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

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

The Washington Post [5/10/2025 12:33 AM, María Luisa Paúl, Anumita Kaur, and Brianna Tucker, 31735K] reports Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D) was arrested and charged with trespassing on Friday after he tried to visit a new immigrant detention facility in his city — flaring tensions between the Trump administration and officials resisting its immigration crackdown. The arrest unfolded in a chaotic scene outside Delaney Hall, a privately run detention center that can hold up to 1,000 people. Federal agents clashed with Baraka and three Democratic members of New Jersey’s congressional delegation — Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, Robert Menendez Jr. and LaMonica McIver — as they attempted to inspect the facility. Interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey Alina Habba, a longtime ally of President Donald Trump and his personal attorney, accused Baraka of trespassing and ignoring “multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself.” The Department of Homeland Security alleged that Menendez and Watson Coleman “stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility,” then “holed up in a guard shack.” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin called the congressional visit a “bizarre political stunt.” “Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility,” McLaughlin said in a statement. Axios [5/9/2025 4:10 PM, Andrew Solender, 13163K] reports that the lawmakers said they were attempting to investigate ICE’s controversial reopening of the Delany Hall facility to house detained migrants. "Today, as a bus of detainees was entering the security gate of Delaney Hall Detention Center, a group of protestors, including two members of US Congress, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility," said DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin. "These members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and the detainees at risk," McLaughlin said. "Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour of the facility. This is an evolving situation." Spokespeople for Watson Coleman and McIver pushed back on McLaughlin’s claim that the lawmakers "stormed" the facility. ABC News [5/9/2025 7:51 PM, Oren Oppenheim, Luke Barr, Mariam Khan, Aaron Katersky, and Josh Margolin, 31638K] reports Ras Baraka, the Democratic mayor of Newark, New Jersey, was arrested on Friday while joining members of Congress at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, according to interim U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba. Baraka, who is one of six candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for governor in New Jersey’s primary next month, "committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself from the ICE detention center in Newark, New Jersey this afternoon. ... He has been taken into custody," Habba claimed on X. Baraka and three members of the congressional delegation for New Jersey -- Democratic Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman, LaMonica McIver, and Robert Menendez Jr. -- had gone to the Delaney Hall immigration detention facility to conduct oversight, according to Watson Coleman and McIver. Watson Coleman also disputed the department’s characterization of their visit: "Contrary to a press statement put out by DHS we did not ‘storm’ the detention center. The author of that press release was so unfamiliar with the facts on the ground that they didn’t even correctly count the number of Representatives present. We were exercising our legal oversight function as we have done at the Elizabeth Detention Center without incident," she wrote in a statement. Politico [5/9/2025 3:37 PM, Ry Rivard] reports [Delaney Hall] is the Trump administration’s newest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility, which is expected to play a major role in its Northeast immigration operations. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was being held at a separate ICE field office in his own city as elected Democrats in New Jersey scrambled to get him released. The members of Congress all said they were touched to varying degrees and, in one case, assaulted by federal authorities at the facility. “This most assuredly is the most discomforting, concerning visit we have had. And what we experienced was the weaponization, of the abuse of power, that this administration has given ICE to do,” Watson Coleman said. “ICE is out of control.” The AP [5/9/2025 6:30 PM, Jake Offenhartz And Claudia Lauer] reports that the Department of Homeland Security said the lawmakers had not asked for a tour of the facility. The department said further that as a bus carrying detainees was entering, "a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility." DHS, in its statement issued after Baraka’s arrest, said Menendez, Watson Coleman and a number of protesters were currently "holed up in a guard shack" at the facility. Watson Coleman, who left and was at a Homeland Security Investigations holding facility where Baraka was said to have been taken, said the DHS statement inaccurately characterized the visit. Breitbart [5/9/2025 5:58 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2923K] reports the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has provided mugshots and criminal records of detainees held at the New Jersey ICE detention center that was blockaded today by Democrat representatives and progressive activists. DHS releasing photographs and criminal records of some of the detainees at Delaney Hall comes as several Democrats, such as Rep. LaMonica McIver (D-NJ), Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-NJ), and Newark Mayor Ras Baraka (D), showed up at Delaney Hall to "conduct federal oversight." In a statement posted to X, acting U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey Alina Habba revealed that Baraka had been taken into custody by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after ignoring "multiple warnings" to remove himself from the detention center. Habba stated that Baraka had "committed trespass" of the facility. The city of Newark is suing for more inspections, claiming ICE has not indicated how many detainees it has in the building — which can only house 1,000 people.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [5/9/2025 5:42 PM, Tracey Tully, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Alyce McFadden, 145325K]
Breitbart [5/9/2025 6:42 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2900K]
The Hill [5/9/2025 4:25 PM, Filip Timotija, 12829K]
CBS News [5/10/2025 12:01 AM, Mark Prussin and Alecia Reid, 52225K]
CNBC [5/9/2025 3:31 PM, Kevin Breuninger, 35400K]
NBC News [5/9/2025 11:06 PM, Bridget Bowman, Zoë Richards, and Raquel Coronell Uribe, 44742K] Video HERE
FOX News [5/9/2025 5:16 PM, Louis Casiano , Bill Melugin, 46189K]
FOX News [5/9/2025 6:44 PM, Peter Pinedo, et al., 46189K]
USA Today [5/9/2025 6:18 PM, Fernando Cervantes Jr, 75858K]
Free Beacon [5/9/2025 8:00 PM, Meghan Blonder, 475K]
Daily Wire [5/9/2025 6:20 PM, Virginia Kruta, 4700K]
Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 4:58 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 2296K]

The AP [5/10/2025 12:33 AM, Jake Offenhartz and Claudia Lauer, 48304K] reports Newark Mayor Ras Baraka was released after spending several hours in custody following his arrest at a new federal immigration detention center he has been protesting against. Baraka was accused of trespassing and ignoring warnings to leave the Delaney Hall facility and was finally released around 8 p.m. Friday. Stepping out of an SUV with flashing emergency lights, he told waiting supporters: “The reality is this: I didn’t do anything wrong.” The mayor said he could not speak about his case, citing a promise he made to lawyers and the judge. But he voiced full-throated support for everyone living in his community, immigrants included. “All of us here, every last one of us, I don’t care what background you come from, what nationality, what language you speak,” Baraka said, “at some point we have to stop these people from causing division between us.” Baraka, a Democrat who is running to succeed term-limited Gov. Phil Murphy, has embraced the fight with the Trump administration over illegal immigration. He has aggressively pushed back against the construction and opening of the 1,000-bed detention center, arguing that it should not be allowed to open because of building permit issues. Linda Baraka, the mayor’s wife, accused the federal government of targeting her husband. “They didn’t arrest anyone else. They didn’t ask anyone else to leave. They wanted to make an example out of the mayor,” she said, adding that she had not been allowed to see him. Alina Habba, interim U.S. attorney for New Jersey, said on the social platform X that Baraka trespassed at the detention facility, which is run by private prison operator Geo Group. Habba said Baraka had “chosen to disregard the law.” Video of the incident showed that Baraka was arrested after returning to the public side of the gate to the facility. The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement that the lawmakers had not asked for a tour of Delaney Hall, which the agency said it would have facilitated. The department said that as a bus carrying detainees was entering in the afternoon “a group of protestors, including two members of the U.S. House of Representatives, stormed the gate and broke into the detention facility.” Watson Coleman spokesperson Ned Cooper said the three lawmakers went there unannounced because they planned to inspect it, not take a scheduled tour. “They arrived, explained to the guards and the officials at the facility that they were there to exercise their oversight authority,” he said, adding that they were allowed to enter and inspect the center sometime between 3 and 4 p.m. Bloomberg [5/9/2025 9:34 PM, David Voreacos, Sri Taylor, Dylan Sloan, and Ellen M Gilmer, 27782K] reports Alina Habba, Trump’s appointee as interim US Attorney in New Jersey, said Baraka “committed trespass and ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself” from the Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark. “He has willingly chosen to disregard the law,” Habba said in a post on X. “That will not stand in this state. He has been taken into custody.” The actions escalate a standoff between the Trump administration and Baraka over a 1,000-bed facility known as Delaney Hall, which operator GEO Group Inc. recently reopened. Baraka, who is running in the Democratic primary for New Jersey governor next month, has protested several times at the facility, and the city has sued the US to block its use. Baraka’s arrest marked a day of rising tensions at Delaney Hall. Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said the mayor and the three lawmakers broke into the site without permission and warned that members of Congress “are not above the law.” A spokesperson for Watson Coleman disputed that account, saying the lawmakers identified themselves to guards and were conducting a lawful oversight visit. “The claim that they forced their way in or broke into this heavily guarded facility is a blatant lie,” according to spokesman Mike Shanahan. The New York Post [5/9/2025 10:13 PM, Dorian Geiger, Georgia Worrell and Shane Galvin, 54903K] reports DHS has characterized the action as a “break-in” and excoriated the protesting pols. “Members of Congress storming into a detention facility goes beyond a bizarre political stunt and puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and detainees at risk,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Members of Congress are not above the law and cannot illegally break into detention facilities. Had these members requested a tour, we would have facilitated a tour pf the facility,” McLaughlin added.

FOX News [5/9/2025 4:23 PM, Staff, 46189K] reports DHS public affairs assistant secretary Tricia McLaughlin gives her take on Democrats allegedly breaking into an ICE facility in New Jersey on ‘The Will Cain Show.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [5/9/2025 8:08 PM, Brooke Singman, 46189K] reports the White House is blasting Democrats for "prioritizing the welfare of illegal aliens over American citizens," after "outright breaking the law" and storming an ICE facility in New Jersey. On Friday, Reps. Rob Menendez Jr., Bonnie Watson Coleman and LaMonica McIver, all New Jersey Democrats, entered ICE’s Delaney Hall detention facility in Newark, N.J. and were held up inside the first checkpoint, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News. The three lawmakers were outside the facility with a group of protesters when the gates opened to allow an ICE bus in. The lawmakers then rushed through the gates and past security, DHS said. The mayor of Newark, New Jersey, Ras Baraka, was arrested at the ICE detention facility where the three members of Congress also stormed the gate, demanding they be allowed to conduct an "oversight visit.” Baraka, a top Democratic gubernatorial candidate, was arrested at the scene for trespassing, authorities said. The White House is blasting the Democrats, telling Fox News Digital they are "crossing the line.” "As always, Democrats are prioritizing the welfare of illegal aliens over American citizens - except now they’re crossing the line between meaningless political street theatre and outright breaking the law," White House spokesman Kush Desai told Fox News Digital. The Department of Homeland Security said the allegations by Newark politicians that Delaney does not have the proper permitting is false.

Breitbart [5/9/2025 8:37 PM, Pam Key, 2923K] reports Representative Robert Garcia (D-CA) said Friday on MSNBC’s “The Beat” that the Trump administration’s arrest of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka at the Delaney Hall ICE detention center was “shameful.” Guest host Antonia Hylton said, “I need to ask you two, if you’ve seen the images coming out of Newark, of the arrest of Mayor Ras Baraka, and some of your colleagues were there on the ground with him in this incredible scene. You know, we see a congressman right there in the center, sort of stuck in, in this tug of war with officials on the ground there. What’s your reaction to this and what his arrest represents?” Garcia said, “This is completely shameful and outrageous. Members of Congress have a right to visit these facilities. It happens all the time. And for this to happen to the mayor and to colleagues, people, all of which I know and respect — is a dark, dark day for our country. Members of Congress have the right to do oversight and to visit these facilities.” He added, “Kristi Noem, the secretary who oversees Homeland Security, is creating her own immigration laws. She’s not following the Constitution. They’re deporting people that don’t have any right to due process, and they’re sending people to these facilities that essentially have gotten no day in court. They have had their due process stripped from them. And so we’ve got to speak up. It is unconscionable that the mayor would get arrested this way. So we are going to call this out. Secretary Noem will be in front of our committee on Homeland Security this week. You can rest assured that she will be asked the tough questions about how this happened to the members of Congress and the mayor.”

The Washington Post [5/9/2025 8:24 PM, Joanna Slater, 31735K] reports that a Tufts University graduate student who was grabbed off the street in late March and detained for co-writing an opinion piece in a student newspaper was freed Friday after a federal judge ordered her release. Rumeysa Ozturk, a Turkish citizen, was seized by masked federal agents outside her home near Boston, then driven to Vermont and flown to Louisiana, where she had remained in detention. U.S. District Judge William Sessions said Friday that Ozturk’s detention constituted “a continued infringement” on her First Amendment and due process rights. It also “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.” Sessions described Ozturk as someone “committed to her academic career,” adding that there was “absolutely no evidence” that she posed any danger to the community. Ozturk, 30, attended Friday’s hearing in Vermont remotely, appearing via video call in an orange prison smock from a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Louisiana. She appeared to tear up as the judge concluded his ruling and embraced her lawyer at the end of the hearing. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security did not directly comment on the judge’s order. “Visas provided to foreign students to live and study in the United States are a privilege not a right,” the spokesperson said in a statement. The New York Times [5/9/2025 6:23 PM, Anemona Hartocollis and Jonah E. Bromwich, 153395K] reports that in seeking her release, her lawyers have accused the government of detaining her in retaliation for speech that is protected by the First Amendment. The main evidence against her appears to be an essay critical of Israel that she helped to write in a Tufts student newspaper last year. Department of Homeland Security officials have said that Ms. Ozturk had “engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans.” And following her arrest, Secretary of State Marco Rubio commented on Ms. Ozturk’s detention at a news conference, saying that she had not been given a visa to “become a social activist that tears up our university campuses.” But during the hearing Friday, the government’s lawyer, Michael Drescher, called no witnesses and hardly spoke. When he did speak, it was mainly to raise technical issues about the conditions of her bail. Mr. Drescher asked the judge to bear in mind that even though Ms. Ozturk was being released from immigration custody, the deportation proceeding against her would continue. The Daily Caller [5/9/2025 11:06 PM, Derek VanBuskirk, 1082K] reports that federal authorities had held the doctoral student from Tufts University at a detention center in Louisiana for approximately six weeks. “Her continued detention cannot stand,” Sessions said at Ozturk’s hearing. Ozturk was detained in March by ICE agents outside her home in Somerville, Massachusetts, according to NYT. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE “found that Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told the Daily Caller News Foundation in March. McLaughlin said it was “commonsense security” and added that a “visa is a privilege.” Ozturk co-authored an op-ed in the Tufts Daily 2024 regarding Tufts Community Union Senate voting to demand her university accept three resolutions calling on the institution to “acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.” The Union Senate did approve a fourth that would call for the termination of study abroad programs at Israeli universities.

Reported similarly:
New York Post [5/9/2025 6:20 PM, Victor Nava, 54903K]
Politico [5/9/2025 1:26 PM, Liz Crampton and Kyle Cheney]
The Hill [5/9/2025 1:45 PM, Zach Schonfeld, 12829K]
NPR [5/9/2025 2:15 PM, Adrian Florido, 29983K]
Reuters [5/9/2025 1:19 PM, Nate Raymond, 41523K]
ABC News [5/9/2025 8:03 PM, Armando Garcia, 34586K]
Axios [5/9/2025 2:18 PM, Sareen Habeshian and Steph Solis, 13163K]
NBC News [5/9/2025 1:40 PM, Chloe Atkins and Minyvonne Burke, 44742K]
CNN [5/9/2025 1:21 PM, Gloria Pazmino, Rebekah Riess, Dalia Faheid, 908K]

The Hill [5/9/2025 3:39 PM, Rebecca Beitsch and Brett Samuels, 12829K] reports White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller said Friday that President Trump and his team are “actively looking at” suspending habeas corpus as part of the administration’s immigration crackdown. But like igniting the Alien Enemies Act, suspending habeas corpus would be highly controversial. The Supreme Court directed migrants to challenge their Alien Enemies Act deportations through habeas corpus, and since then, judges in at least three cases have sided with migrants, determining the Trump administration was improperly using a law meant to address warfare and incursions. It’s possible judges might have a similar interpretation of efforts to suspend habeas corpus, as challengers would also likely dispute whether the U.S. is currently experiencing rebellion or invasion. The Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 4:56 PM, Kaelan Deese, 2296K] reports Miller stressed that the administration’s decision hinges largely on whether federal courts "do the right thing" — specifically, whether they stop blocking the administration’s efforts to deport illegal immigrants who have filed habeas challenges. He blasted federal judges, calling them "radical rogue judges" who are not just at war with the executive branch, but also with the legislative branch. Under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Miller argued, Congress stripped Article III federal courts of jurisdiction over immigration enforcement. Miller suggested the courts are overstepping their constitutional role by intervening in deportation cases. NewsMax [5/9/2025 6:55 PM, Staff, 4998K] reports "The Constitution is clear, and that, of course, is the supreme law of the land, that the privilege of the writ of habeas corpus can be suspended in a time of invasion," White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters. "So it’s an option we’re actively looking at," Miller said. "A lot of it depends on whether the courts do the right thing or not.” Trump campaigned for the White House on a pledge to deport millions of undocumented migrants and has repeatedly referred to their presence in the United States as an "invasion.” Since taking office in January, Trump has been seeking to step up deportations, but his efforts have met with pushback from multiple federal courts which have insisted that migrants targeted for removal receive due process. Among other measures, the president invoked an obscure wartime law in March to summarily deport hundreds of alleged Venezuelan gang members to a prison in El Salvador. Several federal courts have blocked further deportations using the 1798 Alien Enemies Act and the Supreme Court also weighed in, saying migrants subject to deportation under the AEA must be given an opportunity to legally challenge their removal in court. CNN [5/9/2025 9:55 PM, Kaitlan Collins, Samantha Waldenberg and Tierney Sneed, 908K] reports that while Trump has not explicitly mentioned habeas corpus in public, it’s what he was referencing last month when he commented on steps he could take to combat nationwide injunctions against his actions on deportations, according to one of the people familiar with the talks. "There are ways to mitigate it and there’s some very strong ways," Trump told reporters April 30. "There’s one way that’s been used by three very highly respected presidents, but we hope we don’t have to go that route. But there is one way used successfully by three presidents – all highly respected – and hopefully we don’t have to go that way but there are ways of mitigating it.” It remains unclear whether this is something the administration will actually pursue, and experts say it will likely generate legal challenges. The White House declined to comment beyond Miller’s statement. "Essentially everything Miller says about suspending habeas corpus – which would eliminate the ability of the courts to rule on immigration matters – is wrong," CNN senior legal analyst and former federal prosecutor Elie Honig said.

