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

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

The Washington Post [5/29/2025 7:51 PM, Marianne LeVine and Maria Sacchetti, 32099K] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is shaking up its leadership as the Trump administration struggles to ramp up deportations and meet the president’s goal of removing 1 million unauthorized immigrants in his first year. Robert Hammer, the acting head of Homeland Security Investigations, has been reassigned four months after taking charge of the Department of Homeland Security’s investigative arm, the agency said Thursday. In addition, Kenneth Genalo, who has been acting chief of enforcement and removal operations, will be retiring. The leadership changes come one day after White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller shared on Fox News that the administration wants ICE to make “a minimum of 3,000 arrests for ICE every day,” a dramatic increase from arrest quotas that Trump officials set in January. At the start of President Donald Trump’s second term, officials directed ICE to arrest at least 1,200 to 1,500 per day. But ICE has struggled to keep pace with that earlier quota. In April, DHS said that ICE made more than 66,000 arrests in Trump’s first 100 days, or an average of more than 660 arrests a day. Border czar Tom Homan said Thursday that he had "not been satisfied with the numbers," but that Trump officials had "increased the teams a lot" and "we expect a fast increase in the number of arrests.” Trump campaigned on a plan to enact the "largest domestic deportation operation in American history." His administration has sought to fast-track deportations, including invoking a rarely used wartime law to deport alleged gang members without a hearing. Even as administration officials have complained about the pace of arrests, congressional Republicans are seeking to infuse billions of dollars to increase the scale of Trump’s mass deportation goals. DHS said in a news release that Derek Gordon, who recently served as special agent in charge at Homeland Security Investigations in Washington, will replace Hammer. Marcos Charles will fill Genalo’s role overseeing enforcement and removal. Charles has been the point person providing information to a federal judge in Boston on the recent attempt to deport people from Mexico, Vietnam and other countries to South Sudan, even though they are not citizens of that country. The judge found that the deportations violated a court order barring the administration from removing people to countries where they are not citizens without providing them sufficient notice in advance to challenge their removal. Charles has been overseeing enforcement and removal operations at the 25 ICE field offices nationwide. He said in a recent court filing in the South Sudan deportations case that he began his career as a U.S. Border Patrol agent in Hebbronville, Texas, before DHS was created after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. He joined ICE in 2008 and has led field offices in Boston; St. Paul, Minnesota; and Dallas. In February, the Trump administration removed the top official at ICE one month into his tenure. Caleb Vitello, a veteran ICE official, was replaced by Todd Lyons. Vitello was removed following complaints from White House officials over lagging immigrant arrest numbers. ICE also said Thursday that Mellissa Harper would be Charles’s acting deputy for enforcement and removal operations. The New York Times [5/29/2025 6:24 PM, Hamed Aleaziz, 138952K] reports Homeland security officials said the moves on Thursday were meant to help make Mr. Trump’s immigration promises a reality. The AP [5/29/2025 6:36 PM, Staff, 56000K] reports ICE also announced a host of other staff changes at various departments within the agency. ICE said the changes would “help ICE achieve President Trump and the American people’s mandate of arresting and deporting criminal illegal aliens and making American communities safe.” Reuters [5/29/2025 4:38 PM, Ted Hesson, 51390K] reports Tricia McLaughlin, a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, denied that the officials were pushed out of their roles, saying it "isn’t accurate." The removal of Genalo and Hammer follows multiple ICE leadership shakeups in February. White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told Fox News’ "Hannity" on Wednesday that the White House was setting a goal for ICE to arrest at least 3,000 migrants per day, far above an earlier 1,000 per day arrest quota. Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem also threatened to fire the bottom 10% of regional ICE officials based on their arrest tallies, the people said. ICE said Marcos Charles, a former Dallas field office director, would take over enforcement and removal operations. Derek Gordon, a Washington-based official, will helm its investigative arm, the agency said.

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FOX News [5/29/2025 7:57 PM, Peter Pinedo, 46878K] reports The Department of Homeland Security is warning would-be disrupters to avoid interfering with federal immigration enforcement operations after it said a demonstrator attempted to disrupt a federal immigration arrest in New York City on Wednesday. Nearly two dozen anti-ICE protesters were also detained in another part of the city later that day. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News Digital that ICE agents contacted Federal Protective Service (FPS) on Wednesday morning and "requested assistance as their officers were conducting arrests" in the lobby of a federal immigration court building. McLaughlin said FPS officers responded and saw several protesters filming and taking pictures of law enforcement personnel in the lobby. She said that at approximately 11:45 a.m. a person attempted to forcibly interfere with ICE agents attempting to place someone in custody. McLaughlin said ICE reported the incident to FPS as "an assault on one of their officers." The person was briefly taken into custody, issued a U.S. district court violation notice and released, according to McLaughlin. In response to the incident, McLaughlin said, "Anyone who actively obstructs law enforcement in the performance of their sworn duties will of course face consequences which could include arrest." Later that day, nearly two dozen anti-ICE protesters were detained by the New York Police Department outside a federal building in Manhattan on Wednesday night after a chaotic protest led to police struggling with demonstrators. Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in a statement this month that assaults against ICE officers rose by more than 400% from the same time last year. He placed part of the blame on politicians who "are careless with their politically motivated rhetoric."

