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.

New York Times [2/28/2025 10:54 PM, Andrew Duehren, 3973K] reports the Department of Homeland Security has pushed the Internal Revenue Service to turn over the addresses of roughly 700,000 undocumented immigrants it is seeking to deport, according to three people familiar with the matter, in a request that could violate taxpayer privacy laws. I.R.S. officials have so far denied the department’s attempts to verify the addresses, the people said, because of the legal concerns. But the request is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to enlist the tax collector in its plans for mass deportations. Many undocumented immigrants file tax returns with the I.R.S., giving the agency information about where they live, their families, their employers and their earnings. The I.R.S. gives immigrants without Social Security numbers a separate nine-digit code called an individual tax payer identification number to file their returns. Taxpayer information is typically kept closely held at the I.R.S., with improper disclosure barred under federal law. I.R.S. officials have told their Department of Homeland Security counterparts that they need to follow rules governing taxpayer privacy, the people familiar with the matter said. Representatives for the I.R.S. and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Washington Post reported earlier on the request. The request is a sign of the lengths Trump administration officials are trying to go to deport millions of immigrants in the United States illegally. Administration officials are preparing to create a registry listing migrants and are using military sites to help deport them. The Trump administration has repeatedly sought access to taxpayer information at the I.R.S. in ways that officials at the tax agency have worried could violate federal law. The agency recently signed an agreement allowing a member of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to view anonymized taxpayer data as part of a push to modernize the agency’s software. The Musk team is leading an effort to shrink federal programs and the government’s work force. The Department of Homeland Security had previously tried to enlist I.R.S. agents in its broad immigration crackdown, asking for agents to audit companies that might be hiring unauthorized immigrants, according to a copy of a memo viewed by New York Times. President Trump has also suggested that I.R.S. agents could be sent to the border with Mexico.

Reported similarly:
Washington Post [2/28/2025 4:30 PM, Jacob Bogage, Jeff Stein, Maria Sacchetti and Lisa Rein, 31735K]

The Hill [2/28/2025 11:57 AM, Brett Samuels, 12829K] reports that Vice President Vance is scheduled to travel next week to the U.S.-Mexico border, becoming the highest ranking administration to do so amid the Trump White House’s efforts to crack down on immigration. Vance will make the trip Wednesday, a day after President Trump gives a joint address to Congress, a spokesperson for the vice president confirmed to The Hill. Trump is expected to discuss at length his administration’s initiatives to curb the flow of migrants into the U.S. Trump campaigned on drastically reducing the number of immigrants entering the country and on deporting millions of people in the U.S. who entered illegally, and he has taken a number of actions in his first month in office to make good on that promise. Trump signed orders to pause the U.S. refugee program, to increase military presence at the border and to shut down the CBP One App, which was used for migrants without visas who sought to enter at legal points of entry. He also signed an order seeking to end birthright citizenship, though it has been halted by the courts. The Trump administration has given more latitude to Immigration and Customs Enforcement in conducting raids to remove immigrants who did not enter the U.S. legally.

Reuters [2/28/2025 9:26 AM, Nate Raymond, 41523K] reports that U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to curtail automatic birthright citizenship nationwide as part of his hardline immigration crackdown suffered another legal setback on Friday when a second federal appeals court declined to lift one of the court orders blocking the Republican’s executive order. The Richmond, Virginia-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals on a 2-1 vote rejected the Trump administration’s request for an order putting on hold a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland who concluded the order was unconstitutional. "For well over a century, the federal government has recognized the birthright citizenship of children born in this country to undocumented or non-permanent immigrants," the appeals court’s majority said. It said it was "hard to overstate the confusion and upheaval" that would result from allowing Trump’s order to take effect, as it challenged long-standing legal interpretations and practice in ways that could cause "chaos." The panel’s majority included U.S. Circuit Judges Roger Gregory and Pamela Harris, both appointees of Democratic presidents. U.S. Circuit Judge Paul Niemeyer, an appointee of Republican former President George H.W. Bush, dissented, saying a nationwide injunction was "inappropriate." Newsweek [2/28/2025 12:26 PM, Jesus Mesa and Gabe Whisnant, 52220K] reports Trump has long argued that birthright citizenship encourages illegal immigration, asserting that his executive order is necessary to protect American sovereignty. He first introduced the policy during his presidency in 2018 and revisited it after being reelected, signing an executive order. On Friday, judges rejected the Trump administration’s request to pause a nationwide injunction issued by a federal judge in Maryland, who deemed the order unconstitutional. This decision adds to a growing legal consensus against the order, following similar rulings from federal judges in Seattle, Massachusetts, and New Hampshire, all blocking its enforcement. Bloomberg [2/28/2025 9:23 AM, Mallory Culhane, 16228K] reports that the government appealed the sweeping nationwide injunction, arguing the court shouldn’t pause shouldn’t extend to people beyond the plaintiffs in the suit. But the government failed to show that the district court abused its discretion in halting the executive order nationwide, the Fourth Circuit said. An injunction limited to the parties in the suit would be unworkable in practice and cause inequitable treatment “in an area in which uniformity is needed.” The public interest favors a wide-reaching preliminary injunction, given the “confusion and upheaval” that will accompany the executive order,” the circuit court said. “The status quo in this case is clear, and adding a bit more time to its century-plus pedigree will not impose any substantial harm on the government,” the Fourth Circuit wrote. Judge Paul V. Niemeyer said in a dissent that the government’s request to limit the injunction to the parties in the suit should be granted, given the many other cases pending in districts across the country. “It is simply presumptuous and jurisdictionally messy” for one court to issue a sweeping injunction that includes the jurisdiction of other federal courts considering the same issue, Niemeyer said. Judge Pamela A. Harris and Roger L. Gregory joined the majority opinion.

Georgetown University Law Center and Asylum Seeker Advocacy Project represent the plaintiffs challenging the order. The case is CASA Inc. v. Trump, 4th Cir., No. 25-01153, 2/28/25.

Washington Post [2/28/2025 7:20 PM, Nick Miroff and Maria Sacchetti, 31735K] reports migrants could be speedily deported if they crossed the border illegally, were waved into the country on parole or with a notice to report to immigration authorities, and have not applied for asylum, the memo said. Immigrants who arrived legally through a port of entry also may be targeted if they lacked immigration documents or misrepresented themselves, the memo said. Lawyers said this group could include Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and others who entered legally through a Biden parole program, which President Donald Trump terminated, if they lack any other immigration status. Migrants who booked appointments through a U.S. Customs and Border Protection app to enter through a border checkpoint also could be swept out of the country. "This is allowing ICE to go after a lot of people that are here, that have been here for a long time," said Paul Hunker, former ICE chief counsel in Dallas, who said the fast-track deportation process historically has been meant for newer arrivals, not people who have deep roots in their communities. The memo comes as Trump administration officials scramble to fulfill his campaign promise to oversee a historic mass deportation of millions of immigrants. Those efforts have fallen short in part because longtime residents are entitled to court hearings that can take years to materialize, so Trump officials are increasingly targeting people who can be quickly removed, such as criminals, those with final removal orders or people with temporary protections like parole that officials can swiftly rescind. Recent arrivals who were released into the country via parole are in such a tenuous position that the month before the 2024 presidential election, the Biden administration warned them to apply for asylum or permanent residency, if eligible, to avoid being deported.

NPR [2/28/2025 6:00 PM, Staff, 29983K] Audio: HERE reports on Tuesday, President Trump will address Congress and the nation in a major speech, where he’ll sum up what he’s accomplished in his first month. And while the Trump administration has already claimed success in curbing illegal immigration, many people affected by his policies have experienced chaos and panic.

Washington Examiner [2/28/2025 10:58 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 2296K] reports that the Trump administration’s new requirement for immigrants in the country to register with the federal government has prompted swift backlash from advocacy groups. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced Tuesday evening that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would set up a website for immigrants to register with the federal government as the first step to self-deporting from the United States. "These folks that are here in this country illegally can self-register… and we will help them go home," Noem told Fox News host Jesse Watters on Tuesday evening. "It allows them an opportunity to come back to this country and to be an American." However, a number of aspects of the registration process have triggered serious concerns among immigrant rights groups and immigration lawyers, including the steep penalties for not cooperating and making it easier for federal immigration officers to find and deport those who register. Charles Kuck, an immigration lawyer and adjunct professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said he had no reason to believe that registering would not make immigrants an easier target for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the federal agency that arrests and deports illegal immigrants. "Obviously, if you register ICE is coming to pick you up if you don’t have [Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals] or [Temporary Protected Status], your choice," wrote Kuck in a long post to X.

CBS News [2/28/2025 6:12 AM, Staff, 52868K] reports a global campaign has led to at least 25 arrests over child sexual abuse content generated by artificial intelligence and distributed online, Europol said Friday. "Operation Cumberland has been one of the first cases involving AI-generated child sexual abuse material, making it exceptionally challenging for investigators due to the lack of national legislation addressing these crimes," the Hague-based European police agency said in a statement. The majority of the arrests were made Wednesday during the world-wide operation led by the Danish police, and which also involved law enforcement agencies from the EU, Australia, Britain, Canada and New Zealand. U.S. law enforcement agencies did not take part in the operation, according to Europol. It followed the arrest last November of the main suspect in the case, a Danish national who ran an online platform where he distributed the AI material he produced. After a "symbolic online payment, users from around the world were able to obtain a password to access the platform and watch children being abused," Europol said. Online child sexual exploitation remains one of the most threatening manifestations of cybercrime in the European Union, the agency warned. It "continues to be one of the top priorities for law enforcement agencies, which are dealing with an ever-growing volume of illegal content," it said, adding that more arrests were expected as the investigation continued. While Europol said Operation Cumberland targeted a platform and people sharing content fully created using AI, there has also been a worrying proliferation of AI-manipulated "deepfake" imagery online, which often uses images of real people, including children, and can have devastating impacts on their lives.

Washington Examiner [2/28/2025 12:28 PM, Jack Birle, 2296K] reports that Elon Musk pleaded for retired air traffic controllers to consider returning to work as the Trump administration attempts to fix a long-running shortage in the field following several recent air travel incidents. Air traffic controllers face mandatory retirement at the end of the month they turn 56, with an exemption available to allow exceptional performers to remain on the job until age 61, according to federal law. There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so. "There is a shortage of top notch air traffic controllers. If you have retired, but are open to returning to work, please consider doing so," Musk said in a post on X. The plea from Musk, who helms the Department of Government Efficiency as an adviser to President Donald Trump, came the same day Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced a hiring "supercharge" at the Federal Aviation Administration’s academy. The effort emphasizes a merit-based process with increased starting salaries and simplifying the hiring process to five steps from the current eight-step process.

The Hill [2/28/2025 9:45 AM, Rebecca Beitsch, 52868K] reports that some agencies plan to send a second Saturday email to federal workers asking them for bullet points on what they did this week, a sign at least some departments plan to continue with the controversial practice ignited by Elon Musk. The decision comes after Musk faced pushback last week from some agency heads, who instructed their employees not to respond to a Saturday email from hr@opm.gov, undercutting Musk’s threats that any nonresponse would be considered a resignation. The move acknowledges that the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) itself has little authority over other agencies, which have their own human resources departments and, of course, agency heads who dictate internal policy. But while several department leaders, like new FBI Director Kash Patel, told their employees not to respond, others informed employees they should go ahead and do so, demonstrating an appetite among other agencies to have their employees send bullet points recapping what they accomplished in the week that just ended. Musk, at the first meeting of President Trump’s Cabinet on Wednesday, defended his email demanding all federal workers report their accomplishments to his office, calling it a "pulse check" and saying anyone with a heartbeat and neurons could complete it. The directive sparked confusion across government. OPM on Monday sought to clear the air, telling agency HR leaders that any response to the email was voluntary.

AP [2/28/2025 12:33 PM, Jeff McMurray, 52868K] reports that President Donald Trump’s administration is backing off its demand for an extra layer of federal scrutiny whenever states seek even minor changes to their transportation plans, after the rescinded requirement sparked concern that some payments for roads, bridges and transit would be delayed or even halted due to policy differences. Most of the federal money used for transportation projects flows to states almost automatically through formulas established by Congress that consider population and other factors. For decades, states have enjoyed widespread autonomy to set their own priorities and spend the funds on projects they deem as most worthy. But under the policy the administration put in place last week and reversed this week, no additional money was to be allocated until lawyers in the U.S. Department of Transportation ‘s Washington headquarters signed off on any changes. Such amendments to state transportation plans were already subject to a federal review, but it was usually a swift process from a regional office to confirm they didn’t violate any U.S. laws. State transportation departments learned of the reversal Friday through an email from Joung Lee, deputy director and chief policy officer for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials. Lee said the Trump administration had confirmed that the review process was being returned to the regional level without the need for lawyers in Washington to sign off.

Washington Post [2/28/2025 12:32 PM, Maegan Vazquez, 31735K] reports that President Donald Trump will soon sign an executive order designating English as the official language of the United States, marking the first time the country will have a federally recognized national language in its nearly 250-year history. A draft White House fact sheet obtained by The Washington Post states that the order will rescind a federal mandate issued by then-President Bill Clinton “that required agencies and recipients of federal funding to provide extensive language assistance to non-English speakers.” The fact sheet also states that the order will give agencies discretion to keep their current language policies allowing documents and services in other languages, “but encourages new Americans to adopt a national language that opens doors to greater opportunities.” The White House order, the sheet stated, will help foster “national cohesion” and “establishes efficiency in government operations.” The Wall Street Journal first reported on the order. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) said at a news conference Friday that the Trump administration could be taken to court over the incoming order. “Like dozens of the other executive orders and actions that have been taken, we’re going to have to examine if what he’s doing is actually in compliance with the law and the United States Constitution. And to the extent that it’s not, I’m confident that he will be sued,” Jeffries said, noting how courts have halted many of the president’s executive actions so far.