Reported similarly:
CBS News [5/9/2025 5:40 PM, Kathryn Watson, 51661K]
NBC News [5/9/2025 5:01 PM, Dareh Gregorian, 44742K]
Houston Chronicle [5/9/2025 8:59 PM, Tanya Babbar, 1769K]

FOX News [5/10/2025 4:00 AM, Deirdre Heavey, 46189K] reports that, while Republicans have celebrated President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration, Democrats have accused the Trump administration’s deportations of violating due process. "We need judges that are not going to be demanding a trial for every single illegal immigrant. We have millions of people who have come in here illegally, and we can’t have a trial for every single person. That would be millions of trials," Trump recently told reporters on Air Force One. Fox News Digital asked lawmakers on Capitol Hill to respond to Trump’s argument that illegal immigrants are not entitled to due process. "People come here and get a legal process called parole and have a right to due process," said Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz. "We are a country of laws, and we shouldn’t be kicking people out of the country without having that due process.” According to the Fifth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, all "persons" are entitled to due process. While the extent of due process for deporting illegal immigrants has played out in the courts, Kelly made his position clear when pressed by Fox News Digital. "I’ll also say, throwing out little kids who are U.S. citizens, it’s wrong, it’s dangerous. It is certainly not fair to them or their parents, but it really does affect everybody. I mean, tossing out a 2-year-old who’s a U.S. citizen is crazy," Kelly said. But Republicans who spoke to Fox News Digital weren’t so sympathetic, as they doubled down on their support of the Trump administration deporting illegal immigrants. "Nobody should be coming into the country illegally," Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., said. "[Former President Joe] Biden has ruined all this. He’s ruined the whole immigration process. He has tainted immigration. Now we have [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro’s criminals that are coming in, that he sent here. We have all the drug traffickers here. We have terrorists here. These people need to get out of the country. They’re here illegally. I want this country safe.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Post [5/9/2025 11:24 PM, Victor Nava, 54903K] reports President Trump signed an executive order Friday authorizing government-funded flights and financial incentives to illegal migrants willing to self-deport. The program, dubbed "Project Homecoming," tasks government agencies with facilitating travel for migrants without travel documents, providing flights "at no cost to illegal aliens," offering concierge service at airports to assist with travel bookings and granting illegal migrants an "exit bonus" to leave the US. "We are making it as easy as possible for illegal aliens to leave America," Trump said in a video posted on Truth Social. "Any illegal alien can simply show up at an airport and receive a free flight out of our country.” The president noted that through the Department of Homeland Security’s new CBP Home app "illegals can book a free flight to any foreign country. "As long as it’s not here, you can go anywhere you want," he declared. The "exit bonus," which DHS indicated earlier this week would be in the amount of $1,000-per-migrant, "will save American taxpayers billions and billions of dollars," according to the president. "Eventually, when the illegals are gone, it will save us trillions of dollars," Trump continued, warning that illegal migrants choosing to remain in the country will face "severe consequences," including stiff fines, jail time and "sudden deportation in a place and manner solely of our discretion. "We want you out of America," the president declared, before claiming, "If you’re really good, we’re going to try and help you get back in.” Trump’s order directs Secretary of State Marco Rubio and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem to launch a nationwide communications campaign to inform illegal migrants of the Project Homecoming program and of the consequences of remaining. The president also called for the "deputizing" of state and local law enforcement officers, former federal officers, officers and personnel within other federal agencies as part of an "intensive campaign" to deport illegal migrants who refuse to self-deport. The effort, described by the White House as a "full-scale, aggressive deportation surge," will commence within the next 60 days. In 2023 alone, the fiscal burden of illegal migrants was estimated to have cost taxpayers more than $150 billion, according to the White House. "By incentivizing voluntary departure, Project Homecoming aims to reduce these costs and restore resources for American citizens," the White House said in a statement.

Breitbart [5/9/2025 5:32 PM, Warner Todd Huston, 2923K] reports the Trump administration is hiring a decades-old U.N. migration agency to help illegal migrants self-deport to their home country. The administration has contracted with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a UN-sponsored agency founded n 1951 to help people spread around the world return to their homes in the aftermath of WWII. The IOM will provide structure to Trump’s self-deportation policy and give migrants advice and assistance in their journeys back to their country, the Washington Post reported. Trump is offering migrants a $1,000 payment to entice them to self-deport, but is also warning of a hefty $998 per day fine if they decide to ignore the offer and remain in the U.S. It is also being reported that Trump officials are allowing self-deporters to take their U.S. earnings with them and will put them on a list that allows them the opportunity to immigrate legally into the U.S. in the future as opposed to those who are forcibly deported and who are placed on a list blocking future legal access. More than 1,000 migrants have already agreed to enter the self-deportation process for the $1,000 payout, and the Trump administration hopes this number will substantially increase now that they are working with their "implementing partner" in the form of the IOM. While the IOM has helped more than 1.5 million people migrate back to their home countries, the organization has never before worked with migrants looking to leave the United States, even though the U.S. has been the biggest source of funding for the agency.

New York Times [5/10/2025 12:07 AM, Hamed Aleaziz, 145325K] reports President Trump ordered the Department of Homeland Security on Friday to increase the deportation force of the United States by 20,000 officers, a move that would lead to an enormous expansion of immigration enforcement if realized. In a provision tucked into a presidential proclamation focused on pushing undocumented immigrants to leave the country voluntarily, Mr. Trump called on the Department of Homeland Security to soon begin “deputizing and contracting with state and local law enforcement officers, former federal officers, officers and personnel within other federal agencies, and other individuals.” It was unclear how such an effort would be funded, one of several major logistical hurdles to such a large operation. There are now around 6,000 officers focused on deportation efforts at Immigration and Custom Enforcement. Mr. Trump has pushed to deputize state and local law enforcement officers for immigration enforcement before, and Department of Homeland Security officials have already signed a series of agreements with local law enforcement in the months since took office. Late last month, local law enforcement officials in Florida assisted ICE in an operation that led to the arrest of more than 1,100 migrants across the state. The Trump administration has spent the past few months attempting to make good on the president’s promise of mass deportations by conducting sweeping raids in major cities, arresting international students and allowing officers more freedom where they make arrests, like in courthouses. But it has still struggled to reach the pace that would be necessary for Mr. Trump’s expansive deportation goals. In recent weeks, the Trump administration has turned to pushing for migrants to leave the country on their own accord, a concept known as “self-deportation.” Earlier this week, department officials said they would pay migrants $1,000 and the cost of their travel if they left the country voluntarily and used a government app to do so. In his proclamation Friday, Mr. Trump repeated that call, labeling it “project homecoming.” “This proclamation establishes Project Homecoming, which will present illegal aliens with a choice: either leave the United States voluntarily, with the support and financial assistance of the federal government, or remain and face the consequences,” the proclamation read.

Wall Street Journal [5/9/2025 9:25 AM, Victoria Albert, 646K] reports private-prison companies have banked on a windfall from President Trump’s immigration crackdown. They are still waiting. Trump’s campaign promise to carry out the largest domestic deportation operation in American history sent shares soaring at GEO Group and CoreCivic, the two major players in private immigration detention. Both companies have signed new detention facility contracts with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since Trump’s inauguration. But the real payload—funds from an expected multitrillion-dollar tax and spending bill—is still working its way through Congress, keeping revenue tethered for now to the churn of government bureaucracy. The companies this week reported a small decline in revenue in the latest quarter, compared with a year earlier, when Joe Biden was still the president. On an earnings call, GEO Group executives called this year a “tale of two halves,” saying the company’s payday will come once ICE has more funding. The private detention companies run facilities that they contract out to state and federal agencies, including ICE. They also transport detainees. Each said they are investing tens of millions of dollars to prepare for an expected influx of ICE contracts, which currently make up roughly 43% of GEO Group’s revenue and 21% of CoreCivic’s. ICE currently has a budget shortfall it is hoping to plug through the spending bill. It will need a large cash infusion before it can open new detention centers or significantly expand existing ones.

Breitbart [5/9/2025 3:40 PM, John Binder, 2923K] reports two left-wing non-governmental organizations (NGOs), both with financial ties to Alex and George Soros’s network, are suing to stop President Donald Trump’s reforms of the Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) program, which are intended to end trafficking of such migrant children within the United States. In February, Trump’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued reforms to the UAC program, which resettles migrant children in American communities with adult sponsors after they arrive at the U.S.-Mexico border without parents or guardians. Part of those reforms is banning UACs from being turned over to illegal aliens in the United States. The groups are asking a district court to find the reforms unlawful and issue a preliminary injunction stopping the administration from implementing the reforms.

The Hill [5/9/2025 12:37 PM, Rebecca Beitsch, 12829K] reports immigration advocates are suing on behalf of Afghans and Cameroonians set to lose protections from deportation after the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it plans to let their temporary protected status (TPS) expire. "Each designation was first made in 2022, in response to the prolonged armed conflicts, hunger, and human rights abuses afflicting both countries. Each designation was extended fewer than 18 months ago for similar reasons," Citizens Assisting and Sheltering the Abused, also known as CASA Inc., wrote in the lawsuit. DHS announced the plans last month, but it has yet to formally announce the move in the Federal Register as required. "A TPS designation cannot be terminated in this manner," the lawsuit says. "Instead, Congress established a strict process for terminating TPS designations, one that required [Homeland Security] Secretary [Kristi] Noem to publish notice of her decision in the Federal Register at least 60 days before the current designation period ends.” The advocates added the formal process helps "provide certainty to TPS beneficiaries and an orderly transition in the event of a termination.” "The statute further prescribes what happens when the Secretary fails to follow that process: the TPS designation is automatically extended for at least another six months," they wrote. The group also said the decision was made in part based on "racial animus," pointing to a string of comments from President Trump and Noem as well as plans to lift protections for immigrants from non-white nations, while opening the refugee program to Afrikaners in South Africa. The suit argues that both Afghanistan and Cameroon retain the dangerous conditions that sparked the Biden administration to designate TPS for citizens already in the U.S. "In stark contrast to the lengthy process described above, Secretary Noem decided to terminate the TPS designations for Afghanistan and Cameroon within less than three months of taking office," CASA wrote. "Secretary Noem could not have engaged in the typical review process within the shortened timeframe of at most three months, and any consultation with the State Department or other government agencies was at best cursory.”

Reported similarly:
News Max [5/9/2025 2:09 PM, Mark Swanson, 4998K]

Reuters [5/9/2025 7:02 PM, Nate Raymond, 41523K] reports a federal judge warned on Friday that a new executive order from President Donald Trump that calls for cutting off funding to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions that do not cooperate with his immigration agenda cannot be used to evade a court order barring his administration from doing just that. U.S. District Judge William Orrick in San Francisco issued Friday’s order, at the urging of 16 cities and counties nationally that had already secured an injunction barring the administration from withholding all federal funding to them. Those cities and counties, led by San Francisco, sued after Trump signed two earlier executive orders in January and February that they said unlawfully threatened to cut off funding to them unless they cooperated with federal immigration law enforcement, including U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The jurisdictions include the cities of Minneapolis; New Haven, Connecticut; Portland, Oregon; St. Paul, Minnesota; Santa Fe, New Mexico; and Seattle, all of which have laws and policies that limit or prevent local law enforcement from assisting federal officers with civil immigration arrests. Four days after Orrick issued the injunction in April, Trump signed a new executive order directing Attorney General Pam Bondi to create a list of sanctuary jurisdictions and for agencies to then identify grants and other funding to them they could cancel or suspend. The 16 local governments argued Trump issued the new executive order in "blatant disregard" for Orrick’s court order and urged him to enforce his injunction.

Bloomberg Law [5/9/2025 2:04 PM, Kimberly Strawbridge Robinson, 1085K] reports that the US Supreme Court will sit for a special session May 15 to hear a challenge to President Donald Trump’s birthright citizenship order. The merits, however, are not before justices. Instead, the court will consider the scope of relief temporarily available to the parties, and in particular whether federal district courts can enjoin a policy nationwide as to all persons affected. Joining “Cases and Controversies” hosts Kimberly Robinson and Greg Stohr is University of Virginia law professor Amanda Frost, a leading expert on both birthright citizenship and so-called nationwide injunctions. [Editorial note: consult audio at source link]

Politico [5/10/2025 7:00 AM Kyle Cheney, 1085K] reports that a fundamental promise by America’s founders — that no one should be punished by the state without a fair hearing — is under threat, a growing chorus of federal judges say. That concept of “due process under law,” borrowed from the Magna Carta and enshrined in the Bill of Rights, is most clearly imperiled for the immigrants President Donald Trump intends to summarily deport, they say, but U.S. citizens should be wary, too. Across the country, judges appointed by presidents of both parties — including Trump himself — are escalating warnings about what they see as an erosion of due process caused by the Trump administration’s mass deportation campaign. What started with a focus on people Trump has deemed “terrorists” and “gang members” — despite their fierce denials — could easily expand to other groups, including Americans, these judges warn. “When the courts say due process is important, we’re not unhinged, we’re not radicals,” U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes, a Washington, D.C.-based appointee of President Joe Biden, said at a recent hearing. “We are literally trying to enforce a process embodied in probably the most significant document with respect to peoples’ rights against tyrannical government oppression. That’s what we’re doing here. Okay?” It’s a fight that judges are increasingly casting as existential, rooted in the 5th Amendment’s guarantee that “no person shall … be deprived of life, liberty or property, without due process of law.” The word “person,” courts have noted, makes no distinction between citizens or noncitizens. The Supreme Court has long held that this fundamental promise extends to immigrants in deportation proceedings. In a 1993 opinion, Justice Antonin Scalia called that principle “well-established.” The daily skirmishing between the White House and judges has obscured a slow-moving, nearly unanimous crescendo: If the courts don’t protect the rights of the most vulnerable, everyone is at risk. “If today the Executive claims the right to deport without due process and in disregard of court orders, what assurance will there be tomorrow that it will not deport American citizens and then disclaim responsibility to bring them home?” wondered J. Harvie Wilkinson, a Ronald Reagan appointee to the Richmond-based 4th Circuit Court of Appeals. Wilkinson described an “incipient crisis” but also an opportunity to rally around the rule of law.

Breitbart [5/9/2025 2:23 PM, John Binder, 2923K] reports that President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice (DOJ) is urging the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to permit the administration to end a parole pipeline, created by former President Joe Biden, that imported more than half a million migrants to American communities. In March, the Trump administration revoked the legal status of more than 530,000 migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela who were allowed into the U.S. interior via a Biden-era parole pipeline known as the CHNV program. Following the announcement, two non-governmental organizations (NGOs) partially funded by Alex and George Soros’s Open Society Foundations sued the Trump administration to keep the parole pipeline intact. Later, Obama-appointed U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani sided with the Soros-funded NGOs and blocked Trump from ending Biden’s CHNV program. The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) vests the Secretary of Homeland Security with broad discretion over categories of immigration determinations and precludes judicial review of such discretionary determinations. Specifically, the INA permits the Secretary to grant parole to aliens "on a case-by-case basis for urgent humanitarian reasons or significant public benefit," and it permits the Secretary to revoke that parole whenever "the pur-poses of such parole shall, in the opinion of the Secretary of Homeland Security, have been served." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CBS News [5/9/2025 1:24 PM, Melissa Quinn and Jacob Rosen, 51661K] report that a federal appeals court on Friday said Columbia student Mohsen Mahdawi can remain released from immigration custody while a legal challenge to his detention moves forward, denying a request from the Trump administration to allow immigration officials to re-detain Mahdawi. The three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit unanimously rejected the government’s bid for emergency relief, finding that it is unlikely to succeed on its arguments that a Vermont district court did not have jurisdiction over Mahdawi’s habeas petition. The 2nd Circuit panel also said that the Justice Department was unlikely to succeed on its claims that the lower court lacked the authority to order Mahdawi’s release last week. "[T]he practical effect of the relief the government seeks would be Mahdawi’s re-detention. Individual liberty substantially outweighs the government’s weak assertions of administrative and logistical costs," Judges Barrington Parker, Alison Nathan and Susan Carney wrote in their decision. Mahdawi, who is to graduate from Columbia this month with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, was detained by immigration agents in Vermont last month during what he was told was his citizenship interview. His attorneys say he was detained under a rarely used law allowing the government to revoke a visa if the Secretary of State determines somebody poses "adverse foreign policy consequences." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Blaze [5/9/2025 9:00 PM, Mike Howell, 1668K] reports one of the biggest political fights of Donald Trump’s early second term just ended — and not in his favor. The country didn’t rally behind Ed Martin, the president’s nominee for U.S. attorney in Washington, D.C., because of his résumé. And the fight was never about Martin alone. It was about the first real clash between two irreconcilable political forces that had managed a brief post-election détente. The Senate took its first scalp — and it was a big one. After Trump’s big victory, most of his Cabinet picks cleared the Senate with some turbulence but no real roadblocks — except for Matt Gaetz at the Justice Department. That era just ended. The honeymoon is over. After weeks of public drama, the Senate — with Republican help — forced Trump to pull Martin. Trump reassigned him to duties inside the Justice Department that don’t require Senate confirmation. He named Judge Jeanine Pirro in Martin’s place, a figure seemingly more palatable to senators who either opposed Martin outright or refused to defend him. The administration cast this as a "double down." In reality, the Senate won. The consequences go far beyond who runs the D.C. office. Martin’s defeat sends a clear message: The Senate will challenge Trump’s ability to govern. That includes the looming budget reconciliation battle, judicial confirmations, and the future of the America First movement. With no filibuster-proof majority, Trump’s window to act remains narrow — and shrinking. Martin’s supporters and opponents split along familiar lines. On one side stood the Democrats: Sen. Chuck Schumer (N.Y.), Sen. Adam Schiff (Calif.), Sen. Dick Durbin (Ill.), and House attack dog Jamie Raskin (Md.). They had help from establishment Republicans and anti-Trump legal elites. Senator Thom Tillis led the GOP sabotage effort, backed quietly by the Wall Street Journal editorial board and the usual anonymous gang of Republican senators who prefer to knife the president in private. On the other side stood Trump, his team, and a bloc of loyal senators including Mike Lee (Utah), Tommy Tuberville (Ala.), and Rand Paul (Ky.). Law enforcement organizations backed Martin, as did nearly every Republican state attorney general (except three) and Jewish leaders who stood up for him after a failed smear campaign falsely branding him anti-Semitic. Martin had prosecuted Hamas — unlike his Biden-era predecessor. This was more than a nomination fight. It was a battle between the GOP’s old guard and its future. The result will shape whether Trump can deliver on his second-term agenda — or get strangled by the same Beltway forces that worked to undermine his first.

CNBC [5/9/2025 8:16 AM, Courtney Reagan and Scott Zamost, 35400K] reports America’s supply chain is under attack. From coast to coast, organized criminal groups are hitting trucks on the road, breaking into warehouses and pilfering expensive items from train cars, according to industry experts and law enforcement officials CNBC interviewed during a six-month investigation. It’s all part of a record surge in cargo theft in which criminal networks in the U.S. and abroad exploit technology intended to improve supply chain efficiency and use it to steal truckloads of valuable products. Armed with doctored invoices, the fraudsters impersonate the staff of legitimate companies in order to divert cargo into the hands of criminals. The widespread scheme is “low risk and a very high reward,” according to Keith Lewis, vice president of Verisk CargoNet, which tracks theft trends in the industry. “The return on investment is almost 100%,” he said. “And if there’s no risk of getting caught, why not do it better and do it faster?” In 2024, Verisk CargoNet recorded 3,798 incidents of cargo theft, representing a 26% increase over 2023. Total reported losses topped nearly $455 million, according to Verisk CargoNet, but industry experts told CNBC that number is likely lower than the true toll because many cases go unreported. Numerous experts who spoke to CNBC estimate losses are close to $1 billion or more a year. In response to the surge in cargo theft, U.S. Rep. David Valadao, R-Calif., along with other lawmakers, in April introduced a bipartisan bill called the Combating Organized Retail Crime Act. The bill would set up a coordination center within the Department of Homeland Security tasked with fighting cargo theft and organized retail crime. “It incorporates the FBI and Homeland Security,” Valadao told CNBC, “and it creates the task force [to] communicate with my local agencies but also amongst themselves so that they can be informed about what’s going on ... around the district or even around the country.” The legislation is pending. On the other side of Congress, the Senate Subcommittee on Surface Transportation, Freight, Pipelines, and Safety has taken a particular focus on cargo theft. “In this era of increasing permeability of our southern border, in particular, we’ve seen a lot of criminal elements come through, including those who are engaging in cargo theft,” said Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., who chairs the subcommittee.

