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 Hill [1/24/2025 10:17 PM, Al Weaver and Rebecca Beitsch, 57114K, Neutral] reports South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) moved a step closer to leading the Department of Homeland Security as the Senate voted on Friday to advance her to a final confirmation vote. Senators voted 61-39 to break a filibuster on Noem’s nomination on Friday evening. Noem’s confirmation would put the final piece of President Trump’s core national security team in place. The chamber quickly approved Marco Rubio to lead the State Department after Trump’s inauguration on Monday, and eventually confirmed CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to their positions on Thursday and Friday, respectively. Republicans view Noem as integral to carrying out Trump’s immigration plans, which include the deportation of large swaths of immigrants who entered the country illegally and ending numerous legal pathways for entering the country. “She will secure the border,” Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) said on Friday. He also lauded her as an “excellent and well-qualified choice.” “Gov. Noem understands what’s needed to tackle the border crisis,” he continued. “As she said at her hearing, she will ensure our border patrol agents and our Immigrations and Customs group have all the tools, the resources and the support they need to carry out their mission efficiently and effectively.” Noem was on a glide path to confirmation after the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee approved her in a 13-2 tally on Monday. She earned praise from the top Democrat overseeing her review. “During her confirmation hearing, I pressed Governor Noem to set aside partisan ideologies and to follow the facts when it comes to the threats our communities face – whether we’re talking about securing our borders, foreign and domestic terrorism, or even increasingly devastating natural disasters,” Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), the top Democrat of the Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee, said after a vote to back her. The AP [1/25/2025 12:07 AM, Stephen Groves, 47097K, Neutral] reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth won confirmation Friday night, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were already in place. Noem, a Trump ally who is in her second term as South Dakota governor, received some support from Democrats on the Senate Homeland Security Committee when it voted 13-2 to advance her nomination earlier this week. Republicans, who already hold the votes necessary to confirm her, have also expressed confidence in her determination to lead border security and immigration enforcement. “Fixing this crisis and restoring respect for the rule of law is one of President Trump and Republicans’ top priorities,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune, a fellow South Dakota Republican, said Friday. “And it’s going to require a decisive and committed leader at the Department of Homeland Security. I believe Kristi has everything it takes to undertake this task.” Noem will oversee U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Citizenship and Immigration Services. Beyond those agencies, the department is also responsible for securing airline transportation, protecting dignitaries, responding to natural disasters and more. Trump is planning major changes to the way the department functions, including involving the military in immigration enforcement and reshaping the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Those plans could immediately put Noem in the spotlight after the new president visited recent disaster sites in North Carolina and California on Friday. FOX News [1/24/2025 10:17 PM, Julia Johnson, 57114K, Neutral] reports that the South Dakota governor is expected to receive bipartisan support for her confirmation to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Her nomination advanced out of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee (HSGAC) by a vote of 13-2. Only two Democrats voted against her. "I was the first Governor to send National Guard troops to Texas when they were being overwhelmed by an unprecedented border crisis," Noem told the committee during her confirmation hearing last week. "If confirmed as Secretary, I will ensure that our exceptional, extraordinary border patrol agents have all the tools and resources and support they need to carry out their mission effectively."

The New York Times [1/24/2025 10:36 PM, Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval, 161405K, Negative] reports that, bearing Social Security numbers and employment authorization, workers who recently arrived from places like Haiti and Venezuela have been packing and sorting orders at Amazon; making car parts for Toyota and Honda; and working in hotels, restaurants and assisted-living facilities. On Friday, they woke up to the news from the Trump administration that many of them could be abruptly detained and swiftly deported. A memo issued by the acting secretary of Homeland Security instructs immigration agents to speed up the deportation of immigrants who have been admitted under certain programs that were created by the Biden administration and have benefited about 1.5 million people. Many of them have a protected status that stretches for another year or two. FOX News [1/24/2025 10:12 AM, Adam Shaw, 49889K, Neutral] reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is allowing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials to review the parole status of migrants who were brought in under a dramatic expansion of humanitarian parole by the Biden administration, opening the door for their quick removal from the country. In an internal memo signed Thursday, and obtained by Fox News Digital, acting DHS Secretary Benjamine Huffman noted moves he made this week to take limits off expedited removal, which allows for the rapid removal of recently-arrived migrants if they do not claim asylum or fail to meet an initial standard. The power can now be used anywhere in the U.S. for migrants in the U.S. for less than two years. The new memo says that with those expanded powers, any immigrant whom DHS knows who could be put on expedited removal, but has not, should have their case reviewed and "consider, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether to apply expedited removal." The memo was first reported by The New York Times. "This may include steps to terminate any ongoing removal proceeding and/or any active parole status," it says. It also says that for any immigrant who has been granted parole under a policy paused, modified or terminated by the Trump administration, officers can decide whether they should be placed in removal proceedings and "review the alien’s parole status to determine, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether parole remains appropriate in light of any changed legal or factual status." CBS News [1/24/2025 11:04 AM, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, 52225K, Negative] reports that ICE officers can arrest, detain and deport — in some cases, in an expedited fashion — at least 1.5 million migrants who came to the U.S. in recent years under programs the Biden administration said dissuaded illegal immigration but that the Trump administration now argues were unlawful. The major policy change was authorized by acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman, who the Trump administration placed in that position pending the confirmation of President Trump’s pick to lead the department, South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem. ABC News [1/24/2025 11:11 AM, Luke Barr] reports that the Cuban, Haitian, Nicaraguan, Venezuela (CHNV) parole program allowed for certain migrants from those counties to apply for parole status into U.S. for up to two years. There were, however, conditions on the applicants, for example they needed to have a sponsor in the U.S. and be able to pass security vetting. Both programs were swiftly done away with when President Donald Trump came into office earlier this week. "The Biden-Harris Administration abused the humanitarian parole program to indiscriminately allow 1.5 million migrants to enter our country," a DHS spokesperson said on Tuesday. "This was all stopped on day one of the Trump administration. This action will return the humanitarian parole program to its original purpose of looking at migrants on a case-by-case basis." The memo, first reported by The New York Times, says it is up to an ICE agent to review an individual case and determine what enforcement is necessary. "Take all steps necessary to review the alien’s case and consider, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether any such alien should be placed in removal proceedings; and Review the alien’s parole status to determine, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether parole remains appropriate in light of any changed legal or factual circumstances," according to the memo. The memo says for any person in the country legally who ICE is "aware of," agents should take "all necessary steps to determine if they should be in the country "Take all steps necessary to review the alien’s case and consider, in exercising your enforcement discretion, whether to apply expedited removal. This may include steps to terminate any ongoing removal proceeding and/or any active parole status." The administration expanded its expedited removal authority to its "statutory maximum" -- meaning someone who is in the country for less than two years can be removed without an immigration hearing -- an interpretation of the law that immigration advocates say has never been used before. "To maximize efficiency in the short term, DHS components may wish to prioritize aliens eligible for expedited removal who failed to apply for asylum within the statutory deadline," the DHS memo said.

Reported similarly:
Politico [1/24/2025 3:57 PM, Myah Ward, Negative]
NPR [1/24/2025 3:50 PM, Joel Rose, 35747K, Neutral] Audio: HERE
Reuters [1/24/2025 10:46 AM, Ted Hesson, 48128K, Negative]
Reuters [1/24/2025 10:52 PM, Costas Pitas and Daniel Trotta, 48128K, Neutral]

New York Times [1/24/2025 10:36 PM, Miriam Jordan and Edgar Sandoval, 161405K, Negative] reports that, bearing Social Security numbers and employment authorization, workers who recently arrived from places like Haiti and Venezuela have been packing and sorting orders at Amazon; making car parts for Toyota and Honda; and working in hotels, restaurants and assisted-living facilities. On Friday, they woke up to the news from the Trump administration that many of them could be abruptly detained and swiftly deported. A memo issued by the acting secretary of Homeland Security instructs immigration agents to speed up the deportation of immigrants who have been admitted under certain programs that were created by the Biden administration and have benefited about 1.5 million people. Many of them have a protected status that stretches for another year or two. Tens of thousands, who arrived more recently, likely do not. The memo leaves unclear exactly who could be deported. Frantzdy Jerome, a Haitian migrant who had scheduled an appointment at a port of entry along the southern border, was admitted into the country in June. Within weeks, he was issued a work permit, and he has been working the overnight shift at an Amazon warehouse in the Midwest. He worries that he could be designated for deportation. “The news is overwhelming me with fear,” said Mr. Jerome, 33, who has a young child in the United States and supports 12 people in his home country. “So many Haitians work at Amazon, and we are all nervous about the situation,” he said. At a New York migrant shelter, Elhadi Youssouf Diagana, 34, of Mauritania, said that some people had not left the facility. “There’s people who work, who work for Uber, who deliver food, they don’t want to go outside,” Mr. Diagana added. “They’re there, they don’t move.” Wilfredo O. Allen, an immigration lawyer in Miami, said that when he went to have breakfast at a Cuban restaurant on Friday, several workers — some of whom are already his clients — peppered him with questions about whether they could be deported. “Today, in Miami, there is fear,” he said.

Government Executive [1/24/2025 2:15 PM, Staff, 342K, Negative] reports that Congress is sending to President Donald Trump a bill to increase the detention of certain undocumented immigrants, but Immigration and Customs Enforcement previously warned that it would be "impossible" to implement with current resources. The House on Wednesday passed, 263-156, the Laken Riley Act (S 5), which would require the Homeland Security Department to detain any undocumented individual who has been charged with, arrested for or convicted of burglary, theft, larceny or shoplifting. It was supported by all present Republicans and 46 House Democrats. The Senate approved, 64-35, the measure on Monday with the backing of a dozen Democratic senators. Senators also amended the bill to mandate detention of undocumented immigrants who have been charged with, arrested for or convicted of assaulting a law enforcement officer or any crime that results in another person’s death or serious injury. However, prior to the start of Trump’s second administration, ICE said an earlier version of the bill would cost $26.9 billion to enforce in its first year, according to an internal agency document obtained by NPR. ICE’s annual budget is approximately $9 billion, according to a December agency report.

NBC News [1/24/2025 7:59 PM, Ken Dilanian and Ryan J. Reilly, 50804K, Neutral] reports half a dozen senior career Justice Department officials have been told they are being removed from their jobs and reassigned to a new effort to take legal action against so-called sanctuary cities, four DOJ officials familiar with the matter told NBC News. The sources spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive internal personnel matters. Two of those reassigned, one senior DOJ official said, were Corey Amundson, who had been head of the public integrity section, and George Toscas, who had been deputy assistant attorney general in the national security division. It was not previously known that Amundson had been reassigned. The public integrity section prosecutes political corruption and played a role in both DOJ criminal cases against the former president. NBC News had previously reported that Toscas had been removed from his job. He played a key role in pushing for the 2022 search of Mar-a-Lago for classified documents that Donald Trump, then a former president, had declined to return to the National Archives. All of the section chiefs in the environmental and natural resources division, which helps enforce environmental law, have been reassigned to the sanctuary cities task force as well, a source told NBC News. One of the environmental division officials wrote in an email that they had been assigned to the “Sanctuary Cities Environmental Working Group,” citing an email they received from the acting attorney general that gave them a 15-day notice to move to the new position. “Everyone they don’t like is being dumped there,” another official said.

Washington Examiner [1/24/2025 10:54 AM, Alan Wooten, 2365K, Negative] reports that raids by ICE enforcement that captured so much media attention Thursday may pale by comparison to the litigation possibilities opened by a bill from a North Carolina senator. Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities would permit victims, and families of victims, to sue for compensatory damages against a state or political subdivision of a state. Republican Sen. Thom Tillis authored the bill and introduced it Wednesday with fellow North Carolina Sen. Ted Budd and nine other cosponsors. "For far too long, we have watched local jurisdictions in North Carolina and across the country ignore the lawful notification and detainer requests made by ICE agents and instead release dangerous criminals back into their communities, putting innocent lives at risk," Tillis said. "I am committed to working with President Trump to end illegal immigration and fight sanctuary cities that prioritize reckless, lawless policies over public safety. "It is clear that liberal politicians want to put political ideology ahead of the safety of their constituents. It is time for Congress to step in and hold sanctuary cities accountable." As of Thursday afternoon, the other nine cosponsors included no Democrats among Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Katie Boyd Britt of Alabama, Ted Cruz of Texas, James Lankford of Oklahoma, Dr. Bill Cassidy of Louisiana, Kevin Cramer of North Dakota, Roger Marshall of Kansas, Tim Sheehy of Montana and Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

Washington Examiner [1/24/2025 11:02 AM, Kenneth Schrupp, 2365K, Neutral] reports that Congressman Kevin Kiley, R-California, has introduced a bill that would prevent states such as California from allowing illegal immigrants to enroll in Medicaid. Kiley estimates this would save California $6.5 billion per year; in January 2024, the state expanded Medicaid enrollment to include all illegal immigrants. "This common sense legislation ensures that taxpayer-funded healthcare benefits are preserved for those who lawfully qualify, prioritizing the needs of American citizens and legal residents while promoting fairness and fiscal responsibility," Kiley said in a statement on the bill. Kiley also noted that many Americans enrolled in Medicaid, a taxpayer-funded public healthcare system for low-income individuals, are already struggling to find doctors. "California is spending $6.5 billion each year providing free health care to everyone here illegally," Kiley said Kiley X. "Meanwhile, many of our own citizens can’t even get in to see a doctor." California, which has sanctuary state laws limiting state and local law enforcement agencies from actively assisting federal immigration officials, is currently in a special session called by Gov. Gavin Newsom to "Trump-proof" the state, chiefly by providing $25 million for state and local lawsuits against the Trump administration, and another $25 million for legal aid, largely for deportation defense.

Yahoo! News [1/25/2025 3:25 AM, Staff, 57114K, Neutral] reports President Donald Trump sacked at least a dozen internal government watchdogs late Friday, US media reported, the latest shake-up of the Republican’s second term after less than a week back in office. Independent inspectors general of at least 12 federal agencies were notified of their immediate dismissals via emails from the White House personnel director, Washington Post reported, citing unnamed people familiar with the actions. Inspectors general have an oversight role to detect and deter fraud, waste and abuse by government employees. They are responsible for investigating violations of laws, regulations and ethical standards by employees, and conducting audits of contracts, finances and staff performance. Among the federal agencies affected by the ousters were the departments of defense, state, interior and energy, as well as the Environmental Protection Agency and Social Security Administration, the Post said. "It’s a widespread massacre," said one of the fired inspectors general, according to the Post. "Whoever Trump puts in now will be viewed as loyalists, and that undermines the entire system." Most of those fired were appointed by Trump during his first term, the newspaper added. New York Times, citing three unnamed people with knowledge of the dismissals, said 17 inspectors general were fired, and one source said the Justice Department’s watchdog was not affected. Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts called the firings "a purge... in the middle of the night." "Inspectors general are charged with rooting out government waste, fraud, abuse, and preventing misconduct," she said in a post on social media platform X.

CBS Austin [1/24/2025 11:42 AM, Ray Lewis, 581K, Neutral] reports that Secretary of State Marco Rubio instructed staff on Thursday to freeze applications for passports with an "X" sex identification and for changes to the sex identified on existing passports, according to The Guardian. Rubio ordered State Department staff via a memo to suspend any application requesting an "X" sex identification, according to The Guardian. "The policy of the United States is that an individual’s sex is not changeable," the memo reportedly reads. Trump’s executive order directs the secretaries of the State Department and Department of Homeland Security to ensure passports accurately reflect the holder’s sex, as defined in the order. Rubio also told staff that sex, instead of gender, will be used on passports. "‘Sex’ shall refer to an individual’s immutable biological classification as either male or female," the order reads. "‘Sex’ is not a synonym for and does not include the concept of ‘gender identity.’". Trump also said in the order that "ideologues who deny the biological reality of sex" have increasingly used legal and "socially coercive" means to allow men to identify as women. Basing federal policy on "truth" is critical to public safety, morale, trust in government and "scientific inquiry," according to the president.

