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

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

FOX News [1/30/2025 1:43 PM, Audrey Conklin, 49889K, Neutral] reports that an estimated 67 people are presumed dead after a Black Hawk helicopter collided with a commercial American Airlines flight from Wichita, Kansas, over the Potomac River in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday evening. A total of 64 people, including four staff members, were aboard passenger American Airlines Flight 5342, and three soldiers were on the Army Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk that came from Fort Belvoir in Virginia. A senior Army official told Fox News the soldiers were part of a "fairly experienced" Black Hawk crew, and they had night vision goggles aboard the helicopter. A Department of Homeland Security source told Fox News Digital on Thursday morning that there are "no terror concerns" after the collision, and officials suspect the crash was "just a tragedy." NPR [1/30/2025 11:07 AM, Jaclyn Diaz, Rachel Treisman, Scott Neuman, and Russell Lewis, 35747K, Neutral] reports that in a White House press briefing on the crash, President Trump said the search mission has turned into recovery efforts as of late morning. "We are one family today and we are all heartbroken," he said. Officials say 28 bodies have been recovered so far. There were 64 people on the plane and three on the Black Hawk. Among the passengers of the jet were members of the U.S. Figure Skating team, several Russian figure skaters, coaches and family members, according to U.S. Figure Skating and Russian state media. The crash could be the most significant disaster in U.S. airspace in at least 15 years. The investigation is in its early hours and the cause of the midair collision is still unclear. Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 7:36 AM, Marissa Brunkhorst, 57114K, Neutral] reports Kristi Noem and Senate Majority Leader John Thune took to X to respond to the crash of a plane and helicopter in Washington D.C. Noem wrote "We are deploying every available US Coast Guard resource for search and rescue efforts in this horrific incident at DCA. We are actively monitoring the situation & stand ready to support local responders,". Noem oversees the U.S. Coast Guard during peacetime, as part of her new role as the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. EFE [1/31/2025 12:48 AM, Staff, 1532K, Negative] reports that the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) said Thursday it had “recovered the cockpit voice recorder and flight data recorder from the Bombardier CRJ700 airplane involved in yesterday’s mid-air collision at DCA. The recorders are at the NTSB labs for evaluation.” The devices are expected to shed light on what happened to cause the collision and the NTSB is to release a preliminary report into the accident within 30 days. Authorities are looking for the device of the helicopter, which had been operating out of Davison Army Airfield, Fort Belvoir, and was on a training flight. Some 300 emergency units with fire trucks, police cars and ambulances, as well as rescue boats and diving units were deployed in search operations, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said, with personnel “working in very dark and cold conditions.” Washington Fire and Emergency Services Chief John Donnelly later said in a press conference that the efforts underway on the Potomac River had changed from a “rescue” to a “recovery” operation. “At this time, we do not believe there are any survivors from this accident. We have recovered 27 people from the plane and one from the helicopter,” he said. If confirmed, this would be the worst air crash in the US in nearly 24 years. At the same press conference, US Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced that authorities had located the wreckage of both aircraft. He said that the American Eagle’s fuselage was upside down and was found in three separate pieces in shallow water. Duffy said that the plane had been making a normal landing approach and that “something went wrong” because it is normal for military helicopters to share airspace with civilian aircraft in the area. The Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 10:06 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 2365K, Neutral] reports that there has been no specific reason cited for the collision, which is still under investigation. The black boxes will likely grant critical information about the incident to investigators. President Donald Trump blamed the military helicopter’s actions for the crash on Thursday. "They shouldn’t have been at the same height," Trump said. "You had a pilot problem from the standpoint of the helicopter. I mean it was visual. It was a very clear night.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth also suggested those in the helicopter were at fault. "There was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DOD and Army level," he said. Trump has also blamed diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives, without evidence, for the crash. "Because I have common sense, and unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level," Trump said.

Reported similarly:
USA Today [1/30/2025 9:30 AM, George Petras, Ramon Padilla, Janet Loehrke and Jim Sergent, 89965K, Neutral]
Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 10:59 PM, Benedict Smith, 57114K, Neutral]

Washington Post [1/30/2025 9:48 PM, Dan Lamothe, Alex Horton and Missy Ryan, 40736K, Neutral] reports the Army Black Hawk rumbled through dark skies over the Potomac River on Wednesday night using a route so common for military pilots that many consider it an aerial highway. Just a few hundred feet above the icy water, the chopper — call sign PAT25 — was wrapping up what Pentagon officials said was annual proficiency training for one of the three aviators on board. At 8:47 p.m., the helicopter and American Eagle Flight 5342 collided over the river as the passenger jet, carrying 64 people, was on final approach to Reagan National Airport. A fireball erupted in the night, debris rained down — and the longtime, carefully choreographed ballet between rotary aircraft and the increasingly bustling D.C.-area airport collapsed. The catastrophe likely killed everyone aboard the jet and all three soldiers on the helicopter, authorities said, and it immediately raised questions about the close proximity in which aircraft soar over the busy skies of the nation’s capital. For decades, the airspace over the Potomac has served as a corridor for military and police helicopters, as civilian jetliners land every few minutes nearby. Trump administration officials promised a multiprong investigation while suggesting that the helicopter may have been traveling above a 200-foot-high “ceiling” on its prescribed route. “The military does dangerous things,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Thursday afternoon, speaking alongside President Donald Trump at the White House. “Tragically, last night, a mistake was made.” Helicopters from the Army unit involved — the 12th Aviation Battalion, based some 15 miles away in Virginia — routinely fly over Washington from Davison Army Airfield at Fort Belvoir, providing “priority air transport” to Army generals and other senior U.S. defense officials, according to an Army summary of the unit’s mission. The twin-engine, 65-foot Black Hawk is ubiquitous across U.S. military operations, relied upon for everything from the delivery and recovery of U.S. troops in combat to the more recent effort to battle wildfires in California. Army officials withheld the identities of the helicopter crew on Thursday, with Hegseth saying that families were still being notified about the tragedy. The crew chief assisting the pilots was identified by his family as Ryan O’Hara, 28. Ryan’s father, Gary, said in an interview that he saw news about the crash on television Wednesday night and had two soldiers arrive at his home in Midway, Georgia, on Thursday morning to notify him of his son’s death.

Wall Street Journal [1/31/2025 9:00 PM, Vera Bergengruen, Jack Gillum, Alison Sider and Gordon Lubold, 57114K, Negative] reports more than 700 planes had already taken off and landed at Reagan National Airport on Wednesday when American Airlines flight 5342 approached it through one of the nation’s most congested air corridors. Shortly before 9 p.m., the passenger jet collided in a fireball with an Army Black Hawk helicopter on a routine training mission, leaving no survivors. As officials scramble to determine the cause of the crash, the catastrophe is drawing new attention to longstanding safety warnings about the increasingly busy airspace above the nation’s capital. Reagan sits on just 733 acres of land along the Potomac River, across from downtown Washington and the military’s Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling. Space is so tight that federal regulators dole out takeoff and landing rights. The airport’s convenience and close proximity to the Capitol have made it irresistible to Washington’s politicians. Over the years, lawmakers have lobbied to open access and add more flights, often to make quick jaunts to their home states easier. Last year, after a fierce debate over whether the airport could absorb more flights, Congress authorized more, which were awarded to five airlines proposing to fly to San Antonio, San Diego, Seattle, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Adding to the crowded airspace are helicopters that crisscross the Potomac every day, many of them military flights from the Pentagon and other government agencies ferrying officials or other passengers and cargo around Washington. Officials and commercial and military pilots have warned that the airspace leaves little margin for error. “We’re dealing with an extraordinarily complex airspace system that has been complicated even worse by the addition of flights to National Airport,” said Keith Meurlin, a retired Air Force major general and head of the Washington Airports Task Force. “At what point is enough enough?”

NBC News [1/30/2025 2:11 PM, Scott Wong and Kate Santaliz, 50804K, Neutral] reports that several members of Congress are expressing concerns about the air congestion in the area where a commercial passenger jet collided with a military helicopter over the Potomac River on Wednesday night. Lawmakers didn’t ascribe any blame for the accident and said they trusted the National Transportation Safety Board would do a lengthy, in-depth investigation. But they said the deadly crash reinforced worries about traffic in a busy transportation corridor where military and other helicopters are sharing airspace with passenger jets flying in and out of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, known as DCA. There were 60 passengers and four crew members aboard the American Eagle jet, which was flying from Wichita, Kansas, to DCA, which sits on the Virginia side of the Potomac River. Three people were aboard the Army Black Hawk helicopter. President Donald Trump said at a White House briefing that there were no survivors in the crash. The airspace above Washington is complex for a variety of reasons. DCA is one of the busiest airports in the country, with hundreds of flights arriving and departing each day. The airport saw a record 25.5 million passengers in 2023. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Reuters [1/30/2025 1:57 PM, Allison Lampert, Rajesh Kumar Singh, and Daniel Catchpole, 48128K, Negative] reports that U.S. commercial pilot Rick Redfern was preparing to land at Reagan Washington National Airport a decade ago when he spotted a Coast Guard helicopter hovering about 50 feet off the Potomac River. Air traffic control promptly warned the helicopter pilot to stay clear, averting a potential disaster. A collision on Wednesday night between a Black Hawk military helicopter and an American Eagle CRJ 700 jet, which killed more than 60 people, has stirred haunting memories for Redfern and other pilots who have faced challenges landing at Washington airport. Planes approaching the airport must navigate a precise and narrow flight path to avoid restricted airspace around the nearby White House and Pentagon. "That turn from the eastern side along the river to turn into runway 33 is very, very tight," said Redfern, referring to the same airstrip the American Eagle jet was heading towards before colliding with the U.S. military helicopter. It is unclear what caused the crash, which is now under investigation by the U.S. National Transportation Safety Board and the U.S. Army. Most air crashes typically result from multiple contributing factors.

New York Times [1/31/2025 3:20 AM, David A. Fahrenthold, Karoun Demirjian, Christine Chung and Kate Kelly, 740K, Neutral] reports Congress has repeatedly voted to increase the number of daily flights at Reagan National Airport, adding departures that made life more convenient for lawmakers despite warnings that increased air traffic around Washington would raise the risk of delays and accidents. On Tuesday, an American Airlines regional jet with 64 people on board collided with an Army Black Hawk helicopter over the Potomac River near the airport. Authorities have said that none of those on either aircraft are believed to have survived. The causes of that collision are still unclear. But a look back at that airport’s recent history shows that Congress played a role in making the airspace around it busier. Reagan is one of three U.S. airports governed by a “slot” system, in which the Federal Aviation Administration limits the number of daily takeoffs and landings to prevent overcrowded airspace. The other two are New York’s LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy airports. But the limits at Reagan have been repeatedly expanded by Congress itself, whose members are major users of the airport. Congress has added more than 50 new slots to the airport’s daily schedule since 2000, including 10 that lawmakers approved last year, according to the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority. The newest slots are not yet in use. Those flights are expected to begin in the coming weeks. When they do, Congress’s actions will have increased the airport’s authorized traffic by more than 50 takeoffs or landings, or more than 25 round trips.

Newsweek [1/30/2025 11:35 PM, Anna Commander, 56005K, Neutral] reports the black hawk helicopter involved in a fatal midair collision with a passenger jet near D.C.’s Ronald Reagan National Airport may have been flying off its pre-approved flight path. Newsweek reached out to the Army via email Thursday night for comment. The collision was the first fatal commercial crash in the U.S. since 2009, when a propeller plane crashed near Buffalo, New York killing nearly 50 people. The aviation catastrophe involving an American Airlines (AA) plane and a Sikorsky H-60 military helicopter on Wednesday night sparked a "whole of government" response as local, state, federal and military agencies ascended onto the Potomac River. Recent airplane incidents and close calls have seemingly sparked questions about safety protocols and in a news conference on Thursday President Donald Trump questioned if Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) may be to blame in part for the crash near Reagan National. According to a report in New York Times, the black hawk helicopter may have been flying too high and at least half a mile off its approved path, citing multiple people briefed on the matter. The helicopter’s pilot asked to fly on a path that closely followed the east side of the Potomac River and was "no higher than 200 feet," the Times reports. This route, known as route 4, would have put the black hawk out of the AA’s flight path. However, the helicopter was above 300 feet when the collision with the AA plane occurred, and the black hawk allegedly did not follow the approved path, the Times reports citing the people briefed. President Trump on Truth Social after the crash on Wednesday night: "The airplane was on a perfect and routine line of approach to the airport. The helicopter was going straight at the airplane for an extended period of time. It is a CLEAR NIGHT, the lights on the plane were blazing, why didn’t the helicopter go up or down, or turn. Why didn’t the control tower tell the helicopter what to do instead of asking if they saw the plane. This is a bad situation that looks like it should have been prevented. NOT GOOD!!!" Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth in a news conference on Thursday in part: "The military does dangerous things; it does routine things on the regular basis. Tragically last night, a mistake was made. I think the president is right, there was some sort of an elevation issue that we have immediately begun investigating at the DOD (Department of Defense) and Army level. Army CID (Criminal Investigation Division) is on the ground investigating, top tier aviation assets inside the DOD are investigating sir to get to the bottom of it so that it does not happen again because it is absolutely unacceptable." Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy on X on Thursday night: "This is not what I expected on my first day on the job to be, but I do believe that God puts us exactly where we’re supposed to be. Tonight, I met with some of the families who lost their loved ones in the plane and helicopter crash last night. Their pain is immeasurable. I can’t take away their pain, but I can do a very small part to help ease it by keeping my promise to get to the bottom of what happened and be 100% transparent about the results of the investigation. They have my word.”

AP [1/30/2025 8:30 PM, Curt Anderson, 47097K, Negative] reports that the Army helicopter and regional American Airlines jet that collided over Washington are both workhorse aircraft that operate around the world on a daily basis. There were 60 passengers and four crew members on the jet, a Bombardier CRJ-700, officials said. Three service members were on a training flight on the UH-60 Black Hawk helicopter. None are believed to have survived the Wednesday night collision, which caused both aircraft to plunge into the frigid Potomac River. There are about 5,000 Black Hawks in use around the world, according to the aviation site FlightGlobal.com. The twin-engine, four-blade helicopter is manufactured by Sikorsky, a subsidiary of defense contractor Lockheed Martin. The aircraft involved in Wednesday’s collision was an Army version. There are other variants made for the Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard, and for specialized duty such as intelligence gathering. The passenger jet was manufactured by Quebec, Canada-based conglomerate Bombardier Inc. The CRJ program was sold in June 2020 to the Japanese company Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which no longer makes them but continues to produce parts. The plane in Wednesday’s crash was registered as N530EA and manufactured in 2010, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. The jet was operated by an American Airlines subsidiary, PSA Airlines.

Washington Post [1/30/2025 7:46 PM, Katie Shepherd, et al., 40736K, Neutral] reports the air traffic control tower at Reagan National Airport was understaffed on Wednesday evening when a passenger plane and a military helicopter collided in midair, according to a government report about the circumstances surrounding the disaster that killed 67 people and sparked renewed debate around the airport’s crowded airspace. According to the report, described to The Washington Post, two people were handling the jobs of four among other colleagues inside National’s control tower at the time of the collision. The control tower staffing levels, the report concludes, were “not normal” for the time of day or the amount of air traffic over D.C., where an average of more than 100 helicopters a day zip around and underneath arriving and departing airline flights. The crash occurred around 8:50 p.m., and its cause remained unclear Thursday evening. While federal investigators hunt for answers — chiefly how this could happen when airplanes and helicopters are often equipped with software to detect nearby aircraft — a portrait emerged of a cramped and swarming airspace, the subject of safety warnings by federal officials and lawmakers and the site of a number of close calls in recent years, including about 24 hours before Wednesday’s collision. The day before, another plane had to abort a landing at National to avoid a crash with a helicopter. On Wednesday evening, the position of helicopter controller — a role typically staffed until 9:30 p.m. — had been combined ahead of the crash with that of local controller, according to the report. Doubling up those roles can create challenges for an air traffic controller, especially if the airspace is busy. The roles use different radio frequencies, and airplane pilots and helicopter pilots cannot necessarily hear each other even if they’re both in touch with the tower. Neither the Federal Aviation Administration nor the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) immediately responded to questions about staffing. National Transportation Safety Board officials said they would leave no stone unturned in an investigation that may not definitively answer the critical question — how did this happen? — for months. The board will examine the role played by air traffic controllers in the crash, officials said in a briefing Thursday.

FOX News [1/30/2025 8:51 AM, Danielle Wallace, Jennifer Griffin, 49889K, Neutral] reports the Army Blackhawk helicopter that collided with a passenger jet coming in for a landing at Ronald Reagan National Airport near Washington Wednesday night had three soldiers on board, Fox News has learned. The three soldiers aboard the Blackh Hawk when it crashed have not been publicly identified, but the helicopter was not carrying any VIPs or senior officials, an Army official told Fox News. Fox News also confirmed newly sworn-in Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth was not involved in the incident. Hegseth was at the White House shortly before the crash and is actively monitoring the situation. The helicopter had flown out of Davidson Air Base at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, and crashed while performing a training mission, Army officials said. Joint Base Anacostia-Bolling also sits across the river from Reagan National Airport. The Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk is a four-blade, twin-engine, medium-lift utility military helicopter manufactured by Sikorsky Aircraft. Modified versions have also been developed for the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Coast Guard. The Black Hawk can carry up to 15 people, including two pilots, two crew chiefs and two rescue specialists. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said a PSA Airlines Bombardier CRJ700 regional jet collided in midair with a Sikorsky H-60 helicopter while on approach to Runway 33 at Reagan Washington National Airport around 9 p.m. American Airlines Flight 5342 had departed from Wichita, Kansas, and had 60 passengers and four crew members on board. Multiple fatalities have been reported, and no survivors are expected, as officials said they have moved from a rescue to a recovery operation. Passengers on the flight included a group of figure skaters, their coaches and family members who were returning from a development camp that followed the U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita. "We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts," U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement. Two of those coaches were identified by the Kremlin as Russian figure skaters Evgenia Shishkova and Vadim Naumov, who won the pairs title at the 1994 world championships and competed twice in the Olympics. The Skating Club of Boston lists them as coaches and their son, Maxim Naumov, is a competitive figure skater for the U.S. The crash occurred in some of the most tightly controlled and monitored airspace in the world, just over three miles south of the White House and the Capitol.

New York Times [1/30/2025 7:16 PM, Rachel Nostrant, 161405K, Negative] reports the cause of Wednesday’s midair collision between an Army helicopter and a passenger jet is under investigation. But the tragedy, which claimed the lives of 67 people, was only the latest in a series of accidents involving Army helicopters the past couple of years. The three soldiers from Fort Belvoir, Va., who were killed were conducting an annual training exercise near Ronald Reagan National Airport when the crash occurred. All 60 passengers and the four crew members aboard the American Airlines flight also died. The crashes and mishaps of Army helicopters, which can include hard landings or other incidents that yield damage or injuries, have been so frequent in the past two years that the number of fatalities from these incidents — at least 18 — has surpassed those killed in recent combat operations abroad. Last year, there were five helicopter incidents in a span of three months, killing four troops and a Border Patrol agent. The last fiscal year had the most rotary-wing mishaps in a decade, according to the Army. In 2023, 10 incidents involving Army helicopters resulted in 14 deaths and numerous troops injured. Two of those incidents involved Black Hawk helicopters, like the one flown Wednesday night, claiming the lives of 11 service members combined. In a report published just days before this latest crash, the Army attributed such incidents to a combination of factors, including an overall “experience deficit” among its soldiers, in addition to maintenance and equipment failures. Since 2012, the Army said, its pilots, which include those flying other aircraft, have logged fewer flight hours as the war on terror wound down, according to a report last year by Military.com, an independent military publication. For Black Hawk helicopters specifically, flight time logged by pilots since 2012 dropped 25 percent. On Thursday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the troops involved in Wednesday’s crash were highly experienced.

AP [1/30/2025 9:06 AM, Staff, 2212K, Negative] reports passengers aboard the American Airlines flight that collided with an Army helicopter and crashed into the frigid waters of the Potomac River included figure skaters returning from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships and two of their Russian coaches. There were 60 passengers and four crew members on the American Airlines flight on Wednesday and three soldiers aboard the training flight on the Blackhawk helicopter. Hope of rescuing any survivors evaporated by daybreak. “We are now at the point where we are switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation,” said John Donnelly, the fire chief in the nation’s capital, on Thursday morning. “We don’t believe there are any survivors.” Donnelly said he’s confident that the remains of those killed in the crash will be recovered, but it may take some time. U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement that several skaters, coaches and their family members were on the commercial flight after attending a development camp that followed the championships that wrapped up Sunday in Wichita, Kansas. “We are devastated by this unspeakable tragedy and hold the victims’ families closely in our hearts,” U.S. Figure Skating said in a statement. Two of those coaches were identified by the Kremlin as a Russian couple who were pairs world champions 30 years ago. It’s not the first time that the U.S. figure skating community has been rocked by an air tragedy. The 18-member U.S. team that was set to compete in the 1961 world championships at Prague died when Sabena Flight 548 crashed on Feb. 15, 1961, in Berg-Kampenhout, about 45 minutes outside of Brussels. Also killed were six U.S. coaches and four skating officials, along with some family members. American Airlines set up a hotline as well as centers in Washington and Wichita for people searching for information about family members who may have been aboard Wednesday’s downed flight.