Reported similarly:
Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 5:45 AM, Jeremy Lott, 2296K]

Politico [5/9/2025 3:00 PM, By Sophia Cai, Myah Ward and Tim Röhn, 11599K] reports President Donald Trump’s zeal to preside over one of the world’s leading sports events is about to collide with the more aggressive version of an America First foreign policy that is defining his second term. Trump is ramping up preparations to co-host the 2026 World Cup next summer — a month-long showcase of global spirit — alongside Canada and Mexico. The early months of his second term have featured fresh tariffs against both countries, relentless taunts about turning the northern neighbor into the 51st state and a crackdown on immigration that has spurred fears about how the Trump administration will handle the millions of fans traveling to the U.S. to watch their teams. Not to worry, Trump said this week, when asked about the strained relations during the FIFA task force meeting at the White House on Tuesday. “Tensions are a good thing,” Trump said. “It’ll make it more exciting.” The U.S. leg of the 2026 tournament will span 11 cities and host more than half of the event’s projected 104 matches, a logistical marathon that FIFA President Gianni Infantino and Trump have likened to “three Super Bowls a day for a month.” Officials have begun planning for the crush of foreign visitors, but are warning them to depart the country after the tournament is done. FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, awarded the hosting rights to the three North American countries in 2018, during Trump’s first term. Planning for the event continued quietly during the Biden administration, but this week marked a noticeable shift: the launch of Trump’s newly minted World Cup task force and stepped up coordination between federal agencies, host cities, and FIFA. The early efforts reflect the major task ahead for the Trump administration as it coordinates with officials across the U.S. — and other countries — in preparation for the 2026 games. The administration’s planning is taking a page from some of Trump’s family business enterprises, with roles for the son of former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the brother of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

The Hill [5/9/2025 8:39 PM, Ella Lee, 12829K] reports that President Trump said Friday that he and Eric Adams discussed “almost nothing” during their White House meeting Friday, suggesting that the embattled New York City mayor requested a meeting to “thank” him. “He came in to say, ‘Hello,’” Trump told reporters of the meeting. “It was very nice. “And I think he came in to thank me, frankly,” the president continued, without addressing what Adams was thanking him for. Todd Shapiro, a campaign spokesperson for Adams, said in a statement passed along by Adams’s office that he had thanked Trump for his “words of support” from the campaign trail while the mayor was being “unfairly and selectively targeted” by federal authorities. Adams said in his own statement that the meeting was “productive and laid a strong foundation” for continued discussions about New York City’s priorities. In a video posted to X after the meeting, the mayor said they discussed how to “move the city forward,” particularly in manufacturing, and establish “a real communication” between New York City and the White House. “New York City is important to America, and what happens here in Washington, D.C. is important to New York,” Adams said in the video. “It’s my obligation to deliver for the people of New York, and as a city that’s the largest city in America, we must have a dialogue with the White House. The White House confirmed earlier Friday that Trump would meet with Adams just hours before the Justice Department (DOJ) was slated to release documents tied to the embattled New York City mayor’s now-defunct corruption case. Hundreds of pages were made public shortly before Trump’s remarks.

Reported similarly:
Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 12:48 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 2296K]

Wall Street Journal [5/9/2025 6:17 PM, Douglas Belkin, 646K] reports Columbia University suspended 65 students involved in a pro-Palestinian protest Wednesday that took over part of the school’s main library. The students won’t be able to take their final exams or enter campus except to access their dorms. Seniors won’t be able to participate in graduation ceremonies, a school official said. Columbia barred 33 other people from campus, including students from other colleges and alumni who took part in the protest. “When rules are violated and when our academic community is purposefully disrupted, that is a considered choice—one with real consequences,” a Columbia spokesperson said. The disciplinary actions come as Columbia is negotiating with the Trump administration over its federal funding and autonomy. The government has presented Columbia with a proposal for a consent decree, a form of federal oversight that would give a judge responsibility for ensuring Columbia complies with the agreement. The administration has pressed the school to demonstrate that it has changed its ways after protests overwhelmed campus last year. On Wednesday, about 100 masked demonstrators stormed the university’s Butler Library. Columbia called the New York Police Department for help, and 80 people were arrested. The school’s acting president denounced the demonstration, calling it “utterly unacceptable.”

New York Post [5/9/2025 3:23 PM, Jennie Taer, 54903K] reports House Homeland Security Chairman Mark Green is demanding that Tennessee authorities hand over unredacted reports and video from alleged MS-13 gangbanger Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s traffic stop, where he was suspected of trafficking illegal migrants, The Post has learned. Edited bodycam footage has been released showing the moment Agrego Garcia — who was mistakenly deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration — was pulled over by the Tennessee Highway Patrol in 2022 with a carload of eight people. The alleged gang member was ultimately let go with a citation for driving with an expired license. However, a source told Fox News that in a redacted portion of the video, troopers talked about calling immigration enforcement officials. Green is now asking for "full" and "unredacted" versions of all footage and reports from the traffic stop, according to a copy of the Friday letter.

Federalist [5/9/2025 7:26 AM, M.D. Kittle, 1033K] reports as Joe Abraham fights for justice for his daughter Katie and victims like her, the suburban Chicago father isn’t holding out much hope in “sanctuary” Illinois. Katie Abraham was killed in a car crash near the campus of the University of Illinois in Urbana the weekend of Jan. 18. She was 20 years old. Her killer, according to police, was a previously-deported illegal alien who was allegedly drunk when he slammed his SUV into the driver’s side of the vehicle Katie’s friend was driving as it was stopped at a red light. Julio Cucul-Bol, a 29-year-old Guatemalan national, was driving 78 miles per hour when his vehicle collided with the Honda Civic, Champaign State’s Attorney Julia Rietz said at the suspect’s arraignment, according to WCIA. Rietz said Cucul-Bol applied the brakes about a half a second before the collision; he made “little to no attempt to steer out of the way” of the car filled with four college-aged students, including 21-year-old Chloe Polzin, who died at the hospital from her injuries. Cucul-Bol immediately fled the scene. When U.S. Marshals ultimately apprehended him days later, he was about an hour south of Dallas, Texas, en route to the U.S. southern border, according to federal law enforcement officials. Upon his arrest, the illegal immigrant gave police a phony name, Juan Jahaziel Saenz-Suarez. His falsified paperwork claimed that he was a 27-year-old Mexican national residing in Urbana. Back in Champaign County, Cucul-Bol is now facing multiple charges, including two counts of reckless homicide, a Class 3 Felony, two counts of leaving the scene of a personal injury crash resulting in death, a Class I Felony, and aggravated driving under the influence resulting in death, a Class 2 Felony. But Urbana, like Illinois, is a “sanctuary,” “welcoming” to illegal aliens and, critics charge, soft on illegal immigrant crime. Illinois laws prohibit local law enforcement from asking individuals about their immigration status and “detaining them because they lack status, and most notably, largely bar officers from cooperating with federal agents,” NPR reported earlier this year. Far-left Gov. J.B. Pritzker, whose national political aspirations appear nearly as ravenous as his appetite, “has championed sanctuary city policies that have endangered Illinois families and cost the taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars,” Rep. Darin LaHood, R-Ill., recently said in a statement.

Chicago Sun-Times [5/9/2025 11:25 AM, Chip Mitchell and George Wiebe, 3000K] reports Homeland Security chief Kristi Noem kicked off her Springfield visit Wednesday with a photo op at a federal facility as agents fingerprinted two Guatemalan men marked for deportation. But her agency did not explain what public threat they posed, even as she blasted Illinois’ sanctuary policies. Both worked in Mexican restaurants and lived with their wives and children in the Edgewood Mobile Home Park, according to a neighbor and a public health volunteer who recognized the detainees in a news photo. The park, consisting of about 40 trailers, is three miles southwest of the state capitol building. Both families migrated to the United States from Guatemala years ago, according to the volunteer, Julio Barrenzuela, a U.S. Navy veteran who turned one of the trailers in the park into a makeshift clinic and education center during the COVID pandemic. ICE arrested the men Wednesday morning at the trailer park, Barrenzuela said. In front of photographers on Wednesday, Noem asked one of the Guatemalans if he knew he faced battery charges. He answered he did not understand the question. Noem later told him he was being detained and deported. One of the men was arrested by Sangamon County sheriff’s officers Sept. 16 on misdemeanor domestic battery charges, according to court records. He was released pending a trial, which is scheduled for July 10. Little is known about the other man who appeared in front of Noem, including whether he has been charged with crimes or convicted. After Noem’s photo opp with the detainees, the secretary held a press conference near the Springfield home of Emma Shafer, a 24-year-old woman stabbed to death in 2023. The suspect, who remains at large, should not have been in the United States at the time of the crime, Noem said. Shafer’s parents released a statement, condemning Noem’s comments.

Reuters [5/9/2025 1:00 PM, Staff, 41523K] reports migrants in Texas who were told they would be deported to Libya sat on a military airfield tarmac for hours on Wednesday, unsure of what would happen next, an attorney for one of the men told Reuters. The attorney, Tin Thanh Nguyen, said his client, a Vietnamese construction worker from Los Angeles, was among the migrants woken in the early morning hours and bused from an immigration detention center in Pearsall, Texas, to an airfield where a military aircraft awaited them. After several hours, they were bused back to the detention center around noon, the attorney said on Thursday. The Department of Homeland Security, the Pentagon and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment. Reuters was first to report that U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration was poised to deport migrants to Libya, a move that would escalate his immigration crackdown which has already drawn legal backlash. Officials earlier this week told Reuters the U.S. military could fly the migrants to the North African country as soon as Wednesday, but stressed that plans could change. A U.S. official told Reuters the flight never departed. As of Friday, it was unclear if the administration was still planning to proceed with the deportations. A federal judge in Boston ruled on Wednesday that any effort by the Trump administration to deport non-Libyan migrants to Libya without adequate screenings for possible persecution or torture would clearly violate a prior court order. Lawyers for a group of migrants pursuing a class action lawsuit had made an emergency request to the court hours after the news broke of the potential flight to Libya. Nguyen, who declined to name his client, said the man was told on Monday to sign a document agreeing to be deported to Libya. The man, who does not read English well, declined to sign it and was placed in solitary confinement and shackled along with four or five other men, the attorney said.

Yahoo! News [5/9/2025 9:13 AM, Joe Sommerlad, 52868K] reports Texas Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate have issued two bills that, if passed by Congress, would empower the federal government to seek to have undocumented migrants convicted of murder put to death in all 50 states, including those in which executions are currently banned. The "Justice for Victims of Illegal Alien Murders Act" in the House and the "Justice for American Victims of Illegal Aliens Act" in the Senate are ultimately likely to be combined into one legislative package and would codify President Donald Trump’s executive order in January seeking justice for American citizens killed by perpetrators who arrived in the country unlawfully. "Violent predators who enter our country illegally and brutally murder American citizens should be subject to the death penalty as a consequence of their heinous actions," said Senator John Cornyn in a statement introducing the upper chamber’s bill, co-signed by a dozen of his GOP peers. "This legislation would protect the American people, make our country safe again, and ensure no future president can single-handedly undo this consequence for taking innocent lives.” Representative Morgan Luttrell said in his own statement that the bill seeks to close a "dangerous loophole" by ending jurisdictional inconsistencies in the administration of capital punishment. "This bill gives us the authority to deliver justice when local prosecutors simply don’t have the tools, manpower, or funding to take on a high-profile death penalty case," he said. "If you’re in this country illegally and you murder an innocent American, you will be held fully accountable no matter where the crime happens.” The proposed laws follow on from Trump’s "Restoring the Death Penalty and Protecting Public Safety" order, directing his Justice Department to seek the death penalty in murder cases involving undocumented migrants. "These efforts to subvert and undermine capital punishment defy the laws of our nation, make a mockery of justice, and insult the victims of these horrible crimes," the president’s order read. His Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem attracted criticism this week after delivering a speech outside the former home of another woman, Emma Shafer, 24, in Springfield, Illinois, who Noem said was killed by an undocumented migrant, a gesture that led her grieving parents to denounce the secretary as "cruel and heartless" for politicizing their daughter’s tragic passing.

Houston Chronicle [5/9/2025 7:13 PM, Brammhi Balarajan, 3700K] reports a Texas mother’s deportation with her three young children, two of whom were U.S. citizens, has caused concerns among immigrant rights advocates, who say it reflects a growing trend in immigration enforcement procedures. However, federal officials have maintained that they followed procedure amid rising criticism. According to the nonprofit organization Grassroots Leadership, Denisse Parra Vargas and her partner were stopped outside Dobie Middle School in Austin on April 30 due to their expired vehicle tags. The pair were detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), but Parra Vargas was later fitted with an ankle monitor and released. She was told if she attended upcoming appointments and met other guidelines, she would be eligible for a work visa, advocates said. Parra Vargas was also informed she should go to an ICE facility for a hearing for her partner on May 6. But upon arrival, she learned that there was no appointment—she and her children were detained, then later deported to Mexico on May 7, attorneys said. Under federal directives, ICE is expected to "accommodate, to the extent practicable," parents’ efforts to arrange for their U.S. citizen children to remain in the country, if that’s their choice. But advocates say they believe Parra Vargas was never given that opportunity. They claim she wasn’t allowed to contact family members who could have cared for her children—ages 8, 5, and 4—two of whom were born in the U.S. However, a spokesperson for DHS maintained that they allowed Parra Vargas to choose to take her children or leave them in the U.S. "Rather than separate their families, ICE asked the mothers if they wanted to be removed with their children or if they wanted ICE to place the children with someone safe the parent designates. In this case, when Parra was taken into ICE custody, she chose to bring her children with her to Mexico," Assistant Secretary with DHS Tricia McLaughlin said. DHS also said that Parra Vargas “failed to appear before her immigration judge and was issued a final order of removal in 2019.” In addition, Omar Gallardo Rodriguez, Parra Vargas’ partner, had previously been deported three times and also had been convicted of multiple crimes while in the U.S., KXAN in Austin reported.

Dakota News Now [5/9/2025 7:07 PM, Grant Gree, 174K] reports Saturday’s graduation ceremony at Dakota State University has become a contentious event due to the school’s choice in commencement speaker: Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. While many Dakota State students will be protesting the arrival of the former governor, they will not be alone. Ginny Freitag and Dale Droge helped organize the protest as part of the group Madison Area Stands Together (MAST). They say they strongly share the frustrations many of the students have with Noem’s actions as DHS secretary. “Just the overreach of executive power, that they seem to be able/willing to not follow the laws or circumvent the laws and so I think this is very concerning to us all,” Dale Droge, a member of MAST said. Droge said Noem has not given respect to Due Process in some of Homeland Security’s deportations and revoking of visas, as such in the case of Dakota Mines student Priya Saxena, a doctorate student from India. The university went ahead with its decision to keep Noem as the commencement speaker for the graduation despite protests from faculty and students. MAST members say there could be hundreds of people that take part in the demonstration with news of the event spreading on social media.

Telemundo20 [5/9/2025 9:33 PM, Karla Gonzalez, 41K] reports dressed in brown prisoners’ uniforms and using the interpretation service, it is how Julio César Zúñiga and Jesús Iván Rodríguez Leyva presented this Friday in the Federal Court in the Center of San Diego. Schwarts. In less than five minutes, their lawyers obtained a new date for the hearing, which will be held on May 15. Julius, 30, and Jesus Ivan, 36, are reported by human trafficking of the rest of the immigrants aboard the panga, and led to the death of 4 of them on Monday, May 5. After the crash in Del Mar, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said she will seek the death penalty for both of them. Although Governor Gavin Newsom suspended the death penalty in 2019, this could be applied to the two Mexicans, since the judge is the Federal Government. However, you could avoid it if they reach an agreement before trial. These individuals who are confronted on these charges can say: we have information about the system, the organization that is carrying these types of human trafficking and if we give you that information maybe they will not proceed with the death penalty or perhaps less time in prison," says Christian Contreras, a civil rights lawyer. After the arrests made on Monday night and being pointed out for his alleged involvement in the transfer of surviving migrants by car, Gustavo Lara, 32, also had his appearance in court this Friday. He was granted bail for $5,000, and his preliminary hearing is scheduled for June 3.

CBS News [5/9/2025 5:25 PM, Staff, 51661K] reports Guatemala on Friday handed over one of its most wanted drug fugitives to the United States, which noted the extradition as the Central American country’s "most important" in decades. Aler Baldomero Samayoa-Recinos, whose alias is "Chicharra" (Cicada), is accused of leading a group called Los Huistas, which allegedly trafficked U.S.-bound cocaine from South America to Mexican cartels. He was captured in Mexico in March and deported to Guatemala as a result of joint efforts between the two countries and the United States, officials said at the time. Announcing his extradition, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arevalo said that he hoped the suspect would "share a lot of information" with US authorities to help the fight against the "scourge" of drug trafficking. The U.S. embassy in Guatemala City described his handover as "the most important extradition in decades" by the country to the United States.

Blaze [5/9/2025 3:55 PM, Julio Rosas, 1668K] reports Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green (R-Tenn.) explained in an op-ed in the Daily Caller why he denied the use of committee funds for committee Democrats to travel to El Salvador to advocate the release of Kilmar Abrego Garcia. Congressional Democrats have been clamoring to go on a taxpayer-funded trip to the Central American country to highlight the plight of Garcia, an accused MS-13 gang member and human trafficker who was deported to El Salvador’s mega-prison for gang members while he had a stay of deportation to that country. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) was the first to go to El Salvador and speak with Garcia, but other Democrats have said they intend to travel there as well. It was reported House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) told House Democrats to stop the trips, but his office denied those reports. Green said he was proud to be the first committee chair to tell Democrats if they wanted to go to El Salvador, they would have to pay their own way. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem told Senate Democrats during Thursday’s hearing multiple times that Garcia would not be returning to the United States because he had no right to be in the country.

AP [5/9/2025 10:07 AM, Marcos Alemán, 1682K] reports international human rights organizations on Friday filed a lawsuit with the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights asking that the commission order El Salvador’s government to release Venezuelans deported from the United States and held in a maximum-security prison. In March, the U.S. government deported more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants alleged to have ties to the Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador, paying the Salvadoran government to imprison them. Since then, they have had no access to lawyers or ability to communicate with their families. Neither the U.S. nor Salvadoran governments have said how the men could eventually regain their freedom. "These individuals have been stripped from their families and subject to a state-sponsored enforced disappearance regime, effectively, completely against the law," said Bella Mosselmans, director of the Global Strategic Litigation Council, which helped bring the suit. "We’re hoping that this case might help put pressure on El Salvador to put basic guardrails in place.” El Salvador has been living under a state of emergency for more than three years, which has suspended some fundamental rights and given the administration of President Nayib Bukele extraordinary powers. More than 85,000 Salvadorans have been arrested over the period for alleged ties to the country’s once-powerful street gangs. The improvement in El Salvador’s security has won Bukele widespread domestic support and some admirers in the region who seek to imitate his success. But the lack of due process and numerous arbitrary arrests have drawn international condemnation. Bukele has dismissed those critics as defenders of criminals. With the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump taking a hard line on immigration and portraying migrants broadly as criminals, neither government has been swayed by legal maneuvers in their own country to seek the men’s release or return to the U.S. A judge in Washington this week said he would order the U.S. government to provide more information about its prison deal with El Salvador as he moved closer to requiring the government to return the men to the U.S.