CBS News [1/24/2025 11:55 AM, Melissa Quinn, 52225K, Neutral] reports that President Trump’s cascade of executive actions announced soon after he took office has already prompted more than half a dozen legal challenges before the end of his first week. And they’re likely just the opening salvos in a series of court battles that will play out as federal agencies begin the work of executing the president’s directives. In the hours and days after his inauguration Monday, Mr. Trump has signed more than 50 executive orders, memorandums and proclamations tackling a wide range of policy issues, from immigration to federal hiring and remote work to energy. His wave of Day 1 signings wasn’t unusual — his predecessor issued more than a dozen executive actions on his first day in the White House — and neither are Mr. Trump’s unilateral efforts to change policy. But whether his proposals are ultimately implemented by federal agencies in the face of legal challenges remains to be seen. Already, Mr. Trump’s order seeking to end birthright citizenship and prohibiting federal agencies from issuing citizenship documents to children born on U.S. soil to parents in the country illegally or under temporary visas has been the subject of at least four separate lawsuits brought by 22 states and advocacy groups. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

MeriTalk [1/24/2025 10:44 AM, Andrew Rice, 31K, Neutral] reports that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) found that facial recognition software used to identify travelers is more than 99 percent accurate on average, according to a Jan. 17 report. The report comes after DHS instituted a directive requiring thorough testing of facial capture and facial recognition software to reveal unintended bias in its technology. "We’re not perfect, but this report highlights how [facial recognition] is delivering real value for the public and supporting critical law enforcement missions – while maintaining our commitment to transparency, accountability, and responsible AI use," Eric Hysen, the former DHS chief information officer and chief AI officer, said in a LinkedIn post. DHS tested eight methods, which are primarily powered by artificial intelligence and used by Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, and Homeland Security Investigations. Across the eight methods, the report found differences in facial recognition capabilities between volunteer participants with lighter skin tones compared to participants with darker skin tones. In testing CBP technologies, face matching succeeded 98 percent of the time for people with darker skin tones compared to more than 99 percent of the time for people with lighter skin tones.

New York Times [1/25/2025 5:00 AM, Adam Satariano, Paul Mozur, Aaron Krolik and David McCabe, 161405K, Neutral] reports apps and ankle monitors that track asylum seekers in real time wherever they go. Databases packed with personal information like fingerprints and faces. Investigative tools that can break into locked phones and search through gigabytes of emails, text messages and other files. These are pieces of a technology arsenal available to President Trump as he aims to crack down on illegal immigration and carry out the largest deportation operation in American history. To do so, his administration can tap a stockpile of tools built up by Democrats and Republicans that is nearly unmatched in the Western world, according to an analysis by New York Times. A review of nearly 15,000 contracts shows that two agencies — Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and Citizen and Immigration Services — have spent $7.8 billion on immigration technologies from 263 companies since 2020. The contracts, most of which were initiated under the Biden administration, included ones for tools that can rapidly prove family relationships with a DNA test to check whether, say, an adult migrant crossing the border with a minor are related. (Families are often treated differently from individuals.) Other systems compare biometrics against criminal records, alert agents to changes in address, follow cars with license plate readers, and rip and analyze data from phones, hard drives and cars. The contracts, which ranged in size, were for mundane tech like phone services as well as advanced tools from big and small companies. Palantir, the provider of data-analysis tools that was co-founded by the billionaire Peter Thiel, received more than $1 billion over the past four years. Venntel, a provider of location data, had seven contracts with ICE totaling at least $330,000 between 2018 and 2022. The Biden administration used many of these technologies for immigration enforcement, including in investigations of drug trafficking, human smuggling and transnational gang activity. How Mr. Trump may apply the tools is unknown, especially as the whereabouts of many immigrants are known and the government faces a shortage of officers and facilities to detain people. But Mr. Trump has already made clear that his immigration agenda is strikingly different from his predecessor’s. This week, he announced a barrage of executive actions to lock down the borders and expel migrants and those seeking asylum. “All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came,” Mr. Trump said at his inauguration on Monday.

Reuters [1/24/2025 1:34 PM, Daniel Wiessner, 48128K, Negative] reports that afederal judge on Friday granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s request to pause a lawsuit by Elon Musk’s SpaceX claiming the agency lacks the power to pursue claims that the space technology company refused to hire certain immigrants. U.S. Magistrate Judge Ignacio Torteya in Brownsville, Texas, made the decision following the agency’s Jan. 19 request to stay the lawsuit for 45 days, in which it signaled that it could drop or settle the case. Republican President Donald Trump took office on Jan. 20, ushering in a new administration. Musk, a top adviser to Trump, is leading a commission tasked with identifying waste and inefficiency in the federal government. SpaceX and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment. DOJ claims that from at least 2018 to 2022, SpaceX routinely discouraged asylum recipients and refugees from applying for jobs and refused to consider or hire them. The company has denied wrongdoing, saying federal export control laws require it to employ only U.S. citizens and legal permanent residents.

The New York Times [1/24/2025 5:16 PM, Jenna Russell, 161405K, Negative] reports a 21-year-old woman was arrested and charged on Friday with assaulting federal law enforcement officers with a deadly weapon, after the shooting death on Monday of a U.S. Border Patrol agent on Interstate 91 near the Canadian border. David Maland, a 44-year-old Border Patrol agent who was known as Chris, was injured in the exchange of gunfire and later pronounced dead at North Country Hospital in Newport, Vt. The sole passenger in Ms. Youngblut’s car, Felix Baukholt, a German citizen, was also shot, and later pronounced dead at the scene. Ms. Youngblut was injured by gunfire and hospitalized at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon, N.H., where she remained on Friday. Her initial hearing in federal court, on one count of using a deadly weapon while assaulting a Border Patrol agent and one count of using and discharging a firearm during that assault, has not yet been scheduled. She faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years if convicted of the charges, according to the office of Acting U.S. Attorney Michael P. Drescher. Ms. Youngblut and Mr. Baukholt had been under surveillance by law enforcement officials for nearly a week before the shooting occurred, according to an F.B.I. affidavit. The AP [1/24/2025 7:16 PM, Holly Ramer, 14282K, Negative] reports Teresa Youngblut, 21, faces two weapons charges in connection with the death of Border Patrol Agent David Maland, 44, who died Monday during the shootout in Coventry, a small town about 20 miles from the Canadian border. According to an FBI affidavit, Maland pulled over Youngblut and Felix Baukholt on Interstate 91 because Baukholt appeared to have an expired visa. Youngblut, who had been driving Baukholt’s car, got out and opened fire on Maland and other officers without warning, the FBI alleges. Baukholt tried to draw a gun but was shot, the affidavit states. At least one border agent fired on Youngblut and Baukholt, but authorities haven’t specified whose bullets hit whom. Investigators had been performing "periodic surveillance" of the pair since Jan. 14 after an employee at a hotel where they were staying reported concerns after seeing Youngblut carrying a gun and she and Baukholt wearing black tactical gear, according to the affidavit. Investigators tried to question the duo, who said they were in the area looking to buy property but declined to have an extended conversation, the FBI said. [Editorial note: consult video at source link] CNN [1/24/2025 3:37 PM, Artemis Moshtaghian, 987K, Negative] reports Coventry is about 13 miles south of the Canadian border. Maland was assigned to CBP’s Swanton Sector, which covers parts of Vermont, New York, and New Hampshire, a US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson previously told CNN. The incident unfolded when Maland and several border patrol agents stopped Youngblut, who was driving a blue 2015 Toyota Prius with North Carolina plates, for an immigration inspection, according to court documents. The vehicle was registered to passenger Felix Baukholt, a German national who officials said appeared to have an expired US visa. The traffic stop escalated into a shooting after Youngblut allegedly fired a handgun on at least one of the agents, according to the court documents. Maland and Baukholt were killed as a result of the shooting, while Youngblut was injured and taken to Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in New Hampshire for treatment.

Reported similarly:
AP [1/24/2025 9:58 PM, Holly Ramer, 47097K, Negative]
ABC News [1/24/2025 5:08 PM, Luke Barr and Megan Forrester, 33392K, Negative]
USA Today [1/24/2025 5:50 PM, Fernando Cervantes Jr., 89965K, Negative]

NBC News [1/24/2025 2:03 PM, Rich Schapiro and Tom Winter, 50804K, Negative] reports that the two suspects involved in a shootout that killed a U.S. border patrol agent in northern Vermont had an arsenal of weapons and tactical gear, including 48 rounds of .380-caliber jacketed hollow point ammunition, a ballistic helmet and night vision equipment, according to court documents unsealed Friday. The suspects were identified as Teresa Youngblut of Washington state, who was wounded in the gun battle, and Felix Bauckholt, a German national who was killed. Border patrol agent David "Chris" Maland, 44, also died in the exchange of gunfire on a highway just 20 miles south of the Canadian border. The court documents do not make clear whether Maland was struck by one of Youngblut’s bullets or a shot fired by a fellow agent. The incident unfolded after 3 p.m. on Monday, after a border patrol agent pulled over a blue 2015 Toyota Prius to conduct an immigration inspection. Multiple agents in three vehicles then arrived to the scene, court documents say. Bauckholt, the registered owner of the vehicle, appeared to have an expired visa in a Department of Homeland Security database, according to court documents. The FBI had previously said the German national involved in the incident was on a current visa. Homeland Security Investigations agents had been performing "periodic surveillance" of Buckhault and Youngblut since Jan. 14, according to the documents.

Yahoo! News [1/25/2025 5:30 AM, Brandon Kingdollar, 57114K, Negative] reports North Carolina lawmakers introduced legislation in Congress Wednesday that would allow the victims of felonies committed by undocumented immigrants to sue cities, counties, and states that did not comply with ICE deportation orders. Entitled the “Justice for Victims of Sanctuary Cities Act,” the bill is sponsored in the Senate by North Carolina Republican Senators Thom Tillis and Ted Budd and nine other GOP members. Western North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards, who introduced the legislation in the House last year, announced on Thursday that he has reintroduced it. “For far too long, we have watched local jurisdictions in North Carolina and across the country ignore the lawful notification and detainer requests made by ICE agents and instead release dangerous criminals back into their communities, putting innocent lives at risk,” Tillis said in a news release. “It is time for Congress to step in and hold sanctuary cities accountable.” According to the Center for Immigration Studies, in North Carolina, Buncombe, Chatham, Durham, Forsyth, Guilford, Mecklenburg, Orange, Wake, and Watauga counties all operate as “sanctuary jurisdictions,” meaning they employ local protocols that restrict or prohibit cooperation with ICE, typically by preventing law enforcement from complying with ICE “detainers” — orders from the agency to hold undocumented immigrants taken int0 custody until they can be turned over to ICE. If passed into law, the bill would open up such jurisdictions to civil liability for not complying with ICE detainers for or notifying the agency of the release of undocumented immigrants who go on to commit felonies. The statute of limitations for such claims would be 10 years after the felony or the death of an individual resulting from the felony. But according to Rick Su, a UNC immigration law professor, states must first waive their “sovereign immunity” to become liable to federal civil lawsuits. Similarly, because of state sovereignty, jurisdictions cannot face federal criminal charges for declining to enforce ICE detainers, which function as requests rather than legal orders.

The Hill [1/24/2025 2:25 PM, Ashleigh Fields, 16346K, Neutral] reports a Mississippi district attorney proposed new legislation Wednesday to pay bounty hunters a reward for helping to deport immigrants in the country illegally. DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton announced his support for House Bill 1484, authored by state Rep. Justin Keen (R), which would create the Illegal Alien Certified Bounty Hunter Program. Keen and Barton suggested offering a $1,000 reward to registered bounty hunters for each successful deportation they help facilitate, which would be funded by the general assembly and administered by the state treasurer, according to a press release from his office.

Reported similarly:
FOX News [1/24/2025 4:22 PM, Louis Casiano, 49889K, Neutral]

NBC News [1/24/2025 8:16 PM, Phil Helsel, 50804K, Negative] reports a woman who helped arrange a 2022 human smuggling trip from Cuba to Florida that ended in the deaths of 16 people pleaded guilty to federal charges that carry up to life in prison, prosecutors said Friday. Yaquelin Dominguez-Nieves, 26, who is in the U.S. without authorization, pleaded guilty Tuesday to "conspiring to smuggle aliens into the United States," the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami said in a statement. Dominguez-Nieves collected the money from the migrants’ family members in the U.S., at least $11,500 in all, and sent that to her boyfriend in Cuba who put the migrants on a boat, she admitted as part of a plea deal. The small fishing boat left Playa Jaimanitas in Cuba on Nov. 16, 2022, and sank 30 miles into the trip. Of the 18 people aboard, 16 people drowned. There were no life jackets on board and the two survivors told authorities that the captain “did not appear to know how to operate the vessel,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said. The charges carry up to life in prison and a mandatory minimum of five years, the office said. A plea agreement does not spell out any sentence that prosecutors will recommend, but it does indicate they will ask that it be reduced because of her cooperation. Sentencing is scheduled for April 11. A federal defender listed as representing Dominguez-Nieves did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday evening. In 2022, at least 269 migrants — most of whom were trying to reach the United States mainland or Puerto Rico — died on sea routes through the Caribbean, according to the International Organization for Migration, an organization within the United Nations system. On the U.S.-Mexico border, 686 migrant deaths were recorded in 2022, the group said in a 2023 report.

Reported similarly:
AP [1/24/2025 4:22 PM, Staff, 47097K, Negative]

New York Times [1/24/2025 7:58 PM, Julie Bosman and Hamed Aleaziz, 161405K, Negative] reports that, when two men bearing federal badges showed up at the entrance of a Chicago public school on Friday morning, school employees did what they had been trained to do. Believing that the men were U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, the employees refused to allow them into the school, John H. Hamline Elementary, which enrolls children in kindergarten through eighth grade in a mostly-Latino neighborhood on the city’s southwest side. The school immediately notified officials at Chicago Public Schools, which quickly released a statement. “The ICE agents were not allowed into the school and were not permitted to speak to any students or staff,” the statement said. But the school was mistaken: The agents were actually from the Secret Service, not ICE. They were investigating a threat against someone their agency had been assigned to protect, relating to the TikTok ban, a Secret Service spokesman said hours later. The spokesman, Anthony Guglielmi, declined to name the person who was threatened. The agents had gone to a nearby home to try to speak to a minor, and then had tried the school, unsuccessfully. But the correction came too late to stem the panic and fear that had already set in around Chicago over rumored immigration raids. All week, many residents had been on edge over the Trump administration’s vows to deport unauthorized immigrants, worried that ICE agents might at any moment arrive at workplaces, churches, even schools. “It seems that this was a very large miscommunication,” Mr. Guglielmi said in an interview. Mr. Guglielmi said that the agents had identified themselves as being from the Secret Service, and that their badges had been stamped with the words “Department of Homeland Security.” “I just want to make it clear — the Secret Service will never investigate immigration matters,” he said. He noted that the agency had a consistent presence in Chicago, where former President Barack Obama still owns a home. A spokeswoman for ICE said that there had been no immigration enforcement action at or near the school.

Reported similarly:
NBC News [1/24/2025 11:42 PM, Phil Helsel and Nadine Comerford, 50804K, Neutral]
CNN [1/24/2025 8:51 PM, Dalia Faheid and Holmes Lybrand,, 987K, Neutral]
FOX News [1/24/2025 1:15 PM, Greg Norman, 49889K, Negative]
Washington Examiner [1/24/2025 6:54 PM, Barnini Chakraborty, 2365K, Neutral]

Miami Herald [1/24/2025 11:54 AM, Maya Rao, 6595K, Neutral] reports that two orphaned Karen children, a Somali family of five in Kenya and a Congolese woman are among the people whose trips to Minnesota were canceled after President Trump issued an executive order suspending refugee admissions. Jane Graupman, executive director of the International Institute of Minnesota, said the resettlement agency had been hopeful they would still land here this week because Monday’s executive order was not set to take effect until Jan. 27. Instead, she said, "they instructed the State Department to cancel all the flights." Hundreds of refugees bound for Minnesota over the next few months are now stuck abroad, with Trump’s executive order directing leaders in the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the State Department to submit a report to him every 90 days so he can determine whether refugee admissions are in the national interest. "The United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees," the executive order said. Trump’s actions will delay family reunification for many refugees already in Minnesota. The state received 2,990 refugees in the 2024 fiscal year, a figure that was on the rise under President Joe Biden, who set a national ceiling of 125,000 new refugees a year, after Trump made drastic reductions during his first term.

