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 New York Times [5/28/2025 3:02 AM, Edward Wong, 138952K] reports Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday evening that the Trump administration would work to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students, including those with ties to the Chinese Communist Party or who are studying in “critical fields.” He added that the State Department was revising visa criteria to “enhance scrutiny” of all future applications from China, including Hong Kong. The move was certain to send ripples of anxiety across university campuses in the United States and was likely to lead to reprisal from China, the country of origin for the second-largest group of international students in the United States. Mr. Rubio’s brief statement announcing the visa crackdown did not define “critical fields” of study, but the phrase most likely refers to research in the physical sciences. In recent years, American officials have expressed concerns about the Chinese government recruiting U.S.-trained scientists, though there is no evidence of such scientists working for China in large numbers. Similarly, it is unclear how U.S. officials will determine which students have ties to the Communist Party. The lack of detail on the scope of the directive will no doubt fuel worries among the roughly 275,000 Chinese students in the United States, as well as professors and university administrators who depend on their research skills and financial support. American universities and research laboratories have benefited over many decades by drawing some of the most talented students from China and other countries, and many universities rely on international students paying full tuition for a substantial part of their annual revenue. “I think it is terribly misguided, counterproductive and another way in which we are shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Michael S. Roth, president of Wesleyan University. The move against Chinese students comes as the Trump administration has sought a broader crackdown on elite universities and international students. And it coincides with heightened tensions between the United States and China over President Trump’s trade war. The foremost target of Mr. Trump’s expansive tariffs is China, which he has asserted has taken unfair advantage of the international trade system for decades. It is unclear how quickly the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security will move to cancel the visas of affected students, or whether China will now take retaliatory actions on the relatively fewer number of American students in the country and move to expel some of them. Until now, family members of most Chinese Communist Party officials could study at American universities. Many top party officials sent children to American universities in recent decades. Mr. Xi sent his daughter, Xi Mingze, to attend Harvard under a pseudonym. Harvard administrators and a few professors knew who she was before her graduation in 2014. The Washington Post [5/29/2025 3:34 AM, David Nakamura and Katrina Northrop, 32099K] reports that in a statement, Rubio said the State Department would work with the Department of Homeland Security to “aggressively revoke” visas of Chinese students in the United States, “including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” He did not specify which areas of study would be targeted — of the 277,398 Chinese students at U.S. universities last year, more than 110,000 were pursuing math, engineering, science and technology courses — or define what "connections" meant. About 100 million people belong to the Chinese Communist Party, with membership often used as a fast-track to higher social and economic status rather than an act of ideological commitment. Rubio also did not provide details about what additional measures the department would take to scrutinize new visa applicants, and whether this applied to student visas only or all categories of visas. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The State Department previously moved to strip visas from some foreign students whom the administration has accused of leading pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses. Last week, the administration revoked Harvard University’s ability to enroll foreign students and said thousands of enrolled students must transfer or leave the country, a move that has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge. The largest proportion of foreign students at Harvard — almost 1,300 — are Chinese. Asked Wednesday, before Rubio’s statement, about the Trump administration’s moves to stop or slow the issuing of visas to foreign students, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said Beijing was closely following the issue. "China believes that education cooperation and academic exchanges should not be disrupted," she said at a news briefing in Beijing. "We urge the U.S. to protect the lawful and legitimate rights and interests of all international students, including those from China.” The AP [5/28/2025 9:26 PM, Annie Ma and Collin Binkley, 56000K] reports that last year, House Republicans issued a report warning that hundreds of millions of dollars in defense funding was going to research partnerships linked to the Chinese government, providing “back-door access to the very foreign adversary nation whose aggression these capabilities are necessary to protect against.” The Department of Homeland Security raised similar issues in a letter barring international students at Harvard University last week. Secretary Kristi Noem accused Harvard of “coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party,” citing research collaborations with Chinese scholars. It also accused Harvard of training members of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, a Chinese paramilitary group. The announcement came a day after Rubio halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for international students as the department prepares guidelines for increased vetting of their activity on social media.

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AP [5/28/2025 4:49 PM, Staff, 56000K] Video: HERE reports the State Department has halted the scheduling of new visa interviews for foreign students hoping to study in the U.S. while it prepares to expand the screening of their activity on social media, officials said.

Bloomberg [5/29/2025 3:58 AM, Staff, 19320K] reports China blasted the Trump administration’s move to revoke the visas of Chinese students in the US, underscoring the fragility of a recent steadying of ties between the world’s largest economies. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning accused the US of taking its decision “under the pretext of ideology and national security” at a regular briefing in Beijing on Thursday, adding that it would harm people-to-people relations. “Such a politicized and discriminatory move lays bare the US lie behind the so-called freedom and openness that the US touts,” she added. “It will only further undermine its image in the world and national reputation.” The US plans to start “aggressively” revoking visas for Chinese students, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement, escalating the Trump administration’s push for greater scrutiny of foreigners attending American universities. Rubio added that students affected would include “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The US will also enhance scrutiny “of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” he said.

AP [5/29/2025 4:36 AM, Fu Tin and Kanis Lueng, 48304K] reports Chinese students studying in the U.S. are scrambling to figure out their futures after U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday that some students would have their visas revoked. The U.S. will begin revoking the visas of some Chinese students, including those studying in “critical fields”, and “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party,” according to the announcement. China is the second-largest country of origin for international students in the United States, behind only India. In the 2023-2024 school year, more than 270,000 international students were from China, making up roughly a quarter of all foreign students in the U.S. This is a “new version of Chinese Exclusion Act,” said Linqin, a Chinese student at Johns Hopkins University, who asked to be identified only by his first name out of fear of retaliation. He said Wednesday was the first time he thought about leaving the U.S. after spending one third of his life here.

FOX News [5/28/2025 10:06 PM, Greg Wehner, Bill Melugin, 46878K] reports senior State Department officials tell Fox News all visa holders associated with Harvard University are being scrutinized, not just student visa holders. Along with student visas, the State Department will be conducting a substantive investigation into B-1, or business visas; B-2, or tourist visas; as well as others, officials said. The investigation is aimed at identifying potential security vulnerabilities or other abuses of the visa system. The probe could impact hundreds of people associated with the elite school and could reveal if people entering with claimed connections truly have real connections or more tenuous connections. Fox News Digital learned earlier in the day that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is eliminating the student visa program at Harvard University due to "pro-terrorist conduct" at campus protests. The move is a severe consequence in response to what the DHS claims is Harvard’s refusal to comply with its requests for behavioral records of student visa holders. "This administration is holding Harvard accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said. "It is a privilege, not a right, for universities to enroll foreign students and benefit from their higher tuition payments to help pad their multibillion-dollar endowments. Harvard had plenty of opportunity to do the right thing. It refused. They have lost their Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification as a result of their failure to adhere to the law. Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country.” Harvard may no longer enroll foreign students in the 2025-2026 school year, and existing foreign students must transfer or lose their legal status to reside in the U.S. before the next academic year begins. "As a result of your brazen refusal to comply with multiple requests to provide the Department of Homeland Security pertinent information while perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is hostile to Jewish students, promotes pro-Hamas rhetoric, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies, you have lost this privilege," Noem wrote in a letter to Maureen Martin, the university’s director of immigration services. Noem offered Harvard 72 hours to provide the information requested for an opportunity to regain its visa program for the next school year. She called the move the "direct result of Harvard’s epic failure to comply with simple reporting requirements.” Harvard, meanwhile, asserted the termination was "unlawful." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

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Reuters [5/28/2025 4:27 PM, Simon Lewis and Daphne Psaledakis, 24051K] reports the U.S. will impose visa bans on foreign nationals it deems to be censoring Americans, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday, and he suggested the new policy could target officials regulating U.S. tech companies. Rubio did not name any specific instances of censorship. But U.S. tech companies and the Trump administration have challenged U.S. allies in Europe, alleging censorship of social media platforms. Restricting officials from visiting the U.S. appeared to be an escalation by Washington. Rubio said in a statement that a new visa restriction policy would apply to foreign nationals responsible for censorship of protected expression in the U.S. He said it was unacceptable for foreign officials to issue or threaten arrest warrants for social media posts made on U.S. soil. "It is similarly unacceptable for foreign officials to demand that American tech platforms adopt global content moderation policies or engage in censorship activity that reaches beyond their authority and into the United States," Rubio said. Some foreign officials have taken "flagrant censorship actions against U.S. tech companies and U.S. citizens and residents when they have no authority to do so," Rubio said. U.S. social media companies like Facebook and Instagram parent Meta have said an EU content moderation law, the Digital Services Act, amounts to censorship of their platforms. The Trump-appointed chairman of the U.S. Federal Communications Commission in March warned the EU Digital Services Act excessively restricts freedom of expression. Trump officials have repeatedly weighed in on European politics to denounce what they see as suppression of right-wing politicians, including in Romania, Germany and France, accusing European authorities of censoring views like criticism of immigration in the name of countering disinformation. In April, Rubio shut down a State Department office that had sought to counter foreign disinformation, accusing it of censorship and wasting U.S. taxpayer money. In a social media post on Wednesday, Rubio added, "Whether in Latin America, Europe, or elsewhere, the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.” FOX News [5/28/2025 11:34 AM, Danielle Wallace, 46878K] reports that the United States has long condemned censorship and repression by the Chinese Communist Party, Russia, and the Iranian and Cuban regimes, but the Trump administration more recently has added criticism against allies in Europe. Vice President JD Vance argued that the European Union’s Digital Services Act could effectively export European-style censorship to the U.S. through pressure against American tech companies. In February, Vance accused European leaders at the Munich Security Conference of suppressing dissenting opinions by categorizing those views as "misinformation" and "disinformation.” The vice president specifically cited the United Kingdom’s prosecution over silent prayer outside an abortion clinic, the annulment of the Romanian 2024 presidential election results over alleged foreign interference, the conviction of a Christian activist in Sweden for burning a Quran and Germany policing anti-feminist views online. "What I worry about is the threat from within – the retreat of Europe from some of its most fundamental values," Vance said at the time.

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Bloomberg [5/28/2025 1:30 PM, Alicia A. Caldwell and Hadriana Lowenkron, 19320K] reports that the Trump administration is telling immigration officials to ramp up arrests to 3,000 per day with a goal of more than 1 million a year, according to a person familiar with the discussions, a target that would significantly escalate the pace of detentions. The directive was delivered at a recent meeting led by senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation. The tone of the discussion left some senior officials concerned they could be fired or relocated if the goals weren’t met, according to the person. The meeting and new targets were reported earlier by Axios. “We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States, and ensuring our law enforcement officers have the resources necessary to do so,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement Wednesday. “The safety of the American people depends upon it.” The Department of Homeland Security echoed that sentiment in its own statement, saying it was delivering on President Donald Trump’s push “to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe.”

NewsMax [5/28/2025 10:13 AM, Eric Mack, 4622K] reports the daily standard of 1,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests during the early days of the Trump administration is falling short of an administration goal which is reportedly targeting 3,000 per day. The stepped-up ICE goals were laid out by White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in a "tense" May 21 meeting at ICE’s D.C. headquarters, sources told Axios. It comes with some challenges, though, because President Donald Trump’s border security measures have brought illegal border crossings to record lows, leaving the deportation numbers at roughly Biden administration levels, a concerning political data point for the White House. That effectively means ICE arrests will have to come by rounding up those holdovers from former President Joe Biden’s open-borders policies, finding those who have evaded local law enforcement after being allowed to enter illegally and then be released into sanctuary city communities around the country. Noem and special government employee Corey Lewandowski are urging ICE leadership for feedback and outlines for how stepped-up daily arrest goals can be met as a quiet border makes for less low-hanging fruit. The White House’s goal of a million deportations a year remains in the balance with data showing low illegal border crossing numbers. Miller’s "tone" was reportedly tense and more forceful in pressing the White House goals with some "motivational" directives, potentially putting ICE leadership’s jobs at risk if numbers do not pick up, according to Axios sources. Bloomberg [5/28/2025 1:30 PM, Alicia A. Caldwell and Hadriana Lowenkron, 19320K] reports that the Trump administration is telling immigration officials to ramp up arrests to 3,000 per day with a goal of more than 1 million a year, according to a person familiar with the discussions, a target that would significantly escalate the pace of detentions. The directive was delivered at a recent meeting led by senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe the private conversation. The tone of the discussion left some senior officials concerned they could be fired or relocated if the goals weren’t met, according to the person. The meeting and new targets were reported earlier by Axios. “We are committed to aggressively and efficiently removing illegal aliens from the United States, and ensuring our law enforcement officers have the resources necessary to do so,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement Wednesday. “The safety of the American people depends upon it.” The Department of Homeland Security echoed that sentiment in its own statement, saying it was delivering on President Donald Trump’s push “to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe.”

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NewsMax [5/28/2025 9:08 PM, Michael Katz, 4622K] reports U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks told Newsmax on Wednesday that his agency can help fulfill an ambitious goal of arresting at least 3,000 illegal immigrants a day. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller reportedly stated last week that the daily standard of 1,000 arrests by Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the early days of the Trump administration was falling short of the target of 3,000 a day. "It’s absolutely doable, without a doubt," Banks told "Rob Schmitt Tonight.” ICE announced last month that it arrested "66,463 illegal aliens" during the first 100 days of President Donald Trump’s second term and "removed 65,682 aliens." Although border crossings have reached record lows, the number of deportations is roughly at Biden administration levels — largely due to injunctions judges placed on the administration, he said. Still, it means arrests will have to come through the millions who crossed illegally and evaded capture during the Biden administration, said Banks. It’s "crucial" that Congress pass the reconciliation budget bill, dubbed Trump’s "one big, beautiful bill," he said, because it contains needed funding for illegal immigration enforcement. "The previous administration raped, robbed, and pillaged every penny that wasn’t nailed down to allow illegal immigration to happen," Banks said. "And so we’ve got to rebuild back up our forces, our infrastructure, and our resources inside of the U.S. Border Patrol. "But right now, with what we have we’ve been able to drastically decrease the number of illegal immigrants crossing into the United States daily. We’re currently seeing a 93% decrease. "And so,what that is allowing us to do is to provide Border Patrol agents and CBP [Customs and Border Protection] officers to assist ICE in reaching that goal of 3,000 arrests a day.” The goal would total about 1.1 million for a year, a figure Banks said he would be "excited" to reach. "I can tell you that U.S. Border Patrol is going to be lockstep with ICE and DHS [the Department of Homeland Security] as we go out and arrest those that are in this country illegally and get them deported," Banks said.

Breitbart [5/29/2025 4:19 AM, Ian Hanchett, 3100k] reports on Wednesday’s broadcast of Newsmax TV’s “Rob Schmitt Tonight,” U.S. Border Patrol Chief Michael Banks stated that “we have a large number of illegal immigrants in this country that have already received their due process and have already been ordered deported by a judge and just have refused to leave. And so, if we’re targeting those that are deportable, first and foremost,” the goal of 3,000 immigration arrests a day reportedly pushed by the Trump administration can be done “pretty rapidly.” Banks began by saying that the goal is doable, but it’s crucial to get the tax and spending bill passed. Host Rob Schmitt asked, “Are you feeling good about — you guys are making the arrests, but the deportation process, they’re trying to stonewall this at every possible turn in the courts. Are you feeling good about the possibility that these deportations, rapid deportations, will be allowed, that the follow-through will be there when you make the arrests, that we will be able to kick the people out of the country?” Banks answered, “I do. I believe that it’ll play itself out in the court system, but I have no doubt we’re going to be able to get those in this country illegally deported, especially if you look at the at-large, we have a large number of illegal immigrants in this country that have already received their due process and have already been ordered deported by a judge and just have refused to leave. And so, if we’re targeting those that are deportable, first and foremost, then I think we can achieve this goal pretty rapidly.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [5/28/2025 1:00 PM, Andrew Mark Miller, 46878K] reports that the Department of Homeland Security released a video honoring late Marine Corps veteran Nicholas Quets and highlighting his death at the hands of the Sinaloa Cartel, which the department says it is taking "decisive action" to address. "Drug cartels are being called what they truly are: foreign terrorist organizations," the two-and-a-half-minute video states before showing an interview with retired Army Lt. Col. Warren D. Quotes Jr. and Patricia Quets, whose son Nicholas was shot and killed at a Sinaloa Cartel checkpoint on his way to Rocky Point, Mexico, with friends on Oct. 18, 2024. The cartel members attempted to steal Quets’ pickup truck before shooting him in the back through the heart, ending his life at 31 years old. "I felt validated and vindicated," Quets’ father says in the video, explaining how Trump spoke with him about his son’s death after receiving no feedback from the Biden administration or the Kamala Harris campaign. "Nicholas Quets was a patriot who served our country honorably and was killed by these cartel cowards who shot him in the back. President Trump and Secretary Noem are honoring his memory by dismantling the Sinaloa cartel and other drug cartels that profit from trafficking, violence, and lawlessness," Assistant DHS Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "President Trump’s strong leadership and these arrests and prosecutions of scum-of-the-earth cartel leaders are delivering results. The days of unchecked cartel violence are over."

Reuters [5/28/2025 3:53 PM, Ted Hesson, 24051K] reports U.S. immigration authorities arrested a Mexican immigrant who allegedly threatened to shoot President Donald Trump, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said on Wednesday. The man, Ramon Morales Reyes, 54, allegedly sent a letter to a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer stating that he would "shoot your precious president in [his] head" at one of his rallies, according to DHS, which published an image of the letter. Morales said in the letter that ICE had been deporting his family members although he did not mention anyone specifically. The Washington Times [5/28/2025 2:46 PM, Stephen Dinan, 2106K] reports "We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans," he wrote in neat handwritten script in the letter, which was released by Homeland Security. "We have done more for this country than you white people — you have been deporting my family and I think it is time Donald J. Trump get what he has coming to him.” He said he would "self deport" but first "shoot your precious president in is head.” He said he would take the shot at "one of his big rallies.” A field intelligence officer at U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement received the letter, and ICE rushed to arrest Mr. Morales. "Thanks to our ICE officers, this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars," said Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. She noted that Mr. Morales made the threat less than a year after a would-be assassin shot Mr. Trump at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.The Blaze [5/28/2025 5:40 PM, Carlos Garcia, 1805K] reports Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on social media that the suspect had been detained, and she posted an image of the handwritten threat letter. ‘You have been deporting my family and I think it is time Donald J. Trump get what he has coming to him.’. "Thanks to our ICE officers, this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars," wrote Noem on social media. The letter claimed that the president had deported some of the author’s family and that he would self-deport to Mexico after killing Trump. "We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans — we have done more for this country than you white people — you have been deporting my family and I think it is time Donald J. Trump get what he has coming to him," the letter read. "I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 [sic] to shoot your precious president in is [sic] head — I will see him at one of his big ralleys [sic]," it concluded. The suspect was identified as 54-year-old Ramon Morales Reyes, who is accused of mailing the letter to ICE officials. He was apprehended on Thursday, and he remains in custody in Juneau, Wisconsin. Noem connected the threat to the irresponsible rhetoric used by politicians. "This threat comes not even a year after President Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, and less than two weeks after former FBI Director Comey called for the President’s assassination," she continued. "All politicians and members of the media should take notice of these repeated attempts on President Trump’s life and tone down their rhetoric.” Officials said that Morales Reyes had entered the U.S. illegally nine times in the period from 1998 until 2005. He also had a criminal record with criminal damage to property, felony hit and run, and disorderly conduct with a domestic abuse modifier, according to DHS. "I will continue to take all measures necessary to ensure the protection of President Trump," concluded Noem.