CNN [5/29/2025 7:44 PM, Whitney Wild and Holmes Lybrand, 21433K] reports Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted a stunning allegation on Wednesday: A undocumented migrant sent a letter threatening to kill President Donald Trump, promising to "self deport" after the assassination. "Thanks to our ICE officers, this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump is behind bars," Noem wrote in a social media post that included the letter and a picture of the man arrested. DHS also sent out a press release. The story was picked up by multiple news outlets. The president’s allies used it to highlight what they see as the dangers of undocumented migrants and the work of the administration to boot them out of the country. The problem: Investigators believe the migrant was a victim of a setup. Law enforcement believes the man, Ramon Morales Reyes, 54, never wrote the letter, which was sent to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement office and other law enforcement agencies, several sources familiar with the matter told CNN. Instead, investigators suspect the letter was intended to benefit a separate individual who is currently awaiting trial in a robbery and assault case in which Reyes is a victim. They do not consider the threat to be credible. In investigating the case, agents believe the person may have been involved in sending these letters, claiming to be from Reyes, in an attempt to have Reyes deported before the case could go to trial, sources said. A high-level law enforcement official who was briefed on the case told CNN that law enforcement determined Reyes did not write the letter when they interviewed him regarding the threat. Federal officials asked for a handwriting sample from Reyes and determined his handwriting and the threatening letter didn’t match. Further, a source told CNN law enforcement reviewed jail calls made by a person they believe played a role in penning the letters. The source said the person asked about specific addresses, one of which received the letter. "We are tired of this president messing with us Mexicans," the letter says, adding later, "I will self deport myself back to Mexico but not before I use my 30 yard 6 to shoot your precious president in the head," possibly at a rally. The Milwaukee Police Department told CNN on Thursday it is "investigating an identity theft and victim intimidation incident related to this incident" but could not provide details as the investigation is ongoing and "no one has been criminally charged at this time.” In her post, Noem wrote that the alleged threat came "less than two weeks after former FBI Director Comey called for the President’s assassination." (James Comey has denied the post was meant as a threat or at all associated with violence.). "All politicians and members of the media should take notice of these repeated attempts on President Trump’s life and tone down their rhetoric," the secretary added.

The AP [5/29/2025 6:14 PM, Rebecca Santana, 56000K] reports the Department of Homeland Security is putting more than 500 “sanctuary jurisdictions” across the country on notice that the Trump administration views them as obstructing immigration enforcement as it attempts to increase pressure on communities it believes are standing in the way of the president’s mass deportations agenda. The department on Thursday is publishing a list of the jurisdictions and said each one will receive formal notification that the government has deemed them noncompliant and if they’re believed to be in violation of any federal criminal statutes. The list will be published on the department’s website. “These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens,” DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a press release. The Trump administration has repeatedly targeted communities, states and jurisdictions that it says aren’t doing enough to help Immigration and Customs Enforcement as it seeks to make good on President Donald Trump’s campaign promises to remove millions of people in the country illegally. The list was compiled using a number of factors, including whether the cities or localities identified themselves as sanctuary jurisdictions, how much they complied already with federal officials enforcing immigration laws, if they had restrictions on sharing information with immigration enforcement or had any legal protections for people in the country illegally, according to the department. Trump signed an executive order on April 28 requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. The list is to be regularly updated. Federal departments and agencies, working with the Office of Management and Budget, would then be tasked with identifying federal grants or contracts with those states or local jurisdictions that the federal government identified as “sanctuary jurisdictions” and suspending or terminating the money, according to the executive order. If “sanctuary jurisdictions” are notified and the Trump administration determines that they “remain in defiance,” the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security are then empowered to pursue whatever “legal remedies and enforcement measures” they consider necessary to make them comply. There’s no specific or legal definition of what constitutes a “sanctuary jurisdiction.” The term is often used to refer to law enforcement agencies, states or communities that don’t cooperate with immigration enforcement. The Wall Street Journal [5/29/2025 9:31 PM, Tali Arbel, 646K] reports the Trump administration on Thursday named counties and cities in more than 30 states, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago and Seattle, as sanctuary jurisdictions it could go after for not complying with federal immigration laws. President Trump has threatened to pull federal funding and pursue lawsuits against places that don’t change their practices. Sanctuary cities place limits on asking residents about their immigration status and on helping federal officials with immigration enforcement. That makes it harder for the administration to arrest people who are in the U.S. illegally and makes Trump’s push for mass deportations more difficult. The DHS list contained counties and cities across New England, and on the West Coast in Washington, California and Oregon, along with jurisdictions in Hawaii and Alaska. Cities and counties in New Mexico, Tennessee, Colorado, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois and Minnesota were also named, as well as Washington, D.C. “We are exposing these sanctuary politicians who harbor criminal illegal aliens and defy federal law,” said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. The San Diego Union Tribune [5/29/2025 11:17 PM, Alexandra Mendoza, 1611K] reports "These sanctuary city politicians are endangering Americans and our law enforcement in order to protect violent criminal illegal aliens," DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said in a news release. Trump signed an executive order on April 28 requiring the secretary of Homeland Security and the attorney general to publish a list of states and local jurisdictions that they considered to be obstructing federal immigration laws. The list is to be regularly updated. Federal departments and agencies, working with the Office of Management and Budget, would then be tasked with identifying federal grants or contracts with those states or local jurisdictions that the federal government identified as "sanctuary jurisdictions" and suspending or terminating the money, according to the executive order. If "sanctuary jurisdictions" are notified and the Trump administration determines that they "remain in defiance," the attorney general and the secretary of Homeland Security are then empowered to pursue whatever "legal remedies and enforcement measures" they consider necessary to make them comply.

