory that it required “allegiance and obedience” is based on an English case from 1608. But that case affirmed that even if a foreigner were in England only temporarily, he would have a duty of obedience while he was there — and any child he had there would be “a natural born subject” of the king.

NewsMax [12/12/2025 10:31 AM, Michael Dorstewitz, 4109K] reports that the requirements to be a president of the United States includes a provision that’s missing for members of Congress and the federal judiciary. Article II, Section 1, Clause 5 provides that "No Person except a natural born Citizen... shall be eligible to the Office of President." But a member of Congress or the federal judiciary can be a foreign-born, naturalized U.S. citizen. We need to change that. At the time the Constitution was rarified and throughout most of our nation’s history, it wasn’t an issue. Immigrants who arrived on our shores were eager to become American citizens. They learned the English language, adopted to our customs, and assimilated as Americans in every respect imaginable. Naturalized citizens were proud to be Americans then; not necessarily today. Nalin Haley, a political activist and son of former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley, appeared on a Tucker Carlson podcast last month and suggested a number of changes concerning immigration and citizenship. They included: Limiting the number of foreign students who may enroll in U.S. universities. Banning dual citizenship: "People should have their loyalty to America first," he said. Banning Americans from serving in a foreign military. But his Number-1 belief was that "naturalized citizens should not be able to hold public office."

FOX News [12/12/2025 5:00 AM, Simon Hankinson, 40621K] Video: HERE reports the federal-benefits fraud in Minnesota is so big, it’s now a national story. Even left-leaning national media are covering it, though it undermines a narrative they’re desperate to believe. The situation reveals some uncomfortable truths about indiscriminate mass migration. One is the hidden fiscal cost of absorbing millions of refugees and other low-skilled immigrants and allowing them full access to a welfare state which neither their parents nor they themselves will end up paying for. Minnesota offers a generous range of public benefits for those who need them. Historically, the state had a reputation for low crime and high civic responsibility. Enter thousands of Somalis who came to the U.S. over the past 30 years. Most were brought through the U.S. Refugee Assistance Program, asylum applications or related family chain migration. Many were settled in Minnesota through the Lutheran church’s refugee resettlement charity. The result was a sudden meeting of high-trust and low-trust societies. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

San Diego Union Tribune [12/12/2025 9:10 AM, William Menard, 1538K] reports immigration officers have ignited a global outcry recently as masked ICE agents have patrolled communities across the country, arresting people at their homes, work and schools. While this is extremely distressing, ICE is now taking actions that have received much less attention but are just as concerning: arresting immigrants lawfully applying for green cards. A few weeks ago, I was preparing my client and her husband for their green card interview at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service field office in San Diego. My client was from Australia, lawfully entered the United States, and had no criminal record whatsoever. While she was here, she fell in love with her husband, a U.S. citizen and veteran of the U.S. Navy who received numerous commendations during his service. They lived together with their dog in a San Diego suburb. My client’s only issue was minor — she had overstayed her visa in the United States for a few months. This was extremely typical. Federal statute explicitly permits spouses of U.S. citizens to apply for permanent residence even if they had previously overstayed a visa. I had submitted hundreds of nearly identical applications in the past without any issue. The three of us arrived at the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service field office in San Diego, and everything seemed normal at first. However, once we went into the interview, I became increasingly concerned about how long the interview was taking. Then, while my client was answering questions, I looked out the window of the office door and saw someone else getting arrested. Soon, three ICE officers walked in and detained my client. She looked at me with terror; she was both surprised and scared about what would happen next. As I was leaving the room, one of the officers asked me to fix this, that he wanted to focus on dangerous criminals and not people like my client. My client’s husband exclaimed that he served this country, and said, “This is what I get?” No one seemed to think this should be happening.

The Hill [12/12/2025 8:07 PM, Elliott Davis, 12595K] reports the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is planning to change its tactics in immigration enforcement operations, moving away from sweeping raids that have been publicized in some cities across the country. DHS sources told NewsNation’s Ali Bradley that U.S. Border Patrol teams under Commander Gregory Bovino will narrow their focus to specific targets, such as immigrants in the country illegally who have been convicted of serious crimes. The change will see agents not necessarily carrying out larger raids that have taken place at locations such as Home Depot, according to Bradley’s exclusive report. Agents will also focus on traffic stop enforcement, according to the reporting on NewsNation, The Hill’s sister network. But it’s unlikely that onlookers will see Border Patrol grabbing people off the streets, Bradley said Friday night on NewsNation’s “The Hill” with Blake Burman. The change in tactics comes amid a stretch of negative polling for President Trump over his immigration crackdown — a key part of his 2024 campaign platform and agenda during his second term. A survey released earlier this week by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) found that approval of Trump’s handling of immigration had dropped from 42 percent to 33 percent since March. In November, a YouGov poll revealed that a majority of Americans specifically disapproved of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operations launched as part of the administration’s mass deportation efforts. About half of immigrants surveyed by the health policy research group KFF and New York Times last month said they and their family members “feel less safe” with Trump back in the White House. Border Patrol’s immigration enforcement operations have been visible across several states this year, including in Los Angeles, Chicago and Charlotte, N.C. Many raids have been met with protests and, in some cases, clashes with agents. The operations have also been criticized as going too far. Bradley reported Friday that a recently launched operation in New Orleans, named “Catahoula Crunch,” will persist despite the change in tactics. There have already been more than 250 arrests in the Louisiana city, with DHS saying its end goal is 5,000, according to Bradley. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

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FOX News [12/13/2025 3:43 AM, Landon Mion, 40621K]

USA Today [12/13/2025 6:01 AM, Trevor Hughes, 67103K] reports inside an ICE headquarters in a suburban office park hangs a printed text-message that immigration officers feel is aimed at them: "Get a gun and shoot them in the streets." It’s tacked on a cubicle wall that dozens of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pass by daily. The screenshot message also declares, "This is a war." In response, an ICE agent wrote on the printout in all caps: "BE VIGILANT!!" For ICE Supervisory Detention and Deportation Officer Keone Feliciano, the note is an unavoidable reminder of the danger he and his colleagues face amidst rapidly increasing anger over the Trump administration’s aggressive approach to immigration enforcement. Across the country, Feliciano and other longtime ICE officers accustomed to operating below the radar have been thrust into the spotlight by Trump’s orders to conduct the largest mass deportation in history. For many, it’s an uncomfortable position as they work to balance their self-image as patriotic, law-and-order Americans with the perception that they have suddenly become, in the words of one ICE officer, "the bad guys." In response to Trump’s orders, the deployment of masked federal agents across American communities has spawned sometimes violent backlash including shootings, attacks on ICE facilities and vehicle rammings. Protesters, the vast majority peaceful, say agents are crossing dangerous lines for American society, smashing car windows, chasing workers through restaurants and targeting people for detention seemingly at random. To report on the perspective of both sides, USA TODAY journalists spent several days this November in Kansas City, accompanying ICE officers as they detained suspects, collected detainees from local jails, and loaded others onto a charter flight to Texas for eventual deportation. We also spoke with Kansas City-area migrant advocates and local elected officials who say the expanded immigration enforcement is tearing communities apart, turning neighbor against neighbor and sparking heated confrontations over the tactics now being deployed.

NewsMax [12/12/2025 8:53 AM, Charlie McCarthy, 4109K] reports Border czar Tom Homan on Thursday invited Catholic leadership to watch him and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials perform their duties and see "why illegal immigration is not a victimless crime." The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has criticized ICE enforcement tactics and detention conditions, warning about fear in immigrant communities and saying bishops are concerned about "conditions in detention centers" and "lack of access to pastoral care." Pope Leo XIV similarly urged authorities to allow pastoral workers to minister to detainees and said longtime residents "never causing problems" have been "deeply affected" by current enforcement. During an appearance on "The World Over with Raymond Arroyo," Homan, a practicing Catholic, rejected claims that enforcement is incompatible with human dignity. He argued that refusing to enforce immigration laws invites cartels, fuels trafficking, and increases deaths on the journey north. He also said a secure border and barriers "save lives" by reducing the number of vulnerable women and children pushed into dangerous routes controlled by smugglers. The debate turned even more heated after a parish outside Boston altered a Nativity display to protest ICE actions, removing the Holy Family and replacing it with a sign reading "ICE was here," according to the National Catholic Reporter. The Archdiocese of Boston publicly objected and called for the display to be removed as inappropriate politicization of sacred objects.

CNN [12/12/2025 10:35 PM, Taylor Romine, 606K] reports Bruna Ferreira had rushed out of her Massachusetts home, shoelaces untied, and was driving to pick up her 11-year-old son from school when she was approached by unmarked vehicles and a "swarm of people.” The 33-year-old woman, the mother of White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt’s nephew, was being surrounded by federal immigration agents asking her to confirm her name, she told CNN’s Erin Burnett Friday in an interview. The November 12 arrest near Boston at first felt like a traffic stop – but seemed bizarre as agents already seemed to know her name, the Brazilian native said. "How could you possibly know who I am and where I live?" Ferreira asked. While agents took her to the nearby Revere Police Department to verify her identity, Ferreira started calling her emergency contacts to make sure her son was picked up from school. "I just started panicking, trying to see if I could get somebody, an emergency contact, anybody to answer me, to pick up Michael from school," she said. Ferreira was previously engaged to her son’s father, Michael Leavitt, her attorney Todd Pomerleau previously told CNN. Michael Leavitt is the brother of Karoline Leavitt. An immigration judge ordered for her to be released from the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile earlier this week. During the 26 days in immigration custody, Ferreira was taken from Massachusetts to facilities in four other states before she was taken to Louisiana – more than 1,500 miles from where she was arrested, she said. Once she arrived at the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, Ferreira was "by the grace of God" able to use another woman’s phone minutes to make a call and let her family and attorney know where she was, she said. She wasn’t able to speak to her son during her detainment, where she met many other mothers in her same situation, and they all prayed for one another, which helped her get through the "horrible situation," Ferreira said. CNN has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Wall Street Journal [12/12/2025 6:22 PM, James T. Areddy, 646K] reports Chinese citizen who fled the country after gathering evidence of alleged human-rights violations against the nation’s Uyghur population is at risk of being returned there after being detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, his supporters said. Heng Guan is jailed in upstate New York awaiting an immigration hearing on Monday that could lead to his removal from the U.S. and ultimately land him back in China, according to his lawyer and a New York-based activist group, Human Rights in China. The group says the 38-year-old arrived in the U.S. illegally in 2021 and was detained in August during an ICE operation targeting his roommate. Guan’s name appears through an online portal of ICE detainees, indicating he was held in New York state. “​​If he is deported, he will certainly face a very severe prison sentence due to the social impact of this incident,” said Zhou Fengsuo, executive director of HRIC. Rep. James P. McGovern (D., Mass.) sent a letter Friday to the director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, Joseph B. Edlow, supporting an application for giving Guan political asylum in the U.S. McGovern’s letter said Guan’s video work supported reporting that had been useful to American policymakers in challenging China, including passage of a 2021 law that blocked imports of goods from Xinjiang. A lawyer for Guan, Chuangchuang Chen, said Monday’s online hearing will give the detainee his first opportunity to state his case and for a judge to hear from his supporters. Chen said that while he doubts such a complex case can be resolved in one hearing, Guan is bracing for a relatively quick decision. Chen said a judge on Friday denied releasing Guan on bond for jurisdictional reasons.