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The AP [5/28/2025 5:19 PM, Staff, 24051K] reports a federal judge in Vermont on Wednesday released a Russian-born scientist and Harvard University researcher from immigration custody as she deals with a criminal charge of smuggling frog embryos into the United States. Colleagues and academics also testified on Kseniia Petrova’s behalf, saying she is doing valuable research to advance cures for cancer. "It is excellent science," Michael West, a scientist and entrepreneur in the biotech industry, testified on Petrova’s research papers. He said he does not know Petrova, but has become acquainted with her published work, citing one in which she explains that "by mapping embryonic development, novel ways of intervening in the biology of regeneration and aging.” West said that Petrova’s medical research skills are highly sought after and that he himself would hire her "in a heartbeat.” Petrova, 30, is currently in the custody of the U.S. Marshals Service in Louisiana. She is expected to be brought to Massachusetts as early as Friday in preparation for a bail hearing next week on the smuggling charge, lawyers said in court. NewsMax [5/28/2025 5:48 PM, Jim Morley, 4622K] reports "We are gratified that today’s hearing gave us the opportunity to present clear and convincing evidence that Kseniia Petrova was not carrying anything dangerous or unlawful, and that customs officers at Logan International Airport had no legal authority to revoke her visa or detain her," Gregory Romanovsky, Petrova’s attorney, said in a statement. "At today’s hearing, we demonstrated that Kseniia is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and does not belong in immigration detention," he added. The Russian-born Petrova was detained at Boston Logan Airport in February and transferred to an ICE detention facility for allegedly failing to declare frog embryos she attempted to bring into the country for her research. U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss instructed Jeffrey M. Hartman, the government’s attorney for Petrova’s case, to draft conditions for her release by May 30. "This is kind of a circular process, because it was the government that revoked her visa," Reiss said on Wednesday. "And it’s essentially saying, We revoked your visa, now you have no documentation and now we’re going to place you in removal proceedings.” Petrova’s case drew national attention in the midst of the Trump administration’s very public feud with the esteemed university. In March, 17 U.S. senator’s sent a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and the acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Todd M. Lyons, demanding the release of Petrova. Reuters [5/28/2025 4:22PM, Nate Raymond, 51390K] reports U.S. District Judge Christina Reiss said during a hearing in Burlington, Vermont that it appeared immigration authorities had detained Kseniia Petrova in February and canceled her visa without any factual or legal basis for doing so after discovering frog embryo samples in her luggage. "What happened in this case was extraordinary and novel," Reiss said. Reiss was not able to order Petrova’s full release from government custody, as federal prosecutors in Boston earlier this month criminally charged her with illegally attempting to smuggle the frog embryo samples into the country. She is now being held by the U.S. Marshals Service, and a judge in her criminal case would need to decide whether to grant her bail as well when she goes before the court as soon as next week. But Reiss said bail in her related immigration case was appropriate as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has indicated that it intends to re-detain Petrova if a judge in her criminal case grants her bail. "At today’s hearing, we demonstrated that Kseniia is neither a danger to the community nor a flight risk, and does not belong in immigration detention," her lawyer, Gregory Romanovsky, said in a statement. The Justice Department declined to comment. CNN [5/28/2025 12:56 PM, Lauren Mascarenhas and Gloria Pazmino, 21433K] reports that the researcher remains in custody until a bail hearing on criminal charges, expected next week. The bail hearing was held in Burlington, Vermont, federal district court before Chief District Judge Christina Reiss Wednesday, though Petrova joined via Zoom from a facility in Louisiana where she is being held. Petrova, who has been detained for more than three months, is among the hundreds of foreign academics whose visas have been revoked amid Trump’s deportation crackdown. Petrova’s lawyers have raised questions about whether the frog embryos that she was carrying were biological items that were dangerous or unlawful and whether customs officers at the Boston Logan International Airport had the legal authority to revoke her visa or detain her. "Miss Petrova has submitted compelling declarations and witness testimony that supports the conclusion that what happened in this case was extraordinary and novel, that there does not appear to be either a factual or legal basis for the immigration officers’ actions," the judge said Wednesday. "She has also raised a substantial question regarding whether her current detention is the product of a process that has nothing to do with the merits of this case," the judge added. "Ms. Petrova has presented compelling evidence of improper government conduct—including efforts to jail and prosecute her—over a minor customs violation," her attorneys wrote in a brief to the court earlier this week. "If re-detained by ICE, there is a substantial and well-founded risk that she will be unlawfully removed to Russia—despite her past political persecution there.” Petrova failed to declare the biological materials and lied to federal officers about carrying them into the country as she was going through a customs search at the airport in February, the Department of Homeland Security has said.

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The Hill [5/28/2025 4:30 PM, Lexi Lonas Cochran, 18649K]
ABC News [5/28/2025 7:32 PM, Ely Brown and Armando Garcia, 31733K]

CBS News [5/28/2025 9:14 PM, Camilo Montoya-Galvez, 51860K] reports a federal judge in Massachusetts on Wednesday ordered the Trump administration to lift a pause it imposed on various immigration applications, saying it was not in the public interest for hundreds of thousands of immigrants to lose their legal status in the U.S. The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge Indira Talwani is a reprieve for many immigrants from Afghanistan, Latin America, Ukraine and other parts of the world whose ability to remain and work in the U.S. lawfully had been threatened by several Trump administration actions. Agreeing with pro-immigrant advocates who sued the Trump administration, Talwani found that the government’s actions were arbitrary and capricious, in violation of federal administrative law. "This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country, such that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families," Talwani wrote in her order. The programs at the center of Talwani’s order rely on a legal immigration authority known as parole, which allows the federal government to temporarily admit foreigners on humanitarian or public interest grounds. President Trump’s appointees have sought to curtail the use of parole, arguing that the authority was broadly abused by the Biden administration. Talwani directed the Trump administration to end a pause it quietly enacted in February to suspend the processing of immigration benefit applications filed by immigrants allowed into the U.S. under several Biden administration programs that relied on the parole authority. That pause mainly affected 240,000 Ukrainians allowed into the U.S. under a sponsorship program known as Uniting for Ukraine set up after the Russian invasion of their homeland in February 2022, as well as 530,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans who benefited from another Biden-era parole policy. It prevented those who entered the U.S. under those policies from obtaining other forms of legal status, like asylum, Temporary Protected Status or permanent residency. Representatives for the Department of Homeland Security and its sub-agency, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), which oversees the parole programs, did not immediately comment on Wednesday’s court order. [Editorial note: consult video at source link] The New York Times [5/28/2025 10:43 PM, Zach Montague and Jazmine Ulloa, 138952K] reports “This court emphasizes, as it did in its prior order, that it is not in the public interest to manufacture a circumstance in which hundreds of thousands of individuals will, over the course of several months, become unlawfully present in the country, such that these individuals cannot legally work in their communities or provide for themselves and their families,” Judge Talwani wrote. “Nor is it in the public interest for individuals who enlisted and are currently serving in the United States military to face family separation, particularly where some of these individuals joined the military in part to help their loved ones obtain lawful status.” As part of the order, Judge Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, also moved to certify all those affected as a class, extending blanket protections temporarily to those in several programs pending a final decision in the case. They included Afghans who worked with the U.S. military during 20 years of war in Afghanistan; Ukrainians fleeing violence after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022; and those in a family reunification program that allowed migrants from some Central and South American countries to join their family members in the United States while awaiting a visa.

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Reuters [5/28/2025 7:02 PM, Nate Raymond, 51390K]

The AP [5/28/2025 8:12 PM, Claire Rush, 56000K] reports the Trump administration said in court filings Wednesday that it was working to bring back a Guatemalan man who was deported to Mexico in spite of his fears of being harmed there, days after a federal judge ordered the administration to facilitate his return. The man, who is gay, was protected from being returned to his home country under a U.S. immigration judge’s order at the time. But the U.S. put him on a bus and sent him to Mexico instead, a removal that U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy found likely “lacked any semblance of due process.” Mexico has since returned him to Guatemala, where he is in hiding, according to court documents. In a court filing Wednesday, government lawyers said that a so-called significant public benefit parole packet had been approved and was awaiting additional approval from Homeland Security Investigations. The designation allows people who aren’t eligible to enter the U.S. to do so temporarily, often for reasons related to law enforcement or legal proceedings. Officials in the Phoenix field office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, spoke with the man’s lawyers over the weekend and are working to bring him back to the U.S. on a plane chartered by ICE, the court filing said. An earlier court proceeding had determined that the man, identified by the initials O.C.G., risked persecution or torture if returned to Guatemala. But he also feared returning to Mexico, where he says he was raped and extorted while seeking asylum in the U.S., according to court documents. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, who called Murphy a “federal activist judge,” said O.C.G. was in the country illegally, was “granted withholding of removal to Guatemala” and was instead sent to Mexico, which she said was “a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim.” Murphy’s order last Friday adds to a string of findings by federal courts against recent Trump administration deportations. Those have included other deportations to third countries and the erroneous deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, an El Salvadoran who had lived in Maryland for roughly 14 years, working and raising a family. The U.S. Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. from a notorious Salvadoran prison, rejecting the White House’s claim that it couldn’t retrieve him after mistakenly deporting him. Both the White House and the El Salvadoran president have said they are powerless to return him. FOX News [5/28/2025 8:13 PM, Breanne Deppisch, 46878K] reports that the Justice Department said in a court filing Wednesday that they are working to return the individual, identified only as O.C.G., to the U.S. The update is significant and marks the first known instance that the Trump administration appears to be complying with a federal court’s order to return to the U.S. a migrant who was deported in what administration officials have since acknowledged to be the result of erroneous information. Lawyers for the Trump administration told the court late Wednesday that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations Phoenix Field Office made contact over the weekend with O.C.G.’s attorneys and are "currently working with ICE Air to bring O.C.G. back to the United States on an Air Charter Operations (ACO) flight return leg." The update comes after Murphy rejected a request from the Department of Homeland Security to amend his earlier order requiring the Trump administration to "take all immediate steps" to return the individual to the U.S., citing a lack of due process. "America’s asylum system was never intended to be used as a de facto amnesty program or a catch-all, get-out-of-deportation-free card," DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement over the weekend.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [5/29/2025 3:23 AM, Mattathias Schwartz and Hamed Aleaziz, 330K]
Washington Post [5/28/2025 11:07 PM, Maria Sacchetti, 32099K]
Politico [5/28/2025 11:09 PM, Hassan Ali Kanu, 16523K]
Axios [5/29/2025 12:33 AM, Rebecca Falconer, 13599K]
CBS News [5/28/2025 8:45 PM, Staff, 51860K]
Washington Examiner [5/28/2025 6:57 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 1934K]

FOX News [5/28/2025 12:18 PM, Greg Norman, 46878K] reports a federal judge denied a request from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to reconsider his order calling for the Trump administration "to take all immediate steps" to return a Guatemalan deportee to the U.S. The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy in Massachusetts comes after he issued a ruling last week saying that the removal of the individual – identified only as O.C.G. – "lacked due process." "In general, this case presents no special facts or legal circumstances, only the banal horror of a man being wrongfully loaded onto a bus and sent back to a country where he was allegedly just raped and kidnapped," Murphy wrote Friday. "Defendants are hereby ORDERED to take all immediate steps, including coordinating with Plaintiffs’ counsel, to facilitate the return of O.C.G. to the United States," he added. DHS said in response to the decision that "America’s asylum system was never intended to be used as a de facto amnesty program or a catch-all, get-out-of-deportation-free card. "The person in question was an illegally present alien who was granted withholding of removal to Guatemala. He was instead removed to Mexico, a safe third option for him, pending his asylum claim. Yet, this federal activist judge is ordering us to bring him back, so he can have an opportunity to prove why he should be granted asylum to a country that he has had no past connection to," the department wrote on X in response to a news article about Murphy’s decision. "The Trump administration is committed to returning our asylum system to its original intent," it declared.

NPR [5/28/2025 7:37 PM, Adrian Florido, 37958K] reports a federal judge has ruled that Secretary of State Marco Rubio likely violated the constitution when he stripped Mahmoud Khalil of his green card and ordered him deported over his pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia University. But in a lengthy, mixed ruling, U.S. District Judge Michael Farbiarz for the District of New Jersey declined, for now, to order Khalil released from federal immigration detention in Louisiana, where he’s been held since ICE agents arrested him in New York City on March 8. Judge Farbiarz said Khalil had not yet proven that his detention is causing him "irreparable harm," and gave him more time to provide evidence that it is. But he also suggested that even if Khalil is able to prove that, the government may, for now, be justified in detaining him on a separate charge it filed against him in immigration court alleging he committed fraud by failing to provide certain personal details on his application for a green card last year. Khalil’s lawyers had claimed that the charge was baseless, and that the government only filed it, days after his arrest, as retaliation for his speech. But the judge ruled Khalil did not provide enough evidence for that First Amendment retaliation claim, and denied his request to be released on those grounds. Khalil’s lawyers are trying to convince an immigration judge in Louisiana to throw out that charge. That same judge ruled last month that she had no authority to question Rubio’s decision to deport Khalil. In Wednesday’s ruling, the federal judge in New Jersey said that he would soon issue another order detailing the next steps in the case. The New York Times [5/28/2025 7:01 PM, Santul Nerkar and Jonah E. Bromwich, 138952K] reports Secretary of State Marco Rubio had first invoked a rarely cited law, saying Mr. Khalil’s presence in the United States facilitated the spread of antisemitism. The new allegations were more mundane: that Mr. Khalil had failed to disclose his membership in several organizations, including a United Nations agency that provides relief to Palestinian refugees, when he applied for permanent residency. On Wednesday, the government’s strategy appeared to have worked. Judge Michael E. Farbiarz of Federal District Court in New Jersey declined to release Mr. Khalil from an immigration facility in Louisiana, even though he found that the use of the foreign policy law in Mr. Khalil’s detention was most likely unconstitutional. Mr. Khalil’s case is playing out in two courts. Judge Farbiarz has the power to free him and to determine the broad constitutionality of the administration’s attempts to deport him. An immigration court judge in Louisiana is considering the more narrow question of whether the United States has satisfied the basic legal requirements for a deportation. Mr. Khalil’s lawyers had sought a preliminary injunction that, in addition to ordering his release, would block the Trump administration from using the law to deport other noncitizens who had spoken out in support of Palestinians, or had been critical of Israel. NBC News [5/28/2025 11:43 PM, Chloe Atkins, 44540K] reports Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement Wednesday night: "It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should no longer be in this country.” The Washington Examiner [5/28/2025 10:41 PM, Kaelan Deese, 1934K] reports that a DHS spokeswoman defended the administration’s motivations in a statement to the Washington Examiner, arguing they fall well within constitutional authority. "Article II and federal statute clearly give President Trump the powers necessary to protect the safety and wellbeing of the American people," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said. "That’s the job the American people elected him to do, and that’s what he did here. It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should no longer be in this country. The Constitution, the facts, and common sense are on our side on this.” In justifying Khalil’s deportation efforts, the administration invoked a Cold War-era deportation statute that permits the removal of noncitizens deemed a threat to foreign policy. But Farbiarz sharply criticized how the law was applied in this case, noting that Rubio never explained how Khalil’s campus activities actually affected diplomatic relations with another country — the core requirement of a foreign policy justification. "The Secretary did not affirmatively determine that the Petitioner’s alleged conduct has impacted U.S. relations with other countries," the judge wrote, adding that the memo "says nothing about any country other than America.”

CBS New York [5/28/2025 7:25 PM, Staff, 51860K] Video HERE reports a district judge has denied Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil’s request for a preliminary injunction to temporarily stop his deportation proceedings. The judge will allow his lawyers to present more evidence in his request, however. Khalil, who holds a green card, has been held in Louisiana since Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested him in March. The judge said the Trump administration’s effort to deport Khalil because of his pro-Palestinian activism at Columbia likely violates the Constitution. In a lengthy order issued Wednesday, Judge Michael Farbiarz wrote the government’s primary justification for removing Khalil — that his beliefs may pose a threat to U.S. foreign policy — could open the door to vague and arbitrary enforcement. Still, Farbiarz stopped short of ordering Khalil released from a Louisiana jail, finding his attorneys had not sufficiently responded to another charge brought by the government: that Khalil did not properly disclose certain personal details in his permanent residency application. The judge said he would review additional evidence in the coming days as he continues to consider Khalil’s request for release.

The AP [5/28/2025 3:58 PM, Ben Finley, 24051K] reports the Trump administration has asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit over Kilmar Abrego Garcia ‘s mistaken deportation to El Salvador, arguing the court lacks jurisdiction because he’s no longer in the United States. The request for dismissal late Tuesday was a procedural move by the U.S. government, which was required to respond to Abrego Garcia’s lawsuit within 60 days. U.S. attorneys reiterated their arguments from late March against his return. The government’s filing is the latest development in a case that has carried on for two months without any discernible movement toward resolution, despite a judge’s order to bring back Abrego Garcia and a subsequent Supreme Court ruling to "facilitate" his return. President Donald Trump told ABC News in late April that he could retrieve Abrego Garcia with a phone call to El Salvador’s president. But Trump said he wouldn’t do it because Abrego Garcia is a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that Abrego Garcia denies and for which he was never charged. Trump administration attorneys have not used the president’s plainspoken explanation inside the Maryland federal court that ordered Abrego Garcia’s return. They’ve argued that information about returning Abrego Garcia is protected by the state secrets privilege, a legal doctrine often used in military cases. U.S. attorneys said releasing such details in open court — or even to the judge in private – would jeopardize national security by revealing sensitive diplomatic negotiations. Many filings in the case have been sealed. Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have argued that the Trump administration has done nothing to return the Maryland construction worker. They say the government is invoking the privilege to hide behind the misconduct of mistakenly deporting him and refusing to bring him back. Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg, one of Abrego Garcia’s attorneys, said in a statement that the Trump administration’s motion to dismiss was "a retread of arguments they’ve already made that have already been rejected, filed just to meet a deadline.” The Washington Examiner [5/28/2025 11:59 AM, Kaelan Deese, 1934K] reports Abrego Garcia and his family sued after he was removed from the U.S. despite a prior immigration court order granting him withholding of removal to El Salvador due to what Abrego Garcia claimed were gang-related threats to his safety in his home country. He is now detained there anyway and is seeking emergency relief to be brought back to the U.S. But Justice Department attorneys said Tuesday the case cannot proceed because Abrego Garcia "is not in United States custody, [so] his injury is not redressable by this Court." The DOJ also argued that the Immigration and Nationality Act bars judicial review in this context. "All Plaintiffs’ claims challenge Abrego Garcia’s confinement in El Salvador," the motion, joined by the Department of Homeland Security, said. "Plaintiffs admit that Abrego Garcia ‘is being held in custody by the Government of El Salvador.’ Therefore, this Court lacks jurisdiction to hear Plaintiffs’ claims and should dismiss them." Abrego Garcia has not been convicted of a crime but was previously denied bond based on confidential information that he was affiliated with MS-13, a violent gang designated as a terrorist group by the Trump administration. His removal occurred in March following an encounter with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Maryland, which his lawyers call unlawful and retaliatory.