Reported similarly:
Reuters [2/28/2025 12:06 PM, Doina Chiacu, 52868K]
USA Today [2/28/2025 6:05 PM, Joey Garrison, 75858K]

ABC News [2/28/2025 3:37 PM, Aaron Katersky and Meredith Deliso, 34586K] reports more than 100 Drug Enforcement Administration agents packed a New York City federal courtroom Friday for the arraignment of the alleged mastermind behind the 1985 murder of Enrique "Kiki" Camarena, the first DEA agent killed on Mexican soil. Rafael Caro Quintero, 72, was arraigned on multiple drug and weapons offenses in Brooklyn federal court following his extradition Thursday to the U.S. from Mexico. His court-appointed attorney entered a not guilty plea on his behalf and did not contest pretrial detention. He was convicted in Mexico in 1985 of the torture and murder of Camarena, one of the most notorious killings in the history of the Mexican narco wars. After serving 28 years of his 40-year sentence, he was released from prison in 2013 when a Mexican judge ruled that he had been improperly tried. Caro Quintero promptly went into hiding, as U.S. officials stridently condemned the release. The criminal ringleader was once again detained in Mexico in 2022, nearly 10 years after his release. At the time, the FBI said that he was allegedly involved in the Sinaloa cartel and the Caro-Quintero drug trafficking organization in the region of Badiraguato in Sinaloa, Mexico, and warned that he should be considered "armed and extremely dangerous." Caro Quintero is charged in the Eastern District of New York with multiple drug and weapons offenses, including leading a continuing criminal enterprise, making him eligible for the death penalty if convicted. Reuters [2/28/2025 3:05 PM, Staff, 41523K] reports U.S. President Donald Trump has threatened to impose 25% tariffs on Mexican goods starting on March 4 over what his administration sees as insufficient progress on stemming fentanyl and U.S.-bound migrant flows. Caro Quintero, 72, pleaded not guilty to an indictment charging him with leading a criminal enterprise, drug trafficking, and illegal firearms use at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Robert Levy in Brooklyn. Caro Quintero’s Guadalajara Cartel was once one of Latin America’s most powerful drug groups, and evolved into the modern-day Sinaloa Cartel. FOX News [2/28/2025 1:40 PM, Alex Nitzberg, 46189K] reports "President Trump directed the Department of Justice and the Department of State to make this happen, and Attorney General Bondi and Secretary of State Rubio did a tremendous job in getting this done," the White House press secretary said in a statement on Friday. "The previous Administration allowed these criminals to run free and commit crimes all over the world. The Trump Administration is declaring these thugs as terrorists, because that is what they are, and demanding justice for the American people," the statement adds.

Reported similarly:
AP [2/28/2025 12:24 PM, Philip Marcelo, 10355K]
CBS New York [2/28/2025 2:56 PM, Alice Gainer, 51661K]

Washington Examiner [2/28/2025 5:02 PM, Ashley Oliver, 2296K] reports a judge on Friday was met with a new complication in a lawsuit brought by U.S. Catholic bishops after the State Department abruptly terminated a $65 million agreement with them related to refugee resettlement. Judge Trevor McFadden said during a hearing in Washington, D.C., that he would wait to issue a ruling on the bishops’ request for an injunction against the State Department and instead said both parties should revise their arguments by next week, in part so that they could factor in the State Department’s sudden cancelation of its agreement. The hearing came after the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops sued the State Department last week, claiming the department illegally stopped paying the group after President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January to suspend refugee admissions and resettlement programs. The lawsuit is one of two the Trump administration has faced over the State Department’s move on Jan. 24 to halt resettlement services in response to Trump’s order.

AP [2/28/2025 6:42 PM, Staff, 48304K] reports the owner of a North Carolina company pleaded guilty in federal court on Friday to trying to sell electronic devices that have military applications to China without having a required U.S. government license, authorities said. David C. Bohmerwald, who was formally charged in October with violating the Export Control Reform Act and other portions of the federal code, entered the plea to a count before U.S. District Judge Terrence Boyle in Raleigh. Bohmerwald, 63, has a tentative sentencing date for mid-May, court records show. He could face up to 20 years in prison, according to a U.S. Justice Department news release. Bohmerwald, the owner of Raleigh-based Components Cooper Inc., purchased 100 accelerometers from a U.S.-based electronic company, and then attempted to export the devices to a company in China, the release said, citing court documents and information presented in court. An accelerometer, which measures the vibration, tilt and acceleration of a structure, can be used in aerospace and military applications, such as helping missiles fly more accurately and measuring the precise effect of munitions. The electronics company notified law enforcement about Bohmerwald’s purchase request. After receiving the accelerometers, Bohmerwald dropped off two parcels -- one addressed to a business in China -- at a shipping store, the release said. A federal agent held the package and found the 100 accelerometers inside. "The disruption of this scheme to illegally export sensitive technology means that accelerometers and other items will not be used by unauthorized individuals or for adversarial purposes," said Cardell Morant, a special agent in charge who supervises Homeland Security Investigations, within the Department of Homeland Security, in the Carolinas.

USA Today [2/28/2025 8:29 PM, Sudiksha Kochi, 75858K] reports the FBI handed back boxes of materials that President Donald Trump had unlawfully taken to his Mar-a-Lago Florida estate upon leaving the White House in 2021, the administration announced Friday. Trump faced criminal charges for retaining national defense documents after leaving leaving office and allegedly conspiring to hide them from federal authorities, after FBI agents found more than 100 documents with classified markings at his Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022. The FBI had also recovered other government documents during the search. Those charges were dropped after Trump won the election, per Justice Department policy not to prosecute a sitting president. It wasn’t clear whether the boxes given to Trump on Friday consisted of classified documents. The White House did not respond to a message seeking clarification on the contents in the boxes. “The FBl is giving the president his property back that was taken during the unlawful and illegal raids,” Trump’s communications director Steven Cheung said. “We are taking possession of the boxes today and loading them onto Air Force One.” The boxes were loaded onto Trump’s flight departing to Florida on Friday. Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that the materials in the boxes will “someday be part of the Trump Presidential Library.” “Justice finally won out. I did absolutely nothing wrong. This was merely an attack on a political opponent that, obviously, did not work well. Justice in our Country will now be restored,” he wrote. Special counsel Jack Smith, who brought the charges against Trump in the classified documents case, resigned from the Department of Justice after Trump took office. Newsweek [2/28/2025 11:57 PM, Aila Slisco, 52220K] reports President Donald Trump celebrated on Friday after the FBI returned boxes of classified documents that were confiscated during a raid of Mar-a-Lago in 2022. "The Department of Justice has just returned the boxes that Deranged Jack Smith made such a big deal about," Trump wrote. "Justice finally won out," he continued. "I did absolutely nothing wrong. This was merely an attack on a political opponent that, obviously, did not work well. Justice in our Country will now be restored.”

Reported similarly:
Washington Post [2/28/2025 7:43 PM, Perry Stein, 31735K]

CNN [3/1/2025 6:00 AM, Omar Jimenez and Rachel Clarke, 908K] reports a bill before the Missouri State Senate would introduce $1,000 rewards for people identifying undocumented immigrants who are then taken into custody. The proposal would make it a state felony for anyone in the US illegally to enter and stay in Missouri. It would create an opportunity for licensed bond agents to become bounty hunters.  And it would create a fund not just for the bounty hunters, but anyone who provides information on an undocumented individual that results in their arrest. Senate Bill 72 is still in committee and may never become law. But opponents say it’s already spreading fear and changing the lives of both legally residing and undocumented immigrants. “It’s really hateful,” Ashley Chavarria told CNN. Chavarria is the US-born daughter of two Mexicans who came across the border illegally in the late 1980s and have stayed ever since. She said she’s already seen Latinos, some undocumented, in Missouri’s capital Jefferson City area staying away from English classes and even afraid to collect their children from school since the inauguration of President Donald Trump and the onset of his mass deportation drive. And the new bill could make things worse, added Chavarria, who works at a social service agency for Hispanic communities made up of both citizens and non-citizens. “It’s actually going to put more fear into people and turn people against each other,” she said. The bill’s sponsor, freshman state Sen. David Gregory took time to criticize what he said had been misinformation about his plan both when introducing the legislation and in a short interview with CNN. “I’m hearing things like ‘oh, this places a bounty on people.’ No, it doesn’t” he said. “Just because we’re dispatching bounty hunters after a warrant has been issued is not a bounty. It’s actually a reward system through a hotline.” The bill creates a felony of “trespass by an illegal alien” if an undocumented immigrant enters and stays in the state. The text of the bill talks of setting up a toll-free phone line, email address and online portal where people could — anonymously if they wish — report suspected violators. If an undocumented immigrant “is arrested and imprisoned…as a result of a report to the information system, the person who made the report shall be eligible to receive a reward of $1,000,” it says. Gregory insists that incentive is a reward — similar to those offered by local and national law enforcement agencies seeking information on crimes — and not a “bounty.”

Chicago Tribune [2/28/2025 7:07 AM, Jason Meisner, 5269K] reports two reputed high-ranking Mexican cartel figures have already landed in Chicago as part of a historic prisoner transfer with Mexico as the Trump administration turns up the pressure on drug trafficking organizations, federal authorities said late Thursday. Norberto Valencia Gonzalez, a financial guru affiliated with the once-powerful and notoriously violent Beltran-Leyva cartel, was extradited to Chicago and pleaded not guilty to an indictment unsealed Thursday alleging he conspired to traffic kilogram-quantities of cocaine and launder drug proceeds, according to a spokesman for the U.S. attorney’s office in Chicago. Also coming to Chicago was Jose Angel Canobbio-Inzunza, an alleged aide and security chief for the Sinaloa cartel once headed by Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the spokesman said. An indictment unveiled last year accused Inzunza, 44, of assisting one of Guzman’s sons, who took over the business after their father’s arrest, with manufacturing and importing cocaine, methamphetamine, fentanyl and marijuana to the U.S. for sale. The charges also alleged Inzunza financed and ran the cartel’s security arm, known as Los Chimales. Inzunza pleaded not guilty during a hearing Thursday before U.S. District Judge Martha Pacold, before the prisoner deal was announced by the Department of Justice, court records show. In all, Mexico sent 29 drug cartel figures, including drug lord Rafael Caro Quintero, who was behind the killing of a U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agent in 1985, to the United States — an unprecedented show of security cooperation that comes as top Mexican officials are in Washington trying to head off the Trump administration’s threat of imposing 25% tariffs on all Mexican imports starting Tuesday. Those sent to the U.S. were brought from prisons across Mexico to board planes at an airport north of Mexico City that took them to eight U.S. cities, according to the Mexican government. Among them were members of five of the six Mexican organized crime groups designated earlier this month by U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration as "foreign terrorist organizations.". One prisoner, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, was a former leader of the Juarez drug cartel, based in the border city of Ciudad Juarez, across from El Paso, Texas, and brother of drug lord Amado Carrillo Fuentes, known as "The Lord of The Skies," who died in a botched plastic surgery in 1997. "We will prosecute these criminals to the fullest extent of the law in honor of the brave law enforcement agents who have dedicated their careers — and in some cases, given their lives — to protect innocent people from the scourge of violent cartels," U.S. Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement Thursday.

CBS News [2/28/2025 3:35 PM, Ken Molestina, Lexi Salazar, Chris Wymore, 51661K] reports the expansion of an existing federal program could turn some local and state agencies into an immigration task force. The job of enforcing immigration laws has typically been the responsibility of federal law enforcement agencies. However, since 1996 state and local law enforcement agencies like police departments and sheriff’s offices have been able to partner with the Department of Homeland security to conduct some of those immigration enforcement duties through a voluntary program called 287(g). The program gives deputies or officers with state and local departments the authority to enforce some immigration enforcement efforts within local jails. This is known as the "Jail Model" enforcement and is currently what the Tarrant County Sheriff’s office is enrolled in. Denton County has applied for it, but hasn’t been given the green light yet.

New York Times [3/1/2025 6:00 AM, Ian Austen,145325K] reports President Trump and Vice President JD Vance’s televised berating of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine suggests that things could be worse between Canada and the U.S. But when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau steps down in a few days, his successor will face the worst relations between the U.S. and Canada since the trade war of the Great Depression. Arguably they are nearing a nadir not seen since the 19th century. After a week of confusing signals from the White House, Mr. Trump said he was committed to imposing potentially devastating 25 percent tariffs on most exports from Canada except oil and gas, which face a 10 percent tax. If we recall when Mr. Trump first started proposing tariffs on Canada and Mexico, which now seems a very long time ago, he had two justifications. He insisted that the U.S. was being overrun by migrants and poisoned with fentanyl coming across the borders with the country’s two major trading partners. Mr. Trudeau’s government responded with a 1.3 billion Canadian dollar package of measures to fortify the border. He named a “fentanyl czar,” gave the Mounties two Black Hawk helicopters to fly along the border, assigned a large number of their officers to border patrol and bought a variety of surveillance devices, including drones. Matina Stevis-Gridneff, our Canada bureau chief, went to Coutts, Alberta, to see the project in action. What she found is that instead of stopping migrants coming out of Canada, the new patrols are picking up people fleeing from the U.S. Mr. Trump’s arguments for tariffs are sometimes based around the view that the U.S. is, as he puts it, subsidizing Canada. The idea is part of a general argument by the president that trade is being used by the rest of the world to “rip off” the U.S. and undermine its industries. In Canada’s case, his subsidy claim appears related to its trade surplus with the U.S. That surplus is largely a result of oil and gas exports to the U.S. Because Americans receive goods and services from Canada for their money, the trade surplus in no way fits the definition of a subsidy.

CNBC [2/28/2025 12:29 PM, Dan Mangan, 35355K] reports that Mexico extradited 29 drug cartel members to the United States amid a looming promise by President Donald Trump amid a looming promise by Trump to impose stiff tariffs on Mexican imports. The people extradited Thursday included Rafael Caro Quintea, a cartel kingpin who is charged in the U.S. with the 1985 slaying of Drug Enforcement Administration agent Enrique “Kiki” Camarena. “The group of cartel members... includes one of the most evil cartel bosses in the world,” the White House said in a statement. In the same statement, the White House said Trump had “directed the Department of Justice and the Department of State to make this happen, and Attorney General [Pam] Bondi and Secretary of State [Marco] Rubio did a tremendous job in getting this done. The DEA’s former chief of operations, Ray Donovan, said, “For those of us who have investigated Mexican cartels for many generations, this is truly an historical moment.” “We have never seen this many sent from Mexico to the U.S. in one day,” Donovan said, according to NBC News. The extraditions came on the heels of promises by Trump to impose tariffs of 25% on goods imported from Mexico and Canada if those countries do not take steps to halt the flow of the deadly opioid fentanyl and other narcotics across their borders with the U.S. Those tariffs were suspended until next week after Mexico and Canada both took steps to address Trump’s concerns.