FOX News [12/12/2025 9:00 AM, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten Fox, 40621K] reports an illegal immigrant who entered the United States during the Biden administration’s era of catch and release is accused of leaving a Maryland woman severely injured after a head-on crash, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said after arresting him. Kevin Alexis Mendez-Ortiz, a Honduran national, illegally entered under the Biden administration in 2022, ICE Baltimore announced. On Nov. 9, Mendez-Ortiz was driving on an Oxon Hill, Maryland, road when he crossed into oncoming traffic and rammed into a vehicle head-on. He fled the scene, the agency said. The passenger in the vehicle was left with broken vertebrae, collarbone and wrist. She also had fractured ribs, injuries to her intestines and uterus, as well as a ruptured diaphragm, collapsed lung and a concussion, the agency said. Mendez-Ortiz entered into the U.S. illegally near Hidalgo, Texas, on Sept. 30, 2022. He was arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol and issued a notice to appear in front of a judge that same day. According to ICE, he was then released into the U.S. on his own recognizance.

USA Today [12/13/2025 6:01 AM, Lauren Villagran, 67103K] reports back when he was in uniform, everywhere the airman went Americans adored him, thanked him for his service, offered to buy him lunch. Then he joined ICE. Now – in the midst of newly aggressive immigration enforcement – the U.S. Air Force veteran is more likely to hear insults and slurs from the public than thanks. He became an ICE deportation officer because he thinks of himself as "a law-and-order guy." And because ICE is the family business. His father is an ICE deportation officer. And his sister. And his twin brother. "All we want to do is create a safer America," said John, who asked that USA TODAY withhold his full name for fear of being targeted for his work. His fellow officers and family "put their lives on the line," he said, "and I’m willing to do the same." President Donald Trump, acting with broad voter support, has made deporting millions of immigrants the centerpiece of his second presidency. Masked ICE agents have become the face of that nationwide deportation campaign. Trump supporters view the effort as a necessary response to historically high migration under President Joe Biden. An influx of roughly 6 million migrants between 2021 and 2024 pushed the percentage of foreign-born people in the United States to a century high and drove a political crowbar into an America sharply divided by immigration. Polls, protests and viral videos suggest millions of Americans support mass deportation at whatever cost. Millions of others believe the effort has already gone too far, and organized resistance is growing. John and his family have long considered themselves public servants charged with enforcing the law Congress enacted. But this view is increasingly at odds with the shocking headlines and viral videos of detentions many Americans see as unjust or overly violent.

AP [12/12/2025 6:14 PM, Leah Willingham and Laura Bargfeld, 2218K] Video: HERE reports one baby Jesus lies in a manger in the snow, wrapped in a silver emergency blanket with his wrists zip-tied. Mary stands nearby outside the Lake Street Church in Evanston, Illinois, wearing a plastic gas mask and flanked by Roman soldiers in tactical vests labeled “ICE.” In another Chicago suburb, not far from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility that has drawn protests over detentions, a sign at the manger outside the Urban Village Church says “Due to ICE activity in our community the Holy Family is in hiding.” And more than a thousand miles away, the Christ child went missing from a Nativity scene at St. Susanna Parish in Dedham, Massachusetts, replaced by a hand-painted sign: “ICE was here.” These and other stark reimaginings of Christ’s birth are drawing praise and outrage as churches turn the Christmas tableau into a commentary on federal immigration enforcement under the Trump administration. Their creators say they are placing the ancient story in a contemporary frame, portraying the Holy Family as refugees to reflect on the fear of separation and deportation that many families — including their own parishioners — are experiencing today. Supporters of the displays say the Bible is on their side, but critics call the scenes sacrilegious and politically divisive, accusing the churches of abusing sacred imagery and some arguing they should lose their tax-exempt status. The archdiocese in Massachusetts ordered that the manger must be “restored to its proper sacred purpose.” The debate comes as immigration enforcement intensifies in states and cities whose leaders object to the immigration crackdown. In September alone, a combined total of at least 2,000 people were arrested in Illinois and Massachusetts, according to federal arrest figures released by immigration authorities.

NPR [12/12/2025 8:55 AM, Maayan Silver, 28013K] reports jury selection is complete and a federal trial gets underway Monday for Milwaukee County judge Hannah Dugan. She is accused of helping a man try to evade arrest by immigration authorities at the county courthouse last April. A grand jury indicted Dugan the following month. She faces one count of obstructing a proceeding, a felony, and another count of concealing an individual to prevent an arrest, a misdemeanor. She has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Dugan could face up to six years in prison if convicted. NPR reached out to Judge Dugan and her attorneys, who declined to comment. However, before her arraignment, members of her defense team issued a statement: "As she said after her unnecessary arrest, Judge Dugan asserts her innocence and looks forward to being vindicated in court.” Dugan’s attorneys argue in court documents that court policy on immigration enforcement at the courthouse was in flux. They say Dugan was following draft protocols sent by the chief judge which required her to refer ICE agents to a supervisor.

CNN [12/13/2025 6:10 AM, Emma Tucker, 18595K] reports Mubashir had just stepped outside into the snowy Minneapolis winter weather to take his lunch break when he says he saw a masked federal officer running toward him "at full speed." Within seconds, the agent had tackled the 20-year-old Somali American, forced him into the back hallway of a building and restrained him, according to Mubashir’s account and video footage of the incident. He did not want his last name released publicly due to privacy concerns. "I told him, ‘I’m a US citizen. What is going on?’ He didn’t seem to care," Mubashir said at a news conference with city leaders Wednesday. "He dragged me outside through the snow while I was handcuffed, restrained, helpless." The young man was handcuffed by two agents, one of whom put him in a chokehold while he was on his knees on the snow-covered street before forcing him into a gray SUV that appeared to be unmarked as onlookers yelled out in protest, video shows. Mubashir said the agents interrogated him about his immigration status and took him to a federal facility as he repeatedly asserted he’s a US citizen, tried to show them a digital copy of his passport and pleaded with them to let him go. The violent detainment in the Cedar-Riverside neighborhood on Tuesday has become another flashpoint in the Trump administration’s new immigration enforcement operation targeting undocumented Somali immigrants in Minneapolis and St. Paul as part of its sweeping deportation push that has led to a surge of federal agents in blue cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte and New Orleans. Local and state leaders in Minnesota have decried the operation for singling out the nation’s largest population of people from Somalia who they say are vital to the fabric of the state. As reports of US citizens being detained in the sweeps accumulate, Somalis in the Twin Cities are grappling with rippling fears and heightened anxieties as the federal presence looms over their community, against the backdrop of President Donald Trump’s rhetorical attacks describing them as "garbage" who should "go back to where they came from." "All I did was step outside as a Somali American, and I just got chased by a masked person," said Mubashir. When asked about the incident, the Department of Homeland Security said ICE agents were having a "consensual" conversation with a suspected undocumented immigrant near a location that has "a high level of criminal activity" when Mubashir "walked out of a nearby restaurant, turned around, and fled from law enforcement." The agents, having "reasonable suspicion," chased the man who "violently resisted officers and refused to answer questions," DHS said. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz has called for a review of all recent federal arrests in a letter to DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, expressing concern over the detentions of Mubashir and other US citizens, including some who he said were reportedly documenting federal activity.

USA Today [12/12/2025 7:16 PM, Jeff Abbott, 67103K] reports a Guatemalan immigrant held at ICE’s Camp East Montana immigration detention facility has died in an El Paso hospital. Francisco Gaspar Andres, 48, was pronounced dead on Dec. 3, an ICE news release stated. The official cause of death is pending, but officials state it was likely because of "natural liver and kidney failure.” He was admitted to the Hospitals of Providence East on Nov. 16, but he had been treated by medical staff at the detention facility on Sept. 27, Oct. 2 and Oct. 9. Gaspar Andres was detained in Florida on Sept. 1 along with his wife. He was transferred to Camp East Montana on Sept. 19 and was scheduled for deportation back to Guatemala. At least 25 immigrants held in immigration detention facilities across the country have died in 2025, according to congressional oversight numbers. Camp East Montana first began receiving deportees on Aug. 1. The detention facility is set to be the largest in the country. This is the first confirmed death at Camp East Montana, according to U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar’s office. U.S. Rep Veronica Escobar condemns immigrant’s death. Escobar, D-El Paso, has condemned the Trump administration for failing to inform her office of Gaspar Andres’ death after his passing and in spite of her previous inquiries in congressional committees earlier in the day on Tuesday, Dec. 9. "Despite claims from DHS about the inhumane, abhorrent conditions at facilities like Camp East Montana being ‘categorically false,’ my own visits and discussions with detainees prove otherwise," Escobar said in a statement. "Never before has an administration so carelessly made a mockery of the rule of law while hypocritically championing values like law and order. From their denial of true oversight visits to the cruel treatment of detainees at this facility, it is abundantly clear Camp East Montana is not being effectively or humanely operated.”