Reported similarly:
Telemundo Washington DC [5/28/2025 5:19 PM, Thayma Sánchez, 56K]

FOX News [5/28/2025 3:38 PM, Breanne Deppisch, 46878K] reports a federal judge in Maryland scolded Trump administration lawyers on Tuesday for waiting until the eleventh hour to seek an extension in the case of Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia, the Salvadorian migrant and alleged MS-13 member deported to El Salvador in what officials have acknowledged was an administrative error. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis denied the Justice Department’s 30-day extension request, noting that Trump administration lawyers waited until "the very day" their response was due to file. She also said they "expended no effort in demonstrating good cause" to comply with her earlier orders. She also noted the number of times the administration has delayed submitting information in the case despite the fact the Supreme Court ordered the Trump administration this year to "facilitate" Abrego Garcia’s return to the U.S. Hours later, the Trump administration filed with the court a motion to dismiss the case, citing what it described as a "lack of jurisdiction." Xinis has not yet responded to the motion to dismiss.

NBC News [5/28/2025 5:10 PM, David Noriega, 44540K] reports before he was sent to an infamous supermax prison in El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act, Andry Hernandez Romero was waiting for an immigration judge to decide whether he would be granted asylum in the United States. And even after his deportation, Hernandez’s lawyers fought to keep his asylum claim open as a way of ensuring he didn’t disappear from the American legal system. But an immigration judge in San Diego dismissed Hernandez’s asylum claim on Tuesday — one of at least 14 such dismissals to take place in recent weeks. This has immigration attorneys concerned that the dismissals are the Trump administration’s latest tactic in evading due process to ensure those sent away have no means to return. “It seems the government’s intention in dismissing these cases across the country is to complete the disappearance of people to El Salvador, to end their legal proceedings, and to act as though they weren’t here seeking asylum in the first place,” said Lindsay Toczylowski, executive director of Immigrant Defenders Law Center, a nonprofit representing Hernandez and seven other Venezuelans deported to El Salvador. Hernandez, 32, is the lead plaintiff in a high-profile lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union against the Trump administration in Washington, D.C., on behalf of the hundreds of Venezuelans deported to a Salvadoran megaprison under the Alien Enemies Act. That case has been the centerpiece of a legal saga surrounding the deportations — one some legal analysts say has brought the U.S. to the brink of a constitutional crisis.

CNN [5/28/2025 8:04 PM, Uriel Blanco, 21433K] reports a year ago, Andry José Hernández Romero left Venezuela to seek a better future in the United States. He wanted to continue growing his career as a makeup artist. He left behind his lifelong home in the little town of Capacho Nuevo, where he lived with his mother, father, and younger brother. On May 23, 2024 – just two days after his 31st birthday – Andry left with the hope of one day opening a beauty salon in the US, or making a living from one of his other passions: design and tailoring. But all that hope has turned to anguish. The Venezuelan makeup artist made it to the US, but his journey became "tragic," his mother, Alexis Romero, told CNN. Andry is one of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants who were deported by the US government to El Salvador in March. His loved ones have had no news of him; they are completely out of touch. As of now, there is no certainty about what will happen to him or the rest of the detainees in the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) prison. "Please bring him back, it’s been two months of anguish. We can’t take it anymore. Please, put your hand on your heart and send him back. This anguish is eating us alive … I hope these people say, ‘Yes, he’s coming back.’ That they say something, anything, just a little thing," pleads Alexis, 65. CNN asked the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) about Andry’s case and, without mentioning him directly, the agency said its intelligence assessments go beyond tattoos and social media reviews, without giving further details. "DHS intelligence assessments go well beyond just gang affiliate tattoos and social media," a senior DHS spokesperson told CNN in a statement sent by email. "Tren De Aragua is one of the most violent and ruthless terrorist gangs on planet earth. They rape, maim, and murder for sport. President Trump and Secretary (of Homeland Security) Kristi Noem will not allow criminal gangs to terrorize American citizens. We are confident in our law enforcement’s intelligence. We aren’t going to share intelligence reports and undermine national security every time a gang member denies he is one. That would be insane.”

New York Times [5/28/2025 10:54 PM, Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer, 138952K] reports an F.B.I. intelligence memo unsealed on Wednesday offers new details on why the bureau concluded that some Venezuelan government officials were likely to have had some responsibility for a criminal gang’s actions in the United States, pitting it against other intelligence agencies in a heated dispute over President Trump’s use of a wartime law. The memo, whose conclusions the remaining intelligence agencies have rejected, was submitted by the administration to a federal judge in Texas before a hearing on Thursday. It is part of a proliferating array of lawsuits over Mr. Trump’s use of the law, the Alien Enemies Act, to deport people accused of being members of that gang, Tren de Aragua, to a notorious Salvadoran prison without due process. “The F.B.I. assesses some Venezuelan government officials likely facilitate the migration of TdA members from Venezuela to the United States to advance the Maduro regime’s objective of undermining public safety in the United States,” the memo said, using an abbreviation for the gang. It added that the bureau also thinks some officials in the administration of Venezeula’s president, Nicolas Maduro, “likely use TdA members as proxies.” The submission of the memo opens the door to greater judicial scrutiny of a key basis for Mr. Trump’s assertion that he can invoke the rarely used law to summarily deport people accused of being members of the gang. It also offers a glimpse of the claims put forth by several detained migrants that formed the basis for the F.B.I.’s assessment. In March, Mr. Trump proclaimed that Venezuela’s government controls the gang — a key premise for his use of the wartime deportation law — as he sent planeloads of men to El Salvador. Courts have since halted such transfers under the act, ruling that it is likely that it does not apply to the issue of undocumented migrants rather than a wartime situation. Despite the F.B.I.’s assessment, the majority of the nation’s intelligence agencies, including the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, believe Mr. Trump’s claim is inaccurate. The National Intelligence Council, an elite internal think tank that policymakers can commission for special projects, has written two assessments to that effect, while also noting that the F.B.I. partly dissented. The F.B.I.’s minority views were known, in part because one of the council’s memos was declassified and released this month in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Among other things, it made it clear that the F.B.I. had based its view on the statements of several migrants arrested in the United States.

New York Times [5/28/2025 9:23 PM, Michael C. Bender, 138952K] reports President Trump on Wednesday said Harvard should have a cap on the number of international students it admits to create more spots for Americans, undercutting his administration’s argument that merit alone should guide admissions practices as it escalates its fight with the elite university. Mr. Trump’s comments came in response to a question about the Department of Homeland Security’s recent move to revoke the school’s ability to enroll foreign students. The college immediately challenged that decision in court, and a federal judge has temporarily blocked the policy. Still, the State Department has since halted interviews abroad with foreign citizens applying for student and exchange visas as the government expands its scrutiny of applicants’ social media posts, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Wednesday that the Trump administration would begin revoking student visas for Chinese citizens. The policy shifts follow efforts to crack down on universities, including Harvard, over what the administration has said is a failure to address antisemitism on campus. Mr. Trump’s has also attacked policies aimed at supporting diversity, equity and inclusion in an attempt to bring academia more in line with his views that white men and those with traditional views of gender are being discriminated against. Harvard has so far resisted considerable pressure from the government to enact changes sought by Mr. Trump to its curriculum, hiring and admissions practices. But the government could potentially limit the number of international students allowed to study in the United States on the whole, an idea Mr. Trump alluded to on Wednesday.

Breitbart [5/28/2025 3:17 PM, John Binder, 3077K] reports President Donald Trump is suggesting that Harvard University cap the number of foreign students it accepts annually to make room for Americans who want to attend the prestigious Ivy League school. Last week, Trump’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced it would be blocking Harvard University from enrolling foreign students — a move that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said is to hold the Ivy League school "accountable for fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus." In remarks to the media on Wednesday, Trump said Harvard ought to cap its foreign student population at perhaps 15 percent to open more slots for American applicants.

CNN [5/28/2025 5:45 PM, Katelyn Polantz, 21433K] reports the Trump administration has thrown the lives of the university’s 7,000 international students into distress and disarray, with some afraid of attending commencement this week, Harvard’s director of immigration services spelled out in a new court filing ahead of a major federal court hearing Thursday in Boston. Some US students are even reconsidering enrolling this fall because of the Trump administration’s actions, Maureen Martin wrote in her sworn statement filed Wednesday. Martin’s declaration in court highlights the competitive disadvantage the Trump administration’s recent actions against the university have caused. A judge has temporarily blocked the State Department and Department of Homeland Security from rescinding Harvard’s ability to host international students. Yet some of the damage is already done, the school says.

Bloomberg [5/28/2025 6:47 PM, David Voreacos, 19320K] reports Harvard University said the Trump administration’s ban on enrolling international students is already causing harm and spreading fear, even though a judge has temporarily barred the order from taking effect. US customs officials at Boston Logan International Airport ordered secondary screenings of Harvard visa holders — including a former head of state who’s a fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School — immediately after the Department of Homeland Security issued the ban on May 22, a school official said in a court filing Wednesday. At least 10 students and scholars had their visa applications denied by US embassy officials, the university said. Harvard sued President Donald Trump’s administration on May 23, and US District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked the ban about two hours later. But the damage has been done, according to Maureen Martin, director of immigration services in the Harvard International Office. “Students and faculty alike have expressed profound fear, concern, and confusion,” Martin wrote in a statement to the court. “Many international students and scholars are reporting significant emotional distress that is affecting their mental health and making it difficult to focus on their studies. Some are afraid to attend their own graduation ceremonies this week out of fear that some immigration related action will be taken against them.” Harvard lawyers filed the Martin declaration before a hearing Thursday in Boston federal court, where Burroughs will consider Harvard’s request to extend her earlier order blocking the administration’s move. The government wants to withhold Harvard’s certification to enroll about 6,800 international students. About 27% of the student body comes from other countries.

Washington Examiner [5/28/2025 12:29 PM, Timothy Nerozzi, 1934K] reports Governments in East Asia are hoping to attract their nations’ brightest overseas students in the wake of President Donald Trump’s war against Harvard University. China, Japan, Malaysia, and others are implementing programs that will seek to entice current Harvard students from their country to return and finish their education domestically, as the future of international enrollment at the Ivy League heavyweight is questioned. "The U.S. is the biggest destination for Japanese students studying abroad," Japanese Minister of Education Toshiko Abe said on Tuesday. "We are committed to ensuring, in collaboration with related agencies, that motivated and talented young people can continue their studies." The Japanese government is urging local and national universities to accommodate valuable students who are at risk of becoming academic free agents. The Department of Homeland Security revoked Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification last week for failing to comply with an April 16 demand for information about international students believed to be contributing to public disruptions and illegal protests. "Harvard’s leadership has created an unsafe campus environment by permitting anti-American, pro-terrorist agitators to harass and physically assault individuals, including many Jewish students," the DHS said in a press release. "Many of these agitators are foreign students," it continued. "Harvard’s leadership further facilitated, and engaged in coordinated activity with the [Chinese Communist Party], including hosting and training members of a CCP paramilitary group complicit in the Uyghur genocide."

The Hill [5/28/2025 1:47 PM, Alex Gangitano, 18649K] reports that President Trump on Wednesday suggested a 15 percent cap be imposed on the percentage of foreign students that Harvard University and other U.S. higher education institutions can admit. The president, while speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, suggested that foreign students take up too much of the student body and raised issues over some of the foreign students he called "troublemakers." "These countries aren’t helping us. They’re not investing in Harvard … we are. So why would 31 percent — why would a number so big," he said. "I think they should have a cap of maybe around 15 percent, not 31 percent." "We have people [who] want to go to Harvard and other schools, [but] they can’t get in because we have foreign students there. But I want to make sure that the foreign students are people that can love our country. We don’t want to see shopping centers exploding. We don’t want to see the kind of riots that you had," Trump said. "And I’ll tell you what, many of those students didn’t go anywhere. Many of those students were troublemakers caused by the radical left lunatics in this country." He also said, without elaborating, that he doesn’t want "radical people" coming to U.S. as students and "making trouble in our country."

Federal News Network [5/28/2025 6:01 PM, Drew Friedman, 2346K] reports probationary employees who allege their terminations from the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year were unlawful can now pursue their appeal as a class action at the Merit Systems Protection Board. After MSPB issued a class certification decision Friday, DHS probationary employees who were fired now have coverage through the class appeal, rather than needing to file individual cases at MSPB as they seek reinstatement in their jobs. DHS earlier this year terminated approximately 369 probationary employees who had recently either joined the federal workforce or started a new federal position. Friday’s decision from MSPB Chief Administrative Judge Sara Snyder created the first certified class out of 20 appeals that a consortium of law firms has filed on behalf of fired probationary employees at various agencies. "I find that a class appeal is the fairest and most efficient way to adjudicate the appeal and that the putative class counsel and named appellants will adequately represent the interests of the parties," Snyder, who works in MSPB’s western regional office, wrote in Friday’s decision. The original appellants in the DHS case were employed at the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency. But Snyder determined that the class certification applies to any DHS probationary employees who were fired from their jobs as part of the Trump administration’s terminations in February. "While the agency argued that the class should be limited to FEMA and CISA … I do not find such limitation necessary or efficient," Snyder wrote. "The agency responsible for the action is the respondent in a board appeal, not the underlying agency department or subcomponent.” The class action appeal at MSPB will not cover DHS employees who were fired earlier this year due to individual performance issues, nor will it cover DHS employees who signed a deferred resignation program agreement or opted into another separation incentive. Non-probationary employees at DHS are also excluded from the class.

Wall Street Journal [5/28/2025 10:32 PM, Robert Barba, 646K] reports President Trump has pardoned or commuted the sentences of 26 people in recent days, including former Republican lawmakers, reality-television stars and a one-time gang leader convicted of murder. The White House didn’t provide details on the president’s decision. Here is a look at some of the individuals who have been granted clemency. James Callahan, the former leader of the International Union of Operating Engineers pleaded guilty in early 2025 to knowingly filing false annual reports to the Labor Department. Todd and Julie Chrisley, the stars of the reality-TV show “Chrisley Knows Best” were sentenced in 2022 for conspiracy to defraud banks out of more than $30 million in fraudulent loans by submitting false documents. Kentrell Gaulden, the rap artist known as YoungBoy Never Broke Again, or NBA YoungBoy, the rapper was sentenced in December 2024 to just under two years in prison for possessing a weapon as a convicted felon, according to the Associated Press. Michael Grimm, the former Republican congressman from the New York City borough of Staten Island pleaded guilty to tax fraud in 2014 and was sentenced to eight months in prison. Larry Hoover, a co-founder of the infamous Gangster Disciples in Chicago, Hoover has been in prison since the early 1970s for crimes including murder. In recent years, artists such as Kanye West and Drake have pushed for his case to be reconsidered. John G. Rowland, the former governor of Connecticut, a Republican, served two prison sentences. He resigned in 2004 during his third term and served 10 months in federal prison after pleading guilty to a corruption-related charge. In 2014, he was convicted and later sentenced to 30 months in prison for attempting to conceal his paid role in a congressional campaign from the Federal Election Commission. Imaad Zuberi, in 2019, Zuberi pleaded guilty to several charges related to influence peddling, campaign-finance violations and unregistered lobbying on behalf of numerous foreign states.

Wall Street Journal [5/28/2025 3:26 PM, Tarini Parti and C. Ryan Barber, 646K] reports President Trump said he is considering pardoning the men who are serving prison terms for conspiring to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. “I will take a look at it,” Trump said in the Oval Office on Wednesday. The president suggested that the men were unfairly convicted, asserting that they “got railroaded.” “You know, they were drinking, and I think they said stupid things, but I’ll take a look at that,” he said. Government prosecutors portrayed Adam Fox of Michigan and Barry Croft of Delaware as violent extremists who hatched a plan to kidnap the Democratic governor over her policies to contain the Covid-19 pandemic. Prosecutors said that in the summer of 2020, the men took steps to plan for the kidnapping. “These defendants were outside a woman’s house in the middle of the night with night-vision goggles, and guns, and a plan to kidnap her,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler said in his closing argument during the trial. The indictment said the defendants used encrypted text messages, held meetings in a business that had a secret trap door and talked about blowing up a bridge to hinder the law-enforcement response. Defense lawyers said they were entrapped and egged on by government informants and FBI agents. A first trial ended with a hung jury for Croft and Fox, while two others were acquitted and another two pleaded guilty. Croft and Fox were both found guilty at a second trial in 2022. Croft was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison, while Fox was sentenced to 16 years in prison. Other men were sentenced to prison terms after being convicted of aiding in the kidnapping plot. Whitmer, a two-term Democratic governor of the swing state, has said the plot was the result of violent and divisive political rhetoric in the country. Her office didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Telemundo [5/28/2025 2:15 PM, Alejandra Arteaga, 3352K] reports from January 20 to May 15 of this year, 40,552 Mexican migrants have returned to the country. Eighty percent are men from the states of Guanajuato, Chiapas, Guerrero, Puebla, and Oaxaca, according to data from the National Migration Institute provided to Noticias Telemundo. The migrants have been deported primarily through the cities of San Luis Río Colorado, Nogales, and Agua Prieta, in Sonora, on the border with Arizona; Tijuana and Mexicali, in Baja California, bordering California; and Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, and Matamoros, in Tamaulipas, a state bordering Texas.

Los Angeles Times [5/28/2025 2:28 PM, Sarah McLaughlin, 14672K] reports that American universities have long feared that the Chinese government will restrict its country’s students from attending institutions that cross Beijing’s sensitive political lines. Universities still fear that consequence today, but the most immediate threat is no longer posed by the Chinese government. Now, as the latest punishment meted out to the Trump administration’s preeminent academic scapegoat shows, it’s our own government posing the threat. In a May 22 letter, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced she revoked Harvard University’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, meaning the university’s thousands of international students must transfer immediately or lose their legal status. Harvard can no longer enroll future international students either. Noem cited Harvard’s failure to hand over international student disciplinary records in response to a prior letter and, disturbingly, the Trump administration’s desire to "root out the evils of anti-Americanism" on campus. Among the most alarming demands in this latest missive was that Harvard supply all video of "any protest activity" by any international student within the last five years. "Let this serve as a warning to all universities and academic institutions across the country," Noem wrote on X about the punishment. And on Tuesday, the administration halted interviews for all new student visas. Noem’s warning will, no doubt, be heard loud and clear. That’s because universities — which depend on international students’ tuition dollars — have already had reason to worry that they will lose access to international students for displeasing censorial government officials.