Washington Examiner [1/24/2025 9:36 AM, Emily Hallas, 2365K, Negative] reports that Texas wants a massive payback from the federal government after the state shelled out billions on border security measures amid the Biden administration’s relaxed immigration policies. On Thursday, Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) sent letters to top government officials requesting reimbursement for more than $11 billion Texas spent on Operation Lone Star, the border security initiative the state launched in 2021 after it accused former President Joe Biden of "refusing to enforce federal immigration law and pursuing reckless open-border policies." "Biden’s policies left Texas and the rest of America defenseless against an unprecedented infiltration of violent criminals, known terrorists, and other hostile foreign actors, like the dangerous Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua," Abbott wrote in the letter sent to House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), among other congressional leaders. The weighty cost of carrying out Operation Lone Star to combat such threats, Abbott wrote, "fell squarely on the shoulders of Texas taxpayers but should have been the federal government’s responsibility."

Reuters [1/24/2025 3:55 PM, Daniel Wiessner, Negative] reports a U.S. appeals court refused Friday to allow Iowa to implement a law allowing state and local officials to arrest and prosecute people who are in the country illegally. The St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the law, which had been set to take effect in July before it was blocked by a judge, would interfere with the federal government’s ability to enforce U.S. immigration laws. Iowa’s law, Senate File 2340, passed by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Kim Reynolds in April, would make "illegal reentry" into the state a crime punishable by up to two years in prison. It also would authorize state judges to order that individuals return to their home countries after serving sentences. The ruling keeps the state law blocked pending the outcome of a lawsuit by the U.S. Department of Justice, which sued Iowa last year during the administration of Democratic former President Joe Biden. The administration of Republican President Donald Trump could drop the challenge, along with lawsuits seeking to strike down similar laws adopted by Texas and Oklahoma. But it was not clear how that would affect the already-issued decision.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [1/24/2025 5:46 PM, Mitch Smith, 161405K, Neutral]

Washington Examiner [1/24/2025 6:27 PM, Naomi Lim, 2365K, Neutral] reports Newsom, approaching Trump at the Los Angeles International Airport, briefly shook his hand and patted him on the back as he seeks to secure federal dollars to address weeks of fires that have killed at least two dozen people and caused billions in damage. "Thank you for being here," Newsom told Trump in front of reporters. "It means a great deal to all of us, not just the folks in the Palisades, the folks in Altadena that were devastated. We’re going to need your support. We’re going to need your help. You were there for us during COVID. I don’t forget that. And I have all the expectations that we’ll be able to work together to get the speed recovery.” Trump has pummeled Newsom over the wildfires, blaming the state’s environmental practices for the blaze and demanding concessions if California wants his administration’s help. Earlier on Friday, he named voter ID and water reforms as his two conditions, prompting pushback from Newsom’s office. "We’re looking to get something completed, and the way you get it completed is to work together as the governor of the state," Trump said as he stood beside Newsom. Trump has for years sparred with Newsom, adopting the moniker "Newscum" as a taunt. In turn, Newsom has burnished his national reputation with the rivalry. He asked the state legislature for millions to be set aside for a litigation fund ahead of Trump’s return to the Oval Office. Now, Newsom is in the position of needing a Republican-led Washington’s help for any wildfire relief package. The White House did not originally coordinate Friday’s briefing and tour with Newsom’s office, but the governor told reporters this week his aides were "making sure that all the resources he needs for a successful briefing are provided to him.” "There’s no limit to the resources we’ll provide for that briefing," he said on Thursday.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [1/24/2025 7:30 PM, Adam Nagourney, 161405K, Neutral]

Reuters [1/25/2025 1:03 AM, Phil Stewart and Diego Oré, 48128K, Neutral] reports Mexico has refused a request from President Donald Trump’s administration to allow a U.S. military aircraft deporting migrants to land in the country, a U.S. official and a Mexican official told Reuters. U.S. military aircraft carried out two similar flights, each with about 80 migrants, to Guatemala on Friday. The government was not able to move ahead with a plan to have a C-17 transport aircraft land in Mexico, however, after the country denied permission. A U.S. official and a Mexican official confirmed the decision, which was first reported by NBC News. Mexico’s foreign ministry, in a statement late on Friday, said the country had a "very great relationship" with the U.S. and cooperated on issues such as immigration. "When it comes to repatriations, we will always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms," the ministry said. The Mexican official did not give a reason for the denial of permission to land, while the foreign ministry did not mention the incident. Trump’s administration earlier this week announced it was re-launching the program known as "Remain in Mexico," which forced non-Mexican asylum seekers to wait in Mexico until their cases in the United States were resolved. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said on Wednesday such a move would require the country receiving the asylum-seekers to agree, and that Mexico had not done so. The U.S. State Department and the Pentagon did not immediately respond to requests for comment. U.S.-Mexico relations have come into sharp focus since Trump started his second term on Monday with the declaration of a national emergency along the two nations’ shared border. He has ordered 1,500 additional U.S. troops there so far, and officials have said thousands more could deploy soon. The president has declared Mexican drug cartels terrorist organizations, renamed the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America and threatened an across-the-board 25% duty on Mexican goods beginning in February.

Reported similarly:
NBC News [1/24/2025 5:01 PM, Courtney Kube and Jonathan Allen, 50804K, Neutral]

Roll Call [1/24/2025 10:03 AM, Chris Johnson, 440K, Neutral] reports that President Donald Trump’s plans to seal the U.S.-Mexico border and conduct mass deportations might soon run into a major roadblock: Mexico and the countries where the immigrants come from might not accept some of them back. Trump on Monday signed an order to revive of the "Remain in Mexico" policy, which requires asylum-seekers to stay outside the United States as their claims are processed. But on the frontlines of the U.S.-Mexico border, that requires a degree of cooperation from the Mexican government, which appears resistant. Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum told reporters Wednesday she has not agreed to accept non-Mexican migrants seeking asylum in the United States, and such a move would require Mexico to agree, according to report in Reuters. An expert witness at a House Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday listed other countries that have refused to take back migrants, such as Cuba, Venezuela, China, India, Bangladesh and Iran. Sen. Gary Peters of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said Thursday that getting Mexico to cooperate with the Remain in Mexico policy "could be very problematic.” "It’s really hard to actually institute that program if the Mexican government doesn’t agree, and I don’t think we can take that for granted, that they’re going to agree," Peters said.

Bloomberg [1/24/2025 11:29 AM, Maya Averbuch, 21617K, Negative] reports that Mexico’s Claudia Sheinbaum said that Donald Trump’s decision to classify drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations won’t reduce crime, urging the new US president to work with her nation on security and drug prevention instead. Trump has pressed Mexico to stem the flow of drugs across the border into the US, but Sheinbaum argued that his executive order targeting cartels and other criminal organizations will only complicate its efforts to seize fentanyl and fight crime. “This does not help. What does help is collaborating and coordinating together,” Sheinbaum said at a Friday morning press conference. “The issue of fentanyl consumption is not only an issue of criminal groups. It’s also a public health issue.” Sheinbaum, who earlier this week warned Trump against interventions in Mexican territory, said a team of lawyers working for her government is now analyzing the potential impact of the decree. The order has raised concerns among analysts who have said an aggressive interpretation could pave the way for US military action in Mexico, an idea Trump floated before taking office. It has also rattled companies and financial firms fearing that they could become vulnerable to penalties for even unwittingly serving criminals. Sheinbaum said the government plans to continue collaborating with the US while also advancing its own security strategy.

The New York Times [1/24/2025 11:21 PM, Annie Correal and Jody García, 161405K, Neutral] reports two military jets landed in Guatemala City on Friday carrying deported migrants from Tucson, Ariz., and El Paso, according to local migration authorities and the American Embassy in Guatemala. Guatemala appears to be one of first countries to have struck an agreement with the United States to receive deported citizens transported on U.S. Air Force jets, after the Trump administration this week authorized the military through executive order to assist in securing the border. The acting secretary of defense, Robert Salesses, said in a statement this week that, working with the State Department, the Department of Defense would provide military airplanes to support Department of Homeland Security “deportation flights of more than 5,000 illegal aliens from the San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, sectors detained by Customs and Border Protection.” The U.S. Embassy in Guatemala could not confirm how many more military jets were expected to transport deportees to the country or on what timeline. Yahoo! News [1/25/2025 12:26 AM, Staff, 57114K, Negative] reports Washington also sent four deportation flights to Mexico on Thursday, the White House press secretary said on X, despite multiple US media reports that authorities there had turned at least one plane back. The Mexican government has not confirmed either the arrival of flights or any agreement to receive a specific number of planes with deportees. But Mexico’s foreign ministry said Friday it was ready to work with Washington over the deportation of its citizens, saying the country would "always accept the arrival of Mexicans to our territory with open arms." The flights came as the White House said it had arrested more than a thousand people in two days with hundreds deported by military aircraft, saying that "the largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway." Some 538 illegal immigrant "criminals" were arrested Thursday, it said, followed by another 593 on Friday. By comparison, under Trump’s predecessor Joe Biden deportation flights were carried out regularly, with a total of 270,000 deportations in 2024 -- a 10-year record -- and 113,400 arrests, making an average of 310 per day. - ‘Bad, hard criminals’ - The Guatemalan government did not confirm whether any of the migrants arrested this week were among the deportees that arrived Friday. "These are flights that took place after Trump took office," an official in the Guatemalan vice president’s office told AFP. A Pentagon source told AFP that "overnight, two DOD (Department of Defense) aircraft conducted repatriation flights from the US to Guatemala." Early Friday the White House posted an image on X of men in shackles being marched into a military aircraft, with the caption: "Deportation flights have begun." And Trump told reporters that the flights were to get "the bad, hard criminals out." "Murderers, people that have been as bad as you get. As bad as anybody you’ve seen," he said.

Reported similarly:
AP [1/24/2025 6:22 PM, Staff, 47097K, Neutral] Video: HERE

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 8:52 PM, Jared Malsin, Alexander Ward, and Adam Chamseddine, Neutral] reports the possibility of falling out of President Trump’s good graces is an occupational hazard for good people who serve in his Administration, but this looks like a new low: Mr. Trump reportedly has ordered an end to security protection for three former advisers who are living under threat of assassination by Iran. Pray it won’t happen, but what if one of them now gets attacked? John Bolton, a longtime Iran hawk who was Mr. Trump’s national security adviser in 2018 and 2019, said the Secret Service called him on Inauguration Day evening to give him the news. In the summer of 2022 the Justice Department charged a member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) with planning to kill Mr. Bolton by attempting “to pay individuals in the United States $300,000 to carry out the murder in Washington, D.C. or Maryland.” As recently as last week, according to Mr. Bolton, he was informed that the threat against him hadn’t diminished. “This, to me, is an act of war against the United States by the government of Iran,” he told CNN, “in threatening current and former American officials for doing their jobs.” The feds said three years ago that the plot to murder Mr. Bolton was likely meant as Iranian retaliation for the U.S. strike, ordered by Mr. Trump in 2020, that killed the IRGC’s Qassem Soleimani. On Thursday news reports said Mr. Trump also revoked protection for his former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, along with his former Iran envoy Brian Hook. Two sources told the Associated Press that “Pompeo and Hook were told of the loss of protection on Wednesday and that it took effect at 11 p.m. that night.” Both of those men had been granted security because of credible threats against them.

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 8:17 AM, Matthew Luxmoore and Thomas Grove, Neutral] reports President Trump’s initial attempts to lure Russian President Vladimir Putin to the negotiating table on Ukraine have been met with what essentially amounts to a shrug. “We don’t see anything new here,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Thursday, a day after Trump took to Truth Social to warn he would be willing to increase the economic pressure on Moscow after a raft of sanctions were applied following its invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago. Putin’s inner circle has reason to regard Trump’s threat as hollow. While the war has drained the country’s resources and manpower, the Kremlin believes it has successfully stood up against sanctions and that Moscow has the capacity to withstand at least another year of the conflict while Russians continue to sign up to serve on the front line. To be sure, Russia’s economy is showing some stress-related cracks and is being hammered by inflation as it drives billions of dollars into the country’s defense industry. Inducements for Russians to sign up and benefits for the families of those who have been killed or injured are biting into its budget. Western officials say Russia has suffered about 700,000 casualties in Ukraine. But while it is losing cash and men, analysts say Russia has enough of both to continue fighting for now and has the upper hand. Russian forces have slowly chewed westward through Ukraine, threatening cities and towns that are important logistics hubs for the Ukrainian military. They now control almost one-fifth of the country. “We have imbalances and inflation, but it’s not so acute to demand the stop of all hostilities,” said Vasily Kashin, director of the Department for World Economy and International Affairs at the Moscow-based Higher School of Economics. “We are in a position to press on with our demands…and if Ukraine’s defense continues to collapse as it is now, it would be wiser for the other side to agree to our terms.”

CBS News [1/24/2025 5:39 PM, Staff, Negative] reports hundreds of "illegal immigrant criminals" in the United States were arrested Thursday and hundreds of others were flown out of the country on military aircraft as President Trump’s promised mass deportation operation got underway, the White House said. In a post on X Thursday night, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said, "The Trump Administration arrested 538 illegal immigrant criminals including a suspected terrorist, four members of the Tren de Aragua gang, and several illegals convicted of sex crimes against minors." Those 538 arrests included 373 people with criminal records and 165 people without criminal records aside from immigration violations, according to documentation provided by a senior administration official. Another 1,041 people were removed or repatriated, according to those records. Meanwhile, a defense official said there had been two flights overnight. Both went to Guatemala, according to two sources. A Guatemalan migration official said three flights have arrived: A flight from El Paso, with 80 people, arrived early Friday morning. Another flight from Tucson, which also carried 80 people, arrived at around 7 a.m., and a third flight from El Paso with around 105 people arrived Friday afternoon.

Reported similarly:
The Hill [1/24/2025 9:28 AM, Brett Samuels and Rebecca Beitsch, 57114K, Negative]

Washington Examiner [1/24/2025 12:37 PM, Anna Giaritelli and Mike Brest, 2365K, Negative] reports that the Defense Department has begun to repatriate illegal immigrants, using military cargo aircraft as the Trump administration steps up its crackdown at the southern border. The first such military flight out of El Paso, Texas, took place Thursday evening, originating from Biggs Army Airfield and bound for Guatemala with approximately 80 Guatemalan nationals on board, according to a Department of Homeland Security official authorized to speak with the media. The forthcoming military repatriation flights, the official specified, are of immigrants apprehended at the southern border and not within the United States, where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers will separately carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation. The first 80 people put on the cargo plane are some of the 5,400 illegal immigrants whom border officials anticipate sending south of the border on military aircraft in the coming days at the direction of Trump. The C-17 military transport aircraft departed El Paso at 5 p.m. local time Thursday, with future Pentagon repatriation flights also planned out of a base in San Diego, California. Acting Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses clarified in a statement Wednesday that the military would assist with the removal flights as well as putting up barriers along the border. "The Department will provide military airlift to support DHS deportation flights of more than 5,000 illegal aliens from the San Diego, California, and El Paso, Texas, sectors detained by Customs and Border Protection," Salesses said.

ABC News [1/24/2025 6:06 PM, Mike Levine, 33392K, Neutral] reports the Trump administration is planning to use military aircraft every day to help carry out what President Donald Trump and his "border czar," Tom Homan, have promised will be the largest deportation operation in U.S. history, Homan told ABC News. In an interview with ABC "This Week" co-anchor Martha Raddatz, Homan said that only days after Trump took office, the U.S. government for the first time ever used military aircraft to transport migrants back to their home country, and it will now be a daily occurrence. According to U.S. officials, the U.S. military on Thursday flew more than 150 migrants to Guatemala on two separate flights. But Homan made clear that the military flights are just one part of a much broader plan. He claimed that – unlike under the Biden administration – Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers are now free to arrest any of the estimated more than 11 million immigrants in the country without legal status, not just those identified as priorities for deportation for being convicted criminals or other public safety threats. Homan said that while the Trump administration’s enforcement actions are currently prioritizing public safety and national security threats, they’re going to "open up the aperture" in the weeks and months ahead.