Los Angeles Times [12/12/2025 6:00 AM, Anita Chabria, 14862K] reports call it an accident, call it the plan. But don’t stoop to the reprehensible gaslighting of calling it a lie: It is fact that federal agents have detained and arrested dozens, if not hundreds, of United States citizens as part of immigration sweeps, regardless of what Kristi Noem would like us to believe. During a congressional hearing Thursday, Noem, our secretary of Homeland Security and self-appointed Cruelty Barbie, reiterated her oft-used and patently false line that only the worst of the worst are being targeted by immigration authorities. That comes after weeks of her department posting online, on its ever-more far-right social media accounts, that claims of American citizens being rounded up and held incommunicado are "fake news" or a "hoax.” "Stop fear-mongering. ICE does NOT arrest or deport U.S. citizens," Homeland Security recently posted on the former Twitter. Tuesday, at a different congressional hearing, a handful of citizens — including two Californians — told their stories of being grabbed by faceless masked men and being whisked away to holding cells where they were denied access to phones, lawyers, medications and a variety of other legal rights. Their testimony accompanied the release of a congressional report by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations in which 22 American citizens, including a dozen from the Golden State, told their own shocking, terrifying tales of manhandling and detentions by what can only be described as secret police — armed agents who wouldn’t identify themselves and often seemed to lack basic training required for safe urban policing. These stories and the courageous Americans who are stepping forward to tell them are history in the making — a history I hope we regret but not forget.

Reuters [12/12/2025 11:21 AM, Staff, 36480K] reports the U.S. is ending temporary legal status for citizens of Ethiopia in the United States, according to a government notice on Friday, as the Trump administration continues its crackdown on legal and illegal immigration. "After reviewing country conditions and consulting with appropriate U.S. Government agencies, the Secretary determined that Ethiopia no longer continues to meet the conditions for the designation for Temporary Protected Status," Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in a notice posted in the Federal Register. Temporary Protected Status is available to people whose home country has experienced a natural disaster, armed conflict or other extraordinary event. It provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation. The program was created in 1991 and under Biden was extended to cover about 600,000 Venezuelans and 521,000 Haitians. Noem reversed the extensions in February, saying they were no longer justified. In recent months, the administration has removed the protective status for migrants from numerous countries, including Haiti, Myanmar, South Sudan, Syria and Venezuela. In November, Trump announced the termination of protection for Somalis in Minnesota. Trump has made controlling immigration a central plank of his second White House term. Canceling TPS protections are a boost to the administration’s campaign to deport millions of people. The cancellations have been challenged in court. The Supreme Court in October cleared the way for the administration to revoke TPS for hundreds of thousands of Venezuelan migrants in the United States, granting a request to put on hold a federal judge’s ruling that Noem lacked the authority to terminate the status while litigation proceeds.The Homeland Security department also said on Friday it was no longer processing legacy cases under the Cuban and Haitian family reunification parole program, according to a post in the Federal Register. Those programs make it easier for U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents to bring family members into the country.

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Bloomberg Law News [12/12/2025 9:42 AM, Andrew Kreighbaum, 91K]
Washington Examiner [12/12/2025 10:53 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 1394K] r

The New York Times [12/13/2025 1:26 AM, Francesca Regalado, 153395K] reports the attorneys general of 20 states including California and New York sued the Trump administration on Friday over its decision to impose a $100,000 fee on visas for skilled foreign workers. President Trump signed a proclamation in September imposing the fee. His administration has argued that some employers had abused the program to keep wages low, hurting American workers. The policy took effect Sept. 21. The states have asked a federal court to declare the policy unlawful and to block its enforcement. California and Massachusetts were the lead plaintiffs in the suit, which was filed on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts. California-based tech companies including Meta, Google and Apple were among the largest employers of H-1B visa holders this year, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Schools and universities also use the program to bring educators and researchers to the United States. “The $100,000 visa fee is devastating for all states, including California, and threatens the quality of education, health care and other core services available to our residents,” Attorney General Rob Bonta of California said in a statement. The states that have joined California, Massachusetts and New York in the suit include Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, North Carolina, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin. The Homeland Security, State, Labor and Justice Departments did not immediately respond to requests for comment outside of business hours. Bloomberg [12/12/2025 10:41 PM, Madlin Mekelburg, 803K] reports that the case is being led by California Attorney General Rob Bonta and Massachusetts Attorney General Andrea Joy Campbell. "What Congress has never done is authorize a president to impose a six-figure surcharge designed to dismantle the program entirely," Bonta said during a press conference announcing the suit. "The bottom line is: no presidential administration can re-write immigration law." The lawsuit would be at least the third challenging the fee increase, which Trump announced in September, but the first complaint by US states. The US Chamber of Commerce sued in October, as did a global nurse-staffing agency and several unions. Both cases are ongoing. White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers defended the fee as lawful and called it "a necessary, initial, incremental step towards necessary reforms to the H-1B program." “President Trump promised to put American workers first, and his commonsense action on H-1B visas does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages, while providing certainty to employers who need to bring the best talent from overseas," she said in a statement. The Washington Examiner [12/12/2025 6:19 PM, Brady Knox, 1394K] reports that other Democratic attorneys general stressed their belief that H-1B visas were critical for innovation. "Oregon’s colleges, universities, and research institutions rely on skilled international workers to keep labs running, courses on track, and innovation moving forward," Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield said in a statement. "This threatens Oregon’s ability to compete, educate, and grow.” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers defended the president’s actions regarding the visa program, telling Politico they were both lawful and "a necessary, initial, incremental step towards necessary reforms to the H-1B program.” "President Trump promised to put American workers first, and his commonsense action on H-1B visas does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages, while providing certainty to employers who need to bring the best talent from overseas," Rogers said in a statement responding to the lawsuit.

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CNN [12/12/2025 3:25 PM, Casey Gannon, 18595K]

Politico [12/12/2025 3:29 PM, Christine Mui, 13586K] reports California Attorney General Rob Bonta announced Friday that he and 19 other states are suing the Trump administration over its policy to hike fees on new H-1B visa petitions to $100,000. Bonta claimed that the increases for the skilled-worker visa are illegal because they exceed what Congress has authorized and undermine its intent in establishing the program. All of the states joining the lawsuit have Democratic attorneys general. “No presidential administration can rewrite immigration law,” Bonta said at a press conference in San Francisco. “No president can ignore the co-equal branch of government of Congress, ignore the Constitution, or ignore the law.” The largest users of the visas are major tech companies bringing in high-skilled foreign workers, which MAGA Republicans have accused of abusing the program to pass over Americans for cheaper labor. But Bonta argued the fees will also worsen labor shortages within other important sectors to the state economy by making it more difficult to fill spots for physicians, researchers, teachers, nurses and public service employees. He also warned that the $100,000 payment, which President Donald Trump issued via presidential proclamation in September, could be applied selectively at the discretion of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. High-skilled immigration and H-1Bs in particular have previously been the source of infighting between Trump’s populist supporters and Silicon Valley allies, concerned about the impact on global talent attraction. The president appeared to soften his stance since issuing the policy and forging closer relationships with tech leaders whose companies use the program. When discussing H-1B visas with Fox News host Laura Ingraham last month, he disputed that the U.S. has enough talented people and said it still needs to bring in workers for certain areas. White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers defended the administration’s actions Friday as not only lawful but “a necessary, initial, incremental step towards necessary reforms to the H-1B program.” “President Trump promised to put American workers first, and his commonsense action on H-1B visas does just that by discouraging companies from spamming the system and driving down American wages, while providing certainty to employers who need to bring the best talent from overseas,” Rogers said in a statement responding to the lawsuit. Bonta did not recommend specific reforms to the H-1B process Friday, though he told reporters that like any program or policy, it can “probably benefit from improvements.”

Telemundo52 [12/12/2025 8:38 PM, Luis Treto, 76K] reports the Department of Homeland Security announced this Friday the termination of the family reunification program for citizens of seven Latin American countries. The measure, which will take effect next Monday, will affect thousands of people who are already in the country with a temporary status. Family reunification programs were created for five of these seven countries in 2023 by the then-President Biden administration to allow the legal and temporary entry into the country of immediate family members of people with legal immigration status in the United States who had petitioned for their loved ones. The cancellation of the “Parole” family reunification programs includes seven countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. The DHS “is ending all Family Reunification Parole (FRP) programs for aliens from Colombia, Cuba, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras, and their immediate family members,” according to the statement published on its official website. “They will not be able to come to the United States on parole to wait for the visa to become valid and obtain permanent residency within the United States,” said Alex Gálvez, an immigration lawyer. Gálvez explains that the process that is being ended benefited "immediate relatives; they can be children under 21 years of age, spouses, parents and we even know that these requests can last from 10 to 30 years." According to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), beneficiaries of family reunification programs who are already in the United States and have not applied for permanent residency must leave the country by January 14 if they do not have another legal alternative to remain. “For those immigrants who entered with Parole and have already submitted an application for permanent residency, they will continue to be protected under Parole,” Gálvez said. That is, provided the application was postmarked or submitted electronically on or before December 15, 2025, and remains pending as of January 14, 2026. USCIS justified the new directive by arguing the need to ensure the safety of Americans, claiming that “criminals and fraudsters” could enter the country under the pretext of reuniting with their families. According to the DHS statement, the administration is ending “the abuse of humanitarian parole, which allowed aliens with insufficiently vetted backgrounds to circumvent the traditional immigration process.” “The program was designed to admit 20,000 people a year; in 2017 the Trump administration suspended it,” said Wilfredo Alle, an immigration expert, adding that the program “briefly returned in 2023 under the Biden administration.” The DHS says it will reinstate the issuance of these permits on a case-by-case basis after supposedly verifying the eligibility of the beneficiaries. Immigration experts recommend seeking advice if you have immediate family members inside or outside the country. “Speak with an immigration attorney as soon as possible to remain protected against arrest and deportation and to obtain permanent residency,” Gálvez said.