Reported similarly:
Houston Chronicle [5/9/2025 3:46 PM, Sam González Kelly, 1769K]

New York Times [5/9/2025 1:34 PM, Emiliano Rodríguez Mega, 145325K] report that their loved ones were picked up by U.S. immigration authorities, deported to El Salvador and then jailed in a notorious maximum-security prison. Now, more than a dozen families are suing the Salvadoran government, accusing it of illegally keeping their sons, brothers, nephews and partners behind bars for nearly two months. The lawsuit, filed on Friday before the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights by a coalition of migrant rights lawyers representing the families, names 18 Venezuelan nationals who are being held at the Terrorism Confinement Center, known as CECOT — a strict and austere megaprison at the center of a deportation deal between El Salvador and the Trump administration. Since March, none of the families have had news of their imprisoned relatives, most of whom had pending or approved applications for asylum or other kinds of humanitarian protection in the United States, according to a copy of the suit seen by The New York Times. “They’ve all been deported without due process, excluded from any protection of the law and are in a situation of enforced disappearance,” said Isabel C. Roby, a senior staff attorney at Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights, one of the groups bringing the lawsuit. Spokespeople for El Salvador’s government did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House has found an important ally in El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, to carry out its deportation policy. At least 288 U.S. deportees — mostly Venezuelans and several dozen Salvadorans, including a man deported from Maryland in error — are in CECOT custody, the recent lawsuit estimates, but the exact number is not known because neither government has revealed their identities.

Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 8:19 PM, Ashley Oliver, 2296K] reports that an appellate court handed the Trump administration a small victory Thursday evening by temporarily blocking a lower court’s order that required the government to take steps to return a Venezuelan national it deported to El Salvador. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit gave no explanation for its decision but granted the administration the stay until Thursday. Justice Department attorneys argued to the appellate court that the government legally deported Daniel Lozano Camargo to a terrorist prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act. Trump invoked the powerful wartime law in March as a means to bypass routine immigration proceedings and quickly deport alleged members of Tren de Aragua. Lozano Camargo, however, was covered by a court-authorized settlement agreement that required the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to issue a decision on his asylum claim before his deportation. The government did not honor that agreement, nor was it required to, DOJ attorneys told the appellate court. The attorneys said that vetting migrants’ asylum claims before deporting them was a process only available under Title 8, not under Title 50, which includes a set of war and national security laws.

Houston Chronicle [5/9/2025 7:00 AM, Sam González Kelly, 1769K] reports Widmer Josneyder Agelviz Sanguino arrived in Houston last fall with approval to travel to the United States through the refugee system, having already been vetted by the government and eager to start a new life in Texas with his family. But Agelviz Sanguino never made it out of Bush Intercontinental Airport. A Customs and Border Patrol agent noticed his tattoos and claimed he was part of a Venezuelan gang. Federal officials denied Agelviz Sanguino’s refugee status and sent him to a detention center in Montgomery County. In March, as his mother awaited an immigration judge’s decision on her son’s asylum case, she stopped hearing from him. It wasn’t until several days later, when she read a CBS News article with his name at the top of an alphabetical list, that she learned why: Her son was among the 238 Venezuelans who had been removed to a notorious mega prison in El Salvador.

Washington Post [5/9/2025 5:11 PM, Staff, 31735K] reports the administration has also been tearing down federal programs that protect Americans against the kind of extreme weather that climate change brings, making it harder for communities to prepare for and recover from natural disasters. These decisions will weaken the economy and — more important — could cost lives. Then there’s the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which the president and many of his advisers repeatedly have threatened to eliminate. In 2023, the Government Accountability Office determined that understaffing at FEMA was impeding disaster responses. Yet Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has reduced its workforce by 20 percent through layoffs and voluntary buyouts. Trump this week also fired the acting head of the agency a day after the administrator told Congress that he didn’t believe FEMA should be eliminated. Meanwhile, the administration has repeatedly denied federal aid to disaster-stricken regions, arguing that states should lead response efforts.

Washington Post [5/9/2025 12:06 PM, Staff, 31735K] reports most Americans are descendants of people who, at some point in the nation’s history, have been told: “Go back to where you came from!” Whether Irish or Arab, German or Mexican, East Asian or even Native American, few groups have been spared the insult. Once or twice a year, someone upset about something I’ve written sends an email to tell me to go back to Africa. This kind of thing happens in many countries, but the irony of the United States is that the people who say it here are often just a few generations removed from being the people it was once said to. That can result in intolerant policy. The latest evidence is a White House proposal offering undocumented immigrants $1,000 and a plane ticket if they voluntarily leave the country. A Department of Homeland Security news release describes the program as a historic opportunity that reduces the chances of detention and forcible removal, stating, "Self-deportation is a dignified way to leave the U.S." Secretary Kristi L. Noem’s sales pitch adds that "the safest and most cost-effective way" to avoid being arrested is to use the Customs and Border Protection’s smartphone application to notify government of your departure plans. More from Noem’s plea: "Download the CBP Home App TODAY and self-deport.” The approach isn’t novel; other nations pay immigrants to leave. France has offered payments upward of $8,000, travel aid and in-kind reintegration assistance. Germany provides transportation, lump-sum payments and medical assistance. Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom have similar programs. But for a place that has proudly proclaimed to be a "nation of immigrants" and home to the American Dream, the country’s pay-to-go-away policy is particularly hypocritical. In the United States, today’s nativists always arise from yesterday’s immigrants. For them to tell other arrivals to go back home is evidence that they’ve forgotten where they come from. Paying undocumented immigrants to leave only cheapens things. But the Trump administration insists on operating the country more like a cutthroat business than a constitutional democracy. Through this lens, offering paltry buyouts to people hoping to become Americans — and measuring success in dollars saved — is framed as compassionate and efficient policy. But it mostly amounts to bad severance packages for dreamers, or predatory contracts branded as smart governance and sound business acumen. It also capitalizes on the fear and uncertainty that results from the deportations of citizens and legal residents. It makes people an offer they can’t refuse, but with concierge service: Go back to Africa! Can we help you with your bags? Some things, however, aren’t for sale. Some people, even those with few resources or rights, cannot be bought off. For some, there is no bribe that beats a shot at safety and opportunity for themselves and their families. These are truths that people who’ve experienced government at its worst know all too well. And anyone who has witnessed new Americans take the oath of allegiance at a naturalization ceremony knows the extraordinary drive they have to call the United States home.

Washington Post [5/9/2025 12:06 PM, Theodore R. Johnson, 31735K] reports most Americans are descendants of people who, at some point in the nation’s history, have been told: “Go back to where you came from!” Whether Irish or Arab, German or Mexican, East Asian or even Native American, few groups have been spared the insult. Once or twice a year, someone upset about something I’ve written sends an email to tell me to go back to Africa. This kind of thing happens in many countries, but the irony of the United States is that the people who say it here are often just a few generations removed from being the people it was once said to. That can result in intolerant policy. The latest evidence is a White House proposal offering undocumented immigrants $1,000 and a plane ticket if they voluntarily leave the country. A Department of Homeland Security news release describes the program as a historic opportunity that reduces the chances of detention and forcible removal, stating, “Self-deportation is a dignified way to leave the U.S.” Secretary Kristi L. Noem’s sales pitch adds that “the safest and most cost-effective way” to avoid being arrested is to use the Customs and Border Protection’s smartphone application to notify government of your departure plans. More from Noem’s plea: “Download the CBP Home App TODAY and self-deport.” The approach isn’t novel; other nations pay immigrants to leave. France has offered payments upward of $8,000, travel aid and in-kind reintegration assistance. Germany provides transportation, lump-sum payments and medical assistance. Japan, Sweden and the United Kingdom have similar programs. But for a place that has proudly proclaimed to be a “nation of immigrants” and home to the American Dream, the country’s pay-to-go-away policy is particularly hypocritical. In the United States, today’s nativists always arise from yesterday’s immigrants. For them to tell other arrivals to go back home is evidence that they’ve forgotten where they come from. Paying undocumented immigrants to leave only cheapens things.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/9/2025 2:20 PM, Laura Castañeda, 1682K] reports that another tragic accident off our coastline in San Diego reminds us how desperate many migrants are. Three lives were lost, including a 10-year-old child from India, and seven others are presumed missing. We may never know if they reached shore, but their journey reflects a broader truth often ignored in American debates: Immigration is deeply personal, yet rarely discussed with honesty. At this point, nearly every American knows at least one person among the estimated 12 million undocumented individuals in the U.S; a neighbor, co-worker, friend or family member. They include 538,000 DACA recipients (children brought here by their parents as youth fleeing poverty or violence). Despite doing essential work, like caring for the elderly or working in restaurants, they remain invisible in public discourse. As journalists working in the border region, we hear their stories. Families torn apart as they risk everything to find safety, or the fear of being deported back to perilous situations. But the stories that dominate the media often focus on criminals or sensational cases. These narratives are used as political tools, distorting the broader reality and framing immigrants through a narrow, negative lens. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem responded to the latest maritime tragedy by calling for the death penalty for alleged smugglers. But that misses the point. We should be focusing on the lives lost in these tragic accidents, the children and the mothers who made unimaginable sacrifices to escape dangerous circumstances. Their courage should prompt compassion, not condemnation.

NPR [5/9/2025 5:36 PM, Zane Irwin, 29983K] reports chronic understaffing and mismanagement at a now-closed private prison in Leavenworth, Kansas, made instances like this common, Rogers said. Memories of preventable overdoses, suicides, stabbings, medical neglect and overcrowded cells still haunt him. CoreCivic, the prison’s owner and one of the country’s largest private corrections companies, said in a statement that allegations of dangerous conditions in the past reflect isolated incidents during a limited timeframe. With a renewed federal push to expand immigration detention, CoreCivic plans to reopen the facility to hold up to 1,000 migrants. To that end, lawmakers in Congress are mulling a spending proposal that would provide $175 billion to the Department of Homeland Security over five years, a 65% percent increase in the agency’s budget. Now Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, is sending out calls for new contracts with private corrections companies, in many cases to use dormant detention centers. But many of these facilities had a history of serious issues.

NewsMax [5/9/2025 9:35 AM, Josh Hammer, 4998K] reports earlier this week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents raided at least nine restaurants in the nation’s capital, requesting proof that the establishments are not flouting the law by employing illegal aliens. Washington, D.C., presents itself as a so-called sanctuary city for illegal aliens, so the mere fact ICE agents targeted a few businesses there is hardly surprising. What is perhaps more newsworthy is the specific names associated with those raided restaurants. One of those restaurants, Chef Geoff’s, is owned by Geoff Tracy, the husband of CBS News anchor and former vice presidential debate co-moderator Norah O’Donnell. Another of the raided restaurants is owned by former Biden White House Chief of Staff Jeff Zients, and a third is owned by the left-wing activist Spanish restaurateur, Jose Andres. Following the raids, a predictable debate has unfolded: Did the Trump administration "politicize" law enforcement by siccing ICE agents on White House critics and foes? Maybe; maybe not. Regardless, and with all due respect to the pearl-clutchers, permit a moment of unfettered bluntness: I simply do not care. And I highly suspect tens of millions of other Americans don’t care either. After years of politicized law enforcement, many of us are now sufficiently jaded so as to be well past the point of shock at new examples. Did the ICE raid pearl-clutchers express similar dismay when, in 2013, Obama-era IRS director Lois Lerner admitted to targeting conservative groups in an attempt to improperly strip them of their tax-exempt status? Did they care when, that same year, the elderly nuns of the Little Sisters of the Poor were forced to sue the Obama administration in order to not violate their faith and subsidize abortifacients? The answer to all these rhetorical questions is simple: no. Of course they didn’t care. So you’ll have to spare me for not viewing it as a particularly big deal that a few Washington restaurants had the feds show up to request immigration papers.

Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 7:00 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 2296K] reports the Trump administration has begun reopening immigrant detention facilities and shuttered prisons nationwide, the latest move in its effort to arrest, detain, and then deport illegal immigrants in the United States. Two prison corporations and the Federal Bureau of Prisons have moved quickly to prepare facilities to hold immigrants in virtually every region of the country. The move followed President Donald Trump’s recent comments over the weekend, in which he called for the infamous Alcatraz prison off the San Francisco coast to be reopened to detain "America’s most ruthless and violent offenders.” The Department of Homeland Security has maintained that the expansion of immigrant detention space is necessary to carry out Trump’s "largest-ever" deportation operation. However, the operation is moving slower than anticipated due to a lack of detention space, where immigrants are held as they go through legal proceedings before they can be deported. Documents that the American Civil Liberties Union obtained from Immigration and Customs Enforcement through a Freedom of Information Act request revealed plans to fully reopen or significantly expand ICE detention facilities in 10 states. "The documents received provide important details regarding what we have long feared — a massive expansion of ICE detention facilities nationwide in an effort to further the Trump administration’s dystopian plans to deport our immigrant neighbors and loved ones," Eunice Cho, senior staff attorney at the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said in a statement. "This expansion is a disastrous waste of billions of taxpayer dollars that will only line the coffers of the private prison industry." In a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Homeland Security hearing on Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem testified that her department needed up to 60,000 more beds to have adequate space to detain illegal immigrants. "We have the ability to go out and act quicker in this country, but need the space in which to hold them," Noem said.

Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 6:00 AM, John Schindler, 2296K] reports what are the terrorism and extremism risks to U.S. national security posed by legal immigration? Immigration and Customs Enforcement is insufficiently tasked as a counterterrorism agency, which is hardly its fault. ICE catches many more criminals and immigration fraudsters than it does foreign extremists and terrorists. Still, the second Trump administration has unquestionably broadcast the terrorism threat caused by immigration, legal or not. On his very first day back in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order protecting Americans "from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes.” The White House justified this with claims that not only do foreigners coming here threaten U.S. national security, but many are scammers, including thousands of foreigners fraudulently claiming federal benefits, including Medicaid (among them four persons on the terrorist watch list). Democrats have pooh-poohed all this as MAGA political theater, but there’s no doubt that the Biden administration witnessed a massive jump in the number of suspect foreigners entering this country with minimal, if any, security vetting. Even if the accusations of House Republicans last year that the Biden White House released at least hundreds of suspected foreign terrorists into the United States represent a worst-case scenario, the threat is real. But what about the terrorist-extremist threat from legal immigrants? This is a controversial subject, given political sensitivities, but counterterrorism professionals are keenly aware of this problem, which is hardly new. Ever since al Qaeda’s Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York City’s twin towers and the Pentagon, the federal government, led by ICE (which was created during post-9/11 security reforms), has made weeding out terrorists and extremists entering the U.S. a key mission.

NBC News [5/9/2025 2:39 PM, Matt Lavietes, 44742K] reports that police in Worcester, Massachusetts, held a young girl’s face to the ground as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained her mother on Thursday, video shows. The footage, captured by Telemundo Nueva Inglaterra, shows an ICE agent and police officer chasing after the girl, before three more officers surround her and the ICE agent backs away. The four police officers then bring the girl to the ground, with at least one grabbing her legs and forcing her to lose her balance, the video shows. Two women, one of whom is holding a newborn baby, then can be seen trying to help the girl. The teenage girl is screaming throughout the entirety of the incident, the video shows. The mother-daughter pair, another relative and a newborn baby were about to get into a vehicle when they were intercepted by ICE agents, neighbors told NBC Boston. The neighbors said the girl held to the ground was 16-years-old. It is unclear what the immigration statuses are of the individuals involved in the incident. ICE did not immediately return a request for comment on the incident. In Massachusetts, state law generally prevents local police from assisting ICE with immigration enforcement. The Worcester Police Department defended their conduct in a lengthy statement on Thursday. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Times [5/10/2025 3:32 AM, Tracey Tully, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Alyce McFadden, 330K] reports federal officials on Friday arrested Ras J. Baraka, the mayor of Newark, after a confrontation that also involved three members of Congress at a new immigration detention facility that is expected to play a central role in President Trump’s mass deportation effort. Mr. Baraka, a Democrat who is running for governor of New Jersey, was taken to a separate federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Newark and charged with trespassing. He was released roughly five hours later and was greeted by a crowd that had grown throughout the afternoon to more than 200 supporters and included candidates for New York City mayor and prominent labor leaders. Alina Habba, a lawyer for Mr. Trump who is now New Jersey’s interim U.S. attorney, said that Mr. Baraka had been arrested because he had “ignored multiple warnings from Homeland Security Investigations to remove himself,” and had chosen “to disregard the law.” Videos taken by protesters show Mr. Baraka being taken into custody in a public area outside the front entrance gates of the facility, which is known as Delaney Hall and is expected to hold up to 1,000 migrants at a time. Three members of New Jersey’s Democratic congressional delegation — Representatives Bonnie Watson Coleman, Rob Menendez and LaMonica McIver — were at the building on Friday for what they said was an oversight visit, and were allowed to enter. Federal officials described the lawmakers’ presence as a “stunt.” Mr. Baraka was allowed past the front gate but was not allowed to accompany the members of Congress inside, according to a video taken by Viri Martinez, an immigration activist who witnessed the arrest. “Congressmen are different, congresswomen are different,” a Homeland Security Investigations agent told the mayor, the video shows. The agent added: “That is the last warning. You will be placed under arrest.” After leaving the facility, the members of Congress joined Mr. Baraka in an area inside the front gate, according to the video. Ms. McIver said that Mr. Baraka then went to a public area where other protesters were gathered. “He walked himself out,” she said. Mr. Menendez can be heard on video telling Mr. Baraka: “They’re talking about coming back to arrest you.” The mayor replied: “I’m not on their property. They can’t come out on the street and arrest me.” Mr. Baraka, 55, was taken into custody by a team of masked federal agents wearing military fatigues while outside the gates in a driveway swarming with protesters and reporters. Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, called the episode a “bizarre political stunt” in a social media post. She said Ms. Watson Coleman and Mr. Menendez, along with “multiple protesters,” had “holed up in a guard shack.” Ms. McLaughlin shared a video of the mayor’s arrest that she said showed a “mob” assaulting ICE agents outside the gates. “This illegal breaking and entering of a detention facility puts the safety of our law enforcement agents and the detainees at risk,” Ms. McLaughlin said, despite there being no evidence that the lawmakers had entered the building illegally. Mr. Menendez said ICE agents had “put their hands on” Ms. Watson Coleman and Ms. McIver. “They feel no restraint on what they should be doing, and that was shown in broad daylight today,” Mr. Menendez said at a news conference shortly after Mr. Baraka’s arrest.

New York Times [5/10/2025 3:32 AM, Anemona Hartocollis and Jonah E. Bromwich, 330K] reports that, Rumeysa Ozturk, a Tufts University student, was released from immigration detention on Friday after a federal judge said her continued detention could potentially chill “the speech of the millions and millions of individuals in this country who are not citizens.” At a hearing at the Federal District Court in Vermont, the judge, William K. Sessions III, said Ms. Ozturk should be freed immediately: “Her continued detention cannot stand.” Ms. Ozturk, a doctoral student from Turkey, had been held at the immigration detention center in Basile, La., for six weeks. Her lawyers said she was expected to return home to Massachusetts on Saturday. There was a delay in Ms. Ozturk’s release on Friday as federal officials sought to outfit her with an ankle monitor. The move prompted Judge Sessions to issue a second order on Friday afternoon, clarifying that she was to be released immediately, without any form of Immigration and Customs monitoring. Ms. Ozturk, he wrote, was “not subject to any travel restrictions.” She was released around 5:15 Central Standard Time. On March 25, Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in masks and plainclothes surrounded her outside her home in Somerville, Mass., while she was on the phone with her mother. She was put on a plane to the detention center in Louisiana, and her friends, family and lawyers didn’t know where she was for 24 hours, they said. Her arrest led to public outrage at her treatment and criticism that the government is abusing the immigration system to deport international students, in the guise of combating antisemitism. In seeking her release, her lawyers have accused the government of detaining her in retaliation for speech that is protected by the First Amendment. The main evidence against her appears to be an essay critical of Israel that she helped to write in a Tufts student newspaper last year. They also said the conditions at the detention center were exacerbating her chronic asthma and preventing her from carrying out her academic work.