Reported similarly:

Reuters [2/28/2025 10:57 AM, Staff, 41523K]
Washington Examiner [2/28/2025 2:28 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 2296K]

Reuters [2/28/2025 3:52 PM, Lizbeth Diaz, 41523K] reports the Mexican government broke with its own legal procedures to hand over 29 suspected cartel members to the U.S., experts said, as pressure mounts over threats by President Donald Trump to slap tariffs on Mexican imports. A dozen lawyers who are experts in extradition law and security analysts in Mexico told Reuters the handover of these high-profile jailed convicts, some sought by Washington for years, is unprecedented and a clear "jump" over any existing legal barrier. The handover could expose some of the suspects to the possibility of execution in the U.S. The death penalty is normally barred in Mexican extraditions. The experts interviewed by Reuters said the mass handoff cannot be considered an "extradition" because it went outside the bounds of treaties and laws between the two countries.

Wall Street Journal [2/28/2025 5:30 AM, Steve Fisher and Vera Bergengruen] reports the U.S. has secretly flown unarmed drones from Mexican airfields to spy on drug cartels, leading to the arrests of kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, one of his sons and other drug lords, U.S. and Mexican officials said. The flights, operated by the Department of Homeland Security and the Central Intelligence Agency at the Mexican military’s request, have also provided vital information for large drug seizures, the officials said. Using cameras that can capture a license plate from 20,000 feet above, the drones feed surveillance video on cartel smuggling operations, and map out clandestine labs, to authorities on both sides of the border, the officials said. The drones, many of them MQ-9 Reapers used in counterterrorism operations around the world, are based for a week or two at a time at Mexican airfields, the officials said, highlighting the deep bilateral security cooperation between the two countries. Being based in Mexico enables the drones to spend more time over surveillance targets in the lush mountains of western Mexico that are home to the world’s largest fentanyl smuggling organizations, instead of flying back and forth to the U.S., the officials said. Gen. Ricardo Trevilla, Mexico’s defense minister, said the American drones provided intelligence that led to the arrest last week of the security chief of Iván Archivaldo Guzmán, a son of “El Chapo” who is in a turf war with other factions of the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the biggest drug-smuggling outfits in Mexico. U.S. drone intelligence also led to the arrest of the elder Guzmán, commonly known as “El Chapo,” in Mexico in 2013 and 2016, the Mexican and U.S. officials said, though he escaped prison twice. In 2023, drones helped find Ovidio Guzmán, another of “El Chapo’s” sons, who had taken over the drug business with his brothers. A CIA spokeswoman declined to comment on the program, while the Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Reported similarly:
Newsweek [2/28/2025 11:55 AM, Jenna Sundel, 52220K]

AP [2/28/2025 7:12 PM, Staff, 48304K] Video: HERE reports members of Mexico’s Security Cabinet on Friday said the handing over of 29 drug cartel figures to the United States was a national security decision in the interests of the country.

The Hill [2/28/2025 2:36 PM, Ailia Zehra, 12829K] reports that Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-Ga.) led a group of Democratic senators in writing a letter Friday to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth against the mass detention of migrants at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, saying it poses a threat to civil rights and military readiness. The lawmakers highlighted past reports of mistreatment of detainees in facilities operated by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), expressing concerns over the treatment of migrants imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. Sens. Chris Coons (D-Del.), Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), and Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) also signed the letter. "We oppose placing U.S. military and DoD civilian personnel in the legally and morally tenuous position of conducting mass migrant detention operations. Our men and women in uniform are warfighters, not jailers of migrants," the group wrote. "The dramatically expanded use of U.S. military personnel and facilities to support mass detention operations overseas will divert DoD personnel and resources from its core warfighting mission," the letter added. According to a statement by Ossoff, he led an 18-month bipartisan investigation in 2022 that revealed that women detainees in Georgia "were subjected by a DHS-contracted doctor to excessive, invasive, and often unnecessary gynecological surgeries and procedures." "Given widespread and well-documented abuse of detainees in DHS and DHS-contracted facilities in the United States, we lack confidence that DHS political leadership has the will or capacity to conduct such detention operations at NS Guantánamo Bay humanely," the senators said.

Texas Tribune [2/28/2025 12:15 PM, Gerardo Del Valle, Perla Trevizo, and Mica Rosenberg, 1487K] reports that less than a week after deporting Venezuelans detained at Guantanamo Bay, the Trump administration has again flown about two dozen migrants to the U.S. naval base in Cuba. This time, however, the migrants are from countries across the world, including from places that are willing to take them back, which has raised additional questions about whom the government is choosing to send there and why. ProPublica and The Texas Tribune interviewed Angela Sequera, the mother of one of the first migrants sent to Guantanamo. She described her fear and desperation upon learning that her son, Yoiker Sequera, had been transferred to the facility, which she knew only as a place where terrorists were held and tortured after the 9/11 attacks. On Feb. 9, Sequera was waiting for her daily phone call from Yoiker, who had been in an El Paso immigration detention facility since he was charged with entering the U.S. illegally late last year. When the phone finally rang, it wasn’t her son but another detainee who told her that Yoiker had been taken to Guantanamo. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said this week that nearly half of the Venezuelans originally detained at Guantanamo were members of the Tren de Aragua gang and that many had serious criminal records. DHS did not provide evidence to support that assertion. DHS also said in court filings this month that Guantanamo will continue to "temporarily house" migrants before they are "removed to their home country or a safe third country." [Editorial note: consult video at source link for video]

New York Times [2/28/2025 5:38 PM, Julie Turkewitz, Farnaz Fassihi, Annie Correal, 145325K] reports the camp lies four hours from Panama’s capital, down a bumpy, often desolate highway, at the edge of a treacherous jungle called the Darién. For more than a week, it has held more than 100 asylum seekers from around the world. Surrounded by fences and armed guards, they sleep on cots or hard benches. Journalists have been barred, lawyers say they have been blocked from speaking to their clients and it is the government in charge — not the international aid groups Panamanian officials say are the ones organizing the operation. The migrants are among several hundred people who arrived in recent weeks at the U.S. southern border, hoping to seek asylum in the United States, and were swiftly deported to Central America. They have since become test cases in the Trump administration’s effort to send some of its most challenging-to-deport people to other countries. Of the roughly 300 people sent to Panama, more than half have agreed to be repatriated, according to President Raúl Mulino. Another 112 have said that it is too dangerous for them to go home or that they lack documentation allowing them to do so. Now they are at the camp by the jungle with no sense of how long they will be held or where they may be sent next.

CBS Austin [2/28/2025 4:31 PM, Cory Smith, 602K] reports arrests by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement jumped 627% from last year in President Donald Trump’s first month in office, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said this week. ICE agents arrested over 20,000 illegal immigrants in one month, she said. Noem said that compares to 33,000 at-large arrests under former President Joe Biden for all of last year. "President Trump and this Administration are saving lives every day because of the actions we are taking to secure the border and deport illegal alien criminals," Noem said in a statement. "Hundreds of thousands of criminals were let into this country illegally. We are sending them home, and they will never be allowed to return." That announcement comes after officials last week said border encounters have plunged 93% since Trump took office. Illegally present immigrants with criminal backgrounds are being prioritized in the early going of the crackdown, but Trump’s "border czar" Tom Homan has said any immigrant who isn’t authorized to be in the country is fair game to be arrested and deported.

FOX News [2/28/2025 10:18 AM, Adam Shaw, 46189K] reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is making moves to detain illegal immigrants as the Trump administration looks to expand its arrest and deportation operations throughout the United States. ICE announced the "imminent reopening" of the Delaney Hall facility in Newark, N.J. The agency said it has reached an agreement with the facility’s owner to re-establish a processing and detention center, which can accommodate up to 1,000 beds. "This detention center is the first to open under the new administration," acting ICE Director Caleb Vitello said in a statement. "The location near an international airport streamlines logistics and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities," he said. The agency said the facility will expand the capacity in the Northeast and increase the agency’s ability to manage a "growing" enforcement and removal operation in the region. Fox News reported this month that Department of Homeland Security data showed 11,791 interior ICE arrests from Jan 20 to Feb 8, compared to 4,969 during the same period in 2024. That is a 137% increase. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has since said that over 20,000 illegal immigrants were arrested in a single month under the new administration.

Reuters [2/28/2025 6:06 AM, Andrew Hay and Julia Harte, 41523K] reports President Donald Trump signed executive orders in January targeting foreigners who espoused hateful ideology and antisemitism, specifically international students involved in university pro-Palestinian protests. For activist groups ranging from Mothers Against College Antisemitism and the Chicago Jewish Alliance to the U.S. wings of Zionist organization Betar and the Shirion Collective surveillance network, the orders provided what they said was a long-awaited tool to help quash antisemitism on college campuses. "If students are here on visas and they are harassing our kids, they should definitely be deported," MACA founder Elizabeth Rand said on Facebook on February 7, after posting a link to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement tip line on January 21. Betar, labelled an extremist group by the Anti-Defamation League Jewish advocacy group, went further, saying it provided names of international students and faculty to the Trump administration for deportation. Betar did not provide evidence of such a list, but spokesperson Daniel Levy said of the promised deportations, opens new tab, "We are pleased this process has now begun.". The U.S. Departments of Justice, State and Homeland Security did not respond to requests for comment. The orders have not yet had the impact of Trump’s first-term travel ban when nationals from seven Muslim-majority countries were barred from the U.S., sparking chaos at airports before a federal court ruled it unconstitutional. But civil rights lawyers said the orders may violate constitutional rights to free speech, while Arab American groups have said they are prepared to challenge the policy in court. The executive orders and response to them showed a willingness among some Jewish activists to work with the Trump administration on a common cause. A few MACA members, however, said they were leaving the group as reporting on foreigners smacked of informing on Jews during World War Two, according to Facebook posts. Major Jewish American advocacy groups such as the ADL and American Jewish Committee welcomed Trump’s orders, but stopped short of asking people to report foreign students to the government. The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and subsequent Israeli assault on Gaza led to months of pro-Palestinian protests that roiled U.S. college campuses.

Washington Examiner [2/28/2025 1:13 PM, Rachel Schilke, 2296K] reports that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is inquiring to Attorney General Pam Bondi whether she is under investigation for advising constituents on how to respond to visits and requests from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers. In a letter to Bondi sent on Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez asked for "clarity" on whether the Department of Justice has "yielded to political pressure and attempts to weaponize the agency against elected officials whose speech they disagree with." The correspondence comes after the New York congresswoman’s office held a webinar in February called "Know Your Rights with ICE" that informed undocumented immigrants how to handle situations involving immigration officers. She did not attend, but it was hosted on her Facebook page, where members of her office characterized the raids as "political tactics." Migrants were told not to open their doors to ICE agents unless they were presented with a warrant. This webinar, in addition to posts by Ocasio-Cortez regarding ICE and President Donald Trump’s executive orders on immigration, caught the attention of border czar Tom Homan. He asked the Justice Department to look into whether Ocasio-Cortez’s actions were illegal. In her letter to Bondi, Ocasio-Cortez cited recent remarks from Vice President JD Vance: "We may disagree with your views, but we will fight to defend your right to offer it in the public square."

Reported similarly:
Yahoo! News [2/28/2025 1:09 PM, Paul Blumenthal, 52868K]

Newsweek [2/28/2025 12:09 PM, Billal Rahman, 3973K] reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents clad in tactical gear and ski masks stopped a Connecticut lawyer’s car outside a courthouse and arrested his client, a Polish immigrant working to adjust his visa status. Adrian Baron, a New Britain-based attorney, detailed the incident on social media, describing how multiple blacked-out vehicles surrounded his car after he left a local courthouse. "You might have heard that ICE is only going after hardened criminals, drug dealers, and gang members. It’s simply not true," Baron said in a statement. Newsweek reached out to ICE for comment via email. The event has sparked concern over the aggressive enforcement tactics employed by ICE agents and other federal agencies as they look to carry out President Donald Trump’s mass deportation program. Immigration policy continues to be a top concern in the U.S., especially after the reelection of Trump, who centered his campaign on mass deportation and tougher border security measures. His administration has pledged to carry out the largest mass deportation effort in U.S. history, focusing on the estimated 11.7 million individuals living in the country without legal status.

New York Times [2/28/2025 4:20 AM, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Tracey Tully, 330K] reports the Trump administration announced plans this week to reopen an immigration detention facility in Newark, just a short drive from New York City, greatly expanding its capacity to hold detained immigrants in the Northeast as federal authorities seek to ramp up arrests and deportations. Known as Delaney Hall, the 1,000-bed, privately operated facility will be the first new detention center to open during President Trump’s second term, according to Caleb Vitello, the acting director of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, who was recently reassigned. The center’s reopening is poised to place New Jersey and New York, two liberal strongholds that have long relished their reputations as safe havens for immigrants, at the center of the president’s efforts to enact mass deportations. The move, weeks after ICE began publicizing immigration arrests in both states, coincides with emerging plans to use two military bases — in Niagara Falls and in a rural part of New Jersey — as deportation staging areas. The Newark center will dwarf the only other detention site in New Jersey, a facility in Elizabeth that has about 200 beds. The new center’s location — near major airports and on the outskirts of immigrant-rich New York City — could play a pivotal role in the agency’s ability to increase the number of detainees it can hold and to quickly arrange deportation flights. “The location near an international airport streamlines logistics and helps facilitate the timely processing of individuals in our custody as we pursue President Trump’s mandate to arrest, detain and remove illegal aliens from our communities,” Mr. Vitello said in a statement late Wednesday. One of the major obstacles facing Mr. Trump as he aims to deport millions of undocumented immigrants is securing enough detention beds to hold the people federal agents are arresting. The administration has already turned to military bases, including Guantánamo Bay in Cuba. The plan to reopen the Newark detention center was the first concrete indication that the Trump administration intends to also rely on more traditional facilities to expand its detention capacity. ICE has been running low on beds in recent weeks as it holds about 40,000 people in jails and centers nationwide, a number that federal officials are scrambling to increase. Aside from the existing center in New Jersey, ICE has contracts with three local jails in New York State to house detainees. Those jails — near Buffalo and in Clinton and Orange Counties — collectively hold about 600 people. Some immigrants picked up by ICE in New York City are also sent to a large facility in Pennsylvania that is owned by the GEO Group, one of the country’s largest private prison companies.