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NewsMax [5/29/2025 10:05 AM, Sandy Fitzgerald, 4622K] reports Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin, commenting on a demand filed by the Trump administration to dismiss a lawsuit over the deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador, argued on Newsmax on Thursday that the courts can’t have jurisdiction over his case. "He’s not in the United States," she told "Wake Up America." "He’s also not a U.S. citizen." The administration on Wednesday asked for the dismissal with the argument that the court lacks jurisdiction, as Abrego Garcia remains outside the United States. The procedural move came as the government was asked to respond to his lawsuit about his deportation within 60 days. The case has gone on for two months and has involved a judge’s order to return Abrego Garcia and a Supreme Court ruling to "facilitate" his return. But McLaughlin reiterated the administration’s arguments that Abrego is a member of the MS-13 gang, which he has continued to deny. "This is a known human trafficker," she claimed. "This is a known wife-beater and an illegal immigrant. He should not have been in our country in the first place. The media might want you to believe that he is a Maryland man and an innocent father. But he’s anything but.” Meanwhile, millions of dollars have been spent to try to get him back on U.S. soil, and "it’s really un-American and it’s unacceptable to the American people," McLaughlin said. Over the weekend, Rep. Glenn Ivey, D-Md., tried to visit with Abrego Garcia in the El Salvador prison where he is detained but was rejected, and McLaughlin accused Democrats and the media of "doing the bidding of MS-13 gang members" by calling for his release. "On the other hand, you have [DHS] Secretary [Kristi] Noem, President Trump and other members of the Trump administration, including our brave ICE enforcement officers who are working every single day to get these vicious criminals off of American streets," said McLaughlin. "So when they show us who they are, we should believe them. … you got to think about it: Maryland is home to the Naval Academy, Bethesda, and Fort McHenry. It’s a hugely patriotic state, and you’re standing with an illegal gangbanger who’s been deported." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Caller [5/29/2025 9:07 PM, Mariane Angela, 1010K] reports Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin condemned American universities on Fox Business Thursday for what she called their “complicity” in Chinese Communist Party espionage. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday the State Department will begin aggressively revoking visas held by Chinese students, citing national security concerns. During an appearance on “The Evening Edit,” McLaughlin highlighted that more than 277,000 Chinese nationals were enrolled in U.S. colleges, while only 800 American students were studying in China. “I found this statistic to be absolutely staggering. In the academic year 2024, there were 277,000 Chinese nationals who were studying here at academic institutions here in the United States. On the other hand, there were only 800 Americans who were studying at universities over in China. That’s pretty staggering, and the reason is because the Chinese Communist Party, for decades and decades with impunity, have been exploiting U.S. visa systems and other programs that we’ve been using with academic institutions,” McLaughlin said. McLaughlin praised Rubio, alongside President Donald Trump and Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, for taking action. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX Business [5/29/2025 9:47 PM, Staff, 10702K] reports DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin discusses how Harvard’s commencement speaker is facing criticism over comments regarding President Donald Trump on ‘The Evening Edit.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