CBS News [1/30/2025 2:51 PM, Graham Kates, 52225K, Negative] reports that as first responders searched the Potomac River Thursday following the nation’s deadliest airline crash in nearly a quarter of a century, the agency tasked with regulating civilian air travel was without a Senate-approved head. President Trump moved Thursday, appointing Christopher Rocheleau, a 22-year FAA veteran, as acting administrator of the agency. Mr. Trump described Rocheleau as "highly respected." The Federal Aviation Administration’s most recent administrator, Michael Whitaker, resigned when President Trump took office last week. Whitaker held the job for 15 months, with the last few marred by criticism from prominent Trump supporter and now-White House official Elon Musk, who chafed at the agency’s oversight of his company SpaceX. Rocheleau is in his third stint at the FAA. He was appointed by Mr. Trump as deputy administrator last week, and took on the title acting administrator Thursday morning, hours after an American Airlines jet with 64 people on board and an Army helicopter carrying three collided. Rocheleau most recently was chief operating officer of the National Business Aviation Association. Prior to that job, which he began in 2022, he was the FAA’s deputy associate administrator for aviation safety. The U.S. Air Force veteran previously worked for the Transportation Security Administration.

Reported similarly:
Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 11:20 AM, Annabella Rosciglione, 2365K, Negative]

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 9:23 AM, Hafiz Rashid, 57114K, Neutral] reports that last week, just days after his inauguration, Donald Trump eliminated the membership of a key committee that handles aviation security. And on Wednesday night, a passenger plane collided with a military helicopter in the Washington, D.C., area. On Tuesday, January 22, the Aviation Security Advisory Committee’s members received a memo from the Trump administration saying that the Department of Homeland Security was getting rid of the membership of all advisory committees in a "commitment to eliminating the misuse of resources and ensuring that DHS activities prioritize our national security." At the same time, Trump also fired the heads of the Transportation Security Administration and the Coast Guard. Congress mandated the aviation committee in 1988, after the PanAm Flight 103 bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland. After Trump’s move, the committee technically continues to exist but has no members to examine safety issues in airlines and airports. Its membership consisted of key groups in the aviation industry, from major unions to representatives from major airlines, as well as a group associated with victims of the PanAm bombing.

The Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 12:59 PM, Naomi Lim, 2365K, Neutral] reports that President Donald Trump blamed former Presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden’s aviation and diversity policies as 67 people are presumed to be dead after a regional American Airlines plane and an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided near a busy airport outside Washington and crashed into the Potomac River. Reading from prepared remarks after encouraging a moment of silence to mark the tragedy that unfolded in mid-air, Trump said he was "heartbroken" and that it was "an hour of anguish" in the White House press briefing room before criticizing diversity, equity, and inclusion practices in particular for the incident ahead of an official investigation. "A real tragedy," Trump told reporters on Thursday less than 24 hours after the accident. "This was a dark and excruciating night in our nation’s capital, and in our nation’s history, and a tragedy of terrible proportions." While promising to be there for the families of the victims "to wipe away the tears and to offer you our devotion, our love, and our support," Trump pledged to share some "very strong opinions and ideas" about what went wrong, acknowledging the country is "searching for answers." "You must have only the highest standards to work in our aviation system," he said. "I put safety first. Obama, Biden, and the Democrats put the policy first, and they put politics at a level that nobody’s ever seen because this was the lowest level. Their policy was horrible, and their politics was even worse." The New York Times [1/30/2025 5:28 PM, David E. Sanger, 161405K, Neutral] reports Mr. Trump cited no evidence that diversity programs had anything to do with the fatal accident, which killed 67 people, and even admitted when pressed that the investigation had only just begun. Moments later, he blamed the pilots of the Army helicopter that appeared to fly into a passenger jet while it was on final approach to Reagan National Airport, across the river from the capital. But he quickly returned to the theme that diversity goals that he said were created by President Barack Obama and President Joseph R. Biden Jr. had created unsafe skies, implying that those moves had to have contributed to the disaster.

FOX News [1/31/2025 4:00 AM, Michael Ruiz, 49889K, Neutral] reports FBI special agents in charge of the country’s 55 field offices are proactively teaming up with Homeland Security and other law enforcement agencies around the country, from major cities like New York and Chicago to the American heartland, offering up intelligence services and tactical assistance as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on criminal aliens, according to the bureau’s top leadership. Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll told Fox News Digital he’s been in touch with the special agents in charge of all the FBI’s divisions regarding their support for the president’s initiative. "Following the issuance of the acting AG’s memo, all of our special agents in charge have been reaching out to their counterparts over there at [the Department of Homeland Security] to proactively offer assistance," he said. "And we’ve been working really hard over here to get our folks trained up on Title 8 authorities that we’re operating under for these particular operations. So we are and will remain postured to support DHS the best that we can over here at the FBI.” Title 8 refers to the section of the U.S. Code governing "Aliens and Nationality," lawful immigration, apprehension of criminal aliens, deportation, visas and related matters. The memo also served as a reminder to state and local authorities that federal law is the supreme law of the land. In any criminal investigation, it’s significant when the bureau joins and brings its vast resources to bear. In this case, the FBI is teaming up with federal offices around the country, not just local departments, to round up illegal immigrants with known or suspected criminal backgrounds. From SWAT operators in tactical gear to intelligence gathering and legal experts stationed in command posts around the country, the FBI has assisted in arresting known suspects who had been moving freely just a few weeks ago. "Our intelligence support is as strong as our tactical support. I want to make that clear," Driscoll said. "So, for example, in New York, about gathering and sharing what we know with DHS, we were able to prioritize the worst of the worst. And we now have dozens of subjects in custody.”

AZCentral [1/30/2025 8:02 AM, Rey Covarrubias Jr., 6018K, Neutral] reports a freshman senator from Arizona is championing a bipartisan bill that would extend the territorial waters under the watch of U.S. immigration and law enforcement. Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., co-sponsored the Extending Limit of U.S. Customs Water Act, legislation that would double waters under the jurisdiction of the federal government. That would help curb human trafficking and stop the flow of illegal drugs into the country, Gallego’s office said. The bill would stretch the border of the U.S. at sea from 12 nautical miles off the nation’s coastline to 24 nautical miles, which as a result would expand the legal reach of the U.S. Coast Guard and U.S. Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations. “Strengthening our border includes keeping our waters secure," Gallego said in a written statement. Gallego added that if passed, the bill would give "CBP the authority and tools to stay ahead of transnational criminal organizations and intercept criminal activity before it reaches American shores." He co-sponsored the bill alongside two Republicans, Sens. James Lankford of Oklahoma and Rick Scott of Florida, and another Democrat, Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire. The latter voicing support for the expansion of law enforcement power. The bill would override a 1988 Presidential proclamation that established the 12-nautical-mile standard. In 2023, CBP said if expanded, the 24-mile reach would better support law enforcement efforts to find smugglers and slow illegal immigration, citing "geographic constraint limits." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Reuters [1/30/2025 12:00 PM, Tim Reid, 48128K, Neutral] reports that U.S. President Donald Trump has signed a blizzard of executive orders and taken other actions since his inauguration on Jan. 20 to remake and reduce the size of America’s 2.2 million-strong federal workforce. Trump’s moves include offering buyouts to most government workers, dismissing or reassigning hundreds of officials, removing agency watchdogs, and issuing an order that could make it easier to fire hundreds of thousands of civil servants. Here are some of the actions Trump and his Republican administration have taken so far. The Trump administration has offered buyouts to 2 million civilian full-time federal workers. The "deferred resignation program" would allow federal employees to remain on the payroll through Sept. 30 but without having to work in person and possibly having their duties reduced or eliminated in the meantime, according to an email sent to federal employees. The email gives federal employees until Feb. 6 to decide whether to take part. It instructed interested employees to reply to the email from a government account and type the word "resign." Federal worker unions have urged employees not to take the offer, and many civil servants have expressed anger and defiance over the email. Trump has ordered a review of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), as he considers whether to close or reshape the country’s lead federal disaster response agency. On his first full day in office the heads of the U.S. Coast Guard and Transportation Security Administration were fired along with other officials.

FOX News [1/30/2025 1:11 PM, Deirdre Heavey, 49889K, Neutral] reports that Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Tulsi Gabbard and Kash Patel testified before Senate committees on Capitol Hill on Thursday as urgency builds to confirm President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominations. Kennedy, Trump’s nominee for secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), faced his second day of questioning on the Hill before the Senate Committee on Health, Education Labor & Pensions on Thursday. Kennedy clashed with Democratic senators over abortion and vaccines on Wednesday before the Senate Finance Committee, which will vote on his confirmation. Patel, Trump’s nominee for FBI director, appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday, while Gabbard, Trump’s nominee for national intelligence director, appeared before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Also on Thursday, Trump’s nominee for Army secretary, Daniel Driscoll, the relatively unknown soldier and former advisor to Vice President JD Vance, fielded questions from the Senate Armed Services Committee. As of Thursday, the U.S. Senate has confirmed seven of Trump’s Cabinet nominations, including Secretary of State Marco Rubio, CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin.

AP [1/30/2025 5:39 PM, Holly Ramer and Patrick Whittle, 33392K, Negative] reports that a Washington state woman was ordered held without bail Thursday in connection with the death of a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a case that has grown to encompass killings in multiple states. Teresa Youngblut, 21, faces federal firearms charges in the Jan. 20 death of Agent David Maland. She’s accused of opening fire on agents during a traffic stop in northern Vermont, sparking a shootout that also left her companion, Felix Bauckholt, dead. Pennsylvania state police said Wednesday that the gun used in the Vermont shooting was purchased by a person of interest in the Dec. 31, 2022, killings of Richard and Rita Zajko, who were shot to death in their Chester Heights home. Both Youngblut and the buyer were in frequent contact with someone who was detained as part of the Pennsylvania investigation and is a person of interest in another killing in California, U.S. Attorney Michael Drescher said in a court filing. Prosecutors didn’t elaborate during a brief hearing Thursday during which neither Youngblut nor her attorney spoke, according to NBC5-TV. Youngblut’s attorney has not responded to requests for comment on the charges. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Feb. 7. In the meantime, police and court records have shed some light on the connections.

FOX News [1/30/2025 8:48 PM, Brie Stimson, 57114K, Negative] reports a manhunt is underway for a 32-year-old woman suspected of buying the handguns used in the killing of a Vermont Border Patrol agent last week, according to a report. Law enforcement agencies in several states are searching for Michelle J. Zajko, who is considered "armed and dangerous," Albany’s Times Union reported, citing police records. U.S. Border Patrol Agent David "Chris" Maland was gunned down near the Canada-Vermont border Jan. 20, and, four days later, Teresa Youngblut, 21, was taken into custody. "The United States Attorney’s Office District of Vermont has charged Youngblut with assault on a federal law enforcement officer," the FBI’s office in Albany said at the time. "Our hearts remain with our partners at U.S. Border Patrol Swanton Sector as they mourn this tremendous loss." Maland was shot and killed during a traffic stop of Youngblut between Newport and Orleans, Vermont. Her passenger, Felix Bauckholt, was also armed but was fatally shot by federal agents after Youngblut opened fire. Zajko allegedly bought .40-caliber and .380-caliber handguns in February 2024 in Mount Tabor, Vermont, that were used in Maland’s shooting, the Times Union reported, citing court documents. Zajko is also considered a "person of interest" in a double murder in Pennsylvania and another murder in California, prosecutors revealed, without naming her. Maland, a Minnesota native and U.S. Air Force veteran, worked as a Border Patrol agent at the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Newport Station. He spent nine years in the military and 15 working for the federal government. "On January 20, 2025, at approximately 3:00 pm, an on-duty, uniformed United States Border Patrol (USBP) Agent initiated a stop of a blue 2015 Toyota Prius Hatchback with [a] North Carolina license plate ... to conduct an immigration inspection as it was driving southbound on Interstate 91 in Coventry, Vermont," an FBI criminal complaint obtained by Fox News states.

Reuters [1/30/2025 7:34 PM, Sarah N. Lynch and Andrew Goudsward, 48128K, Negative] reports the U.S. Justice Department said on Thursday it was probing the release by an upstate New York sheriff’s office of an immigrant living in the U.S. illegally, in what appears to be its first use of a new policy to target state and local agencies that do not comply with President Donald Trump’s directives. The department last week directed federal prosecutors to consider criminal investigations of state and local officials if they interfere with federal immigration enforcement, in a crackdown on "sanctuary cities.” The incident took place on Wednesday in Ithaca, New York, a deeply progressive city in New York’s Finger Lakes region, and involved Mexican national Jesus Romero-Hernandez, 27, who had been in custody over an assault charge. Federal prosecutors said the Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office released him despite an outstanding federal arrest warrant on a charge of illegally reentering the U.S. after a prior removal. Romero-Hernandez was later arrested on the immigration charge by federal agents. "Yesterday, despite the warrant, a defendant with no legal status and a history of violence was released into the community," Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove said in a statement. Bove said he welcomed the local U.S. attorney’s office’s commitment "to investigate these circumstances for potential prosecution.” Ithaca said the city’s police department adhered to "all relevant city policies" and "did not participate in any immigration enforcement activities.” Bove traveled to Chicago on Sunday to observe a law enforcement operation involving agents from the Department of Homeland Security and agents from several Justice Department components. A Justice Department official told Reuters this week that part of Bove’s visit also served in part to "observe how sanctuary city policies impact DHS and DOJ immigration enforcement operations.”

Telemundo [1/30/2025 8:19 PM, Staff, 2623K, Negative] reports ten alleged gang members were charged with criminal charges related to a gun trafficking operation that was coming firearms in Queens and other parts of New York City, Queens District Attorney Melinda Katz and New York Police Commissioner Jesica Tisch announced Wednesday. The arrested and accused individuals are suspected of being members of the Venezuelan Aragua train gang, which recently reportedly recruited children to commit crimes in the five districts of New York. Operation Train Derail, the undercover investigation into the Venezuelan gang, also led to the seizure of 34 firearms and 48 grams of "pink cocaine," a drug cocktail also known as "tusi." "As alleged, the defendants conspired to traffic and sell firearms and illegal drugs in New York City, and each played a different role in promoting the Aragua Train agenda," Katz said. "The geographical scope of his alleged conduct was extended nationally to include Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Texas, Florida, Colorado and reached Colombia. As a result of our investigation, 34 dangerous weapons are no longer on the streets, and we are dismantling this gang as it tries to establish themselves locally," he said.

Washington Post [1/30/2025 6:00 AM, Marissa J. Lang, Teo Armus and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, 40736K, Neutral] reports that, in the days since President Donald Trump took office, reports have rippled through the Washington region of suspected immigration raids — at churches, at restaurants, at schools. There has not yet been a large-scale sweep by agents in any of those public spaces locally, but that hasn’t quieted fears. Rumors ricocheting across the region have for many begun to feel like a promise of what’s to come. The Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration has started to take shape nationally with aggressive new arrest quotas, planned deportation flights and executive orders that take aim at, among other things, birthright citizenship. All the while, immigrants living in the president’s backyard — in and around the nation’s capital — have drawn blinds, locked doors and begun to plan for the worst. Workers have left jobs early. Families have drafted safety plans and signed off on emergency guardianship rights for their children, giving that responsibility to older siblings. Visa-holders and those under temporary protected status have left frantic messages for attorneys. Prayers around the dinner table have taken on new weight. A 6-year-old in Maryland recently started adding a line to his: Please don’t let them take my abuela away. In the last week, Washington Post reporters have spoken to dozens of immigrants and people who work with them in the D.C. metropolitan area, a region home to more than 1.5 million foreign-born individuals. Below are the stories of five people. Each asked not to be identified by their full names for fear of losing their jobs, homes or jeopardizing their immigration status or that of the people around them.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 11:05 AM, Gustaf Kilander, 57114K, Negative] reports that just after President Donald Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people for their crimes in connection to the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot, Speaker Mike Johnson, when asked to comment on the measure, said he wouldn’t "second guess" the president’s decision. "The President made a decision, we move forward," he said. "There are better days ahead of us… We’re not looking backward, we’re looking forward." Even so, the following day, the speaker announced that he was forming a select subcommittee under the House Judiciary Committee to investigate the attack on the Capitol. He formed it in order to investigate the failures of the Capitol police in securing the building that day and what many Republicans see as the flawed investigation by the initial select committee launched by Democrats. Johnson announced that he would make Georgia Republican Rep. Barry Loudermilk the chair of the subcommittee. He has previously investigated the Capitol attack during his time as chair of the Oversight Subcommittee of the House Administration Committee. Loudermilk said earlier this month "You’ve got to look backward to look forward," in an apparent attempt to square the speaker’s opposing comments.

New York Times [1/30/2025 6:57 PM, Emily Cochrane, 161405K, Neutral] reports Tennessee’s Republican-controlled legislature approved bills on Thursday aimed at reducing unauthorized immigration and allowing families to use public funds for private school tuition, mirroring the policy agenda of the new Trump administration. Legislative leaders left little room for debate, pushing through millions of dollars and sprawling policy changes in a special session that lasted just four days. One bill creates a new state immigration office that will work directly with the federal government to enforce immigration law. Another expands the state’s school voucher program, which currently operates only in Tennessee’s largest school districts. President Trump’s explicit support and a full-throated pressure campaign was enough to help overcome resistance within the Republican supermajority over the school bill. Expanding the voucher program has also been a top priority of Gov. Bill Lee’s, and it narrowly passed with 54 votes in the House and 20 in the Senate. “Now, we stand ready to assist the president in his further agenda for public safety for our state,” Mr. Lee, a Republican, said in a statement after the special session ended Thursday afternoon. “And finally, thanks to the General Assembly and thousands of Tennesseans who have worked so hard, universal school choice is now a reality for Tennessee families.” The only provision that won bipartisan support allotted millions of dollars in aid for communities in East Tennessee, which were devastated last year by flooding from Hurricane Helene. Some Democrats voted against part of it, though, because the funding was wrapped into the same spending bill that would pay for the voucher expansion. “In reality, it’s about control — certainly about control over taxpayer dollars,” said State Senator Heidi Campbell, a Democrat.

Miami Herald [1/30/2025 7:00 AM, David Goodhue, 6595K, Negative] reports the same morning that 26 people from China landed in Coral Gables in what authorities say was a migrant smuggling operation, Customs and Coast Guard crews stopped a boat off the Upper Florida Keys carrying migrants from Ecuador and also China, officials say. Tuesday’s incident in southern Coral Gables was the second large human smuggling operation busted in the same area this month. On Jan. 17, Coral Gables police stopped a U-Haul and Toyota Corolla near the Snapper Creek Lakes neighborhood with more than 20 migrants inside both vehicles. Most of the people were from China, but there were others from Ecuador and Brazil, according to Homeland Security Investigations, the federal agency investigating both incidents. Around 9 a.m. Tuesday, about an hour after police stopped two vans on Old Cutler Road in Coral Gables carrying the Chinese migrants, a Customs and Border Protection Air and Marine Operations aircraft was tracking a 22-foot center console boat with seven people on board traveling east of Key Largo, a spokesperson for that agency told the Miami Herald. The air crew notified a Customs interceptor boat and a Coast Guard boat from Station Islamorada. Both boats stopped the center console in Card Sound, a body of water in south Biscayne Bay sandwiched between north Key Largo and south Miami-Dade County on the mainland, the spokesperson said. Card Sound is located roughly 15 miles south by water of where federal agents said a boat dropped off the Chinese migrants near Snapper Creek Marina Tuesday. The Customs and Border Protection spokesperson said a driver who is suspected to be a smuggler and six others were on board the center console. Four are from Ecuador and two from China — all adults, the spokesperson said. They were taken to a Coast Guard cutter to be processed for removal from the U.S., according to the spokesperson. The boat operator was taken into custody by agents with Homeland Security Investigations, the spokesperson said.

The Miami Herald [1/30/2025 7:32 PM, Lawrence Mower, 6595K, Neutral] reports after being called out by Republican lawmakers for not enforcing the state’s E-Verify laws, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration on Wednesday issued warning letters to 40 companies. The notices — which blame the Legislature for not funding the program — are an apparent response to the bitter fight this week between DeSantis and the GOP-controlled Legislature over how best to carry out President Donald Trump’s immigration agenda. Earlier this week, top Republicans noted that his Department of Commerce had issued eight enforcement letters to companies during DeSantis’ tenure for potentially not screening employees through E-Verify, the federal program that checks the legal eligibility of new workers. None were issued since 2023, when DeSantis signed legislation requiring all companies with 25 or more employees to screen their employees through the program. The lack of action was part of the reason, top Republicans said, that immigration enforcement should be removed from the governor and given to the state’s agriculture commissioner, part of sweeping legislation lawmakers passed this week. DeSantis has vowed to veto the bill, claiming that the agriculture commissioner won’t aggressively pursue immigration enforcement. Wednesday’s "non-compliance letters," which were sent out to companies including the Cleveland Clinic Weston Hospital and corporate sites for Circle K and 7-Eleven, include language blaming the Legislature for not funding E-Verify. "Though the Legislature created but twice refused to fund this program, the Department has marshaled existing resources to enforce" the E-Verify law, the letters to the companies state. It wasn’t clear Thursday how, or when, lawmakers refused to fund the program. "The [annual state budget] includes enough funding for the Department to carry out its statutorily assigned duties, E-Verify being one of them," Senate spokesperson Katie Betta said in a statement. Telemundo [1/30/2025 7:06 PM, Ana Cuervo, 283K, Neutral] report that during an event in Palm Beach, DeSantis criticized the state’s current legislation, known as the "Trump Law on Illegal Immigration," and reaffirmed its intention to block it. His administration has been promoting additional initiatives that seek to discourage undocumented immigration, with particular emphasis on the money immigrants send to their home countries. One of the pillars of the governor’s proposal is the implementation of a system that verifies the legal status of those who send remittances. According to DeSantis, transfers of money abroad are an incentive for undocumented immigration, as they allow undocumented workers to generate income in the United States and send them to their families or, in some cases, to illegal organizations. "Many of these people from third world countries can make more money here doing informal jobs than in their own countries. Then they send that money in the form of remittances, sometimes to relatives, sometimes to friends, and sometimes to posters, if we are sincere," DeSantis said. The governor proposes that only U.S. citizens and legal residents on visas be able to send remittances, while undocumented immigrants would be excluded from this system. To do this, a mechanism similar to E-Verify would be implemented, the program that already requires companies with more than 25 employees to verify the immigration status of their workers.