NBC News [12/13/2025 6:30 AM, Nicole Acevedo, 43603K] reports lawful permanent residents are seeing their naturalization ceremonies abruptly canceled this month as the Trump administration puts an indefinite “hold” on immigration applications from certain countries. The holds apply to green card and U.S. citizenship requests by people from 19 countries deemed “high risk” by the Trump administration. The list includes Cuba, Iran, Haiti and Somalia, among others. Lawful permanent residents, or green card holders, are already among the most thoroughly vetted individuals in the nation’s immigration system. When they decide to naturalize, they undergo an even more comprehensive government review that includes background checks, interviews with immigration officers and a citizenship test. The citizenship ceremony is the last step in a long process that starts with having a green card for several years, submitting the application, paying hundreds of dollars in fees, completing an interview with an immigration officer, passing a background check as well as an English and civics test, all before finally taking the oath. The Trump administration’s new policy placing a hold on naturalization ceremonies for immigrants from the 19 countries is the latest among several other changes implemented this year that could make it more difficult for many lawful permanent residents to become U.S. citizens. In addition to the holds on immigration applications, the administration is cutting grants to groups that help prepare people to become citizens, implementing stricter social media vetting for those seeking citizenship, conducting neighborhood investigations into applicants’ “moral character,” and giving a more difficult civics test required for citizenship. USCIS has said it wants to do away with judicial oath ceremonies, which take place at courthouses, and allow only administrative ceremonies that are held in USCIS field offices or other federal buildings. For some, the cancelations would mean that people would have to wait longer and travel farther outside their county to take their citizenship oath. USCIS did not respond to a request for comment. The agency previously told NBC News it had concerns about the efficient use of USCIS grants following the funding freeze in February. In a policy email made public by the Immigration Policy Tracking Project, USCIS said it stopped coordinating naturalization ceremonies in public venues, preferring to continue conducting them at USCIS field offices.

NBC News [12/12/2025 3:13 PM, Daniella Silva, 34509K] reports there have been several dozen known cases out of San Diego alone, but cases have also been reported in New York City, Cleveland and Utah, according to attorneys and local news reports. Immigration attorneys told NBC News that this marks an "unprecedented" break in decadeslong practice policy, and that their clients are panicked they could be detained even when they are eligible to become legal permanent residents by law and have no criminal histories. The Trump administration has said in multiple cases that people were detained because they had fallen out of status by overstaying their visas, but longtime attorneys say this has never been an issue and spouses of U.S. citizens looking to obtain green cards were granted exceptions by Congress. The law says that immediate relatives, such as spouses, of U.S. citizens are eligible for green cards even if they were in unlawful immigration status at the time they filed to become legal permanent residents.

Blaze [12/12/2025 1:40 PM, Candace Hathaway, 1442K] reports that President Donald Trump’s Department of Homeland Security is continuing to roll back Temporary Protected Status, which was widely granted to numerous countries under the previous administration’s leadership. On Friday morning, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services issued a press release announcing that the DHS will terminate TPS for Ethiopia. The current TPS designation was set to expire on Friday. Ethiopian nationals without another lawful basis to remain in the U.S. have 60 days to leave the country. Those individuals are encouraged to use the Customs and Border Protection’s CBP Home mobile app to report their departure. They will receive a plane ticket and a $1,000 exit bonus. The DHS may begin making arrests and deportations after February 13 for those who fail to leave voluntarily. They will not be eligible to return to the U.S. "Temporary Protected Status designations are time-limited and were never meant to be a ticket to permanent residency," a USCIS spokesperson stated. "Conditions in Ethiopia no longer pose a serious threat to the personal safety of returning Ethiopian nationals. Since the situation no longer meets the statutory requirements for a TPS designation, [DHS] Secretary [Kristi] Noem is terminating this designation to restore integrity in our immigration system."

NewsMax [12/12/2025 7:48 PM, Mark Swanson, 4109K] reports Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, has doubled down on legislation he introduced last month that would pause all immigration — including legal entries — until the system is reset and key security benchmarks are met. Roy said the scale of immigration has reached a breaking point, noting that more than 51 million foreign-born individuals now make up roughly 16% of the U.S. population. He introduced the PAUSE Act, "Pausing All Admissions Until Security Ensured," on Nov. 20, a proposal to freeze all immigration to the U.S., with limited exceptions for temporary tourist visas. "And so what you’ve got to do is pause because we have 51.5 million foreign-born people in the United States — 16% of the population — the highest percentage we’ve had since the early 1900s," Roy said Friday. He added, "We paused in 1920, and we had about 40 years where we kind of reclaimed our sovereignty as people assimilated.” Roy’s bill would, in part effect these changes: "The problem isn’t just illegal immigration; it’s also legal immigration. While the Biden administration opened our borders and allowed millions to flood into our country, they also rubber-stamped millions more arriving through convoluted legal schemes, completely overwhelming the system," Roy said in a statement last month. He said Friday, "We should pause and then we should reset all of those issues.” Roy’s plan goes beyond what the Trump administration is pushing. President Donald Trump recently froze immigration from countries already subject to U.S. travel restrictions, citing national security and vetting concerns. The administration is also moving to expand the travel ban to more than 30 countries, targeting nations with weak identity verification or terrorism risks. The PAUSE Act is supported by Immigration Accountability Project, Citizens for Renewing America and the National Immigration Center for Enforcement.

NewsMax [12/12/2025 12:17 PM, Jim Mishler, 4109K] reports that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said New York’s practice of handing out commercial driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants will be brought to a "full stop." Duffy told reporters on Friday that New York has the worst record of any state in allowing illegals to handle freight hauling. In an accompanying social media post, Duffy wrote, "We’re holding New York accountable for issuing non-domicile commercial driver’s licenses to truckers illegally. FULL STOP." He threatened that New York stands to pay a heavy price if it continues what he said is an illegal practice. "We’re giving New York 30 days to comply, or we’ll withhold $73 MILLION! The safety of the American people comes first," he wrote. Duffy said a department audit of New York’s handling of commercial licenses shows widespread failure to comply with federal regulations. "If an applicant comes in and they have a work authorization for 30 days, 60 days, one year, New York automatically issues them an eight-year commercial driver’s license," he said. Duffy said the problem is obvious. "That’s contrary to the law. That’s one offense," he said. "But we also found that New York won’t even verify whether they have a work authorization… a visa, or they’re in the country legally."Investigators with the department said that, along with New York and California, Colorado, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington were also identified as states with licensing patterns not consistent with federal regulations.

Univision [12/12/2025 7:08 PM, Staff, 5004K] reports what was to be a routine appointment to immigration authorities ended in the arrest of a Mexican mother and her two daughters, just days after the family publicly claimed to have been the victim of alleged fraud by a suspected immigration attorney in Florida. On Thursday morning, Mayra, an immigrant from Mexico who arrived in the country two years ago seeking asylum with her two daughters, went on time to an appointment scheduled at 8:00 a.m. at the USCIS offices in Tampa. According to his family, he did not know that it would be his last day of release in the United States. After introducing herself, federal agents arrested her with the minors and placed all three in ICE custody, in a process that could result in her deportation to Mexico. Her sister, Beatriz Arrona, reported that Mayra had followed to the letter the instructions to keep her asylum case in force, but that an alleged scammer who presented herself as an immigration lawyer would have caused the process to derail. “She paid about 10 thousand dollars to represent her in her court, but she never showed up. After receiving the money, he disappeared,” Arrona explained. Documents the family retains show Mayra was left without legal representation at a key hearing, which they say triggered subsequent issues.

Washington Examiner [12/12/2025 3:30 PM, Emily Hallas, 1394K] reports President Donald Trump granted Washington state’s request on Friday for an emergency declaration over flooding in the state. “I just received a phone call from Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Secretary Noem informed me that the president signed our request for an emergency declaration. We have also received written confirmation of that emergency declaration,” Gov. Bob Ferguson (D-WA) said in a statement to X. The decision authorizes Federal Emergency Management Agency aid for Benton, Chelan, Clallam, Grays Harbor, Jefferson, King, Kittitas, Lewis, Mason, Pierce, Skagit, Snohomish, Thurston, Wahkiakum, Whatcom, and Yakima counties, as well as the Samish Indian Nation and other indigenous nations in the affected areas. Ferguson said he thanked Noem for the government’s action “during this extremely challenging time,” as over 100,000 people have been ordered to evacuate their homes due to flooding concentrated in western Washington. Ferguson activated the National Guard and declared a statewide emergency on Wednesday, saying it would allow the state to seek federal FEMA funds for recovery. Washington’s congressional delegation sent a letter to Trump the following day requesting that the president approve an emergency declaration.

FOX News [12/12/2025 4:56 PM, Louis Casiano, Bill Melugin, 40621K] reports a semi-truck driver arrested in Washington state for killing a 29-year-old man in a crash on Thursday is an Indian illegal immigrant who was caught and released at the Arizona border by the Biden administration, Fox News has learned. Kamalpreet Singh was arrested by U.S. Border Patrol agents in Lukeville, Arizona, after crossing illegally into the United States on Dec. 23, 2023, but he was released into the country instead of being detained, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) source said. He faces charges of vehicular homicide after he allegedly crashed into the back of a vehicle on State Route 167 in Washington, crushing it between another truck and killing 29-year-old Robert B. Pearson. Singh and the Peterbilt driver were not injured. The Washington State Patrol said drugs and alcohol were not involved, and the cause of the collision remains under investigation. ICE has placed a detainer on Singh with local law enforcement in King County, Washington. Fox News Digital has reached out to WSP for comment.

Reuters [12/12/2025 1:03 PM, Daniel Wiessner, 36480K] reports that California and 18 other U.S. states will file a lawsuit on Friday seeking to block President Donald Trump’s $100,000 fee on new H-1B visas for highly skilled foreign workers, California Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office said. The lawsuit in Massachusetts federal court will be at least the third to challenge the fee announced by Trump in September, which dramatically raises the cost of obtaining H-1B visas. Currently, employers typically pay between $2,000 and $5,000 in fees. Bonta’s office in a release said Trump lacks the power to impose the fee and that it violates federal law, which allows immigration authorities to collect only fees necessary to cover the cost of administering visa programs. The H-1B program allows U.S. employers to hire foreign workers in specialty fields. The tech industry, with many companies headquartered in California, is particularly reliant on workers who receive the visas. Bonta, a Democrat, said the $100,000 fee would create unnecessary financial burdens for providers of vital services such as education and healthcare, exacerbating labor shortages and threatening to cut services. The states joining California in the lawsuit include New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, New Jersey and Washington. The White House in response to other lawsuits has said the new fee is a lawful exercise of Trump’s powers and will discourage employers from abusing the H-1B program.