Newsweek [5/9/2025 5:01 PM, Billal Rahman, 52220K] reports the son of a Vietnam War veteran has been detained by federal immigration authorities, leaving his family devastated. Blong Yang, a longtime resident of the United States and the son of a war hero who fought alongside U.S. forces during the "Secret War" in Laos, was apprehended by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on April 30 while on his way to work in Lakeland, Minnesota. In a statement to Newsweek, a DHS spokesperson said Blong was a "violent convicted criminal." "In 1996, he was convicted of theft and served probation after the second offense. In 1996, Yang was convicted of carrying a concealed weapon and again sentenced to probation. In 1997, Yang committed 4th degree sexual assault and sentenced to 30 days’ incarceration and 18 months’ probation. He was issued final order of removal was on April 19. 2023," said Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the Department of Homeland Security.

Washington Post [5/9/2025 10:00 AM, Jeremy Roebuck, 31735K] reports the administration views Hendrix’s district as a "favorable venue," American Civil Liberties Union attorney Tim Macdonald alleged at a recent court hearing in Denver. He and other immigrant advocates say the rush of relocations to the Bluebonnet Detention Facility in Anson, Texas, has forced targeted Venezuelans to contest their removals in a court they see as ideologically aligned with the president. "What the government was doing," Macdonald said in the hearing, "was finding Venezuelan men, rounding them up and shipping them to the Northern District of Texas.” The Department of Homeland Security declined to answer questions about how many Venezuelan migrants are housed at Bluebonnet. It also would not say how many had been moved there from other facilities in recent weeks or why those transfers were made. For now, the Supreme Court has indefinitely paused all Alien Enemies Act deportations in Hendrix’s district as it weighs whether migrants there are being given adequate opportunity to challenge their designations as "alien enemies." The administration does not appear to have deported any migrants under the law from anywhere in the country since it first sent more than 130 Venezuelans to a notorious prison in El Salvador in March. But the justices could at any time lift the restriction they imposed on April 19, potentially clearing the way for a rash of swift deportations of Venezuelans detained in North Texas. In one instance, a Philadelphia man was transferred to Bluebonnet in apparent violation of a court order requiring that he be kept in Pennsylvania as his case played out there. The judge in that case has not accused U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement of purposefully defying her order, and the agency maintains its disregard of her instructions was inadvertent. A Washington Post review of court records revealed other instances in which migrants detained in California and other parts of Texas were moved to Bluebonnet, in some cases just hours before their attorneys could seek relief from courts in the jurisdictions where they were originally held.

Houston Chronicle [5/9/2025 3:51 PM, Tanya Babbar, 1769K] reports a Houston-based airline struck a deal with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to operate deportation flights in April, prompting Houston residents to protest outside of the airline’s headquarters this week, joining demonstrations nationwide. Starting May 12 as part of the deal with ICE, three Avelo Airline flights out of Arizona will be used as charter flights for deportation, NPR reported at the end of April. The company’s CEO, Andrew Levy, said in a statement to NPR that while he understands deportation is a "sensitive" subject, the deal will help the company stay financially stable.

NBC News [5/9/2025 9:07 AM, Nicole Acevedo, 44742K] reports a girl recovering from a rare brain tumor celebrated her 11th birthday Sunday, hundreds of miles away from everything she’s known — her friends at school, her community at church, her home. She’s one of four U.S. citizen children who were sent to Mexico from Texas three months ago when immigration authorities deported their undocumented parents. earing for their safety after the mixed-immigration-status family was taken to an area in Mexico that’s been known for kidnapping U.S. citizens, they haven’t given up on being able to return to the U.S. — primarily to continue the girl’s medical treatment. On Friday morning, the family is traveling to Monterrey to meet with members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. They hope that sharing their immigration plight motivates legislators to advocate for their return under humanitarian parole, according to a family representative. Attorneys for the family filed a complaint with the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Civil Rights and Civil Liberties in March requesting a probe into abuses they say the family faced in U.S. detention. In the filing, they also requested immigration authorities grant humanitarian parole to the undocumented parents, the girl and one of her siblings. But that DHS office, which protected the civil rights of both immigrants and U.S. citizens, was dismantled shortly after the attorneys filed the complaint — forcing them to refile it with the Office of Inspector General at the Department of Health and Human Services. They have not yet received a response. A DHS spokesperson previously told NBC News that reports of the family’s situation are “inaccurate” and declined to speak on the specifics of the case, citing privacy reasons. They said in a statement that when “someone is given expedited removal orders and chooses to disregard them, they will face the consequences.” In response to a similar but separate case involving the removal of U.S. citizen children in connection with their mother’s deportation, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Thursday: “The narrative that DHS is deporting American children is false and irresponsible reporting,” adding that immigration authorities ask mothers if they wish to be removed with their children or if they want the children to be placed in the safe custody of someone the parent designates.

(B) CBS Mornings [5/9/2025 10:25 AM, Staff] reports that last week, ICE requested ten beds at the Gallatin County Detention Center as a holding facility. The meeting welcomed nearly 30 community members all speaking out on the recent proposal from ICE to use space. After a lengthy county commission meeting on Tuesday and bombardment of calls and emails, the proposal has stalled.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/9/2025 9:00 AM, Alexandra Mendoza, 1682K] reports a more than century-old San Diego Jesuit parish has joined other churches and a farmworker organization across the country in a federal lawsuit challenging the Trump administration’s willingness to bring its immigration crackdown into so-called "sensitive locations." "I feel like the only effective tool with this administration is lawsuits," said the Rev. Scott Santarosa from Our Lady of Guadalupe, the Logan Heights parish. "That doesn’t tend to be the church’s first method of defense, but I think with this administration, that’s what we have to do." The legal action, filed in Oregon federal court, comes after the Trump administration in January rescinded a yearslong policy that limited immigration arrests in places previously considered off-limits, such as schools, hospitals and churches, with certain exceptions. Plaintiffs include the Oregon-based community organization Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste; the Augustana Lutheran Church, also from Oregon; the San Francisco Interfaith Council in California; and the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Florida. The complaint says that the government’s actions violate the First Amendment as well as the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The suit names the heads of the Department of Homeland Security, Customs and Border Protection, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement as defendants.

NC Newsline [5/9/2025 11:07 AM, Ariana Figueroa] report that the Trump administration Thursday made an emergency request to the U.S. Supreme Court to allow the deportation of more than half a million immigrants granted humanitarian protections under the Biden administration. A federal judge in Massachusetts in April blocked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from ending the humanitarian parole program for 532,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. An appeals court rejected the request from the Trump administration to stay the lower court’s order. In the filing to the high court, Solicitor General D. John Sauer argues that the Immigration Nationality Act bars judicial review of discretionary decisions, such as humanitarian parole. Sauer adds that Noem terminated the program because it does not align with the interests of the Trump administration. "The district court’s order stymies the government’s ability to terminate parole grants that the Secretary has determined undermine U.S. interests, and thus it inhibits the government’s pursuit of its foreign policy goals," according to the brief. Presidents for decades have used their parole authority to allow for migrants to obtain protected status.

Washington Examiner [5/10/2025 6:00 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 2296K] reports that, U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the country’s largest law enforcement agency, put out a notice to senior employees shortly after President Donald Trump’s return to Washington that listed dozens of diversity, equity, and inclusion terms banned from government communications. A document obtained by the Washington Examiner on Friday revealed that CBP personnel were told not to use three dozen terms related to DEI following Trump’s executive actions on the matter. Select CBP personnel were told to remove references to the terms from existing documents and not to use them going forward in communications, including government social media accounts or press releases. The terms included: Affirmative action; DEI; DEIA; Diversity & Inclusion; Diversity and Inclusion; Diversity Equity & Inclusion; Diversity Equity and Inclusion; Diversity Equity Inclusion; Diversity Inclusion; Diversity, Equity & Inclusion; Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Diversity, Equity Inclusion; Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion; Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion; Diversity, Equity, Inclusion; Equity & Diversity; Equity and Diversity; Gender Equality; Gender Equity; IDDP; Implicit Bias; Inclusion Diversity and Equity; Inclusion, Diversity and Equity; Inclusion, Diversity, Equity; Inclusive Diversity; LGBT; LGBTQ; LGBTQ+; LGBTQI; LGBTQIA; Racial Equality; Racial Equity; Social Justice; STEER; STRIDE; and Unconscious Bias. CBP declined to confirm or deny the publishing of the document to staff or the precise date that the notice was issued. "CBP is following President Trump’s Executive Order to end discriminatory DEI-related material and programs. CBP does not confirm/deny or comment on information that was purportedly leaked or otherwise obtained unofficially," CBP said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the top Democrat on the House Homeland Security Committee, reasoned that it was a waste of federal employees’ time to have to go back through old documents and remove certain words and terms. "Forcing agencies to do a manual search of all of its documents for right-wing buzzwords does nothing to improve our security," Thompson wrote in a statement to the Washington Examiner. "With all the chaos it’s causing, the Trump administration would be wise to not waste time on pointless culture wars.” Upon taking office in January, President Donald Trump took various executive actions targeting DEI and accessibility initiatives that were expanded under the Biden administration. Simon Hankinson from the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank in Washington said the Trump administration’s intent was to make federal agencies hire and operate on the basis of merit. "We’ve got now this entrenched bureaucracy of DEI in federal agencies that is woker than a college campus and sees it as their mission to discriminate against certain groups in order to achieve equal outcomes," Hankinson, senior research fellow at Heritage’s border security and immigration center, said in a phone call. "So I think the purpose of this is to try to eradicate this race- and sex-based preference system throughout the federal government and go back to meritocracy and equal opportunity.”

Los Angeles Times [5/9/2025 6:00 AM, Rachel Uranga, 13342K] reports two advocacy groups are suing the Trump administration to halt the use of new rules they say have kept migrant children in federal custody and separated from their families for months as the children’s mental health deteriorates. The National Center for Youth Law and Democracy Forward filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia on behalf of a Los Angeles-based immigrant advocacy group along with two siblings in California foster care, a teenager who gave birth while being detained and other children who crossed the Southern border without a legal custodian and have been in federal programs for prolonged periods. The suit names the Department of Health and Human Services and its Office of Refugee Resettlement, which administers programs to care for the children until they are released to sponsors, often family, in the United States. HHS did not respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 8:00 AM, John Miano, 2296K] reports graduating seniors who were told they should study technology fields, such as computers, are receiving a nasty surprise as they discover the jobs simply are not out there and that they face competition from foreign workers admitted under a variety of immigration programs, most conspicuously, the notorious H-1B visa program. The very purpose of the H-1B visa is to replace American workers with cheap, foreign labor. No other description of H-1B fits what Congress has actually enacted. In theory, the H-1B program requires employers to pay the foreign workers at least the prevailing wage for the occupation and location, but in practice, the lobbyist-written H-1B statutes allow the employer to determine the prevailing wage. The Department of Labor is effectively required to approve all employer claims within seven days as long as the form is filled out correctly. Under this "trust me" system, the claimed prevailing wage is about the bottom 1/6th of U.S. wages in most cases and is rarely at or above the actual prevailing wage. To make this system for low wages perfect, the Department of Labor is also prohibited from reviewing employer prevailing wage claims after they have been approved. Furthermore, the Department of Labor is prohibited from acting on information provided by DHS received as part of the visa application process. Financial analysts boast that U.S. workers are paid 25%–30% more than their H-1B counterparts. The H-1B program has an even greater effect than direct competition with U.S. workers for jobs. The H-1B program is largely responsible for creating the business of offshoring technology jobs to other countries.

New York Post [5/9/2025 5:15 PM, James Franey, 54903K] reports a glamorous, jet-setting Miami hedge funder known for her Instagram selfies has been banned from US soil for five years — after she admitted to immigration officials that she had been working in the country illegally, The Post has learned. Jasmina Midzic — listed as a managing director at Typhon Capital Management with a habit of posting photos of herself dressed in pricey outfits and skimpy bikinis in exotic locales — was put on a plane back to London from Los Angeles this past Sunday, sources close to the case told The Post. That was after the 36-year-old Croatian national, who holds British permanent residency, made a botched attempt last Saturday to attend the Milken Institute Global Conference, an LA summit for the financial elite whose guests included Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Elon Musk and Jill Biden. Over the weekend, she confessed to authorities that she had been illicitly working in her $13,000-a-month job for her Miami Beach-based firm on a visitor visa, multiple senior officials said. But Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told The Post that officers booted Midzic because she "had violated the terms of her admission under her B1/B2 visa."

Daily Mail [5/10/2025 2:25 AM, Bethan Sexton, 126906K] reports a glamorous Miami hedge fund manager has been barred from the US after allegedly lying to immigration officials. Jasmina Midzic, a managing director at Typhon Capital Management, was detained for 26 hours at Los Angeles Airport on Sunday, the New York Post reports. The Croatian national had jetted in from London, but was put back on a plane to the UK after being denied entry to the US, per the outlet. Officials claim she confessed to illegally working her $13,000-a-month job on a tourist visa. Midzic strenuously denied any wrongdoing when contacted by the New York Post. ‘My friends are judges and prosecutors in the US, I would not break the law,’ she said. ‘This is horribly violating my rights on so many levels.’. Midzic, 36, was on her way to attend the Milken Institute Global Conference, attended by the likes of Elon Musk and Jill Biden when her travel plans were derailed. ‘They didn’t listen because I am a white European and I work for a hedge fund,’ she told the Post. ‘They got very offended that I don’t want American citizenship.’. The financier was travelling to the US to try and raise capital for Typhon, according to those with knowledge of the matter. Midzic previously worked as a manager for New York City-based JurisTrade, according to her LinkedIn. Her boss James Koutoulas, who founded both JurisTrade and Typhon, insisted that Midzic has not violated any immigration laws. ‘If they want to smear her, then I will see them in court,’ Koutoulas told the Post. Midzic’s corporate biography on the Typhon website states that she gained, ‘significant international finance experience working in New York, London, Zug, Dubai, and Miami’. While she has since switched to a private Instagram, evidence of her jet-set lifestyle is still evident on other social media pages. Her Facebook is peppered with images of her hitting the slopes in the French Alps, lounging at the beach and popping bottles of champagne. Typhon manages around $250 million worth of assets, according to Business Insider. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, told The Post Midzic ‘had violated the terms of her admission under her B1/B2 visa.’. ‘Immigration laws must be followed — those seeking to work in the United States must do so through legal and lawful means or face the consequences,’ McLaughlin said.

NBC News [5/9/2025 8:18 PM, Abigail Williams and Gabe Gutierrez, 44742K] reports a group of white South Africans will be arriving in Washington, D.C., on Monday by way of a State Department-chartered plane to be resettled in the U.S. as refugees, a source familiar with their arrival told NBC News. Their resettlement comes even though President Donald Trump suspended the State Department’s refugee admissions program through an executive order on the first day of his second term. The group’s scheduled arrival as the first white South Africans to enter the U.S. as refugees was first reported by The New York Times on Friday. Trump signed an order on Jan. 20 that said the U.S. "lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees.” But after a public dispute with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa a few weeks later over his signing of a land seizure law, Trump issued a second executive order both eliminating aid for South Africa and granting an exception for "Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation. "Trump adviser Elon Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa, has described the country as having "racist ownership laws," accusing its government of failing to stop what he has referred to as a "genocide" against white farmers. The South African government expressed its concerns to the Trump administration regarding the refugee status granted to its citizens in a Friday phone call between South African Deputy Minister Alvin Botes and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau. According to a South African readout of the call, Botes disputed the Trump administration’s position that the white South Africans are refugees, adding that the "allegations of discrimination are unfounded.”

Reported similarly:
(B) Katy Tur Reports [5/9/2025 2:17 PM, Staff]

Washington Post [5/9/2025 1:25 PM, Teo Armus, 31735K] reports that months after the Trump administration ground U.S. refugee admissions to a halt, suspending a program that lets in thousands of people fleeing war or political persecution, it is preparing to restart that effort — but only for one group: White South Africans. Plans are underway to fly approximately 60 Afrikaners to Dulles International Airport on a State Department-chartered plane Monday, with federal and Virginia officials preparing to receive them in a ceremonial news conference, according to documents and emails obtained by The Washington Post, as well as three government officials familiar with the preparations. The arriving families, who are part of a group that President Donald Trump has said faces racial discrimination, will then be resettled outside Virginia in 10 states, according to those familiar with the plans, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to share details of the preparations. “The U.S. government is prioritizing the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees, and [the Office of Refugee Resettlement] is coordinating services to ensure they receive the support they need from the very initial days of their arrival,” Miro Marinovich, who oversees the Refugee Program Bureau at the Department of Health and Human Services, wrote in an email to other federal officials Wednesday. “The first flight of Afrikaner refugees is set to arrive on Monday, May 12.”

Breitbart [5/10/2025 1:13 AM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2923K] reports Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a warning to illegal aliens thinking of crossing into the United States through land controlled by the U.S. military, telling them they "will be charged.” In a video on X, Hegseth revealed that the Department of Defense (DOD) had 2,000 troops patrolling the National Defense Area and added that more than 1300 signs were placed in the National Defense Area. "Two weeks ago, we were down on the border when we established the first National Defense Area — basically, think about the border, similar to a military installation," Hegseth explained. "If you trespass, you will be charged.” "Well, since then, we’ve got 2,000 troops patrolling that area," Hegseth added. "We’ve put over 1300 signs up in that National Defense Area, including a second National Defense Area — so, the border space that DOD is allowed to take actions inside, is growing and growing.” Hegseth continued to explain that "combined charges" for illegal aliens entering the U.S. through the National Defense Area and damaging government property could lead to "a total of up to ten years in prison.” "So far, DOJ has already charged more than 100 illegal aliens with these crimes — that number will continue to climb. The number of National Defense Areas will continue to climb, the barb wire will climb, the troops will climb because we’re going to get 100 percent operational control of the border," Hegseth added. "And, when you cross illegal, you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law by the Department of Justice.” Hegseth’s video comes after President Donald Trump last month ordered the U.S. Armed Forces to take control of public land along the U.S.-Mexico border as part of an effort for protect the southern border from illegal aliens attempting to enter the U.S. unlawfully.

CBS News [5/9/2025 8:00 AM, Melissa Quinn, 51661K] reports a group of House and Senate Democrats is urging top Trump administration officials to use the recent designation of Latin American cartels and gangs as foreign terrorist organizations to take action to curtail the flow of American-made guns across the southern border. The 14 Democratic lawmakers said in a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Attorney General Pam Bondi that the designation unlocks additional legal tools that would allow the administration to disrupt the cartels’ financial networks and impose harsher penalties on entities that provide material support to them. "If you want to really tackle the fentanyl trade, you have to tackle the source of the power of the people who are involved in that trade, and there’s no way to do that without addressing the guns that they receive from American-made manufacturers and dealers," Rep. Dan Goldman, a New York Democrat who led the letter, told CBS News. "It’s a choice I would say, which is you can’t actually successfully dismantle the cartels without also dismantling the gun trafficking that goes southward that allows them to send the fentanyl trafficking northward." The Democrats urged the Departments of Homeland Security, State and Justice to take "immediate" steps to stem the flow of firearms manufactured in the U.S. into Mexico by boosting interagency cooperation to dismantle smuggling rings that facilitate gun trafficking; expanding inspections at border crossings; increasing law enforcement efforts against straw purchased and gun dealers that provide material support to smugglers; and bolstering intelligence-sharing between the U.S. and Mexican authorities and other partners to target weapons traffickers.