Reported similarly:
Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 8:21 PM, Lawrence Mower, 57114K, Neutral]

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 1:11 PM, Asher Notheis, 2365K, Negative] reports that Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-FL) chided state lawmakers over a bill they passed with the intent to combat illegal immigration, spotlighting several problems with the "grotesque" bill and its purpose. The Tracking and Reforming Unlawful Migration Policy Act, which passed in the state House but failed to pass in the Senate, would allow the state to cooperate better with federal government deportation efforts. However, it would also take immigration enforcement authority away from the governor and vest it in the state’s agriculture secretary. DeSantis, who has been an ally of President Donald Trump and his fight against illegal immigration, argued the bill was "written to kneecap" law enforcement from effectively combating illegal immigration. "If you read their legislation, their legislation uses the word ‘agriculture’ over 30 times," DeSantis said in a Thursday press conference. "The number of times it uses the word ‘deport’? Zero. This is an immigration enforcement bill, and you’re not using that at all, but you’re using ‘agriculture’ 30, 36 times? That just shows you what we’re dealing with here, so the structure of the bill is just patently ridiculous."

Newsweek [1/30/2025 2:12 PM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Neutral] reports that Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is at odds with state lawmakers over an immigration bill. Florida lawmakers defied DeSantis and approved their own version of sweeping immigration reforms amid a GOP power struggle in President Donald Trump’s home state. The Florida Senate swiftly passed the bill with a 21-16 vote on Tuesday night, and the House followed suit with a decisive 82-30 vote. "The veto pen is ready," DeSantis said in a post on X after the bill was passed on Tuesday. "The bill that narrowly passed the Florida legislature last night fails to honor our promises to voters, fails to meet the moment, and would actually weaken state immigration enforcement," he wrote in a social media post. DeSantis’s veto threat comes as tensions rise between him and state House Speaker Daniel Perez (R) and state Senate President Ben Albritton (R). On Monday, in a surprising move, Perez and Albritton abruptly adjourned a special session that DeSantis had called to push forward President Trump’s immigration agenda. The passage of the bill signals a GOP civil war brewing between DeSantis and Perez and Albritton, who rejected the governor’s immigration proposal in favor of their own plan.

Tampa Bay Times [1/30/2025 6:14 PM, Romy Ellenbogen, Lawrence Mower, Neutral] reports Florida Highway Patrol troopers could soon be deputized to perform some of the functions of federal immigration officers under an agreement Gov. Ron DeSantis signed Wednesday with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. DeSantis said Wednesday during a news conference that Highway Patrol troopers will have "authority to exercise immigration power." But the union representing the majority of troopers warns the agency needs millions more dollars to carry out its work — money that neither DeSantis nor the Legislature have assigned to the historically underfunded organization. The memorandum comes as DeSantis tries to reassert his role in immigration enforcement amid a fierce back-and-forth with the Florida Legislature over dueling immigration bills that both aim to help President Donald Trump’s efforts to identify and deport immigrants who are in the country illegally.

AP [1/30/2025 6:24 PM, Staff, 47097K, Negative] Video: HERE reports a U.S. Air Force jet with migrants bound at their wrists and ankles departed Texas for Guatemala on Thursday, carrying 80 deportees in another deportation flight that reflects a growing role for the armed forces in helping enforce immigration laws.

Newsweek [1/30/2025 8:13 AM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Neutral] reports Texas Governor Greg Abbott has signed five executive orders directing the state’s agencies to assist President Donald Trump’s deportation efforts. The orders, which Abbott signed on Wednesday, are focused on strengthening border security, and include assisting with migrant arrests and looking for land for the government to lease. Newsweek has contacted Abbott’s office for comment outside of normal office hours. Trump made migration a central issue of his presidential campaign. Americans largely support immigration reform, but disagree about how policies such as deportations should be carried out. A New York Times/Ipsos poll, carried out from January 2 to 10, found 55 percent of voters strongly or somewhat supported deportations. Eighty-eight percent supported "deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records." Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the immigration system is broken. Texas was at the forefront of the crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border under Joe Biden’s administration, and spent over $13 billion on Operation Lonestar to tackle illegal immigration. Under Abbott’s executive orders, state agencies are required to support federal officers in "carrying out functions under federal immigration laws." The Texas military is tasked with developing an operational plan to collaborate with the U.S. army "to regain and maintain operational control of the southern border." States agencies are also required to assist with erecting border barriers; share intelligence on foreign terrorist organizations, such as Mexican drug cartels; and identify "additional detention space" for the detention and deportation of migrants suspected of being in the U.S. unlawfully. Abbott’s orders came after Trump announced on Wednesday that a facility at Guantánamo Bay in Cuba will be prepared to receive and house up to 30,000 migrants deported from the U.S. Meanwhile, Abbott also sent 400 Texas National Guard troops to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas on Monday to assist the U.S. military and Border Patrol agents.

Yahoo! News [1/31/2025 1:46 AM, Dominique LaVigne, 57114K, Neutral] reports Mayor Paloma Aguirre on Thursday night delivered the State of the City address in Imperial Beach, covering a wide range of issues. But for most, the Tijuana River sewage crisis remains at the top of mind. Some Imperial Beach residents may walk along the sandy shore, but you won’t find anyone going for a swim in the polluted water. “I wanted to retire here and be able to surf every day. Well, I haven’t surfed in this beach for two years,” said Bill Wright, an Imperial Beach resident. Among a laundry list of issues, the sewage crisis was at the top. “South County gets ignored because we’re not wealthy. We’re not well-connected like other parts of San Diego county,” she said. “If toxic sewage was flooding across the border into La Jolla, they’d send in the Army Corp of Engineers.” The city secured $250 million to expand the South Bay International Water Treatment Plant and fund maintenance once its complete. “That money is already being put to good use,” she said. Now, Aguirre demands the County of San Diego to pull from their reserves to continue addressing the sewage crisis. “Our taxpayer money shouldn’t be sitting in their bank, gaining interest. It should be spent on the community,” she said in her address. Aguirre continued to point out that 11 of the 20 homeless individuals identified in last year’s Point-In-Time Count in Imperial Beach were placed in homes or programs, and she plans to continue developing affordable housing in the city. “Families should be able to enjoy life here without breaking the bank,” she added. Aguirre also expressed support for the immigrant community, saying the city would not use law enforcement to assist in deportations. “We will not allow for city resources to be used to do the federal government’s job,” she said. While residents say they still need to see significant improvement, they feel the mayor addressed their concerns on Thursday night. “I like her proactive approach,” said Perly Shouse, a long-time Imperial Beach resident. For now, community members like Shouse and Wright are hoping for the same thing. “We have our fingers crossed for 2025 that our beaches will be opened this summer,” Wright said.

BNN Bloomberg [1/30/2025 6:27 PM, Stephanie Ha and Spencer Van Dyk, 1450K, Neutral] reports U.S. President Donald Trump confirmed today he’ll follow through on his threat to impose punishing tariffs on Canadian imports on Saturday, despite efforts by the federal government to address the commander-in-chief’s concerns by fortifying the border. "Look, Mexico and Canada have never been good to us on trade," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday. "They’ve treated us very unfairly on trade.” "And we will be able to make that up really quickly, because we don’t need the products that they have," he added. "We have all the oil you need. We have all the trees you need, meaning the lumber. We have more than almost everybody in those two categories.” As reasoning for the measure, the president pointed to the number of illegal drugs and migrants crossing the border, and what he considers the "massive subsidies … in the form of deficits," referencing the trade deficit between Canada and the United States. Trump initially threatened in late November to impose across-the-board 25 per cent tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico on "day one" of his second term. While the president held off on that threat last Monday, he said during an executive order signing ceremony on that day that he was considering Feb. 1 as the new implementation date. On Thursday, Trump added: "Those tariffs may or may not rise with time.” Trump also said oil "may or may not" be carved out of the sweeping tariffs.

Reuters [1/30/2025 5:13 PM, Jarrett Renshaw, Ted Hesson, 48128K, Neutral] reports the new U.S. border czar is expected to meet with Canada’s top public safety official on Friday just hours before President Donald Trump has promised to level new tariffs on Canada unless it helps deal with the flow of migrants and fentanyl across the border, according to two U.S. sources familiar with the planning. The meeting will offer Canada an opportunity to make a final pitch about its border efforts before Trump makes public his decision on whether or not to follow through on his threats to impose 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Saturday. Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, is expected to meet with Canadian Minister of Public Safety David McGuinty and others on Friday to hold preliminary discussions on border issues, the sources said.

Newsweek [1/30/2025 11:33 AM, Theo Burnman, 56005K, Neutral] reports that Canada is clamping down on border control as the threat of tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump looms. The U.S.’s biggest trading partner has launched a crackdown on fentanyl crossing the U.S.-Canada border after Trump threatened to place taxes as high as 25 percent on Canadian imports. Canada is the closest and largest U.S. trading partner, but the relationship has come under strain since Trump’s election. The president has threatened the imposition of a 25 percent tariff on all imports from Canada and Mexico, in an attempt to curb the influx of migrants and drugs across U.S. borders. Canada’s move represents a win for Trump’s rhetoric in motivating allies to do what he has demanded. Americans largely support the president’s mass deportation plans. A poll carried out by The New York Times and Ipsos from January 2 to 10 found that 55 percent of voters strongly or somewhat supported such plans. Eighty-eight percent supported "deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records." Canada has deployed new measures along the border with the U.S. to signify how seriously they take Trump’s threats. Canadian border patrols are now making use of Black Hawk patrol helicopters, a new fleet of drones, and dogs in an attempt to stop fentanyl from being smuggled into the U.S.

AP [1/30/2025 11:23 PM, Valerie Gonzalez, 47097K, Neutral] reports a U.S. Air Force jet with 80 migrants that left Texas for Guatemala on Thursday charted a path around Mexico because it couldn’t fly over the country, according to a U.S. official. The Mexican government said it never denied permission. The flight from Fort Bliss, an Army base in El Paso, was scheduled to take about seven hours, nearly twice as long as a direct route, because the military plane could not fly over Mexico, said U.S. Border Patrol spokesperson Orlando Marrero. Eight children were aboard. Mexico’s interior secretary said in a brief statement Thursday night that the U.S. government never asked permission to send the flight and that it has no ban. The flight, with migrants bound at their wrists and ankles, reflects a growing role for the U.S. armed forces in helping enforce immigration laws. “The message that we have for those people is that if you cross the border illegally, we are going to deport you to your country of origin in a matter of hours,” Marrero said The Trump administration has used military aircraft to deport people to Guatemala, Ecuador and Colombia, a departure from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s previous practice to employ charter and commercial planes. “There are some countries that don’t like military planes coming into their territory,” said U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, a Democrat who represents a Texas border district. “It’s something that logistically has to be worked out with the country before, because you don’t want to have a plane turned around in midair.” On Sunday, Colombia’s President Gustavo Petro refused two U.S. military planes with migrants, prompting Trump to announce 25% tariffs on Colombian exports. Colombia backed off and said it would accept the migrants but fly them on Colombian military flights that Petro said would guarantee them dignity.

Border Report [1/30/2025 8:51 PM, Salvador Rivera, 153K, Neutral] reports Tijuana Mayor Ismael Burgueño Ruiz says he will not lift an emergency declaration he made last month as a way to prepare for mass deportations from the United States. "At the moment, we have seen some deportation, but not as predicted," Burgueño Ruiz said. "Nevertheless, we need to stay on top of this dynamic.” The mayor says the emergency declaration issues Dec. 13 frees up funding from the federal government, which allows them to stay ready for large numbers of people who might suddenly descend on the city. "It allows us to prevent situations where we have to deal with a lot of bureaucracy," he said. "This bypasses a lot of red tape and it gives us a lot of authority to act immediately when the need arises.” The mayor made these comments during a meeting with residents Wednesday night. Meanwhile, as of Thursday morning, the shelter set up for deported migrants in Tijuana has taken in 216 Mexican nationals since it opened late last week. Mónica Vega Aguirre, coordinator for the Baja California state government, says only 40 of the migrants have chosen to spend the night with most accepting a bus ticket to return to their place of origin.

Wall Street Journal [1/31/2025 5:30 AM, Santiago Pérez, 57114K, Negative] reports President Trump’s plan to carry out the biggest mass deportation in U.S. history is squeezing Mexico like no other country. Mexico’s government is rushing to raise tent cities for migrants getting deported from the U.S. Thousands of non-Mexicans now stranded in the country are overwhelming immigration officials. And migrants continue to arrive in Mexico from Central and South America. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum is cooperating with the Trump administration’s new policies, U.S. officials say. As part of the “Mexico Embraces You” program, the government has set up a call center, developed a mobile phone app that works as a panic button in case of detention, and prepped thousands of diplomats at its network of 53 consulates across the U.S. to provide legal advice to Mexicans facing expulsion. The Mexican government is also setting up shelters for expelled migrants in border cities, and Sheinbaum said Mexico has already received more than 4,000 people—mostly Mexicans—deported from the U.S. since Trump’s Jan. 20 inauguration. She has pledged to give each deported Mexican migrant about $100 so they can make their way home. At the same time, Mexico has agreed to keep hosting hundreds of thousands of non-Mexican migrants seeking asylum in the U.S.—a significant concession that her government has made to the Trump administration. Thousands of often-impoverished foreigners are continuing to arrive in Mexico every month. “That’s a lot of people,” said Adam Isacson, a border-security expert at WOLA, a Washington-based human-rights advocacy group. The Trump administration and Mexico’s government have created a working group to address migration issues that will later be expanded to cover other areas of the U.S.-Mexico relationship, Sheinbaum said Monday. A senior U.S. official said cooperation with Mexico over Trump’s immigration and border plans is expected to continue.

FOX News [1/30/2025 8:54 PM, Staff, 49889K, Neutral] Video: HERE reports DHS Secretary Kristi Noem discusses sanctuary city policies and the Trump administration’s deportation efforts on ‘The Ingraham Angle.’

NPR [1/30/2025 4:36 PM, Sacha Pfeiffer, 35747K, Negative] Audio: HERE reports President Donald Trump signed a memorandum that instructs the Pentagon and HHS to prepare 30,000 beds at Guantanamo to house undocumented criminal migrants.

Border Report [1/30/2025 9:14 PM, Sandra Sanchez, 153K, Negative] reports migrant advocates on Thursday were speaking out against plans by President Donald Trump to revamp Guantánamo Bay to detain and hold thousands of undocumented immigrants sent from the United States. “We denounce Trump’s plans to more than double the capacity of the immigration detention system in the U.S. and detain some 30,000 immigrants at Guantánamo Bay, a site of horrific abuse and torture that should have been shut down a long time ago,” Stacy Suh, program director for the nonprofit Detention Watch Network, said on a call with reporters Thursday. “There are already nearly 40,000 people locked up in immigration detention. With these recent announcements, the Trump administration is proposing to hold an additional 84,000 people at any given time, which would bring the number of people detained for immigration to over 120,000 people — roughly the number of Japanese-Americans incarcerated in detention camps in the U.S. during World War II,” Suh said. Trump on Wednesday announced an executive order instructing the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security to begin preparing a facility to house up to 30,000 migrants at the U.S. Guantánamo Bay military base in Cuba. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who served as an officer at Guantánamo Bay while on active-duty National Guard deployment from 2004 to 2005, said it’s the “perfect place” to safely detain migrants, according to the Department of Defense. “This is not the camps,” Hegseth said in a DOD article Wednesday. “This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantánamo Bay, where we can plus-up thousands — and tens of thousands, if necessary — to humanely move illegals out of our country where they do not belong [and] back to the countries where they came from in proper process.”

Washington Post [1/30/2025 6:33 AM, Kelly Kasulis Cho and Niha Masih, 40736K, Negative] reports President Donald Trump said Wednesday he is ordering officials to establish a massive migrant detention facility at the Guantánamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. He made the announcement during a signing ceremony for the Laken Riley Act, which allows authorities to detain undocumented immigrants accused of theft-related crimes. Trump said the site would “detain the worst criminal illegal aliens” and be “a tough place to get out of.” Guantánamo Bay, which is also the site of a prison that held terrorist suspects after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, has become a notorious symbol of U.S. excesses during the “war on terror,” including the brutal mistreatment of prisoners and detention of suspects for two decades without charge. Human rights groups have condemned Trump’s move. “Migrants and asylum seekers are being cast as the new terrorist threat, deserving to be discarded in an island prison, removed from legal and social services and supports,” the Center for Constitutional Rights said in a statement. The group, which has represented a number of Guantánamo detainees, said it will continue to challenge the U.S. government’s use of the facility. Trump wants to use the Guantánamo naval base to house detained migrants, and he has instructed the secretaries of defense and homeland security to expand the base’s Migrant Operations Center to “to full capacity.” Speaking at the White House on Wednesday, Trump said he has directed officials to start preparing what he described as “the 30,000-person migrant facility.” Immigrant detainees will not be held with terrorism suspects, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told Fox News in an interview. The facility, Hegseth added, will be used to hold people while their deportation paperwork is processed and travel arrangements are made. It was not immediately clear how migrants will be housed, what kind of construction will be required and what the operational costs might be. U.S. government agencies and private contractors have used facilities at Guantánamo Bay to detain asylum seekers and refugees for several decades, rights groups say In 1994, for instance, President Bill Clinton resumed the previous administration’s use of the Guantánamo base for processing Haitian refugees and later ordered Cuban asylum seekers caught at sea to be held on the base. Later that same year, the facility’s migrant population totaled 45,000, according to a government report.

Reported similarly:
CNN [1/30/2025 6:00 AM, Stephen Collinson, 22417K, Negative]

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 7:21 AM, Jamie McIntyre, 2365K, Neutral] reports "Some of them are so bad we don’t even trust the countries to hold them, because we don’t want them coming back. So we’re going to send them out to Guantanamo," Trump said. "That’s a tough place to get out of." Trump’s executive order signed later also referred to the need to expand the Migrant Operations Center to full capacity to "provide additional detention space for high-priority criminal aliens.” However, in an interview last night on Fox News, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the migrant processing facility — which is separate from the prison camp for terror suspects — would only be a way station as deportees are sent back to their home countries. "We don’t want illegal criminals in the United States, not a minute longer than they have to be. Move them off to Guantanamo Bay, where they can be safely maintained until they are deported to their final location, their country of origin, where they are headed," Hegseth told Sean Hannity. "Guantanamo has long been a place for migrants," Hegseth noted. "In fact, in the 1990s, tens of thousands of Haitian and Cuban migrants were staged there as part of a crisis. We have an even bigger crisis on our hands right now.” In an earlier appearance on Fox News, Hegseth drew on his experience from his first National Guard deployment to Guantanamo to paint a picture of how the Naval Base would be used to "humanely move illegals out of our country, where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from.” "Guantanamo Bay is a perfect place. I served there from 2004 to 2005," Hegseth told host Will Cain. "Americans think of Gitmo as the images you see on your screen, right, the detention facilities with folks from the Taliban and al Qaeda. Those are the people I guarded in Camp 5 and Camp X-Ray. That’s one part of Guantanamo Bay.” "That’s one part of Guantanamo Bay. The other part of Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a naval station where it has long been, for decades, a mission of that naval station to provide for migrants and refugees and resettlement. So, this is not the camps," Hegseth said, insisting Gitmo would be a "safe location" for processing paperwork before people were sent to their home country. He said Guantanamo was "built for" this kind of mission and has plenty of space to expand. "One of them is the golf course on the Naval station, which can be expanded to provide an additional 6,000 places where migrants or illegals could go.”

Reuters [1/30/2025 6:06 AM, Phil Stewart, 48128K, Neutral] reports U.S. President Donald Trump’s military deportation flight to Guatemala on Monday likely cost at least $4,675 per migrant, according to data provided by U.S. and Guatemalan officials. That is more than five times the $853 cost of a one-way first class ticket on American Airlines from El Paso, Texas, the departure point for the flight, according to a review of publicly available airfares. It is also significantly higher than the cost of a commercial charter flight by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Trump launched the military deportation flights last week as part of his national emergency declaration on immigration, so far sending six planeloads of migrants on flights to Latin America. Only four have landed, all of them in Guatemala, after Colombia refused to let two U.S. C-17 cargo aircraft land and instead sent its own planes to collect migrants following a standoff with Trump. A U.S. official, speaking to Reuters on condition of anonymity, estimated the cost to operate a C-17 military transport aircraft is $28,500 per hour. The flight back and forth to Guatemala, not including time on the ground or any operations to prepare the flight for takeoff, took about 10-1/2 hours in the air to complete, the official said. A Guatemalan official told Reuters the military transport plane landed on Monday with 64 people on board. The Pentagon did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Trump, speaking at his Doral golf club to Republican lawmakers on Monday, vowed his unprecedented use of military aircraft for deportations would continue and any countries that refuse will "pay a high economic price." "For the first time in history, we are locating and loading illegal aliens into military aircraft and flying them back to the places from which they came," Trump said to applause. "We’re respected again, after years of laughing at us like we’re stupid people." White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt posted images last week of migrants boarding up the back ramp of a hulking C-17, announcing, "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."