Daily Caller [5/28/2025 2:13 PM, Adam Johnston, 1010K] reports that shortly after taking office, President Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act, directing the Attorney General and the Secretary of Homeland Security to apprehend, detain, and deport members of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua (TdA) from the United States. According to a report by the Heritage Foundation, TdA functions as a “tool of asymmetric warfare employed by the Venezuelan regime” to destabilize countries and assassinate political opponents while maintaining plausible deniability. TdA’s reach into the fabric of America became glaringly obvious when a video surfaced showing gun-wielding Venezuelan migrants storming through an apartment building in the suburban city of Aurora, Colorado. According to court documents, the apartment investor said they “lost control” of several apartment buildings to the gang, and have been renting out units to migrants under “threat.” Given the reach and threat posed by TdA, the Trump Administration moved quickly to expedite the removal of these gang members, sending approximately 250 people whom it says are members of Tren de Aragua, as well as some MS-13 members, to El Salvador’s Cecot prison. Given the scale of America’s illegal alien problem, differentiating members of Tren de Aragua or other foreign gang members from the millions of illegal aliens who entered the United States under the previous Biden Administration will be a difficult task. And to be sure, deportations at the scale necessary after decades of mass immigration, both legal and illegal, will undoubtedly produce a few mistakes or adverse outliers.

The Hill [5/28/2025 12:30 PM, Jim Harper, 18649K] reports there’s a certain irony in completing the financial surveillance procedures the government requires Airbnb to impose on its hosts. Right along with snapping and submitting a selfie for automatic verification against the required government-issued identification, Airbnb occasionally asks for a guest’s country of citizenship, too. It is literally the United States, but is it really the United States? In so many ways, we have become a banal pseudo-security state that betrays our founding ideals. Sure, "the land of the free and the home of the brave" has always been self-flattering and aspirational. The line was lent to our national anthem from Francis Scott Key’s poem, "Defence of Fort M’Henry," recalling the War of 1812. That war involved actual death, destruction and threats to the territorial integrity of the United States. The English captured Washington and burned the Capitol before American victories at Baltimore and Plattsburgh set the British back. Andrew Jackson led American forces in repelling a British attack on New Orleans. If you could transport the minds and collective spirit of those Americans to this day, would they have meekly submitted their data to administrative security systems that treat them as prospective suspects in relatively pitiable crimes and wrongs? There is a lot packed into such a broad question. Let’s sharpen it through the language of risk management.

New York Times [5/28/2025 3:36 PM, Miriam Jordan and Christina Jewett, 138952K] reports for more than a decade, unaccompanied children fleeing hardship have journeyed north from Central America and crossed the Mexico-U.S. border. Many of them have been allowed to stay in the United States, and the government has spared most of them the full weight of immigration enforcement. Under the Trump administration, more of those children are coming face to face with federal agents. From New York to Hawaii, agents have been showing up unannounced at schools, homes and migrant shelters to interview the children. The Trump administration has called these surprise visits “wellness checks” intended to ensure that the children are enrolled in school and being properly cared for. But the agents conducting the visits are not social workers or child welfare specialists, nor are they labor inspectors or truant officers. Rather, the agents are primarily from Homeland Security Investigations, a specialized unit of Immigration and Customs Enforcement that combats drug and weapons smuggling, cybercrimes and financial crimes. Now, though, the Trump administration’s use of criminal investigators for these checks has stirred anxiety among immigrants and has alarmed educators, advocates and lawyers, who see the visits as a tactic to accelerate deportations. Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, said that in the course of these checks, agents have detained some caregivers who are in the country unlawfully. In cases where there were no other adults authorized to care for the children, agents have placed the children in government care, according to Ms. McLaughlin, who did not specify how many adults or children had been detained as a result of the visits or whether any of them had been deported.

FOX News [5/28/2025 12:54 PM, Deirdre Heavey, 46878K] reports that Republicans are ripping progressive New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for renewing her call to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a recent fundraising email. "I believe that ICE, an agency that was just formed in 2003 during the Patriot Act era, is a rogue agency that should not exist," Ocasio-Cortez said in a fundraising email obtained by Fox News Digital. The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC), House Republicans’ campaign arm, criticized the potential 2028 presidential candidate in an X post for fundraising on wanting to abolish ICE, a progressive rallying cry that rejects President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. "House Democrat Minority Leader AOC is doubling down on their party’s most extreme, unhinged agenda, while the rest of her party is bending their knee to the radical wing. At this rate, the Democrat platform in 2026 will be a fever dream of defunding the police, wide open borders, and far-left hellscapes," NRCC Spokesman Mike Marinella told Fox News Digital in a statement. "Pathetic, yet predictable from AOC," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News Digital. "This kind of demonization of ICE officers has led to our officers facing a 413% increase in assaults. While bottom-barrel politicians like AOC fight to protect criminal illegal aliens, our ICE officers will continue putting their lives and safety on the line to arrest murderers, kidnappers, and pedophiles that were let into our country by the Biden Administration’s open border policies."

NewsMax [5/28/2025 11:43 AM, Eric Mack, 4622K] reports the White House fired back at Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who again called for the abolishment of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. "I believe that ICE, an agency that was just formed in 2003 during the Patriot Act era, is a rogue agency that should not exist," Ocasio-Cortez wrote in a campaign email Monday. Her email slammed critics who are calling her "extreme" as she potentially gears up to be a leading Democrat presidential primary candidate in 2028. "AOC, Democrat Party leader, calls for abolishing ICE; meanwhile, the brave men and women of ICE get dangerous criminal illegal immigrants off our streets and protect American citizens: Why does AOC want to stop that?" White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson wrote in a statement in a memo. Ocasio-Cortez has had notorious congressional run-ins and media spats with Tom Homan, border czar for President Donald Trump. Homan called her the "dumbest congresswoman ever" and questioned if she might be complicit in criminal conspiracy in seeking to educated illegals on how to evade arrest by U.S. and local law enforcement, including ICE. "Where is the congresswoman’s concern for her fellow New Yorkers who have been brutally killed, maimed, and raped by criminal illegal immigrants allowed to roam free due to New York’s so-called ‘sanctuary’ policies?" the White House memo added, listing crimes committed by illegals who were taken off the New York City streets by ICE.

AP [5/28/2025 7:46 PM, Cedar Attanasio and Amanda Seitz, 3077K] reports that dressed in a pink pullover, the 17-year-old girl rested her head in her hands, weighing her bleak options from the empty room of an shelter in Poughkeepsie, New York. During a video call into an immigration courtroom in Manhattan, she listened as a lawyer explained to a judge how new regulations imposed by President Donald Trump’s administration — for DNA testing, income verification and more — have hobbled efforts to reunite with her parents in the U.S. for more than 70 days. As the administration’s aggressive efforts to curtail migration have taken shape, including unparalleled removals of men to prisons in other countries, migrant children are being separated for long periods from the relatives they had hoped to live with after crossing into the U.S. Under the Trump rules, migrant children have stayed in shelters an average of 217 days before being released last month to family members, according to new data from the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement. During the Biden administration, migrant children spent an average of 35 days in shelters before being released to relatives. "Collectively, these policy changes have resulted in children across the country being separated from their loving families, while the government denies their release, unnecessarily prolonging their detention," lawyers for the National Center for Youth Law argued in court documents submitted May 8.

CBS Boston [5/28/2025 11:15 AM, Neal Riley, 51860K] Video: HERE reports an immigration raid on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket on Tuesday resulted in 40 arrests, according to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE said that the people arrested on the Massachusetts islands included a gang member and a sex offender. "Officers with ICE Boston and agents with FBI Boston, DEA New England and ATF Boston arrested around 40 alien offenders on the two islands, many of whom had U.S. criminality including a documented member of the notorious MS-13 street gang and at least one child sex offender," ICE said in a statement. The U.S. Coast Guard provided boats to transport those arrested off the islands. Reaction to ICE raid on Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Carla Zenis, who arrived in Nantucket from Chile in 2004, told The Nantucket Current that immigrants on the island are "extremely afraid.” "They are in a panic," Zenis said. "They don’t know what to expect for tomorrow and the other days to come.” Massachusetts state Sen. Julian Cyr said in a statement that "the operation appears to have gone far beyond any targeted effort." He said work vans were pulled over on both islands and people, "were questioned without clear cause.” "While federal officials continue to cite the arrest of two individuals with criminal histories, that does not justify these broad, indiscriminate tactics with little regard for due process," Cyr said. The raids come just as the islands enter the busy summer season. Multiple Massachusetts communities have seen ICE raids since President Trump took office in January. "Border czar" Tom Homan announced the arrest of 370 people in the state when he traveled to Boston in March. Earlier this month in Worcester, a large crowd tried to stop ICE agents from taking a woman into custody. FOX News [5/28/2025 10:12 AM, Alex Nitzberg, 46878K] reports that the effort marked a major win for public safety — a documented MS-13 member as well as "at least one child sex offender" were among those arrested, the release indicates. "ICE officers and FBI, DEA and ATF agents worked together to arrest a significant number of illegal alien offenders which included at least one child predator," ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Boston acting Field Office Director Patricia H. Hyde, noted, according to the release. "Our partners in the U.S. Coast Guard facilitated a safe and efficient transport of the alien offenders off Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard, ensuring the safety of the residents of those communities." The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) also shared the outlet’s post, noting, "ICE is removing illegal aliens from ALL states, communities, and worksites across this country. If you are here illegally use the CBP Home app to self-deport. If not, you will be arrested and deported without a chance to return."

Reported similarly:
New York Post [5/28/2025 5:34 PM, Jorge Fitz-Gibbon, 49956K]
Breitbart [5/28/2025 1:26 PM, John Binder, 3077K]

FOX News [5/28/2025 10:21 AM, Staff, 46878K] reports May 27 immigration enforcement efforts on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard resulted in about 40 apprehensions, ICE noted in a press release. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [5/28/2025 5:23 PM, Peter Pinedo, 46878K] reports Massachusetts Democratic Governor Maura Healey is sounding off about her frustrations with ICE’s latest operations in her state, saying she found it "disturbing" to hear about the arrests of some 40 illegal immigrants in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard. ICE, working with several other federal law enforcement agencies, conducted a series of immigration enforcement operations in Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard on Tuesday. An ICE statement said "around 40" individuals were arrested as a result of the operations, including an MS-13 gang member and at least one child sex offender. The outlet also reported Healey saying the arrests raised "real questions" about whether federal immigration authorities are complying with due process. Trump DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin, however, told Fox News Digital that "ICE did notify local authorities about the enforcement operations."

New York Post [5/28/2025 4:26 PM, Amanda Woods, 49956K] reports several migrants were arrested – as was a Queens pastor who tried to intervene – when federal agents descended on a federal immigration courthouse in Lower Manhattan Wednesday afternoon, according to a report. About two dozen masked, plainclothes officers gathered Wednesday afternoon in the lobby of 26 Federal Plaza, where they corralled at least six migrants and the pastor, The City reported. The six men and one woman were spotted as agents carted them — some in handcuffs — back into an elevator they had just come out of, the outlet reported. The officers used either print-outs of the migrants’ faces or images on their phones to help identify them, according to The City. The intervening pastor, who was not immediately identified, was subsequently released, according to Talia Jane.

NBC News [5/28/2025 11:22 AM, Ida Siegal, 44540K] reports a 20-year-old from Venezuela became the first reported New York City public school student to be detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents since the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, being taken into custody following a routine court hearing. Now, there are growing calls for his release. Parents and teachers at Ellis Prep Academy in Manhattan’s Marble Hill neighborhood expressed shock after learning that Dylan Lopez Contreras was taken into ICE custody last week. The arrest did not happen on school grounds, but rather after a scheduled court appearance in Manhattan, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which confirmed they had Contreras in custody. Advocates reportedly have said Contreras does not have a criminal record. When asked about it at a news conference, Mayor Eric Adams deferred to the federal government. "People should really understand that this was not in the school building. We don’t know what was the outcome of the court case," the mayor said. The Department of Homeland Security said Contreras "illegally entered the US more than a year ago. ... ICE is now following the law and placing the illegal aliens in expedited removal, as they always should have been.” Univision [5/28/2025 2:33 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports that this is the first known case of a New York City public school student arrested by ICE during President Donald Trump’s second term, according to the city’s Department of Education. The arrest is part of a series of similar arrests reported in immigration courts in other states, where people were detained after their cases were dismissed. ICE spokeswoman Marie Ferguson said people detained in immigration court will be subject to expedited removal, a process that allows for summary removal without hearings before immigration judges. Newsweek [5/28/2025 11:56 AM, Billal Rahman, 52220K] reports Dylan "is an illegal alien from Venezuela who illegally entered the U.S. more than one year ago. Under the Biden administration he was encountered at the border and released into the country. On May 21. 2025, Contreras was arrested and placed in expedited removal proceedings," Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Newsweek. Having entered the United States in April 2024 under a Biden-era asylum program, Dylan had been awaiting a court date while working and studying. His deportation case was dismissed by a judge, which inadvertently made him eligible for expedited removal, a fast-track deportation process due to his under-two-year stay in the U.S. ICE agents detained Dylan immediately after the hearing, despite his having no criminal record and no access to legal representation. "It seems like a dirty game on their part," his mother, Raiza, told Chalkbeat. It is the first known example of a current New York City public school student detained by ICE during President Donald Trump’s second administration. Approximately 500 students from various New York City schools staged a walkout on May 27, gathering in Union Square Park to protest the detention and the Trump administration’s immigration policies. Students emphasized the value of immigrants in the United States and expressed concerns about the erosion of democratic values and free speech.

(B) NBC News Daily [5/28/2025 12:52 PM, Staff] reports that there is uproar after a New York City public school student was detained by ICE. He was taken into custody following a routine court hearing. There are questions about why he was detained in the first place and what may lie ahead for him. That student has been identified as Dylan Lopez Contreras, originally from Venezuela. The Department of Homeland Security claims he was in their custody and entered the country illegally at the border. Advocates say he does not have a criminal record and was detained without due process.

CBS Baltimore [5/28/2025 7:16 PM, Staff, 51860K] reports ICE checks on migrant children in Baltimore intimidate families. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Axios [5/28/2025 4:54 PM, Cuneyt Dil, 13599K] reports Mayor Muriel Bowser is seeking to quietly overturn D.C.’s sanctuary city law, proposing to remove the ban on local police assisting with deportations. Bowser has retreated from championing the nation’s capital as a sanctuary city just as the Trump administration moves to ramp up ICE arrests. Bowser wants to repeal a law that prevents local police from cooperating with ICE to detain undocumented immigrants. The mayor is asking for the repeal without fanfare, via a tucked-away provision as part of her newly released 2026 budget proposal, first spotted by journalist Martin Austermuhle. The D.C. Council has final say over what makes it into the budget, and some progressive members may thwart Bowser’s push. White House officials are pressuring ICE to dial up deportations, Axios’ Brittany Gibson and Stef W. Kight report: In a tense meeting last week, top Trump aide Stephen Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanded that immigration agents seek to arrest 3,000 people a day, according to two sources familiar with the meeting.

ABC News [5/28/2025 4:33 PM, Armando Garcia and Nadine El-Bawab, 31733K] Video: HERE reports a Georgia teen detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement after wrongfully being arrested said she forgives the police officer who mistakenly pulled her over for a traffic violation she did not commit. "I think he needed to do what he needed to do. He knows why he did it and I think, as from my standpoint, I don’t hold a grudge against him. As a Christian I think the Bible says forgive those who wrong you, and I forgive him," Ximena Arias-Cristobal said at a press conference Wednesday. Arias-Cristobal, 19, was arrested on May 5 in Dalton, Georgia, when her dark gray truck was mistaken for a black pickup that made an illegal turn. Those citations were later dropped once officials realized there was a mix-up, Dalton Assistant Police Chief Chris Crossen said. But, she was still detained by ICE after it was discovered she was an undocumented immigrant. She was released on bond last week. Officer Leslie O’Neal has resigned from his position at the Dalton Police Department, the communications director for the City of Dalton, Georgia, confirmed to ABC News. Arias-Cristobal said immigrants at the Stewart Detention Center, where she was held, are "treated like we’re the worst criminals ever" and acknowledged that others have also been treated unjustly. "I know everything that I’m going through is something that’s very unjust, and it’s not only my case, but millions of people are going through this in the United States. At Stewart, I met a lot of people that are going through tougher situations than me, and I think they deserve justice because they are not criminals," she said. "There’s a lot of very sad cases in there, mine is just a speck of what you see and that’s the sad truth," she said. Despite forgiving the officer for her arrest, she said he acted "very unprofessional with his words" and "unprofessional with how he treated me.” She said the incident has changed her world. Arias-Cristobal’s lawyers said they’re looking into the possibility of applying for a U visa, which may be a pathway to legal status for Arias-Cristobal and her family stemming from the wrongful arrest, according to attorney Dustin Baxter. The U visa is a special type of visa that is offered to some victims of abuse or crimes who help law enforcement with investigations. "We have concerns based on a number of different things, how the arrest was carried out, what was put in the arrest report that obviously wasn’t true, and some things that happened right after, resulting in his resignation about the legality of this stop and then arrest," Baxter said.

NewsMax [5/28/2025 10:28 AM, Charlie McCarthy, 4622K] reports Rep. Andy Ogles, R-Tenn., said two House committees will investigate Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell for possibly "aiding and abetting" illegal migrants and obstructing Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. Ogles announced the probes during a press conference that included federal, state, and local officials at the Tennessee State Capitol. "We’ve heard it: the individuals that the mayor is standing with are murderers, rapists, drug traffickers, sexual predators, child traffickers … the list goes on," Ogles told reporters Monday. "Which is why I will always stand on the rule of law and with ICE. And I don’t just stand with ICE, I’ll stand in front of ICE because we the people have had enough. I choose my community, my state and my family over this type of nonsense. "Due to the remarks of Freddie O’Connell and the potential for aiding and abetting illegal immigration, the Homeland Security and the Judiciary committees will be conducting an investigation into the mayor of Nashville, his conduct and whether or not federal dollars have been used in criminal enterprise." Ogles said the Homeland Security Committee, of which he’s a member, and the Judiciary Committee will investigate whether the mayor used federal tax dollars "in criminal enterprise" related to illegal immigration.