Reported similarly:
Washington Post [2/28/2025 1:13 PM, Marianne LeVine, Douglas MacMillan, and Silvia Foster-Frau, 31735K]

FOX News [2/28/2025 4:08 PM, Greg Wehner, 46189K] reports a Haitian migrant charged with triple murder in Fayetteville, North Carolina, who allegedly killed several members of his family last week, had come to the U.S. as part of former President Biden’s controversial migrant flights program, according to authorities. The Fayetteville Police Department said that 26-year-old Mackendy Darbouze has been charged with three counts of first-degree murder for allegedly killing 77-year-old Beatrice Desir, as well as a 13-year-old and a 4-year-old. Darbouze was arrested at the scene and is currently being held at the Cumberland County Detention Center without bond. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox News that Darbouze had flown into the U.S. in July 2024 as part of Biden’s Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela (CHNV) migrant flights mass parole program. ICE has lodged a detainer on Darbouze.

Washington Post [3/1/2025 6:00 AM, Ben Brasch, 31735K] reports a Hungarian man who was in the country illegally and slated for deportation was rearrested in Florida last week after he disabled his court-mandated ankle monitor and went on to strangle two older gay men, according to police. Zsolt Zsolyomi, 26, is being held in Miami-Dade County on two charges of second-degree murder for allegedly killing the men and staging their deaths to hide his actions, arrest warrants obtained by Washington Post show. One man’s body was found in a bathtub, the other in a car that police alleged Zsolyomi crashed into a concrete wall to make it appear as though the dead man had been driving. Police wrote in the warrants that Zsolyomi admitted to the killings after being apprehended. Miami authorities said Friday at a news conference that investigators believe Zsolyomi traveled elsewhere in Florida, possibly to Orlando and Gainesville. They asked victims or those who knew him to call the Miami police homicide unit. “The epitome of evil” is how Miami Beach Police Chief Wayne Jones described Zsolyomi. “He hunts his prey, and he’s patient with his prey, and then he kills them,” Jones said. A representative of the Miami-Dade Public Defender’s Office, which represents Zsolyomi, declined to answer questions from The Post. Zsolyomi entered the United States in October 2022 on a three-month visa, Nestor Yglesias, spokesman for the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Miami, wrote in an email. Zsolyomi first came onto ICE’s radar in July 2024, when he was arrested for strong-arm robbery, Yglesias wrote. The charge was dropped, but Zsolyomi was transferred to ICE custody in September to be processed for deportation. He was released through an agency program that allows some detainees to go about their lives while awaiting deportation after undergoing a risk assessment. ICE officers put a GPS ankle monitor on Zsolyomi to track his movements. About two weeks later, according to Yglesias, ICE received a notification that the ankle monitor strap had been tampered with. The agency told Zsolyomi to report so the device could be checked, “but he absconded,” Yglesias wrote. An ICE unit that retrieves fugitives was notified. Because Zsolyomi had not been convicted of a violent crime, his case did not ring alarm bells for the ICE office in Miami. During the 2024 fiscal year, it had the fourth most arrests among ICE offices, according to agency data.

Treasure Coast Newspapers [2/28/2025 4:53 PM, Olivia Franklin] reports Martin County sheriff’s deputies assisted federal law enforcement officers in detaining undocumented immigrants Feb. 21 in Indiantown, sheriff’s officials said. Sheriff John Budensiek said Enforcement and Removal Operations of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement reached out to sheriff’s detectives wanting to target individuals who had deportation orders or who came back into the country after being deported. Budensiek said it was a one-day operation, and for the most part, federal law enforcement knew who they were looking for; they just needed the deputies help. He said they went to Indiantown on Feb. 21 and 11 people were taken into custody and several were taken in for processing, but none of them were taken to the Martin County Jail. Budensiek said if Martin County deputies came across an individual who had an immigration warrant, they could not arrest them because they have no federal jurisdiction. He said the goal is for deputies to eventually be able to take individuals into custody whenever they come across them, as opposed to having to do special operations. Budensiek said there have not been any more arrests since, but if Enforcement Removal Operations reaches out again and needs assistance, the Sheriff’s Office will help them.

Newsweek [2/28/2025 9:54 AM, Khaleda Rahman, 3973K] reports that an Illinois state audit has revealed that Governor JB Pritzker’s administration hugely underestimated the cost of programs providing health care to undocumented immigrants, prompting calls for them to be shut down. The report, released on Wednesday by Auditor General Frank Mautino’s office, said the programs have cost the state more than $1.6 billion since 2020. Newsweek contacted Pritzker’s office for further comment via email. Pritzker’s proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year eliminates funding for the Health Benefits for Immigrant Adults program, which provided health care for immigrants without legal status aged 42 to 64. But his proposal includes $132 million for the Health Benefits for Immigrant Seniors program, which caters to those over 65. While progressive lawmakers support the programs, Republicans have accused Pritzker’s administration of mismanaging the programs and downplaying their cost. Some have called for the program for adults to be shut down now. It comes as President Donald Trump’s administration has begun a crackdown on illegal immigration. The administration filed a lawsuit against Illinois, Chicago and Cook County last month, alleging that "sanctuary" laws there are thwarting efforts to enforce immigration laws.

NBC News [2/28/2025 5:42 PM, Daniella Silva, 44742K] reports a man dropping off two students outside of charter schools in Chicago was arrested by federal immigration authorities this week as part of the Trump administration’s push to carry out mass deportations of undocumented immigrants. The man’s arrest during school drop-off comes as the administration says it has arrested more than 20,000 immigrants in one month. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained the man on Wednesday at around 8:15 a.m. outside of Victoria Soto High and Jovita Idar Elementary schools, according to a letter sent to families by the principals of both schools. The letter said school officials "escorted these students away from the car and to their respective campuses" and no one was physically harmed during the incident. An ICE spokesperson said in a statement to NBC News that the man arrested in Chicago was 37-year-old Francisco Andrade-Berrera. The agency alleged Andrade-Berrera was a member of a street gang and had criminal convictions for "drug trafficking, gang loitering, and damage to property" and that he had twice previously been removed from the United States.

Washington Examiner [2/28/2025 5:29 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 2296K] reports a recent Illinois state audit revealed that programs aimed at providing healthcare to illegal immigrants doled out $1.6 billion, far more than Gov. JB Pritzker’s (D-IL) administration estimated. The audit discovered that more than 6,000 people listed as "undocumented" in the program had Social Security numbers, and some were legal permanent residents who would be eligible for Medicaid. It also found that 668 people enlisted in the program for senior citizens were not over 65 years old. Pritzker acknowledged inaccurate estimates and explained that it was due to changing immigration statuses. The audit concludes by saying the state should review its eligibility process and data while offering upgrades to ensure that the state government isn’t being defrauded of healthcare money due to ineligibility. The program is highly controversial and has faced cuts in Pritzker’s new budget after the Trump administration sued Chicago and Illinois for their sanctuary city laws. The new budget will exclude the HBIA program but still include the HBIS program.

Los Angeles Times [2/28/2025 6:00 AM, Karen Garcia, 52868K] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials knocked on the doors of a handful of Los Angeles-area homes. And last month, U.S. Border Patrol agents conducted a three-day raid in rural parts of Kern County targeting Latino farmworkers and day laborers soliciting work in the parking lots of big-box stores. These actions serve as a reminder that ICE and other immigration officials can show up with little or no warning at homes, businesses or in public places. And given the Trump administration’s stated desire to ratchet up immigration enforcement and deportations, advocacy groups for workplace and immigrant rights say it’s vital for business owners to prepare themselves and their employees for any potential visits from ICE. “The best way to counteract feeling overwhelmed is to be prepared,” said Giuliana Gabriel, vice president of human resources at the California Employers Assn. Among the reasons immigration authorities may visit a workplace include a Form I-9 audit, a raid, or to detain a specific person. Employers might be notified of a visit, or it could happen without warning. Having such officials at a work site can feel overwhelming because employees might be “unsure of their rights, the purpose of the search, or what might happen next,” Gabriel said. Employers, she added, should consider creating a response plan for their managers to follow in the event of an ICE visit. “Some employers may choose to conduct ‘ICE Drills’ — similar to fire drills — for staff to gauge preparedness and help employees keep calm in the event of a real visit,” she said. Federal law requires every employee on a payroll to have a Form I-9 on file. Those documents prove an employee is authorized to work in the U.S., according to the California Employers Assn. “We recommend having strong hiring and onboarding practices to ensure your employee files are as complete and correct as possible,” Gabriel said. “It is also a best practice to conduct periodic audits of I-9 records to identify and correct any discrepancies before ICE shows up.”

AP [2/28/2025 8:01 AM, Dorany Pineda and Elliot Spagat, 48304K] reports 10 people met at a parking lot shared by a laundromat and coffee shop in South Central Los Angeles on what has become a daily mission: Look for immigration officers and warn people of their presence to try to prevent arrests. Bullhorns and sirens are ready for use. "There’s raza that’s been detained," Ron Gochez, founder of Union del Barrio’s Los Angeles chapter, said before they split up in five cars. "It seems like there’s more activity now. Let’s keep a close eye out.". Working with other similar-size groups and using walkie-talkies, the Community Self-Defense Coalition, made up of more than 60 organizations, found nothing Thursday but appeared to have disrupted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations earlier in the week. In Los Angeles and across the country, these tactics have been a thorn in ICE’s side as it tries to carry out President Donald Trump’s promise of mass deportations. "Positive spotting right now of ICE agents at the Target in Alhambra," Lupe Carrasco Cardona said in a live Instagram report Sunday from the Los Angeles suburb over a blaring siren to draw attention. She said at least six government vehicles were identified in the ICE operation. Counter-ICE operations have had "a huge impact," said John Fabbricatore, a former head of ICE’s enforcement and removal division in Denver. "It’s dangerous for the officers because they are trying to get into a situation, maybe undercover, trying to make an arrest without alarming the neighborhood, and then these guys come out here with these bullhorns and they start yelling and screaming," Fabbricatore said. Advocates "go right to the edge" of a law against impeding federal law enforcement to avoid criminal prosecution, he said. Advocates say they are exercising free speech and reminding people of their rights. ICE officers cannot forcibly enter a home without a judicial warrant, which they rarely have. Sophisticated "know-your- rights" campaigns urge people to stay inside and not open the door. For years, including during Trump’s first administration, ICE has contended with advocates who rely on blast text messages, social media and bullhorns to spread the word. Trump’s border czar Tom Homan was visibly angry after joining ICE officers who were met at apartments in the Denver area by activists who insulted them and used bullhorns to alert residents. He insisted word of the operation was leaked. "The less people know about these operations, the better," Homan said outside the White House after the Denver operation resulted in fewer arrests than expected.

Newsweek [2/28/2025 5:37 AM, Billal Rahman, 52220K] reports two men have been accused of staging a social media stunt in which they impersonated U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents and recorded themselves harassing local businesses. Newsweek has contacted ICE for further comment. The incident occurred just weeks after ICE raids in the Central Valley reignited fears within the region’s immigrant community and came amid a series of ICE operations in California following President Trump’s pledge to launch the largest deportation effort in U.S. history. According to the Fresno Police Department, the pair wore wigs and black tactical vests with partially obscured lettering, making them appear to read "Police" and "ICE." They were reported for confronting community members at 11 businesses. At one store, they claimed to be conducting an investigation and demanded to see specific business documents, police said. They arrested the men on Wednesday on suspicion of impersonating a police officer, a misdemeanor. They were cited and released shortly after. "As their actions were done simply to gain attention on their personal social media pages, we will not be releasing their names or other information," the department stated. Officials said the Fresno Police Department received multiple reports of two men dressed as "ICE agents" harassing customers at various businesses. Callers reported that the men were impersonating federal immigration officials and recording their confrontations with community members. Police found the two men outside of the River Park shopping center. In January, ICE officers carried out a three-day raid in rural Kern County, detaining dozens of undocumented farmworkers. Authorities said that the two men visited multiple businesses, posing as officers and recording their confrontations with the public to post on social media. A jacket resembling those worn by ICE agents has become a best seller on Amazon, raising concerns about additional impersonations. The fake ICE jacket is available on the website for $29.99 in black or navy. Since Trump’s return to the White House, there have been multiple reports of emboldened individuals impersonating ICE agents.

Washington Examiner [2/28/2025 2:34 PM, Barnini Chakraborty, 2296K] reports that a Northern California sheriff said he is ready to break state law by contacting federal immigration authorities if his deputies arrest illegal immigrants for violent crimes. Doing so would put Amador County Sheriff Gary Redman on "shaky legal ground" by being at odds with the state’s 2017 sanctuary law that prohibits police from participating in immigration enforcement. California lawmakers passed the state’s sanctuary law during President Donald Trump’s first term. The law does make allowances for certain violent criminals and does allow authorities to contact U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials if someone is in the country illegally after the person has been convicted, served their sentence, and is about to be released. A spokesperson for Redman’s office told the Washington Examiner on Friday that if his officers become aware that a person is in the country illegally and poses a serious threat, he will notify ICE officials to facilitate their removal. The sheriff, separately, emphasized that residents and visitors "deserve to feel safe" in Amadors County, "including law-abiding migrants who post no threat." The spokesperson added that recent actions by the state legislature and aggressive moves by Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) and Democratic state Attorney General Rob Bonta have put him in a tricky spot. Redman said the passage of SB 54, known as the "California Values Act," which limits the use of state and local resources in immigration enforcement, puts him in violation of federal law.

Reported similarly:
Capital Public Radio [2/28/2025 2:23 PM, Nigel Duara, 138K]

CBS Los Angeles [2/28/2025 9:22 PM, Luzdelia Caballero, 51661K] reports a Los Angeles family is left with a ransacked home after one of the latest ICE immigration raids in the Pico Union neighborhood Friday. Marisela, who lives in the home, said the raid happened in an instant. Within moments, agents broke the lock to their rear gate, surrounded the house and knocked down the doors before searching the home. Amid the chaos, they damaged the walls and took away her son’s 18-year-old friend for failing to appear in his immigration court hearing. Marisela said the teen did not have a criminal background. "The landlord is saying there is no tenant that has existed with that name here," Vladimir Carasco said. "This family didn’t have to answer the door. There are the tactics we’re seeing of CBP." Carasco works for CHIRLA, the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights. "ICE and CBP are only targeting people by name and if it’s not your name and judge with a signature on it, just keep walking," he said. Two other raids happened nearby on Mountain View Avenue and the intersection of 41st Street and Avalon Boulevard. Homeland Security Agents detained at least one woman. "What I’ve been seeing is that the community is very scared, but they are becoming aware of their legal rights in the U.S.," immigration attorney Yanci Montes said. Montes urged residents to know their rights. "They have the right to remain silent," she said. "They don’t have to speak to an officer. "The other right is the Fourth Amendment right. They have the right to not be searched or have them enter their home." Officers from the Los Angeles Police Department were present during the 41st and Avalon operation. Mayor Karen Bass’ office said they were there serving a criminal warrant for a suspect wanted for human trafficking. "The City of LA, including LAPD, does not assist ICE or any federal agency in carrying out civil immigration enforcement and has not for decades under Special Order 40," spokesperson Zach Seidl said. "No one should live in fear due to their immigration status and Los Angeles will continue to stand together."