Washington Post [1/30/2025 2:41 PM, Staff, 40736K, Negative] reports that regarding the Jan. 30 front-page article “Bodies pulled from Potomac after collision of aircraft.” I have worked at the Federal Aviation Administration’s Indianapolis Air Route Traffic Control Center for 16 years. Though we don’t yet know the cause of the midair collision and crash of American Eagle Flight 5342 on Wednesday, the disaster is a somber reminder of the tragedies that can result when pilots or air traffic controllers lose situational awareness. Call it irony or maybe just plain incompetence, but last week, President Donald Trump issued an executive order for a federal workforce hiring freeze with exceptions for “military personnel of the armed forces or to positions related to immigration enforcement, national security, or public safety.” Not exempted: the Federal Aviation Administration, despite the key role the FAA air traffic controller workforce plays in the safety of the flying public. This freeze comes as the FAA has been trying “to reverse the decades-long air traffic controller staffing level decline.” At the facility where I work, as with all air traffic control facilities, it has been normal for air traffic controllers to work six days a week. This has been the case for years. The burden on the controllers has become so bad, that the FAA enacted a policy in agreement with the air traffic controllers union last summer to eliminate forced overtime and provide more time between shifts to help reduce fatigue.

Bloomberg [1/30/2025 7:00 AM, James Stavridis, 21617K, Positive] reports the controversial dismissal of the US Coast Guard commandant, Admiral Linda Fagan, means the nation’s maritime guardians will soon have a new leader. He or she will face a host of challenges. Despite decades of punching well above their weight, the Coasties are in a difficult spot, with significant budget shortfalls and big missions ahead. What can the new commandant do to address the challenges? I am an enormous admirer of the US Coast Guard, which became part of the Department of Homeland Security in 2003. Unlike many Navy officers, I’ve had a lot of interaction with our maritime partners, especially in the 2000s when I was commander of the US Southern Command, in charge of nearly all military operations south of the US. I pushed for the position of operations officer at that major combatant command to be raised to a 2-star admiral. I strongly supported the Coastie admiral in charge of drug interdiction at Joint Interagency Task Force South (JIATF-S), which reported to me. I commanded and relied on Coast Guard cutters and aircraft to fulfill missions every day from my headquarters in southern Florida. Whenever I’d visit JIATF-S in Key West, I was briefed by the entire senior team. In addition to the Coast Guard rear admiral, it included representatives from the Drug Enforcement Agency, Central Intelligence Agency, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and the departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security, among others. We also had a dozen international partners from around Latin America and the Caribbean. It was an inspiring group, full of innovative ideas to stop the tons of cocaine flowing through the region. I came away deeply impressed with the Coast Guard, then led by charismatic Admiral Thad Allen, who became a national hero during the Hurricane Katrina disaster in 2005. Drug interdiction is just one of many things we call on the Coast Guard to do. With only 47,000 personnel, 250 ships (most of them very small cutters) and a couple of hundred aircraft, they must stem the flow of illegal migrants at sea; fight against well-armed drug cartels; maintain the systems of navigation and buoys around the nation; conduct patrols against illegal fishing and dumping of toxins as sea; guard the Arctic; train foreign Coast Guards; rescue mariners in distress; and be prepared to go into full-blown combat alongside the Navy. They do more with less than any part of the armed forces. But the strains are showing.

Washington Post [1/30/2025 6:45 AM, Max Boot, 40736K, Neutral] reports that, in 1983, President Ronald Reagan announced he was launching a Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as “Star Wars,” with the goal of rendering nuclear weapons “impotent and obsolete.” He imagined lasers in space shooting down Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles, effectively creating a space shield to save America from nuclear Armageddon. More than 40 years and hundreds of billions of dollars in missile-defense spending later, the United States has not come close to achieving Reagan’s lofty aspirations. Space lasers did not prove practical. Neither did a madcap scheme known as Brilliant Pebbles for lofting thousands of interceptors into space. The Airborne Laser — a Boeing 747 equipped with a laser — got to the testing phase before being canceled as too impractical. The United States did develop and deploy effective defenses, such as the Patriot battery and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, for use against short- and medium-range missiles. But attempts to stop a nuclear missile strike on the United States have never advanced much beyond President George W. Bush’s deployment in 2004 of 44 ground-based interceptors in Alaska and California. This system was designed to defend against a few missiles launched by a rogue state, not a massive nuclear attack from Russia or China. And it isn’t clear the system could achieve even that objective: In tests, the interceptors hit their targets only 50 percent of the time. But faith in national missile defense never dies. On Monday, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to create an “Iron Dome for America.” He directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to submit a plan within 60 days for “a next-generation missile defense shield” that would defeat “any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland” by employing, among other methods, “space-based interceptors.”

FOX News [1/30/2025 7:05 PM, Michael Ruiz, 49889K, Negative] reports the FBI is on the ground working alongside agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other law enforcement bodies conducting a nationwide crackdown on criminal aliens ordered by President Donald Trump, photos obtained by Fox News Digital reveal. "I’ve talked to every single one of our special agents in charge of all 55 of our divisions," acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll told Fox News Digital on Thursday. "I know that every single one of them has reached out to their DHS counterparts to offer assistance and support. So we here at the FBI are really leaning forward to assist DHS the best that we can, to stand shoulder-to-shoulder.” The FBI’s presence bolsters Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and other partner agencies with the bureau’s vast resources, including tactical teams and its intelligence network. Those resources worked alongside DHS agents in New York City earlier this week, helping identify and capture dozens of "the worst of the worst" suspects, including a 25-year-old suspected Tren de Aragua gang member. He is believed to have been involved in a violent incident in Colorado before police found him Monday in a Bronx apartment across the street from a school. And they extend across the country. In El Paso, Texas, the FBI, Homeland Security Investigations, ICE and agents from its Enforcement Removal Operations wing were seen on the ground as part of a mission that led to the capture of a suspect accused of running a stash house for human smugglers. "Our best chance to protect Americans, whether it’s from the threats posed by groups like ISIS or in our efforts to dismantle groups like Tren de Aragua, the best way to do that is to put our heads together, our tools together, our efforts together with DHS, but also with all of our United States intelligence community and law enforcement partners around the country," Driscoll said.

NBC News [1/30/2025 3:03 PM, Nicole Acevedo, 50804K, Neutral] reports some immigrants are worried that routine check-ins with immigration authorities are making them more vulnerable to being detained, as President Donald Trump and his administration ramp up arrests and deportations throughout the country. Two New York-based immigration attorneys whose names are being withheld to protect their clients said they started noticing a shift after Trump was elected president in November. People in the state who have long been enrolled in one of these immigration supervision programs, or have been checking in with ICE once or twice a year, were asked to report sooner and, in dozens of cases since, they said, their clients ended up being detained and deported. There are immigrants who go to ICE check-ins who don’t have deportation orders and are in the process of trying to adjust their immigration status. Others may have such orders, but are appealing them or are not aware they have a deportation order until they show up to their routine check-in. A recent memo from the Trump administration expanded immigration officials’ "enforcement discretion" powers. This allows them to bypass regular immigration law and speed up deportations of anyone with a removal order, regardless of whether they are considered a priority or not. The attorneys said they are expecting to see more of these cases across the nation. Yet immigrants don’t have much of a choice: Failure to show up for a routine ICE appointment hurts their chances of remaining in the U.S. and can even lead to a deportation order.

New York Times [1/30/2025 6:32 PM, Miriam Jordan, Hamed Aleaziz and Heather Knight, 161405K, Neutral] reports at a barbershop in Los Angeles, only one of the 10 chairs was occupied on what would ordinarily be a busy evening. In San Francisco, a middle school student’s erroneous information about seeing an immigration officer on a city bus prompted the school district to send parents a warning. In Chicago, a mistaken report that immigration agents showed up at a school set off panic that rippled across the country. At a church in Charlotte, N.C., more than a third of the usual congregants were absent from a recent evening service. Hotlines set up by advocates for immigrants to report enforcement activity have experienced a spike in calls. “The hysteria is out of control,” said Patrick Garcia, executive director of Embrace All Latino Voices, a group in Charlotte, N.C. After taking office last week, the Trump administration began highlighting what it has characterized as a new and more aggressive effort to target illegal immigration and deliver on a key campaign pledge to carry out mass deportations. So far, the enforcement efforts have been primarily individual arrests, rather than sweeps of factories, farms or other large-scale sites. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has reported on social media more than 5,000 arrests in around a week’s time. An estimated 14 million undocumented immigrants live in the United States, according to demographers and other experts. The number includes people with no legal status as well as people who have some form of temporary status that is being contested in court or has been threatened with termination by the Trump administration. Arresting and deporting even a small share of the population with no status or contested status is all but impossible. But stirring anxiety and uncertainty among those millions of people appears to be far easier, stoked by sharp rhetoric from Mr. Trump and his top aides and fed by news footage of federal agents massing in communities from Seattle to New York.

Newsweek [1/30/2025 12:39 PM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Neutral] reports that the morale among Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents is reportedly soaring amid an increase in enforcement actions under the Trump administration. Two sources familiar with the situation have confirmed that ICE officers are feeling more motivated as they resume their duties with fewer restrictions. John Fabbricatore, a retired ICE field office director in Colorado, told Newsweek: "The morale is extremely high right now that they’re finally able to do their job; they’re allowed to follow the law as it’s written.” Newsweek understands that Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO) officers have been particularly "enthusiastic" since Trump returned to office. ICE has been thrust into the forefront of the national conversation surrounding immigration enforcement in the United States as President Trump begins to implement his mass deportation policy. Immigration policies, including mass deportations, were a key element of President Trump’s campaign to return to the White House. Since the commencement of his second term, thousands of undocumented immigrants have been apprehended and hundreds deported. Americans largely support immigration reform overall but disagree about how policies such as deportations should be carried out.

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 1:02 PM, Paul Bedard, 2365K, Negative] reports that law enforcement agencies that resist helping U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement round up criminal illegal migrants are going to be called out by their own in a new escalation of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. The national police publication Law Enforcement Today said that it would list departments and cities that refuse to cooperate with ICE and other departments seeking to find, arrest, and deport the thousands of criminal illegal immigrants in the nation. "As the largest group of online law enforcement publications, Law Enforcement Today is committed to assisting the Trump administration, border czar Tom Homan, and the Department of Homeland Security in securing our border and, most importantly, sending as many illegals out of our country and back to their country of origin as possible," said the publication. Over 700 jurisdictions and their police departments have declared themselves sanctuaries for all illegal immigrants, including any with a record of violence. A recent report said that sanctuaries are hiding 60% of criminal illegal immigrants from ICE. Homan has pledged to override those declarations and even arrest officials who get in his way. The police publication said it would help direct ICE and Homan to resistance departments to test sanctuary policies.

Reuters [1/30/2025 5:00 PM, Gnaneshwar Rajan, 48128K, Negative] reports U.S. President Donald Trump is looking to strike a deal with El Salvador to deport members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua to the Central American country, Bloomberg News reported on Thursday, citing people familiar with the discussions. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio plans to visit Panama and four other countries in Central America in the coming days in his first overseas trip, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce told reporters last week. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that the deportations would be a part of discussions between U.S. officials and El Salvador during Rubio’s trip. Any eventual deal would be announced by Trump, the report said. The newly sworn-in President also wants to reintroduce "safe third country" type asylum agreements similar to those in place during his first term, Bloomberg reported, adding that these would also be a focus of Rubio’s meetings in El Salvador and in Guatemala.

Bloomberg [1/30/2025 9:45 AM, Fola Akinnibi, 21617K, Positive] reports that the Trump administration is laying the groundwork for state and local law enforcement officers to participate in mass deportation efforts, an unprecedented move that could deputize thousands of officers with the power to arrest immigrants across the US. A late January memo from the US Department of Homeland Security invokes a 1996 provision that allows the agency to give state and local police immigration enforcement powers in certain circumstances. It serves as a call to action to jurisdictions that have expressed a desire to help implement President Donald Trump’s mass deportation agenda. And it could result in local police and sheriffs investigating immigration offenses alongside their other work. Since the memo, Texas Governor Greg Abbott announced that state troopers and special agents will be deployed to help identify immigrants with warrants across the state. Florida’s legislature passed a bill, after consulting with the Trump administration, to increase law enforcement cooperation with the federal government. Despite border arrests dropping to the lowest levels since the height of the pandemic, the memo cites an “actual or imminent mass influx” of immigrants at the southern border that’s affecting residents of all 50 states. That designation is the basis for requesting the help of the nearly 800,000 state and local police officers across the country. DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 10:51 AM, Jenny Goldsberry, 2365K, Negative] reports that Vice President JD Vance explained that the deportation of illegal immigrants with "violent criminal backgrounds" was simple because their addresses were known to the White House. Deportation and repatriation efforts are in full swing across the country. The U.S. Air Force posted photos of illegal immigrants boarding planes and local law enforcement have confirmed arrests across the country. Vance gave his first television interview since becoming the Vice President on Fox News’s Hannity on Wednesday to give an update on more dangerous illegal immigrants that officials deported. "How do we find them?" Hannity asked. "You have a known terrorists but you don’t know where they are. Known cartel members but you don’t know where they are." However, Vance said it is only "sometimes" true that their locations aren’t known. "You ask what is shocking to me. It’s that many of these violent criminals, we knew their addresses, we knew their names, we just needed to send some of you to go to their house and get them the hell out of the country. That really should shock the American people," Vance said. However, border czar Tom Homan expressed his plan to deport many more. Homan anticipates deportation flights to happen daily.

New York Times [1/30/2025 2:26 PM, Jenna Russell and Tik Root, 161405K, Negative] reports that in court filings and arguments before a judge on Thursday, a federal prosecutor in Vermont laid out a web of connections between Teresa Youngblut, who faces charges related to the fatal shooting of a Border Patrol agent last week, and two people linked to murder investigations in other states. The allegations of ties between Ms. Youngblut, 21, and people suspected of violent crimes in California and Pennsylvania shed little new light on the highway traffic stop in Coventry, Vt., on Jan. 20 that ended with the deaths of the border agent, David Maland, and Ms. Youngblut’s companion, Felix Bauckholt. But during a detention hearing in federal court in Burlington, Vt., on Thursday, Matthew Lasher, an assistant U.S. attorney, cited those connections, and Ms. Youngblut’s “violent escalation of an otherwise peaceful law enforcement encounter,” as evidence that she should remain in federal custody while her case proceeds. “That kind of unprovoked violence could not more clearly demonstrate the danger to the community that the defendant represents,” he said.

Vermont Public [1/30/2025 7:02 PM, Elodie Reed and Sabine Poux, 148K, Neutral] reports advocates and lawyers that work with Vermont’s immigrant communities say President Donald Trump’s executive actions cracking down on immigration and an uptick in anti-immigrant rhetoric are fueling "fear mongering" and sparking rumors of increased federal immigration enforcement across the state. "It’s a scary time," said Jill Martin Diaz, the executive director of Vermont Asylum Assistance Project, or VAAP. "My inbox is absolutely inundated with questions from people across all sectors, health care, education, early childhood, retail, production, manufacturing: ‘We need information. We need information, what do we do if ICE shows up?’". But receiving clear information about actions by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Customs and Border Protection and the wider Department of Homeland Security is a long-standing challenge, according to immigration lawyers. "While we should be able to know how federal agencies are operating within state borders, in practice, it’s often very difficult to know," said James Lyall with the ACLU of Vermont. "It does, in fact, deny members of the public – all of us – information about what they’re doing in our name.” In response to this information gap, VAAP, which provides legal services for noncitizens, recently launched an online form where people can submit immigration enforcement they witness, including raids and arrests. Martin Diaz said it’s funded with a temporary grant from the Vermont Refugee Office for statewide asylum coordination. "I think it’s within our mandate to help be part of the solution, in coordinating data collection," they said. "I hope to incorporate what I’m learning into talking points that we reiterate in our community, education in our systems, advocacy work … and to help let communities know what to look for.”

New York Times [1/30/2025 11:43 PM, Christopher Maag and Eileen Sullivan, 161405K, Negative] reports the acting U.S. deputy attorney general called on Thursday for an investigation of an upstate New York sheriff who had released an undocumented immigrant from custody — in an apparent escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against sanctuary cities. Emil Bove III, who was named acting deputy attorney general last week, said that the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of New York was looking into the failure of Sheriff Derek R. Osborne of Tompkins County to honor a federal arrest warrant. It was for the arrest of Jesus Romero-Hernandez, 27, a Mexican citizen who Mr. Bove said was released from jail in Ithaca, N.Y., on Tuesday after having pleaded guilty to assault in the third degree. “I applaud the U.S. attorney’s commitment to investigate these circumstances for potential prosecution,” Mr. Bove said in a news release. The episode in Ithaca, 230 miles north of New York City, could present an early test of the Trump administration’s threat to take on so-called sanctuary city policies, which include various measures to bar local officials from assisting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE has stepped up immigration raids since Mr. Trump took office, focusing on immigrants with criminal records. In New York City on Tuesday, 39 people were arrested in a show of force, with ICE agents teaming with other federal agencies. The administration created a “Sanctuary Cities Enforcement Working Group” and is threatening to bring civil lawsuits against jurisdictions that stand in the federal government’s way on immigration enforcement. In the Tompkins County case, agents with ICE, the U.S. Marshals Service and the Department of Homeland Security arrested Mr. Romero-Hernandez on Thursday. He was charged on Jan. 8, 2024, with illegally re-entering the United States after a prior removal, according to the Justice Department. Mr. Romero-Hernandez had been sentenced on the state assault charge to the time he had already served in local custody. The Tompkins County Sheriff’s Office released him before ICE was able to pick him up from the jail, according to Mr. Bove. “A defendant with no legal status and a history of violence was released into the community,” Mr. Bove said. “Federal agents risked their safety and pursued the defendant in unsafe conditions.”

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 7:06 PM, Caity Coyne, 57114K, Negative] reports at least 72 people in West Virginia have been identified and detained for residing in the country without proper documentation as of Thursday, according to Gov. Patrick Morrisey. That’s up from the 58 people who were identified earlier this week. The detentions are part of a nationwide crackdown on undocumented immigrants spurred in recent days by President Donald Trump’s administration. To aid in that effort, Morrisey on Thursday released an executive order directing all law enforcement agencies in the state to fully cooperate with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on finding and arresting undocumented people. The action also ordered all officials under the authority of the governor to cooperate with the efforts. Despite West Virginia sitting nearly 1,500 miles away from the nation’s southern border, Morrisey during a news briefing Thursday said he believed unauthorized immigration was responsible for the deadly toll that fentanyl has taken in the state. In 2023 — the most recent year nearly complete data is available from the state Department of Health — more than 81% of fatal drug overdoses in West Virginia involved fentanyl.

CBS Austin [1/30/2025 11:19 AM, Karen Aguilar, 581K, Negative] reports that a Senior Trump administration official told FOX News that two Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang members were arrested in Nashville by ICE. The men were allegedly arrested last year by the Biden administration when they came into this country illegally. However, with Trump’s mass deportation plans the hope is there likely won’t be a repeat. A cellphone video taken by a woman who wants to be anonymous because of fear for her life shows a chaotic scene at a home on Hobson Pike in Antioch. "A bunch of cops out here on the street, several of them traffic. All backed up, helicopters flying around. And then after that cleared up, they had the SWAT team, FBI and FBI, immigration," she said. Court documents show earlier this month, federal agents with Homeland Security Investigations or HSI and other law enforcement officers had a search warrant and entered the home. MNPD said it was a suspected brothel. Tire marks are still on the ground from the operation, officials said when federal agents went to the home five men including undocumented immigrant Elmer Humberto Aparicio Castillo, ran from the back of the home and they were caught and then arrested.

Newsweek [1/30/2025 6:53 AM, Billal Rahman, 56005K, Neutral] reports a man was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers outside a church in Georgia while his family was inside during the service. Newsweek has contacted ICE for further comment via email outside of normal office hours. The Department of Homeland Security 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.” Trump made immigration a central theme of his successful presidential campaign. Americans largely support immigration reform overall but disagree about how policies such as deportations should be carried out. A majority of Americans support Trump’s current deportation plans. A poll carried out by New York Times and Ipsos from January 2 to 10 found that 55 percent of voters strongly or somewhat supported such plans. Eighty-eight percent supported "deporting immigrants who are here illegally and have criminal records.” Large majorities of both Democrats and Republicans agreed that the immigration system is broken. Kenia Colindres told Channel 2 that her husband, Wilson Rogelio Velasquez Cruz, was arrested during service at Iglesia Fuente de Vida in Tucker. Colindres told local news that she, her husband and three children were in the church when her husband received a call during the service, but chose not to answer it. Moments later, his immigration GPS ankle monitor began alarming. Worried about the disturbance, she advised him to step outside to check it. As soon as he did, ICE officers were waiting to take him into custody, according to WSBTV. Colindres spoke with her husband on Monday, and he informed her that he could not appeal his case to a judge. He also told her he was being transferred to Stewart Detention Center before his deportation. Newsweek understands Velasquez Cruz is currently in Stewart Detention Center. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 1:34 AM, Hannah Mackenzie, 57114K, Negative] reports Sanford Police Chief Cecile Smith has confirmed to FOX 35 that federal agents were on scene at an apartment complex off Live Oak Boulevard early Wednesday morning. Residents at the complex told FOX 35’s Hannah Mackenzie that as many as 12 people may have been detained. The Department of Homeland Security has not confirmed the number of people detained nor the reason for detainment. Video, captured by an employee of the Roselea Manor Apartments in Sanford, showed three people in handcuffs being escorted by federal law enforcement agents. Their bullet-proof vests read "HSI" and "ERO" which stands for Enforcement and Removal Operations, part of ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement). President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants with criminal records has been ramping up across the country. On Jan. 29, ICE reported 1,016 arrests. Jeremiah Lopez-Perez said one of the men detained was a friend of his. "Did your friend have a criminal background?" asked Mackenzie. "Maybe… yeah… a long time ago," Lopez-Perez responded. Lopez-Perez said he is in the United States legally, and has never committed a crime, but after seeing federal agents detain his neighbors, he skipped work because he was too scared to go outside. "A lot of people stayed home," Lopez-Perez said. Hours after the raid, the apartment complex was quiet, and residents were on edge. "Are there a lot of undocumented immigrants in this apartment complex?" Mackenzie asked one man. "I think, yeah," he responded. The man, who didn’t want us to show his face, said he was in the country illegally. He works as a landscaper. "How old were you when you came here?" Mackenzie asked. "Fifteen," he responded. Another man, who also said he is in the U.S. without legal authorization, said he saw four people being detained outside his apartment. "I think everybody is scared," he said. The specific charges or immigration statuses of those detained were not immediately released. It is not also not known how many people in the complex are undocumented or whether more enforcement actions are planned in the area.