El Diario de Sonora [5/9/2025 9:05 AM, Nicol Matuz Scott, 94K] reports the migration landscape at the southern border of the United States has undergone a significant shift, sparking a debate that transcends numbers and reaches the realm of ethics and humanity; unexpected changes in policies for caring for vulnerable migrants are generating a wave of reactions. The crux of the matter lies in a May 5 memo signed by Pete Flores , acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection (CBP). This document declares obsolete four policies implemented during the Biden administration, designed to protect particularly sensitive groups: pregnant women, children, the sick, and the elderly. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has expressed its deep concern. “These policies included providing water and diapers to infants in CBP care and guidelines to expedite the release of individuals in dangerous medical circumstances to medical care,” the organization stated. The ACLU cites landmark cases, such as that of a woman who gave birth at a Border Patrol station, or the tragic death of Anadith Reyes , an 8-year-old girl who died after a week in custody without receiving necessary medical care. CBP, for its part, argues that personnel must follow the "National Transportation and Escort Standards" and comply with the "Flores Settlement Agreement" regarding minors. However, the controversy remains, raising serious questions about the well-being of the most vulnerable migrants .

Telemundo51 [5/9/2025 10:49 AM, Staff, 171K] reports Palm Beach authorities are investigating an apparent landing of immigrants in the early hours of Friday near N. Ocean Boulevard and Sunrise Avenue. Police said around 3 a.m., an alert was received about a stranded boat in the vicinity of The Breakers hotel. Upon arrival, the officers arrested 10 people, who were handed over to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Although the origin of the migrants is still unknown, the police indicated that investigations are continuing and do not rule out that there are at least two more people involved who have not yet been located. Of the detained group, two people were taken to a hospital with no life-threatening injuries.

Detroit Free Press [5/9/2025 4:59 PM, Christina Hall, 4124K] reports a truck driver trying to get into Canada was stopped with about $3 million worth of suspected cocaine at the Ambassador Bridge, according to federal officials. Gurshinder Singh was charged with possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance in a criminal complaint May 9 in U.S. District Court in Detroit. He made an initial appearance and was temporarily detained. A detention hearing was set for May 12, according to court records. Singh tried to exit the U.S. to Canada via the bridge early May 9 and was found with just over 173 kilograms of suspected cocaine in his tractor-trailer truck, according to an affidavit. The cocaine, about 380 pounds, was discovered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Detroit Contraband Enforcement Team as it was conducting outbound enforcement operations at the bridge at 6:15 a.m. Eight Home Depot boxes were removed from the trailer passenger-side tool compartment and the individual bundles were weighed. Narcotics testing was done on three of the individually wrapped bundles from three separate boxes, with the three bundles returning positive results for cocaine, according to the affidavit. This is believed to be the fourth suspected bulk cocaine load intercepted by customs and border protection near the bridge since March 21.

Breitbart [5/9/2025 8:26 AM, Bob Price and Randy Clark, 2923K] reports enforcement actions by the Trump administration continue to yield record-shattering declines in the number of migrants attempting to enter the United States from Mexico. The number of apprehensions in April fell by nearly 13 percent from the previous month and more than 95 percent compared to last year. During the first week of May, agents along the entire southwest border apprehended approximately 270 per day. “From chaos to control,” Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks said in a post on social media.” In just 100 days, President Trump and Secretary Noem delivered on the promise to provide the most secure border in history.” In April, Border Patrol agents encountered nearly 6,300 migrants who illegally crossed the southwest border from Mexico into the U.S., according to unofficial Border Patrol reports reviewed by Breitbart Texas. This is down from nearly 184,000 in Apr 2023 and 129,000 one year ago. During the first week of May, agents continue to see record-low border crossing numbers, with the apprehension of just over 2,000 migrants along the southwest border. This is down by nearly 93 percent from the same period last year.

FedScoop [5/9/2025 5:09 PM, Rebecca Heilweil, 56K] reports a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation this week that would scale back the Transportation Security Administration’s facial recognition program, giving travelers the right to not have their faces scanned when passing through airports. The lawmakers say their push for the Traveler Privacy Protection Act comes as the Department of Homeland Security component seeks to expand the use of facial recognition at hundreds of airports. “Folks don’t want a national surveillance state, but that’s exactly what the TSA’s unchecked expansion of facial recognition technology is leading us to,” Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., a co-sponsor of the bill and a longtime critic of the government’s facial recognition program, said in a statement. Specifically, the bill would require the TSA to clearly inform passengers of their right to not participate in the DHS facial recognition program and bar the agency from providing worse treatment to passengers that choose not to participate. The legislation would also forbid the TSA from storing traveler facial recognition data indefinitely and from using the technology to target people or conduct mass surveillance. “The TSA subjects countless law-abiding Americans to excessive facial recognition screenings as they travel, invading passengers’ privacy without even making it clear that they can opt out of the screening,” Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., another co-sponsor of the legislation, said in a statement.

Blaze [5/9/2025 10:00 AM, Staff, 1668K] reports the REAL ID Act is now in effect, and some Americans are concerned about what it means for their freedom — and after everything the country has been put through over the last five years, their fears are not unfounded. The new rule mandates that U.S. travelers present a federally compliant ID, such as a REAL ID-compliant driver’s license or passport, to board domestic flights and access certain federal facilities. Those without compliant IDs will no longer be accepted at TSA checkpoints, potentially causing delays or denial of entry for those without proper identification. They may also face additional screening or be barred from flying. "If you plan on traveling, we need your help to prevent delays and to prove your identity. Get a REAL ID. Starting May 7, you will need a REAL ID to travel by air or to visit federal buildings in the United States. These IDs keep our country safe because they help prevent fraud and they enhance security," United States Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said in a statement. "Please do your part to protect our country. Go today, and don’t delay," she added.

AOL [5/9/2025 12:31 PM, Matthew Petti, 33298K] report that the government sent out a lot of mixed messages the week of December 16, 2024. In response to various apparent drone sightings in New Jersey, then-President Joe Biden said on December 17 that there was "nothing nefarious" in the sky. That same day, members of Congress came out of a classified briefing saying that the alleged drone sightings posed no threat to the public. Then, on December 18, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) imposed large flight restrictions backed by "deadly force" over New Jersey, and authorities announced they were investigating drone sightings over military bases across the country. New Jerseyans would just have to take it on faith from the authorities that there was nothing to worry about, while the authorities themselves acted worried. But the day before the FAA no-fly zones were imposed, the federal government had already internally debunked some of the most alarming reports. The explanation was neither nefarious nor too sensitive to share with the public. On December 17, 2024, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) presented an internal slideshow demonstrating that three alleged drone incidents—one during a medevac flight, one over the ocean, and another near a nuclear plant—were simply normal air traffic. Another report of a "drone" spraying mysterious mist could be explained by wing-tip condensation on a small airplane. The presentation included maps matching flight logs to specific sightings. The Department of Homeland Security released the slideshow this week in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Wall Street Journal [5/9/2025 9:24 PM, Alison Sider and Tali Arbel, 646K] reports a technology outage took out radar and communications for Newark Liberty International Airport’s controllers briefly Friday morning, the second such breakdown in two weeks at a heavily trafficked U.S. transit hub. The outage at the Philadelphia air-traffic control facility occurred Friday at 3:55 a.m. ET, the Federal Aviation Administration said, and lasted for around 90 seconds. A controller told a FedEx pilot before 4 a.m.: “Our scopes just went black again. If you care about this, contact your airline and try to get some pressure from them to fix this stuff,” according to audio of air-traffic control. “The flight made it safely to its destination without issue,” FedEx said in a written statement. “We appreciate the professionalism and actions of our crew members and the controllers in safely addressing this challenging situation.” Controllers also lost contact with planes and their radar screens went dark because of a technology outage in late April. The second recent snafu illustrates the persistent challenges that have plagued the facility, which oversees arrivals at Newark. The FAA has said it is speeding up technology fixes for Newark’s air-traffic control operation. About a third of flights flying into and out of Newark airport Friday were delayed as of 3 p.m., according to flight tracker FlightAware. More than 10% of flights both departing and arriving at the airport were canceled.

The Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 3:43 PM, Anna Giaritelli, 2296K] reports Cameron Hamilton, the recently terminated chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was let go suddenly this week for undercutting President Donald Trump while testifying before Congress, according to the White House. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters during a press briefing Friday afternoon that comments Hamilton made while on Capitol Hill Wednesday cost him his job. Hamilton was fired less than one day after he told House lawmakers on the Appropriations Committee for Homeland Security that he did not believe the agency should be abolished. The remark marked a break from Trump, who has previously called for the agency’s dismantling. Hamilton previewed changes he would make to the agency, including having local and state governments lead disaster response efforts, using innovative methods to reach survivors, and enhancing FEMA’s internal operational readiness. The Daily Caller [5/9/2025 11:29 AM, Derek Vanbuskirk, 33298K] reports Democratic Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut asked Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem about the future of FEMA in an oversight hearing Tuesday with the House Appropriations Committee. Noem responded that "FEMA as it exists today should be eliminated." DeLauro, unsatisfied with Noem’s answer, calling it "confusing and inadequate," put Hamilton on the spot by asking for a "clear answer." "I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency," Hamilton responded. Hamilton followed up by saying FEMA’s future "is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body." The next day, Hamilton was fired under the direction of Noem, Reuters reported Thursday. The dissonance in Noem’s and Hamilton’s statements seems to hinge on the interpretation of what she meant by "as it exists today." In the hearing, Hamilton said the reason he was hired was to "refocus this organization in order to better serve the American people under President Trump’s mandate."

Reported similarly:
The Hill [5/9/2025 9:38 PM, Rachel Frazin, 12829K]
HSToday [5/9/2025 4:41 PM, Kalyna White, 38K]

(B) The National News Desk [5/9/2025 8:35 AM, Staff] reports FEMA’s acting administrator is out after telling members of Congress the agency should not be eliminated. Cameron Hamilton had been serving as FEMA’s acting administrator since President Trump took office. The statement from Hamilton is a break with the president and the administration that has been highly critical of emergency management in the country. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also told lawmakers this week that she and the president believe FEMA should be eliminated. David Richardson, an assistant secretary in Homeland Security’s countering weapons of mass destruction office, was named new FEMA acting administrator.

Politico [5/9/2025 2:36 PM, Thomas Frank, 2100K] reports the new head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency told staffers Friday morning that he will personally make all decisions at the agency, including those related to disaster payments, according to a former FEMA official who listened to the virtual meeting. “I don’t know if that will last for hours, days or weeks, but I need to get a handle on what’s going on in the agency,” FEMA acting Administrator David Richardson said at an all-staff meeting, according to the former official, who was granted anonymity to discuss internal communications. Richardson succeeded Cameron Hamilton, who was fired Thursday after leading the disaster agency for 3½ months. Richardson’s focus on making every decision threatens to drastically slow down FEMA operations, including the payment of disaster aid and grants to states, the former official said. Agency leaders have typically delegated such decisions. “It’ll slow down everything. How can everything funnel through one person? He will have to figure out who he can trust and delegate some authority,” the former official told POLITICO’s E&E News. Richardson also said Friday he would approve all news releases and added, “I and I alone will speak on behalf of FEMA.” At one point, he told staff, “I’m not going to start out by saying I’m honored to serve. I’m here to do a job.” Department of Homeland Security officials had planned to fire Hamilton on Wednesday morning, hours before he was to testify before the House Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, according to a person with knowledge of the events. When Hamilton arrived at FEMA headquarters that morning, his computer was not working, another person with knowledge of the events said. He then went to Capitol Hill, where at one point during his testimony he seemed to contradict President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, both of whom had previously indicated that FEMA might be disbanded. “I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency,” Hamilton told the House panel. The remark was widely interpreted as the catalyst for his firing the next day at DHS headquarters. But the plan to fire Hamilton on Wednesday morning appears to confirm a report by NBC News in which DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said his termination was not in response to his statements to the subcommittee.

Reuters [5/9/2025 1:44 PM, Leah Douglas and Nathan Layne, 75858K] reports David Richardson, the new head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, told staff on Friday he will "run right over" anyone that resists changes and that all delegation of authority in the agency is immediately suspended. Richardson spoke one day after he was appointed to replace acting FEMA chief Cameron Hamilton, who was ousted by Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after telling a congressional hearing he did not support eliminating the agency. President Donald Trump and Noem have called for the agency to be shrunk or even abolished, arguing that many of its functions can be carried out by the states, a stance that is already leading to decreased federal aid for disasters. Richardson, a former Marine artillery officer and combat veteran, told staff in an all-hands call that was heavy on references to his military experience, that all decisions, including those on spending, would go through him. "I, and I alone in FEMA, speak for FEMA. I’m here to carry out the president’s intent for FEMA," Richardson, who was most recently assistant secretary for DHS’ office for countering weapons of mass destruction, told the staff. Standing behind a lectern and speaking in a forceful tone, Richardson said in his experience carrying out reforms that roughly 20% of an organization will resist. "Obfuscation, delay, undermining. If you’re one of those 20% of people and you think those tactics and techniques are going to help you, they will not, because I will run right over you," Richardson said. "Don’t get in my way ... I know all the tricks.” The leadership change comes at a time when the agency, which is in charge of coordinating the federal government’s response to disasters, is helping states and local communities prepare for the onset of hurricane season on June 1. CBS News [5/9/2025 5:33 PM, Nicole Sganga, 51661K] Video HERE reports that when told about Richardsdon’s meeting, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin responded, "sounds like a productive first meeting." Richardson was appointed to lead FEMA after Cameron Hamilton, the former acting administrator, was fired Thursday morning, one day after publicly breaking with the Trump administration’s expressed intent to eliminate the nation’s disaster relief agency. "I do not believe it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency," Hamilton testified Tuesday before a House Appropriations Committee hearing on Capitol Hill. His dismissal comes roughly three weeks before the start of the Atlantic hurricane season. [Editorial note: consult video at source link for video]

Reported similarly:
Bloomberg Law [5/9/2025 11:07 AM, Ellen M. Gilmer and Jennifer Hijazi, 1085K]
AP [5/9/2025 3:08 PM, Gabriela Aoun Angueira and Rebecca Santana, 1682K]
NewsMax [5/9/2025 3:48 PM, Jim Mishler, 4998K]

FOX News [5/9/2025 1:03 PM, Diana Stancy, 46189K] report that while President Donald Trump wants to gut the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are seeking to elevate FEMA to a Cabinet-level agency. FEMA is currently housed under the Department of Homeland Security, but the House effort would solidify FEMA as its own separate agency, according to a discussion draft of the legislation released Thursday. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee Chairman Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., and committee ranking member Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Wash., are spearheading the legislation. Other proposals included in the draft legislation are instructing the Office of Management and Budget to create a centralized website tracking disaster assistance recovery across the federal government, and allowing FEMA to foot the bill for repairs to homes suffering damage in disasters. Currently, FEMA only covers expenses that make a home livable following disasters. While Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem have voiced support for eradicating FEMA, the former acting administrator of FEMA, Cameron Hamilton, warned against gutting the agency on Wednesday. "I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency," Hamilton told lawmakers on the House Appropriations committee on Wednesday. "Having said that, I’m not in a position to make a decision," Hamilton said. "That is a conversation that should be had between the president of the United States and this governing body."

Axios [5/9/2025 3:29 PM, Carlie Kollath Wells, Alex Fitzpatrick, 13163K] reports FEMA’s leadership has changed again, less than a month before the start of Atlantic hurricane season. It raises questions for Louisiana and other coastal states that rely heavily on federal help after disasters. Cameron Hamilton, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, was fired this week, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson confirmed to CNN. David Richardson is the new acting administrator, effective immediately, CNN is reporting. The change came a day after Hamilton told federal lawmakers that he does not support dismantling FEMA, an idea floated by the Trump administration. "A month before hurricane season hits, Trump is continuing his war against critical disaster aid," U.S. Rep. Troy Carter Sr., a Democrat, wrote in a statement to Axios. "Protecting people and their homes during and after natural disasters shouldn’t be partisan." He joined fellow Democratic U.S. Rep. Cleo Fields last month in sending a letter to President Trump and DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, expressing "profound concerns" with eliminating aid via FEMA. Fields, in an interview Friday with Axios New Orleans, said, "It’s unfortunate that we don’t have a director at a very vulnerable time, especially for Louisiana." Louisiana’s congressional delegation has called for reform and other changes instead of eliminating the agency.

Houston Chronicle [5/9/2025 11:58 AM, Roberto Villalpando, 1769K] reports major changes made this week by the Trump administration at the nation’s top weather and disaster response agencies could have an outsized effect on Houston and Southeast Texas as we prepare for a busy hurricane season that starts in a few weeks. The interim head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which provides disaster relief and assists local and state agencies with response and recovery efforts, was ousted Thursday after testifying before Congress that he did not agree with proposals to dismantle the organization. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration on Thursday announced it would no longer update its "billion-dollar weather and climate disasters" database that has allowed the public to track the cost of extreme weather and climate events. As regional National Weather Service offices across Texas grapple with staffing cuts and unplanned vacancies, three Houston-area members of Congress are seeking answers from administration officials. Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL who has only run FEMA for a few months, had told a House Appropriations subcommittee on Capitol Hill Wednesday that he was concerned that the agency had "evolved into an overextended federal bureaucracy, attempting to manage every type of emergency no matter how minor," the Associated Press reported. But Hamilton said he did not agree with President Donald Trump’s proposals to end FEMA. "I do not believe it is in the best interest of the American people to eliminate the Federal Emergency Management Agency," he told Congress. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, named David Richardson, a former Marine Corps officer who served in Afghanistan, Iraq and Africa, to run FEMA for now. He had been serving as the DHS assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. The upheaval in leadership, as well as job cuts, at FEMA comes as the nation, led by Florida and Texas, has been experiencing increasing numbers of large-scale natural disasters. Former FEMA chief of staff Michael Coen told the Chronicle’s James Osborne in February that without leadership and proper staffing, the disaster response system that has helped rebuild the Gulf Coast for decades could be overwhelmed by a major hurricane.

FOX Business [5/9/2025 11:40 AM, Aislinn Murphy, 10702K] reports the U.S. Secret Service recently received 10 vehicles from General Motors (GM). The agency tasked with guarding dignitaries from the U.S. and foreign countries announced the GM delivery on Tuesday, saying the array of vehicles is slated to be tested and used for training at its James J. Rowley Training Center (RTC). The RTC is situated in Laurel, Maryland, which is approximately 20 miles outside of Washington, D.C. RTC Special Agent in Charge Scott Simons said in a press release that "this opportunity with GM will be another tool we can use to innovate and advance our dynamic training.” GM supplied the Secret Service with two Cadillac CT4 sedans, Cadillac CT5 sedans and Corvettes each. A Cadillac Escalade SUV, a Chevrolet Colorado pickup truck, a Chevrolet Tahoe "with a police package" and a Chevrolet Suburban SUV were the other four vehicles that made up the inventory. "Experience with different types of vehicles can help instructors teach students how to adapt their driving techniques based on the vehicles they are operating," Simons said. "Because each vehicle handles differently in any given situation, exposure to new cars will challenge instructors and give them an opportunity to develop more realistic training scenarios.” Protective Transportation Section instructors will also give feedback "on the technology integrated into the vehicles" that GM delivered, according to the Secret Service. Two of the sedans feature manual transmissions. The Secret Service said agents could potentially come across vehicles with manual transmissions while working outside the U.S. Having the manual transmission vehicles, RTC driving instructor Mark Armstrong said, will "enable us to give instruction on how to drive manual vehicles for overseas trips.” The 10-vehicle delivery stemmed from an agreement that the Secret Service and the Detroit-based automaker have.