Newsweek [2/28/2025 10:47 AM, Billal Rahman, 3973K] reports that a California woman has accused Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) of assaulting her husband during an arrest in Sunnyvale. "Our whole family is frightened and outraged by ICE’s ongoing violations," Aby Peña said in a statement. Newsweek has contacted the family’s lawyers for comment. The case raises questions about the treatment of detainees by ICE, as well as concerns about due process for immigrants in the U.S. Immigration policy remains a deeply contested issue in the U.S., particularly following the reelection of President Donald Trump, who campaigned on a platform of mass deportation and strengthening border security. On February 21, ICE agents arrested Ulises Peña Lopez. His wife, Aby Peña, alleges that agents smashed his car window and physically assaulted him. She said that Ulises was in his vehicle when ICE agents approached, demanding he exit the vehicle. An ICE spokesperson told Newsweek: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is aware of news and social media accounts with reports on the recent arrest of illegal alien Ulises Pena-Lopez which are inaccurate and not supported by facts. "Pena, 30, is a citizen of Mexico who was arrested by ICE officials Feb. 21 in Sunnyvale, California, as part of a targeted enforcement action. ICE officers contacted Pena while he was in his vehicle. Pena initially refused officers’ instructions but eventually exited his vehicle unassisted and was fully cooperative as arresting officers took him into custody. Pena experienced a non-specific medical emergency during the arrest, and an ICE agent initiated emergency medical care until he could be transported by ambulance to a nearby hospital for evaluation. Pena was admitted to that hospital for observation, but no specific injury was found, and he was discharged into ICE custody Feb. 22."

CBS San Francisco [2/28/2025 3:13 PM, Tim Fang, 51661K] reports nearly a dozen local governments from across the country have joined a lawsuit led by San Francisco challenging the Trump administration’s crackdown on sanctuary city policies. San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu announced Friday that several California cities including Emeryville, Oakland, Sacramento, San Jose, San Diego and Santa Cruz, along with Monterey County, joined the lawsuit in an amended complaint filed Thursday. In addition, Seattle, Washington; Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota; along with Santa Fe, New Mexico were part of the amended complaint.

Yahoo! News [2/28/2025 9:34 PM, Lily Dallow, 52868K] reports that, from around 7-10 a.m. Friday morning, witnesses watched ICE officers raid at least three homes stretching from the Pico-Union area to South Los Angeles. One resident told KTLA’s Angeli Kakade that he was inside his home near West 10th Place when federal officials came in with a warrant for his friend’s mother. "I was just coming out of the shower and I thought it was going to be a regular Friday and the next thing I see is three people having guns pointing at me," said Elvis Vasquez. "I was worried about how my little siblings would feel because I thought for a minute they were going to take my mom away.” Vasquez said his mom wasn’t detained, but that his friend’s mom was arrested. "They had a search warrant so we couldn’t deny that," said Vasquez. One witness who wanted to remain anonymous said agents made a mess of the homes. "I know that they went inside the house, into their basement and everything, and they made a huge mess," said the witness. Just over a month into President Trump’s second time in office, federal officers continue to crack down on illegal immigration – arresting people across the country including in Los Angeles. Neighbors told KTLA that they’re scared, initially hoping officers were only going after criminals. "People are going to school or walking their dogs and then you just see a bunch of trucks come and take a whole family. It’s scary," said the witness. "We don’t know what to expect anymore, just hoping for better things.”

CBS News [2/28/2025 5:50 AM, Staff, 51661K] reports refugee aid groups said in a federal court filing Thursday that President Trump’s administration appears to be trying to circumvent a ruling this week that blocked his efforts to suspend the nation’s refugee admissions program. U.S. District Judge Jamal Whitehead, in Seattle, had determined Tuesday that while the president has broad authority over who comes into the country, he can’t nullify the law passed by Congress establishing the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. Whitehead, a 2023 appointee of former President Joe Biden, said Mr. Trump’s actions amounted to an "effective nullification of congressional will" and from the bench, he granted the aid groups’ request for a preliminary injunction blocking Mr. Trump’s executive order suspending the refugee resettlement program. Whitehead promised a written ruling in the next few days. But Wednesday aid groups, including Church World Service and the Jewish refugee resettlement organization HIAS, received notifications that their "cooperative agreements" with the State Department had been canceled. The groups on Thursday asked Whitehead for an emergency hearing to discuss the impact of the termination notices, or to make clear that his ruling also applies to those newly issued notices. The groups called the administration’s actions a "flagrant attempt" to evade the court’s ruling. "Defendants are continuing to implement their defunding of the USRAP, and an emergency hearing is necessary to ensure that Defendants are not permitted to evade this Court’s bench ruling and the forthcoming written order with antics designed to confuse the state of play," the motion said. Whitehead set a hearing for Monday.

FOX News [2/28/2025 6:08 PM, Greg Wehner, Liz Friden, 52868K] reports the Department of Defense (DOD) is sending 1,140 additional U.S. troops to the southern border of the United States to help bolster the efforts of U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to control the influx of illegal immigrants. "The DOD continues to work with the Department of Homeland Security to fill critical capabilities gaps at the southern border in accordance with President Trump’s Executive Order, ‘Protecting the American People Against Invasion,’" U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) said. There are currently 4,300 U.S. active-duty troops at the southern border, and an additional 1,140 troops will bring the total to 5,440 active-duty service members. USNORTHCOM said the additional troops will provide support to joint task force operations, including command and control of sustainable units and coordination of logistical support, field feeding support sites and control of logistical movement. The Army units being deployed will come from the 101st Division Sustainment Brigade, Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Alpha Company, 189th Division Sustainment Support Battalion (DSSB), Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Bravo Company, 68th DSSB, Fort Carson, Colorado; Charlie Company, 129th DSSB, Fort Campbell, Kentucky; Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 264th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, Fort Bragg, North Carolina; 70th Movement Control Team, Joint Base Langley-Eustis, Virginia; and 564th Quartermaster Company, Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington. The Trump administration has designated eight gangs and cartels, including Tren de Aragua, the Sinaloa Cartel and MS-13, foreign terrorist organizations in a move that expands the U.S. government’s ability to crack down on criminal organizations operating in its territory. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time of the announcement this month there was a "sufficient factual basis" under section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act to issue the designations against the gangs and cartels. The Trump administration also began sending flights of illegal immigrants to the Guantánamo Bay detention site in Cuba earlier this month.

Reuters [2/28/2025 11:04 AM, David Lawder, 41523K] reports that Canada and Mexico on Friday sought to show U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration evidence of progress in curbing the flow of fentanyl opioids into the U.S. ahead of a March 4 deadline for punishing 25% tariffs on their goods imports. Canadian and Mexican officials were expected to meet separately with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and other senior Trump administration officials to try to forestall the tariffs. Trump on Thursday reaffirmed the deadline next Tuesday for imposing the duties on more than $900 billion worth of annual imports from Canada and Mexico and said he would double his 10% tariff on Chinese goods on that date, citing insufficient progress in reducing fentanyl overdose deaths in the U.S. Mexico on Thursday staged its largest mass extradition of suspected drug cartel members in 10 years, including a 1980s kingpin who spent decades in prison for the murder of a U.S. drug enforcement agent and 28 other suspects. Rafael Caro Quintero, 72, was due to be arraigned in federal court on U.S. drug trafficking charges on Friday. The extradited suspects included younger leaders accused of moving fentanyl into the U.S.

FOX News [2/28/2025 9:39 AM, Staff, 10702K] reports that U.S. Customs and Border Protection senior advisor Ronald Vitiello joins ‘Mornings with Maria’ to discuss the Trump administration’s work to curb the flow of fentanyl into the United States. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CNBC [2/28/2025 11:40 AM, Staff, 35355K] reports that CNBC’s Megan Cassella joins ‘Squawk on the Street’ to break down the latest details on tariffs. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Yahoo! News [2/28/2025 12:46 PM, Maria Papadopoulos, 52868K] reports that two Turkish men were arrested for illegally entering the U.S. near Hall Stream, a river that runs along the border between Pittsburg, New Hampshire and Canada, Acting U.S. Attorney Jay McCormack said Friday. Serif Alihan, 33, and Mustafa Kaya, 32, both of Turkey, were each charged with one count of illegal entry, McCormack said. Both men were set to appear in federal court later Friday. According to the charging documents, on Wednesday, a Beecher Falls Border Patrol agent encountered Alihan and Kaya near Hall Stream. "The two men were covered in snow and their clothes were wet," prosecutors said. The snow in the area was about knee-deep and the Border Patrol agent followed the men’s footprints back to Hall Stream. The footprints ended at the New Hampshire side of the stream and resumed on the Canadian side of the stream, prosecutors said. U.S. Customs and Border Protection led the investigation. Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew T. Hunter is prosecuting the case.

Newsweek [2/28/2025 12:50 PM, Maria Azzurra Volpe, 52220K] reports that a man from Tennessee told Newsweek he fears he could face penalties after bringing an illegal object into the United States via plane, but the item in question might surprise you. In a post shared on TikTok in February under the username @dylanobyrne, 30-year-old social-media personality, Dylan O’Byrne, says that, after 40 hours of international travel, he was stopped at baggage claim after security dogs smelled the item in his carry-on bag. "I brought an illegal item to the United States the other day. and now I might be banned from Global Entry, and I might be getting a nice size fine in the mail," he says in the post. O’Byrne adds that, after traveling to Southeast Asia for three weeks, he was flying back to New York City via Germany on January 31. He was then stopped by border protection agents at baggage claim because of something their dogs smelled in his bag, a banana he had picked up at the lounge on his layover in Germany. At this time, O’Byrne has not received a fine, nor has he tried to apply for Global Entry, which he fears may be denied to him because of the banana. Global Entry is a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) program that allows expedited clearance for preapproved, low-risk travelers upon arrival in the United States, which members can enjoy at selected airports across the country. Anthony Bucci, spokesperson for the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP), told Newsweek: "Privacy policy prohibits CBP from discussing the details of any individual’s specific inspection; however, all agriculture items must be declared. Prohibited items that are not declared by a passenger are confiscated and disposed of by CBP.

Yahoo! News [2/28/2025 9:39 PM, Mark Ludwiczak, 52868K] reports two men were arrested in Cheektowaga and charged with illegal reentry after deportation, according to the Acting U.S. District Attorney’s Office. Manuel Alejandro Estrada-Gonzalez, 31, of Mexico, and Juan Carlos Castro-Cidcas, 44, of El Salvador, have been charged. According to officials, Estrada-Gonzalez was identified as a suspect staying at the Buffalo Airport Inn in Cheektowaga and was arrested by border patrol agents on Feb. 20. Officials said that he was "ordered removed by an immigration officer" twice in early 2019. Castro-Cidcas was approached by border patrol agents at the Hilton Garden Inn in Cheektowaga on Feb. 12 but allegedly refused to exit his vehicle, according to officials. He later exited his vehicle after Cheektowaga Police were called, officials said, and was taken into custody. Officials said he was previously deported in August 2010 and November 2019. Illegal reentry after deportation carries a maximum penalty of two years in prison.

Newsweek [2/28/2025 6:51 AM, Billal Rahman, 3973K] reports the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has canceled the lease for the U.S. attorney’s office in Corpus Christi, leaving prosecutors racing to find a new workplace. The office handles cases from Border Patrol checkpoints near Falfurrias and Sarita, while its Civil Division oversees land condemnation proceedings for border wall construction. The sudden closure raises concerns about potential disruptions to legal operations tied to border security. Newsweek has contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Texas. The newly formed DOGE, led by President Donald Trump’s billionaire backer, Elon Musk, is committed to cutting federal spending and has dismantled several federal agencies. DOGE has become a flashpoint in the national conversation regarding the Trump’s administration efforts to try to make government more efficient. However, it has faced backlash from critics who say it has overstepped presidential authority and disregarded legal constraints. The administration has been hit with a wave of lawsuits, including some filed by unions representing recently dismissed employees. It remains unclear at this stage when exactly DOGE staffers scrapped the lease. Prosecutors only learned of the decision on Wednesday. The Corpus Christi division operates out of One Shoreline Plaza, a twin-skyscraper office complex overlooking Corpus Christi Bay, just a few blocks south of the federal courthouse. According to The Hill, the U.S. Attorney’s Office remained in the building as of Tuesday morning. DOGE reported that it had terminated a 17,039-square-foot lease for the "Office of U.S. Attorneys" in Corpus Christi. The department listed the "Annual Lease Cost" at $409,689 and the "Total Savings" at $307,267. However, DOGE did not provide any explanation for the decision to terminate the lease. DOGE also reported terminating leases for approximately 2,600 square feet in McAllen and nearly 750 square feet in Brownsville. However, it did not specify which federal agencies would be impacted.

AZCentral [2/28/2025 7:03 AM, Raphael Romero Ruiz, 52868K] reports travelers headed toward the popular beach destination of Puerto Peñasco, or Rocky Point, might see long wait times because of heightened security measures at the Lukeville Port of Entry. After Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum deployed 10,000 National Guardsmen to reinforce the U.S.-Mexico border as part of the "Operativo Frontera Norte" mission, troops stationed across the border began inspecting more and more vehicles crossing in and out of Mexico. About 200 soldiers were sent to the border town of Sonoyta, part of a collective of 1,500 Guardsmen distributed across the state of Sonora. Sheinbaum agreed to reinforce the border with additional military personnel to postpone President Donald Trump’s plans to impose duties on imports from Mexico. Those troops have been tasked with preventing drug-trafficking from Mexico to the United States by conducting a variety of security operations, including helping Mexican Customs officers at ports of entry. Several people have shared their experiences with the changes at the land border crossing online in a Facebook group centered around the Mexico beach destination. Some who have posted in "Rocky Point Friends" over the last few weeks said they waited for more than two hours to cross into Mexico. Others caution that wait times vary significantly, and that individual experiences depend on the time of day. The Arizona Republic reached out to several members of the group for this story, but did not get any responses. "Sometimes you’ll experience some of those larger lines, because the controlling processes in Mexico has been increased," Rafael Barceló Durazo, the cónsul of Mexico in Tucson, told The Republic. "But that’s something I would say that’s contingent on the time when you’re crossing.".