The New York Times [5/30/2025 3:18 AM, Edward Wong, 330K] 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. The Wall Street Journal [5/29/2025 11:42 AM, Gareth Vipers, 646K] reports that the State Department said it would also revise its criteria for future visa applications from China and Hong Kong. The State Department also said it was pausing new student-visa interviews while it prepared measures to vet applicants’ social-media accounts. Last month, Beijing cautioned Chinese students against studying in the U.S. following a warning that Washington was preparing to revoke visas for many of those already there. On Thursday, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman called the U.S. plan to revoke Chinese students’ visas politically motivated and discriminatory and said it “hurts the lawful rights and interests of international students from China and disrupts people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.” The US News & World Report [5/29/2025 2:24 PM, Elliott Davis Jr. and Jaclyn Jeffrey-Wilensky, 24051K] reports that the news comes after Politico reported that the administration has ordered U.S. embassies and consular sections to pause scheduling new interviews for student visa applications – not just from China – and is considering a new social media vetting requirement for all foreign students applying to study in the U.S. On Wednesday, the Department of Homeland Security sent a letter to Harvard notifying its intent to withdraw the university’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification, citing claims that Harvard "has coordinated with the Chinese Communist Party." But a federal judge on Thursday extended an order temporarily blocking the administration’s effort. The moves also add another layer to the recently complicated relationship between Trump and China. After the president in April imposed tariffs of up to 145% on goods from the country – which retaliated with duties of up to 125% on American products – the two nations struck a temporary trade truce earlier this month. The administration, however, also has told U.S. companies offering software used to design semiconductors to stop selling their services to Chinese groups, the Financial Times reported.

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The AP [5/29/2025 3:08 PM, Michael Casey and Annie Ma, 48304K] reports a federal judge on Thursday extended an order blocking the Trump administration’s attempt to bar Harvard University from enrolling foreign students. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs extended the block she imposed last week with a temporary restraining order, which allows the Ivy League school to continue enrolling international students as a lawsuit proceeds. Harvard sued the Department of Homeland Security on Friday after Secretary Kristi Noem revoked its ability to host foreign students at its campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "Harvard will continue to take steps to protect the rights of our international students and scholars, members of our community who are vital to the University’s academic mission and community — and whose presence here benefits our country immeasurably," a university spokesman said in a statement. On Wednesday, the Trump administration introduced a new effort to revoke Harvard’s certification to enroll foreign students. In a letter sent by the acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement director, Todd Lyons, the government gave Harvard 30 days to respond to the alleged grounds for withdrawal, which include accusations that Harvard coordinated with foreign entities and failed to respond sufficiently to antisemitism on campus. The dispute over international enrollment at Harvard is the latest escalation in a battle between the White House and the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college. In April, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem sent a letter to the school, demanding a range of records related to foreign students, including discipline records and anything related to "dangerous or violent activity." Noem said it was in response to accusations of antisemitism on Harvard’s campus. Harvard says it complied. But on May 22, Noem sent a letter saying the school’s response fell short. She said Harvard was being pulled from the federal program that allows colleges to sponsor international students to get U.S. visas. It took effect immediately and prevented Harvard from hosting foreign students in the upcoming school year. The Hill [5/29/2025 11:52 AM, Lexi Lonas Cochran, 18649K] reports "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. In a court filing Wednesday, Maureen Martin, the university’s director of immigration services, detailed a long list of consequences the directive had on Harvard in the week since it was announced. Some international students are looking to transfer due to the order, others are declining offers to Harvard, those with Harvard visas are getting extra screening at airports, and other countries are looking to recruit students away from Harvard, she said. FOX News [5/29/2025 7:22 PM, Breanne Deppisch, 46878K] reports U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs on Thursday extended her earlier restraining order, which blocks the Trump administration from revoking Harvard’s certification under the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, or SEVP. That certification allows colleges to sponsor international students for U.S. visas during their enrollment. At issue is whether the Trump administration has grounds to revoke Harvard’s SEVP certification. Trump officials have accused Harvard University of "fostering violence, antisemitism, and coordinating with the Chinese Communist Party on its campus," according to a statement from DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. Legal experts told Fox News Digital that foreign students have far fewer protections than U.S. citizens, which puts Harvard at the government’s mercy as long as the Trump administration satisfies certain procedural requirements. Experts noted that the SEVP program falls squarely under the authority of DHS and ICE, giving the Trump administration broad discretion to certify, extend or revoke a university’s participation based on the conduct of its foreign student visa holders. While U.S. citizens have First Amendment protected free speech rights, the same is not true for foreign students studying in the U.S., whose status is sponsored by their university. Shortly after court adjourned Thursday, the Trump administration gave Harvard 30 days to submit evidence and argue why its SEVP certification should not be revoked. It’s unclear whether that alone satisfies procedural requirements under the Administrative Procedure Act. The court must also consider what type of conduct foreign student visa holders are engaged in and whether these student visa holders are "systemically" engaged in serial violations of immigration law or are acting in support of foreign terrorist organizations, alleged foreign terrorist organizations or foreign totalitarian governments. "That gives DHS stake to investigate and reevaluate on an off-cycle basis, the SEVP certification and eligibility," said Aram Gavoor, an associate dean at George Washington University Law School and a former Justice Department attorney. In this case, he said, DHS would have "significant authorities to authorize, regulate, certify and, if necessary, decertify, the Student and Exchange Visitor Program.” The New York Times [5/30/2025 3:18 AM, Stephanie Saul, Sarah Mervosh and Michael C. Bender, 330K] reports Burroughs said she would extend an order from last week blocking the government’s attempts to prevent international students from enrolling at the school as the two sides continue to argue the matter in court. At the same time, lawyers for the Department of Homeland Security hinted that the Trump administration was pursuing other ways to bar international students from enrolling at the Ivy League university. The Trump administration had been trying to ban international students at Harvard as part of a multipronged attack against the school, which has included halting billions in federal funds. Government officials have accused the school of harboring antisemitism and, in a court filing on Thursday, also accused the school of working with the Chinese Communist Party. The government has not offered any particular evidence for these claims, and Harvard officials have maintained they are in full compliance with legal requirements to report foreign donations. The university has accused the Trump administration of violating its First Amendment rights and targeting it as part of a political crusade. Its lawyers have cited a barrage of social media posts by President Trump that attack the university and its professors for their political ideology. Harvard sued the Trump administration last week after the government announced that it would revoke the university’s authorization to enroll students from abroad. Hours after the lawsuit was filed, Judge Burroughs issued a short-term ban on those efforts. In the Thursday hearing in federal district court in Boston, the judge voiced concerns that the government was in violation of that earlier order by attempting to prevent foreign students from enrolling. She cited complaints in a filing late Wednesday by Harvard, which included examples of its students being hassled at airports.