Reported similarly:
New York Post [5/28/2025 8:11 AM, Patrick Reilly, 49956K]

Washington Post [5/29/2025 4:00 AM, Terrence McCoy and Marina Dias, 31735K] reports Elioni Gonçalves awoke with a feeling of dread. Her first thought was of her 2-year-old daughter, Manu. Manu is American. She was born Emanuelly Borges Santos in a Fort Lauderdale hospital in September 2022. But in February, she was taken into custody in Florida alongside her mother and father, both of whom were undocumented, and placed on a deportation flight to Brazil, where the family has been plunged into a bureaucratic morass. Manu, who is not a citizen or resident of Brazil, was forced to enter the country as a tourist. In the tense months since, as authorities here tried to figure out how to give her legal status, the girl has been left all but stateless — removed from her country of birth and not yet adopted by her parents’ ancestral home. She has no right to routine pediatric checkups in Brazil’s public health-care system. She cannot easily enroll in a Brazilian school or day care. And she’s living on a temporary tourism visa that’s set to expire in weeks. All of this was on her mother’s mind, she said, as she got out of bed on a recent morning. As the Trump administration intensifies its immigration crackdown — moving to deport 1 million undocumented immigrants by year’s end — American citizens are being caught in the dragnet. Their removal has raised alarm among judges and legal scholars, who accuse the government of violating due process rights, and it illustrates how many U.S. families have mixed immigration statuses. A 2020 study by the Migration Policy Institute found that 4.4 million American children had at least one undocumented parent. The details of Manu’s removal, which occurred on Feb. 21, have not been previously reported. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security did not address the specifics of Manu’s case. In separate statements, both agencies said that in cases like hers, “parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children, or ICE will place the children with someone the parent designates.” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said it was “false and irresponsible” to suggest that the government had deported U.S. citizens. Gonçalves, 41, and her husband, Edivan Borges dos Santos, 42, both insisted they weren’t given a choice. They would probably have decided to stay together, Gonçalves said. But she added that she has a brother in Pompano Beach, Florida. Perhaps Manu could have stayed with him. “They simply deported us,” Borges said.

Washington Post [5/28/2025 6:00 AM, Molly Hennessy-Fiske, 32099K] reports the 21st century has been tough here in timber country, especially in the small town of Winnfield. Sawmills automated and jobs disappeared. An interstate extension bypassed the area. The population fell by nearly a third. Downtown storefronts emptied. One positive: the low-slung brick complex, with razor-wire-topped fencing and a white-steepled chapel, that sprawls southwest of town amid a forest of longleaf and loblolly pines. Six years ago, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement took over this prison, contracted with the sheriff and began detaining migrants there. With them came well-paying positions, plus an infusion of money for Winn Parish’s jail, school resource officers and other services. These days, Winn Correctional Center’s 1,600 beds make it the largest ICE detention center in this deep-red state and one of the largest in the country. With President Donald Trump’s hard deportation push, its beds are staying occupied. The economic benefits of detention, in a rural parish where about a quarter of residents live in poverty, have muted criticism of the president’s immigration policies. Many take more issue with outsiders who accuse the administration of trying to isolate detainees by sending them to such a remote spot — in a swath of the Gulf Coast known as “detention alley” because it’s home to 14 of the country’s 20 largest immigration detention centers. “Like Louisiana is so terrible,” said Terry Warden, a retired Trump supporter who years ago moved from Southern California for political reasons. “Yeah, we’ve got gators. And we’ve got lawyers. We’re not Gitmo.” ICE detainee buses are now as common a sight as lumber trucks across the region. In downtown Winnfield, uniformed ICE workers can be seen getting haircuts, dining and shopping. To locals, they’re customers, relatives, neighbors.

Washington Post [5/28/2025 11:28 AM, María Luisa Paúl, 32099K] reports in the music video, a Venezuelan man is pinned to the ground under mock arrest by immigration officers. In Spanish, one of the singers pleads: “Donald Trump, don’t deport me … I just want a chance to stay.” The song “Donaltron” — a riff on how the president’s name is pronounced in Spanish — became a viral hit amid the administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown, drawing millions of listeners on TikTok and streaming platforms. About two months after the song’s release, one of the Venezuelan artists behind the track says that he lived a scene similar to the one depicted in the video. Claudio David Balcane González, known as Davicito59, says immigration agents shoved him to the ground outside a friend’s apartment in Chicago and took him into custody. The 26-year-old is accused of having ties to a Venezuela-based gang, which he denies. He could now face deportation. Balcane, now held in Dodge Detention Facility in Wisconsin, hopes to make the same case in immigration court that he made in the song: that he deserves a shot at the American Dream. A senior DHS official said in a statement to The Washington Post that Balcane was detained because he is an “illegal alien and public safety threat with ties to Tren de Aragua” — a reason the Department of Homeland Security has increasingly cited while detaining and deporting Venezuelans. A search by The Post did not find any federal, state or local criminal charges filed against Balcane.

DailySignal [5/28/2025 10:23 AM, Virginia Allen, 558K] reports two illegal aliens have been arrested following the death of an 18-year-old woman. Ava Moore, an Air Force cadet candidate, was kayaking on Lake Grapevine in North Texas on Sunday when Daikerlyn Alejandra Gonzalez Gonzalez, an illegal alien from Venezuela, allegedly struck and killed the 18-year-old with a jet ski. The suspect is reported to have then struck a vehicle while fleeing the scene in a vehicle with a male, according to the Dallas ABC station WFAA. "Ava Moore’s senseless death was caused by an illegal alien who should have never been in our country in the first place," Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said. "My heart breaks for Ava’s family and friends, and my prayers are with them as they face this tragedy. My office will continue to work with local, state, and national law enforcement partners to secure justice for Ava," Paxton pledged. The attorney general’s Fugitive Apprehension Unit worked with local, state, and federal authorities, including the Texas Department of Public Safety and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, to tracked down and arrest Gonzalez and the man who helped her flee the scene. In addition to Gonzalez, there was another woman on the jet ski that hit Moore’s kayak. That woman did not flee the scene and spoke with law enforcement after the incident, The Dallas Morning News reports.

FOX News [5/28/2025 4:07 PM, Stepheny Price , Peter D’Abrosca, 46878K] reports the suspect and her alleged accomplice linked to the jet ski hit-and-run death of an Air Force cadet candidate over Memorial Day weekend have been identified as illegal immigrants, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official. During a Wednesday news conference in Grapevine, Texas, Joshua Johnson, acting field director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Emergency Removal Operations in Dallas, confirmed that 21-year-old Daikerlyn Alejandra Gonzalez Gonzalez and 21-year-old Maikel Coello Perozo are both illegal immigrants from Venezuela. Gonzalez was allegedly operating the jet ski that struck and killed 18-year-old Ava Moore on Sunday at Grapevine Lake. Moore was a United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) cadet candidate and part of USAFA’s Class of 2029, according to the military school. He added that ICE has lodged immigration detainers against the suspects, and that after the criminal justice proceedings against them in Texas are complete, they will be processed for removal. Capt. Joseph Quintero, game warden at the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, announced that Gonzalez has been charged with second-degree felony manslaughter. Perozo has been charged with collision involving damage to a vehicle and hindering apprehension, both misdemeanors, after allegedly driving away from the scene with Gonzalez. He said both were arrested in Dallas on Tuesday, and that the relationship between them remains unclear. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton first announced that the pair were in the country illegally on Tuesday night.

Reported similarly:
Blaze [5/28/2025 2:35 PM, Paul Sacca, 1805K]

Univision [5/28/2025 2:53 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports dozens of people who attended their appointments at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Department in San Antonio on Wednesday, the 28th, were detained in an ICE raid, which was already waiting for them outside the building. The incident occurred around 11:00 a.m. in the 800 block of Dolorosa Street. At least two buses full of people who were detained outside the Immigration building were observed at the scene. Witnesses said more than 20 people, including entire families with children, were arrested by federal officers. “Secretary Noem is reversing a Biden ‘catch and release’ policy that allowed millions of undocumented immigrants to walk free on the streets. This administration is once again bringing the full force of the law to bear,” the document reads.

NewsNation [5/28/2025 2:05 PM, Anna Kutz, 5801K] reports that multiple suspected gang members are behind bars after the bust of a drug trafficking scheme using the U.S. mail, a taco truck and homes in the Houston area, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced. In an unsealed 29-count indictment, the Justice Department alleges a group of at least 15 people imported methamphetamine from Mexico to the U.S. and then distributed it along with other drugs like crack cocaine, heroin, oxycodone, psilocybin mushrooms and more. “Several of the defendants are also alleged to have used firearms in furtherance of their narcotics trafficking and illegally possessed firearms despite having previously been convicted of felonies,” said Matthew R. Galeotti, head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, in a statement. Those charged include: James Michael Brewer aka “Creeper,” 33. Jonathan Alvarado aka “Joker,” 28. Alexis Delgado aka “Chino,” 28. Hector Luis Lopez aka “Capulito,” 23. Kylie Rae Alvarado, 24. Ruby Mata, 31. Victor Norris Ellison, 35. Mexi Dyan Garcia aka “Mexi,” 31. Jesus Gomez-Rodriguez aka “Jr.,” 33. Enzo Xavier Dominguez aka “Smiley,” 32. William Alexander Lazo aka “Miclo,” 21. Alfredo Gomez aka “Fredo,” 26. Three people accused of participating in the drug trafficking scheme remain at large. The ICE investigation, conducted alongside Houston police and other federal agencies, could see nearly all suspects serving a life sentence if convicted.

New York Post [5/28/2025 10:18 AM, Patrick Reilly, 49956K] reports an FBI analyst was arrested after investigators discovered multiple videos depicting child sexual assault in his possession, according to Texas police. Brian Vincent Rausch, an employee with the FBI office in Houston, is facing seven counts of possession of child pornography after police raided Rausch’s home in Cypress on Tuesday and found the sick videos, according to the Montgomery County Precinct 3 Constable’s Office. Rausch was charged in Texas with five counts of possession of child porn — three of which are first-degree felonies, the other two second-degree ones. He is also facing two federal child pornography charges. Rausch was booked into the Harris County Jail. The FBI, Harris County District Attorney’s Office, the Houston Police Department, the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Department of Homeland Security were involved in the investigation.

Univision [5/28/2025 11:19 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports that, Oscar López Delira, a 47-year-old man who had been convicted of child sexual exploitation, was deported to Mexico, ICE said. He is also accused of entering the United States without authorization at least three times, said a statement from the federal agency. Lopez was transferred on May 27 from the Montgomery Processing Center in Conroe to a gate in the city of Laredo, where he was turned over to Mexican authorities. While the man was in the United States, Lopez was convicted in 2017 on two counts of sexual exploitation of minors. He was also convicted in 2024 of reentering the U.S. without authorization, the agency said. His first arrest by ICE occurred in Dallas in 2001. He was returned to Mexico the same day. However, the agency said it is unknown on what exact date he entered this time. Years later, in 2015, he was arrested by ICE for child sexual exploitation in the city of Carrolton. He was incarcerated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. In 2019, this agency then transferred the man to ICE to place him under deportation proceedings. He was removed from the country later this year, the agency reported. In February 2024, Lopez again crossed the border near Hidalgo, Texas, without documents. He was apprehended by Border Patrol and subsequently convicted of unauthorized re-entry. Lopez served an 18-month prison sentence and was again turned over to ICE on May 23, 2025. He was finally deported to Mexico on May 27.

SFGate [5/28/2025 1:49 PM, Olivia Hebert, 11859K] reports four asylum seekers were detained by federal agents on Tuesday at San Francisco Immigration Court, a move the Department of Homeland Security has portrayed as part of a broader return to "the rule of law" but that immigration attorneys have called unconstitutional and unprecedented in U.S. history. According to the San Francisco Bar Association, the individuals were arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in two separate sweeps, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, while attending hearings to claim asylum. All four had pending asylum applications. "It’s a clear violation of the Constitution and due process rights," Milli Atkinson, an immigration attorney with the SF Bar Association’s Attorney of the Day program, told SFGATE. Association members were at the courthouse when ICE swept in during the morning and were advocating for one of the detainees. Atkinson added that ICE had already determined at the time of arrest that each individual should pursue asylum before a judge — a legal process outlined by Congress. She argued that the agency is now attempting to reverse course by claiming a change in circumstances, a justification she described as unfounded. Atkinson said of the individuals she spoke to who were arrested Tuesday, none had criminal records. "These are people who recently arrived, fleeing unstable political situations and persecution," she said. "They came here to seek a better life.” DHS defended the arrests in a statement to SFGATE, describing the detentions as a broader effort to reverse what it characterized as the Biden administration not enforcing immigration policy. "This Administration is once again implementing the rule of law," a senior DHS spokesperson said in the statement, though DHS declined to identify the spokesperson. They added that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is leading the enforcement shift. According to the agency, individuals who entered the U.S. without authorization in the past two years are now being placed into expedited removal — a process that allows deportation without a full hearing before an immigration judge, despite constitutional protections that guarantee due process. DHS said this authority had been underused by the previous administration and that ICE is now applying it more aggressively. Under federal law, those eligible for asylum are permitted to stay in the U.S. while their applications are reviewed by an immigration judge. Atkinson said Tuesday’s arrests short-circuited that process. "The law is very clear that when someone has an asylum application campaign, it is the role of the judge to decide whether or not that person is eligible to remain in the United States," she said. "They’re trying to use a process that has normally only been used at the border for people who have just arrived to try to force people in expedited proceedings.” Atkinson added, "They’re trying to take away how the judge reviews their case, take away the rights to apply for asylum, all of which is contrary to the existing asylum laws, as they were written, as they were voted by Congress, and how they are implemented through the courts.”

CBS San Francisco [5/28/2025 8:23 PM, Carlos E. Castañeda, 51860K] Video HERE reports immigrant rights advocates rallied at immigration courthouses in San Francisco and Sacramento on Wednesday morning to show their outrage over the Trump administration’s arrests of people seeking asylum. The organizations said at the dual protests that the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents’ arrests at immigration courts are an attempt to bypass the legal system and an attack on due process rights. Last week, rights groups were at immigration courts on Montgomery Street in San Francisco’s downtown, at the Capitol Mall in Sacramento, and in Concord, warning immigrants that authorities were dismissing their cases to have ICE agents arrest them outside the courthouses. The operation by ICE to place certain immigrants into an expedited removal process after their arrest began last week at immigration courthouses across the country. The process fast-tracks their deportation without a court hearing, bypassing the huge backlog of pending cases. Rights advocates said multiple people at the San Francisco and Concord immigration courts as recently as Tuesday. In addition, posters have been placed at courthouses encouraging people to "self-deport" with misleading information that can jeopardize people’s legal situation. Last week, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman said in a statement that the Trump administration was acting because of Biden administration policies to release migrants with notices to appear in immigration court, instead of trying to deport them quickly through expedited removal.

San Francisco Chronicle [5/28/2025 3:51 PM, Jessica Flores, 4120K] reports immigrant-rights advocates rallied Wednesday to voice deep concerns about the recent arrests of asylum-seekers by federal officers at Bay Area courthouses. Standing outside of the San Francisco immigration courthouse on the corner of Montgomery and Sutter streets, advocates and protesters demanded that San Francisco officials denounce the arrests and provide more resources for legal protection, such as the SF Rapid Response Network hotline. Demonstrators held signs that read "Hands off immigrants" and "Abolish ICE," and drivers passing by honked their horns in apparent support. Federal officials sought "to undermine due process and to intimidate our immigrant communities into missing their court appointments and putting themselves at further risk of deportation," said Sanika Mahajan, director of community engagement and organizing at Mission Action. "We will stand up and fight back," she added. Homeland Security officials have apparently ramped up enforcement at immigration courts throughout the country over the last week. Advocates say U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have appeared outside of courthouses and in hallways to arrest people showing up to their scheduled hearings. Homeland Security spokespersons did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A statement from the Department of Homeland Security provided by an ICE spokesperson said the agency was "reversing Biden’s catch and release policy that allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets.” Richard Beam, a spokesperson for ICE, said the agency did not "have specifics" on the arrests Tuesday, but acknowledged that the agency was "doing targeted enforcement at immigration courts.” While arrests at courthouses are rare, advocates say, ICE appears to be using the new strategy to accelerate deportations and meet President Donald Trump’s goal of deporting millions of undocumented immigrants. The first arrests in San Francisco immigration court were reported Tuesday. ICE officers arrested four men outside of courtrooms after judges rejected motions from Department of Homeland Security lawyers who requested that their asylum cases be dismissed, said Milli Atkinson, director of the Immigrant Legal Defense Program with the San Francisco Bar Association’s Justice and Diversity Center. In Concord, three people were arrested Tuesday and one person was arrested last week, said Lisa Knox, co-executive director at California Collaborative for Immigrant Justice in Oakland. Luis Angel Reyes Savalza, a deputy defender with the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office’s immigration unit, called the immigration courthouse arrests a fear tactic.

AP [5/28/2025 5:09 PM, Janie Har, 24051K] reports immigrant rights advocates rallied Wednesday outside San Francisco’s immigration court to condemn the Trump administration’s latest deportation tactics and implore asylum-seekers to keep their court dates despite recent arrests. Arrests were once a rarity in or near immigration courts, but U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents last week showed up at courthouses across the country to arrest migrants who appeared for routine court proceedings. The move has rattled immigrant communities already feeling pressure from the Republican administration to leave. Eight people were arrested in the San Francisco and Contra Costa County courthouses Tuesday, advocates said. At least one person was arrested last week. ICE did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Most of the people in Concord courthouse are asylum-seekers, said Ali Saidi, director of Stand Together Contra Costa, an immigration hotline and rapid response team in the county east of San Francisco. It was unclear who was being targeted and why, but speakers at the rally said agents at both courts had specific names and were not arresting people at random. They did not have details of the people who were arrested. "It seems to be targeted arrests that they could have done at other locations," Saidi said, "but chose to do it at the court in order to — it appears — make people afraid to come to court.” Speakers implored immigrants to keep their court dates, because missing a hearing would make them subject to a removal order and deportation. They said lawyers are available, as are volunteers, to accompany them to court.

Telemundo52 [5/28/2025 3:54 PM, Clara Ramirez, 103K] reports a possible operation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been underway since Wednesday morning in downtown Los Angeles. Several patrol cars and agents from both agencies were seen outside the federal building located in the 300 block of Los Angeles Street. The official U.S. government website indicates that the building houses various offices, including U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the Executive Office for Immigration Review. ICE said in a statement sent to Teleundo 52 Los Angeles that while they do not comment on specific operations underway, DHS has issued a statement regarding law enforcement activities at immigration courts. The statement indicates that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem "is reversing Biden’s catch-and-release policy, which allowed millions of illegal aliens with no criminal records to be released onto American streets."

Bloomberg [5/28/2025 4:58 PM, Ryan Chua, 19320K] reports US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on foreign officials and other individuals who “censor Americans,” including those who target American technology companies, as the Trump administration steps up a confrontation with other countries over their social media policies. Without giving specifics, Rubio cited instances of foreign governments censoring protected speech in the US, saying it was unacceptable for foreigners to “issue or threaten arrest warrants on US citizens or US residents for social media posts on American platforms,” according to a statement on Wednesday. It is unclear from the statement what prompted the move and whether it was directed at any particular official or country. In a social media post, however, Rubio alluded to Latin America and Europe in saying “the days of passive treatment for those who work to undermine the rights of Americans are over.” At the same time, an article posted on the State Department website on Tuesday singled out the European Union’s Digital Services Act, alleging that it’s being used to silence dissident voices. “Independent regulators now police social media companies, including prominent American platforms like X, and threaten immense fines for non-compliance with their strict speech regulations,” according to the article, written by an official from the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor. President Donald Trump has sharply criticized the EU over its regulatory crackdown on some of the biggest US tech companies and threatened to strike back with penalties.