Bloomberg [2/28/2025 7:00 AM, Fola Akinnibi and Rachel Adams-Heard, 16228K] reports migrant families with children are being detained at a massive California tent city for far longer than federal guidelines suggest, even as crossings remain at the lowest levels in years. Some families have been held for 10 days or more at a soft-sided facility near San Diego, according to the National Center for Youth Law and a person familiar with the facility’s operations. Guidelines laid out by US Customs and Border Protection, which operates the center, state that people should not be held in such spaces longer than 72 hours, noting special care should be taken for families and unaccompanied children. One family with a sick child was recently put on a deportation flight to Costa Rica after being detained by CBP for more than two weeks, said Neha Desai, the center’s senior director of immigration. “By detaining families for prolonged periods of time, only to deport them, CBP facilities are effectively being used as family detention in spite of the fact that they are intended to be used as short-term processing facilities.” Families with children were kept in CBP facilities beyond 72 hours under the Biden administration as well: Last October, 832 children were in CBP custody for more than a week and 56 children were in custody for more than two weeks, according to a recent report issued by Democratic staffers for the Senate Judiciary Committee. But border crossings then were almost double those in January. The San Diego facility was originally meant for 500 people but at times has held many more. In the last week and a half, it has been relatively quiet, according to the person familiar with operations who wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. Earlier this month, NBC News cited people familiar with the Trump administration’s plans to report that officials were moving toward restarting family detention. Currently, there are no family detention facilities open in the US. Lengthy stays in detention for children and families plagued the first Trump administration. CBP did not provide immediate comment when asked about whether families were being detained beyond its guidelines.

Border Report [2/28/2025 11:39 AM, Rhea Caoile, 117K] reports that as the costs of eggs and poultry continue to rocket across the country, U.S. Customs and Border Protection says its San Diego field office has seen a significant increase in people trying to bring in raw eggs from Mexico. According to a news release Thursday, CBP’s San Diego field office has seen a 158% increase in "egg interceptions" since fiscal year 2024. Authorities are now warning people that raw eggs, along with certain other agricultural products from Mexico, are prohibited from entering the U.S. The warning comes on the heels of a bird flu outbreak experienced by several areas across the country, including in San Diego County where a house cat reportedly died after contracting the virus. According to CBP, there is a need for "heightened awareness to protect U.S. agriculture from potential disease risks." People crossing over the southern border are required to declare all agricultural products to CBP officers and agriculture specialists, the release adds. Personal food items are permissible. Food intended for resale or distribution is also allowed but must be properly imported at a cargo facility. Failure to declare a foreign product may result in up to $10,000 in fines, according to officials.

Washington Post [3/1/2025 5:00 AM, Mary Beth Sheridan, 31735K] reports that, when President Donald Trump threatened 25 percent tariffs unless Mexico put a halt to fentanyl trafficking, the government snapped to attention. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum dispatched an additional 10,000 national guard members to the border. For more than three weeks, troops have stopped nearly every U.S.-bound car leaving this city, questioning drivers, sliding mirrors under vehicles, poking fiber-optic scopes into gas tanks and walking drug-sniffing dogs around autos. The result? The troops in Nogales have found 150 fentanyl pills, according to official statistics. Meanwhile, U.S. officials just across the border have seized more than 400,000. Some critics have dismissed Mexico’s operation as a show, designed to placate an American leader fond of military solutions to complex problems. That misses the point, analysts say. Mexico appears to be making a serious effort to cooperate more on tackling fentanyl and other narcotics. On Thursday, for example, it transferred 29 high-level drug suspects to the United States. But the border operation underscores the difficulty of finding the opioid — especially for a country with a weak, underfunded security structure. The fentanyl epidemic is the deadliest in U.S. history. Overdose deaths attributed mostly to the opioid topped 100,000 in 2023, before dropping by more than 20 percent in the 12-month period ending in August, according to preliminary figures. The drug is largely made in small Mexican labs and is highly concentrated, U.S. officials say. That makes it frustratingly hard to find at crossings like Nogales. About 11,000 vehicles a day crawl north across the border — carrying tourists, shoppers and workers, along with commerce ranging from Ford Broncos to tons of tomatoes. “A pill is very tiny,” said Michael Humphries, the U.S. Customs and Border Protection director of the Nogales, Arizona, border crossing. For smugglers, “concealment locations are pretty unlimited.”

New York Times [3/1/2025 5:06 AM, Matina Stevis-Gridneff, 145325K] reports the pre-dawn call by U.S. border agents to their Canadian counterparts was shocking: A group of nine people, most of them children, were about to enter Canada on foot. On Feb. 3 at 6:16 a.m., when the group was spotted, the border between Alberta and Montana was brutally uninviting, covered in snow, dark with a temperature of minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit. Grainy night-vision images captured by Canadian border cameras showed two little girls in pink winter wear holding a woman’s hand as they trudged through the snow. More children followed in a line. Another adult dragged two suitcases. The quick intervention by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police crew that found the group was the result of a newly beefed-up border presence across the vast frontier between the United States and Canada. At 5,525 miles, the border is the world’s longest. Until recently, the border had been described by both nations as “unguarded,” a testament to their close friendship. But with the return of President Trump to the White House, it has become a flashpoint in the relationship between the two neighbors. Even before his inauguration, Mr. Trump accused Canada of allowing large numbers of unauthorized migrants to enter the United States. He has made stopping that movement a key demand as he threatens to impose crippling tariffs on Canadian exports to the United States. After a one-month reprieve, Mr. Trump says those tariffs will now go into effect on Tuesday. Canada has mobilized. It has deployed more staff and equipment along the border and tightened visa rules that critics say made Canada a steppingstone to enter the United States illegally. The number of illegal crossings into the United States from Canada was relatively low to begin with, and has now plummeted, indicating that Canada’s response to Mr. Trump’s pressure is working. But now a new dynamic is emerging at the border: Asylum seekers are fleeing north to Canada as Mr. Trump has embarked on his plan for sweeping deportations.

CBS Austin [2/28/2025 9:10 AM, John Gonzalez, 602K] reports that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) will now bring air traffic at Reagan Washington National Airport (DCA) to a complete stop whenever the president flies nearby on Marine One. That’s just one of the policy changes aimed at enhancing airspace security. Airlines are adapting by carrying extra fuel and warning pilots of extended disruptions. More safety at the airport usually means longer delays, but much like after 9/11, the majority of passengers understand it is a necessary evil right now. The restrictions now force commercial flights to circle in holding patterns or divert to other airports, with delays of up to an hour expected during presidential travel. A month after the deadly midair collision over the Potomac River, air traffic at DCA will stop whenever President Donald Trump flies on Marine One under this new policy. In a statement, the FAA said, "The new policy provides exceptions for lifesaving medical support, active law enforcement, active air defense, or presidential helicopter missions. We will review the current policy once the National Transportation Safety Board completes its preliminary investigation." Aviation leaders did consider a permanent ban on helicopter flights near the airport. A new reduction of flights each hour at the airport is also increasing delays by nearly an hour. [Editorial note: consort video at source link]

USA Today [2/28/2025 9:01 AM, Christopher Cann, 75858K] reports red flag warnings were active across multiple states in the central U.S. as forecasters warned that high winds, warmer temperatures and low humidity is elevating the threat of wildfires in the dry region. The states under the urgent fire warnings were South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Missouri and western Illinois, according to the National Weather Service. Wind advisories stretched from North Dakota to West Virginia. Winds across the region could reach speeds of 20 to 30 mph with some gusts up to 50 mph, according to the weather service. Meanwhile, forecasters said above average temperatures will set in across the Midwest with highs running well into the 50s and 60s across the Plains and Midwest. "A combination of strong winds, low relative humidity and warm temperatures can contribute to extreme fire behavior," the weather service office in Omaha, Nebraska, warned. "Take extra precautions to avoid sparks, and closely monitor any smoldering fires that burned in recent days.". Nearly the entire region is experiencing moderate to severe drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.

Reuters [2/28/2025 1:56 PM, Valerie Volcovici, Rich McKay, and Leah Douglas, 41523K] reports that scientists and researchers are warning that the Trump administration’s firing of hundreds of workers at NOAA, the agency that provides the U.S. government’s weather forecasts, will put American lives at risk and stifle crucial climate research. The layoffs at the agency, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, started to unfold on Thursday afternoon and numbered more than 800, according to congressional sources. The dismissals are part of a broadening assault on the federal bureaucracy engineered by President Donald Trump and his aide, billionaire Elon Musk, who say they are trying to cut wasteful spending. "There will be people who die in extreme weather events and related disasters who would not have otherwise," said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist and professor at the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to everyday forecasting, NOAA - which houses the National Weather Service, the National Hurricane Center and two tsunami warning centers - provide crucial information to help Americans survive weather emergencies. The cuts come at a time when scientists say climate change is increasing the intensity and frequency of hurricanes, tornadoes, flooding and wildfires. With faster and more accurate weather warnings, authorities have a better chance of saving lives, experts say.

Houston Chronicle [2/28/2025 11:42 AM, James Osborne, 1769K] reports that after a series of severe hurricanes hit the Texas Gulf Coast and other U.S. coastlines last summer, the Federal Emergency Management Agency was nearing its limits. The agency was so strained, said Michael Coen, then its chief of staff, that it had to bring in officials from other federal agencies to help coordinate relief efforts in what would be the third costliest hurricane season on record. Now, with the next hurricane season just three months away, FEMA and other federal agencies tasked with helping communities prepare and recover from natural disasters are among those being slashed by Texas billionaire Elon Musk at the direction of President Donald Trump. The cost-cutting moves come as the U.S. is experiencing increasing numbers of large-scale natural disasters, driving fears that the federal disaster system that has helped rebuild the Gulf Coast time and again could be overwhelmed by a major hurricane. "To diminish FEMA and these other agencies at a time they’re challenged by the increased frequency and severity of storms will leave this administration in jeopardy," said Cohen, who left FEMA in January. "States are relying on these programs for guidance and approval. I don’t know how that money would get administered if you don’t have the staff.". Texas has received $18.6 billion in FEMA funding since 2017, more than any other state except Florida. And it is one of the largest recipients of federal block grants that help fund rebuilding efforts after natural disasters, receiving more than $14.6 billion since 2001, according to the Bipartisan Policy Institute.

USA Today [2/28/2025 3:50 PM, Fernando Cervantes Jr, 75858K] reports that an earthquake shook parts of West Texas Friday afternoon with a preliminary magnitude of 4.8, according to the United States Geological Survey. The earthquake was recorded about 16 miles southwest of Ackerly, which is roughly 60 miles northwest of Midland and 320 miles west of Dallas. The USGS says the quake happened at a depth of about 4.2 miles, with no injuries or damages reported so far. Earthquakes have been shaking the Texas-New Mexico border in recent weeks. According to the El Paso Times, part of the USA TODAY Network, several earthquakes ranging between magnitudes of 2.5 and 4.6 have been observed. Several areas of New Mexico, including Carlsbad, Alamogordo, and Roswell, and parts of West Texas, including El Paso, reported feeling the quakes, the USGS said.

The Hill [2/28/2025 2:29 PM, Zack Budryk, 12829K] reports that Colorado Sens. John Hickenlooper (D) and Michael Bennet (D), and Rep. Joe Neguse (D) called for an independent investigation Friday into this week’s mass firings at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). In a letter to Roderick Anderson, the Commerce Department’s deputy inspector general (IG), the Colorado Democrats called for the IG’s office to probe the firings, which reportedly affected between 500 and over 1,000 workers at the agency. The Commerce Department oversees NOAA. In the letter, the lawmakers cited the agency’s work on satellite technology, weather information and warning information about natural disasters such as wildfires. They also called the mass firings illegal and raised concerns around alleged access granted to Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staffers to NOAA systems. "The value of NOAA and its programs are clear. Any attempt to unilaterally halt them would constitute egregious overreach of executive power, jeopardizing the safety and well-being of countless Americans," the members wrote. "The American people deserve answers about what President Trump and DOGE have done and plan to do with this crucial agency, which has demonstrated tremendous effectiveness at saving lives and property and serving critical economic and strategic national interests," they continued.

The Hill [2/28/2025 6:00 AM, Sharon Udasin, 12829K] reports federal officials have declared they will not order soil sampling after completing debris removal on Los Angeles properties that succumbed to the region’s devastating fires earlier this year, rebuffing concerns raised by state officials about potential contamination. California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D) administration last week appealed to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in a bid to revive the once-routine testing. "As practice on all past major fire recoveries, we urge FEMA to conduct comprehensive soil sampling as part of the debris removal process at affected properties," Nancy Ward, director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES), wrote in a letter to Curtis Brown, federal coordinating officer for FEMA Region 9. "Without adequate soil testing, contaminants caused by the fire can remain undetected.". She warned that failing to implement such sampling could "expose individuals to residual substances during rebuilding efforts and potentially jeopardize groundwater and surface water quality.". FEMA, however, has reaffirmed its decision to forgo the sampling and instead task the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) with eliminating waste and clearing the top 6 inches from ravaged properties without conducting follow-up soil tests. "The mission assignment USACE was given does not include soil testing," said Susan Lee, a spokesperson for the Army Corps, in an emailed statement. "The decision regarding soil testing is outside of USACE’s role, as it is not part of our assigned responsibilities for this disaster.". Although FEMA has funded and conducted soil sampling at some of California’s biggest wildfires over the past two decades, the federal agency changed its approach in 2020, Brandi Richard Thompson, a spokesperson for FEMA Region 9, told The Hill in an emailed statement. Based on lessons learned from past fires and in consultation with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), FEMA "stopped funding soil testing as a routine practice and adopted the 6-inch removal standard," Richard Thompson said.