Los Angeles Times [12/12/2025 1:04 PM, Kevin Rector, 14862K] reports that California and a coalition of other states are suing the Trump administration over a policy charging employers $100,000 for each new H-1B visa they request for foreign employees to work in the U.S. — calling it a threat not only to major industry but to public education and healthcare services. "As the world’s fourth largest economy, California knows that when skilled talent from around the world joins our workforce, it drives our state forward," said California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, who announced the litigation Friday. President Trump imposed the fee through a Sept. 19 proclamation, in which he said the H-1B visa program — designed to provide U.S. employers with skilled workers in science, technology, engineering, math and other advanced fields — has been "deliberately exploited to replace, rather than supplement, American workers with lower-paid, lower-skilled labor." Trump said the program also created a "national security threat by discouraging Americans from pursuing careers in science and technology, risking American leadership in these fields." Bonta said such claims are baseless, and that the imposition of such fees is unlawful because it runs counter to the intent of Congress in creating the program and exceeds the president’s authority. He said Congress has included significant safeguards to prevent abuses, and that the new fee structure undermines the program’s purpose. Joining California in the lawsuit are Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington and Wisconsin.

NewsNation [12/12/2025 8:07 PM, Ali Bradley, 8017K] reports Homeland Security sources confirm that Border Patrol teams under Commander Gregory Bovino will change tactics in their ongoing enforcement operations. Instead of sweeping raids like those that have taken place at locations including Home Depot, agents will now be narrowing their focus to specific targets, such as illegal immigrants convicted of heinous crimes. While the tactics are changing, operations such as "Catahoula Crunch" in NOLA will continue. Thus far, that operation has yielded 250 or more arrests in a week. DHS has said the end goal for the operation is 5,000 arrests. "We’re not going to be seeing them necessarily grabbing people off the streets as we’ve seen, and in this situation, this was a Home Depot sweep. We did see someone run, and we saw this apprehension in real time," NewsNation border correspondent Ali Bradley told "The Hill.”

FOX News [12/12/2025 9:30 PM, Staff, 40621K] reports Chief Border Patrol Agent Greg Bovino addresses the status of Kilmar Abrego Garcia and of operations in New Orleans on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

ABC 10 San Diego [12/12/2025 7:43 PM, Laura Acevedo, 30493K] reports Rodney Scott, the former head of San Diego’s Border Patrol sector who now serves as Commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, will visit San Diego Saturday alongside President-elect Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan to discuss increased border security measures. ABC 10News has covered Scott and the agency’s work under his leadership for years. This past June, he became the head of Customs and Border Protection after his nomination and confirmation earlier this year, making him the first patrol agent to ever take on the role. When ABC 10News spoke with him in 2020, Scott had just taken over as U.S. Border Patrol Chief during Trump’s first term. He said San Ysidro, which has the busiest land port of entry in the Western Hemisphere, had come a long way since he first arrived to serve as San Diego Sector Chief in 2017. "Housing developments are being built, shopping malls are coming in, and we’ve kind of proven what it takes to secure the border. And I want to take it to Washington, D.C. and continue to expand it out nationwide," Scott said. Scott spent over 29 years with the U.S. Border Patrol, starting his career in Imperial Beach and quickly rising through the ranks before becoming the sector chief in San Diego in 2017.

AP [12/12/2025 8:26 PM, Rio Yamat, 30493K] reports the Transportation Security Administration is renewing Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem’s push to end a collective bargaining agreement with airport screening officers — the second such attempt this year, coming just a month after the longest government shutdown on record. The agency said Friday the move relies on a September memo from Noem — issued months after a federal judge blocked her earlier directive — that says TSA screeners “have a primary function of national security” and therefore should not engage in collective bargaining or be represented by a union. The American Federation of Government Employees swiftly vowed to fight the decision, calling it illegal and a violation of the preliminary injunction issued in June that halted Noem’s first attempt to terminate the contract covering 47,000 workers. In the September memo cited by TSA, Noem acknowledged the injunction but did not explain why she concluded it did not prohibit her from pursuing the same outcome through a new directive while the case remains pending. The injunction barred TSA from rescinding the union contract or enforcing Noem’s orders to dismiss pending grievances, but it did not state whether its restrictions would extend to future directives by Noem. “It definitely seems like they’re using all loopholes to try to eliminate collective bargaining rights for the transportation security officers,” Johnny Jones, secretary-treasurer of the bargaining unit for TSA workers, said Friday in a phone interview. TSA declined Friday to comment on the union’s assertions. An emailed request for comment was sent to Homeland Security. The agency said it plans to rescind the current seven-year contract in January and replace it with a new “security-focused framework.” The agreement, reached last May, was supposed to expire in 2031. Adam Stahl, acting TSA deputy administrator, said in a statement that airport screeners “need to be focused on their mission of keeping travelers safe.” “Under the leadership of Secretary Noem, we are ridding the agency of wasteful and time-consuming activities that distracted our officers from their crucial work,” Stahl said. The announcement also comes weeks after Noem held a news conference in which she handed out $10,000 bonus checks to TSA officers who she said went “above and beyond” during the 43-day shutdown, when thousands of airport screeners continued reporting for duty despite missing more than six weeks of pay during the lapse in funding. “This is how they’re going to be repaid for coming to work every single day during the government shutdown?” Jones said, calling the agency’s decision “a slap in the face to the people they’re handing checks to.” Noem issued her first memo in February rescinding the collective bargaining agreement. But the union sued, claiming the move was retaliation for AFGE’s resistance to the Trump administration’s actions affecting federal workers, such as firing probationary employees. A trial is currently scheduled for next year. In granting the preliminary injunction in June, U.S. District Judge Marsha Pechman of Seattle said the order was necessary to preserve the rights and benefits TSA workers have long held under union representation. Pechman wrote that AFGE had shown in its lawsuit that Noem’s directive “constitutes impermissible retaliation,” likely violated the union’s due process, and was “arbitrary and capricious” — findings that the judge said make it likely AFGE will ultimately prevail. AFGE represents about 800,000 federal government employees and has been pushing back as the Trump administration has laid the groundwork to weaken or eliminate protections for federal workers in an effort to shrink the bureaucracy.

Reported similarly:
Politico [12/12/2025 7:24 PM, Sam Ogozalek, 2100K]
Bloomberg [12/12/2025 5:27 PM, Ian Kullgren, 803K]
Reuters [12/12/2025 6:25 PM, David Shepardson, 36480K]
NewsMax [12/12/2025 8:55 PM, Sam Barron, 4109K] r
Federal News Network [12/12/2025 5:43 PM, Justin Doubleday, 986K]

Bloomberg [12/12/2025 12:11 PM, Jennifer Bennett, 91K] reports that the Transportation Security Administration accommodated a Jewish worker when it allowed him to take leave to observe the Sabbath, even though doing so cost him pay. The employee had to exhaust his vacation days and then take unpaid leave to avoid his scheduled Saturday work because he usually couldn’t find anyone to swap shifts with him. But those were reasonable accommodations for his Sabbath observance, so his religious bias claim can’t go forward, the US District Court for the District of Maryland said Thursday. [Editorial note: consult extended commentary at source link]

NewsMax [12/12/2025 2:36 PM, Staff, 4109K] reports that more than $1 billion in federal FEMA funding is now available to Georgia communities and healthcare facilities, including $350 million for recovery efforts tied to Hurricane Helene and Tropical Storm Debby, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Friday. The money is being made available through FEMA’s Public Assistance and Hazard Mitigation grant programs, she said. Karen Evans, the senior official performing the duties of FEMA administrator, said that the investment will "repair and restore critical public infrastructure across Georgia, including schools, public safety facilities, utilities, and community services." Georgia communities, she added, are "rebuilding stronger, and today’s approvals show this administration’s commitment to streamlining assistance and ensuring accountability." Notable funding includes $671 million for emergency protective measures at Georgia healthcare facilities during the COVID-19 pandemic, including hiring nurses and clinical care staff, sanitization efforts, personal protective equipment, and testing supplies. It will also include $350 million for more than 140 recovery projects tied to Hurricane Helene and Tropical Storm Debby. White House officials on Thursday rescheduled what had been expected to be a key meeting on FEMA’s future, leaving questions about the direction and timing of the agency’s restructuring.

NBC News [12/12/2025 2:22 PM, Patrick Smith, 34509K] reports western Washington is facing a “historic” flooding crisis that has forced tens of thousands to flee their homes and could displace thousands more Friday as rivers reach record levels. There have been no reports of fatalities, but local authorities and first responders stressed the potentially lethal nature of the record-breaking flooding. Warnings remain in place for some parts of the state until Saturday morning. Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said the Skagit River was expected to crest Friday morning, making the period through Friday night critical for residents and first responders. On Friday afternoon, Ferguson said in a statement that he issued an emergency declaration with the approval of President Donald Trump. "I just received a phone call from Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. Secretary Noem informed me that the president signed our request for an emergency declaration. We have also received written confirmation of that emergency declaration," he said. "I expressed my thanks to Secretary Noem on behalf of the people of the State of Washington during this extremely challenging time." He added that tens of thousands of Washingtonians could face orders or warnings on Friday as the flooding moves into more densely populated areas. As of Friday morning, 5 million people remain under flood watches across western Washington, according to an NBC News analysis.