Bloomberg [1/24/2025 6:17 PM, Josh Wingrove and Courtney McBride, 21617K, Neutral] reports the Trump administration is in the process of securing enough planes from half a dozen sources to speed up the expulsion of migrants from the US, Deputy White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller said Friday. Miller told reporters that Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, had been hampered in its ability to deport people because of a lack of aircraft. The agency charters planes and conducted hundreds of flights last year, according to experts. This week, the US began deporting migrants on military planes, an option former President Joe Biden declined to use. Miller suggested President Donald Trump was willing to go further, saying even more aircraft could be brought to bear, including from the Department of Homeland Security and the Defense Department. “You have obviously DHS air assets, you have DOD air assets, you have State Department air assets, you have commercial air assets, you have charter air assets, so every asset that can be used to conduct a lawful deportation,” Miller told reporters. The Trump administration had released photographs and videos of authorities herding migrants onto C-17s, military planes ordinarily used to transport troops. One option for the president would be to activate the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which would compel commercial airlines to augment the military’s resources if he deems an emergency warrants such a move. The CRAF was deployed as part of the US evacuation from Afghanistan in 2021. Using the CRAF for deportations “would be unprecedented,” said Todd Harrison, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute specializing in defense. “If you’re trying to fly 100,000 people — that’s a lot of flights. And the longer it takes you to fly people, the more you have to have temporary facilities to keep them in. So if you don’t have the facilities, then it will be incumbent to move people quickly.”

CBS Austin [1/24/2025 2:29 PM, Austin Denean, 581K, Neutral] reports that the Trump administration is moving to ramp up deportations of people in the country without legal status as the president rolls out executive orders and directives to crack down on immigration. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said agents arrested 538 undocumented immigrants and detained several hundred others on Thursday, which comes as the administration is highlighting its efforts to increase the number of deportations taking place. The agency reported more than 460 arrests over 33 hours spanning Tuesday to Wednesday. "Deportation flights have begun. President Trump is sending a strong and clear message to the entire world: if you illegally enter the United States of America, you will face severe consequences," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter. "The largest massive deportation operation in history is well underway." The Department of Homeland Security estimates there are 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the U.S. Trump has vowed to carry out large-scale removals of people living in the country illegally, a massive endeavor that would require significant increases to the resources currently available to immigration agencies.

Newsweek [1/24/2025 5:37 PM, Shannon McDonagh, 56005K, Neutral] reports President Donald Trump’s administration has expanded the use of fast-track deportation authority across the United States, allowing immigration officers to deport people without requiring them to appear before a judge. The expanded use of the procedure––known as "expedited removal"––effective immediately, grants Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers nationwide authority to bypass immigration courts for people who cannot demonstrate they have been in the U.S. for more than two years. Hundreds of immigrants have already been arrested and deported. More than 500 men were photographed boarding an aircraft on Thursday.

ABC News [1/24/2025 5:27 PM, Arthur Jones II and Jennifer Vilcarino, 33392K, Neutral] reports Latino and immigrant lawmakers are sounding the alarm as their school districts brace for deportations in the second Trump administration. In its first press conference of the 119th Congress, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus condemned President Donald Trump’s immigration executive orders and the Department of Homeland Security revoking long-standing restrictions that thwarted Immigration and Customs Enforcement from conducting raids on schools and other sensitive areas. Acting Homeland Security Secretary Benjamine Huffman said that to curb the "invasion" at the border, the policy is needed to "return the humanitarian parole program to its original purpose of looking at migrants on a case-by-case basis." "This action empowers the brave men and women in CBP and ICE to enforce our immigration laws and catch criminal aliens -- including murders and rapists -- who have illegally come into our country. Criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest," Huffman wrote in a statement on Tuesday.

New York Times [1/24/2025 9:46 PM, Tracey Tully and Mark Bonamo, 161405K, Neutral] reports last year in New Jersey, federal immigration officers took more than 1,300 undocumented migrants into custody. That figure was roughly 300 more than in 2023. But on Thursday, less than a week into President Trump’s second term, the arrests of three people at a fish distribution warehouse in Newark appeared to tap a well of pent-up fear about mass deportations in a region teeming with immigrants. The streets around the warehouse filled early Friday with television crews. Newark’s mayor held a news conference to decry the methods used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials as unconstitutional and blamed Mr. Trump, who campaigned on a promise to initiate the “largest deportation program in American history.” Whether Thursday’s arrests in Newark’s Ironbound neighborhood were part of a new crackdown, or fairly typical of ICE enforcement actions in the city in recent years, was not immediately clear. Immigration arrests in the city are common. Last month, under former President Joseph R. Biden Jr., ICE officers based in Newark announced 33 arrests to little public notice. And ICE officials did not reply to several requests for comment. But the enforcement activity left immigrants across the region on edge. There were reports of ICE officers knocking on doors in Vineland, in New Jersey’s southern agricultural region, which is heavily dependent on migrant labor. On Long Island, immigrant rights activists said they were busy fielding reports of “ramped-up” activity by ICE officers. And a police captain in Ossining, N.Y., Brendan Donohue, warned that rumors often multiply more quickly than facts. “Fear spreads very quickly, and even just the suggestion that ICE could come here turns into a ‘ICE was here’ kind of a situation,” Captain Donohue said. “These things can snowball, of course.”

Reported similarly:
Washington Post [1/24/2025 3:45 PM, Maria Sacchetti, Nick Miroff, Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, and Teo Armus, 40736K, Negative]
AP [1/24/2025 6:12 PM, Mike Catalini and Rebecca Santana, 2212K, Negative]

Newsweek [1/24/2025 7:39 PM, Dan Gooding, 56005K, Neutral] reports United States citizens, including Native Americans, are being warned to carry ID with them after reports of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers questioning and detaining people this week. One such warning came from the Navajo Nation President, Buu Nygren, in Arizona, following reports that some residents had been approached by officials. Newsweek reached out to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE for comment via email Friday morning. With President Donald Trump’s plan to ramp up deportations of illegal immigrants, ICE and DHS will likely come under increased scrutiny in the coming weeks and months as they seek to show force when it comes to immigration enforcement. Any overstepping could result in legal action against the agencies. Nygren’s post on Facebook Wednesday came a day before ICE carried out a raid in Newark, New Jersey, in which a U.S. veteran was reportedly detained by officials, along with some American citizens. According to the tribal leader in Arizona, there had been "several concerns and unconfirmed reports" that immigration officials had detained Diné people in urban areas. "My office is looking into this matter and will provide updates as they come," he said in the post. "I am working actively with our state leaders and law enforcement to protect our Diné people." The leader said citizens should carry their certificate of Indian birth, their state ID or driver’s license, or other forms of identification in case officials stopped them. The message reflected advice from the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Immigrant Justice Center (NIJC), with both organizations adding that those detained by ICE had the right to access an attorney and the right to remain silent. Matthew Fletcher, a professor at the University of Michigan who focuses on federal Indian law, told Newsweek that many tribal citizens in rural areas do not have any form of I.D. proving their citizenship. For those who do, ICE agents are not always familiar with their documents, he said. Since the election in November, immigration advocacy groups have been trying to prepare communities for potential increases in immigration enforcement, including courses and classes on immigrants’ rights. Warnings of racial profiling have also been issued by groups and experts, with concerns those with legal status or citizenship could be accidentally targeted.

NBC News [1/25/2025 5:00 AM, Laura Strickler, 50804K, Negative] reports that, as immigrant communities across the country were still bracing for potential mass raids by the new Trump administration, NBC News got an up-close look at one of the last deportation flights to Central America to take place during the Biden administration. Here’s how the journey, an example of how a typical such trip happens regardless of administration, unfolded step by step. Every immigration case is different, but for each unauthorized immigrant who is ultimately deported, the journey begins with an arrest. That arrest could come from a simple run-in with the law such as a traffic stop, or it could be the result of a workplace raid, or — for those with criminal backgrounds — it could start with a knock at the door. From there, immigrants are transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, which could be local or a few hours away. Currently, ICE has a little over 100 facilities nationwide that can hold up to 41,500 people total, but the Trump administration is promising to build more detention facilities and work with the military to build soft-sided temporary structures for detention. Immigrants who have arrived in the U.S. within the last two years could be subject to expedited removal, which means they do not go before an immigration judge and can be deported within weeks. For immigrants who have been here longer than two years, the time between an arrest and deportation has been known to last for years. It’s unclear if the Trump administration can speed up that process. If a judge determines that an immigrant should be deported, then they are given what’s known as a “final order of removal.” Typically, the person would then be flown from a local airport via a commercial airline — or, more commonly, by one of ICE’s 10 planes — to one of four staging locations along the southwest border, which are in Mesa, Arizona; Alexandria, Louisiana; and San Antonio and Harlingen, Texas. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Washington Examiner [1/24/2025 1:22 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 2365K, Negative] reports that Gov. Maura Healey (D-MA) said she supports “apprehension of criminals in our communities” when asked about recent Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests in Massachusetts on Thursday. The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement since taking power, sparking controversy in some states about whether certain arrests are lawful. Recently, the State Department confirmed that military cargo aircraft are flying illegal immigrants found at the southern border to Guatemala. Separately, ICE agents are conducting operations within the United States. "I wouldn’t describe them as raids. What it seems to be is what we expected and what I support, which is the apprehension of criminals in our communities," Healey told reporters. Immigration officials were seen making arrests in Boston and Chelsea, Massachusetts, on Wednesday. In Boston, there were no raids since the arrests were made one at a time. Healey noted that she does not support immigration arrests of lawful citizens. "Officials here follow the law," she said. The Massachusetts governor added that her state is not a sanctuary state, though there are laws in place that prevent law enforcement from holding undocumented immigrants after their criminal cases have concluded so federal immigration authorities can deport them.

New York Times [1/24/2025 4:40 PM, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Jonah E. Bromwich, 161405K, Negative] reports on Thursday, the Trump administration issued a memo that widened the scope of people it would seek to deport, including those who, like Mr. Luna, used CBP One, a mobile app, to enter the country. For nearly three years, thousands of migrants have come to New York City under Biden-era programs that allowed migrants from Venezuela, Haiti and elsewhere to legally enter the United States and temporarily remain for as long as two years. Now the Homeland Security Department has empowered Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials to expel those with a temporary legal status known as parole, which also allows migrants to work here. The new directive could have an outsize impact in New York City, where more than 225,000 migrants have arrived since early 2022, many under parole. It raised the possibility that the city’s 187 migrant shelters, where more than 49,000 people still reside, would be prime targets if ICE aggressively pursues migrants allowed in under the Biden administration.

Yahoo! News [1/24/2025 7:47 PM, Molly Crane-Newman, 57114K, Negative] reports ICE won’t be able to arrest undocumented New Yorkers facing criminal cases in state courthouses without a warrant, local court officials said Friday. In response to a Daily News inquiry concerning the New York court system’s response to the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigration, Office of Court Administration spokesman Al Baker said it would continue to follow regular procedure. New York law prohibits U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and other agencies from making civil arrests in or around state courthouses without a warrant signed by a judge. "The same law prohibits law enforcement agencies from making a civil arrest while a person is going to, remaining at, or returning from court unless they have a warrant signed by a judge," Baker said. Following Trump’s inauguration, the Department of Homeland Security said it would rescind guidelines followed under the Biden administration that thwart immigration enforcement in "sensitive areas" like "America’s schools and churches." A bill passed by the House and Senate this week would give immigration officials the power to deport undocumented people accused of crimes before their case has played out. And Trump’s acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove — one of the lawyers who represented him in the hush money case that ended in his conviction — in a memo to all Department of Justice employees Tuesday, said any state or federal authorities who refuse to comply with the enforcement of Trump’s immigration policies could face potential prosecution. "Federal law prohibits state and local actors from resisting, obstructing, and otherwise failing to comply with lawful immigration-related commands and requests," the memo reviewed by The News read." The U.S. Attorney’s Offices and litigating components of the Department of Justice shall investigate incidents involving any such misconduct for potential prosecution.”

NBC News [1/24/2025 5:21 PM, Nicole Acevedo, 50804K, Negative] reports New Jersey officials and immigrant rights advocates blasted federal immigration authorities for conducting a workplace raid on a small business in the city of Newark without a warrant. In a news conference Friday morning, Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said several agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement entered the back of the business, arrested three undocumented workers, and detained and questioned employees who are U.S. citizens. While ICE confirmed it conducted "a targeted enforcement operation at a worksite" in Newark, it did not say how many people were taken into custody following the raid, saying, "This is an active investigation and, per ICE policy, we cannot discuss ongoing investigations." In an interview with NBC News on Friday afternoon, Baraka confirmed that at least two other ICE workplace raids have taken place in Newark Friday. The mayor said they were still awaiting for details and locations. The Newark raid that happened on Thursday took place at Ocean Seafood Depot, a seafood wholesaler in the city. Baraka also accused ICE of detaining both undocumented residents and U.S. citizens. One of the detainees was a U.S. military veteran "who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned," Baraka said in a statement. In response, ICE said, "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity." The agency added that this was the case during the Newark raid.

CNN [1/24/2025 4:51 PM, Gloria Pazmino, Mark Morales, and Chelsea Bailey, 57114K, Neutral] reports that a New Jersey mayor says his city has been "unlawfully terrorized" after federal agents detained multiple people Thursday during what Immigration and Customs Enforcement called "a targeted enforcement operation." The agents "raided" a local business and detained "undocumented residents as well as citizens, without producing a warrant," Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement. "One of the detainees is a U.S. military veteran who suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned," he added. CNN has not been able to independently verify details of the mayor’s statements. A spokesman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed Thursday that a US citizen was involved but declined to comment further on the active investigation. "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual’s identity as was the case during a targeted enforcement operation at a worksite today in Newark, New Jersey," the spokesman said in a statement. FOX News [1/24/2025 4:20 PM, Chris Pandolfo, 49889K, Negative] reports Newark Mayor Ras Baraka, members of Congress, state officials and migrant activists on Friday spoke at a news conference, where the mayor claimed U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) acted without a warrant and detained workers, including a U.S. military veteran. The mayor also said that Newark must remain a sanctuary city for migrants. Officials and immigration activists said that ICE agents detained four women, who were all mothers, and four men. The mayor said he was "appalled" to learn that those who were detained had been fingerprinted and had pictures of their IDs taken, and he accused ICE of violating the Fourth and 14th Amendment rights of those detained. CBS New York [1/24/2025 10:55 AM, Christina Fan and Christine Sloane, 52225K, Negative] reports that the mayor of Newark, New Jersey is demanding answers after ICE agents conducted an operation in his city. Mayor Ras Baraka said in a statement Thursday a local business was raided and multiple people were detained. He spoke publicly about the situation Friday, saying he was "appalled, upset, angry." "Some ICE agents raided a business in our city without a warrant. They went in the back of the establishment. We believe there were three people who they say were undocumented that they detained. But they also detained folks that were, in fact, citizens of this country. One person showed their military veteran identification and was still questioned anyway," Baraka told reporters at a news conference. "People were fingerprinted, pictures of their IDs and face were taken there." U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed it conducted an enforcement operation at a worksite Thursday in Newark, but did not provide any further details. "The problem with it is that ICE went in there without a warrant. And we can disagree on politics, you can disagree with me about the role immigrants play in the economy of our community, you can disagree with me about the fact that most immigrants are not criminals, in fact, they are victims of violence in cities. We can disagree about whether you support mass deportation or not. But what we must agree on is that the thing that separates this country from many other countries around the world is the Constitution of the United States," said Baraka. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Reported similarly:
Univision [1/24/2025 3:52 PM, Staff, 7281K, Negative]

Newsweek [1/24/2025 8:49 AM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Neutral] reports the nation’s top immigration enforcement agency reportedly detained a military veteran in New Jersey as it conducted sweeping raids under President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation. Newsweek has contacted Immigration and Customs Enforcement for comment via email outside normal office hours. Mass deportations were a key component of Trump’s 2024 campaign. Since the president returned to office on Monday, hundreds of undocumented immigrants have been arrested under his administration’s crackdown, and critics say the immigration raids are sowing fear in vulnerable communities. Ras J. Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, said on Thursday that ICE raided a local business and detained "undocumented residents as well as citizens, without producing a warrant.” He added that a U.S. military veteran was among the people detained and that he "suffered the indignity of having the legitimacy of his military documentation questioned.” In an "Enforcement Update" posted on X, formerly Twitter, ICE said it made 538 arrests on Thursday. ABC News reported that the enforcement operations carried out following Trump’s second inauguration were typical of the routine immigration raids the agency had conducted for years. According to WABC, ICE also made arrests in New York on Wednesday, which included the apprehension of an alleged MS-13 member. In Massachusetts, WCVB reported that ICE conducted arrests in Chelsea and East Boston on Wednesday. The Trump administration has declared that agents will be permitted to enter "sensitive locations," including schools, hospitals and places of worship. Experts previously told Newsweek that ICE would become more empowered and emboldened under Trump’s second administration. Representative LaMonica McIver, a Democrat from New Jersey, said: "Without a warrant, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) conducted a raid on a Newark business today. My office has reached out to the Department of Homeland Security to get answers on exactly what happened, and how it was allowed that ICE came in—without warrant and without justification—to detain not only immigrants, but citizens and even a veteran of our nation’s military. "Already, Trump’s attacks on immigrant communities are hitting home and we will not back down. I am in contact with Mayor Baraka, and other local and federal officials as more unfolds. We will always fight for the dignity and rights of everyone in our district and across the country.”