CBS Miami [1/30/2025 5:49 PM, Ted Scouten, 52225K, Neutral] reports a South Florida man says he is traumatized after being stopped twice in two weeks by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) who demanded to see his identification, despite being a U.S. citizen. Carlos, who was born and raised in Hollywood and is of Colombian descent, believes he was racially profiled. ICE has acknowledged receiving a request for comment but has not yet responded.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 4:52 PM, Anne Geggis, 57114K, Negative] reports that fear and chaos are rippling through the immigrant community in Lake Worth Beach as even those under application for asylum are being detained and marked for deportation, according to a human service agency that serves them. Mariana Blanco, director of operations at the Guatemalan-Maya Center there, said that it’s like a switch flipped the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration Jan. 20 and the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stepped up its presence in the community beyond what was happening during the Biden administration. It became even more pronounced on the Thursday following Trump’s return to the Oval Office, she said. She knows of at least 20 people who have been detained, she says, either doing their official check-ins, appearing in court and going to the grocery. "They have a proper case open with ICE, and they’re just doing their regular check-ins, which they’ve been doing for years," Blanco said. "They’re receiving calls specifically from the Delray (ICE) office saying, ‘Hey, you know your GPS isn’t working,’ or ‘Your phone isn’t working,’ or ‘You forgot to sign something. Can you come in.’"

Miami Herald [1/30/2025 5:07 PM, Maykel Gonzalez, 6595K, Neutral] reports the Miami office of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) arrested an undocumented immigrant in Florida after discovering a crucial detail on his driver’s license. The arrest occurred amid operations launched by several federal agencies in support of the Trump administration’s mass deportation plans. The agency stated on social media Monday that the immigrant was "arrested for operating a motor vehicle without valid driver’s license and possession of a counterfeit driver license." FHP has launched a joint operation with federal partners at Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) in Tallahassee and resulted in the arrest of "12 individuals who were believed to be illegally residing in the State of Florida." The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) revealed that more than 7,000 undocumented immigrants were detained and deported after the Republican leader took office on Jan. 20.

Axios [1/30/2025 6:18 AM, Martin Vassolo, Sareen Habeshian, 16349K, Neutral] reports immigrants across South Florida are bracing in anticipation of a wave of Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids ordered by the Trump administration. President Trump has already acted on his promise to crack down on undocumented immigrants through large-scale deportation. Trump declared a national emergency at the U.S.-Mexico border hours after being sworn in as president. The administration also announced it’s ending the policy of avoiding arrests in churches, schools, hospitals, funerals, weddings and public demonstrations. Below are some important details to keep in mind for those concerned about encountering federal immigration agents. The Department of Homeland Security has expanded its use of this process, which can hasten deportation for undocumented people who’ve been in the country for less than two years, according to the National Immigration Law Center. Migrants facing expedited removal can lose their opportunity to appear before an immigration judge or fight their case. People arrested by ICE have a better chance to fight their case in immigration court if they can prove how long they’ve been in the U.S., Nicole Hallett, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago, told Axios. ICE or a federal officer can enter a home with an arrest warrant or search warrant signed by a judge, Andres Guerra, an attorney with the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, tells Axios. Agents can enter your home without a warrant if you give them consent or if they hear an emergency happening inside, Guerra says.

Miami Herald [1/30/2025 5:46 PM, Lauren Liebhaber, 6595K, Negative] reports a New York man is facing charges after federal agents say he threatened to kidnap and harm an 11-year-old he met on the internet if she didn’t send him nude photos of herself. Michigan State Police were contacted by the child’s family, who had recently learned she was "engaging in sexual conversations and sending nude photographs" to a man she met on Roblox, an online gaming platform, according to a criminal complaint. An agent with the Department of Homeland Security assisting with the investigation learned the girl met 29-year-old Ryan Romario Dookhan, a licensed security guard from Jamaica, New York, around June 2024, records show. Dookhan is charged with three counts of sexual exploitation of a child, according to Jan. 28 indictment records.

Chicago Tribune [1/30/2025 6:00 AM, Caroline Kubzansky, 57114K, Negative] reports that, as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents led Sai Pavuluri out of his Northwest Side home in handcuffs, he turned to look at the camera crew recording his arrest. He wore shorts and a T-shirt. His face offered no discernible expression. Several feet away, Dr. Phil McGraw — a TV talk show host who, along with his camera crew, was embedded with Homeland Security agents as they launched an immigration blitz in the Chicago area on Sunday — opined on the arrest in keeping with his role of de facto spokesman for the operation. In another video shared on social media, Pavuluri is shown sitting inside a black sedan as a federal agent opens the door and allows a reporter from the pro-Donald Trump website Frontline America to stick a microphone in the 31-year-old man’s face and question him. Pavuluri, who was born in India, explained he had been in prison since 2018, serving an eight-year sentence for a drunken driving incident that killed 20-year-old Mariyah Howard of Beecher. He had been released from prison only 16 days earlier, according to Illinois Department of Correction records. Looking into the camera, he asked for a “fair chance” and pleaded for grace from no one in particular. “I did something wrong,” said Pavuluri, who was in the country on a student visa at the time of the crash. “I’m sorry about what I did.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement has not released detailed information about its arrests this week, leaving Pavuluri’s detention as one of the few cases tacitly confirmed by the agency. With ICE refusing to say how many people were arrested locally or the reason for their detainment, curated videos have filled the void on social media and prop up the Trump administration’s so-far unverifiable claims that it is only going after felons. In far south suburban Manteno, the video brought Wendy Howard to tears. She had been “torn” over President Trump’s deportation plan, she said, and worries in particular about how it will affect people with families and young children. But Pavuluri, she says, is a different case. He is responsible for her daughter’s death in the aforementioned DUI fatality on March 31, 2018. She says she has forgiven him, in part because God forgives people, but his actions are the reason she no longer enjoys holidays and why she had to move her mother into memory care alone.

Newsweek [1/30/2025 5:24 PM, Dan Gooding, 56005K, Neutral] reports two people, reported to be illegal immigrants, were arrested Thursday in connection with a man’s murder in Chicago over the weekend. George Levin, 63, was found dead by his sister Sunday night, according to local media reports. He had been bound with duct tape, and his legs tied with an extension cord. Levin was found in the basement of his Norwood Park neighborhood home late Sunday night. He was taken to the nearby Ascension Resurrection medical center but was pronounced dead by medics. The man’s cause of death was put down to multiple injuries from an assault and ruled as a homicide, the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office confirmed to Newsweek. Chicago Police Department confirmed to Newsweek that two people were being held and that an investigation was still underway. The department did not answer questions about the suspects’ immigration status. Local media reported that the suspects were both illegal immigrants, one from Ecuador and the other from Venezuela, but that remained unconfirmed Thursday afternoon.

VOA News [1/30/2025 3:41 PM, Kane Farabaugh, 2717K, Neutral] reports Alderman Michael Rodriguez represents Chicago’s 22nd Ward, including the "Little Village" neighborhood on the west side of the city. But as federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and other agents fan out across the area amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on illegal immigrants, the usually bustling 26th Street is noticeably quieter. At a city press conference on Wednesday, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling told reporters that federal law enforcement agencies were providing updates to his department on their enforcement actions.

Chicago Tribune [1/30/2025 1:14 PM, Olivia Stevens and Samantha Moilanen, 4917K, Neutral] reports that amid community fears of potential raids by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, Guadalupe Gutierrez sensed more chaos when her cousin came home from Dixmoor’s Rosa Parks Middle School crying. "He told me, ‘I’m scared to go out,’" Gutierrez said Tuesday. Gutierrez said her cousin and other students told her their teacher came into class holding up a newspaper with a story about potential mass deportations under President Donald Trump and saying, ‘I can’t wait for this to happen.’" "The students, they go to school to learn," Gutierrez said. "They don’t go to school to be scared and wonder if they’re going to get dragged out by ICE officers." The teacher said Thursday that "these are all false allegations," declining to elaborate further. Chicago streets have quieted following targeted operations by ICE agents that began Sunday, part of a nationwide effort federal officials say led to 1,000 arrests. But some south and southwest suburban cities, villages and school districts with large Hispanic populations are also bracing for potential arrests in their communities. Gutierrez said West Harvey Dixmoor Elementary District 147 officials dismissed or ignored complaints about the teacher’s rhetoric but sent parents a statement Thursday "addressing concerns… regarding immigration enforcement and the safety of our students and families."

Border Report [1/30/2025 8:48 PM, Julian Resendiz, 153K, Negative] reports two Guatemalan brothers authorities say are illegally present in the United States are facing federal charges after allegedly pointing a rifle at a trucker during a "road rage" incident on Jan. 24 in Texas. Police in Bell County responded to a 911 call of alleged threats with a firearm made to the operator of a tractor-trailer on the northbound lanes of Interstate 35 south of Waco. Officers tracked down the gray Ford F-150 pickup from where the threats were allegedly made and conducted a high-risk traffic stop. The officers questioned Ever Morales Calderon and Anderson Morales Calderon and located two pellet guns and one fully functional rifle that brothers said they used for hunting. When asked about the alleged road rage incident, Ever allegedly said it was his brother, Anderson, who pointed the rifle at the trucker, according to court documents filed in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas. Court records show the case was referred to a deportation officer with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Jan. 26. The officer found that not only Anderson, but also Ever, had entered the U.S. Illegally through California.

Border Report [1/30/2025 12:31 PM, Jorge Vela, 153K, Neutral] reports that as the national crackdown on immigration continues, fears of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids at schools and other sensitive areas have spread in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley. "Afraid of what is happening? Not really, but I do feel a little sad because they are Latino brothers, not just Mexicans. People who have been facing many dangers and many problems and the situation is not easy since they literally work like donkeys," said Jorge Sierra, an American citizen from Reynosa, Tamaulipas. He says he does not fear being detained since he is an American citizen. However, he knows many others, including children, are fearful of ICE agents entering schools and churches. He adds that people should not panic because this is nothing new. "This is not the first time it has happened, we have been here before," Sierra said. Psychologist Dr. Christopher Carcamo says fear has grown due to the overexposure of these issues in social media. He says all this can be traumatizing for both children and adults. "With the current political climate, there’s a lot of people that have a lot of different mixed emotions, conflicting emotions, and we also have to recognize that sometimes, not just on an individual level, but on a family level, on a cultural level, on a societal level," Carcamo said. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 11:35 AM, Jenny Goldsberry, 2365K, Positive] reports that Ryan Walters, the Oklahoma state superintendent of public instruction, is standing by President Donald Trump’s immigration policies at the risk of separating children from their families. This comes after the Oklahoma Board of Education unanimously approved a measure requiring families to verify their children’s citizenship when enrolling them in school. It was discussed for 20 minutes before its approval. Walters stood by the measure during an appearance on NewsNation Now. Host Connell McShane asked him if it would lead to fewer immigrant families enrolling their children in school. "If the president and ICE don’t know where the families are, where the students are, you’re going to have families that are deported without their kids," Walters said. "This is what the American people have asked for. President Trump is fulfilling a promise." Trump signed an executive order earlier this week allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to enter schools. Walters also expressed his support for the order. "We’ve said our schools will not be sanctuary schools in Oklahoma," Walters said. "We will work with President Trump… If he needs the information, we’ll get it for him."

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 12:17 PM, Emma Murphy, 57114K, Negative] reports that a push to deport undocumented immigrants serving time in Oklahoma prisons doesn’t mean that they won’t be required to serve out their sentences or will escape justice. Gov. Kevin Stitt said he will review the cases of undocumented immigrants serving time in Oklahoma correctional facilities individually before deciding whether to commute any sentences so that they can be deported. The Republican governor made the remarks Wednesday when asked how he was planning to balance victim rights and public safety with his plan to save taxpayers money by deporting undocumented criminals serving time in Oklahoma prisons. "We’re not going to let bad people out just to make a political statement," Stitt said. "But I also think about the tens of billions of dollars that Oklahoma taxpayers are spending to be incarcerating people that really shouldn’t be in our state anyway." He said the Department of Corrections has over 500 undocumented immigrants in custody. Stitt tapped Tim Tipton, Oklahoma’s commissioner of public safety, in November to develop and launch Operation Guardian. The program aims to deport undocumented inmates incarcerated in Oklahoma prisons in coordination with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the Trump administration’s mass deportation mandate. But before anyone in state custody can be deported, Stitt must commute their sentence.

Reuters [1/30/2025 7:11 PM, Andrew Hay, 48128K, Negative] reports Native Americans and Democratic lawmakers allege Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are harassing tribal members as they carry out President Donald Trump’s crackdown on migrants. Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren said his citizens have had "traumatizing" experiences with ICE agents, and U.S. Congressional Democrats called on Trump to stop the agency targeting Native Americans as it carried out immigration raids. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It has previously said its agents may encounter U.S. citizens during operations and request identification from them. "ICE’s dangerous behavior of harassing American citizens, seemingly only due to the way they look, is unconstitutional and un-American," nine Democrats led by New Mexico Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez said in a Wednesday letter to Trump. The lawmakers cited a Jan. 22 incident reported, opens new tab by the Mescalero Apache tribe in which an ICE agent stopped a tribal member at a convenience store in Ruidoso, New Mexico and asked to see proof of U.S. citizenship. Nygren, head of the United States’ largest Native American reservation, is among indigenous leaders urging members to proactively carry state-issued identification cards and their Certificate of Indian Blood, an official U.S. document certifying a person has Native American ancestry. Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship in 1924.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 8:01 AM, Staff, 57114K, Negative] reports Navajo Nation President Buu Nygren pictured at the Santa Fe Roundhouse in 2023. Nygren issued a warning on social media on Jan. 22 about reports of ICE harassment of tribal members. (Photo by Sharon Chischilly for Source NM) In a letter addressed to President Donald Trump this week, New Mexico’s congressional delegation joined several of their colleagues in addressing reported incidents of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement harassment of Native Americans. In the letter, the members write they have heard of several such incidents and urge Trump “to immediately direct your agents to stop harassing Native Americans and violating Tribal sovereignty.” In addition to an incident in New Mexico, the letter cites similar instances in other states. The letter also requests Trump direct ICE agents to accept tribal identification as proof of citizenship, and to explain the criteria they are using to stop and question Native Americans. “ICE’s dangerous behavior of harassing American citizens, seemingly only due to the way they look, is unconstitutional and un-American,” the letter said. “The Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 granted citizenship to all Native Americans. Native Communities are quintessentially American communities. Your Administration’s actions and policies are quickly spreading fear in communities that have existed since time immemorial. It is unconscionable to question their citizenship and cause them to live in fear.”

New York Times [1/30/2025 8:24 PM, Neil Vigdor, 161405K, Negative] reports an unauthorized immigrant from Guatemala who went on a stabbing rampage on the Las Vegas Strip in 2022 that left two people dead and injured six others, pleaded guilty but mentally ill to two counts of murder on Thursday. The man, Yoni Barrios, 34, will serve life in prison without the possibility of parole but will avoid the death penalty, according to a copy of his plea agreement, which was reached in Clark County District Court. His unprovoked attack on the morning of Oct. 6, 2022, provided political grist to Donald J. Trump and to a far-right nonprofit anti-immigration group. His victims included several showgirl impersonators, one of whom was killed. Mr. Barrios pleaded guilty to a total of 15 counts, including five for attempted murder with use of a deadly weapon and one count of an act of terrorism. His formal sentencing is scheduled for March 14. Scott L. Coffee, a public defender for Mr. Barrios, said in an interview on Thursday that his client had received a diagnosis of unspecified schizophrenia spectrum and other psychotic disorders. “The allegations were egregious, but the state also recognized that he was somebody who was severely mentally ill,” said Mr. Coffee, who described Mr. Barrios as being “delusional” at the time of the attack. The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department referred questions on Thursday to the Clark County District Attorney’s Office, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CBS Los Angeles [1/30/2025 7:22 PM, Matthew Rodriguez, 52225K, Negative] reports the US Attorney’s Office announced charges against four men accused of participating in an international "neo-Nazi child exploitation enterprise" that victimized more than a dozen minors, two of whom were in Southern California. In its indictment, a federal grand jury charged the following men with one count of engaging in a child exploitation enterprise: New Jersey native Collin John Thomas Walker, 23, Hawaii native Clint Jordan Lopaka Nahooikaika Borge, 41, French national Rohan Sandeep Rane, 28, Texas native Kaleb Christoper Merritt, 24. Walker and Borge were arrested on Jan. 30 while Rane and Merritt were arrested earlier this month. "The defendants here are alleged to have committed horrific acts against children," said Acting United States Attorney Joseph T. McNally. "There is nothing more important than protecting our youth. Our office will continue its effort to aggressively prosecute and incarcerate dangerous predators.” Investigators said that between at least 2019 and 2022 the four men were members of "CVLT," an online group that "espoused neo-Nazism, nihilism and pedophilia as its core principles." The Department of Justice said Rane, Walker and Merritt acted as leaders and administrators for the group by hosting and running online servers. They also allegedly determined the membership of the group. "Sextortion and other forms of online child sexual abuse have tragically altered the trajectory of too many young lives and this group preyed upon the vulnerable to fulfill their sick and twisted desires," said Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Los Angeles Special Agent in Charge Eddy Wang. "HSI and our partners will work tirelessly to protect children from victimization in communities across the United States and around the globe.”

Reuters [1/30/2025 11:30 PM, Kirsty Needham, 48128K, Negative] reports the Marshall Islands has warned citizens living in the U.S. not to open the door to immigration officials without a judicial warrant, amid fears the community is being caught in President Donald Trump’s crackdown on undocumented migrants, an official said. The Marshall Islands is among three Pacific Island nations whose citizens have the right to live and work in the United States under Compacts of Free Association (COFA) that also give the U.S. military access to swathes of ocean seen as strategic by Washington amid tensions with China. The three COFA states, which also include Palau and Federated States of Micronesia, are seeking a joint meeting with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) next week, a Marshall Islands foreign ministry spokesman said, amid community "panic" after families were questioned by ICE officers in the town of Springdale, Arkansas. More than 10,000 Marshallese live legally in Springdale, the spokesman said, and do not require visas but show Marshall Islands passports and a form when they start jobs or enter school. The Marshall Islands government issued a letter on Facebook on Tuesday with emergency contact details for citizens living in the U.S. to show ICE officials, after video of armed officers entering homes in Springdale circulated on social media. A community news service reported Marshallese were also being questioned at work in the town. "We are working day and night to make sure our citizens are safe - the consulate in Arkansas is informing them of their rights and not to open the door unless there is a warrant," the Marshall Islands spokesman said in a telephone interview, confirming the incidents. Two families "were not aware of their rights and they opened the door and they were questioned", he said. ICE have since "stopped doing that", he added, and Minister of Foreign Affairs Kalani Kaneko will hold a Zoom briefing for Marshallese living in the U.S. on Saturday. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security and U.S. State Department did not immediately respond to Reuters requests for comment. The Federated States of Micronesia issued a statement also urging citizens in the U.S. to carry documents with them as evidence of their lawful status.

Washington Post [1/30/2025 6:00 AM, Maria Sacchetti, 40736K, Negative] reports Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem on Wednesday canceled the Biden administration’s 18-month extension of humanitarian protection for Venezuelans, saying she did not want her predecessor’s policy to “tie our hands.” Days before leaving office, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said up to 600,000 Venezuelan immigrants may remain in the United States through October 2026, citing the economic and political crisis in the South American country. He had granted them protection in 2021 and 2023. Noem indicated that she would make her own decision on the matter. “They were going to be able to stay here and violate our laws for another 18 months, and we stopped that,” she said on “Fox & Friends.” She said she would evaluate the program to determine if it merited an extension. If she does nothing by Saturday, protections for some Venezuelans would automatically extend until October, but they could ultimately end for all this year. Noem argued in an eight-page memo that she should have made the decision, not Mayorkas, because the protections expire under Trump. Venezuelans are by far the largest group protected from deportation under a 1990 law that authorizes DHS to award undocumented immigrants “temporary protected status” if their countries are experiencing war, disaster or another crisis. The status allows immigrants to live and work in the United States for up to 18 months. DHS may renew it, though critics have long complained that the protections often last long after the emergencies have subsided. Noem emphasized Wednesday on television and social media that she was focused on deporting criminal gang members, though they are ineligible for protection under the program, calling them “dirtbags.” Her tone was a sharp departure from the first Trump administration, when the president and other Republicans called for clemency for millions of Venezuelan immigrants who have fled that country over the past decade. In one of the last acts of his first term, Trump spared undocumented immigrants from Venezuela from being deported, in a signed presidential proclamation that declared the country’s situation “catastrophic.” He said millions had been forced to flee amid shortages of food and medicine.