CNN [12/12/2025 9:16 AM, Mary Gilbert, 606K] reports that rain has finally come to an end in flooded Washington and the Pacific Northwest, but the region can’t breathe easy: More heavy rain from new atmospheric rivers will arrive next week. Rivers are dangerously swollen after a days-long deluge from a powerful atmospheric river triggered historic flooding, tens of thousands of evacuations and dozens of water rescues. Some people were rescued from rapidly rising floodwater by helicopter while others were taken to safety by boat from their homes or atop cars. Floodwater was waist deep in many places, but more than 15 feet deep in the hardest-hit areas like Sumas, Washington, where the coast guard rescued dozens. Danger also spiked in Burlington, Washington, on Friday as floodwater spilled into homes. An evacuation order went out to everyone in city limits early in the morning, with the National Guard going door-to-door to notify residents, but was partially lifted a few hours later. The upcoming atmospheric rivers won’t be quite as potent as this week’s, but they could renew flood danger and will complicate cleanup efforts. Soaked ground struggles to absorb heavy rain, so flash flooding and rapid river rises are more likely with new bouts of rain. Light rain will move into western Washington on Sunday, but it will just be an appetizer for the atmospheric river that dips into the area early Monday. Washington will endure the brunt of the heaviest rain Monday, but some soaking rain will also move farther south into western Oregon as the day progresses. This atmospheric river is forecast to be at least a Level 4 of 5 or "strong" event for these states.

NBC News [12/12/2025 9:59 PM, Evan Bush, 34509K] reports floodwaters began to recede on Friday after historic inundation in Washington state, but the areas hardest hit by flooding could face another wave of atmospheric river next week, and more inundation is looming. “This situation is not over and it’s not going to be over again in a couple of days,” said Robert Ezelle, the director of Washington state’s emergency management division, and that several river systems were expected to see another wave of moderate flooding. For most in the state, Friday offered a respite. Officials had worried that a system of dikes along the Skagit River would fail, and potentially inundate parts of Mount Vernon, a riverside town of about 35,000. And while the river did see record flows at Mount Vernon, both the dikes and a downtown floodwall held up. The city isn’t out of the woods yet — Ezelle said the Skagit could return to a major flood stage next week. In the nearby town of Burlington, the river did overtop a slough off the Skagit. Officials sent a warning early Friday morning to evacuate for all 11,000 Burlington residents as some neighborhoods and roadways flooded, though not all of them ultimately needed to leave. “In the middle of the night, about a thousand people had to flee their homes in a really dire situation,” Gov. Bob Ferguson said in a news conference on Friday afternoon. The flood event has set records across Washington state and it prompted officials to ask about 100,000 people to evacuate this week, forced dozens of rescues and caused widespread destruction of roads and other infrastructure. Washington state is prone to intense spells of fall rainfall, but these storms have been exceptional. The atmospheric rivers this week dumped as much as 16 inches of rain in Washington’s Cascade mountains over about three days, according to National Weather Service data. Because many rivers and streams were already running high and the soil was already saturated, the water tore through lowland communities. The Skagit River system is the third biggest on the U.S. west coast, and at Mount Vernon, this is the highest the river has ever run in recorded history. “There has been no reported loss of life at this time,” Ferguson said. “The situation is very dynamic, but we’re exceedingly grateful.” By Friday afternoon, while many roadways near Burlington remained closed, parts of downtown bustled with car traffic, as national guardsmen were waving people away from road closures and curious residents were out snapping photos of the swollen Skagit. Downstream, in the town of Conway, a tree trunk and the metal siding of a trailer could be seen racing away in the current. The dramatic week of flooding sets the stage for a difficult recovery, in a growing state that’s already struggling to provide shelter to homeless residents. It’s not clear how many homes have been damaged, but neighborhoods in dozens of towns and cities took on water. Recovery won’t be quick — after flooding in 2021, some residents who lost their homes were displaced for months. President Donald Trump on Friday signed the state’s request for an expedited emergency declaration, which will enable people to seek individual assistance from the Federal Emergency Management Agency for things like temporary housing and home repairs. The measure will also allow state and local governments to seek federal assistance to remove debris and repair roads, bridges, water facilities and other infrastructure.

AP [12/12/2025 3:50 PM, Cedar Attanasio and Claire Rush, 31753K] reports National Guard troops went door-to-door early Friday to evacuate a farming city north of Seattle as severe flooding throughout western Washington stranded families on rooftops, washed over bridges and ripped homes from their foundations. Gov. Bob Ferguson, who has warned that as many as 100,000 people would need to evacuate statewide, said Friday the Trump administration has approved a disaster declaration. Days of torrential rain have swelled rivers to record or near-record levels. Officials issued “go now” orders Wednesday to tens of thousands of residents in the Skagit River flood plain, including in the city of Burlington, home to nearly 10,000 people. By Friday morning, muddy water overflowed a slough and rushed into homes, prompting more urgent warnings. “ALL RESIDENTS IN THE CITY OF BURLINGTON SHOULD EVACUATE IMMEDIATELY,” Skagit County wrote on social media. By late morning the evacuation order was lifted for part of the city, police department spokesperson Michael Lumpkin said.

New York Times [12/13/2025 2:56 AM, Anna Griffin, Amy Graff and Drew Atkins, 330K] reports Eric Fritch surveyed his 132-acre farm in western Washington on Thursday in the only way possible: by boat. As waterways in the region rose to historic levels this week, and officials issued urgent evacuation orders to Mr. Fritch and more than 100,000 of his neighbors, the Snohomish River, which runs past his farm, had already submerged his fields and fences, along with his tractor and other equipment, even after he had moved them to higher ground. He saved the highest spot on the farm for 60 head of cattle, but wasn’t sure they would make it. “They’ve got another foot or two of dry ground,” he said, “so it’s really just a question of what happens in the next day or so.” That’s the situation across western Washington, where several days of heavy rain have swollen a number of rivers and tributaries. Leaders in the Skagit Valley, roughly halfway between Seattle and the Canadian border, ordered everyone within the 100-year flood plain to evacuate. “You can stand downtown here and just see whole Doug firs and cottonwood trees coming down the river, like a freight train,” said James Eichner, who sought higher ground in the city of Monroe as floodwaters rose at the Snohomish River farm where he works. “It’s just a giant steamroller.” Officials were especially concerned about the Skagit and Snohomish Rivers, which reached new heights in places on Thursday, surpassing records set in 1990. State and local leaders warned that levees and dams would remain at risk for days — and people need to be wary even as the waters recede. “This is a very, very serious situation,” Bob Ferguson, Washington’s governor, said at an afternoon news conference. “If you have instructions to evacuate, please, please, please evacuate.” Another storm system, albeit not as large as the one this week, is expected to arrive as early as Sunday, with the potential to cause landslides and more flooding on already saturated ground. The heavy rain is the result of an unusually potent atmospheric river system pulling a plume of moisture off the warm ocean and spreading it across the Pacific Northwest. Its reach has spread flooding to British Columbia, where highways were shut down late Wednesday. The system’s effects reach as far as the eastern United States, where the moisture in the upper atmosphere is supercharging the chance for heavy snow this week. Flooding from this sort of weather system unfolds over many days, with rivers rising and falling with the pace of downpours. Many rivers will have crested twice by Friday, and the Puyallup River in Pierce County will have crested three times. The worst of the flooding has threatened Washington State communities on or close to Puget Sound. Skagit County officials issued what they described as mandatory, immediate evacuation orders for the region’s 100-year flood plain, urging residents, “Do not wait.” The Los Angeles fires in January forced mandatory evacuation orders for 180,000 people, in a much more heavily populated area. Hundreds of troops with the Washington National Guard were called up to help with sandbagging efforts as flooding closed schools and shut down public transit in many communities. Flooded roads and washouts made travel treacherous. The police and firefighters repeatedly warned residents not to drive through standing water.

AP [12/13/2025 2:37 AM, Cedar Attanasio, Claire Rush and Hallie Golden, 19051K] reports that, when Eddie Wicks and his wife went to bed in their house next to the Snoqualmie River on a Washington state farm known for its sunflower mazes and Christmas trees, they weren’t too worried about the flooding heading their way. After 30 years living in the city of Duvall northeast of Seattle, their family had plenty of experience with floods and always made it through largely unscathed. But as they moved their two donkeys to higher ground and their eight goats to their outdoor kitchen, the water began to rise much quicker than anything they’d experienced before. "It was hours, not days," he said. "In four hours it had to come up 4 feet.” As the water engulfed their home Thursday afternoon, deputies from the King County Sheriff’s Office marine rescue dive unit were able to rescue them and their dog, taking them on a boat the half mile (800 meters) across their field, which had been transformed into a lake. They were among the thousands forced to evacuate as an unusually strong atmospheric river dumped a foot (30 centimeters) or more of rain in parts of western and central Washington over several days this week and swelled rivers, inundating communities and prompting dramatic rescues from rooftops and vehicles. The record floodwaters were expected to continue to slowly recede Saturday, but authorities warn that waters will remain high for days, and that there is still danger from potential levee failures or mudslides. There is also the threat of more rain forecast for Sunday. Still, no deaths have been reported. Authorities have yet to estimate the costs, but photos and videos show widespread damage, with entire communities or neighborhoods flooded around western and central Washington. Officials have conducted dozens of water rescues, debris and mudslides have closed highways, and raging torrents have washed out roads and bridges. President Donald Trump has signed the state’s request for an emergency declaration, Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson said. Officials issued "go now" orders Wednesday to tens of thousands of residents in the Skagit River flood plain north of Seattle, including the farming city of Burlington, home to nearly 10,000 people. By Friday morning, muddy water overflowed a slough and rushed into homes, prompting more urgent warnings for Burlington. The rain arriving Sunday will cause rivers to rise again, said Robert Ezelle, director of the Washington Military Department’s emergency management division.