Washington Post [1/24/2025 10:08 AM, Marianne LeVine, 40736K, Negative] reports that two days after President Donald Trump took office and began his immigration crackdown, a Mississippi state representative introduced legislation to create a “bounty hunter program” to identify people who are in the country illegally. The bill, introduced by state Rep. Justin Keen (R), would give $1,000 in state funds to bounty hunters for every person they help to deport, according to a press release from DeSoto County District Attorney Matthew Barton (R), who says he suggested the idea. “Donald Trump, as he was leading up to his inauguration after his November victory, spent a lot of time speaking about his priority agenda, and immigration was top of the list, and so the idea came about from just trying, I guess, to provide support for that agenda on a local and state level because ICE only has so many people,” Barton said in an interview, referring to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It’s unclear whether the legislation has a chance of passing, but its introduction illustrates how Trump’s hard-line immigration policies at the federal level have influenced policy proposals in states and localities — and the eagerness of some Republican state and local leaders to help the president deport huge numbers of people.

Chicago Tribune [1/24/2025 5:59 PM, Staff, 4917K, Negative] reports two Mexican men living in Lake County have been sentenced in federal court for illegally entering the United States, according to releases from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Hammond. Oscar Valdivia-Salas, 35, a citizen of Mexico and Merrillville resident, was sentenced by U.S. District Court Judge Philip P. Simon after pleading guilty to a felony charge of illegal reentry, announced Acting U.S. Attorney Tina L. Nommay. Valdivia-Salas was sentenced to 10 months in prison, one year of supervised release and ordered to pay a $100 special assessment. The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations with assistance from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Morgan. In the second case, Eulises Yobani Rafael-Garcia, 28, a citizen of Mexico and Gary resident, was sentenced by Simon following his plea of guilty to the felony charge of illegal re-entry. Rafael-Garcia, who has been in custody since his arrest on April 5, 2024, was sentenced to time served and ordered transferred to the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for removal proceedings. The case was investigated by Homeland Security Investigations with support from the National Park Service Law Enforcement Rangers and assistance from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Enforcement and Removal Operations, and the U.S. Marshals Service, Great Lakes Regional Fugitive Task Force. The case was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Francis Sohn.

Newsweek [1/25/2025 5:00 AM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Neutral] reports President Donald Trump is facing mounting resistance in Arizona after lifting restrictions on immigration enforcement, allowing agents to target sensitive locations like schools, churches and hospitals. On Monday, the acting head of the Department of Homeland Security, Benjamine Huffman, released a memo that reversed the Biden administration’s policy of prohibiting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents from operating in or near schools, churches and other "sensitive locations." In a statement regarding the policy shift, a DHS spokesperson said that "criminals will no longer be able to hide in America’s schools and churches to avoid arrest." Yassamin Ansari, who represents Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District in the U.S. House, has emerged as a vocal critic of the administration’s actions. Speaking to Newsweek, Ansari called the policy "ridiculous" and highlighted its impact on her constituents, many of whom are deeply concerned about their families. "There are places in the United States that should be considered safe places," said Ansari, who is the daughter of immigrants and at 32 is the youngest woman in the 119th Congress. "A school is one of those places; a hospital is one of those places. I have close friends who are doctors, and having to, on top of the work that they do daily to save lives, think about protecting people and their patients is outrageous." Ansari, who succeeded Senator Ruben Gallego, boycotted Trump’s inauguration and chose to attend a Martin Luther King Jr. Day march in her district in Phoenix. The Arizona Democrat has been hosting listening sessions with school districts, nonprofits, local legislators and labor unions to address the growing fears in her district among immigrant communities. "We heard from some of the schools that parents are already pulling their kids out in some cases of schools and that they’re concerned about what might happen to them or not knowing if a raid may happen in a school," she said. "I find all of Trump’s proposed policies on this topic to be outrageous. The reality of the matter is that Democrats, alongside Republicans, agree that we need comprehensive immigration reform and we need a secure border. None of the policies that Trump has proposed address these issues." Ansari said that scammers have been preying on immigrant communities, falsely claiming to offer legal services and defrauding vulnerable families. "There’s a lot of bad actors taking advantage of the situation. So we heard some stories of individuals alleging that they are lawyers and scamming people out of money."

New York Times [1/24/2025 9:45 PM, Hamed Aleaziz, 161405K, Negative] reports Department of Homeland Security officials have ordered what amounts to a pause for a range of programs that allowed immigrants to settle in the United States temporarily, including a key initiative providing an entryway for Ukrainians. The directive, contained in an email sent by the top official at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services on Thursday and obtained by New York Times, demands an immediate end to “final decisions” on applications related to the programs while the administration reviews them and decides whether to terminate them. The scope of the programs mentioned in the pause is vast, and the decision will block the entrance of immigrants fleeing some of the most unstable and desperate places in the world. In addition to Ukraine, which has been battered by years of war, the programs offered a pathway to immigrants from Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela, among others. The decision also indicates that the Trump administration plans to conduct an extensive crackdown on a wide range of programs that allowed people to enter temporarily. “This suspension on parole decisions is similar to the suspension of all asylum access at the border and the suspension of the refugee program,” said Yael Schacher, the director of Americas and Europe for Refugees International. “It’s a testament to the administration’s hostility to all humanitarian immigration.” Administration officials have said President Trump believes that many of the programs were never lawful to begin with. He signed an order on Monday demanding that the Department of Homeland Security end “all categorical parole programs that are contrary to the policies of the United States established in my executive orders,” or programs that allow a wide number of people to enter the country under a temporary status known as parole.

Telemundo52 [1/24/2025 2:57 PM, Eduardo Orbea, 124K, Neutral] reports the Department of Homeland Security announced that it will review the cases of immigrants who were authorized to enter or remain in the United States under the program known as Humanitarian Parole, imposed by the government of then-President Joe Biden. Now, President Donald Trump has signed an executive order ending so-called “parole programs” (often referred to as “family reunification”) that allowed relatives of certain citizens and permanent resident immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela to come to the United States while their visa applications are still pending. This would mean that migrants who were granted parole at ports of entry could be eligible for deportation or “expedited removal,” according to a memo. It is estimated that almost 1.5 million migrants were able to enter the country thanks to CBP One and CHNV.

AP [1/25/2025 12:05 AM, Graham Lee Brewer and Janie Har, 30936K, Neutral] reports President Donald Trump has said since his first administration that he wants to end birthright citizenship, a constitutional right for everyone born in the United States. This week he issued an executive order that would eliminate it, upending more than a century of precedent. On Thursday, however, a federal judge temporarily blocked it after 22 states quickly mounted a legal challenge. Over the years the right to citizenship has been won by various oppressed or marginalized groups after hard-fought legal battles. Here’s a look at how birthright citizenship has applied to some of those cases and how the Justice Department is using them today to defend Trump’s order. Native Americans were given U.S. citizenship in 1924. The Justice Department has cited their status as a legal analogy to justify Trump’s executive order in court. Arguing that “birth in the United States does not by itself entitle a person to citizenship, the person must also be ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States.” It raised a case from 1884 that found members of Indian tribes “are not ‘subject to the jurisdiction’ of the United States and are not constitutionally entitled to Citizenship,” the department said. Many scholars take a dim view of the validity of that analogy. It’s not a good or even new legal argument, said Gerald L. Neuman, a professor of international, foreign and comparative law at Harvard Law School. “But it’s got a bigger political movement behind it, and it’s embedded in a degree of openly expressed xenophobia and prejudice.” Some say the legal analogy to the citizens of tribal nations plays directly into that. “It’s not a valid comparison,” said Leo Chavez, a professor and author at the University of California, Irvine, who studies international migration. “It’s using the heat of race to make a political argument rather than a legal argument.”

New York Times [1/24/2025 4:37 PM, Adeel Hassan, 161405K, Neutral] reports that as President Trump embarked on a sweeping crackdown on immigration upon his return to office this week, he left unresolved a rift that surfaced last month among some of his most influential supporters about the role of skilled foreign workers in the U.S. labor market. The split over the H-1B visa program, which allows skilled workers like software engineers to work in the United States, has pitted hard-line immigration opponents against some of Mr. Trump’s most prominent backers in the tech industry, who say they rely on the program because they can’t find enough qualified American workers. It’s unclear where Mr. Trump will land. He pledged in his first term to discontinue H-1B visas, but last month he called it “a great program.” Critics say employers often use H-1B visas to hire workers who are willing to accept lower salaries than Americans, and there have been episodes in which the program has been used to bring in immigrants to do jobs that American workers had been doing. A rift erupted among Republicans in December about how much tolerance, if any, the incoming Trump administration should have for immigrants brought into the country on H-1B visas. In late December, Mr. Trump appeared to weigh in on the debate, saying he had often used the program as a businessman. “I’ve been a believer in H-1B,” he told The New York Post. “I have used it many times. It’s a great program.”

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 5:36 PM, Gordon Lubold, Neutral] reports the Pentagon on Friday readied more than 5,000 troops from high-profile warfighting units to deploy to the southwestern U.S., moving to fulfill President Trump’s order to escalate the military role along the border. Armed infantry and support troops from the 82nd Airborne Division and the 10th Mountain Division—two of the Army’s most experienced combat formations—could be at the border within days, one defense official said, following Trump’s Jan. 20 declaration that what he called an “invasion” of migrants, drug cartels and smugglers would be met with a military response. The Army prepared the forces as a pre-emptive move to ensure they would be ready should the White House order more active-duty troops to the border, as is widely expected, a military official said. The sending of large numbers of front-line combat forces would signal that Trump is breaking with past presidents’ recent practice of limiting deployments along the U.S.-Mexico border mostly to reservists and small numbers of active-duty soldiers. The forces would have the same mission to support law-enforcement agencies as the National Guard units already deployed to the border, the officials said. The 82nd and 10th Mountain divisions are among the Pentagon’s most combat-ready forces, reflecting Trump’s directive that the Pentagon “prioritize the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States along our national borders.” But it could be risky for the Army to send these kinds of forces for the border mission, said Mark Cancian, a retired Marine colonel with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank in Washington. “These are our most responsive forces so their commitment to this mission weakens our ability to respond to global emergencies that might pop up,” said Cancian. “A one-month deployment to provide an immediate capability might be OK, but they need to be replaced by other troops or contractors as soon as possible.” A brigade of the 82nd Airborne is kept on round-the-clock alert, poised to deploy in a national-security crisis, most often outside the U.S.

The Hill [1/24/2025 10:10 AM, Brad Dress, 16346K, Neutral] reports that the National Guard is deploying additional troops to the southern border to assist with President Trump’s directive for the military to help secure migration enforcement. In a Wednesday night statement, the National Guard Bureau said it was sending more resources to assist U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM), which is leading a task force to handle the border mission with support from the Department of Homeland Security and Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM). Gen. Steven Nordhaus, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said more than 1,600 National Guard troops are already deployed to the border along with more than 4,100 Texas National Guard personnel. "In conjunction with our Joint Service partners, we are developing additional support options to meet USNORTHCOM, USTRANSCOM and Department of Homeland Security force requirements as this critical mission evolves," Nordhaus said in a statement. Acting Defense Secretary Robert Salesses ordered 1,500 active-duty troops to the border earlier this week, a detachment that is expected to soon be fully deployed. It consists of 1,000 Army soldiers and 500 Marines. The Pentagon said the deployment is just the initial response, and expects more resources and potentially up to 10,000 troops to deploy, though that number is not considered final.

ABC News [1/24/2025 6:52 PM, Luis Martinez, 33392K, Neutral] reports U.S. military aircraft carried out two deportation flights to Guatemala on Thursday evening at about the same time that the first ground troops arrived at the southern border as part of the Trump administration’s use of military troops to help Customs and Border Protection personnel. Both the White House and the Pentagon are both prioritizing news about the border mission, with the Pentagon allowing only social media posts about the mission over the next 10 days while it carries out a worldwide refocus of its social media mission. The first of 1,500 Marine and Army personnel also began arriving on the border on Thursday evening, with Marines near San Diego arriving at the border wall with Mexico to lay down additional concertina wire and prepare for the arrival of more troops. That same evening, two U.S. Air Force C-17 aircraft took off from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona, and Biggs Army Airfield in El Paso, Texas, carrying approximately 80 deportees back to their home country of Guatemala. About 1,000 U.S. Army personnel, mostly military police units, from a variety of U.S. Army bases are headed to locations in Texas to assist CBP personnel, though it remains unclear what they will be doing as part of the new mission. The 1,500 troops will not be engaging in law enforcement duties, according to a U.S. official, who also stressed the military personnel are only being sent to the border in support of the Department of Homeland Security and that they will not have any interactions with migrants crossing the southern border. The first word of the C-17 deportation flights came from the White House’s X account. The first official video footage of the Marines at the border in San Diego was also posted on that same account later in the day. The postings are an indication of how the Trump White House is prioritizing news of the border mission and is reaching a large audience through the size of its social media accounts. "Just as he promised, President Trump is sending a strong message to the world: those who enter the United States illegally will face serious consequences," the official White House said.

CBS Austin [1/24/2025 3:50 PM, Ray Lewis, 581K, Positive] reports the White House said Friday the Marine Corps is helping Customs and Border Protection (CBP) with a "mission to secure America" at the southern border. Acting Secretary of Defense Robert Salesses announced Wednesday the Department of Defense (DOD) would send 1,500 service members, as well as "air and intelligence assets," to the southern border to add to the troops already conducting "enforcement operations" there. The additional troops will start working on placing physical barriers at the border, the DOD quoted a senior military official as saying. The DOD will also provide "airlift support" to help deport more than 5,000 people detained at the border, the department noted.

Washington Post [1/24/2025 5:22 PM, Dan Lamothe, 40736K, Neutral] reports one military official, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive and evolving situation, said some units already have received notifications warning that they may be needed to deploy depending on the Trump administration’s desires. These efforts would supplement the Pentagon’s move this week to send about 1,000 soldiers and 500 Marines to the border to augment the existing force, which dates to the Biden administration. The extensive preparations foreshadow what could become a major long-term and politically fraught mission for the Pentagon, which historically has sought to limit its involvement at the border because of the limits imposed on the military by federal law and the highly charged dynamics of employing such force within the United States.

US News & World Report [1/24/2025 5:27 PM, Elliott Davis Jr., 30936K, Neutral] reports perhaps lost in the flurry of President Donald Trump’s Day One executive orders earlier this week was him killing a mobile application’s key feature tied to immigration. But an expert says the impact of the move should not be underestimated. The language of the action, more specifically, ordered officials to cease using the application "as a method of paroling or facilitating the entry of otherwise inadmissible aliens into the United States." The app – which actually was launched near the end of Trump’s first term before Joe Biden’s administration later expanded its use – offered a total of 15 different capabilities for travelers, according to information provided by a Customs and Border Protection official before the transfer of power.