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Washington Times [5/29/2025 4:32 PM, Bill Gertz, 2106K] reports the State Department has begun to "aggressively" revoke visas for hundreds of thousands of Chinese students in the United States over concerns the communist nation is using the students to steal U.S. technology. The visa cancellations are focused on students who have connections to the Chinese Communist Party or those studying in critical university fields. "We will also revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong," Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement announcing the action. The statement said the action is in line with policies of putting "America first, not China.” China has an estimated 270,000 students studying at American universities. U.S. security officials say Chinese students are being used by the Chinese Communist Party to obtain U.S. research, intellectual property and technology that will enhance the Chinese military. A 2018 report by the White House estimated that losses due to Chinese theft of technology and intellectual property ranged between $180 billion and $540 billion annually. The students have also been linked to intelligence-gathering and harassment of Chinese dissidents, said State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce. The policy gained support from congressional Republicans. "America’s student visa system has become a Trojan horse for Beijing, providing unrestricted access to our top research institutions and posing a direct threat to our national security," said Rep. John Moolenaar, chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party. "This is exactly the kind of action we need.” Mr. Moolenaar said the CCP has set up a systemic pipeline that embeds researchers in leading U.S. institutions and provides direct access to sensitive technologies with military applications. "If left unaddressed, this trend will continue to displace American talent, compromise research integrity and fuel China’s technological ambitions at our expense," he said. Beijing reacted to the visa revocations by stating the government opposes the action and urged protection of its overseas nationals. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning said the visa revocations are unjustified, using "ideology and national security as a pretext.” "This politically motivated and discriminatory move exposes the U.S. hypocrisy over freedom and openness," Ms. Mao said, adding that it will damage the image and reputation of the United States. The visa cancellation policy "seriously hurts the lawful rights and interests of international students from China and disrupts people-to-people exchanges between the two countries.”