CNN [5/28/2025 10:44 AM, Staff, 21433K] Video: HERE reports the State Department is ordering U.S. embassies to pause all new student visa appointments as it moves to expand social media screening and vetting to all applicants. CNN’s Jennifer Hansler explains the uncertainty that will create for foreign students ahead of the fall semester.

USA Today [5/28/2025 2:33 PM, Eduardo Cuevas, 75552K] reports for over a month, a 43-year-old Vietnamese man has been sitting in a Louisiana detention center waiting to see whether he will be deported to a country he fled as a boy. Huy Quoc Phan, who has an American wife and kids, is among thousands of people who arrived as refugees after the end of the Vietnam War and are now being targeted for removal. The Alabama warehouse worker served 15 years in prison for his involvement in a robbery that led to a shopkeeper’s death. His wife of six years, Amy, 39, said she knew of the crime, which took place when he was 17. "I didn’t hold it against him when I met him," she said. "I think people should be given second chances." For decades, both Republican and Democratic administrations agreed ‒ at least for immigrants from Vietnam, a country the United States left in disgrace five decades years ago. Although immigrants from other countries were routinely deported after serving time for crimes, the Vietnamese were allowed to stay. Tricia McLaughlin, an assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, said people like Phan deserve to be deported because of their criminal past. "Under President Trump and (DHS Secretary Kristi) Noem’s leadership, ICE is continuing to protect Americans by detaining and removing criminal aliens," McLaughlin said in an emailed statement. Fifty years after the fall of Saigon, these changes are leaving thousands of Vietnamese refugees like Phan in limbo, said Quyen Mai, executive director of the California-based nonprofit Vietnamese American Organization. "We feel we got abandoned again," he said.

NBC News [5/28/2025 5:25 PM, Nicole Acevedo and Didi Martinez, 44540K] reports a Mexican girl is at risk of losing access to the life-saving treatment she has been receiving in Los Angeles after her family’s legal immigration status was abruptly revoked. Her family is now fighting to have their status reinstated. Her 4-year-old daughter, who is being identified only by the initials S.G.V., was born with a defect in her small intestines known as short bowel syndrome. The condition does not allow her body to absorb nutrients from regular food. The company that manufactures the equipment that delivers the intravenous nutrition the girl needs does "not allow the equipment to travel outside the United States," Amato said at the news conference, adding that few places outside the U.S. can safely and effectively administer this treatment. According to the family’s legal team, the family’s humanitarian parole was set to expire at the end of July and Vargas was fighting to get it extended. But last month, the family received a notice via email from the Department of Homeland Security terminating their parole and work authorization. The notice did not state a reason for revoking the family’s parole other than DHS "exercising its discretion." Still, the family continued receiving notices about their parole’s termination, Amato said during the press conference. So, they filed a new application for humanitarian parole through the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. A senior DHS official insisted to NBC News via email that reports about the family "actively being deported are FALSE. This family applied with USCIS for humanitarian parole on May 14, 2025, and the application is still being considered."

Reported similarly:
Telemundo [5/28/2025 6:33 PM, Karla Rendón, 57K]

CBS News [5/28/2025 5:11 PM, Chelsea Hylton, 51860K] reports the mother of a 4-year-old who is battling a rare health condition and is receiving lifesaving treatment at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles is asking the Trump administration to reinstate their humanitarian parole. At a news conference on Wednesday morning, Deysi Vargas, Sofia Villa’s mother, said she is asking the government to allow her family to remain in the U.S. in order to save her daughter’s life. Vargas stated that she relies solely on humanitarian parole to give her daughter a chance to experience things like other children. In 2023, the family received an emergency visa through humanitarian parole, allowing them to travel to Los Angeles for treatment. Vargas said Sofia’s medical team has informed them that if she does not continue to receive treatment, she could die in a matter of days. The equipment used in Sofia’s treatment is not available outside of the U.S. and Amato Lough stressed the importance of the family remaining in the country. Amato Lough said in May her legal team sent letters to President Trump asking his administration to reconsider its decision to revoke Vargas’ parole, but they have not received a response. In the meantime, she explained they have submitted new applications for humanitarian parole.

AP [5/28/2025 8:15 PM, Amy Taxin, 56000K] reports the Trump administration has revoked permission for a 4-year-old Mexican girl who receives lifesaving medical care from a California hospital to stay in the country, attorneys for the family said on Wednesday. Lawyer Gina Amato said the girl’s mother was notified the U.S. government was withdrawing the humanitarian parole the family received in 2023 when she brought her ailing child to the U.S.-Mexico border. She received the notifications in April and May and was told the family is subject to potential deportation, Amato said. Since then, the girl has made it out of the hospital thanks to a treatment that provides intravenous nutrition through a backpack she wears. Lawyers said she isn’t strong enough to survive without it as she suffers from short bowel syndrome, which prevents her from being able to take in and process nutrients on her own, and the treatment she receives isn’t available in Mexico. The U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services did not immediately comment. A senior Homeland Security official, in an email sent from an address for media inquiries, said the family is not actively being deported and a more recent application for parole that was filed two weeks ago is still being considered.

Border Report [5/28/2025 6:37 AM, Sandra Sanchez, 245K] reports at a time when apprehensions along the Southwest border are at historic lows, arrests on the northern border in Maine are at historic highs, U.S. Customs and Border Protection says. The number of arrests by Border Patrol agents in Maine in April was the single highest month in 24 years. That included the arrest of 113 migrants from 16 different countries, CBP says. The Border Patrol’s Houlton Sector, across from Woodstock, Canada, reported Border Patrol agents coordinated air transport with Immigration and Customs Enforcement Enforcement Removal Operations agents to transfer 29 people who were apprehended from Portland, Maine, on May 11 to other parts of the country for further processing. “Here in Maine, Border Patrol Agents are working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to keep our border secure. If you attempt to cross the border illegally, you will be apprehended. If you are present in the United States without a legal status, you will be detained and removed in accordance with all applicable immigration laws,” Houlton Sector Acting Chief Patrol Agent Craig Shepley said.

New York Times [5/29/2025 3:00 AM, Jay Root, 138952K] reports they walked out of court in downtown Buffalo a little before 5 p.m., worn down from a hearing that had dragged late into the afternoon. The man and woman climbed into their black S.U.V. With nightfall approaching and powerful wind gusts rolling in from Lake Erie, they began following the Google Maps instructions to get them home to Syracuse, N.Y. They took an exit ramp and veered right, not focusing on where they were going. They didn’t notice the blue sign overhead, warning that they were “entering a federal inspection area.” Within seconds, Victor and his sister Johanna realized their mistake. Victor — a Colombian asylum seeker who had spent the day in immigration court fighting to stay in the United States — was driving across the Peace Bridge toward the Canadian border. There was no way to turn back. On the other side of the Niagara River, a patrol car pulled up alongside their S.U.V. as they approached the security plaza. Victor noticed the word “Canada” painted on its side. It was Thursday, Feb. 6, barely two weeks into the second Trump administration, which by then was already deep into its promised immigration crackdown. “We’re screwed,” Victor recalled telling Johanna as they pulled into Canadian customs. He had a feeling “something bad was coming. Something terrible.” The Peace Bridge has connected Buffalo to Fort Erie, Ontario, since 1927. For decades, drivers who accidentally steered toward Canada could exit on the New York side and turn around. But a 2016 renovation eliminated that escape hatch, and now as many as 20 befuddled drivers end up across the border every day, a Canadian official said. A video on YouTube is entitled, “Accidentally Crossing the U.S.-Canada Border on Peace Bridge!” A Reddit forum about Buffalo asks, “Anybody ever did this before?” The replies make clear that people have, with many saying they were deceived by their own GPS apps. (Google officials acknowledged that GPS technology can misplace the precise location of motorists and urged drivers to review their routes before getting on the road.) “The penalty used to be it would cost you time and you had to pay the $4 toll,” said State Senator Sean Ryan, a Buffalo Democrat. But now, with President Trump pushing for more deportations and “enhanced vetting” at ports of entry, “it’s leading to people not being able to return home and to face immigration enforcement actions,” Mr. Ryan said.

Detroit Free Press [5/28/2025 1:57 PM, Niraj Warikoo, 4241K] reports Border Patrol agents recently detained a Detroit high school student on his way to a field trip in a Downriver park after he was pulled over by local police. The 18-year-old immigrant from Colombia is now in jail and faces deportation because he was living in the U.S. illegally and already had a removal order from a judge, federal officials said. On the afternoon of May 20, the student was driving in a car with other students from Western International High School when he was pulled over by Rockwood police, according to a spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). A federal official said the student was pulled over by police for a traffic stop; two officials with the Detroit Public Schools Community District said the student was accused of tailgating a Rockwood police car. He and three other students with him in the car were on Huron River Drive on their way to Lake Erie Metropark in Brownstown Township, where a field trip was taking place, when police pulled them over about a mile from the park. "An illegal alien with a final deportation order was arrested while driving high school students on a field trip near Rockwood, Michigan," a spokesman for CBP told the Free Press in a May 22 statement. "Rockwood Police pulled over the vehicle and found the driver had no license — only a City of Detroit ID. Border Patrol confirmed he was in the country illegally, having ignored a judge’s removal order and lost his appeal." All four of the car’s passengers "were students from Western International High School" in Detroit, the CBP spokesman said. "The driver was the only one without legal status and is currently in" the custody of Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO), which is part of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), the spokesman added.

FOX News [5/28/2025 7:40 PM, Peter Pinedo, 46878K] reports a pair of human traffickers received sentences of 10 and 6.5 years on Wednesday following the deaths of an Indian family, including two children, who froze during a blizzard in 2022 while attempting to illegally cross the northern border into the U.S. from Canada. Announcing the sentences, U.S. District Judge John Tunheim said, "The crime in many respects is extraordinary because it did result in the unimaginable death of four individuals, including two children," according to AP. The outlet reported that Tunheim said, "These were deaths that were clearly avoidable." This follows a jury in Fergus Falls, Minnesota, finding the two, Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, 29, and Steve Shand, 50, guilty on four counts, including conspiracy to bring migrants into the country illegally. Patel, who is an Indian national, received a sentence of nearly 11 years. Shand, a U.S. citizen from Florida, received 6.5 years with two years’ supervised release. AP reported that neither of the men showed any emotions as they received their sentences. Commenting on the sentencing, Jamie Holt, special agent in charge of U.S. ICE Homeland Security Investigations St. Paul, said: "Today’s sentencing marks a crucial moment of accountability in a case that revealed the harrowing realities of human smuggling." Acting U.S. Attorney Lisa Kirkpatrick for the District of Minnesota added, "As we’ve seen time and time again, human traffickers care nothing for humanity.” The New York Times [5/28/2025 7:40 PM, Miriam Jordan, 46878K] reports More than three years after a young Indian family froze to death trying to cross into the United States from Canada during a blizzard, a federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the convicted architect of the human smuggling network that they used to a decade in prison. Harshkumar Ramanlal Patel, a 29-year-old Indian national who lived in Florida, was sentenced to 10 years and one month in prison for his role in the operation that ferried Indians into the United States via Canada. He will be deported after serving time, the Justice Department said. His convicted co-conspirator, Steve Anthony Shand, 50, a U.S. citizen from Florida, was sentenced to six years and six months in prison followed by two years of supervised release. Prosecutors said during the trial that the men were part of a large-scale criminal operation that arranged for dozens of Indians to enter Canada on fake student visas, and then smuggled them into the United States over land. Mr. Patel orchestrated the logistics with other co-conspirators. Mr. Shand was the driver who met the immigrants south of the Canadian border and transported them to Chicago, according to the Justice Department. It said in a news release that the smugglers had charged $100,000 for passage from India to the United States. For Jagdish Patel, 39, his wife, Vaishali, 37, and their 11-year-old daughter and 3-year-old son, the journey in January 2022 ended in tragedy. Royal Canadian Mounted Police found their ice-encased bodies in the desolate borderland between Manitoba and Minnesota. The Patels were part of a group of 11 Indians who had set out from the tiny Canadian town of Emerson with instructions on how to cross the border on foot. They expected to meet on the American side a person who would deliver them to their destination, most likely Illinois, where they had family or friends. But the family was separated from the rest of the group and most likely struggled to stay on course in the dark, buffeted by winds that whipped up blinding snow. The wind chill temperature was minus 36 degrees and lower, and wind gusts were as high as 50 miles per hour during their trek, the Justice Department said. An autopsy determined that the family had died from exposure to the cold. The seven other passengers survived. The investigation was conducted by Homeland Security Investigations, a specialized unit of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. “The callous disregard for life that led to the tragic deaths of an entire family will not be forgotten,” Jamie Holt, the special agent in charge in St. Paul, Minn., said in a statement on Wednesday. The sentencing took place in the northwestern Minnesota town of Fergus Falls, where a jury convicted the two men last fall of four counts each related to human smuggling, including causing serious bodily injury and placing lives in jeopardy.

Telemundo 48 El Paso [5/28/2025 4:08 PM, Staff, 9K] reports U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers working at the International Bridge of the Americas seized 20 kilos of cocaine on May 27. The drugs were hidden in a vehicle driven by a 20-year-old American citizen. During the searches, a CBP drug-sniffing dog inspected the vehicle and alerted officers to the presence of narcotics. CBP officers located several wrapped packages in the vehicle’s lower panels. CBP officers arrested the woman. She was handed over to the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office to face charges related to the failed smuggling attempt.

FOX News [5/28/2025 8:48 AM, Preston Mizell, 46878K] reports a Texas sheriff, whose county shares 54 miles of the U.S. southern border with Mexico, told Fox News Digital he has seen a "dramatic decline" in illegal migrant crossings since President Donald Trump took office, specifically, a sharp decrease in the last two weeks. "Since President Trump took over, we have seen a continued decline in apprehensions," Terrell County Sheriff Thaddeus Cleveland told Fox. "This past two-week period, we should have been busier because it coincides with the full moon cycle, that’s usually when we see more activity in our area." The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) revealed earlier this month that April year-over-year apprehensions at the border were down 93%. CBP reported 129,000 apprehensions in April 2024 under the Biden administration, compared to 8,383 this past month under Trump. Trump border czar Tom Homan weighed in on the dramatic decrease in illegal crossings, telling Fox News Digital last week that the U.S. border "is the most secure in the nation’s history." "The way we did it, that we got a president in the White House, a strong president, who simply ruled a lot of [Executive Orders], the same [Executive Orders] that were proved effective in Trump 45, remain in Mexico, third state country agreements, ending catch and release, and continue building border barriers," Homan told Fox. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CBS Miami [5/28/2025 8:36 PM, Mauricio Maldonado and Peter D’Oench, 51860K] Video: HERE reports passengers at Miami International Airport are expressing outrage and concern after viewing a newly released surveillance video of a violent attack on TSA officers last December. CBS News Miami showed the footage to travelers, who described the incident as "unacceptable, scary and concerning.” Assault in the Miami International Airport TSA screening area. A man is facing multiple battery charges after allegedly attacking Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officers during a violent incident at Miami International Airport last December, an attack captured on surveillance video, according to a Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office arrest report. The incident occurred just before 7 a.m. on Dec. 28, 2024, at 4200 NW 21st Street. Authorities said the confrontation began with an assault on a passenger and escalated into a physical altercation with TSA personnel, leading to the arrest of 28-year-old Cameron Dylan McDougall. According to the arrest report, McDougall entered a TSA screening area and attempted to punch an officer, grabbing the officer’s arms while continuing to swing. As McDougall backed away and tripped over a cart, another TSA officer stepped in and grabbed his legs to prevent further attacks, deputies said. The report stated McDougall struck one TSA officer three times in the face with a closed fist as the officer tried to restrain him. A witness then held McDougall down until law enforcement arrived and took him into custody, the sheriff’s office said. McDougall is facing several charges, including battery on a law enforcement officer or other protected personnel, battery on a person 65 or older and misdemeanor battery, according to the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office. CBS News Miami showed the surveillance video to airline passengers and they said they found it disturbing.

Reported similarly:
Telemundo [5/28/2025 7:09 PM, Eduardo "Yusnaby" Rodríguez, 177K] Video: HERE

Washington Examiner [5/28/2025 11:28 AM, Brady Knox, 1934K] reports Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy announced the federal government is devoting $1.5 billion to help states recover from Hurricane Helene and other recent natural disasters. The perception that the response to Hurricane Helene was mismanaged by the Biden-Harris administration became a significant theme of the Trump campaign in the late days of the 2024 election cycle. In a Wednesday statement, Duffy touted recovery efforts during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration, while committing more resources. "Under President Trump’s leadership, this Department will leave no state behind. We are expediting the process to remove unnecessary barriers for urgent projects so communities can rebuild in real time. Within the first 100 days of the Administration, we announced repairs to North Carolina’s I-40 highway, washed out by Hurricane Helene, that are projected to save two-thirds in both cost and time — amounting to hundreds of millions of hard-earned tax dollars," Duffy said. "We will continue to support impacted states and regions every step of the way as they make emergency repairs and get critical transportation infrastructure back up and running as quickly and safely as possible," he added.

ABC News [5/28/2025 1:32 PM, Luke Barr, 31733K] Video HERE reports the Federal Emergency Management Agency denied North Carolina’s request for the agency to match 100% of the state funds for Helene cleanup, according to a letter sent from the acting FEMA administrator to the governor of North Carolina. "After a careful and thorough review of all the information available, including that contained in your initial request for a cost share adjustment and appeal, we have concluded that an extension of the 100 percent federal cost share for debris removal and emergency protective measures, including direct federal assistance for an additional 180 days under major disaster declaration FEMA-4827-DR is not warranted," acting Administrator David Richardson wrote in the letter. The cost-sharing request comes from a Biden administration directive to match 100% of the funds that the state puts in to share costs of the disaster cleanup after Hurricane Helene devastated the state as a Category 4 storm in September 2024. Over 230 people were killed by the storm, with at least 72 in Buncombe County, North Carolina, alone, amid record flooding throughout western North Carolina. In a statement, North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein said the denial will cost state residents "hundreds of millions of dollars." "The money we have to pay toward debris removal will mean less money towards supporting our small businesses, rebuilding downtown infrastructure, repairing our water and sewer systems and other critical needs," he said. The funding debate is occurring as the Department of Homeland Security, which houses FEMA, weighs how to eliminate the agency while still giving states funding for disasters. At the center of the plan is Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who has weighed how to cut the agency after Trump said in January that he would "begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA, or maybe getting rid of them," and announced a review of FEMA in a presidential action on Jan. 24. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

ABC News [5/28/2025 12:33 PM, Staff, 31733K] reports FEMA has denied North Carolina’s request for the agency to match 100% of the state funds for Helene cleanup, according to a letter sent from the acting administrator to the governor of North Carolina. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Miami Herald [5/28/2025 8:00 AM, Alex Harris and David Catanese; Miami Herald, 16K] reports that Every hurricane season in Florida comes with uncertainty but there’s a surprising new source of questions this year surrounding the federal agency that responds to disasters and has historically helped pay for often massive cleanup and recovery costs. The Federal Emergency Management Agency, already down thousands of employees under cuts directed by the Trump administration, is also under new marching orders to slash federal spending on disaster responses, leaving bigger shares of the bills to state and local governments. Republican state leaders — starting with Gov. Ron DeSantis and U.S. Sen. Rick Scott — have dismissed serious concerns over the FEMA overhaul, arguing that Florida has always directed response in the immediate wake of the storms.