AP [1/25/2025 12:05 AM, Elliot Spagat, Gregory Bull and Eugene Garcia, 47097K, Neutral] reports long stretches of silence on a Border Patrol scanner are punctuated with updates on tracking a single migrant for hours. The radio traffic sounds like a throwback to earlier times, before the United States became the largest destination for asylum-seekers in 2017. “There’s a pair way down there. We’ll see if they start moving up,” one agent says. “Yeah, maybe they’ll try to move north in a bit,” another responds. Saying that “America’s sovereignty is under attack,” President Donald Trump’s declaration of a border emergency comes at a time of relative calm after years of deep turmoil. Active-duty military arrived Thursday in San Diego and in El Paso, Texas, as part of an initial deployment of 1,500 troops. Arrests for illegal border crossings plummeted more than 80% to about 47,000 in December from an all-time high of 250,000 the same period a year earlier. Arrests fell by about half when Mexican authorities increased enforcement within their own borders a year ago and by about half again when former President Joe Biden introduced severe asylum restrictions in June. For Trump, Biden didn’t go nearly far enough. The last monthly gauge of border arrests under Biden hovered near 4 1/2-year lows and was below much of 2019, during Trump’s first term, but about triple from April 2017, early in Trump’s presidency and a low point that he highlighted on giant charts at campaign rallies. The Associated Press joined the Border Patrol for six hours Thursday in San Diego, the busiest corridor for illegal crossings much of the last year, and found no migrants until the last half-hour. Three Chinese men and one Malaysian turned themselves in to agents minutes after walking through a gap in the border wall. Almost simultaneously, eight from India and one from Nepal crossed and waited for agents. The men were taken for processing to large white tents that opened during Biden’s presidency.

Telemundo Amarillo [1/24/2025 5:46 PM, Staff, 1K, Negative] reports an attempted smuggling of more than a dozen people was intercepted Thursday afternoon in Texas. This comes after several law enforcement agencies, including the Department of Public Safety, Border Patrol, Homeland Security and the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office, arrested Abelardo Herrera for his alleged involvement in a human trafficking cell that stretched from Laredo to Bexar County. Also, during the arrest, 16 undocumented immigrants were found. The joint investigation continues.

Miami Herald [1/24/2025 3:39 PM, Sara Schilling, 6595K, Negative] reports a 78-year-old man appears to have died from hypothermia after taking shelter from bad weather in a non-running farm truck, Montana deputies said. Lynn Taskila, of Great Falls, was missing for about a month when his body was found Jan. 23 on a farm north of Rudyard, the Hill County Sheriff’s Office said in a Facebook post. No foul play is suspected in his death, deputies said. The search for Taskila included using a helicopter from U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Montana air unit, the police department said in a Facebook post.

Yahoo! News [1/24/2025 5:41 PM, Danielle Dawson, 57114K, Neutral] reports dozens of active duty troops arrived at the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego on Friday, marking the first batch to deploy following President Donald Trump’s order to bolster border security. The Pentagon announced the plans Wednesday, saying an initial 1,500 service members would be repositioned along the border this week with more expected once defense and homeland security leaders iron out internal requests for support. Among those who were expected to be utilized included 1,000 Army soldiers and 500 Marines from Camp Pendleton. U.S. officials said Thursday the bulk of the initial deployment were to be used in El Paso and here in San Diego. U.S. officials said it’s not yet clear how many more service members would get tapped in the near future, but they would include active duty, National Guard and reserves, and come from land, air and sea forces. Other defense and military officials this week estimated that the additional number deployed could be in the thousands. What role the military personnel will play in the larger border crackdown remains unclear.

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 5:56 PM, Vipal Monga, Neutral] reports officials in Canada have long played down its role as a hub in the global trade of the deadly synthetic opioid fentanyl. Canada was a bit player compared with China’s role as a supplier of the drug’s raw ingredients and Mexico’s as a manufacturer and trafficker, they said. Suddenly, Canada’s role in the fentanyl global supply chain is a matter of urgent concern, in both the Canadian capital, Ottawa, and in Washington. President Trump is making Canadian fentanyl exports a major issue. A growing body of evidence from Canadian law-enforcement investigations shows that transnational organized-crime groups, including ones linked to Mexican cartels, are increasingly using Canada as a base from which to make drugs and export them to the U.S., Europe and Australia. The message: The problem can no longer be swept under the rug, and it is only getting worse. “The fentanyl coming through Canada is massive,” Trump said this past week. He demanded that Canada stop the flow of drugs and undocumented migrants into the U.S. or face punitive tariffs starting as soon as Feb. 1. Fentanyl has ravaged Canadian cities including Vancouver, which has some of the highest overdose rates in North America. Now, more of the product is leaving Canada, headed for places including the U.S. Canada’s emergence as an exporter of fentanyl has given Trump new leverage in his threats on trade and border issues. Canadian officials dispute Trump’s claims. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that drug flow into the U.S. from Canada doesn’t represent an emergency. He said this past week that the drugs seized at the Canadian border are a fraction of those caught at the southern border. The U.S. Border Patrol seized 46 pounds of the opioid at the northern border last year, compared with 21,000 pounds seized at the southern border with Mexico. But Canadian financial and law-enforcement agencies have said that Canada does have a problem with fentanyl trafficking. Transnational organized-crime groups, including ones linked to Mexican cartels, are making drugs in Canada and exporting them. On Thursday, a report by Canada’s Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center, which monitors suspected money-laundering in Canada, said trafficking networks in Canada, the U.S. and Mexico have increased production of fentanyl and other drugs, and have been sending more offshore.

Bloomberg [1/24/2025 4:10 PM, Randy Thanthong-Knight, 21617K, Negative] reports Canada is planning to set up a center to accommodate migrants from the US crossing the northern border into Quebec as the Trump administration pushes ahead with an immigration crackdown. The Canadian government’s move is part of infrastructure contingency plans “in the event of an influx of asylum seekers where additional space may be required,” Canada Border Services Agency said Friday in an emailed statement. The planned space will serve as a processing center for asylum claimants in Saint-Bernard-de-Lacolle — just across the border from Champlain, New York, and about 65 kilometers (40 miles) south of Montreal.

Yahoo! News [1/24/2025 1:25 PM, Staff, 57114K, Negative] reports that Atlanta police say they caught a Transportation Security Administration officer with a gun past a security checkpoint earlier this week. Officers arrested Matthew Gilbert, 58, at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport on Tuesday. Gilbert was booked on a reckless conduct charge in Clayton County and released on Thursday night. In a statement to Channel 2 Action News, a TSA spokesperson said it is aware of Gilbert’s arrest. "TSA has zero tolerance for misconduct on or off duty and the officer involved has been removed from screening status, placed on leave pending further action, based on resolution of the case. Passenger and employee safety is top priority for TSA, and we are working closely with our Atlanta Airport Police partners on this incident." Atlanta airport ranked No. 1 in 2024 for guns confiscated. Agents seized 498 firearms at security checkpoints in eight airports across Georgia last year and 440 of those were detected at Hartsfield-Jackson. That’s a slight decrease from 451, the number of firearms discovered at the security checkpoints in 2023.

Reported similarly:
Atlanta Journal-Constitution [1/24/2025 3:33 PM, Caroline Silva, Negative]

Reuters [1/25/2025 12:03 AM, Nandita Bose and Steve Holland, 36472K, Negative] reports U.S. President Donald Trump on Friday floated shuttering the Federal Emergency Management Agency during a trip to disaster areas in North Carolina and California, where he pledged government support and sparred with Democratic officials. Fresh from assuming office on Monday, Trump’s visit showcased a desire to show up early in the two states, hit by a hurricane and massive wildfires, respectively. But he punctured the visits with criticism of FEMA, vowing to sign an executive order to overhaul or eliminate the main federal agency that responds to natural disasters. "FEMA has turned out to be a disaster," he said during a tour of a North Carolina neighborhood destroyed by September’s Hurricane Helene. "I think we recommend that FEMA go away." Trump accused FEMA of bungling emergency relief efforts there and said he preferred that states be given federal money to handle disasters themselves. The president has also criticized California’s response to the Los Angeles fires, which have caused widespread destruction, but he pledged to work with Governor Gavin Newsom and offered help to Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass while visiting the state. "We’re looking to get something completed. And the way you get it completed is to work together to govern the state, and we’re going to get it completed. They’re going to need a lot of federal help," Trump told reporters after Newsom met him on the tarmac when Air Force One landed later in Los Angeles. Three massive blazes still threaten the region. Newsom, a Democrat who has had a tense relationship with the Republican leader, told Trump that California would need his support. Trump has accused Newsom and Bass of "gross incompetence" and Republican colleagues in Congress have threatened to withhold disaster aid. During a meeting with California officials, Trump sparred with Bass and another Democratic lawmaker, pressing the mayor to use her emergency powers, let people get back to their properties quickly, and allow them to remove debris on their own. Bass emphasized the importance of safety and the lawmaker, Representative Brad Sherman, praised FEMA’s work. Trump asked Richard Grenell, a former ambassador to Germany, to represent him in the response to the California fires.

Reported similarly:
Washington Post [1/24/2025 5:16 PM, Cat Zakrzewski, Matt Viser and Brady Dennis, Neutral]

NBC News [1/24/2025 2:45 PM, Elyse Perlmutter-Gumbiner, Vaughn Hillyard, and Alexandra Marquez, 50804K, Neutral] reports that President Donald Trump on Friday floated the idea of overhauling or eliminating the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, while visiting North Carolina to view the aftermath of last year’s Hurricane Helene. "I’ll also be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of FEMA. I think, frankly, FEMA is not good," Trump said at a hurricane recovery briefing in Fletcher, North Carolina. "FEMA has really let us down, let the country down. And I don’t know if that’s Biden’s fault or whose fault it is, but we’re going to take over it. We’re going to do a good job," Trump told reporters in separate remarks upon landing in Asheville. He suggested cutting FEMA out of the process entirely for future natural disasters, saying "I’ll be direct. In other words, the aid will go through us. So rather than going through FEMA, it will go through us. And I think maybe this is a good place to start, because, and in all fairness to the governor, in all fairness to everybody else, FEMA was not on the ball, and we’re going to turn it all around." The president spoke about overhauling FEMA entirely, saying "probably less FEMA, because FEMA just hasn’t done the job. And we’re looking at the whole concept of FEMA." He also voiced support for letting states take charge of disaster response in the aftermath of natural disasters such as hurricanes and wildfires, telling reporters, "I’d like to see the states take care of disasters, let the state take care of the tornadoes and the hurricanes and all of the other things that happen. And I think you’re going to find it a lot less expensive. You’ll do it for less than half and you’re going to get a lot quicker response."

Reported similarly:
Roll Call [1/24/2025 3:43 PM, John T. Bennett, 440K, Neutral]
Reuters [1/23/2025 12:01 PM, Nandita Bose, 48128K, Neutral]
FOX News [1/24/2025 12:02 PM, Diana Stancy, 49889K, Neutral]

ABC News [1/24/2025 5:57 PM, Lauren Peller, MaryAlice Parks, Katherine Faulders, and Benjamin Siegel, Neutral] reports President Donald Trump has never kept his contempt for the Federal Emergency Management Agency a secret, contending that the agency has been operating poorly and rarely helped disaster victims. On Friday, while touring North Carolina neighborhoods that were ravaged by Hurricane Helene, the president said he was planning an executive order that would "begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of them." His order would create a task force that would look for reforms, according to sources. However, Trump’s authority does not give him the power to terminate the agency unilaterally, according to federal laws. Doing so would require congressional action.

The Hill [1/24/2025 6:00 AM, Zack Budryk, 16346K, Neutral] reports political tensions and questions swirling around the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) promise to be a key test for South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem (R) as she takes over the department that houses the agency. Noem, President Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), is on track for Senate confirmation after the chamber’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee advanced her nomination in a 13-2 vote Monday. While much of her immediate itinerary will likely focus on immigration, her confirmation process is also taking place amid the ongoing wildfire crisis in California and recovery from devastating hurricanes in the Southeast. If Noem is confirmed as head of DHS, she will be tasked with overseeing FEMA as it navigates a response to those disasters that Trump has thus far been sharply critical of, and as the president and his administration’s push for a federal government shake-up raise questions about the broader future of the agency. Both FEMA and the wildfires that have burned about 40,000 acres in Southern California in recent weeks, killing more than two dozen people and causing an estimated $250 billion-$275 billion in damage, have been the subject of political tensions as Trump has entered his second term. The president has criticized the agency, saying in a Wednesday interview with Fox News’s Sean Hannity that FEMA’s future is "gonna be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.” In the same interview, he doubled down on threats to withhold federal aid to help California to help fight and recover from the fires unless the state changes its approach to water management. GOP lawmakers including Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have called for conditions to be attached to any aid. Democratic lawmakers and California officials have raised concerns about the prospect of Trump politicizing aid to the state amid Noem’s nomination and confirmation process. Noem said in her confirmation hearing last week that she would follow the law and not politicize any distribution of disaster aid as DHS secretary, but she sidestepped whether she would disregard an order from Trump to do so. Asked by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) about what she would do if faced with such an order, Noem said she would not entertain "hypotheticals," to which Blumenthal responded with reports that Trump disregarded wildfire aid requests from then-Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) in his first term.

Newsweek [1/24/2025 12:09 PM, Jesus Mesa, 56005K, Neutral] reports that a deadly winter storm that brought ice, snow and freezing temperatures to North Carolina has intensified scrutiny of the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) handling of disaster recovery efforts in the state. Months after Hurricane Helene devastated parts of Western North Carolina, thousands of residents remain displaced, with many still living in temporary accommodations, including tents and trailers. Newsweek reached out to FEMA for comment on Friday. President Donald Trump is scheduled to travel to North Carolina and Los Angeles on Friday to visit areas hit by hurricanes and wildfires, marking the first trip of his second term. Trump criticized former President Joe Biden’s handling of Hurricane Helene’s aftermath in North Carolina, calling it "horrible" and vowing to address lingering issues from the storm, which struck in September. "We’re going to get it fixed up," Trump told reporters before leaving the White House on Friday. "FEMA is not gonna come down here with tractors and help clean you up," said Lewis Arthur, a community organizer in Swannanoa, said in a December interview with Asheville Watchdog. "That money isn’t showing—it’s being delayed." [Editorial note: consult source link for video]

Bloomberg [1/24/2025 9:00 AM, Zahra Hirji, 21617K, Neutral] reports that fire-wracked Los Angeles, facing its worst natural disaster in decades, has never needed the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) more. As new fires threaten homes across America’s second-largest city, FEMA has deployed roughly 550 experts to help displaced residents find shelter, access aid and coordinate debris removal in neighborhoods reduced to ash. They’re staffing help centers and working with fire survivors, while more than 2,600 of their colleagues are still aiding in recovery efforts from last year’s hurricanes in North Carolina and Florida. Now, President Donald Trump has questioned whether the agency the US turns to whenever major disasters strike should continue to play that role while also installing a former Navy SEAL without prior FEMA experience as interim chief.

“FEMA has not done their job for the last four years,” Trump told Fox News Wednesday, criticizing its performance in North Carolina in particular. “FEMA is going to be a whole big discussion very shortly, because I’d rather see the states take care of their own problems.”

Trump is set to visit Asheville, North Carolina, and Los Angeles on Friday, after repeatedly criticizing California’s fire response and clashing with Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom. He has suggested making federal aid dependent on the state changing its water management policies.

New York Times [1/24/2025 9:46 AM, Eduardo Medina, 161405K, Negative] reports that four months after Hurricane Helene unleashed deadly flooding and landslides that killed 104 people in North Carolina communities wedged across forests and mountains, the unsettling reality of an extremely slow, difficult and costly recovery has become painfully clear in the western part of the state. Vehicles that were swallowed by rapidly rising rivers on Sept. 27 remain abandoned in the water. Many partially destroyed streets and bridges that were covered with mud months ago are still impassable. And the frigid blast of Arctic air that recently hovered throughout the South has slowed recovery efforts. The damage was not spread evenly: In downtown Asheville, the region’s hub, it almost looks as if the storm never happened. And that same split screen informs President Trump’s visit on Friday to an area where he’s far more popular in the surrounding mountain towns than he is in largely liberal Asheville. But whether people voted for Mr. Trump or not, residents devastated by the deadliest storm to ever strike North Carolina agree on one thing: There is a drastic need for more aid, and they believe it needs to come quickly.