FOX News [5/29/2025 9:46 PM, Ashley Oliver, 46878K] reports the Trump administration has intensified its scrutiny of Chinese nationals studying at U.S. universities after several instances in recent years of students from the communist country engaging in alleged surreptitious activity while in the United States. The incidents, which have involved allegations of espionage, conspiracy and accusations of misleading federal officials, occurred as a result of Chinese nationals or others with Chinese ties participating in joint education programs between the United States and China. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced Wednesday the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security plan to "aggressively revoke" student visas of Chinese nationals, "including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party.” A Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson blasted the new policy in a statement Thursday on X, saying the move was "fully unjustified" and damaging to the United States’ reputation. "Citing ideology and national security as a pretext, the move seriously hurts the lawful rights and interests of international students from China and disrupts people-to-people exchanges between the two countries," spokesperson Lin Jian said. The DOJ brought charges against five University of Michigan students last year after a sergeant major encountered them at Camp Grayling in 2023. The students had cameras with them and were discovered as the U.S. National Guard was conducting a massive training operation at the site with Taiwanese military members, according to a complaint. They were all Chinese nationals attending the University of Michigan as part of the school’s joint program with a Shanghai-based university, an FBI official wrote in the complaint, noting some of them had taken photos of Camp Grayling’s military installations and operations. The FBI asked the court to issue arrest warrants for the students for making false statements and destroying records. Two Chinese nationals who were graduate students at the University of Michigan pleaded guilty in 2020 after they were caught illegally entering and photographing defense infrastructure at a naval air station in Key West, Florida. ICE Acting Director Todd Lyons told Harvard in a letter made public through court filings that the revocation was a result of the alleged prevalence of antisemitism on campus but also a result of the administration’s "serious concerns" that the university has "coordinated with the Chinese Communist Party.” Lyons cited several examples, including Harvard accepting $151 million from foreign donors since 2020, working with "China-based academics" on projects funded by an "Iranian government agent," partnering with Chinese universities and using public funds to do so and collaborating with people "linked to China’s defense-industrial base.” "This coordination is a valid and substantive reason for withdrawing Harvard University’s [Student Exchange Visitor Program] certification to enroll foreign students," Lyons wrote.

The Hill [5/29/2025 11:18 AM, Sarah Fortinsky, 18649K] reports the Chinese government on Thursday fired back at the the Trump administration’s decision to revoke Chinese student visas, calling the move unjustified and damaging to the reputation of the U.S. abroad. “The US decision to revoke Chinese student visas is fully unjustified,” Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Lin Jian said in a statement on the social platform X. “Citing ideology and national security as a pretext, the move seriously hurts the lawful rights and interests of international students from China and disrupts people-to-people exchanges between the two countries,” Lin continued. Lin said China has appealed to the U.S. over the decision. “This politically motivated and discriminatory move exposes the hypocrisy behind the US’s claims of freedom and openness. It will further damage the image and reputation of the US itself,” he added. Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday announced the U.S. will start “aggressively revoke visas” from Chinese students, including from “those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The State Department will work with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to revoke the visas and will “revise visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong,” Rubio added in a statement.

ABC News [5/29/2025 12:33 PM, Peter Charalambous, 31733K] Video HERE reports ahead of a federal hearing over Harvard University’s ability to enroll international students, the acting director of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement issued a letter Thursday giving the school 30 days to challenge the administration’s revocation of that certification. The letter formally notifies the school that its Student and Exchange Visitor Program certification would be withdrawn -- but backtracks from the administration’s earlier stance by giving Harvard 30 days to achieve compliance. "Your school has 30 calendar days from the date of service of this Notice to submit written representations under oath and supported by documentary evidence, setting forth the reasons why SEVP should not withdraw your school’s certification," the notice said. "If SEVP certification is withdrawn, your school will then no longer be approved to enroll or continue to educate nonimmigrant students.” The notice comes one week after Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem announced she had ordered the termination of the school’s SEVP certification. "As a result of your 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 sympathies, and employs racist ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ policies, you have lost this privilege," Noem wrote last week in a letter to the university. At a hearing Thursday shortly after the Trump administration issued its 30-day notice, U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said she plans to issue a preliminary injunction that prohibits the Trump administration from revoking Harvard’s SEVP certification without first going through the legally required procedure.

(B) NBC 10 Boston Now [5/29/2025 11:04 AM, Staff] reports Harvard University has thirty days to find a way to respond to the Department of Homeland Security’s ban on enrolling international students. DHS Secretary Kristi Noem shared an official notice of intent to withdraw Harvard’s student and exchange visitor program certification. The government says Harvard has not complied with reporting requirement and has not maintained a safe campus atmosphere. A federal judge is hearing from Harvard and the Trump administration to make a decision about next semester’s enrollment. Harvard’s lawyers will try to convince the judge to issue a preliminary injunction that would allow the university to accept international students. A temporary restraining order preventing any action by the government expires today.