Newsweek [1/30/2025 11:21 AM, Dan Gooding and Jesus Mesa, 56005K, Negative] reports that Venezuelans facing an uncertain future in the United States after the scrapping of a legal program allowing them to stay Wednesday have told Newsweek that they are not just afraid but panicked. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem reversed a last-minute decision by the Biden administration to extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for those from Venezuela through October 2026, leaving thousands open to potential deportation when their protections lapse this year. "Honestly, the stress and anxiety are overwhelming, especially because I’m here with my wife and my 8-year-old daughter," Pablo, whose family was among the first Venezuelans to receive TPS, told Newsweek. "I try to stay strong because I can’t show what I truly feel. I have to put on a brave face and stay optimistic." Just before Inauguration Day, former Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas extended Venezuela’s TPS designation through fall 2026. Wednesday’s action by Noem undid this extension, resetting deadlines for two waves of the program. The DHS order signed by Noem on Wednesday states that USCIS will not accept any more reregistration applications from Venezuelans on TPS.

CBS San Francisco [1/30/2025 7:24 PM, Tim Fang, 52225K, Neutral] reports officials in Santa Clara County on Thursday said they have filed a federal lawsuit over President Trump’s executive order that seeks to end birthright citizenship. The lawsuit, which names Mr. Trump and other top federal officials, argues that the order violates the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. "Executive orders that conflict with the Constitution have no legal standing and only create unnecessary confusion and hardship for immigrant families, and all Americans," said Santa Clara County Board of Supervisors President Otto Lee said in a statement. Trump’s order, signed hours after he was inaugurated on Jan. 20, seeks to deny birthright citizenship to the children of immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally or on temporary visas. The U.S. government has long interpreted the Constitution to mean that those born on American soil are citizens at birth, regardless of their parent’s immigration status. Ratified in 1868, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution says: "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside.” California played a role in setting the precedent in the late 19th century. Wong Kim Ark, a Chinese-American man born in San Francisco, was denied entry back into the U.S. under the Chinese Exclusion Act. A landmark decision by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1898 affirmed his right to citizenship under the Citizenship Clause of the 14th Amendment. "No president has the power to enact, amend, or repeal statutes, much less the Constitution itself," County Counsel Tony LoPresti said. "This order illegally instructs federal agencies and officials to refuse to follow and execute a wide range of laws that rest on the bedrock constitutional foundation of birthright citizenship.” Officials said if the order were implemented, thousands of county residents would be impacted, including refugees and asylees awaiting for green cards, along with professionals working in the county under H-1B visas, students residing in the county on visas and those who are in the U.S. illegally.

AP [1/30/2025 8:37 PM, Valerie Gonzalez, 47097K, Neutral] reports a federal judge extended a court agreement on Thursday ensuring safe and sanitary conditions for migrant children in federal custody a day after U.S. Customs and Border Protection was set to begin self-monitoring. The agreement originally ended Wednesday, but District Judge Dolly M. Gee in California decided to extend it by 18 months. “CBP is not yet capable of wholly fulfilling its responsibilities under the 2022 Settlement and the FSA (Flores Settlement Agreement) without the additional support provided by the JCM (Juvenile Care Monitor) and the Court,” the judge wrote in her order. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A court-appointed monitor will continue to visit and report on conditions for children in custody at U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso, Texas. Concerns were initially raised during the first Trump administration when reports surfaced of children separated from family for weeks and held in poor sanitary conditions. In 2019, a Guatemalan teenager died in custody as a result of a flu outbreak and a lack of proper medical care in a federal facility in Weslaco, Texas.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 7:04 AM, Daniel Borunda, 57114K, Neutral] reports U.S. Border Patrol agents returned fire after shots were fired at them from Mexico along the Rio Grande in the San Elizario area southeast of El Paso, a U.S. Customs and Border Protection official said. There were no injuries reported in the U.S.-Mexico border shooting on Monday night, Jan. 27, which occurred in a drug and migrant smuggling hot zone where Mexican military troops have come under attack in recent days. The border shooting occurred about 10 p.m. when Border Patrol agents from the Clint station came under fire south of San Elizario, about 7.5 miles east of the Ysleta Port of Entry, CBP said in a statement. The Mexican military responded to the location. The shooting by the Border Patrol agents is under investigation by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection Office of Professional Responsibility as standard practice. The shooting occurred in the same San Elizario border area where a person in Mexico fired at a Border Patrol agent in an afternoon shooting in April. No injuries were reported in that incident. Similar cross-border shootings have occurred occasionally over the years in the El Paso-Juárez border region. In 2021, a Border Patrol agent was unhurt when about 20 shots were fired across the Rio Grande near the Jonathan W. Rogers Water Treatment Plant in the Socorro area. The 2021 shooting took place weeks after a narco-banner in Juárez threatened to kill Mexican police and U.S. Border Patrol agents if they didn’t stop messing with "polleros," or human smugglers About the same time Monday night on the Mexico side of the border, Mexican army soldiers and National Guard troops were attacked in a shooting by a group of armed men traveling in a four vehicle convoy in Loma Blanca along the Juárez-Porvenir highway, El Heraldo de Juárez reported. Loma Blanca is across the Rio Grande from San Elizario.

ABC News [1/30/2025 5:34 AM, Mireya Villarreal and James Scholz, 33392K, Positive] Video: HERE reports that, as the sun rises in El Paso, our convoy heads up Mount Cristo Rey. We are riding shotgun with border patrol agents as they drive us along the state line, where Texas turns into New Mexico and both states border Chihuahua, Mexico. This is the first embed given to any world news outlet by the U.S. Border Patrol since the new Trump administration took office and it’s clear, they are eager to show us how well things are going. "This is as forward as you can be on the front line," Agent Orlando Rubio noted as we drove up to the border wall. As we make our way down the road, we run into a row of Border Patrol SUVs on the switchback roads of the mountainside. However, as we get closer, we realize agents aren’t inside those vehicles, they are filled with combat soldiers. Dozens of them from Fort Bliss dressed in their fatigues, sitting out here, just watching. "Most of this area is heavily trafficked by smugglers," Rubio told ABC News. "So, what we see is a lot of footpaths that smugglers use to bring people into the country.” But the paths are eerily quiet today. Clothing and water bottles are scattered all over the mountainside, but there’s not a single person in sight. Most of this area has a border wall in place, but on Mount Cristo Rey, there are about 1.5 miles left open. During our embed, our cameras caught crews starting construction again for the first time in nearly four years. The metal barriers being used were likely stored away when the Biden administration halted construction on the wall in 2021. Until the new Administration can get more funding, they’ll have to resourcefully use what they’ve got left to help secure the border. And then, something I’ve never seen along the border, a black helicopter passing over us multiple times. Rubio points and waves to it before explaining it’s federal agents from Mexico scouting the area for smugglers. We are driving to check something else out when we see another group of Mexican federal agents along the border, flagging us down. In Spanish, they ask U.S. agents if there are any CBP operations running today. They got a call about a drone flying in the area and were trying to find it, but wanted to make sure it didn’t belong to Border Patrol. This level of coordination between agents on both sides of the border is unlike anything we’ve seen.

CBS 7 [1/30/2025 10:52 AM, Blair Miller, 11K, Negative] reports that it’s critical infrastructure that’s often the heartbeat of cities across the country. Ports, both sea and air, are hubs for trade, which, in turn, create business, jobs, and development. Each year, our country’s ports handle $5.4 trillion worth of goods that eventually make their way into your home. According to data from 2023, some of the top U.S. imports by dollar amount are transportation equipment, computers and electronics, and oil and gas. Beneath the surface of this economic hub, we found international cartels use ports as an entrance for illegal drugs, and as an exit for stolen goods and cash. Drugs like cocaine, heroin, and fentanyl. As federal agents comb containers for illegal drugs, they’re also looking for stolen items, primarily vehicles, before they leave the country. During fiscal year 2024, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents intercepted more than 1,200 stolen cars from being shipped overseas. Not just any type of car, international criminals are after high-value luxury vehicles from Bentley’s to Ferraris. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

AZCentral.com [1/30/2025 9:24 PM, Raphael Romero Ruiz, 6018K, Neutral] reports the Douglas City Council voted 3-2 to declare a state of emergency in response to President Donald Trump’s border and immigration policy shifts. Douglas’s proclamation states that the border town would experience "a potential loss in revenue for (the municipal) government and local businesses" and "an increase in costs to assist the federal government in carrying out these Proclamations and Executive Order." Douglas Mayor Jose Grijalva expressed concern over the president’s own declaration of emergency at the southern border and a potential closure of the U.S.-Mexico border. The mayor said the changes could hurt the local economy, which relies on the residents of Agua Prieta, Mexico. He said 70% of the total sales tax collected comes from Mexican consumers. “This is an effort to remain guarded, be proactive and create a preventive position for the city of Douglas,” the mayor said. Douglas, in Cochise County in the southeastern corner of the state, has a population of about 16,500. Agua Prieta, across the border in Mexico, has a population of about 91,000. In a special meeting Wednesday night, Councilmembers Ray Shelton and Richard Acosta voted against the emergency declaration, sharing similar concerns about its timing. “(Constituents are) saying, if we do this, that it’s going to show that we’re in an emergency when there’s no emergency,” Shelton said. “We’re almost jumping the gun,” Acosta said. “Why is Douglas declaring an emergency? It almost seems like Douglas is going against the administration right now.”

AP [1/31/2025 8:37 PM, Valerie Gonzalez, 2717K, Neutral] reports a federal judge extended a court agreement on Thursday ensuring safe and sanitary conditions for migrant children in federal custody a day after U.S. Customs and Border Protection was set to begin self-monitoring. The agreement originally ended Wednesday, but District Judge Dolly M. Gee in California decided to extend it by 18 months. “CBP is not yet capable of wholly fulfilling its responsibilities under the 2022 Settlement and the FSA (Flores Settlement Agreement) without the additional support provided by the JCM (Juvenile Care Monitor) and the Court,” the judge wrote in her order. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A court-appointed monitor will continue to visit and report on conditions for children in custody at U.S. Customs and Border Protection facilities in the Rio Grande Valley and El Paso, Texas. Concerns were initially raised during the first Trump administration when reports surfaced of children separated from family for weeks and held in poor sanitary conditions. In 2019, a Guatemalan teenager died in custody as a result of a flu outbreak and a lack of proper medical care in a federal facility in Weslaco, Texas. The parties reached an agreement that was implemented in July 2022 for two and a half years. It allowed a court monitor to keep track of progress made by Customs and Border Protection. In the last report filed in December, the monitor noted positive changes while also mentioning a continued practice of separating some parents from their children during their time in custody. The monitor later told the court of discrepancies with Customs and Border Protection data suggesting the agency underreported the number of children who had exceeded the recommended time in custody of three days.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 6:05 AM, Paul Hammel, 57114K, Negative] reports Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen (center) joins then-State Sen. Lou Ann Linehan of Omaha in her Elkhorn-area district, visiting people in Douglas County who had homes damaged by the tornadoes that hit the area April 26, 2024. (Courtesy of the Governor’s Office) LINCOLN — President Donald Trump’s call to possibly eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency has Nebraska officials waiting and worrying, with two former disaster response officials saying that doing away with FEMA would leave a void that would prove difficult to fill. “If they do away with FEMA, Nebraska would be in a world of hurt,” said Al Berndt, a former assistant director who managed the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency on a day-to-day basis for 14 years until 2014. “We just didn’t have the people to do what FEMA does.” That sentiment was echoed by Dave Maurstad, a former Nebraska lieutenant governor who went on to serve 15 years as a top FEMA administrator, visiting dozens of disaster sites, from Hurricane Katrina to the tornado that ripped through Joplin, Missouri. Maurstad, who retired in July, said it’s certainly appropriate to review FEMA and see if federal disaster response might be streamlined. But, he said, with the increase in severity and frequency of natural catastrophes such as floods, hurricanes and wildfires, someone has to coordinate the response of the 27 federal agencies that provide help. “At the end of the day, someone has to coordinate that,” Maurstad said. He added that shifting that responsibility to the states would take years — and the hiring of many new employees.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 7:50 AM, Greg Jordan, 57114K, Neutral] reports six weeks after a major disaster was declared for Mercer County, more than $2 million in federal aid has been approved for area residents. More than 955 households have registered with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to date for assistance in recovering from the Sept. 24, 2024 storm. The deadline to apply for disaster assistance is Feb. 7. "Getting $2 million into the hands of the people of Mercer County has been a team effort," Federal Coordinating Officer Georgeta Dragoiu said. "FEMA continues to work side-by-side with West Virginia and Mercer County emergency management and local officials to coordinate this mission. I also want to thank our state and local nonprofits and our private sector and media partners in getting the word out. We couldn’t have reached this important milestone without them." "Recovery is always a team effort, and this milestone reflects the dedication of everyone involved — from FEMA to local officials, nonprofits, and community partners," West Virginia Emergency Management Division Deputy Director Matthew Blackwood added. "We remain committed to supporting the people of Mercer County as they rebuild and recover." Disaster assistance may include grants to help homeowners and renters pay for essential home repairs, personal property replacement, and essential disaster-related needs. In December 2024 and January, FEMA deployed Disaster Survivor Assistance teams to visit storm-damaged homes across Mercer County and to register people and answer their questions about disaster assistance. The remnants of Hurricane Helene pounded the region — including Bluefield in particular — during the morning and afternoon hours of Sept. 24, 2024, downing thousands of trees and power lines across the region.

AP [1/30/2025 12:43 PM, Makiya Seminera, 47097K, Neutral] reports that North Carolina officials charged with leading recovery efforts in western North Carolina after Hurricane Helene — as well as parts of eastern North Carolina still struggling from previous hurricanes — told state lawmakers this week that they need more money. And they need it soon. Western North Carolina will need billions more dollars from the federal and state government to accomplish its recovery goals, according to officials in Democratic Gov. Josh Stein’s administration at a Wednesday legislative meeting. The region saw historic flooding from Helene last year, which resulted in almost $60 billion in damages. A day later, the North Carolina Office of Recovery and Resiliency called on the legislature to provide $217 million as a final request to finish construction on more than 1,100 eastern North Carolina homes devastated by Hurricane Matthew in 2016 and Hurricane Florence in 2018. NCORR has been plagued with financial problems — namely a reported budget shortfall last year — which has fueled criticism from lawmakers. For Helene’s recovery, the Governor’s Recovery Office for Western North Carolina advisor Jonathan Krebs outlined a funding gap of about $10 billion between money North Carolina requested from the federal government and what the state has received. Stein’s administration is requesting that additional money for western North Carolina be included in any future funding bill to address the southern California wildfires.

AZ Central [1/30/2025 2:40 PM, Mary Walrath-Holdridge and Will Hofmann, 6018K, Negative] reports that North Carolina’s McDowell County, still recovering from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene, is facing yet another natural disaster in the form of wildfires. Old Fort, a town of roughly 800 located in McDowell County, was hit with evacuation orders Wednesday afternoon after the Crooked Creek wildfire broke out, the Asheville Citizen Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported. As of noon ET Thursday, McDowell County’s Office of Emergency Management said 220 acres had burned and the fire was 55% contained. Evacuation orders were lifted at 8 a.m. but emergency personnel will remain on-site to monitor the situation and ensure containment of the fire. One home was damaged and multiple outbuildings were destroyed, said the agency’s Thursday afternoon announcement. The county said in its afternoon update that the fire was caused by a downed power line during high winds on Wednesday. No injuries have been reported. The North Carolina Forest Service Wildfire Public Viewer showed that McDowell County was contending with three active wildfires Wednesday including the Crooked Creek Fire in Old Fort and the North Fork Fire in Marion. The last few months have been anything but easy for Old Fort and other communities across Western North Carolina.

CBS Austin [1/30/2025 8:38 AM, Tara Brolley, 581K, Negative] reports over 7,000 Austin Energy customers lost power Thursday morning as storms rolled through the area. The utility reported 22 active outages affecting approximately 7,713 customers as of 7:27 a.m. The outages come as CBS Austin meteorologists warn of potentially severe thunderstorms. The National Weather Service has placed Central Texas under a Level 1 out of 5 severe weather threat, with possible hazards including inch-diameter hail, wind gusts exceeding 50 mph, and isolated tornadoes. Depending on the area of the outage, Austin Energy said power is expected to be restored between 8 a.m. and 10 a.m.

Miami Herald [1/30/2025 9:51 AM, Mitchell Willetts, 6595K, Neutral] reports that a 4.5-magnitude earthquake detected in South Texas was felt across more than 100 miles, and in two major cities, according to U.S. Geological Survey data. The 4.5-magnitude earthquake — quite powerful compared to most that occur in Texas — happened at 9:26 p.m. on Wednesday, Jan. 29, the USGS says. It was detected about 12 miles east-northeast from the town of Falls City, which is roughly a 45-mile drive southeast from San Antonio. Nearly 700 people reported feeling the quake to the USGS as of the morning of Jan. 30. Those closest to the epicenter reported "moderate" shaking and "very light" damage caused by the earthquake, data shows. Residents of San Antonio said they felt the tremors as well. Many San Antonians took to social media to make sure they didn’t imagine the ground wobbling beneath them. In Austin, about 100 miles north from Falls City, plenty of people also reported the quake rattling their city, according to the USGS. A second, smaller earthquake — a 2.6-magnitude — was detected several hours later near the 4.5 quake’s epicenter.

San Diego Union Tribune [1/30/2025 11:41 PM, Karen Kucher, 2212K, Neutral] reports a fire in the hills near the U.S.-Mexico border that burned for nearly a week and charred more than 6,600 acres was declared 100% contained Thursday, fire officials said. All remaining evacuation orders and warnings for the Border 2 fire area were lifted and all roads were reopened Thursday, the county Sheriff’s Office said. Areas evacuated included the Otay Open Space Preserve, the Olympic Training Center and the Pio Pico Campground, some neighborhoods in Chula Vista and residents near Honey Springs Ranch and Dulzura. The cause of the fire remains under investigation, with three fire investigators working to determine what or who sparked it. The fire was discovered shortly before 2 p.m. on Jan. 23 along the Otay Mountain Truck Trail near Doghouse Junction. At its peak, there were more than 2,600 firefighters working the Border 2 fire, including crews from around California and beyond. Cornette said Thursday the fire is now in “patrol status” meaning a few engines will be sent out for the next couple of days to ensure it doesn’t flare up.

FOX News [1/30/2025 5:28 PM, Alexandra Koch, 49889K, Negative] reports the House Judiciary Subcommittee on the Administrative State, Regulatory Reform, and Antitrust will hold a hearing next week addressing overregulation in California following the devastating Los Angeles wildfires, stating California’s "onerous regulatory regime" may have worsened the disaster, Fox News Digital has learned. The "California Fires and the Consequences of Overregulation" hearing will examine the real impacts of regulatory policy on the prevention of natural disasters, particularly in the case of California’s wildfires, according to a statement obtained by Fox News Digital. It will also address how excessive regulation on insurance and permitting serves as a roadblock to those recovering from disasters. Cal Fire reported more than 12,000 homes, businesses and schools were lost to the fires and more than 100,000 people have had to leave their homes.

FOX News [1/30/2025 1:51 PM, Danielle Wallace, 49889K, Neutral] reports that highly combustible lithium-ion batteries used in electric and hybrid vehicles are complicating cleanup efforts in the Los Angeles neighborhoods ravaged by wildfire damage. Phase 1 of the federal cleanup is underway, as surveyors with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) work to remove and dispose of hazardous materials, including lithium-ion batteries found in charred vehicles and decimated homes. The EPA warned that batteries should be considered "extremely dangerous," even if they are believed to be intact, and "can spontaneously re-ignite, explode, and emit toxic gases and particulates even after the fire is out." The Palisades and Eaton fires aftermath is estimated to require the "largest lithium-ion battery pickup, cleanup, that’s ever happened in the history of the world," EPA incident commander Steve Calanog reportedly told local KNBC. He explained that removing lithium-ion batteries – even those that do not appear damaged – from fire wreckage requires "technical sophistication and care," as hazardous material crews find and deionize the batteries so they can be crushed or safely shipped for disposal. "We don’t know the long-term effects of all this exposure, and we haven’t seen this on this large of a scale and this many electric vehicles," Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Adam VanGerpen told KNBC. "This is an unprecedented amount of electric vehicles with lithium-ion batteries in there."

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 11:05 PM, Gregory Hasman, 57114K, Neutral] reports a federal grand jury has indicted an Albuquerque man who reportedly made threats against then-President-elect Donald Trump on social media. Tyler Miles Leveque, 37, is charged with threats against the president and interstate communications containing a threat. He will remain in custody pending trial, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Mexico. Leveque’s attorney could not be reached. Leveque faces up to five years in prison if he’s convicted. During an interview with the U.S. Secret Service and FBI, Leveque said he made the threatening posts, according to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court. Leveque made threatening posts on X earlier this month, including one on Jan. 3 that said, "I got my eyes on you sir! Cant wait for your Victory rally! The 19th right!? Lol you and your rich friends are dead no threat a promise," the agents said. Leveque told authorities he also recently bought a firearm online and made a TikTok video showing his disdain for Trump and Elon Musk, saying they should be scared and Leveque did not care if he died, according to the complaint. Leveque told authorities "he believes this is freedom of speech" and he made the posts "because he is frustrated with the government," the agents said.