“On the core prep, response and then stabilize and get people back to normal, just know that we’ve never relied on FEMA for any of that here in the state of Florida,” DeSantis told reporters last week. But he acknowledged there are still unresolved issues over how much, or how little, FEMA will pay for after hurricanes and other disasters. “We’re working through that,” he said. “I assume that people will still qualify, but who knows how generous and all that.” “FEMA is shifting from bloated, DC-centric dead weight to a lean, deployable disaster force that empowers state actors to provide relief for their citizens. The old processes are being replaced because they failed Americans in real emergencies for decades. Comments about ‘not being ready or prepared’ are coming from the same ex-FEMA employees that failed Americans for decades,” said FEMA spokesman Geoff Harbaugh.

New York Post [5/28/2025 10:10 PM, Victor Nava, 49956K] reports the FBI has been overwhelmed investigating James Comey "copycats" in the wake of his controversial "86 47" Instagram post, Director Kash Patel revealed Wednesday. "Do you know how many copycats we’ve had to investigate as a result of that beachside venture from the former director?" Patel told Fox News "Special Report" host Bret Baier, during an interview from the bureau’s academy in Quantico, Virginia. Patel indicated that the uptick in potential threats against President Trump since Comey’s May 15 post has been so substantial that the FBI has had to redirect significant resources – including agents focused on child sex crimes and drug trafficking – to investigate them. "Do you know how many agents I’ve had to take offline from chasing down child sex predators, fentanyl traffickers, terrorists .. because everywhere across this country people are popping up on social media and think that a threat to the life of the president of the United States is a joke … and they can do it because [Comey] did it?" the FBI chief said. "That’s what I’m having to deal with every single day," Patel fumed. "And that’s why I’m having to pull my agents and analysts off – because [Comey] thought it was funny to go out there and make a political statement.” The FBI did not immediately respond to The Post’s request for details on the surge in possible threats against Trump since the former FBI director’s Instagram post. In the since-deleted post, Comey shared an image of seashells arranged on a beach to form the numbers "86 47," which many Republicans, including Trump, viewed as a call to assassinate the 47th president. Comey, who was fired by Trump in May 2017 after serving as FBI director since September 2013, was interviewed by Secret Service investigators the day after the post. The former director indicated during an interview with MSNBC last week that he doesn’t expect criminal charges or any additional action from the Trump administration over the shell post, which he viewed at the time – and still does – as "totally innocent.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

USA Today [5/28/2025 2:00 PM, Savannah Kuchar, 75552K] reports that former FBI Director James Comey aired his "doubts" about the current bureau leadership, Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino, in a televised interview after his own recent dust-up related to President Donald Trump. "There are lots of people in the FBI who know what they’re doing," Comey said in a May 28 interview with CNN. "I hope these two guys are letting them guide them." Comey has been a fierce adversary of Trump since the commander-in-chief fired him in 2017. Pressed by CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer on whether he felt Patel and Bongino, both Trump picks, were capable of steering the FBI, Comey was clear: "Nothing in their life or their career gives me confidence that they know anything about leading an organization like that." Comey criticized a recent announcement by Bongino that the bureau would be zeroing in on three cases of "potential public corruption," including the discovery of cocaine in the White House in 2023 and the 2022 leak of a Supreme Court draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade. "It’s a little confusing to me, honestly. I’m sure it’s a huge adjustment to go from being a podcaster to being the deputy director of the FBI," Comey said, taking a swipe at Bongino’s previous career as a conservative talk show host.

CBS Austin [5/28/2025 2:20 PM, Jackson Walker, 558K] reports the Secret Service on Wednesday confirmed to The National News Desk (TNND) it is investigating after two agents engaged in a physical altercation with one another. The dust-up took place around 2:30 a.m. on May 21, a spokesperson said. The agents were stationed near former President Barack Obama’s Washington D.C. residence when the incident occurred. "The individuals involved were suspended from duty and this matter is the subject of an internal investigation," a spokesperson wrote via email. "The Secret Service has a very strict code of conduct for all employees and any behavior that violates that code is unacceptable.” Video of the altercation shared to X by RealClearPolitics correspondent Susan Crabtree shows the agents pushing and shoving one another near a vehicle. Audio from the incident also depicts a female’s voice over a radio calling for a supervisor "before I whoop this girl’s a--.”

Reported similarly:
(B) CBS Mornings [5/28/2025 9:48 AM, Staff]

Blaze [5/28/2025 11:30 AM, Staff, 1805K] reports the FBI during the Biden regime was marked by inaction. Case after high-profile case went under-prioritized, mishandled, or obstructed. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino are currently digging into several cases left unanswered by the Biden administration. On Memorial Day, Bongino posted an update on X regarding which specific cases the FBI is either going to "re-open or push additional resources and investigative attention" into. On a recent episode of "The Glenn Beck Program," Glenn discussed the three cases the FBI under President Trump is now prioritizing. One case the FBI is reopening is the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization leak, commonly referred to as the Dobbs leak. In May 2022, an unknown individual leaked a draft of the U.S. Supreme Court opinion detailing the court’s plans to overturn Roe v. Wade to Politico, which then broke the story. The leak sparked massive "Bans Off Our Bodies" protests across over 380 U.S. cities and triggered a wave of violent attacks on numerous crisis pregnancy centers. Another case the FBI is reopening is the White House cocaine incident. On July 2, 2023, the U.S. Secret Service discovered a bag containing over 200 milligrams of cocaine in a highly trafficked cubby near the West Executive Avenue entrance of the White House. Despite extensive forensic testing and security footage review, the investigation closed just days later. A suspect was never identified because apparently the DNA, fingerprints, and video evidence were deemed insufficient. Or .. . higher powers ensured the evidence was considered inconclusive to keep someone’s record clean. And finally, the FBI will push additional resources toward investigating who hid the pipe bombs. On the evening of January 5, 2021, an unidentified individual placed two viable pipe bombs near the Democratic and Republican National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., which were discovered the next day during the Capitol riot but did not detonate. Four and a half years later, the suspect still remains at large.

AP [5/29/2025 12:07 AM, Colleen Slevin, 4120K] reports Teak Ty Brockbank posted online that Colorado’s top election official should be executed and her former counterpart in Arizona should also be killed. But Brockbank, who faces up to five years in prison when he is sentenced Thursday for making online threats, is asking for leniency. He says he made those posts when he was drinking heavily and socially isolated, spending his evenings consuming conspiracy theories online. Brockbank pleaded guilty in October to one count of transmitting interstate threats between September 2021 and August 2022 against Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold and former Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, now the state’s governor, as well as against a Colorado state judge and federal law enforcement agents. Under a plea deal, prosecutors agreed not to pursue charges against him for having firearms he was barred from possessing because of a previous conviction or for online threats he made later. One such threat was against Griswold last year for her role in helping the prosecution of former Colorado clerk, Tina Peters. They also say he threatened judges on the Colorado Supreme Court after they removed Donald Trump from the state’s ballot. The U.S. Supreme Court later restored Trump’s name to the ballot. Brockbank, who was has been behind bars since he was arrested in August 2024, is asking to be sentenced to the time he has already served plus three years of supervised release and possibly six months in home detention or in a halfway house. That’s less than is recommended by federal sentencing guidelines but Brockbank’s lawyer, Tom Ward, said that sentence would allow him to get unspecified treatment. In a court filing in support of the request, Ward said Brockbank was a "keyboard warrior" with no intent of carrying out his threats. Brockbank spent time on social media sites like Gab and Rumble, the alternative video-sharing platform that has been criticized for allowing and sometimes promoting far-right extremism. Ward said Rumble and Gab repeatedly delivered "the message that the country was under attack and that patriotic Americans had a duty to rise up and act," he said. "His engagement with extremist content online was driven not by a malicious character, but by a misplaced desire for belonging and a tendency to not question others’ underlying motives," Ward wrote.

FOX News [5/28/2025 5:20 PM, Alexandra Koch, 46878K] reports the U.S. Coast Guard is warning beachgoers to "remain clear" if they come across a silver-shaped cylinder along the shoreline, as it could be an armed flare. Coast Guard Sector Lake Michigan said in a statement three phosphorus pyrotechnic flares were unaccounted for after a joint military exercise with the Coast Guard and Air Force earlier this month offshore Milwaukee. During the exercise, four phosphorus pyrotechnics that were deployed did not activate when entering the water, according to officials. One phosphorous pyrotechnic was located on Montrose Beach, Illinois, by a lifeguard on May 26. However, three phosphorus pyrotechnics are still unaccounted for. The missing pyrotechnics are still considered armed when they do not activate. USA Today [5/28/2025 3:02 PM, Staff, 75552K] reports that the phosphorous pyrotechnics encased in a silver cylinder are still considered armed, according to a press release from Coast Guard sector overseeing Lake Michigan. If the flare detonates, the smoke and flames could reach a temperature up to 2,900 degrees Fahrenheit. The flares were used as part of a joint exercise between the Coast Guard and the U.S. Air Force in Milwaukee in early May, the release said. During the exercise, four flares were released in the water but did not activate. At the time, none could be located. One of the flares was found May 26 by a lifeguard on Montrose Beach in Chicago, just northwest of Wrigley Field. Coast Guard officials are asking anyone who finds another one to stay clear of it, and immediately call 911.

DVIDS [5/28/2025 10:48 AM, Staff, 988K] reports that U.S. Coast Guard units, Department of Homeland Security components and Canadian law enforcement agencies conducted enhanced border security operations along the Saint Marys River, May 24-25. The operation increased patrols and strengthened information sharing between agencies in a coordinated effort to deter illegal cross-border activity and enhance the safety and security of both nations. "Protecting our shared border is a top priority," said Capt. James Bendle, commander of Sector Northern Great Lakes. "By working closely with our DHS and Canadian partners, we can effectively address potential threats and maintain the integrity of our shared maritime waterway." Participating agencies focused on maintaining security along the U.S. Canada maritime boundary and safeguarding the region’s vital transportation system. Officials emphasized their ongoing commitment to joint operations and using combined resources to counter illegal activity. Agencies involved included: U.S. Coast Guard Sector Northern Great Lakes, Coast Guard Investigative Service, U.S. Border Patrol, CBP Office of Field Operations, CBP Air and Marine Operations, Royal Canadian Mounted Police, Canada Border Services Agency, Ontario Provincial Police. Authorities urge the public to report suspicious activity to the appropriate agency to help maintain border security.

New York Post [5/29/2025 3:42 AM, Christina Shaw, 49956K] reports that, almost 10 months after a Texas family’s boat capsized off the coast of Homer, Alaska, a search turned up human remains at the bottom of the bay. In August 2024, the US Coast Guard searched for the missing boaters but suspended it without any sightings. David and Mary Maynard, of Troy, along with their two sons – 11-year-old Colton Maynard and 8-year-old Brantley Maynard – went missing after a 28-foot aluminum boat carrying eight people capsized approximately 16 miles west of Homer, the US Coast Guard said. Alaska State Troopers said they had three private companies – Support Vessels of Alaska, Vision Subsea, and Benthic Geoscience Inc – contact them to offer their professional tools to assist with the search. With their assistance, they were able to locate the missing boat. "In early May, the group was able to locate the vessel in 180 feet of water and, utilizing a remotely operated vehicle, they were able to positively identify it as the missing boat with potential human remains onboard," the Alaska State Troopers reported. Since the discovery, divers have recovered three sets of remains from the sunken vessel and transported them to the State Medical Examiner’s Office for positive identification and autopsy. Next of kin have been notified and the Alaska Wildlife Troopers expressed their thanks to everyone who assisted in the recovery efforts. "The Alaska Wildlife Troopers would like to thank Support Vessels of Alaska, Vision Subsea, Benthic Geoscience Inc, and Alaska Dive Search, Rescue, and Recovery Team for their continued assistance with this search and recovery operation," they said. A GoFundMe posted when the family first went missing said the Maynards "left a huge imprint on many people," from the laughter they brought to others to the "love and family-oriented connection they provided.” It goes on to express how much they will be missed. "It is indescribable the void that will be left behind, but I know if we come together as a family and a community they would know how much they meant to everyone," the GoFundMe states.

Bloomberg [5/28/2025 4:06 PM, Staff, 19320K] Video: HERE reports Wendi Whitmore, chief security intelligence officer at Palo Alto Networks, discusses what the US can do to improve its cyber defense and preparedness. Whitmore speaks ahead of her testimony to a House Committee on Homeland Security, with Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on "Bloomberg Technology."

CNN [5/28/2025 4:55 PM, Ramishah Maruf, 21433K] reports shares of Victoria’s Secret fell Wednesday after the lingerie company took down its US website, saying there was a prolonged "security incident.” Shoppers visiting the website will see a black screen with the company’s statement rather than its usual selection of lingerie, sleepwear and other products. The retailer has "identified and are taking steps to address a security incident," according to a statement posted to its website. "We have taken down our website and some in store services as a precaution.” It’s rare for a company of Victoria Secret’s size to have such a lengthy site-wide outage. While its physical retail stores remain open, revenue from online shopping is critical for Victoria’s Secret. The brand generated $2 billion in net sales from direct channels that include online shopping in 2024, or roughly a third of its annual sales. Hackers are getting increasingly sophisticated thanks to artificial intelligence, Richard Blech, CEO of AI security firm XSOC Corp., told to CNN. And many retailers may not be prepared for such attacks since they usually outsource cybersecurity to third-party organizations managing multiple accounts, he said. "Hackers are ahead of the game and well-resourced," Blech said. "It’s a critical failure in digital trust.” In a statement to CNN, Victoria’s Secret said that it "immediately enacted our response protocols" and that "third-party experts are engaged.” Attacking unprepared retailers seems to be a new trend for sophisticated hackers, according to Blech. CNN reported that US retail companies were targeted by hackers associated with a notorious cybercriminal group this month, prompting FBI intelligence briefings.

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Bloomberg [5/28/2025 4:56 PM, Lara Sanli, 19320K]
FOX Business [5/28/2025 4:40 PM, Alexandra Koch, 9940K]
SFGate [5/28/2025 4:18 PM, Kasia Pawlowska, 11859K]

New York Times [5/28/2025 12:46 PM, Ephrat Livni, 138952K] reports hundreds of kilos of cocaine were set to arrive at a Syrian port hidden in a shipping container supposedly full of fruit. In exchange, weapons from the arsenal of Syria’s deposed dictator would arm one of the most notorious criminal organizations in Latin America. And millions of dollars would be laundered along the way. This plot was made public last week in an unsealed grand jury indictment in federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia, where one of its key players made a first appearance. The charging document sketches the outlines of an alleged scheme that sheds light on a complex criminal network of drug cartels, rebel groups and rogue regimes spanning four continents. Antoine Kassis, a Lebanese national named in the indictment and one of three men charged in connection with the plan, appeared in court on Friday after being extradited from Kenya. Prosecutors accused the men of involvement in a narco-terrorism conspiracy and of conspiring to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, Colombia’s National Liberation Army. The case is notable for the sinister international ties it seems to expose and because it appears to justify widespread concerns in the international community that the military arsenal of Bashar al-Assad, the longtime Syrian dictator who was deposed in December, could fall into criminal hands. According to the indictment, first noted in the newsletter Court Watch, Mr. Kassis was a drug trafficker in Lebanon with high-level ties to members of the Assad regime, which was known for turning Syria into a narcostate. The indictment links Mr. Kassis to a global money laundering network headquartered in Lebanon whose members were said to be working with the National Liberation Army, known as the E.L.N. for its initials in Spanish, and to have worked for the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico. Last spring, prosecutors said, Mr. Kassis and the alleged money launderers — Alirio Rafael Quintero and Wisam Nagib Kherfan — struck a deal that relied on his Syrian ties to secure military-grade weapons for the E.L.N. to be paid for with cocaine, which the militant group cultivates and traffics. He would distribute the drugs in the Middle East and Mr. Quintero and Mr. Kherfan would handle payments and launder the proceeds, according to the indictment. The charges arise from events and transactions that prosecutors say occurred in Colombia, Ghana, Morocco, Lebanon, Syria, Kenya, the United States and beyond, from last April until late February. Even after Mr. al-Assad was toppled in December, Mr. Kassis still had “access to weapons previously provided to the Assad regime by foreign governments, including Russia and Iran,” prosecutors said. Mr. Kassis is accused of traveling from Lebanon to Kenya to meet an E.L.N. weapons inspector, signing a contract to import a shipping container ostensibly full of fruit from Colombia to the Port of Latakia in Syria. But “the container would actually contain 500 kilograms of cocaine,” prosecutors said.

Washington Examiner [5/28/2025 9:34 AM, Jenny Goldsberry, 1934K] reports that a shooting at a Waterbury, Connecticut, mall resulted in five people injured on Tuesday. Police said they do not believe the shooting was a "random act of violence." "We do not believe this was a random act of violence. We believe this started as a conflict, and it escalated," Waterbury Police Chief Fernando Spagnolo said in a press conference. "We do know that there was one gunman at this time. We’ve identified that gunman was armed with a semiautomatic pistol." Waterbury police officers arrived within minutes of the shooting at Brass Mill Center shortly after 4 p.m. Some shoppers had to shelter in place until officers arrived. One person of interest is in police custody. Spagnolo said he believes there was only one gunman and one person who is suspected to be an accessory to the gunman. Spagnolo credited the shoppers’ quick reaction to shelter in place with preventing "what could have been a really bad incident here." Gov. Ned Lamont (D-CT) expressed disappointment that the shooting happened at a mall "where everyone should feel safe.” "We are grateful to law enforcement, who acted swiftly," Lamont wrote on X. "Our hearts break for the Waterbury community, the victims, and their families who have been impacted by this incident." The victims were transported to a hospital for treatment. Waterbury Police are still investigating alongside Connecticut State Police.

NPR [5/28/2025 5:35 PM, Odette Yousef, 37958K] Audio: HERE reports last week’s fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C., is raising fresh concern about an increase in far-left militancy in the U.S. Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgram were killed as they were leaving an event at the Capital Jewish Museum on May 21. The suspect arrested in the shooting, 31-year old Elias Rodriguez of Chicago, has been charged with several counts, including two of first degree murder and murder of foreign officials. According to an FBI special agent’s affidavit in the case, Rodriguez told an officer upon arrest, "I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza." Jeanine Pirro, acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, has said federal authorities are investigating the killings as a hate crime and a crime of terrorism. President Trump has said they were rooted in antisemitism. If, indeed, the suspect planned to kill people because of their Jewish faith, this would represent a major anomaly in lethal, antisemitic violence. But the conflict in Gaza has spurred many more cases of political violence. According to the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data project, a nonprofit that tracks political violence and protest events around the world, there have been more than 100 instances of physical conflict at U.S. demonstrations related to the war.