New York Times [12/12/2025 3:42 PM, Anna Griffin and Amy Graff, 135475K] reports that swamped roads and potential mudslides hindered efforts to assess the damage across storm-ravaged western Washington on Friday, where record river flooding inundated towns and left potentially tens of millions of dollars in damage, even as more rain was forecast to fall. Helicopter crews plucked people from rooftops near the Canadian border overnight, and the swollen Skagit River, which runs through a mountainous agricultural region north of Seattle, continued to rise on Friday morning, with its peak level still hours away. Some 78,000 people in the Skagit Valley have been ordered to evacuate, with more than 100,000 told to leave their homes across Washington State. The Skagit and Snohomish rivers reached new heights in several spots on Thursday, surpassing records set in 1990, and some parts of the region received more than a half foot of rain in just a few days. State and local leaders warned that levees and dams would remain at risk for days — and that residents should continue to be wary even as rivers crest and the waters recede. State leaders said the biggest area of concern on Friday was in Burlington, Wash., 65 miles north of Seattle, where National Guard soldiers were going door to door encouraging people to seek higher ground away from the Skagit River. “The waters are receding, which is great news, but this is not over,” said Karina Shagren, communications director for the Washington Military Department. “The danger is still very real, and we need everyone to stay safe.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Caller [12/12/2025 4:34 PM, Andrew Powell, 835K] reports western Washington has been hit by days of relentless torrential rainfall, triggering historic flooding that trapped families on rooftops, swept over bridges and caused widespread damage to homes. Washington remains under a state of emergency with evacuation orders issued for tens of thousands of residents, according to KATU. Gov. Bob Ferguson urged all affected individuals Thursday to immediately comply with instructions to evacuate. "I understand that many in our state have experienced significant floods in the past," said Gov. Ferguson on Twitter. "However, we’re looking at a historic situation." By Friday morning, every river in the region had crested, yet many remain far above flood stage and will take several days to recede. Approximately 78,000 residents in Skagit County were given evacuation orders from the Skagit River floodplain after the river crested at almost 38 feet in Mount Vernon. Authorities issued an immediate evacuation order for the city of Burlington as the Gages slough started flooding houses. Flooding has impacted wide swaths of Washington, submerging numerous bridges and either inundating or completely washing out several major roads. A few roads have no viable detours and no estimated time to reopen, including a long stretch of State Route 410.

AP [12/12/2025 10:27 AM, Staff, 31753K] reports days of torrential rain in has caused historic floods, stranding families on rooftops and washing over bridges. Video from the Coast Guard shows a helicopter crew lifting people from roofs in Sumas. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

ABC 2 Portland [12/12/2025 3:48 PM, Sana Aljobory, 30493K] reports Oregon’s U.S. Sen. Jeff Merkley, Sen. Ron Wyden, and Rep. Val Hoyle have secured a written commitment from Admiral Kevin Lunday, Acting Commandant of the U.S. Coast Guard, to keep the rescue helicopter at the Newport Air Facility. This decision follows Merkley’s hold on Lunday’s nomination to lead the Coast Guard, which was lifted after the commitment was made. Merkley wrote in a statement about the helicopter’s significance for the Newport community and those surrounding it. "For fishermen and coastal communities, this is a huge win, especially during winter crab season and in the face of cold-water conditions." Wyden added, "This is great news for fishermen and both residents of -- and visitors to -- the central Oregon Coast." Hoyle expressed gratitude for the collective effort, "When our community stands together, we get results." The letter stated that the Coast Guard pledged to maintain operations at Newport, except for temporary relocations due to maintenance or mission needs, and will comply with statutory requirements for any future changes.

Reported similarly:
Oregon Capital Chronicle [12/12/2025 3:15 PM, Shaanth Nanguneri]

FOX News [12/12/2025 11:51 AM, Staff, 40621K] reports that Fox News’ Nate Foy provides details on the surge in online sextortion cases. Former federal prosecutor Jim Trusty discusses efforts to criminalize online coercion of minors. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Washington Post [12/13/2025 5:00 AM, John Woodrow Cox and Susannah George, 24149K] reports the CIA-trained Afghan accused of opening fire outside the White House struggled for years to adapt to life in the United States, sharing his emotional turmoil in previously unreported social media posts that included broken hearts, a biblical prophecy of the world’s end and a declaration that he was quietly crying but so aggrieved he could have screamed. In his earliest public Facebook posts, which began soon after the U.S. government brought his family here in 2021, Rahmanullah Lakanwal shared nostalgic photos of his homeland that elicited hundreds of likes and comments from his sprawling online network. Beginning in 2023, his posts grew darker and more cryptic, sometimes drawing no more than three or four thumbs-ups. Lakanwal’s Facebook and Instagram accounts provide deeper insight into the enigmatic father of five now charged with first-degree murder. His shift online paralleled his behavior offline, according to a community volunteer who offered new details about her years working with the family. Lakanwal, she said, began to spend days alone in his bedroom or on cross-country drives. He failed to keep menial jobs, make friends, feed his children, support their educations, pay rent or even sign documents critical to maintaining the government benefits that sustained his family. She feared he was depressed and would harm himself. Why Lakanwal would drive 2,800 miles to D.C. and ambush National Guard members on Nov. 26 remains unclear. Charging documents allege that he shouted “Allahu akbar!” as he shot two of them in the head with a .357-caliber revolver. Lakanwal, 29, is accused of killing Spec. Sarah Beckstrom, who was 20. Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, was critically injured but is expected to survive. In March of last year, Lakanwal updated his Facebook profile to an image of an Afghan flag alongside the black and white banner of the Taliban, the militant group he battled on the U.S.’s behalf. Between the flags, two arrows bend in a circle — an apparent “refresh” symbol — and a pair of cartoon hands hold a red heart along with a Pashto message: “My dear country, may Allah grant you thousands of blessings.” Afghan experts who reviewed the image for Washington Post wrestled with its meaning, divided on whether it showed support for the Taliban or was a more general call for unity in a country that has endured decades of violence. The community volunteer was stunned to learn about the Taliban flag on his page. Though she could not recall Lakanwal discussing the militant group, the other Afghan men who resettled in Washington often shared disdain for their former adversaries and, she said, wouldn’t have tolerated public support in their ranks. “Everybody around him would have given him hell,” she said. “These guys’ whole thing was fighting the Taliban.” The FBI did not respond to questions about his social media accounts, and Meta declined to comment. But Lakanwal’s Facebook page shared a handle with his Instagram account that, at his invitation, the volunteer said she followed for years before it was taken down. On Facebook, he was friends with people verified to be family members, and he’d posted photos of himself, his sons and other children resettled in Washington. The Post also found that he shared identical images to both accounts on the same day.

NBC News [12/13/2025 5:00 AM, Ryan J. Reilly and Allan Smith, 34509K] reports that, three months after the assassination of Charlie Kirk, the Justice Department is weighing how to bring federal charges against the shooter, including under a novel legal theory that it was an anti-Christian hate crime, according to three people familiar with the investigation. The suspect, Tyler Robinson, is already facing multiple state charges, including an aggravated murder count, and Utah prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty. Robinson’s partner is trans, and authorities have produced text messages from the suspect to his partner saying he was motivated to kill Kirk because he had "enough of his hatred.” It’s not uncommon for defendants to face both state and federal charges, including for drug-related crimes and domestic terrorist attacks, among other offenses. But the effort to bring federal charges in the Kirk case has been met with resistance by some career prosecutors who have argued that the crime doesn’t appear to fall under any federal statutes, the three people said. Prosecuting it as an anti-Christian hate crime would be highly unusual because the federal case would likely turn on equating anti-trans views with Christianity, according to the three people familiar with the matter. And other potential federal statutes, like the stalking charge brought against Luigi Mangione, do not appear to apply in this case, the people say. "They are trying to shove a square peg into a round hole," said one of the people familiar with the federal investigation. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. A fourth person familiar with the investigation said federal prosecutors are still considering all of their options. The Justice Department "is confident in the death penalty-eligible state murder case and are committed to making sure Charlie’s alleged killer goes to prison for life," the person said. "The federal investigation remains ongoing and we will not hesitate to charge when appropriate. Involving the Civil Rights Division only opens more potential avenues to charge this suspect." Kirk, who founded Turning Point USA, was popular among conservatives and a celebrated figure in President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement. Trump, Vice President JD Vance and Attorney General Pam Bondi all heaped praise on Kirk following his assassination and pledged to do whatever necessary to bring justice in his case. There’s widespread agreement that the Kirk assassination was an act of domestic terrorism under the federal definition, but there’s no specific federal domestic terrorism law. In September, NBC News reported that factors complicating an effort to bring federal charges against Robinson included that the alleged killer, a Utah resident, did not travel from out of state to attack Kirk, who was shot during an appearance at Utah Valley University. Additionally, Kirk himself was not a federal officer or elected official, which would have provided a more straightforward lane for a federal prosecution. Robinson, who made his first in-person court appearance on Thursday, has not yet entered a plea.

Breitbart [12/12/2025 2:12 PM, Awr Hawkins, 2416K] reports that figures from the FBI’s Active Shooter Report show that California led the nation in "active shooter incidents" for the five-year period of 2020-2024. According to the FBI, California led the nation for "active shooter incidents" with 25 during the time frame in view. This goes with previous FBI reports showing California led the nation in "active shooter incidents" in the specific years 2021 and 2023. Breitbart News pointed to these annual reports, noting that California was number one in gun control and number one in "active shooter incidents." California gun controls include an "assault weapons" ban, a "high capacity" magazine ban, universal background checks, a red flag law, a bump stock ban, "ghost gun" regulations, a 10-day waiting period on gun purchases, gun registration requirements, a concealed carry permit requirement, a limit on the number of guns a law-abiding citizen can buy each month, a ban on college campus carry for self-defense, a ban on K-12 teachers being armed for classroom defense, gun storage laws, and ammunition controls, among other things.

NewsMax [12/12/2025 3:46 PM, Solange Reyner, 4109K] reports the U.S. could owe $168 billion to businesses should the Supreme Court rule that reciprocal tariffs implemented by the Trump administration earlier this year were unconstitutional, CBS News reported. The Trump administration justified its tariffs program under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977, or IEEPA. The law grants the president broad authority to regulate economic and commercial transactions with foreign nations in response to what officials deem to be an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to the U.S. economy, national security, or foreign policy. Asked how long companies would have to wait to receive refunds if the tariffs were invalidated by the Supreme Court, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said Wednesday that would be up to the Treasury Department and Customs and Border Protection, adding he met the CBP director Tuesday and was uncertain of the timeline. Greer also said the U.S. could use other measures to replace the roughly $200 billion in revenue it is collecting from tariffs. According to CBS News, the U.S. has collected $259 billion in tariff revenue.