San Francisco Chronicle [1/24/2025 6:53 PM, Julie Johnson, 4368K, Negative] reports President Donald Trump Friday said he would help the Los Angeles area recover from wildfires during a brief press conference before he set out in a helicopter to survey the burned wreckage in Pacific Palisades. Just hours earlier, Trump threatened to withhold disaster aid to California unless the state changed its water allocation and voting policies. But he did not repeat those demands on the tarmac in Los Angeles with Gov. Gavin Newsom, who greeted him off the plane. The politicians shook hands and embraced then traded promises to work together. "Nobody’s ever probably seen anything like this … since the Second World War," Trump said. "We’ll get it permanently fixed so it won’t happen again.” "We’re going to need your support, we’re going to need your help," Newsom said. Trump discussed the "tremendous" number of people killed and amount of real estate damage from the two blazes. The fires broke out on Jan. 7 amid hurricane-force winds, which fanned the flames into horrific urban conflagrations that reduced to ashes thousands of homes in and around Pacific Palisades and Altadena. At least 28 people were killed. Newsom has criticized Trump for politicizing government aid to victims of disasters. On Friday, Newsom spokesperson Tara Gallegos condemned Trump’s latest threats. "Conditioning aid to American citizens is wrong," she said. Trump outlined his demands earlier Friday in North Carolina, where he was surveying areas still recovering from Hurricane Helene.

Newsweek [1/24/2025 3:34 PM, Peter Aitken, 56005K, Negative] reports that President Donald Trump on Thursday stated two conditions that he would need to see before agreeing to release federal aid to wildfire-devastated California. Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment by email on Friday. California has suffered historic damage from wildfires that started around Los Angeles County and recently spread to Venture and San Diego. The fires around Los Angeles destroyed just over 40,000 acres, with the bulk of the damage caused by the Palisades fire and the Eaton fire—both of which are now largely but not yet fully contained. Republicans first floated the idea of conditional disaster relief earlier this month, angering California officials and creating division in the party over what some perceived as inconsistency about policies surrounding a very sensitive topic. House Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana first floated the idea, saying that lawmakers needed to "have a serious conversation about that," blaming California policies for exacerbating the widespread damage of the wildfires. Republican Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, whose state was hit with catastrophic flooding after Hurricane Helene last year, argued that the government had to "be consistent on disaster supplement, period."

Yahoo! News [1/24/2025 11:37 AM, Andrew Feinberg, 57114K, Neutral] reports that President Donald Trump on Friday said he would demand that California overhaul its’ election laws and reverse environmental policies as a condition of signing any legislation providing federal funds to help recover from the wildfires that have devastated the Los Angeles area in recent weeks. He also claimed that the Federal Emergency Management Agency had mishandled efforts to help North Carolinians recover from Hurricane Helene and suggested that the White House and Republican National Committee would somehow take over distribution of any relief funds authorized by Congress for the Tar Heel State as he arrived there to view hurricane damage before he travels to California to see damage from the wildfires. Speaking to reporters just after he disembarked from Air Force One, Trump told reporters that FEMA, which is part of the Department of Homeland Security, "has really let us down," though it was unclear what exactly he was accusing the agency of having done or not done. Trump also said FEMA would not be involved in further relief efforts and instead suggested that Whatley, North Carolina Governor Josh Stein (D) and a trio of Republican House members would be working with the White House directly because the agency "hasn’t done the job."

Bloomberg [1/24/2025 6:27 PM, Lauren Rosenthal, 21617K, Negative] reports Los Angeles is bracing for potential landslides and dangerous runoff near recent wildfires, as Southern California prepares for its first significant rains since spring. A slow-moving weather system packing moisture from the Pacific Ocean is expected to descend on Southern California Saturday, bringing as much as 2 inches (5.1 centimeters) of rain to the drought-stricken region by Monday night. Though it will relieve wildfire risk, forecasters are warning the system could set off thunderstorms and heavy downpours overnight Sunday into Monday, which could trigger sudden slides near newly burned areas. The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for Malibu, Pacific Palisades and Pasadena beginning at 4 p.m. local time Sunday, which will extend through late Monday afternoon due to the risk of debris flows near the sites of the Palisades and Eaton fires in Los Angeles, as well as the Hughes fire currently burning north of the city. Homes downhill from the Bridge fire, which burned north of West Covina in September, also are vulnerable.

Newsweek [1/24/2025 6:36 PM, Joshua Rhett Miller, 56005K, Neutral] reports that a former real estate agent was arrested for trespassing after jumping over a wall at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, authorities said. Bijan Ty Arceo, 32, of Sunny Isles, Florida, was busted at about 6 p.m. Wednesday when Palm Beach police responded to the Ocean Boulevard property to assist the United States Secret Service with an unauthorized person on the property. Officers took Arceo into custody after he "jumped over a wall" that surrounds Mar-a-Lago, according to a probable cause affidavit obtained by Newsweek. Arceo, who was previously licensed as a real estate broker in Colorado, gained access to the property via South Ocean Boulevard near a north service gate. Secret Service agency confirmed that he did not have permission to access the protected site, the affidavit states. Trump’s sprawling estate has numerous "no trespassing" signs posted along its perimeter, as well as tall gates that typically remain closed, Palm Beach police noted in the affidavit. Secret Service agents said they spotted Arceo climbing over a wall just south of a closed gate with a "no trespassing sign," police said. Attempts to reach Arceo or his court-appointed attorney were unsuccessful early Friday. He pleaded not guilty to trespassing with the intent to commit an offense during his first court appearance Thursday and was ordered held on $20,000 bond by Judge Ashley Zuckerman.

Chicago Tribune [1/24/2025 6:37 PM, Rebecca Johnson, Nell Salzman and Alice Yin, 4917K, Neutral] reports a reported sighting of immigration agents attempting to enter an elementary school on Chicago’s Southwest Side on Friday was in fact U.S. Secret Service agents investigating a threat, a federal spokesperson said late Friday afternoon. Chicago Public Schools at first announced that its officials blocked federal immigration officers from going into an elementary school on Chicago’s Southwest Side Friday and talking to students. But later in the day Friday, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told the Tribune it was in fact officers with that agency who investigating a threat in against a "protectee" in connection with the ban on TikTok. Guglielmi would not identify the protectee, but the Secret Service oversees protection for President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance, their immediate families, and former presidents. Two Secret Service agents went to a residence near the school before stepping on campus, Guglielmi said. The officials identified themselves as Secret Service agents and left their business card for school leadership to call them, he said.

WPRI [1/24/2025 4:16 PM, Jusolyn Flower, Neutral] reports four people were rescued Thursday night after two fishing boats crashed off the coast of Block Island, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The Coast Guard Sector Long Island Sound said it dispatched crews around 8:30 p.m. after receiving reports of a collision about 10 miles south of the island. Six people aboard the 87-foot scalloper, Vanquish, reported no injuries or significant damage. However, the 55-foot trawler, Mattie and Maren II, faced critical flooding, with its crew struggling to keep up with dewatering efforts as the engine room filled with water. By 9:15 p.m., another Coast Guard crew arrived on scene to assist, but the USCG said worsening weather conditions, including 4- to 6-foot seas and 23 mph winds, made dewatering efforts unsuccessful. All four crew members aboard the Mattie and Maren II were safely rescued and taken to Station Montauk, with no reported injuries. The Vanquish returned to its home port in New Bedford. The cause of the crash is under investigation.

USA Today [1/24/2025 4:43 PM, Taylor Ardrey, 89965K, Neutral] reports the U.S. military is working to release a 660-foot Canadian freighter that got trapped in the thick ice on Lake Erie earlier this week. Seventeen people are aboard the Manitoulin, which initially got stuck in the frigid water on Wednesday morning following a wheat delivery, WIVB and CBC News reported. It got caught near Buffalo, New York’s shoreline, on its way back to Sarnia, a city in Ontario. Icebreaking efforts −including the arrival of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Bristol Bay to Buffalo on Thursday − are underway, and crews reportedly continued on Friday. WIVB and CBC News reported that the crews on board are confirmed to be safe, and the cargo-carrying ship has enough food and provisions while officials are working to get them out. CBS News [1/24/2025 7:49 AM, Staff, 52225K, Positive] reports a Canadian freighter with 17 people on board got stuck in the ice on Lake Erie while departing Buffalo, according to the Coast Guard, which arrived with icebreaking equipment Thursday to begin freeing the vessel. The 663-foot Manitoulin had dropped off a load of wheat and was heading back to Sarnia, Ontario, on Wednesday when it became stuck in ice that was rapidly forming in sub-zero temperatures off the Buffalo shoreline. It remained there through Thursday, creating a striking sight on the lake, surrounded on all sides by ice and snow. U.S. Coast Guard Lt. Bridgette Baldwin told CBS affiliate WIVB-TV that the ice on Lake Erie is thicker than normal right now "so local ice breakers and local Coast Guard vessels don’t have the capability to break ice with that level of thickness." "We just haven’t had a bad winter in quite a while. So now that we’ve had one and people haven’t seen this for a bit, they’re like ‘what’s going on?’" said Paul Angelillo, a search and rescue specialist with the Coast Guard in Buffalo. Great Lakes freighters typically are able to navigate surface ice in the winter, but occasionally encounter ice that’s too hard or thick to break through, he said. The Manitoulin wasn’t damaged and the captain and crew were safe, the Coast Guard said. A Coast Guard cutter started breaking up ice around the ship by Thursday afternoon. Efforts to free the ship were paused for the night and were scheduled to resume Friday morning, according to the Coast Guard. The incident unfolded a day after a U.S. Coast Guard crew rescued two people from an ice floe in Saginaw Bay, Michigan. An ice rescue team was able to reach both people and return them safely to shore, officials said. No injuries were reported.

Yahoo! News [1/24/2025 9:58 AM, Matt Jaworowski, 57114K, Positive] reports that U.S. Coast Guard crews continue to work Friday to free a Canadian freighter stuck in ice on Lake Erie. According to the Associated Press, the Manitoulin, a 663-foot freighter, had dropped off a load of wheat Wednesday in Buffalo, New York, and left port to return to Sarnia, Ontario, only to be caught in rapidly forming ice later that morning near the Buffalo shoreline. News 8 sister station WIVB-TV reports that Bristol Bay, a USCG icebreaker, arrived on the scene Thursday afternoon. Work paused Thursday night and started up again this morning. "The situation that we are facing here on Lake Erie is that we have greater ice thickness than usual so local ice breakers and local Coast Guard vessels don’t have the capability to break ice with that level of thickness," USCG Lt. j.g. Bridgette Baldwin told WIVB. The captain and crew of 17 are all safe and the ship has not sustained any damage. WIVB reports the ship has plenty of fuel and provisions onboard.

Houston Chronicle [1/24/2025 10:48 AM, John Lomax V, 2315K, Negative] reports that the U.S. Coast Guard will immediately "surge" personnel and equipment to areas along the U.S. border in response to executive orders issued by President Donald Trump, officials said in a news release. The Coast Guard is deploying vessels and specialized forces to maritime borders from Alaska to the Gulf of Mexico, acting commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday said in the release. "Together, in coordination with our Department of Homeland Security and Department of Defense teammates, we will detect, deter and interdict illegal migration, drug smuggling and other terrorist or hostile activity before it reaches our border," Lunday said. The news came Tuesday, hours after Trump fired Adm. Linda Fagan, who was the Coast Guard’s top officer under former President Joe Biden, for "leadership deficiencies," according to the Associated Press. According to the release, the Coast Guard will send additional assets to the Gulf of Mexico, the Pacific Coast near Mexico, U.S. territories and non-contiguous states such as Hawaii and Alaska and to waters near Florida to "prevent a maritime mass migration from Haiti and/or Cuba." The move stoked fears from critics who warned of Trump’s plan to roll out a sweeping overhaul to U.S. immigration policy that includes a goal to deport migrants by the thousands.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser [1/24/2025 5:35 PM, Staff, Neutral] reports police confirmed today that remains found about 200 yards off Oahu’s North Shore were of Joseph "Joey " Fujioka, one of two teenagers who went missing last weekend. Fujioka, 18, and 17-year-old Samantha Chun were the subject of a multiagency four-day search after they didn’t return home Friday night following an evening on the North Shore. The ocean search for the two missing Mililani teenagers was suspended at sunset Tuesday. The remains were discovered in the water off Ke Iki Beach on Saturday afternoon. The U.S. Coast Guard was notified about the missing teens around 11 a.m. Saturday morning after Fujioka’s mother found his and Chun’s belongings on the beach. At a news conference earlier this week, Honolulu Police Lt. Deena Thoemmes said HPD was investigating.

FOX News [1/25/2025 4:00 AM, Michael Ruiz, 49889K, Neutral] reports two days of hearings on defense motions in the quadruple murder case against University of Idaho student stabbings suspect Bryan Kohberger ended without any official decisions but revealed new details ahead of his highly anticipated trial later this year. The defense appeared to confirm early reports that Kohberger was spotted wearing rubber gloves in his parents’ kitchen when tactical officers burst in to arrest him. A key eyewitness was accused of having memory problems, drinking and telling a conflicting story. The defense confirmed that Kohberger arrived at school in Pullman, Washington, in June 2022. And the judge issued a stern warning to both sides about what he expects out of their expert disclosures moving forward. Judge Steven Hippler said he would take the arguments under advisement and issue his decisions later. Here are some key developments from the two-day hearing. Kohberger’s defense wants investigative genetic genealogy evidence suppressed. Their arguments, however, did not appear to move the judge. "I struggle with the idea that DNA left at a crime scene, that there’s any expectation of privacy," Judge Steven Hippler told Kohberger’s lead defense attorney, Anne Taylor. Later, as she tried to attack other elements of a probable cause affidavit, he returned to DNA as the apparent deciding factor. Hippler asked if DNA itself found on a knife sheath under a victim’s body isn’t enough to support probable cause on its own. "Isn’t that probable cause every day and twice on Sunday?" he asked. She said not in this case, but experts say the DNA evidence is likely Kohberger’s greatest threat. "The cellphone records certainly make him look bad, although the fact that the phone was turned off at the time of the murders helps him," said Andrew Stoltmann, a Chicago attorney who has been following the case. "But I think the DNA sinks his Bismarck."

AZCentral.com [1/24/2025 4:34 PM, Karen Bartunek, Negative] reports two Somalian citizens living in Tucson were sentenced last week for a plot in 2019 to join the terrorist organization ISIS. Ahmed Mahad Mohamed, 27, was sentenced to 132 months in prison and Abdi Yemeni Hussein, 26, was sentenced to 96 months in prison followed by lifetime terms of supervised release. According to investigators, beginning near August 2018, Mohamed sought out other ISIS supporters online, stating that he wanted to travel to ISIS-controlled territory to become "the beheading guy" and martyr himself. His dream to go to Syria, join ISIS, and "fight jihad" in ISIS territory abroad was shared by his friend, Hussein. Chief U.S. District Judge Jennifer G. Zipps also ordered both defendants to be removed from the United States and returned to Somalia following their sentences of imprisonment. Mohamed and Hussein pleaded guilty to federal charges of conspiracy to provide material support and resources to a designated foreign terrorist organization, the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS), on August 1, 2024. The FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force investigated this case. The U.S. Attorney’s Office, District of Arizona, and the Department of Justice National Security Division’s Counterterrorism Section handled the prosecution.