Honolulu Star-Advertiser [2/28/2025 5:38 PM, Dan Nakaso] reports U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda led Hawaii’s Congressional delegation to jointly encourage the Federal Emergency Management Agency today to halt its plans to require Maui wildfire survivors to begin paying market-rate rental prices starting Saturday. About 30 percent of survivor households live below the poverty line in West Maui, where landlords continue to drive up rents following the August 2023 wildfires that destroyed nearly 4, 000 structures, most of them homes. Many continue to be unemployed, according to the letter written today to FEMA Region 9 Director Bob Fenton. Tokuda told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that FEMA has not yet replied. The request to maintain FEMA-subsidized housing—based on income levels—does not affect landlords’ rental income, Tokuda said. And the request follows a similar extension of FEMA subsidized housing for victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana, Tokuda said.

Hawaiʻi Public Radio [2/28/2025 4:12 PM, Catherine Cluett Pactol, 61K] reports commercial and residential debris has now been cleared from all 1,538 Lahaina properties in the federal cleanup program. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers just finished debris removal of 148 commercial parcels, marking completion of an 18-month cleanup process. The commercial structure portion of the cleanup started about a year ago. Up next is transferring all that fire debris to the permanent disposal site at the Central Maui Landfill. While concurrently working on the debris removal, the Army Corps will be wrapping up its assistance to FEMA with housing and infrastructure work in Lahaina, all of which is anticipated to be completed by the end of the year.

CNN [3/1/2025 4:00 AM, Andrew Kaczynski and Em Steck, 52868K] reports Dan Bongino, the incoming deputy director of the FBI, suggested on his popular podcast in January that the agency he is now about to help lead was complicit in planting pipe bombs around Washington ahead of the Capitol riot on January 6, 2021. “I believe the FBI knows the identity of this pipe bomber on January 6th, four years ago, and just doesn’t wanna tell us ‘cause it was an inside job,” Bongino said on his podcast. “Folks, this guy was an insider,” he added. “This was an inside job. And it is the biggest scandal in FBI history.” A former Secret Service agent and NYPD cop, Bongino has become a successful conservative media personality in part by spreading conspiracy theories about the so-called deep state that alleges federal workers are plotting to undermine the president’s agenda. The FBI is a frequent target of his ire. Bongino has called the bureau “corrupt” and even suggested it doctored surveillance footage of the pipe bomb suspect, suggesting the bomb was planted by law enforcement to create a narrative that Trump supporters were trying to assassinate then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris. “I’ve told you this many times,” he added on the January show. “The person who planted that bomb was definitely an insider. It was not an anti-Trump person. It was someone planting a bomb to create a narrative that crazy MAGA people are trying to assassinate Kamala Harris.” The unsolved case of who planted two pipe bombs the night before the riot, one near the Democratic National Committee and the other near the Republican National Committee, has fueled a wide range of conspiracy theories, many of which have been fodder for Bongino’s successful podcast.

Yahoo! News [2/28/2025 6:37 PM, Lucy Lopez, 52868K] reports a cruise ship passenger was caught 300 miles offshore in a dire situation while on vacation. Download the free KHON2 app for iOS or Android to stay informed on the latest news The U.S. Coast Guard medevacked a 72-year-old man who suffered multiple strokes aboard a cruise ship, about 300 miles off the coast of Kailua-Kona. The Coast Guard received a call at 2:48 p.m. Wednesday from the crew of the Koningsdam, reporting that the passenger had experienced several strokes while offshore. After consulting with a flight surgeon, the Coast Guard determined that the passenger needed to be evacuated within 20 hours. Early Thursday morning, a joint response team from Coast Guard Air Station Barbers Point launched an airplane and a helicopter to rendezvous with the Koningsdam, approximately 57 miles south of Honolulu. The helicopter crew successfully hoisted the passenger from the ship and transported him to Queen’s Medical Center in Honolulu, where he is reported to be in stable condition.

Bloomberg [2/28/2025 8:08 AM, Alex Longley, 16228K] reports the Canadian Coast Guard was working to secure a container ship that suffered significant breaches to its structure when it ran aground off Newfoundland. The MSC Baltic III was carrying some materials listed as dangerous goods, the Coast Guard said. The focus is currently on the removal of the vessel’s cargo and fuel. It’s carrying about 1.7 million liters, or just over 10,000 barrels, of heavy fuel oil and diesel as propellant. The vessel ran aground on Feb. 15 during bad weather in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, west of Lark Harbour, after reporting a loss of power. In the days that followed, a rescue operation was hampered by treacherous conditions at sea, and in its current condition the ship cannot be refloated, the Coast Guard said. Its cargo included fabrics, food products, metals and polymeric beads. No pollution has been observed from the ship and the main aim of the operation is to prevent any releases into the environment. The Coast Guard said one option may be to build a road to allow easier access to the vessel. That would help limit the impact of sea conditions on operations. A spokesperson for MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., which manages the ship, didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Bloomberg [2/28/2025 12:09 PM, Jamie Tarabay, 16228K] reports that the cancellation of nearly three-dozen cybersecurity contracts at the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau endangers the security of sensitive data maintained by the federal watchdog, a former senior official at the bureau said in court documents filed Friday. Former CFPB chief technologist Erie Meyer said that a rush to terminate contracts raises serious concerns about data preservation and the bureau’s overall ability to function. The cancellations came as part of a Trump administration effort to disable the CFPB by suspending its oversight, closing its Washington headquarters, and firing its director as well as many other employees. The 32 cybersecurity contracts that were scrapped cover a range of services, including vulnerability scanning and penetration testing, security audit and log analysis, virtual private network deployment and management of IT networks, systems and applications, Meyer said in the filing. “That data is crucial to everything from identifying and assisting victims of consumer fraud and providing them with court-ordered relief, to tracking the financial information that is critical to the Bureau’s role in helping to stabilize financial markets, to responding to consumer companies,” Meyer said. Spokespeople for the CFPB and the White House didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

CBS Minnesota [2/29/2025 12:09 AM, Ubah Ali, 51661K] reports a Minneapolis man who allegedly expressed admiration for the truck attack in New Orleans that killed 14 people has been accused of trying to join the Islamic State group, federal prosecutors announced Friday. Abdisatar Ahmed Hassan, 22, made his first court appearance on a charge of attempting to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization. A 34-page complaint details the extensive lengths Hassan went to get to Somalia and fight with ISIS from social media posts to failed attempts to fly there. Hassan was born in Kenya and lived in Texas before moving to Minnesota in 2023. The criminal complaint against Hassan details several social posts dating back to May up until last week. That’s when Investigators say Hassan posted a video of this knife on his lap. On Wednesday, FBI agents say they observed Hassan driving while holding a black ISIS flag. He was arrested Thursday. The charging documents also say police in New York notified the FBI last May that Hassan had made social media posts in support of the Somali group al-Shabab. An affidavit from an agent says investigators spotted al-Shabab and ISIS propaganda videos on his TikTok and Facebook accounts. It also alleges that he exchanged messages with a Facebook account that encourages Somali-speaking individuals to travel and fight on behalf of the Islamic State group. FBI agents were watching when Hassan went to Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport on Dec. 13, authorities say. He allegedly tried to check in for a flight to Somalia but left after an airline employee told him he lacked required travel documents. He allegedly tried again on Dec. 29. Agents saw him board a flight to Chicago, where Customs and Border Protection officers interviewed him extensively before his scheduled flight to Ethiopia but did not detain him. He missed the flight and returned to Minneapolis, the affidavit says. Hassan admitted in an interview that he started consuming ISIS propaganda after the start of the Israel-Hamas war. Jaylani Hussein with the Council on American-Islamic Relations Minnesota says the community has made tremendous strides to reverse radicalization in the state.

Reported similarly:
AP [2/28/2025 7:42 PM, Steve Karnowski, 48304K]

Lansing State Journal [2/28/2025 4:13 PM, Ken Palmer] reports a Michigan State University student is facing felony charges after police said she was behind an anonymous online threat made against the university on Wednesday. Hope Duncan, 18, of Eastpointe, is charged with false report or threat of terrorism and using a computer to commit a crime, according to Ingham County Prosecutor John Dewane. She would face a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison if convicted as charged. MSU police said Wednesday they were notified of the online threat, which was posted anonymously, at about 2 p.m. that afternoon. By 2:52 p.m., officers were able to locate Duncan, who they initially characterized as a person of interest in the investigation. The nature of the alleged threat was unclear.

New York Times [2/28/2025 10:18 PM, Julian E. Barnes, 145325K] reports intelligence officials are continuing to investigate sexually explicit messages that were posted on a government chat tool, the National Security Agency said Friday, exchanges that prompted the nation’s top intelligence official to order the firing of more than 100 officers this week. In a statement on Friday, a spokesman for the National Security Agency said the messages were posted on Intelink, a tool that the N.S.A. manages for the entire intelligence community. “N.S.A. takes the allegations of recently identified misconduct on Intelink very seriously,” the spokesman said in a statement. “Behavior of this type will not be tolerated on this or any other N.S.A.-hosted system.” The existence of the messages was disclosed on Monday by Christopher F. Rufo, a conservative activist. Intelligence officials confirmed that the National Security Agency managed the system that had been used for the sexually explicit chats. People briefed on the inquiry said some of the chat logs that were made public had been altered or manipulated, in some cases to remove classified markings or other material. But the people familiar with the inquiry said some context was removed from the exchanges and screenshots in other instances might not have been accurate representations. Long-serving U.S. civil servants said there was little doubt that some of what was posted was inappropriate for any workplace, much less a system in classified networks that is meant for intelligence sharing. At least one of the chat rooms involved was shut down last year, according to a U.S. official. One U.S. official said the people ordered to be fired were all participants in the chats and had made contributions. It was not clear how many of them had written inappropriate comments. Many of the messages that have come under scrutiny had to do with gender transition treatments and sexual matters. One of the chat rooms where some of the comments were posted focused on gender and transgender issues; it was unclear how many of the officers set to be fired were transgender. The Pentagon is moving to dismiss transgender troops from the ranks of the military. And critics of the move to fire dozens of intelligence officers have called it a purge of L.G.B.T.Q. workers, a charge that Trump administration officials deny.

Reuters [2/28/2025 12:43 PM, John Kruzel, 41523K] reports that foreign aid organizations asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Friday to require President Donald Trump’s administration to promptly pay them for work they already performed for the government, as a federal judge had ordered. The groups - contractors and recipients of grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department - urged the justices to reject the administration’s request to block Washington-based U.S. District Judge Amir Ali’s order for the payments to be made. In a Supreme Court filing on Friday, the foreign aid organizations argued that they "would face extraordinary and irreversible harm if the funding freeze continues," as would their employees and those who depend on their work. The organizations’ "work advances U.S. interests abroad and improves — and, in many cases, literally saves — the lives of millions of people across the globe. In doing so, it helps stop problems like disease and instability overseas before they reach our shores. The government’s actions have largely brought this work to a halt," lawyers for the foreign aid groups wrote. Ali’s order had originally given the administration until February 26 to disburse the funding, which the administration said amounted to nearly $2 billion in thousands of foreign aid payment requests. U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts paused that order hours before the midnight deadline.The interim order by Roberts gave the Supreme Court additional time to consider the administration’s more formal request to block Ali’s ruling and set a Friday deadline for the foreign aid groups to respond.

Washington Post [2/28/2025 6:00 AM, Karen DeYoung, 31735K] reports that, two days before Chilean lawmakers passed a long-debated package of social security reforms in late January, a group of U.S. investors unhappy with the legislation sent an ominous letter to President Gabriel Boric. “As the Trump Administration begins its broad review of trade agreements, it’s important that these actions and their implications are fully understood by U.S. leaders,” wrote David Chavern, head of the American Council of Life Insurers, whose members have investments in Chilean pension funds. The proposed reform package, he said, “would adversely affect the confidence of investors.” A clear reference to the 2004 U.S.-Chile free trade pact, the warning was “we’ll tell Trump … we’re sure he’ll be disappointed,” said a senior South American official. President Donald Trump and his national security team have repeatedly stressed that his administration will pay new attention to the Western Hemisphere, concentrating on what Secretary of State Marco Rubio has called “missed opportunities and neglected partners.” But for many in the region, that focus during Trump’s first month in office has been a one-way street, reviving unpleasant memories of the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine, which declared the hemisphere a U.S. sphere of influence to the exclusion of other powers, and the Manifest Destiny that claimed a God-given right to American territorial expansion. Long-attuned to U.S. slights both perceived and real, few missed Trump’s throwaway line during his signing of executive orders just hours after his inauguration. Relations with Latin America “should be great,” he told reporters in the Oval Office. “They need us much more than we need them. We don’t need them.”

New York Times [2/28/2025 1:36 AM, Peter Baker, 145325K] reports the United States’ relationship with Ukraine erupted in a storm of acrimony on Friday as President Trump and Vice President JD Vance berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in an explosive televised Oval Office showdown and abruptly cut short a visit meant to coordinate a plan for peace. In a fiery public confrontation unlike any seen between an American president and foreign leader in modern times, Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance castigated Mr. Zelensky for not being grateful enough for U.S. support in Ukraine’s war with Russia, and sought to strong-arm him into making a peace deal on whatever terms the Americans dictated. With his voice raised and temper flaring, Mr. Trump threatened to abandon Ukraine altogether if Mr. Zelensky did not go along. After journalists left the Oval Office, Mr. Trump canceled the rest of the visit, including a planned joint news conference and signing ceremony for a deal on rare minerals, and U.S. officials told the Ukrainians to leave. A grim-faced Mr. Zelensky strode out, climbed into a waiting black sport utility vehicle and departed the White House grounds. “I have determined that President Zelenskyy is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations,” Mr. Trump wrote on social media. “I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” The White House later sent out Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina and a close Trump ally, to tell reporters that Mr. Zelensky should consider stepping down. “He either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with or he needs to change,” Mr. Graham said on the White House driveway. The president’s verbal assault on Mr. Zelensky was a stunning display of anger and resentment toward the leader of a country that has been invaded by a larger power intent on eliminating it as an independent state. No other president in memory has lashed out at a visiting foreign leader in the Oval Office on camera in such a vituperative way, not even at an adversary of the United States, much less a putative ally.