AP [1/30/2025 8:42 PM, Staff, 47097K, Negative] reports the captain of an unauthorized tour boat that capsized in the Hudson River, killing a woman and a 7-year-old child, was sentenced Thursday to 18 months in prison, prosecutors said. Richard Cruz, 33, pleaded guilty in October to a misconduct and neglect charge specific to boating. Court papers show he admitted that he overloaded his boat — called Stimulus Money — and didn’t have the Coast Guard credentials needed to take paying customers aboard. The boat flipped over and plunged all 13 people aboard into the water near Manhattan’s West Side on July 12, 2022, prosecutors said. The woman, 48, and the boy died after being trapped underneath the vessel. Interim Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon said in a statement that the case shows commercial boat captains "that there will be consequences when they fail to follow the federal regulations and safety protocols that exist to keep passengers safe.” Her office said Cruz had the boat going fast, though operators of small boats had been warned of high winds and heavy seas.

Miami Herald [1/30/2025 8:16 AM, Mark Price, 6595K, Neutral] reports two men adrift off the North Carolina coast needed to be rescued when it became clear their sailboat was beyond saving, according to the U.S Coast Guard. It happened Tuesday, Jan. 28, approximately 103 miles east of Wilmington, and the crew called for help after realizing they “were unable to keep up with flooding.” A C-130 Hercules airplane and MH-60 Jayhawk helicopter based out of Air Station Elizabeth City, North Carolina, found the 32-foot boat in the Atlantic Ocean. “The C-130 was first on the scene, assessed the situation, and deployed a dewatering pump to help manage the flooding aboard the vessel. Despite these efforts, the boat remained at risk of sinking, prompting the need for immediate extraction of the mariners,” USCG officials said. “The Jayhawk helicopter crew arrived shortly afterward, hoisted the 2 individuals from the sinking vessel, and transported them to shore. The men were reported in stable condition with no injuries.” Identities for the crewmen and details of their destination were not released. They were taken to Wilmington International Airport “to assist with their journey home,” officials said. “The vessel was abandoned at sea,” officials said.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 12:54 PM, Staff, 57114K, Negative] reports that the U.S. Coast Guard is warning fishers in the Sturgeon Bay area of hazardous ice conditions and to be aware of motor vessel traffic scheduled for Thursday. According to a release from the Ninth Coast Guard District, fishers on Sturgeon Bay are being urged to use extreme caution due to the waters’ ice conditions with the recent wave of warm weather. Officials say the tugboat Erika Kobasic traveled from Sturgeon Bay to Marinette earlier on the morning of January 30 and is scheduled to escort a second tugboat between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. The movement will cause ice to break near an area where hundreds of ice fishers have been reported to be actively fishing. "Ice fishers in the area are urged to closely monitor ice quality and avoid fishing in any areas where the ice may be deteriorating," the release concludes. No additional information was provided.

CyberScoop [1/30/2025 12:00 PM, Matt Bracken, Neutral] reports a bipartisan pair of House lawmakers are seeking to improve private-public coordination for financial institutions amid a surge of ransomware attacks on the sector. The Public and Private Sector Ransomware Response Coordination Act, introduced this week by Reps. Zach Nunn, R-Iowa, and Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., would direct the Treasury secretary to deliver a report on existing collaboration between federal agencies and private financial companies, examining how those partnerships can be improved to better protect the industry from cyberattacks. The legislation from Nunn and Gottheimer, both members of the House Financial Services Committee, comes as global ransomware attacks jumped 67% from 2023 to 2024, according to the director of national intelligence. And according to Statista, approximately 65% of financial institutions globally reported experiencing a ransomware attack in 2024, up from 34% in 2021. “Bad actors continue to attack the United States’ critical infrastructure costing companies not only time and money but also leaving a bad taste in the mouth of consumers,” Nunn, who previously served as the National Security Council’s director of cybersecurity policy & engagement, said in a statement. “In order to address the evolving threat landscape, we must ensure critical infrastructure has the tools necessary to combat ransomware attacks and stay ahead of emerging threats.” Under the bill, the Treasury secretary’s report would be required to detail the current levels of public-private coordination in the financial services sector, specifically regarding cybersecurity practices and how they prevent and respond to ransomware attacks. The report would also probe whether relevant federal agencies are receiving timely access to reports on ransomware attacks on financial institutions, analyze reporting requirements, and assess whether additional legislation is needed. The bill also asks the Treasury secretary to provide feedback and potential policy solutions. A 2024 Sophos report found that the average ransom payment is $2 million, while victimized organizations have to pay another $2.73 million on average in recovery costs. Ransomware payments hit a milestone in 2023, exceeding $1 billion for the first time, according to Chainalysis. “Ransomware attacks are incredibly costly — and increasingly common. These attacks pose a serious threat to both our national security and economy, and we must be prepared with a coordinated approach to prevent and effectively respond when they happen,” Gottheimer said. “Our bipartisan legislation will bring government and industry experts together to develop a game plan that can reduce these attacks.”

StateScoop [1/30/2025 12:00 PM, Sophia Fox-Sowell, Neutral] reports cybersecurity experts told StateScoop that state and local governments should brace themselves for changes to the Cybersecurity Infrastructure and Security Agency under Kristi Noem, former governor of South Dakota, who was sworn last weekend as the 8th secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. During her confirmation hearing a week earlier, Noem said she believes the security agency has gone “off-mission,” focusing on tasks other than protecting critical infrastructure, and that she intends to make the CISA “smaller and more nimble.” “CISA’s gotten far off-mission,” Noem told the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs committee during her confirmation hearing on Jan. 17. “They’re using their resources in ways that was never intended. The misinformation and disinformation that they have stuck their toe into and meddled with should be refocused back onto what their job is.” Misinformation became a major grievance of the Trump during the 2020 presidential election and over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many conservatives claimed their free speech, particularly on social media, was being censored by federal agencies, like CISA. Pamela Smith, CEO of Verified Voting, an organization that studies how technology impacts the administration of U.S. elections, said the loss of verified information monitoring may impact election security, which is managed by local government agencies. “CISA has a coordinating function. Their ability to monitor for mis- and disinformation campaigns that may be coming from outside the country, is probably greater than other agencies,” Smith told StateScoop in a recent interview. “It puts more pressure on the entities that have to deal with this, the election officials themselves, to monitor and quickly provide information.” “Election security is kind of newer to the family of critical infrastructure,” Smith explained.

AP [1/30/2025 6:34 AM, Christina A. Cassidy, 47097K, Neutral] reports the nation’s cybersecurity agency has played a critical role in helping states shore up the defenses of their voting systems, but its election mission appears uncertain amid sustained criticism from Republicans and key figures in the Trump administration. President Donald Trump has yet to name anyone to lead the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security, and for the first time since it was formed, there are no plans for anyone in its leadership to address the annual gathering of the nation’s secretaries of state, which begins Thursday in Washington. Trump’s new homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, said during her confirmation hearing that the agency had strayed "far off mission." She pledged to work with senators "should you wish to rein them in" with legislation. The agency, commonly known as CISA, was formed in 2018 during the first Trump administration and is charged with protecting the nation’s critical infrastructure, from dams and nuclear power plants to banks and voting systems. While it’s under the Department of Homeland Security, CISA is a separate agency with its own Senate-confirmed director. The agency has received bipartisan praise from many state and local election officials, but Trump and his allies remain angry over its efforts to counter misinformation about the 2020 presidential election and the coronavirus pandemic. The agency’s first director, Chris Krebs, was fired by Trump after Krebs highlighted a statement issued by a group of election officials that called the 2020 election the "most secure in American history.” That drew Trump’s ire as he was contesting his loss to Democrat Joe Biden. Republicans have claimed repeatedly since then that CISA had worked with social media companies to censor conservative viewpoints on issues related to elections and health. Agency officials have disputed that: "CISA does not censor, has never censored," the agency’s then-director, Jen Easterly, said last fall in an interview with The Associated Press. Nevertheless, Republicans continue to blame the agency and insist changes are necessary. "Joe Biden’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) was more focused on undermining President Trump than they were protecting our own critical infrastructure," Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally from Georgia and chair of the newly formed House subcommittee on Delivering on Government Efficiency, said in a social media post last week. "The thugs responsible for that kind of waste and abuse will be held accountable!".

NBC News [1/31/2025 5:00 AM, Kevin Collier, 50804K, Neutral] reports the hack of a company that helps schools track tens of millions of students appears to be the largest breach of American children’s personal information to date, school officials and cybersecurity experts say. And a specially commissioned interim cybersecurity audit by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike showed that the company had apparently failed to take basic precautions to protect students’ data, according to a copy exclusively obtained by NBC News and records of internal discussions. The company, PowerSchool, is best known for its Student Information System (SIS), one of the most widely used education tech programs in the U.S., and one of the breached systems. The SIS software helps school districts keep track of K-12 students, collecting information like their name, school, birthday, address and parent or guardian. Many districts go further and add information like their Social Security number, health concerns or disciplinary records. Theft of children’s data is regarded as particularly egregious, as they usually have no agency in how it’s protected. It can be difficult to draw a direct line from a particular data breach to a given instance of identity theft, as cybercriminals repeatedly repackage and resell victims’ information. But identity theft cost Americans around $43 billion in 2023, according to a 2024 study by AARP. "We recognize the significance of this incident and are deeply regretful that it occurred," Beth Keebler, a PowerSchool spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. "PowerSchool has significantly invested in its cybersecurity program, culture, and talent over the years — this has been a diligent and continuous area of focus and one the Company plans to continue to invest in.”

Reuters [1/30/2025 4:43 PM, Staff, 48128K, Neutral] reports that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said on Thursday it had identified three cybersecurity risks associated with certain patient monitors from Contec and Epsimed and urged healthcare facilities to mitigate those risks. Patient monitors, used in both healthcare facilities and home settings, display vital patient information including temperature, heartbeat and blood pressure. The FDA raised concerns about cybersecurity vulnerabilities in the patient monitors that could allow unauthorized individuals to access and potentially manipulate those devices. The patient monitors could be remotely controlled by unauthorized users or may not function as intended, and the network to which these devices are connected could be compromised, the agency warned. The FDA also said that once these devices are connected to the internet, they can collect patient data, including personally identifiable information and protected health information, and can export this data out of the healthcare delivery environment. The agency, however, added that it is currently unaware of any cybersecurity incidents, injuries, or deaths related to these identified cybersecurity vulnerabilities.

Yahoo! News [1/30/2025 8:30 AM, Tom Porter, 57114K, Neutral] reports that businesses are using AI to improve their productivity — and it’s no different for hackers from Iran, China, and North Korea, according to a report from Google. The tech giant’s Threat Intelligence Group said in a report on Wednesday that while hackers were using its Gemini chatbot to operate more efficiently, it wasn’t yet a game changer for new capabilities. "Threat actors are experimenting with Gemini to enable their operations, finding productivity gains but not yet developing novel capabilities," it said. "Rather than enabling disruptive change, generative AI allows threat actors to move faster and at higher volume." Google said state-backed hackers were using the tool for tasks including generating code, researching targets, and identifying network vulnerabilities. Promoters of disinformation, it said, were using Gemini for developing fake personas, translation, and messaging. The company’s cybersecurity unit added that rapid advances in large language models meant hackers were constantly devising new ways to use the tools.

SFGate [1/30/2025 9:00 AM, Jason M. Blazakis, 14282K, Negative] reports that in the waning days of the Biden administration, the U.S. Department of State took its first major step against terrorism groups primarily focused on what is called "accelerationism" – the effort to inspire independent followers to engage in violence in ways that broadly destabilize society. The U.S. government has long targeted actively violent terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida – the group behind the 9/11 attacks – and the Islamic State group, which carried out beheadings of innocent civilians in Iraq and Syria. Then-FBI Director Christopher Wray repeatedly warned Congress about the threat to national security from far-right accelerationist groups. In a move to respond to those warnings, the Biden administration labeled the online-only "Terrorgram Collective" and three of its leaders as specially designated global terrorists, which means their financial assets are frozen and anyone who tries to support them can be arrested. The Terrorgram Collective aims to destroy the current global economic and political structure and spark a war between white people and people of other racial and ethnic backgrounds. To accomplish that, it maintains an online forum on the Telegram social media platform. The forum’s posts, from leaders and followers alike, are characterized by people spouting violent rhetoric and incitement to violence against minorities, Jewish people and governments.

AP [1/30/2025 3:44 PM, Staff, Negative] reports a man accused in a series of stabbings on the Las Vegas Strip in 2022 that left two people dead and six injured has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder and terrorism charges. The victims included performers dressed as showgirls and tourists. Yoni Barrios, 34, entered his pleas Thursday as part of a deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. Barrios also pleaded guilty but mentally ill to attempted murder and battery charges. He is expected to be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

New York Times [1/30/2025 9:25 PM, Carol Rosenberg, 161405K, Negative] reports a Pentagon appeals panel on Thursday upheld a judge’s decision in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case to forbid the use of the defendant’s confession as derived from torture. The decision by the U.S. Court of Military Commission Review was still under seal. But Allison F. Miller, the lawyer for the defendant, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, said the panel unanimously rejected a U.S. government request to reinstate use of the confession at his upcoming death penalty trial. Mr. Nashiri is accused of orchestrating the Qaeda suicide bombing attack on the warship in October 2000 in Aden harbor in Yemen. Seventeen soldiers were killed and dozens more were wounded. The trial date is set for Oct. 6, one week shy of the 25th anniversary of that attack. The ruling was a blow to a prosecution strategy of seeking to build torture-free cases against former C.I.A. prisoners. Prosecutors believed that Mr. Nashiri’s interrogations by federal law enforcement agents in 2007 — his fifth year in U.S. custody — were key pieces of evidence. Mr. Nashiri, who was arrested in 2002, had spent four years in secret C.I.A. prisons, where interrogators used violence, threats and punishment to get him to talk. He was transferred to Guantánamo Bay in September 2006. Four months after his arrival, he was questioned again, this time by federal law enforcement agents, and told his participation in the interrogations was voluntary. The agents testified that the atmosphere was cordial, and that he willingly answered questions about his role in Al Qaeda and his relationship with Osama bin Laden. But in August 2023, Col. Lanny J. Acosta Jr., the judge at the time, suppressed the statements as the product of torture. “Any resistance the accused might have been inclined to put up when asked to incriminate himself was intentionally and literally beaten out of him years before,” Colonel Acosta wrote in his 50-page ruling. According to evidence in pretrial hearings, Mr. Nashiri was physically and emotionally tortured during an odyssey through the C.I.A.’s secret prison network — from Thailand to Poland to Afghanistan and then Guantánamo Bay. He was waterboarded, confined inside a cramped box, rectally abused and brutalized in other ways to coerce him to answer questions about future and suspected Qaeda plots. “If there was ever a case where the circumstances of an accused’s prior statements impacted his ability to make a later voluntary statement, this is such a case,” the judge wrote. “Even if the 2007 statements were not obtained by torture or cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment, they were derived from it.”

Government Executive [1/30/2025 5:29 PM, Patrick Tucker, 342K, Neutral] reports President Donald Trump’s executive order to create a "next-generation missile defense shield" that can "defend its citizens and critical infrastructure against—any foreign aerial attack on the Homeland" is technically and budgetarily difficult at best, experts said. One disconnect between the dream and the reality appears in the order’s title: "The Iron Dome for America." Taken literally, this suggests the use of the Iron Dome anti-missile system made by Raytheon and Rafael and used effectively in recent conflicts by Israel. But Iron Dome is designed to protect cities or installations from missiles and drone threats of relatively short range, about 50 miles. Given the terrain and geography of the United States, the system might be useful for protecting a city like, say, El Paso, Texas, from a rocket attack emanating from Mexico, but not much else. "Each Iron Dome system can defend an area of roughly 150 square miles. We would need to deploy more than 24,700 Iron Dome batteries to defend the 3.7 million square miles of the continental United States. At $100 million per battery, that would be approximately $2,470,000,000,000"—and that $2,470 trillion system would be good only against relatively small and slow weapons, not incoming ICBMs, nuclear analyst Joe Cirincione wrote last year for Defense One. Trump’s order, however, appears to use "Iron Dome" as branding for a different kind of system entirely—one that, among other things, puts interceptor weapons in orbit.

ABC News [1/30/2025 6:42 AM, Beatrice Peterson, 33392K, Neutral] Video: HERE reports that, if she is confirmed as director of national intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard would be the youngest-ever in that role, the first millennial, the first Asian American, and only the second woman to hold the position. But she is expected to face questions in her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee about statements she has made that appear to support U.S. enemies and dictators as well as having no significant experience in intelligence. Gabbard can only afford to lose the votes of three Republicans and sources tell ABC News the vote on her nomination is expected to be a close one. In excerpts from her opening statement, Gabbard confronts her critics. "The truth is: what really upsets my political opponents is my consistent record of independence, regardless of political affiliation, and my refusal to be anyone’s puppet. You know who else is committed to defending our country and reforming Washington with a fierce and unparalleled independence, President Donald J. Trump who ran and won with a mandate for change this November," she says in the excerpt. For most of her career, Gabbard has broken barriers. She was the youngest woman ever elected to a state house of representatives and the first to graduate from the Accelerated Officer Candidate School at the Alabama Military Academy as a distinguished honor graduate. In Congress, she was the first Samoan American, the youngest woman elected at the time, and the first combat veteran to serve -- a distinction she shares with Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth. Gabbard has prepared extensively over the past two months for her hearings, meeting with former DNI leaders, including John Negroponte, the first DNI, and Michael Allen, who led Negroponte’s confirmation hearing preparations. She also has consulted with former CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden, along with Trump allies Morgan Ortagus, deputy special presidential envoy for Middle East peace, and FBI director nominee Kash Patel. She has sought input from a broad range of intelligence experts, former government officials and lawmakers across the aisle. She has participated in policy roundtables with lawyers, ex-intelligence officials, and national security negotiators, including figures involved in the Abraham Accords. She also held a full-scale mock confirmation hearing ahead of Thursday’s Senate Intelligence Committee proceedings. Former Republican Sen. Richard Burr, who chaired the committee from 2015 to 2020, will introduce her.

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 11:29 AM, Mike Brest and Samatha-Jo Roth, 2365K, Neutral] reports that Tulsi Gabbard, President Donald Trump’s pick to become intelligence chief, fought back against what she called “smears,” declaring she is nobody’s “puppet” at her confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday. She told senators her opponents accuse her "of being Trump’s puppet, Putin’s puppet, Assad’s puppet, a guru’s puppet, Modi’s puppet, not recognizing the absurdity of simultaneously being the puppet of five different puppet masters." The former Hawaii congresswoman referenced the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrant illegally used to spy on the Trump campaign and the 51 intelligence community officials who vowed that the Hunter Biden laptop scandal had the hallmarks of Russian intelligence, and she claimed she was put on a secret domestic terrorist watch list after criticizing former Vice President Kamala Harris. "The American people elected Donald Trump as their president, not once, but twice, and yet, the FBI and intelligence agencies were politicized by his opponents to undermine his presidency and falsely portray him as a puppet of Putin," she added.

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 1:34 PM, Jenny Goldsberry, 2365K, Neutral] reports that Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said she is among the majority of senators who see Tulsi Gabbard as a security threat if she is confirmed as the director of national intelligence. President Donald Trump picked the former Democratic representative in the early days after he won the election. With Gabbard’s hearing slated for Thursday, Warren appeared remotely for an interview on ABC News’s The View to discuss the former lawmaker’s chances of being confirmed. "Senator Warren, it’s a very busy day on Capitol Hill, and another high-profile hearing taking place is Tulsi Gabbard for director of national intelligence," host Alyssa Farrah Griffin said. "Do you believe she’ll be confirmed? Is there any sort of bipartisan concerns about her running our national security apparatus?" "Listen, there are plenty of concerns. Most everybody in the Senate understands the threat she poses. And I just want to make sure everyone understands the job she would have here. She would be the number one person in charge of all of our secrets, right? All of our intelligence, everything we gather from around the world and every one of our allies around the world who feed us information, which makes our information more valuable," Warren replied. The Massachusetts senator reiterated her commitment not to confirm either Gabbard or Kennedy.

FOX News [1/30/2025 12:30 PM, Emma Colton, 49889K, Neutral] reports that director of national intelligence nominee Tulsi Gabbard shed further light on her 2017 meeting with then-Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, a trip that has come under the microscope since President Donald Trump nominated the former congresswoman. "There is not a great deal in the public record about what you and Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad discussed for so long in January of 2017. And I think there’s a great deal of interest from the American people about what was discussed in that meeting. So what did you talk about? And did you press Assad on things like his use of chemical weapons, systematic torture and the killing of so many Syrians?" Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M., asked Gabbard on Thursday. Gabbard, when she served in the U.S. House, traveled to Syria in 2017, when she met with the dictator, whose government was overthrown years later in 2024. The visit has become a focal point of Democrats’ criticism of the DNI nominee, arguing the visit casts doubt on her worldview and judgment. "Yes, senator, I, upon returning from this trip, I met with people like then-Leader Nancy Pelosi, and Steny Hoyer, talked to them and answered their questions about the trip," Gabbard, who served in the U.S. House representing Hawaii from 2013 to 2021, responded.