Reported similarly:
Yahoo! Autos [5/9/2025 12:49 PM, Jack Fitzgerald, 780K]

Military Times [5/9/2025 1:04 PM, Zita Ballinger Fletcher, 1047K] report that full production of a new polar security cutter for the U.S. Coast Guard was recently approved by the Department of Homeland Security, as the administration seeks to boost shipbuilding and maritime security in the increasingly competitive Arctic region. The new vessel — the first heavy polar icebreaker to be built in the U.S. in about five decades — will be constructed by Bollinger Shipyards. Ben Bordelon, president and CEO of Bollinger Shipyards, hailed the move in a release as "a historic achievement not only for Bollinger Shipyards but also for American shipbuilding." "Securing the green light for full production underscores the confidence the U.S. government places in Bollinger to deliver the nation’s first heavy polar icebreaker in nearly 50 years," he said. The U.S. Coast Guard currently fields a single heavy polar icebreaker, the USCGC Polar Star, and a single medium polar icebreaker, the USCGC Healy. The Healy was put out of action by an electrical fire last July and the Polar Star is nearly five decades old. To compensate for a dearth of existing icebreakers, the service in December purchased a commercially available light polar icebreaker — which was renamed the USCGC Storis — that became the first to be added to the service’s fleet in a 25-year period.

FOX 5/KUSI [5/9/2025 2:29 PM, Danielle Dawson] reports boating season has arrived in San Diego, but federal officials are urging the public to be wary of illegal charter operators after the U.S. Coast Guard stopped one such "pleasure craft" last week. According to the Coast Guard, crews encountered the 26-foot vessel on Saturday, May 3, off the coast of San Diego. At the time, a boarding team was conducting a safety inspection of the boat, which was carrying 10 passengers and one non-credentialed crew member. Upon further inspection, the Coast Guard crew determined the vessel was being used unlawfully as a charter vessel without meeting a number of key requirements for vessel owners. This included the failure to have an appropriately credentialed mariner on board, failure of the operator to be enrolled in a drug and alcohol testing program, and failure to have a valid Certificate of Inspection from the Coast Guard.

Yahoo News [5/9/2025 7:04 PM, John Ross Ferrara, 59943K] reports a body was found at Its Beach in Santa Cruz Friday. The Santa Cruz Police Department said the body was reported to authorities at 2:13 p.m. “The identity of the body is pending verification by the Santa Cruz County Coroner,” SCPD said. A UC Santa Cruz student disappeared at Its Beach around 4:45 p.m. on May 4 after two people jumped from a cliff into the ocean near Steamer Lane. A witness reported that two swimmers struggled to swim back to shore after jumping into the water at the popular surf spot. One person made it back to shore. The other did not, the Santa Cruz City Fire Department said. A massive search-and-rescue effort was launched at Its Beach to recover the missing student. The U.S. Coast Guard, California State Parks, harbor patrol, local lifeguards and multiple fire departments responded to the scene. The missing student was not found during the search and rescue mission. “Specialized search patterns were conducted in the area where the victim was last seen, along with drone operations for assistance,” SCCFD said. “After over an hour of an extensive search, it was determined to conclude the search from shore. Coast Guard units remained on scene to search the area with both aircraft and a vessel.” Officials have not confirmed if the body found Friday is that of the missing UC Santa Cruz student.

Federal News Network [5/9/2025 12:58 PM, Terry Gerton, 1089K] report that the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act passed on a bipartisan basis a decade ago. But to get consensus, a lot of provisions got left behind. Now it’s time to reauthorize, and with that comes the opportunity to modernize and fix the original provisions. Interview transcript: Terry Gerton: Megan, the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, which was passed in 2015, sunsets on September 30th of this year. Lots of authorizing legislation has lapsed and most of the practices that they authorize have continued on through appropriations. Why would or should this particular one be different? Megan Brown: Well, CISA 2015, as I referred to it, has several key parts that the private sector relies on. And so its sunset would eliminate some of those key protections. And so I think there’s a real interest in keeping this baseline going forward. Congress passed it 10 years ago. It might be a good time to look at what’s worked and what didn’t. But the law is important to a lot of key basic cybersecurity practices that happen right now. [Editorial note: consult audio at source link]

CyberScoop [5/9/2025 5:06 PM, Matt Kapko] reports vulnerabilities are proliferating in SonicWall devices and software this year, putting the vendor’s customers at risk of intrusion via secure access gateways and firewalls. The year started off on a sour note for the California-based company when it released security advisories for nine vulnerabilities on Jan. 7. The total number of vulnerabilities publicly disclosed by the company so far in 2025 has grown to 20. SonicWall vulnerabilities are also making a consistent appearance on the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency’s known exploited vulnerabilities (KEV) catalog. Cyber authorities confirm that attackers exploited four vulnerabilities in SonicWall products so far this year, and 14 total since late 2021. Eight of those vulnerabilities have been exploited in ransomware campaigns, according to CISA. The four actively exploited vulnerabilities added to CISA’s catalog this year include a trio in SonicWall Secure Mobile Access (SMA) 100 Appliances: a pair of operating system command injection vulnerabilities, CVE-2023-44221 and CVE-2021-20035, and a critical deserialization of untrusted data vulnerability, CVE-2025-23006. The other vulnerability recently exploited in the wild, CVE-2024-53704, is an improper authentication defect in the secure sockets layer virtual private network (SSL/VPN) mechanism in SonicWall SonicOS, the operating system that powers the company’s latest firewalls.

NTD [5/9/2025 5:59 PM, Arjun Singh, 246K] reports the acting director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) testified to Congress on May 8 about efforts to counter cyberattacks by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in the United States. Bridget Bean, appearing before a House Appropriations subcommittee, was asked by lawmakers about hostile cyber actions by the CCP against U.S. entities. In response, Bean indicated that CISA was encouraging private sector partners to be more vigilant about the CCP.
The cybersecurity agency, she said, is helping companies with mitigation strategies against Chinese cyber threats. “The more we can make it hard for them to get into our critical infrastructure, the better it is,” Bean said, in response to a question from Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) about the adequacy of U.S. infrastructure to defend against the Chinese regime. The United States has faced several CCP-backed cyberattacks in recent years, most notably in connection with the hacking group “Salt Typhoon.” The Chinese state-backed group penetrated U.S. telecommunications networks to collect metadata from calls and texts made by Americans. The hacking group has also gained access to actual call and text data of high-level U.S. officials, prompting CISA to issue an urgent guidance for top officials to only communicate on messaging apps with end-to-end encryption.

DailySignal [5/9/2025 9:30 AM, Joshua Arnold, 495K] reports the FBI employed "false statements and manipulation of known facts" to downplay the significance of a 2017 assassination attempt on Republican congressmen, according to a 27-page report released Tuesday by the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. "This demonstrates why it was important to get the Deep State out of control of [the Justice Department] and FBI," said Chris Gacek, Family Research Council senior fellow, in a statement to The Washington Stand. On June 14, 2017, James Hodgkinson traveled from his home in Belleville, Illinois, to Alexandria, Virginia, where he shot more than 50 rounds from cover at Republican members of Congress practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Hodgkinson shot four people, including two police officers and then-House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., before he was shot and killed by police. Hodgkinson supported Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign and had a history of anti-Republican statements. Nevertheless, within a week of the attack, the FBI announced that it was "investigating this shooting as an assault on a member of Congress and an assault on a federal officer," but did "not believe there is a nexus to terrorism.” This conclusion provoked strong reactions for its loose relationship with the facts. "I have always been incensed by this obvious fraud," Gacek bemoaned. Among those upset by the FBI’s conclusion were those familiar with the definition of domestic terrorism stated in U.S. law (18 U.S.C. §2331(5)): Activities that—(A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended—(i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States. If the motive was not terrorism, there had to be an alternative explanation.

AP [5/9/2025 4:27 PM, Ed White, 48304K] reports that a Wisconsin man charged with crimes for a school shooting committed by his daughter is the latest U.S. parent taken to court for violence caused by a child. Prosecutors have extended responsibility beyond shooters if they believe there is evidence that a parent contributed to the violence. Jeffrey Rupnow is charged with intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a person under 18 causing death. In December, his daughter, Natalie Rupnow, 15, killed a student and a teacher at Abundant Life Christian School in Madison, Wisconsin, and killed herself. Over a lawyer’s objections, Rupnow’s bond was set at $20,000 Friday. A look at other cases: Oxford school shooting - Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first U.S. parents held criminally responsible for a mass school shooting committed by a child. They are serving 10-year prison terms for involuntary manslaughter. Their son, Ethan Crumbley, killed four students and wounded others at Michigan’s Oxford High School in 2021. The school revealed his violent drawings to the Crumbleys a few hours before the shooting, but they declined to take him home. No one checked his heavy backpack for a gun. The Crumbleys were not aware of their son’s plans, but they had given a gun as a gift a few days earlier. Prosecutors said Ethan’s actions were foreseeable and that the Crumbleys had failed to prevent the violence.

FOX News [5/9/2025 7:00 AM, Ali Shihabi, 46189K] reports as President Donald Trump returns to Riyadh for his second official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—once again choosing it as his first foreign destination in a new presidential term—there is both symbolism and substance in the gesture. In a region often defined by volatility and conflict, the Kingdom remains a pillar of stability and continuity. Trump’s return signals a reaffirmation of mutual trust, strategic alignment, and a shared belief in the pragmatic, interest-based diplomacy that has always anchored Saudi-U.S. relations. The Kingdom receives President Trump at a defining moment. It has been nearly a decade since the launch of Vision 2030, Saudi Arabia’s audacious socio-economic transformation plan. Few nations in the modern world have dared to implement such a sweeping overhaul—from weaning off oil dependence to opening up society—at this scale and speed. What began as an ambitious blueprint under the stewardship of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has become a lived reality for millions of Saudis. Women drive, cinemas thrive, and global capital now views Riyadh as not just a petro-state capital, but a regional financial, technological and logistical hub in the making. Against this backdrop, President Trump’s return is more than a diplomatic courtesy—it is a recognition of success. Saudi Arabia has redefined itself not as a buyer of influence, but as a builder of partnerships. And in Trump, Riyadh finds a leader who understands the value of firm alliances built on mutual interest rather than moralistic overreach. Critics in Washington will no doubt raise their predictable objections, steeped in outdated narratives. But what must be understood—especially by a divided and distracted American establishment—is that the Kingdom is not seeking a blank check. Rather, it is pursuing a balanced, transactional relationship that serves both nations’ national interests. Stability in the Middle East is not a partisan goal; it is a bipartisan imperative. And today, no regional actor is more committed to that stability than Saudi Arabia. President Trump’s visit should be seen not merely as a nod to a historical ally, but as a pivot toward a Middle East strategy rooted in realism, mutual respect, and shared opportunity.

Breitbart [5/10/2025 4:16 AM, Staff, 2923K] reports US President Donald Trump heads for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates on Monday, eyeing big business deals even as accords on the Middle East’s hotspots will be harder to seal. While Israel’s war in Gaza and Iran’s nuclear program will loom large over Trump’s first major foreign trip of his second term, the White House said he looked forward to a "historic return" to the region. Eight years ago Trump also chose Riyadh for his first overseas trip as president — when he memorably posed over a glowing orb with the leaders of Egypt and Saudi Arabia. His decision to once more bypass traditional Western allies to visit the oil-rich Gulf states underscores their increasingly pivotal geopolitical role — as well as his own business ties there. "It’s hard for me to escape the idea that President Trump is going to the Gulf because this is his happy place," said Jon Alterman, director of the Middle East program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "His hosts will be generous and hospitable. They’ll be keen to make deals. They’ll flatter him and not criticize him, and they’ll treat his family members as past and future business partners.” Riyadh, Doha and Abu Dhabi are expected to pull out all the stops for Trump, who’s making his first major overseas trip after briefly attending the funeral of Pope Francis in Rome. The wealthy Arab states will mix pomp and ceremony for the 78-year-old billionaire with deals that could span defense, aviation, energy and artificial intelligence. "The president looks forward to embarking on his historic return to the Middle East" to promote a vision where "extremism is defeated in place of commerce and cultural exchanges," spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said Friday. But he will not be able to avoid the long list of regional crises, including the war in Gaza, the Huthi rebels in Yemen and Syria’s post-Assad turmoil. The Gulf states have played a key diplomatic role under Trump 2.0. Qatar has been a major broker between Hamas and Israel while Saudi Arabia has facilitated talks on the war in Ukraine. "Trump is coming to the Gulf first because this region has become a geopolitical and financial center of gravity," Anna Jacobs, non-resident fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute in Washington, told AFP. In Riyadh, Trump will meet the leaders of the six Gulf Cooperation Council states: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Qatar, Kuwait and Oman. But one place that is not on the itinerary is Israel, the United States’ closest ally in the region.

Washington Examiner [5/10/2025 6:00 AM, Naomi Lim, 2296K] reports President Donald Trump’s inaugural trip abroad is poised to be consequential as he tries to reshape the world order, with the Middle East in his sights amid his tariff war. Trump is scheduled to depart next week on a dayslong tour of the Middle East that is expected to include stops in Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. "Eight years ago, President Trump’s first trip was to this same region of the world, where he introduced his bold peace through strength foreign policy strategy," White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters on Friday. "On that trip, the president laid out his goal of eradicating terrorism and extremism in the region, which he successfully accomplished over the course of his administration with the total defeat of ISIS and the historic signing of the Abraham Accords.” According to Leavitt, Trump will return to reiterate his vision for "a proud, prosperous and successful Middle East" where the United States and Arab states are in "cooperative relationships and where extremism is defeated in place of commerce and cultural exchanges.” The decision to travel to the Middle East after last month’s trip to the Vatican for Pope Francis’s funeral underscores the region’s importance to Trump’s domestic and foreign policy interests, from the economy to national security. Saudi Arabia, for example, with its relatively warm relationships with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, is hosting U.S.-led negotiations to end the Russia–Ukraine war. "The choice reflects a recognition that the regional status quo has ended, and the U.S. now has an opportunity to build a new order anchored by strategic alliances and American-led security," Hudson Institute’s Zineb Riboua told the Washington Examiner. "This visit signals that the Middle East is where U.S. global leadership is expanding — through diplomacy, military partnerships, and economic influence. China may be active in the region, but only the U.S. is setting the agenda for what comes next.”

Axios [5/9/2025 1:09 PM, Barak Ravid, 13163K] report that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth canceled his trip to Israel, which had been planned for Monday, in order to join President Trump on Air Force One for his trip to the Middle East, according to three Israeli and U.S. officials. Why it matters: Trump inviting Hegseth to travel with him to the Middle East is a signal that the president continues to embrace his secretary of defense even amid the storms that have surrounded him over the last three months. In an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker last week Trump said Hegseth "is doing a very good job" and that his job as secretary of defense is "totally safe." Behind the scenes: According to an Israeli official Hegseth’s trip plan to Israel has been ready for several days. He was supposed to meet his counterpart, Israel Katz, and prime minister Netanyahu. Briefings aboard an Israeli navy ship off the coast of Gaza were also on the agenda, the official says. The plan was for Hegseth to travel to Saudi Arabia from Israel on Tuesday and join Trump’s visit. But on Thursday, Hegseth’s team notified the Israeli ministry of defense that the trip is canceled because president Trump asked Hegseth to travel with him from Washington to Saudi Arabia on Air Force One, an Israeli official said. Two U.S. officials confirmed this account.

Reported similarly:

The Hill [5/9/2025 8:47 PM, Ellen Mitchell, 12829K]

Breitbart [5/9/2025 2:56 PM, Sean Moran, 2923K] reports that a Commerce Department spokeswoman said on Wednesday that the Trump administration will rescind and alter a Biden rule, known as the Artificial Intelligence Diffusion Rule (AIDR), that limited the export of artificial intelligence chips. The Biden-era rule sought to restrict Chinese access to advanced AI chips. "The Biden AI rule is overly complex, overly bureaucratic, and would stymie American innovation," the Commerce Department spokeswoman said in a statement to Reuters. "We will be replacing it with a much simpler rule that unleashes American innovation and ensures American AI dominance." Senate Republicans in April sent a letter to Commerce Department Secretary Howard Lutnick, warning that under the current language of the AI rule, only 18 countries would have access to American technology, which may ironically push other, non-Tier 1 countries to turn to China’s cheap substitutes: Fundamentally, the rule places burdensome constrains on U.S. companies that would be difficult to comply with and even harder for the Federal government to enforce. Buyers, particularly in Tier 2 countries that are constrained from purchasing U.S. technology, would be incentivized to turn to Communist China’s unregulated, cheap substitutes. Additionally, technology companies in Tier 2 countries could be motivated to create their own AI technology stack that is outside our export control regime. Neither outcome furthers our nation’s long-term economic and national security goals. ALFA Institute Chairman and former Speaker Kevin McCarthy had warned that the Biden AI Diffusion Rule would hurt American technological leadership.

The Hill [5/9/2025 2:48 PM, Miranda Nazzaro, 12829K] reports that Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill Friday that would require chip exports to have location-tracking systems to prevent American technology from reaching adversaries. The bill, titled the Chip Security Act, would direct the Commerce Department to require a "location verification mechanism" on artificial intelligence chips subject to export controls. Chip exporters would then be required to report to the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) if their products were diverted from the intended destination or tampered with. "Expanding access to advanced technology can’t come at the cost of our national security," Cotton wrote on X Friday. "My Chips Security Act will prevent American chips from falling into the hands of adversaries like Communist China." Earlier this week, the Trump administration confirmed it is planning to repeal the Biden administration’s AI diffusion rule, which was announced in January in the final days of former President Biden’s term. The rule placed caps on chip sales to most countries around the world, except for 18 U.S. allies and partners, and intended to curb foreign competition in the tech development space. In a statement Wednesday, the BIS called the rule "overly complex, overly bureaucratic," warning it would stifle American innovation and dominance. David Sacks, the White House AI and crypto czar, later said the rule alienated key U.S. allies and overreached on export control authority.

Free Beacon [5/9/2025 12:45 PM, Matthew Xiao, 475K] report that the University of Pennsylvania is under federal investigation for filing "inaccurate" disclosures of its foreign funding for years, the Department of Education announced in a Thursday letter. The department’s Office of the General Counsel accused the Ivy League school of submitting "incomplete, inaccurate, and untimely disclosures" to the department in violation of "its foreign source funding statutory disclosure obligations." As a recipient of federal funding, the University of Pennsylvania is required by the Higher Education Act of 1965 to disclose "qualifying foreign source gifts and contracts" worth $250,000 or more. The investigation comes two weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order ramping up his administration’s scrutiny of foreign influence in U.S. universities. The order mandates that universities provide detailed information about the sources and purposes of such foreign funding. Failure to do so could result in the loss of federal funding. Foreign funding has poured into elite American universities in recent decades, including $3.2 billion to Harvard University, $2.8 billion to Cornell University, and $2.5 billion to the University of Pennsylvania, according to a report from the group Americans for Public Trust. Much of the funding has come from China and Arab states. The Education Department’s letter said Thursday that the University of Pennsylvania’s record of noncompliance is "a source of tremendous concern."

Houston Chronicle [5/9/2025 12:12 PM, Isaac Yu, 1769K] reports Chinese and other foreign citizens could soon be barred from purchasing homes in Texas under a bill passed by the Texas House on Thursday. The measure, which passed the Republican-led chamber in a largely party-line vote, was significantly narrowed-down from the original version. Lawmakers voted to add exemptions for individuals residing in the United States legally on temporary work or student visas. Dual citizens and permanent residents are also not included in the ban. The legislation would block any other citizens of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran from purchasing homes, buying land or leasing apartments in Texas, and give the governor power to add other countries to the list. Proponents of the proposal, brought by state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst of Brenham, say it is intended to target governments and companies deemed hostile by the federal government. "Our adversaries speak loudly and often about their ambitions and motivations to break our country and its citizens," said state Rep. Cole Hefner, R-Mount Pleasant, the bill’s House sponsor who chairs a special committee on addressing hostile foreign nations. "The state of Texas will not allow this to happen.” Some conservative critics argued that the final bill was too weak. Democrats, meanwhile, have called the measure xenophobic and warned it will harm immigrants who are living in the country legally, especially in the state’s diverse metro areas. The bill’s chief opponent was House Democratic Caucus Leader Gene Wu of Houston, who denounced the measure as racist and a revival of 19th-century laws targeting Asian immigrants. "This is a loud and clear message that Asians don’t belong in this country," said Wu, the chamber’s only Chinese-American legislator. "My community is so angry because this exact thing has been done before, for the same reasons, using the same rhetoric, and against the exact same people. When the attacks come, when the hate crimes start, it will be against all Asians, anyone with an Asian face.” Not all Asian American legislators agreed. Republican Rep. Angie Chen Button, a Taiwanese American from the Dallas area, said she understood immigrants’ fears but said legislators had to balance that with protecting national security.