NPR [5/28/2025 4:34 PM, Staff, 37958K] Audio: HERE reports when ISIS was at its height, its ranks included several hundred Americans. They were often young men radicalized online by savvy marketing that promised free housing and the chance to meet a wife. When the Islamic State collapsed, some of them ended up in huge detention camps in Syria, and the U.S. has been trying to bring them home. NPR’s Sacha Pfeiffer reports on one American family coping with the aftermath of the child they lost, and the children they found. What happened to the families of the Americans who joined ISIS? Not just the families they left behind in the U.S., but the ones they formed overseas?

Telemundo 48 El Paso [5/28/2025 5:16 PM, Staff, 9K] reports in a binational operation, members of the State Investigation Agency (AEI) arrested a subject who was wanted by the United States Department of Homeland Security Investigations, considered a priority target for his participation in the homicide of three people in the state of New Mexico, in 2022. Authorities from both countries coordinated to locate Jaime R., 31, who was captured by investigative police officers attached to the Specialized Prosecutor’s Office for Strategic Operations (FEOE). They served an arrest warrant yesterday afternoon, Tuesday, near the Kilómetro 29 neighborhood in Ciudad Juárez. AEI officers, along with personnel from the National Migration Institute and the National Guard, handed the detainee over to the U.S. authorities at the Lerdo-Stanton International Bridge. The fugitive is wanted for allegedly working as a drug trafficker and cartel killer, and is directly implicated in multiple homicides in the Albuquerque, New Mexico, area. He will also appear before a federal judge tomorrow, where he will face various federal charges.

San Francisco Chronicle [5/28/2025 10:01 AM, Sean Campbell, 4120K] reports the Mexican security forces tracking Nemesio Oseguera Cervantes – the leader of a deadly drug cartel that has been a top driver of violence in Mexico and narcotic addiction in America – thought they finally had him cornered on May 1, 2015. Four helicopters carrying an arrest team whirled over the mountains near Mexico’s southwestern coast toward Cervantes’ compound in the town of Villa Purificación, the heart of the infamous Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel. As the lead helicopter pulled within range, bullets from a truck-mounted, military-grade machine gun on the ground struck the engine. Before it reached the ground, the massive helicopter was hit by a pair of rocket-powered grenades. Four soldiers from Mexico’s Secretariat of National Defense were killed in the crash. Three more soldiers were killed in the firefight that followed, and another 12 were injured. The engagement was the first known incident of a cartel shooting down a military aircraft in Mexico. The cartel’s retaliation for the attempted arrest was swift and brutal. It set fire to trucks, buses, banks, gasoline stations and businesses. The distractions worked. Cervantes, also known as "El Mencho," escaped. The Browning machine gun that took down the helicopter was traced to a legal firearm purchase in Oregon made by a U.S. citizen. And a Barrett .50-caliber rifle used in the ambush was traced to a sale in a U.S. gun shop in Texas 4½ years before. Many military-grade weapons like these are trafficked into Mexico from the U.S. each year, aided by loose standards for firearm dealers and gun laws that favor illicit sales.

Reuters [5/28/2025 8:57 AM, Lizbeth Diaz, 51390K] reports Sol remembers her first kill for a Mexican cartel: a kidnapping she committed with a handful of other young recruits that twisted into torture and bled into murder. She was 12 years old. Sol had joined the drug cartel a few months earlier, recruited by someone she knew as she sold roses on the sidewalk outside a local bar. She started as a lookout, but rose fast. The cartel liked her childish enthusiasm for learning new skills, her unquestioning loyalty, and perhaps most importantly, her status as a minor protected her from severe punishment if the cops ever caught her. "I obeyed the boss blindly," Sol, now 20 years old, told Reuters, speaking from the rehabilitation center in central Mexico where she is trying to patch her life back together. "I thought they loved me." Sol declined to say how many people she killed during her time in the cartel. She said she’d been addicted to methamphetamine from the age of nine. When she was 16 she was arrested for kidnapping - her only criminal conviction - and spent three years in juvenile detention, according to her lawyer. Reuters is withholding Sol’s full name, and the names of the city where she worked and the cartel she joined, to protect her. The news agency was unable to independently verify the details of Sol’s account, although psychologists at the center and her lawyer said they believed it was accurate. Security experts say children like Sol are a casualty of a deliberate strategy by Mexican organized crime groups to recruit minors into their ranks by preying on their hunger for status and camaraderie. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CNN [5/28/2025 5:03 PM, Elisabeth Buchwald, 875K] reports the Trump administration has effectively cut off some American companies from selling software used to design semiconductors to China, the Financial Times reported on Wednesday. Impacted companies include Cadence, Synopsys and Siemens EDA, according to the FT’s reporting, which cited people familiar with the matter. CNN was not immediately able to confirm that. The three companies didn’t return requests for comment. New York Times subsequently reported on Wednesday that sales to China of jet engine technology and certain chemicals were also halted. The Commerce Department told CNN on Wednesday it is "reviewing exports of strategic significance to China.” "In some cases, Commerce has suspended existing export licenses or imposed additional license requirements while the review is pending," a spokesperson told CNN. However, they didn’t respond to CNN’s inquiry regarding which companies that included. The move could be the latest blow in an ongoing trade war between the world’s two biggest economies. While that trade war is ostensibly on pause while the US and China continue to negotiate a trade deal, the Commerce Department’s actions underscore the acrimony between the two nations and the challenges in keeping the peace. The pause came after Chinese government officials and Trump administration officials met in Geneva earlier this month. The US lowered tariffs on products from China to a minimum of 30% from 145%. Meanwhile, China lowered tariffs on American goods to a minimum of 10% from 125%. The truce is set to expire in August and is intended to give both countries more time to negotiate a potentially longer-term trade deal. However, either country could raise tariff rates again and throw the relationship back into turmoil. Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the US, declined to comment on the Commerce Department’s latest actions. However, he said in a statement provided to CNN that "China firmly opposes the US’s overstretching the concept of national security, abusing export controls, and maliciously blocking and suppressing China.”

Roll Call [5/28/2025 5:10 PM, Ryan Tarinelli, 692K] reports a federal court on Wednesday blocked President Donald Trump’s efforts to issue a range of tariffs under an emergency powers statute, finding his orders exceeded the authority given to him by Congress. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade found that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 does not allow for "unbounded authority," finding that the statute could not be used to impose "unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world.” The panel decided two challenges and described two types of tariffs: worldwide and retaliatory tariffs first announced in an executive order April 2 and trafficking tariffs put in place over numerous orders based on national emergencies. "The Worldwide and Retaliatory Tariff Orders exceed any authority granted to the President by IEEPA to regulate importation by means of tariffs," the 49-page ruling states. "The Trafficking Tariffs fail because they do not deal with the threats set forth in those orders.” Before the ruling, the worldwide tariffs remained in place at 10 percent for all countries, while country-specific higher rates are set to take effect on July 9, the ruling states. The trafficking tariffs were in place and set at 25 percent for Mexican and Canadian products and at 20 percent for Chinese products, the ruling states. The tariffs on Canadian energy and energy resources remained at the lower 10 percent rate, according to the ruling. The trade court found that "an unlimited delegation of tariff authority would constitute an improper abdication of legislative power to another branch of government.” The ruling said the imposition of the worldwide and retaliatory tariffs address an imbalance in trade, which it called a "type of balance-of-payments deficit," so it falls under narrower, non-emergency authorities. In one lawsuit, a dozen states contended federal law normally limits the president’s ability to impose tariffs to cases where a country has specific tariffs of its own or is using policy to "dump" products in the American market. The statute was never meant to be used for tariffs, the states argued. "Not once has any other President used IEEPA to impose tariffs," the filing said. The second case decided by the court was brought by a group of businesses harmed by the tariffs. The emergency powers statute does not authorize the president to "unilaterally issue across-the-board worldwide tariffs," the businesses argued in the lawsuit, and the president’s "claimed emergency is a figment of his own imagination.” The lawsuit described Trump’s actions as an "unprecedented power grab.” The cases are State of Oregon et al. v. the Department of Homeland Security et al., and V.O.S. Selections et al. v. United States et al.

Reported similarly:
Bloomberg [5/28/2025 8:26 PM, Erik Larson and Josh Wingrove, 19320K]
The Hill [5/28/2025 7:22 PM, Zach Schonfeld, 18649K]
Reuters [5/28/2025 9:00 PM PM, Dietrich Knauth and Daniel Wiessner, 51390K]
AP [5/28/2025 8:56 PM, Lindsay Whitehurst and Josh Boak, 56000K]

Daily Wire [5/28/2025 4:09 AM, Leif Le Mahieu, 3816K] reports President Donald Trump said Tuesday that Canada was "considering" becoming the 51st state in exchange for free participation in his Golden Dome missile defense program. Trump, who announced last week that his administration had developed a draft architecture for the Golden Dome project, said Canada would have to pay around $61 billion to join the program but not become a state. While Trump has frequently suggested that Canada could become a state, Canadian leaders have consistently rejected the idea. "I told Canada, which very much wants to be part of our fabulous Golden Dome System, that it will cost $61 Billion Dollars if they remain a separate, but unequal, Nation, but will cost ZERO DOLLARS if they become our cherished 51st State," Trump posted on Truth Social. "They are considering the offer!". The Golden Dome, which is projected to cost around $175 billion, is supposed to protect America from hypersonic, ballistic, and cruise missiles. Last week, Trump said he expects the program to be "fully operational" by the end of his term. Last week, he said that Canada was in talks to join the program, but would have to pay their “fair share “ if they wanted in. Prime Minister Mark Carney confirmed that he was in talks with the Trump administration about the Golden Dome.

The Hill [5/28/2025 12:34 PM, Julia Mueller, 18649K] reports that more U.S. citizens are being "held "wrongfully detained" Venezuelan prisons than any other country, the U.S. State Department said as it issued a travel alert for the country this week. "U.S. citizens in Venezuela face a significant and growing risk of wrongful detention. More U.S. nationals are currently wrongfully detained in Venezuela than in any other country," the State Department said in a Tuesday release. Citing concerns about detainments without due process and harsh conditions "including torture," officials warned Americans not to travel to Venezuela "for any reason." "Dual citizenship, a Venezuelan visa, past travel to Venezuela, or a job in Venezuela does not protect U.S. national travelers. Every American is at risk of being detained by [Venezuelan President Nicolas] Maduro’s regime. The U.S. Department of State recommends that any U.S. citizens in Venezuela leave immediately," the department continued. Venezuela was hit with the highest Travel Advisory level, "do not travel," and U.S. embassies in bordering countries have also issued alerts. "Venezuelan borders with Colombia, Brazil, and Guyana are not clearly marked in many locations. Do not go near the border due to the risk of crossing into Venezuela accidentally and being detained," reads a notice, issued Tuesday, from the U.S. Embassy in Bogota. There is no American embassy or consulate operating in Venezuela at this time, officials said, and the U.S. government is unable to provide routine or emergency services for citizens there.

NewsMax [5/28/2025 6:56 PM, Jim Mishler, 4622K] reports the State Department has hit Venezuela with its most serious — Level 4: Do Not Travel — warning. The government said any American who wants to travel there should "prepare a will." The warning is also being transmitted by U.S.Eembassies in neighboring South American countries and those that have direct air connections to Venezuela. A State Department news release indicated travelers might get into Venezuela without issue, but getting out is another question. "More U.S. nationals are currently wrongfully detained in Venezuela than in any other country," the release stated. The State Department warned that just being discovered as an American there could lead to problems. "Venezuelan security forces have detained U.S. citizens for up to five years without respect to due process, in harsh conditions — including torture — frequently based solely on their U.S. nationality or U.S. passport," the release stated. The U.S. does not have an embassy in Venezuela so Americans who run into trouble there have no one at hand to help.

Reuters [5/28/2025 2:26 PM, James Mackenzie, Nandita Bose, and Jarrett Renshaw, 51390K] reports U.S. President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he warned Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu last week not to take actions that could disrupt nuclear talks with Iran. "I told him this would be inappropriate to do right now because we’re very close to a solution now," Trump told reporters gathered in the Oval Office. "That could change at any moment." Israel earlier rejected a report in the New York Times that Netanyahu has been threatening to disrupt talks on a nuclear deal between the United States and Iran by striking Iran’s main nuclear enrichment facilities. Citing officials briefed on the situation, the newspaper said Israeli officials were concerned that Trump was so eager to reach a deal with Iran that he would allow Tehran to keep its nuclear enrichment facilities, a red line for Israel. Israel was particularly concerned about the possibility of any interim deal that would allow Iran to maintain its nuclear facilities for months or even years while a final agreement was reached, the paper reported. U.S. officials were concerned Israel could decide to strike Iran with little warning and said U.S. intelligence estimated that Israel could mount an attack on Iran in as little as seven hours, the paper reported. Netanyahu’s office issued a statement in response to the article which said simply: "Fake news." The New York Times said it stood by the report. On Monday, U.S. Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem said she had a "very candid conversation" with Netanyahu on the negotiations with Iran. She said she told the Israeli prime minister that Trump had asked her to convey "how important it is that we stay united and let this process play out."

Washington Examiner [5/28/2025 2:29 PM, Mike Brest, 1934K] reports that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu confirmed on Wednesday that Mohammed Sinwar, one of Hamas’s most senior leaders, was killed in a recent airstrike. Sinwar was the latest on a long list of senior Hamas leaders the Israeli military has killed, including Sinwar’s brother, Yahya Sinwar, who was the mastermind behind the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack in Israel that ignited the war. "We changed the face of the Middle East, we pushed the terrorists from our territories, we entered the Gaza Strip with force, we eliminated tens of thousands of terrorists, we eliminated (Mohammad) Deif, (Ismail) Haniyeh, Yahya Sinwar and Mohammed Sinwar," Netanyahu told Israeli lawmakers. Hamas has not confirmed Mohammed Sinwar’s assassination. Mohammed Sinwar, born in 1975 in a Khan Younis refugee camp, was the leader of the Khan Younis brigade until 2016. He was reportedly referred to as "the shadow" by the Israeli military for his elusiveness and ability to evade capture over multiple decades in Hamas’s ranks. He was believed to be as hard-line as his brother. Yahya Sinwar was singled out as the primary mastermind behind the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in which Palestinian militants stormed the border and killed about 1,200 people, hundreds of whom were civilians, and kidnapped another 250 others. Hamas is still holding slightly less than 60 people, about a third of whom are believed to still be alive. It’s unclear how Sinwar’s death could complicate the ceasefire negotiations, in part because his and other senior leaders’ deaths have left a void in the group and further decentralized its leadership infrastructure.

FOX News [5/28/2025 3:20 PM, Morgan Phillips, 46878K] reports a pair of House Republicans are urging Secretary Marco Rubio to punish Iraq with sanctions for its "complete subjugation" by Iran as part of the U.S.’s "maximum pressure" policy toward Tehran. "More than 4,400 American service members sacrificed their lives since the start of the Iraq War, yet today, Iraq stands as nothing more than a puppet of Tehran," Reps. Joe Wilson, R-S.C., and Greg Steube, R-Fla., wrote in a letter to the secretary of state and interim national security advisor. The letter laid blame on the Obama administration, arguing former President Barack Obama and his Iraq envoy Brett McGurk "propped up" Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki, whose leadership was marred by brutal political crackdowns and led to the rise of ISIS. "The Obama administration doubled down on its mistakes, relying on Iranian-backed militias to fight ISIS," the letter read. "The consequences of those failed decisions are now undeniable: Iran-backed forces wield unchecked power over Iraq’s government and security services." Fox News Digital reached out to the State Department and the Iraqi Embassy for comment.

FOX News [5/28/2025 4:58 PM, Benjamin Weinthal, 46878K] reports a new intelligence report claims Iran is continuing with its active nuclear weapons program, which it says can be used to launch missiles over long distances. The startling intelligence gathering of Austrian officials contradicts the assessment of the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard told a Senate Intelligence Committee in March that the American intelligence community "continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003.” Austria’s version of the FBI — the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution — wrote Monday in an intelligence report, "In order to assert and enforce its regional political power ambitions, the Islamic Republic of Iran is striving for comprehensive rearmament, with nuclear weapons to make the regime immune to attack and to expand and consolidate its dominance in the Middle East and beyond.” The Austrian domestic intelligence agency report added, "The Iranian nuclear weapons development program is well advanced, and Iran possesses a growing arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of delivering nuclear warheads over long distances.” According to an intelligence document obtained and reviewed by Fox News Digital, "Iran has developed sophisticated sanctions-evasion networks, which has benefited Russia.” The Austrian intelligence findings could be an unwanted wrench in President Trump’s negotiation process to resolve the atomic crisis with Iran’s rulers because the data outlined in the report suggests the regime will not abandon its drive to secure a nuclear weapon. In response to the Austrian intelligence, a White House official told Fox News Digital, "President Trump is committed to Iran never obtaining a nuclear weapon or the capacity to build one.”

Reuters [5/28/2025 2:11 PM, Parisa Hafezi and John Irish, 51390K] reports that Iran may pause uranium enrichment if the U.S. releases frozen Iranian funds and recognises Tehran’s right to refine uranium for civilian use under a "political deal" that could lead to a broader nuclear accord, two Iranian official sources said. The sources, close to the negotiating team, said on Wednesday a "political understanding with the United States could be reached soon" if Washington accepted Tehran’s conditions. One of the sources said the matter "has not been discussed yet" during the talks with the United States. The sources told Reuters that under this arrangement, Tehran would halt uranium enrichment for a year, ship part of its highly enriched stock abroad or convert it into fuel plates for civilian nuclear purposes. A temporary pause to enrichment would be a way to overcome an impasse over clashing red lines after five rounds of talks between Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi and Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff to resolve a decades-long dispute over Tehran’s nuclear program. U.S. officials have repeatedly said that any new nuclear deal with Iran - to replace a failed 2015 accord between Tehran and six world powers - must include a commitment to scrap enrichment, viewed as a potential pathway to developing nuclear bombs.

New York Times [5/28/2025 9:13 PM, Ana Swanson, 138952K] reports the Trump administration has suspended some sales to China of critical U.S. technologies, including those related to jet engines, semiconductors and certain chemicals. The move is a response to China’s recent restrictions on exports of critical minerals to the United States, a decision by Beijing that has threatened to cripple U.S. company supply chains, according to two people familiar with the matter. The new limits are pushing the world’s largest economies a step closer toward supply chain warfare, as Washington and Beijing try to flex their power over essential economic components in an attempt to gain the upper hand in an intensifying trade conflict. The standoff could have significant implications for companies that depend on foreign technologies, including makers of airplanes, robots, cars and semiconductors. It could also complicate efforts to negotiate an end to a trade fight over the administration’s tariff policies. On May 12, negotiators from the two countries agreed to reduce the punishing tariffs they have imposed on each other for 90 days while negotiators sought a longer-term resolution. Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, said at the time that “the consensus from both delegations is that neither side wanted a decoupling.” Yet the administration continues to target China with punitive measures. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on Wednesday that the United States would “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students who study in critical fields or who have connections to the Chinese Communist Party.

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