The New York Post [5/29/2025 9:42 AM, Josh Christenson, 49956K] reports the State Department is broadening its review of visa holders at Harvard University beyond the foreign student population, a senior official told The Post on Thursday. The comprehensive investigation will consider F-1 visas for foreign students, B-1 visas for business-related visitors and B-2 visas for tourism, the State Department official confirmed. The probe will focus on possible threats to US national security policy or other abuses of the visa system. The department’s wider review was first reported by Fox News after Secretary of State Marco Rubio had announced visa revocations for foreign officials or persons censoring Americans and some Chinese students. The roughly 7,000 international Harvard undergrads were already under the microscope due to what the State Department viewed as "pro-terrorist conduct" amid campus protests opposing Israel’s war in Gaza. Foreign students hoping to enroll in the Ivy League institution already had their visa status threatened by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem — before the courts stepped in. Immigration and Customs Enforcement acting director Todd Lyons doubled down ahead of a hearing in Boston federal court Thursday by firing off a letter to Harvard issuing a formal notice that the Department of Homeland Security would withdraw certification for the Student Exchange Visa Program (SEVP). NewsMax [5/29/2025 1:37 PM, James Morley III, 4622K] reports the State Department will widen its review of Harvard-affiliated visa holders to include not just students, the agency confirmed Wednesday. The broader investigation of visa holders at Harvard will be expanded to identify possible security concerns or other abuses of the visa system. In addition to student visas, the State Department will now investigate B-1, or business visas, and B-2, or tourist visas as well as others, officials first confirmed to Fox News. The review is likely to impact hundreds of individuals with ties to Harvard and seeks to identify which people have legitimate or suspect connections. The program is part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to uncover bad actors using the student visa program to either spread propaganda or steal sensitive information. Earlier this week, the agency announced Wednesday it will "aggressively revoke visas" of Chinese students with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or those studying in "critical fields.” The State Department’s increased scrutiny is the latest salvo between the maligned university and the federal government. Last week, the Department of Homeland Security sought to block Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students, which make up nearly 30% of the student body. U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs said Thursday she will order the DHS and State Department to not make any changes to Harvard’s visa program indefinitely, saying, "I want to maintain the status quo.” Burroughs has instructed Harvard’s lawyers and attorney from the U.S. Department of Justice to craft an agreement to cease the revocation of the student visa program. "It doesn’t need to be draconian, but I want to make sure it’s worded in such a way that nothing changes," she said.

Politico [5/29/2025 11:58 AM, Rebecca Carballo, 16523K] reports that, first, the State Department stopped interviewing applicants for student visas to the U.S. Then Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he’d revoke visas for Chinese students working in “critical fields” or with Communist Party ties. Both moves landed this week as part of President Donald Trump’s monthslong crackdown on elite institutions like Harvard that have multibillion-dollar endowments. But they also threaten to blow up the finances of state universities and other schools with far fewer resources that have grown reliant on foreign students. Public institutions in Arizona, California, Illinois, Michigan and Texas rank among the top schools for international enrollees, who pay full out-of-state tuition. It’s a population that generated $545 million for Arizona State University in the 2023-24 school year alone and even more for University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, that’s now under threat. That dependence on international students has become unavoidable for schools that don’t want to raise in-state tuition as their state legislatures have spent years cutting taxpayer support. It also means that a drop in foreign enrollment could now affect everything from financial aid for U.S. students to teaching support on campus. The University of California and California State University, two of the largest public university systems in the country, are already both facing a 3 percent budget cut this year, which amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars for each institution. “International students are a key part of how University of California is able to balance its budget, and so freezing student visas has a huge impact on not just UC’s budget, but on just the quality of our academic experience at UC,” said Democratic state Sen. Jesse Arreguín, whose district includes UC Berkeley, which drew $576 million from foreign-born students in the 2023-24 school year.

FOX News [5/29/2025 3:52 PM, Alec Schemmel, 46878K] reports State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce indicated Thursday that the increased scrutiny the Trump administration is placing on foreign student visas will not be a "one-time" check, but rather a process that lasts the entire time foreign students remain studying in the country. Bruce was peppered with questions at a Thursday press briefing about the Trump administration’s plans for increased vetting for foreign students. The briefing came amid news that the Trump administration has paused new student visa appointments at embassies across the globe. The Trump administration also indicated this week it would begin "aggressively" revoking the visas of Chinese students that pose national security threats, and has plans to implement expanded social media vetting for foreign student visas. Citing national security concerns, Bruce did not reveal many details about what the new scrutiny on foreign students will look like. However, she did tell reporters that the student visa interviews will likely resume "sooner-than-later," once a formalized process has been agreed upon. Bruce framed the new student visa scrutiny as part of President Donald Trump’s "America First" agenda aimed at reducing alleged political indoctrination on campuses and ensuring that American students can receive the highest quality education possible without interference.