FOX News [5/9/2025 10:31 PM, Jasmine Baehr, 46189K] reports Texas lawmakers are charging ahead with what they call the nation’s strongest legislative effort yet to block hostile foreign powers from purchasing land in the Lone Star State. Championed by Republican state Rep. Cole Hefner and state Sen. Lois Kolkhorst, Senate Bill 17 (SB17) is designed to stop governments and entities tied to countries like China, Iran, North Korea and Russia from gaining a foothold on Texas soil. In an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital, Hefner described SB17 as "model legislation" aimed at shutting down land purchases that pose a national security threat. "This bill is about actions and affiliations, not race, not nationality," Hefner said. "If you’re acting on behalf of a hostile foreign adversary, we’re going to take that land back.” The bill is in direct response to real-world events. Hefner cited the 2021 case of a retired Chinese general acquiring over 140,000 acres near Laughlin Air Force Base. "We’ve [also] seen the attempt of foreign actors or hostile foreign adversaries to buy land close to food processing plants," Hefner said. "And it’s just something that we have found the more we dig into it, the more we find that there’s a lot of things we don’t know and a lot of vulnerabilities that are out there.” The bill prohibits entities and individuals affiliated with governments designated as national security threats, based on the U.S. Director of National Intelligence’s annual assessments, from purchasing real estate if those purchases pose risks to public health or safety. The law empowers the state’s attorney general to investigate, block and even reverse such land deals through court-ordered receivership. Under SB17, "real property" includes agricultural, commercial, industrial, and residential land as well as mines, minerals, and timber. The law includes key exemptions for U.S. citizens, lawful permanent residents, and property intended as a personal homestead. "The strong points of our bill is that it can apply to anyone if we can prove they’re acting as an agent," said Hefner. "So even if they’re from a friendly country, but they’re actually on behalf of a foreign adversary, then they will be subject to the bill.” The bill gives the attorney general investigative powers, and authority to appoint receivers to manage or sell properties acquired in violation of the law.

CNN [5/9/2025 1:38 PM, Katie Bo Lillis and Natasha Bertrand, 908K] reports that Trump administration officials are weighing a change that would shift responsibility for US security interests in Greenland to the military command that oversees America’s homeland defense, underscoring the president’s focus on the strategically important territory that he has repeatedly said he wants to acquire, three sources familiar with the deliberations told CNN. The change under consideration would move Greenland out of US European Command’s area of responsibility and into US Northern Command, the sources said. On its face, the idea of putting Greenland under NORTHCOM authority makes some logical sense given it is part of the North American continent, though politically and culturally, it is associated with Europe and is a semiautonomous territory of Denmark. Some of the discussions pre-date Trump’s return to office this year, the sources said. US Northern Command declined to comment. CNN has reached out to the Office of the Secretary of Defense as well as Danish and Greenlandic officials for comment. Still, several US officials expressed wariness about the move because of Trump’s repeated insistence that the US "needs" Greenland and his refusal to rule out military action to obtain it.

FOX News [5/9/2025 2:55 PM, Greg Norman, 46189K] reports that President Donald Trump is "determined to continue with a "10% baseline tariff" against all countries despite his announcement this week of a trade deal with the United Kingdom, the White House said Friday. "The president is committed to the 10% baseline tariff, not just for the United Kingdom, but for his trade negotiations with all other countries as well," White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters. "Permanently? Even after the deals are done. Like, that is going to remain?" Leavitt was asked by Fox News Senior White House Correspondent Jacqui Heinrich. "The president is determined to continue with that 10% baseline tariff," Leavitt responded. Trump announced a new trade deal Thursday with the U.K., calling it "an incredible day for America." Trump told reporters at the White House that "today’s agreement with the U.K. is the first in a series of agreements on trade that my administration has been negotiating over the past four weeks.” "With this deal, the U.K. joins the United States in affirming that reciprocity and fairness is an essential and vital principle of international trade. "They’ll also be fast-tracking American goods through their customs process so our exports go to a very, very quick form of approval," the president added, noting that "The final details are being written up in the coming weeks."

Washington Examiner [5/9/2025 7:10 AM, Jamie McIntyre, 2296K] reports PUTIN: ‘TRUTH AND JUSTICE ARE ON OUR SIDE’: Declaring the anniversary of victory in Europe in World War II "the most important holiday for the country," Russian President Vladimir Putin presided over a massive military parade in Moscow’s Red Square today, flanked by sympathetic world leaders including Chinese President Xi Jinping and Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Under extreme security measures, including the shutdown of the internet, the parade proceeded under bright sunny skies, with no sign of the threat of Ukrainian drones. In his speech, Putin was quick to equate the war in Ukraine to the defeat of Nazi Germany 80 years ago. "Russia has been and will continue to be an indestructible obstacle to Nazism, Russophobia, and anti-Semitism, and will stand in the way of the violence perpetrated by the champions of these aggressive and destructive ideas," Putin said. "Truth and justice are on our side. The whole of Russia, our society, and all people support the participants in the special military operation. We are proud of their courage and spirit, and their steely determination that has always brought us victory." The speech is part of what the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War calls the "Russian mythos of the Second World War," which the Kremlin is using to "justify a prolonged war in Ukraine and future aggression against NATO to Russian society." In an article published yesterday, the ISW noted that Russian Defense Minister Andrei Belousov argued that "Russia’s war in Ukraine will go down in history as a feat of courage and significance equal to the victory of the Soviet military and people during the Second World War." Belousov claimed that Russia’s victory in Ukraine is "inevitable," which the ISW assessed was an attempt to steel the Russian public for a long war in which Russia will achieve its goals "as long as Russian society remains unified and supportive."

Reuters [5/9/2025 6:47 AM, Staff, 41523K] reports Ukrainian troops have made further attempts to breach the Russian border in the Kursk and Belgorod regions, the Russian Defence Ministry said on Friday as President Vladimir Putin hosted world leaders at a major military parade in Moscow. The Defence Ministry said the attacks occurred during a three-day ceasefire running from May 8-10 that Russia has unilaterally declared to mark the 80th anniversary of victory over Nazi Germany in World War Two. Kyiv has called the ceasefire proposal a "farce" and did not agree to it, proposing instead that the two countries adopt a 30-day truce. The Russian Defence Ministry said it had registered four attempts by Ukrainian forces to smash through the border into the Kursk and Belgorod regions in the past week. In eastern Ukraine, Kyiv’s troops had attacked Russian forces 15 times during the ceasefire, the ministry said.

Reuters [5/9/2025 1:06 PM, Alexander Cornwell, 41523K] reports a U.S.-backed mechanism for getting aid into Gaza should take effect soon, Washington’s envoy to Israel said on Friday ahead of President Donald Trump’s visit to the Middle East, without detailing how this would work with no ceasefire in place. Gaza’s residents face possible famine, the U.N. says, with Israel enforcing a months-long blockade on aid to the small Palestinian enclave and vowing to expand its military campaign against Hamas militants after breaking a truce in March. U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee said several partners had already committed to taking part in the aid arrangement, which would be handled by private companies, but declined to name them, saying details would be released in the coming days. "There has been a good initial response," the former Republican governor told reporters at the embassy in Jerusalem. "There are nonprofit organisations that will be a part of the leadership," he said, adding that other organisations and governments would also need to be involved, though not Israel. Tikva Forum, a hawkish Israeli group representing some relatives of hostages held in Gaza, criticised the announcement, saying aid deliveries should be conditional on Hamas releasing the 59 captives in Gaza. Hamas senior official Basem Naim said the plan was close to "the Israeli vision of militarising aid" and said it would fail, at the same time warning local parties against "becoming tools in the Zionist occupation’s schemes".

NBC News [5/10/2025 6:46 AM, Richard Engel, 44742K] reports that, on the outskirts of a remote village in Syria, the hunt is on for the remains of American hostages murdered by ISIS more than a decade ago. The site, a dusty hill about a two hour’s drive from the city of Aleppo, looks like an archeological dig, with dozens of investigators wielding shovels, ground-penetrating radar, pickaxes and paintbrushes for the delicate work of brushing away sand as they search for bones, clothing and any evidence that ISIS terrorists may have buried their victims here. It has taken years of intelligence work to reach this point, including satellite imagery analysis, debriefs with surviving ISIS hostages and jailhouse interviews with ISIS leaders. So far, the team is optimistic. They are finding human remains in shallow graves, and, critically, they are finding them where they were expected to be. The investigation is led by an intelligence and security company called the Soufan Group, founded by former FBI counterterrorism officer Ali Soufan. His team, mainly composed of former FBI and counterterrorism colleagues, has been working the case on behalf of the American victims’ families. They work in coordination with, but are independent from, the FBI. “We’ve been working with the families for a long period of time, trying to figure out what happened to their loved ones. We had an opportunity to go to a location that has been off-limits,” said Soufan. ISIS beheaded and tortured dozens of foreign hostages, including Americans Kayla Mueller, James Foley, Peter Kassig and Steven Sotloff. The Americans were held and executed by a brutal ISIS cell — a cell known as “the Beatles” because of its members’ British accents. None of their remains have been found, and could potentially be here. The recovery mission was launched and funded by the Qatari government, which spared no expense, sending a full search-and-rescue team along with forensic pathologists, doctors, crime scene investigators and a SWAT team — enough men and equipment to fill a massive C-17 military transport plane. NBC News was invited to join the mission and has been given exclusive access to the dig site and the ongoing investigation. “We brought all that we needed to find bodies under the ground. We have been investigating the area, diving into grids, and searching each one with the necessary equipment and hand tools,” said Maj. Khaled al-Hemaidi from Qatar’s Internal Security Forces. He described it as a “humanitarian mission.”

Reuters [5/10/2025 2:16 AM, Andrew Mills and Jonathan Landay, 24727K] reports a Qatari mission has begun searching for the remains of U.S. hostages killed by Islamic State in Syria a decade ago, two sources briefed on the mission said, reviving a longstanding effort to recover their bodies. Islamic State, which controlled swathes of Syria and Iraq at the peak of its power from 2014-2017, beheaded numerous people in captivity, including Western hostages, and released videos of the killings. Qatar’s international search and rescue group began the search on Wednesday, accompanied by several Americans, the sources said. The group, deployed by Doha to earthquake zones in Morocco and Turkey in recent years, had so far found the remains of three bodies, the sources said. One of the sources - a Syrian security source - said the remains had yet to be identified. The second source said it was unclear how long the mission would last. The U.S. State Department had no immediate comment. The Qatari mission gets under way as U.S. President Donald Trump prepares to visit Doha and other Gulf Arab allies next week and as Syria’s ruling Islamists, close allies of Qatar, seek relief from U.S. sanctions. The Syrian source said the mission’s initial focus was on looking for the body of aid worker Peter Kassig, who was beheaded by Islamic State in 2014 in Dabiq in northern Syria. The second source said Kassig’s remains were among those they hoped to find. U.S. journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff were among other Western hostages killed by Islamic State. Their deaths were confirmed in 2014. U.S. aid worker Kayla Mueller was also killed in Islamic State captivity. She was raped repeatedly by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi before her death, U.S. officials have said. Her death was confirmed in 2015. "We’re grateful for anyone taking on this task and risking their lives in some circumstances to try and find the bodies of Jim and the other hostages," said Diane Foley, James Foley’s mother. "We thank all those involved in this effort.” The families of the other hostages, contacted via the Committee to Protect Journalists, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

CBS News [5/9/2025 8:10 PM, Staff, 51661K] Video: HERE reports U.S. officials are set to meet with Iranian officials for talks in Oman this weekend. In an interview published on Friday, U.S. Envoy Steve Witkoff said Iranians have told them they do not want a bomb. The U.S. is accepting their word, for now. CBS News senior national security correspondent Charlie D’Agata has more.

Blaze [5/9/2025 2:40 PM, Joseph Mackinnon, 1668K] reports that the decades-long dispute between India and Pakistan over the Kashmir region has resulted in numerous bloody skirmishes and three full-fledged wars — in 1965, 1971, and 1999. In the wake of a horrific terrorist attack in the southern part of Indian-administered Kashmir last month, fighting has resumed and threatens now to embroil the two nuclear powers in another major war. When pressed on Thursday to comment about the Trump administration’s concern "about the potential for nuclear war between India and Pakistan," Vice President JD Vance told Fox News’ Martha MacCallum that while concerned and keen on de-escalation, the U.S. is "not going to get involved in the middle of war that’s fundamentally none of our business and has nothing to do with America’s ability to control it." "Look, we’re concerned about any time nuclear powers collide and have a major conflict," said Vance. "What we’ve said, what Secretary Rubio has said, and certainly [what] the president has said is we want this thing to de-escalate as quickly as possible."

CyberScoop [5/9/2025 2:07 PM, Derek B. Johnson] reports a bipartisan Senate bill would formally ban the use of DeepSeek by federal contractors, part of a larger effort to keep the Chinese-made large language model out of government systems and networks, where lawmakers fear it could pose cybersecurity and national security concerns. The bill, introduced by Sens. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., would bar federal contractors from using the model to carry out any activity related to a federal contract. It also blocks contractors from using any successor model developed by High Flyer, the Chinese quantitative firm that made DeepSeek. Cassidy and Rosen cited the potential that the use of DeepSeek — which acknowledges that it sends user data back to China — to carry out contract work may put sensitive federal data in the hands of the Chinese government. “AI is a powerful tool which can be used to enhance things like medicine and education,” Cassidy said in a statement. “But in the wrong hands, it can be weaponized. By feeding sensitive data into systems like DeepSeek, we give China another weapon.” The bill gives the Commerce secretary the power to issue waivers on a case-by-case basis if they determine it is “required for the completion of a national security-related objective of a certain contract or for research purposes.” That could potentially ensure that federal agencies like the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, the FBI and the intelligence community are still able to legally test and evaluate models like DeepSeek for cybersecurity flaws and other vulnerabilities. But DeepSeek is just one of a handful of powerful new AI models coming from Chinese companies, all of which pose the same potential risks of sending federal data back to Beijing if used in contracts. So the legislation would also direct the Commerce secretary to develop a report for Congress on the threats to national security posed by artificial intelligence platforms based in or affiliated with countries of concern, including China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.

Federalist [5/9/2025 7:30 AM, Tim Odell, 1033K] reports in 2016, the U.S.-China trade war forced Beijing to negotiate. Tariffs crippled Chinese factories, major U.S. retailers like Walmart and Costco halted orders, and container shipments stalled. China conceded. But in 2025, when the U.S. imposed a 145 percent tariff expecting similar results, Beijing didn’t flinch. There was no panic, no economic distress, no concessions. Why? Because China had a secret card this time. Over the past decade, China has built a decentralized export machine: more than 1 million cross-border e-commerce companies shipping directly to U.S. consumers via platforms like Amazon, Temu, and Shein. This army bypasses traditional retail channels, pays no income taxes, evades tariffs, and undercuts American businesses. Here’s how they do it — and why tariffs alone can’t stop them. Unlike in 2016, Chinese sellers no longer rely on U.S. retailers’ purchase orders. They ship container loads of goods directly to consumers, systematically undervaluing them on customs declarations. Chinese e-commerce companies exploit U.S. customs through sophisticated tactics centered on non-resident importer (NRI) structures and delivered duty paid (DDP) clearance. These methods, often facilitated by logistics firms and customs brokers, shield sellers’ identities and minimize duties.

New York Times [5/10/2025 3:32 AM, Alan Rappeport, Ana Swanson and Alexandra Stevenson, 330K] reports President Trump suggested on Friday that he was open to sharply reducing the tariffs that the United States had imposed on China, as American and Chinese negotiators prepare to meet in Switzerland this weekend for high-stakes trade talks. Trade tensions between the United States and China have roiled international markets and the global economy. The negotiations on Saturday and Sunday are intended to de-escalate the situation and help set the stage for a broader trade pact between the two economic superpowers. In a post on social media, Mr. Trump said that an 80 percent tariff on China “seems right,” adding that it would be “up to Scott B,” an apparent reference to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. An 80 percent tariff would be a big drop from the current 145 percent that Mr. Trump imposed on Chinese imports in recent months. But that high a level would still shut off most trade between the countries. Chinese data released on Friday showed shipments from that country to the United States plunged 21 percent in April from the same period a year ago. The White House press secretary, Karoline Leavitt, said on Friday afternoon that the 80 percent figure was one that Mr. Trump “threw out there” and that a reduction would only happen as part of a negotiation. “The president still remains with his position that he is not going to unilaterally bring down tariffs on China,” Ms. Leavitt said. “We need to see concessions from them as well.” It’s also unclear if the talks will lead to any short-term resolution for two governments that have serious economic disputes and have taken a harsh tone toward the other in recent months. This week, the two sides agreed to hold meetings in Geneva that will include Mr. Bessent; Jamieson Greer, the U.S. trade representative; and He Lifeng, China’s vice premier for economic policy.

Reported similarly:
AP [5/9/2025 3:14 PM, Paul Wiseman and Didi Tang, 48304K]

CNN [5/10/2025 6:51 AM, Juliana Liu and Catherine Nicholls, 22131K] reports high-level talks between the United States and China have begun in Geneva, Switzerland, Chinese state media reported on Saturday, in a possible thaw in the trade war sparked by President Donald Trump’s massive tariffs. Vice Premier He Lifeng will lead the talks on the Chinese side, while US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent will be America’s chief representative, state broadcaster CCTV said in a brief report. Bessent urged the public earlier this week not to expect a major trade deal out of the meetings, but he acknowledged it was an important step in negotiations. The US has placed a minimum 145% tariff on most Chinese imports, and China has responded with a 125% tariff on most US imports. As a result, trade between the two sides is falling sharply, according to logistics experts. Even reducing that tariff rate by half still might not be enough to change trade levels significantly. Economists have said 50% is the make-or-break threshold for the return of somewhat normal business between the two countries. On Friday, hours after Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer had set off for Switzerland, Trump floated the possibility of slashing tariffs on Chinese goods to 80% while demanding China “open up its market to USA.” “80% Tariff on China seems right! Up to Scott B,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. The combination of fewer goods arriving in the US and increased costs on imports that do arrive has already started pushing up prices for Americans. Goldman Sachs analysts said Thursday that a key measure of inflation would effectively double to 4% by the end of the year because of Trump’s trade war. And with ships carrying goods under the 145% tariffs now coming into port, a trade deal wouldn’t lower prices immediately. To say Americans depend on a wide range of Chinese goods understates how pervasive they have become in daily life. Footwear, clothes, appliances, microchips, baby goods, toys, sports equipment, office machine parts and much more all pour into the US from China in staggering numbers. But now those imports are decreasing. Imports into the United States during the second half of 2025 are expected to fall at least 20% year over year, according to the National Retail Federation. The decline from China will be even starker. Investment bank JPMorgan expects a 75% to 80% drop in imports from there.

Reported similarly:
AP [5/10/2025 5:12 AM, Paul Wiseman, Didi Tang and Jamey Keaten, 24727K]

{End of Report} RETURN TO TOP