Washington Post [1/30/2025 9:21 PM, Perry Stein and Jeremy Roebuck, 40736K, Neutral] reports multiple senior FBI officials have been ordered to leave the bureau within days or be fired, according to three people familiar with the matter, a sign that President Donald Trump’s administration is purging leadership at an agency that has been a frequent target of his ire. The ultimatums came as Trump’s nominee to lead the bureau, Kash Patel, vowed during his confirmation hearing Thursday that he would not take action against perceived enemies should he be confirmed as FBI director. “All FBI employees will be protected against political retribution,” Patel told lawmakers. While the Senate considers Patel’s nomination, the massive law enforcement bureau is being run by an acting director and an acting deputy director, both veteran agents appointed by the White House. It is highly unusual for senior staffing changes to be made under such circumstances at the FBI, a law enforcement agency that is supposed to be insulated from politics. The leaders who received the message about resigning or retiring by Monday included several executive assistant directors — managers who oversee criminal and national security investigations — as well as the top agents in some of the bureau’s field offices around the country, two people familiar with the situation said. They and the other person spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive personnel matters that have not been made public. Some of the employees had been promoted under Christopher A. Wray, who resigned as FBI director this month in the face of repeated pledges from Trump that he would be fired. Some have not yet reached retirement age, meaning they could lose out on benefits to which they’d be entitled if they were not forced out. An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on or confirm the personnel moves. The bureau’s leadership shake-up followed days of similar upheaval that has roiled the Justice Department. Interim leaders Trump installed there have moved swiftly to oust or reassign veteran career lawyers who they believe are insufficiently loyal to the president. They also fired prosecutors who worked on the Justice Department’s two special counsel investigations of Trump. Both Trump and Patel have derided the Justice Department and the FBI for years, saying they believe it has been “weaponized” against conservatives and has put political concerns ahead of the pursuit of justice.

Reported similarly:
CNN [1/30/2025 7:52 PM, Evan Perez and Zachary Cohen, 22417K, Negative]

AP [1/30/2025 8:29 PM, Eric Tucker, Alanna Durkin Richer, and Matt Brown, 2717K, Negative] reports that Kash Patel, President Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, insisted to deeply skeptical Democrats on Thursday that he did not have an "enemies list" and that the bureau under his leadership would not seek retribution against the president’s adversaries or launch investigations for political purposes. "I have no interest nor desire and will not, if confirmed, go backwards," Patel told a contentious Senate Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing. "There will be no politicization at the FBI. There will be no retributive actions taken by the FBI." The reassurances were aimed at blunting a persistent line of attack from Democrats, who throughout Thursday’s hearing confronted Patel with a vast catalog of his incendiary statements. They said those statements raise alarming questions about his loyalty to the president, such as when he described some of the prosecuted Jan. 6 rioters as "political prisoners" and called for a purge of anti-Trump "conspirators" in the government and news media. "There is an unfathomable difference between a seeming facade being constructed around this nominee here today, and what he has actually done and said in real life when left to his own devices," said Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat. His colleague, Senator Amy Klobuchar from Minnesota, later added, "It is his own words. It is not some conspiracy. It is what Mr. Patel actually said himself." Patel defended himself by insisting that Democrats were putting his comments and social media posts in a "grotesque context."

New York Times [1/30/2025 12:46 PM, Devlin Barrett, 161405K, Neutral] reports that Kash Patel is an unusual choice for F.B.I. director in many ways — including that he once asserted his Fifth Amendment right to not incriminate himself while being questioned before a grand jury. In television and films, “taking the Fifth” is often a dramatic high point in the plot. In public life, asserting the right not to incriminate oneself can be devastating to a reputation, particularly for government officials. Invoking the Fifth Amendment, however, is not an admission of guilt or wrongdoing, and many lawyers advise clients to assert the right, particularly in instances where it is unclear what investigators are trying to prove. In Mr. Patel’s case, he invoked it before a grand jury examining whether Mr. Trump mishandled national security secrets in repeatedly refusing to return classified documents. On Wednesday, Democratic senators raised concerns about Mr. Patel’s testimony, including his assertion of the Fifth Amendment, underscoring that his private remarks would be a point of contention during his confirmation hearings. The lawmakers said they should be told of any relevant information about Mr. Patel contained in a report by Jack Smith, the special counsel who investigated Mr. Trump. Currently, the portion of the report dealing with the classified documents found at Mr. Trump’s Florida resident remains a closely held secret within the Justice Department.

New York Times [1/31/2025 3:20 AM, Adam Goldman, Glenn Thrush, Devlin Barrett and Charlie Savage, 740K, Neutral] reports Kash Patel, President Trump’s pick to run the F.B.I., repeatedly evaded the question of whether he would investigate officials on a published list of his perceived enemies during his confirmation hearing on Thursday, even as he sought to allay fears about his fitness to serve and his fealty to President Trump. In trying to distance himself from far-right associates and his own statements, Mr. Patel, a cocky and confrontational Trump loyalist, suggested he disagreed with Mr. Trump’s decision to pardon Jan. 6 rioters who attacked law enforcement officials. It was a rare divergence from a president who selected him to run the nation’s most powerful law enforcement agency. Asked if he agreed with Mr. Trump’s broad grant of clemency on the day he was inaugurated, Mr. Patel, a former congressional staff member and national security aide, said he had “repeatedly, often publicly and privately, said there can never be a tolerance for violence against law enforcement.” The nomination of Mr. Patel, 44, has upended the post-Watergate tradition of picking nonpartisan F.B.I. directors with extensive law enforcement experience. If confirmed, Mr. Patel could provide Mr. Trump with a direct line into the bureau, possibly eliminating guardrails meant to insulate it from White House interference. While the hearing addressed a range of issues stemming from Mr. Patel’s actions and statements, Democrats time and again accused Mr. Patel of prioritizing his allegiance to Mr. Trump over adherence to the rule of law, a charge the nominee forcefully denied.

NBC News [1/30/2025 10:55 AM, Hayden Field, 50804K, Positive] reports that OpenAI said Thursday that the U.S. National Laboratories will be using its latest artificial intelligence models for scientific research and nuclear weapons security. Under the agreement, up to 15,000 scientists working at the National Laboratories may be able to access OpenAI’s reasoning-focused o1 series. OpenAI will also work with Microsoft, its lead investor, to deploy one of its models on Venado, the supercomputer at Los Alamos National Laboratory, according to a release. Venado is powered by technology from Nvidia and Hewlett-Packard Enterprise. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced the partnership at a company event called "Building to Win: AI Economics," in Washington, D.C. According to OpenAI, the new partnership will involve scientists using OpenAI’s technology to enhance cybersecurity to protect the U.S. power grid, identify new approaches to treating and preventing diseases and deepen understanding of fundamental mathematics and physics. It will also involve work on nuclear weapons, "focused on reducing the risk of nuclear war and securing nuclear materials and weapons worldwide," the company wrote. Some OpenAI researchers with security clearances will consult on the project.

Reuters [1/30/2025 7:22 PM, Matt Spetalnick, 48128K, Negative]
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Thursday he had "zero doubt" that China has a contingency plan to shut down the Panama Canal in the event of a conflict with the U.S. and that Washington intends to address what it sees as a national security threat. Just days before visiting Central America on his first foreign trip as top U.S. diplomat, Rubio, in an interview with Sirius XM’s The Megyn Kelly Show, echoed some of President Donald Trump’s concerns about Chinese influence over the strategic waterway. Trump, in his Jan. 20 inauguration speech, again accused Panama of breaking the promises it made for the final transfer of the canal in 1999 and of ceding its operation to China - claims that the Panamanian government has vehemently denied. He vowed at the time that the U.S. would take back the canal but did not say when or how. Rubio, a longtime China hawk during his Senate career, pointed to a Hong Kong-based company that operates two ports at the canal’s Atlantic and Pacific entrances as a risk to the U.S. because "they have to do whatever the (Chinese) government tells them." "And if the government in China in a conflict tells them to shut down the Panama Canal, they will have to," Rubio said. "And in fact, I have zero doubt that they have contingency planning to do so. That is a direct threat." The Panamanian government has vehemently denied ceding operation of the canal to China and insists it administers the canal fairly to all shipping. Earlier on Thursday, Panamanian President Jose Raul Mulino ruled out discussing control over the canal with Rubio when he visits the country. "The canal belongs to Panama," he told reporters. Though the canal itself is operated by Panama, the two ports on either side are run by publicly listed Hong Kong company CK Hutchinson (0001.HK), opens new tab, while other ports nearby are operated by private companies from the United States, Singapore and Taiwan. Rubio did not repeat Trump’s vow to retake the canal but insisted that the U.S. intends to address the issues the president has raised, saying the current situation "just can’t continue."

AP [1/30/2025 4:52 PM, Alma Solis, 33392K, Neutral] reports that Panama President José Raúl Mulino said Thursday there will be no negotiation with the United States over ownership of the Panama Canal, and he hopes U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s upcoming visit will allow them to focus on shared interests including migration and combating drug trafficking. Being the destination for the first overseas visit by the top U.S. diplomat would have been big for Panama in any case, but Rubio comes as the emissary of U.S. President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly suggested the U.S. retake the Panama Canal. On the day of his inauguration, Trump claimed that U.S. ships were being "severely overcharged and not treated fairly in any way, shape or form," noting that "above all, China is operating the Panama Canal." He had previously said the U.S. could demand the canal be returned. Mulino tried to downplay the tension at his weekly press conference Thursday. He spoke of wanting to clarify confusion about China’s role in the canal — a Hong Kong consortium manages ports at both ends, but Panama controls the canal – and blamed a predecessor for the long-term concession made for control of the ports. "It’s impossible, I can’t negotiate," Mulino said when asked about returning the canal to U.S. control. "That is done. The canal belongs to Panama."

Reported similarly:
Yahoo! News [1/31/2025 2:45 AM, Staff, 57114K, Negative]

Washington Examiner [1/30/2025 6:04 PM, Asher Notheis, 2365K, Neutral] reports Secretary of State Marco Rubio detailed what President Donald Trump sees in Greenland in his bid to purchase the territory, specifically how it would give the United States an advantage over China in shipping wars. Rubio explained how the Arctic region is going to become "critical" to shipping in the future due to how the area’s ice is melting and becoming easier to navigate and that the U.S. needs to be able to defend this shipping area. He added that it is merely "a matter of time" before China takes its own action on Greenland, noting that China is not "an Arctic power" and will need its own place to stage itself with the Arctic area. "And it is completely realistic to believe that the Chinese will eventually, maybe in the short term, try and do in Greenland what they have done at the Panama Canal and in other places, and that is install facilities that give them access to the Arctic with the cover of a Chinese company," Rubio explained on The Megyn Kelly Show. "But that, in reality, just serves a dual purpose, that in a moment of conflict, they could send naval vessels to that facility and operate from there, and that is completely unacceptable to the national security of the world and the national security of the United States.” When asked by journalist Megyn Kelly if Denmark could stop China in this scenario, Rubio cited how Denmark "can’t stop them" and would instead rely on the U.S., adding that the U.S. has a defense agreement to protect Greenland should it ever come under assault. Because of this, Rubio explained that Trump believes it should have "more control over what happens there.”

Newsweek [1/30/2025 1:41 PM, Jon Jackson, 56005K, Neutral] reports that Russia may expand and upgrade its nuclear arsenal if the United States continues to push ahead with the development of a missile defense system, a top Russian diplomat said in an interview published on Thursday. Grigory Mashkov, the Russian Foreign Ministry’s special ambassador, made the comments to the Russian journal International Affairs, according to Reuters. Newsweek reached out to the Russian Foreign Ministry and the U.S. Department of Defense via email on Thursday for comment. Since Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine in February 2022, tensions have been high between Russia and Kyiv’s Western allies, which includes the United States. Putin and various Russian officials have frequently raised the specter of nuclear escalation. The Russian leader also suspended his country’s participation in the New START nuclear arms reduction agreement two years ago, which was the last remaining treaty between Moscow and Washington that limited nuclear arsenals. In an executive order this week, President Donald Trump directed the military to start "construction of the great Iron Dome missile defense shield, which will be made all in the USA." The Iron Dome is an Israeli air defense system that intercepts incoming rockets and shells, and the U.S. supported its development. It is not currently clear what Russia’s plans are regarding its nuclear arsenal.

Wall Street Journal [1/31/2025 1:03 AM, Dov Lieber, Michael R. Gordon, Benoit Faucon and Adam Chamseddine, Negative] reports Israel has complained to the U.S.-led committee overseeing the cease-fire in Lebanon that Iranian diplomats and others are delivering tens of millions of dollars in cash to Hezbollah to fund the group’s revival, a U.S. defense official speaking for the committee and people familiar with the content of the complaint said. According to the Israeli complaints, Iranian envoys have been flying from Tehran to Beirut’s international airport with suitcases stuffed with U.S. dollars, the people familiar with the allegations said. In addition, Israel alleged in its complaints that Turkish citizens have been used to ferry money from Istanbul to Beirut by air, the people said. The cease-fire committee, which doesn’t adjudicate alleged violations, has conveyed the complaints to Lebanon’s government, the official speaking for the committee said. The committee has representatives from Israel, Lebanon, the U.S., France and the United Nations. Officials of some governments represented on the committee said they were aware of Iran’s use of the airport to smuggle cash or considered the allegations credible. The cease-fire deal requires Lebanon to secure the country’s ports of entry and prevent the flow of arms and related materiel to groups like Hezbollah, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The terms don’t specifically address deliveries of cash. The Lebanese government and armed forces didn’t reply to requests for comment. A spokesman for the Iranian mission at the United Nations in New York and representatives of Hezbollah also didn’t reply to requests for comment. Behnam Khosravi, a diplomat at the Iranian Embassy in Lebanon, told Iranian state media this month that Tehran doesn’t use passenger planes to smuggle funds into Lebanon.

Reuters [1/30/2025 9:07 AM, Jonathan Landay and Aram Roston, 30936K, Negative] reports a small U.S. security firm is hiring nearly 100 U.S. special forces veterans to help run a checkpoint in Gaza during the Israel-Hamas truce, according to a company spokesperson and a recruitment email seen by Reuters, introducing armed American contractors into the heart of one of the world’s most violent conflict zones. UG Solutions - a low-profile company founded in 2023 and based in Davidson, North Carolina - is offering a daily rate starting at $1,100 with a $10,000 advance to veterans it hires, the email said. They will staff the checkpoint at a key intersection in Gaza’s interior, said the spokesperson, who confirmed the authenticity of the email. Some people have been recruited and are already at the checkpoint, said the spokesperson, speaking on condition of anonymity. He did not say how many contractors were already in Gaza. UG Solutions’ role in the ceasefire deal has been reported, but the email disclosed previously unknown details including the aim of recruiting 96 veterans exclusively with U.S. special operations forces backgrounds, the pay and the types of weapons they will carry. Reuters reported on Jan. 7 that Emirati officials had suggested the use of private contractors as part of a post-war peacekeeping force in Gaza, and that the idea had caused concern among Western nations. The deployment of armed U.S. contractors in Gaza, where Hamas remains a potent force after 14 months of war, is unprecedented and poses the risk that Americans could be drawn into fighting as President Donald Trump’s administration seeks to keep the Hamas-Israel conflict from reigniting. Among the risks facing the Americans are gunfights with Islamist militants or Palestinians angry over Washington’s support for Israel’s Gaza offensive. "Of course there is a threat they will face," said Avi Melamed, a former Israeli intelligence official. The document said the contractors will be armed with M4 rifles, which are used by the Israeli and U.S. militaries, and Glock pistols. The rules of engagement governing when UG Solutions personnel can open fire have been finalized, the spokesperson said, but he declined to disclose them.

Newsweek [1/31/2025 5:00 AM, Jon Jackson, 56005K, Negative] reports law enforcement authorities in Kyrgyzstan on Thursday announced the arrest of a suspected arms trafficker who is accused of shipping weapons from the United States to sell in Russia. According to Agence France-Presse (AFP), Kyrgyzstan’s State Committee for National Security said in a statement that the suspect is believed to be part of a criminal group that has trafficked hundreds of weapons from the U.S. to Kyrgyzstan and then sold them to unidentified individuals/parties in Russia. Newsweek reached out to the State Committee for National Security via email on Thursday for comment. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) in recent years has emphasized the importance of thwarting illegal arms trafficking, which is often carried out by transnational organized crime groups. Last year, the UN General Assembly declared November 15 the International Day for the Prevention of and Fight against All Forms of Transnational Organized Crime as a call to action against weapons trafficking. Kyrgyzstan, officially the Kyrgyz Republic, is one of Russia’s Central Asian allies. It’s part of the Customs Union of the Eurasian Economic Union, which is made up of five former Soviet countries, including Russia, to allow easier travel and trade between members. According to the State Committee for National Security, a Kyrgyzstani identified only by the initials S.M.M. purchased firearms through online stores in the United States. Other individuals were also allegedly involved in the trafficking scheme, but no identifying information about the other suspects was provided by Kyrgyzstan’s law agency due to the ongoing investigation.

Bloomberg [1/30/2025 1:37 PM, Julie Zhu and Debby Wu, 21617K, Neutral] reports that Companies and government agencies around the world are moving to restrict their employees’ access to the tools recently released by the Chinese artificial-intelligence startup DeepSeek, according to the cybersecurity firms hired to help protect their systems. “Hundreds” of companies, particularly those associated with governments, have worked to block access to DeepSeek due to concerns about potential data leaks to the Chinese government and what they view as weak privacy safeguards, Nadir Izrael, chief technology officer of the cyber firm Armis Inc., said, referring to the startup’s own clientele. Most customers of Netskope Inc., a service that companies use to restrict employee access to websites, are similarly moving to limit the service. Roughly 70% of Armis customers have requested blocks, the company said, and 52% Netskope clients are blocking access to the site entirely, according to Ray Canzanese, director of Netskope’s threat labs. “The biggest concern is the AI model’s potential data leakage to the Chinese government,” Armis’s Izrael said. “You don’t know where your information goes.”

CyberScoop [1/30/2025 12:00 PM, Greg Otto, Neutral] reports a security issue at Chinese artificial intelligence firm DeepSeek exposed over a million lines of sensitive internal data, including user chat histories, API secrets, and backend operational details, according to research published Wednesday by cloud security firm Wiz. The exposure, discovered earlier this month, stemmed from a publicly accessible ClickHouse database linked to DeepSeek’s systems. The database — hosted on two DeepSeek subdomains — required no authentication, allowing unrestricted access to internal logs dating back to Jan. 6. DeepSeek, which has sent shockwaves through the technology industry due to its cost-efficient DeepSeek-R1 reasoning model, secured the database within hours of being notified by researchers. Wiz researchers identified the vulnerability during routine reconnaissance of DeepSeek’s internet-facing assets. Two non-standard ports (8123 and 9000) led to an exposed ClickHouse database; an open-source database management system that is optimized for performing fast analytical queries on large datasets. From there, Wiz researchers ran arbitrary SQL queries, which pulled information related to: Plaintext chat histories between users and DeepSeek’s AI systems, API keys and cryptographic secrets, Server directory structures and operational metadata, References to internal API endpoints. Researchers say attackers could theoretically execute similar commands to extract files directly from DeepSeek’s servers — potentially leading to privilege escalation or corporate espionage. DeepSeek’s rapid ascent in the artificial intelligence space has led to scrutiny of its security practices. Earlier this week, the company said it was having difficulty registering new users due to “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services. Additionally, Israeli cybersecurity threat intelligence firm Kela said that while R1 bears similarities to OpenAI’s ChatGPT, “it is significantly more vulnerable” to being jailbroken. “KELA’s AI Red Team was able to jailbreak the model across a wide range of scenarios, enabling it to generate malicious outputs, such as ransomware development, fabrication of sensitive content, and detailed instructions for creating toxins and explosive devices,” Kela researchers said in a blog Monday.

Newsweek [1/31/2025 3:39 AM, Ryan Chan, 56005K, Neutral] reports the Philippines offered China a deal on Thursday, demanding it stop its aggressive behavior in the South China Sea in exchange for the removal of a U.S. missile system in the nation. Newsweek has emailed the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command for comment. Both the Chinese defense and foreign ministries did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The Philippines has hosted a U.S. Mid-Range Capability (MRC) missile system, also known as Typhon, since April 2024. Initially it was stated that this was just for exercises but both nations later decided to keep it in the country "indefinitely." The land-based weapon can launch two types of missiles for land attack, air defense and anti-ship missions, and is capable of striking targets up to 1,000 miles away. China has territorial disputes with the Philippines in the South China Sea and there have been frequent maritime confrontations between Chinese and Philippine forces. Manila has signed a security treaty with Washington that comes with mutual defense commitments and Beijing has also repeatedly raised objections to the U.S. missile deployment, denouncing it as a "highly dangerous move." Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. told reporters that he will "return everything" if China stops its "aggressive and coercive behavior" in the contested South China Sea. "Stop claiming our territory, stop harassing our fishermen and let them have a living, stop ramming our boats, stop water cannoning our people, stop firing lasers at us," he said. China has increasingly sent armed coast guard ships to the waters near the Philippines to reinforce its territorial claims with law enforcement patrols, ramming maneuvers, and water cannons, as well as the use of high-power lasers against Philippine vessels. The president’s remarks came after the Chinese Foreign Ministry urged Manila to quickly withdraw the Typhoon missile system to "correct the wrongdoing." The Philippine military hit back by vowing that "no single entity" can dictate how it conducts its defense deployments. Reuters reported last week that the Typhon missile system was relocated from its original site at Laoag airfield on the island of Luzon in the northern Philippines to another location.

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