Reported similarly:
CBS News [12/12/2025 12:46 PM, Megan Cerullo, 39474K] r

Axios [12/12/2025 11:19 PM, Barak Ravid, 12972K] reports President Trump’s advisers Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are expected to meet Monday in Berlin with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the leaders of Germany, France and the U.K. to try and reach an agreement over the U.S. plan for peace in Ukraine, two White House officials told Axios. The White House is pushing Ukraine hard to approve its plan but the territorial concessions Kyiv is being asked to make remain a major sticking point. The U.S. side thinks all other issues are close to resolution, and that Zelensky may have offered a path forward on territory. A White House official noted that Zelensky suggested during public remarks on Thursday that Ukraine could hold a referendum on a peace deal that included ceding territory. The official said the U.S. sees that as progress. Russia insists it must control the entire Donbas region under any deal, despite the fact that around 14% of the Donbas is still held by Ukraine. The U.S. included Russia’s demand in its plan, while suggesting the area in question become a demilitarized zone. In those same remarks, Zelensky made clear he’s highly skeptical of that U.S. proposal for a "free economic zone" in the Donbas, and is seeking changes and clarifications on other issues. He said he believes the question of whether the compromises Ukraine is being asked to make are fair "will be answered by the people of Ukraine" in a referendum or election. Holding such a vote under the current circumstances would be highly challenging. But a U.S. official said the Europeans said during a meeting on Friday that if Zelensky proposes a referendum on territory they will support him. In that virtual meeting, Witkoff and Kushner discussed the plan for a demilitarized zone with the national security advisers of Ukraine, Germany, France and the U.K. A White House official said those discussions and the latest round of U.S.-Ukraine talks on Thursday showed enough progress to convince Trump to send Witkoff and Kushner to Europe. "They believe there could be a chance at peace and the President trusts them," a second White House official said. A spokesperson for Zelensky did not respond to a request for comment. The Wall Street Journal first reported about Witkoff and Kushner’s trip to Europe. Negotiations on the security guarantee Ukraine would receive from the U.S. and Europe have made significant progress. A senior U.S. official said the Trump administration is willing to give Ukraine a guarantee based on NATO’s Article 5 that would be approved by Congress and be legally binding. "We want to give the Ukrainians a security guarantee that will not be a blank check on the one hand but will be strong enough on the other hand. We are willing to send it to Congress to vote on it," the U.S. official said. The U.S. official said there would be three separate agreements on peace, security guarantees, and reconstruction, and that the latest talks have given the Ukrainians a "a full day-after vision" for the first time. Negotiations over the post-war economic and reconstruction package are going well, according to the U.S. official. "When people see what they are going to get and not only what they are going to give they are more willing to move forward," the U.S. official said. "According to the current proposal the war will end with Ukraine keeping the sovereignty over 80% of its territory, will get the biggest and strongest security guarantee it has ever got and will get a very significant prosperity package," the official added. Several European leaders have been counseling Zelensky that he does not need to rush into a deal, particularly one that forces him to cede territory that Ukraine has not actually lost on the battlefield. It’s also unclear if Russia will be willing to accept the U.S. proposals. Zelensky said Thursday that the U.S. side wanted a to reach "full understanding" on the plan by Christmas.

Washington Post [12/12/2025 10:05 AM, John Hudson, Siobhán O’Grady, and Perry Stein, 24149K] reports secret meetings between Ukraine’s top peace negotiator and FBI leaders have injected new uncertainty into the high-stakes talks to end the war there, according to diplomats and officials familiar with the matter. Over the last several weeks, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s lead negotiator, Rustem Umerov, flew to Miami three times to meet with President Donald Trump’s top envoy, Steve Witkoff, and discuss a proposal to end the nearly four-year conflict with Russia. But during his time in the United States, Umerov also held closed-door meetings with FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, according to four people, who like some others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss confidential conversations. The meetings have caused alarm among Western officials who remain in the dark about their intent and purpose. Some said they believe Umerov and other Ukrainian officials sought out Patel and Bongino in the hopes of obtaining amnesty from any corruption allegations the Ukrainians could face. Others worry the newly established channel could be used to exert pressure on Zelensky’s government to accept a peace deal, proposed by the Trump administration, containing steep concessions for Kyiv. Ukrainian Ambassador to Washington Olha Stefanishyna confirmed Umerov’s meeting with the FBI and told The Washington Post he “only covered national security related issues” that could not be disclosed publicly. An FBI official said the Umerov meetings included discussion of the two countries’ shared law enforcement and national security interests. The topic of white collar corruption in Ukraine came up in one of the meetings but was not the main focus, the official said. Any suggestion that Patel’s discussions were inappropriate is “complete nonsense,” the official added.

Reuters [12/12/2025 12:30 PM, Staff, 36480K] reports that Ukrainian, European and U.S. national security advisers met on Friday and discussed further coordination of their positions on proposals for a settlement of the conflict in Ukraine, the head of the Ukrainian negotiating team said. "They discussed further synchronization of positions, security issues, and next steps in working on a peace plan," Kyiv’s senior negotiator Rustem Umerov wrote on Telegram. Work was continuing at the same time, Umerov said, on security guarantees for Ukraine and on economic issues and post-war restoration of Ukraine.

Reuters [12/12/2025 3:19 PM, Erin Banco and Jonathan Landay, 36480K] reports that U.S. intelligence officials temporarily suspended sharing some key information with Israel during the Biden administration over concerns about its conduct of the war in Gaza, according to six people familiar with the matter. In the second half of 2024, the U.S. cut off a live video feed from a U.S. drone over Gaza which was being used by the Israeli government in its hunt for hostages and Hamas militants. The suspension lasted for at least a few days, said five of the sources. The U.S. also restricted how Israel could use certain intelligence in its pursuit of high-value military targets in Gaza, said two of the sources, who declined to specify when this decision was taken. All of the sources spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss U.S. intelligence. The decision came as worries intensified in the U.S. intelligence community about the number of civilians killed in Israel’s military operations in Gaza. Officials were also concerned that Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic security agency, was mistreating Palestinian prisoners, the sources said. Officials were concerned that Israel had not provided sufficient assurances that it would abide by the law of war when using American information, according to three of the sources. Under U.S. law, intelligence agencies must receive such assurances before sharing information with a foreign country.

DailySignal [12/12/2025 10:32 AM, Michael Lucci, 549K] reports for years, climate activists have insisted that America must undergo a rapid, top-down "green transition," pursuing sweeping mandates that Congress has repeatedly rejected. Unable to legislate their agenda, they have turned to the courts, a strategy that has broad national security implications. This week’s Washington Post blockbuster report reveals one particularly stark consequence of our rapid transition: China’s military can cause rolling blackouts across the United States by remotely manipulating green technologies they sell here. The U.S. Supreme Court is considering this week whether to take up Suncor Energy v. Boulder, a case that exemplifies how the legal system is being manipulated to drive national climate policy.

Wall Street Journal [12/12/2025 6:41 PM, Robbie Whelan, 646K] reports a group of seven Democratic U.S. senators is pushing back on President Trump’s decision this week to allow Nvidia to sell its second-most advanced generation of artificial-intelligence chips in China. In a letter sent Friday to Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), Elissa Slotkin (D., Mich.), Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.), Tim Kaine (D., Va.), Michael Bennet (D., Colo.), Andy Kim (D., N.J.) and Ron Wyden (D., Ore.) criticized the administration’s authorization of Nvidia’s H200 chip for sale in China. “The President’s dangerous decision to give away critical national security controls represents a significant departure from longstanding bipartisan efforts to ensure that U.S. technology does not turbocharge China’s military and technological capabilities,” the senators wrote. Trump announced on Monday that he had informed Chinese leader Xi Jinping that the U.S. will allow Nvidia to ship the H200 to China and other countries “under conditions that allow for strong national security.” Nvidia has committed to paying 25% of the revenue generated by the China sales of the chip to the U.S. government. “The Trump administration is committed to ensuring the dominance of the American tech stack—without compromising on national security,” White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement Friday. In a separate statement, an Nvidia spokesman said Trump’s decision “strikes a thoughtful balance that is great for America.” The company has argued that China’s response to a broad ban on AI chip sales has been to accelerate its domestic chip development, making homegrown companies like Huawei more competitive in the long term.

Reuters [12/13/2025 1:18 AM, Mikhail Flores, 36480K] reports the Philippine coast guard said on Saturday that three Filipino fishermen had been wounded and two fishing vessels suffered "significant damage" when Chinese coast guard ships fired water cannon in a disputed South China Sea shoal. Manila’s coast guard said nearly two dozen Filipino fishing boats near Sabina Shoal were targeted with water cannon and blocking manoeuvres on Friday. A small Chinese coast guard boat also cut the anchor lines of several Filipino boats, endangering their crews, it said. "The PCG calls on the Chinese Coast Guard to adhere to internationally recognised standards of conduct, prioritising the preservation of life at sea over pretensions of law enforcement that jeopardize the lives of innocent fishermen," Manila’s coast guard said in a statement. China’s embassy in Manila did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside office hours. On Friday, China’s coast guard said it had driven away multiple Philippine vessels and taken "control measures". That statement, Philippine coast guard spokesperson Jay Tarriela said on Saturday, was an admission of wrongdoing. "They admitted this evil wrongdoing to ordinary Filipino fishermen," Tarriela said by phone. The Philippine coast guard vessels it deployed to aid the injured fishermen were also blocked repeatedly from reaching Sabina Shoal. "Despite these unprofessional and unlawful interferences, the PCG successfully reached the fishermen this morning and provided immediate medical attention to the injured, along with essential supplies," the statement said. Sabina Shoal, which China refers to as Xianbin Reef and the Philippines as the Escoda Shoal, lies in the Philippine exclusive economic zone 150 km (95 miles) west of Palawan province. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a waterway carrying more than $3 trillion of annual commerce. The areas it claims cut into the exclusive economic zones of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam. An international arbitral tribunal ruled in 2016 that Beijing’s sweeping claims had no basis under international law, a decision China rejects.

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