The Hill [2/28/2025 8:20 PM, Ellen Mitchell, 12829K] reports Zelensky arrived at the White House on Friday with the hopes of signing a critical minerals deal with the U.S. and securing assurances from Trump as he seeks to broker peace between Kyiv and Moscow. But negotiations ended shortly after they started, with Trump calling Zelensky "disrespectful" and saying he was "not ready for peace.” One of the most remarkable Oval Office scenes in years, the animosity was the culmination of roughly a month of growing tensions between the Trump administration and Zelensky, who had frustrated White House officials with some of his rhetoric and actions. Trump welcomed Zelensky to the Oval Office cordially, praising the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers and insisting he wanted to see peace in region. But the meeting soon devolved into shouting and finger-pointing, with the president and Vice President Vance accusing Zelensky of being ungrateful and of having little leverage. The moment the meeting went from friendly to off the rails occurred when Vance said Trump was engaging in diplomacy and Zelensky questioned "what kind of diplomacy, JD, are you speaking about?" noting that Russian President has broken ceasefires and killed Ukrainians. That sent all three men into a shouting match that ended with Trump ordering Zelensky from the White House with no signed critical minerals deal. Before that, Trump suggested Ukraine would have to make compromises with Russia to end the war — while avoiding giving details on what Moscow might have to give up. He also said ramping up pressure on Putin would be counterproductive to reaching a peace deal. The president also scolded Zelensky for placing demands on Russia’s side of the peace deal, telling him: "You’re not really in good position right now," and "you don’t have the cards right now.” Trump later told reporters that Zelensky had "overplayed his hand" in the Oval Office meeting, signaling that future U.S. support might be in jeopardy if Zelensky does not want to end the fighting. Asked what Zelensky would have to do to restart talks, Trump said the Ukrainian leader would have to say, "I want to make peace," instead of criticizing Russian President Vladimir Putin.

New York Times [2/28/2025 8:17 PM, John Ismay, 145325K] reports President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine entered the White House for a meeting with President Donald Trump on Friday knowing that the flow of weapons and military hardware from the United States to his country had essentially stopped. By the time he left, after a televised argument between the two leaders, the situation appeared even more dire. As the two men met, it had been 50 days since the Pentagon had announced a new package of weapons to Ukraine and the new administration had said little about providing any more. A Trump administration official said later on Friday that all U.S. aid to Ukraine — including the final shipments of ammunition and equipment authorized and paid for during the Biden administration — could be canceled imminently. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of that country in February 2022, such shipments of military hardware from the United States were announced roughly every two weeks during the Biden administration, and sometimes just five or six days apart. According to the Pentagon, about $3.85 billion remains of what Congress authorized for additional withdrawals from the Defense Department’s stockpile. A former senior defense official from the Biden administration said the last of the arms Ukraine had purchased from U.S. defense companies would be shipped within the next six months. After that, it will be up to a host of European and other countries to keep Ukraine’s guns firing. Mr. Trump has insisted on “payback” for military aid. On Friday, the two leaders had been expected to sign an agreement that would give the United States access to Ukraine’s mineral wealth. A draft of the deal vaguely mentioned security guarantees for Ukraine. But Mr. Zelensky left the White House without an agreement, while his country faces relentless attacks from Russian and North Korean troops along a 600-mile front line.

New York Times [2/28/2025 4:20 AM, Michael D. Shear and Shawn McCreesh, 330K] reports President Trump said Thursday that he trusted President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia not to violate the terms of a potential peace deal with Ukraine, even as he refused to pledge U.S. military support for a peacekeeping force. “I think he’ll keep his word,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. Putin as he hosted Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer, at the White House. Of Mr. Putin, the president said, “I’ve known him for a long time now.” Mr. Trump’s comments underscored his embrace of Mr. Putin just a day before Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, is scheduled to arrive in Washington to finalize a deal to share revenue from mineral sources with the United States. Mr. Trump has pushed for access to Ukraine’s minerals to make up for billions of dollars in military and humanitarian aid the United States has delivered to Ukraine over three years. In the opening weeks of his presidency, Mr. Trump has ended the diplomatic isolation of Russia, falsely accused Ukraine of starting the war with Russia and repeatedly disparaged Mr. Zelensky, including by calling him a “dictator.” He appeared to change his tune on Thursday, however, predicting that the two of them would have a good in-person meeting. “I have a lot of respect for him,” Mr. Trump said, although he dodged a question about whether he would apologize to Mr. Zelensky on Friday for the “dictator” comment. Earlier in the news conference, when asked if he still thought Mr. Zelensky was a dictator, Mr. Trump deadpanned: “Uh, did I say that? I can’t believe I said that.” Mr. Starmer was the latest in a series of European leaders to come to Washington hoping to reason with Mr. Trump as he pushes for negotiations with the Russians to end the war. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, visited earlier this week. “History must be on the side of the peacemaker, not the invader,” Mr. Starmer said as he stood next to Mr. Trump in the East Room of the White House. The comments were sharper than those by Mr. Macron and other leaders, who have been hesitant to even subtly push back against Mr. Trump when visiting the White House. “The U.K. is ready to put boots on the ground and planes in the air to support a deal, working closely with our allies,” Mr. Starmer said. “Because that is the only way that peace will last.”

NPR [3/1/2025 6:13 AM, Hadeel Al-Shalchi, 19K] reports the Palestinian militant group Hamas says talks must begin on the next phase of the ceasefire in Gaza, rejecting what it says was an Israeli proposal to extend the first phase of the ceasefire deal. Israeli, Hamas and other negotiators were in Egypt on Friday to discuss the ceasefire. The Israeli delegation returned home from the talks Friday evening. "Extending the first phase of the deal in the format that Israel wants is unacceptable to the organization," Hamas spokesman Hazem Qassem said in an interview with Al Araby television. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office did not have an immediate response to Hamas’ refusal of the extension. Qassem accused Israel for the failure to begin negotiations on the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire which came into effect Jan. 19. The agreement, negotiated by Egypt, expires Saturday. Under the terms of the deal, fighting won’t resume during the negotiations. Qassem claimed Israel wanted to get back the remaining 59 hostages still held in Gaza and then resume the war. Hamas released 33 Israeli hostages, including eight bodies, under the current phase of the ceasefire in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian prisoners and detainees held in Israeli jails. Phase two of the ceasefire deal would see the complete withdrawal of Israeli troops from Gaza and a commitment to end the war.

CBS News [2/28/2025 8:13 PM, Staff, 51661K] reports the Trump administration has approved a major nearly $3 billion arms sale to Israel, bypassing a normal congressional review to provide the country with more of the 2,000-pound bombs that it has used in its war against Hamas in Gaza. In a series of notifications sent to Congress late Friday, the State Department said it had signed off on the sale of more than 35,500 MK 84 and BLU-117 bombs and 4,000 Predator warheads worth $2.04 billion. The State Department approved Israel’s purchase of Caterpillar D9 Bulldozers and related equipment for an estimated cost of $295 million. Deliveries by the Irving, Texas-based company are expected to begin in 2027. The Defense Security Cooperation released a statement confirming a munitions sale to Israel for an estimated cost of $675.7 million. Repkon USA, located in Tampa, Florida, and The Boeing Company, located in St. Charles, Missouri, will manufacture the equipment, which is estimated to be delivered to Israel beginning in 2028. The arms sale comes as the first phase of the ceasefire, which paused 15 months of war, freed Israeli hostages and Palestinian prisoners, and enabled more humanitarian aid to reach Gaza, is set to expire on Saturday. The two sides seem willing to maintain their truce while negotiators from the U.S., Egypt and Qatar guide talks aimed at getting to the next phase. The parties were supposed to have begun ironing out the details of phase two weeks ago. But talks were delayed as the first six weeks of the ceasefire were marred by disputes between Israel and Hamas over alleged violations of the deal. Under the terms of the truce that began in Jan. 19, the second phase would compel Hamas to release all the remaining living hostages from its Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack that triggered the war, in exchange for more Palestinian prisoners in Israel, a lasting ceasefire and a full Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. Over the past six weeks, Hamas has freed 33 living and dead hostages in exchange for more than 1,700 Palestinian prisoners. The militant group still holds 59 captives, 32 of whom are believed to be dead. Israel is reportedly seeking an extension of the first phase to secure the freedom of more captives.

Newsweek [2/28/2025 6:20 AM, Micah McCartney, 3973K] reports China has pushed back at President Donald Trump’s proposed denuclearization talks, quipping that he should put "America First" when it comes to arms reduction. Newsweek reached out to the White House by email with a request for comment. Trump has called for China and Russia to join the U. S.—the world’s top defense spender—in talks aimed at eventually reducing their respective nuclear stockpiles as well as military budgets by up to 50 percent. Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday welcomed the notion and extended an invitation to his Chinese counterpart to weigh up such a commitment as well. During the Chinese Defense Ministry’s monthly press conference on Thursday, spokesperson Wu Qian issued a challenge to the Trump administration, pointing out that the U.S. boasts both the largest defense budget and a top nuclear stockpile. "I believe that the U.S. should put into practice ‘America First’ in this regard, and be the first to cut its nuclear arsenal and military expenditure," the spokesperson said. He added that China maintains a no-first-use policy when it comes to its nuclear arsenal and "keeps our nuclear strength at the minimum level required for national security.". Total global military spending reached $2.46 trillion in 2024, according to a February 12 report by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), a London-based think tank. China announced a $236 billion defense budget for the year, a 7.2 percent increase. However, some analysts argue that unreported expenditures significantly inflate the real figure, with the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) estimating it at $711 billion—placing it not far behind the U.S.’s $850 billion defense budget. The Pentagon considers China its top strategic challenge, as Beijing rapidly expands its nuclear arsenal to achieve President Xi Jinping’s goal of a "world-class" military to rival U.S. might by 2049. While China’s official warhead count remains far below U.S. and Russian thousands-strong stockpiles, the Pentagon estimates Beijing now possesses around 600 warheads, with projections indicating it could surpass 1,000 by the end of the decade.

Wall Street Journal [3/1/2025 12:01 AM, Yoko Kubota] reports Chinese authorities are instructing top artificial-intelligence entrepreneurs and researchers to avoid visiting the U.S., people familiar with the matter said, reflecting Beijing’s view of the technology as an economic and national security priority. The authorities are concerned that Chinese AI experts traveling abroad could divulge confidential information about the nation’s progress. They also worry that executives could be detained and used as a bargaining chip in U.S.-China negotiations, in an echo of a fight over a Huawei executive held in Canada at Washington’s request during the first Trump administration. AI has become the latest technology battleground between the U.S. and China, symbolized by the emergence of Chinese AI models from the likes of DeepSeek and Alibaba. They are challenging U.S. leaders including OpenAI and Google, and Beijing is increasingly pressuring its entrepreneurs in leading-edge fields to hew close to state interests. The result is to drive a further wedge between the technology communities in the two countries, already divided by U.S. restrictions on semiconductor exports imposed during the Biden administration and tariffs dating to the first Trump administration. As China seeks to build an economic fortress in an era of growing geopolitical tensions, the nation’s leaders want its technology industry to become more self-sufficient. People in the tech industry said there was no outright ban on travel but rather guidance from authorities in China’s biggest technology hubs including Shanghai, Beijing and Zhejiang, a province next to Shanghai where Alibaba and DeepSeek are based.

FedScoop [2/28/2025 12:01 PM, Matt Bracken] reports a bipartisan trio of senators introduced a bill this week to ban the Chinese artificial intelligence platform DeepSeek from all federal government devices and networks. The bill from Sens. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., Jon Husted, R-Ohio, and Pete Ricketts, R-Neb., followed the introduction earlier this month of the No DeepSeek on Government Devices Act from a bipartisan group of two dozen House lawmakers. “As the artificial intelligence landscape continues to rapidly expand, the U.S. must take steps to ensure Americans’ data and government systems remain protected against platforms — like DeepSeek — that are linked to our adversaries,” Rosen said in a statement. “This bipartisan legislation takes proactive steps to ban DeepSeek on all U.S. government devices, helping to further safeguard sensitive government data from the Chinese Communist Party.” The bicameral push to block DeepSeek from government devices comes after a Silicon Valley freakout over the revelation that the Chinese startup’s low-cost, open-source artificial intelligence model was just as good, if not better, than offerings from American AI firms. Since DeepSeek burst into public consciousness a month ago, it has reported challenges in registering new users due to “large-scale malicious attacks” on its services. Additionally, a security issue at the company has exposed sensitive internal data, researchers at Wiz found. “DeepSeek is a tool that perpetuates Communist China’s agenda — full stop,” Husted said in a statement. “It exposes Americans’ data to our adversary’s government, lies to its users, and exploits American workers’ AI advances. We can’t afford for U.S. officials to play into Beijing’s hands by hosting this hostile bot on their devices.” DeepSeek has already been banned on state-owned devices and networks in New York, Virginia and Texas. The platform has also been barred from use on Senate and House devices, according to Axios.

FOX News [2/28/2025 7:35 AM, Greg Norman, 46189K] reports the U.S. Embassy in Bangkok is warning Americans of potential "violent retaliatory attacks" Friday after a group of 45 Uyghurs were deported by Thailand to China in a move Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned in the "strongest possible terms.". Thai police and security officials said China had given assurances that the men — who had been in custody for more than a decade — wouldn’t face penalties or be harmed. They said at a news conference Thursday that all of them voluntarily returned after being shown a translation of a written Chinese agreement requesting their repatriation and declaring they would be allowed to live normally. "Similar deportations have prompted violent retaliatory attacks in the past," the U.S. Embassy warned though on Friday. "Most notably, in the wake of a 2015 deportation of Uyghurs from Thailand, improvised explosive devices detonated at the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok killing 20 people and injuring 125 others as this shrine is heavily visited by tourists from China.". The Embassy is now encouraging Americans in Thailand to "exercise increased caution and vigilance, especially in crowded locations frequented by tourists due to the potential for increased collateral risk.". Rubio slammed the deportations Thursday, describing it as a "forced return of at least 40 Uyghurs to China, where they lack due process rights and where Uyghurs have faced persecution, forced labor, and torture.". "As Thailand’s longstanding ally, we are alarmed by this action, which risks running afoul of its international obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance," Rubio continued. "This act runs counter to the Thai people’s longstanding tradition of protection for the most vulnerable and is inconsistent with Thailand’s commitment to protect human rights.". "We urge all governments in countries where Uyghurs seek protection not to forcibly return ethnic Uyghurs to China," he added. "We call on Chinese authorities to provide full access to verify the well-being of the returned Uyghurs on a regular basis," Rubio also said. "The Thai Government must insist and fully verify continuously that Chinese authorities protect the Uyghurs’ human rights.".

{End of Report} RETURN TO TOP