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 11:46 PM, Nancy A. Youssef and Lindsay Wise and Siobhan Hughes, Neutral] reports Pete Hegseth, a former Army National Guardsman and Fox News host, was narrowly confirmed Friday by the Senate as secretary of defense, overcoming accusations of sexual assault and excessive drinking that Democrats said were disqualifying but that he and his allies called smears. Republicans largely stuck together to approve one of President Trump’s most controversial cabinet picks, backing him as a “change agent” for the Pentagon, after hours of tension over whether the nominee had enough support. Shortly after the vote got under way, Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.) said in a statement that he would support the nominee, providing the key 50th vote. Vice President JD Vance, in his role as president of the Senate, then broke the tie, confirming Hegseth by 51-50. Republicans control the Senate 53-47, and with all Democrats opposed to his confirmation, Hegseth couldn’t afford to lose the support of more than three Republican senators. Two centrist Republicans—Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine—voted against Hegseth, citing his lack of experience, concerns about his character and his past statements opposing women in combat. They were joined by Sen. Mitch McConnell, the former Senate Republican leader, who flashed Sphinx-like smiles and raised his eyebrows to reporters on his way to vote no. In a statement, McConnell gave a blistering critique of Hegseth, saying he failed to meet the standard to hold a job that carries “staggering consequences.” “Mere desire to be a ‘change agent’ is not enough to fill these shoes,” McConnell wrote. The U.S. “faces coordinated aggression from adversaries bent on shattering the order underpinning American security and prosperity. In public comments and testimony before the Armed Services Committee, Mr. Hegseth did not reckon with this reality.”

AP [1/24/2025 1:30 PM, Will Wessert and Zeke Miller, 17996K, Neutral] reports that President Donald Trump has ended the federal security detail for Dr. Anthony Fauci, the infectious disease expert who advised him on the COVID-19 pandemic, a person familiar with the matter said Friday. Fauci is the latest in a string of former Trump aides-turned-critics to see their federal protection canceled despite ongoing threats to their lives. Speaking to reporters in North Carolina on Friday, Trump said he wouldn’t feel any responsibility if harm befell the former government officials. A person familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive security issues, said that Fauci’s federal security detail was ended on Thursday and that he has since hired private security. When asked about Fauci and former national security adviser John Bolton, Trump said, “They all made a lot of money. They can hire their own security, too.” Trump, a Republican, earlier this week revoked protection details for former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and his top aide, Brian Hook, as well as Bolton. All have faced threats from Iran since they took hard-line stances on the Islamic Republic during Trump’s first administration and fell out with him in the years after he left office in 2021. Fauci was a regular at Trump’s side early in the COVID-19 outbreak but grew critical of Trump after the president tried to undermine public health guidance. Fauci faced regular threats to his life and has received federal protection for years.

Reported similarly:
Newsweek [1/24/2025 2:49 PM, Jesus Mesa, 56005K, Neutral]

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 6:12 PM, Alexander Ward and Michael R. Gordon, Neutral] reports the State Department began freezing foreign aid as President Trump ordered earlier this week, but said it would exempt foreign military financing for Israel and Egypt as well as emergency food aid. The freeze was outlined in a cable sent to U.S. embassies and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Trump’s order didn’t clarify how much of the tens of billions of dollars in aid the U.S. disperses would be suspended pending a 90-day review. The cable makes clear that military aid to important Middle East allies won’t be affected. “It is currently impossible to access sufficient information in one place to determine whether the foreign assistance politics and interests supported by appropriations are not duplicated, are effective, and are consistent with President Trump’s foreign policy,” the cable said. Some aid proponents said the move could be the beginning of diminished foreign assistance as part of an “America First” policy. “I think he’s got people around him who want foreign aid closely tied to the America First agenda, who want it closely tied to U.S. strategic interests around the world,” said George Ingram, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Previous administrations, Ingram said, believed it was in U.S. interests to promote economic progress globally. “The suspension and review of assistance is a sign of the aggressive approach the new administration will take to making sure foreign assistance fits with its cultural agenda,” he said. Some former officials said scaling back of aid could hamper U.S. efforts to compete with China, which has sought to use its “Belt and Road” infrastructure program to expand its influence across Asia, Africa and Latin American. The cable said a governmentwide review of the aid programs would be conducted over the next 85 days before Secretary of State Marco Rubio makes recommendations to Trump about how foreign assistance might be realigned.

New York Times [1/24/2025 5:20 PM, Annie Correal, 161405K, Neutral] reports many Latin American leaders have remained silent or responded cautiously to President Trump’s plans to deport large numbers of immigrants, but one small Central American nation has taken a stronger stand. After Mr. Trump signed executive orders this week aimed at sealing the U.S. southern border, expelling migrants and slashing foreign aid, Honduran officials said such measures could push their country closer to China, even as Mr. Trump has criticized China’s advances in Latin America.

New York Times [1/24/2025 11:36 AM, Anton Troianovski, 161405K, Neutral] reports that President Vladimir V. Putin on Friday brushed aside President Trump’s threat of new sanctions against Russia, saying he doubted that Mr. Trump would make a move that would “harm the American economy,” as the leaders continued jockeying for position ahead of talks that both men have said they want. Mr. Putin, in comments to Russian state television broadcast Friday, repeated his desire for a meeting with Mr. Trump. But while Mr. Trump has also said he wants to talk to Mr. Putin, neither the White House nor the Kremlin have said when a meeting — or even a phone call — might take place. “He is not only a smart person, he is a pragmatic person, and I can hardly imagine that decisions will be made that would harm the American economy itself,” Mr. Putin said, referring to the possibility of new sanctions against Russia while heaping new praise on Mr. Trump. “It is probably better for us to meet and, based on today’s realities, talk calmly about all areas that are of interest to both the U.S. and Russia,” Mr. Putin added. Mr. Trump on Wednesday threatened “high levels of Taxes, Tariffs, and Sanctions” on Russian goods if Mr. Putin didn’t make a deal to “STOP this ridiculous war” in Ukraine.

Reuters [1/23/2025 6:14 AM, Staff, 30936K, Neutral] reports Russian President Vladimir Putin is ready to hold a phone call with U.S. President Donald Trump and Moscow is waiting for word from Washington that it is ready too, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Friday. Trump said on Thursday he wanted to meet Putin as soon as possible to secure an end to the war with Ukraine and expressed his desire to work towards cutting nuclear arms, something the Kremlin said Putin had made clear he wanted too. When asked if Putin and Trump would use this weekend to hold their first phone call since Trump’s inauguration - an essential precursor ahead of a face-to-face meeting for deeper talks - Peskov said: "Putin is ready. We are waiting for signals (from Washington). Everyone is ready. It is difficult to read the coffee grounds here. As soon as there is something, if there is something, we will inform you." Trump, who on Thursday was addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos via video link, said he wanted to work towards cutting nuclear arms, adding that he thought Russia and China might support reducing their own weapons capabilities. "We’d like to see denuclearization ... and I will tell you President Putin really liked the idea of cutting way back on nuclear. And I think the rest of the world, we would have gotten them to follow, and China would have come along too," Trump said. Peskov said Putin had made it clear he wanted to resume nuclear disarmament negotiations as soon as possible, but said such talks would need to be wider than in the past to cover other countries’ nuclear arsenals, including those of France and Britain. "So there is something to talk about, we need to talk. Time has been lost in many respects. We have spoken about such interest before, so the ball is in the court of the U.S., which has stopped all substantive contacts with our country," said Peskov.

AP [1/24/2025 6:16 AM, Wafaa Shurafa, Sam Mednick and Samy Magdy, Neutral] reports Hamas militants handed over four captive female Israeli soldiers to the Red Cross in Gaza City on Saturday after parading them in front of a crowd. Israel was set to release 200 Palestinian prisoners or detainees later in the day as part of the fragile ceasefire in the Gaza Strip. The four smiled broadly as they waved and gave the thumbs-up from a stage in Gaza City’s Palestine Square, militants on either side of them and a crowd of thousands watching, before they were led off to waiting Red Cross vehicles. They were likely acting under duress. Israel meanwhile released 70 Palestinian prisoners into Egypt, according to Egypt’s state-run Qahera TV, which said they had arrived on the Egyptian side of the Rafah border crossing with Gaza. Egypt served as a key mediator in more than a year of talks that led to the truce agreement. Many of the 200 Palestinian prisoners set for release on Saturday are to be sent into exile. As the four soldiers were released, hundreds of people cheered in Tel Aviv’s Hostages Square where they were watching the drama unfold on a big screen television. “I’m speechless,” said Aviv Bercovich, one of the onlookers. “I had goosebumps watching them. I just want the war to end.” Israel confirmed that the hostages were with its forces not long after they were driven away from the handover in Gaza City by the Red Cross. The Wall Street Journal [1/25/2025 4:59 AM, Rory Jones, Anat Peled, Summer Said and Carrie Keller-Lynn, Neutral] reports that the militant group set free Karina Ariev, Daniella Gilboa, Naama Levy and Liri Albag, all female soldiers either 19 or 20 years old, who were taken from a military base near Gaza on Oct. 7, 2023, when Hamas launched attacks that sparked the conflict in the Gaza Strip. The hostages were handed over in a square in Gaza City to the International Committee of the Red Cross, which then drove them to meet the Israeli military. At the square, the hostages first walked onto a makeshift stage and, alongside Palestinian fighters, waved to journalists and hundreds of Palestinian civilians who had gathered for the Hamas-managed event. A crowd that had gathered in a square in Tel Aviv simultaneously watched the release, smiling as the four women entered Red Cross vehicles. “Fifteen months we haven’t stopped crying, but now it’s from happiness,” an aunt of Albag told Israeli television, moments after seeing the first images of her niece in Gaza City. The war has proved to be the deadliest ever round of violence between Israelis and Palestinians. More than 47,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Palestinian health authorities, who don’t say how many were combatants. The Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel left around 1,200 people dead and some 250 taken hostage. Global attention is focused on whether the multiphase cease-fire deal can eventually lead to a permanent end to the war despite a multitude of challenges. The exchange of hostages for Palestinian prisoners has been a delicate dance between Israel and Hamas over who is released and when.

Reported similarly:
CBS News [1/25/2025 6:26 AM, Haley Ott, Ramy Inocencio, 52225K, Neutral]

FOX News [1/24/2025 7:31 PM, Efrat Lachter, 49889K, Neutral] reports Israel’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Danon, has formally notified U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres of Israel’s demand for the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) to cease its operations in Jerusalem and evacuate its premises by January 30, 2025. The directive follows recent legislation passed by the Israeli Knesset, terminating Israel’s agreements with UNRWA and citing national security concerns. In a letter addressed to Guterres, Danon outlined the rationale behind the decision, emphasizing "the acute national security risks posed by the widespread infiltration of UNRWA’s ranks by Hamas and other terrorist organizations." He also accused the agency of failing to address Israel’s long-standing concerns and of compromising its "fundamental obligation to impartiality and neutrality beyond repair.” President Donald Trump has also been a vocal critic of UNRWA, withholding funding for it during his first term as president. The United States had previously been UNRWA’s largest donor, contributing more than $350 million annually. In March, Congress agreed to cut funding to the controversial agency for a year. A spokesperson for the U.N. Secretary-General told Fox News Digital, "The Secretary-General has been clear in the need to maintain support for UNRWA, which is the backbone of U.N. operations in the occupied Palestinian Territory.” The legislation passed by the Israeli Knesset includes two complementary bills that sever all ties between Israel and UNRWA, including the termination of diplomatic visas and services provided to the agency. The bills received overwhelming support from both coalition and opposition members of the Knesset. During a U.N. press briefing on Friday, a spokesperson responded to questions regarding the situation, stating, "We are in touch, but we have continued to emphasize the indispensability of UNRWA." When asked about contingency plans should the Israeli legislation be implemented, the spokesperson said, "We will see what the future brings. Obviously, we are doing our utmost and UNRWA will do its utmost to continue to provide aid to the people under our mandate, as much as we can.”

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 3:54 PM, Jared Malsin, Alexander Ward, and Adam Chamseddine, Neutral] reports the White House is calling for Israeli troops to be allowed to remain in Lebanon past the expiration date of a cease-fire next week, giving Israel more time to complete its mission but heightening the risks that the truce will unravel altogether. A White House spokesman said a cease-fire extension was needed to support Lebanon’s new president and ensure the return of Israelis who had fled the country’s north while their military fought the Lebanese militia Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist group. “All parties share the goal of ensuring Hezbollah does not have the ability to threaten the Lebanese people or their neighbors. To achieve these goals, a short, temporary cease-fire extension is urgently needed,” said Brian Hughes, a spokesman for the White House National Security Council. The Biden administration brokered the cease-fire in late November, ending more than a year of fighting that began with Hezbollah assaulting Israel with rockets after the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks from the Gaza Strip sparked a war that enveloped much of the Middle East. Its interim period is scheduled to end on Sunday. The cease-fire was agreed to after Israel launched a lethal wave of airstrikes and a ground operation that destabilized Lebanon and devastated Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group seen as the world’s biggest nonstate army. The Israeli offensive killed a generation of the group’s political and military leaders including its Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah and wiped out much of its weapons stockpile. Israel’s strikes on Iran and its militia allies across the region also weakened the broader Iranian alliance in the Middle East, contributing to the collapse of the regime of former Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who was pushed from power by a rebel military offensive in December. Lebanon’s parliament also elected a new president in January, ending years of political deadlock in another sign of Hezbollah’s declining political power. The new leader, Gen. Joseph Aoun, is a former military chief viewed as the favored candidate of Western powers, including the U.S.

AP [1/25/2025 5:21 AM, Jon Gambrell, 47097K, Neutral] reports Yemen’s Houthi rebels unilaterally freed 153 war detainees Saturday, the International Committee of the Red Cross said, one of several overtures in recent days to ease tensions after the ceasefire in the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. Previous prisoner releases have been viewed as a means to jumpstart talks over permanently ending Yemen’s decadelong war, which began when the Houthis seized the country’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014. However, the Houthis’ release comes just after they detained another seven Yemeni workers from the United Nations, sparking anger from the world body. Those released previously had been visited by Red Cross staff in Sanaa and received medical checks and other assistance, the organization said while announcing the release. The Houthis had signaled Friday night they planned a release of prisoners. The Red Cross said it “welcomes this unilateral release as another positive step towards reviving negotiations.” “This operation has brought much-needed relief and joy to families who have been anxiously waiting for the return of their loved ones,” said Christine Cipolla, the ICRC’s head of delegation in Yemen. “We know that many other families are also waiting for their chance to be reunited. We hope that today’s release will lead to many more moments like this.” Abdul Qader al-Murtada, the head of the Houthis’ Committee for Prisoners’ Affairs, said in a statement carried by Houthi media that those released were “humanitarian cases’ that included the sick, wounded and the elderly. “The goal of the initiative is to build trust and establish a new phase of serious and honest dealing,” al-Murtada reportedly said. The Red Cross has helped oversee other prisoner releases, including one that saw some 1,000 prisoners swapped in 2020, over 800 detainees exchanged in 2023 and another release in 2024. The rebels said earlier this week they would limit their attacks on ships in the Red Sea corridor and released the 25-member crew of the Galaxy Leader, a ship they seized back in November 2023, as the Gaza ceasefire took hold. The war in Yemen has killed more than 150,000 people, including fighters and civilians, and created one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters, killing tens of thousands more.

Wall Street Journal [1/24/2025 7:58 PM, Lingling Wei, Neutral] reports China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi held his first phone conversation Friday with Secretary of State Marco Rubio, a sign that Beijing is willing to get down to business with the new Trump administration. Rubio, a harsh China critic, was among a handful of U.S. officials China sanctioned twice in 2020, the last year of President Trump’s first term. The call indicated that Beijing was prepared to work around the sanctions to engage with Rubio—at a time when Trump has shown a willingness to negotiate with Beijing as opposed to starting a trade war right away. In the call, Wang called on his American counterpart to “find the right way for China and the U.S. to get along in the new era,” according to the account of the conversation by China’s Foreign Ministry. The Chinese statement also included a veiled warning from Wang to Rubio which was omitted from an English version of the Chinese readout. According to the Foreign Ministry’s statement, Wang told Rubio to “conduct yourself well,” or hao zi wei zhi in Chinese, an idiom that conveys a sense of caution that one should consider the consequences of one’s actions. The English version of the account, published by the official Xinhua News Agency, doesn’t have those words of warning. The sleight of hand shows China’s leader Xi Jinping wants to strike a balance between trying to deal with the Trump administration and maintaining his strongman posture to the Chinese public. A statement issued by the State Department said Rubio emphasized to Wang that the Trump administration will pursue a bilateral relationship that “advances U.S. interests and puts the American people first.” It also said Rubio raised concern over “China’s coercive actions” against Taiwan and in the South China Sea.

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