NBC News [5/29/2025 5:09 PM, Kimmy Yam, 44540K] reports Chinese students say they’re questioning their decision to study in the U.S. after Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that the federal government will attempt to "aggressively" revoke their visas. Rubio said Wednesday that Chinese students "with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields" would be targeted. Chinese students who spoke to NBC News on Thursday said that they came to the U.S. for freedoms that they felt they did not have back in China but that now the Trump administration is starting to resemble the strict regime they left behind. "USA stands for freedom. It stands for democracy. … That’s why we come here to chase our dreams," said one Chinese Ph.D. student at a New Jersey university, who requested anonymity out of fear of retaliation. "In China, the government can control education, high schools, colleges, universities. We thought that the USA could be different.” The State Department referred NBC News to comments by spokesperson Tammy Bruce during a press briefing Thursday in which Bruce said that the department does not discuss the details of its visa process due to privacy concerns. "We use every tool that we have to vet and to make sure we know who’s coming in," Bruce said. "In this particular case, the United States is putting America first by beginning to revoke visas of Chinese students as warranted.” The Chinese Embassy referred NBC News to comments made by Mao Ning, a spokesperson for the Foreign Affairs Ministry. Mao harshly criticized Rubio’s announcement Thursday at a regular briefing in Beijing. "This politically discriminatory move exposes the hypocrisy of America’s long-proclaimed values of freedom and openness, and will only further damage the United States’ international image and credibility," Mao said.

CNN [5/30/2025 3:00 AM, Nectar Gan, Yong Xiong, Hassan Tayir and Cynthia Chan, 21433K] reports that, Kiwi Zhang, a computer science student from China, was full of hope for his academic future in the United States – until his visa was revoked at the US border last week. The first-year PhD student at a university in central US had just presented his research at a conference in Asia. He was returning to the US after a brief visit home when his American dream was abruptly cut short. According to Zhang, he was detained at the border for 48 hours by US officials, who confiscated his phone and laptop, and searched his belongings. He said they questioned him about his ties to the Chinese Communist Party and meetings with friends while in China. At the end of the interrogation, Zhang said he was deported and barred from the US for five years, on suspicion of having shared his research with the Chinese government – an allegation he denies. He is now back in China and mulling his next steps. "I never imagined this could happen to me," said Zhang, who – like everyone CNN spoke to for this story – asked to use a pseudonym out of fear of retaliation. "I didn’t know things would get this extreme after Donald Trump returned to office. His administration is jeopardizing my academic future, and I feel powerless to defend my rights.” Now, many Chinese students studying in the US fear they could meet the same fate, after President Trump’s administration vowed on Wednesday to "aggressively revoke visas for Chinese students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields.” The announcement by Secretary of State Marco Rubio was brief and vaguely worded, but it sent shock waves through China, triggering widespread confusion, anxiety and fear among current and prospective students and their families, as well as strong opposition from Beijing. Student chat groups lit up with messages of disbelief. Education consultants were flooded with panicked phone calls. Many students aired their frustration and anger on social media. At a regular news conference Thursday, China’s foreign ministry accused the Trump administration of using ideology and national security as a "pretext" for the "politically motivated and discriminatory" move. Suddenly, hundreds of thousands of young Chinese minds, drawn by the prestige of a world-class education and the allure of the American dream, found themselves facing a stark reality: the future they had worked so hard for now hangs in the balance, held hostage by the whims of a US administration that increasingly views them – and their homeland – as a threat. "What strikes me is how tiny individuals are in the tide of history – career plans can collapse overnight," said Joyce, who received an offer from her dream school, Harvard, to pursue a master’s degree in architecture. Her visa from her undergraduate program in the US is still valid for another year, but she did not dare to return to China for the summer, worrying that she might be denied reentry at the US border. "I can’t help wishing I’d grown up in a golden age of US-China relations," she said. For decades, China’s brightest minds have flocked to America, as their home country played catch-up with the world’s leading superpower. Until last year, Chinese students made up the largest group of international students in the US, contributing significantly to the economy and helping America maintain its competitive edge in scientific research and technological innovation. But as strategic rivalry between the two nations intensifies, mistrust has deepened. Both sides have ramped up national security measures and grown more protective of their advanced technologies – particularly in sensitive sectors with military implications. During his first term in 2020, Trump introduced a ban that effectively denied US visas to graduates in the science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields from Chinese universities believed to be linked to the military. Within just three months, more than 1,000 Chinese nationals had their visas revoked, and the order remained in place under former President Joe Biden. It’s unclear how quickly or widely the new revocations will be carried out. But the fear is palpable in CNN’s interviews with Chinese students. Studying in a country that has long held itself up as a beacon of freedom, many were too afraid to speak openly under their real names – a fear all too familiar to those back in China.

Politico [5/29/2025 7:32 PM, Felicia Schwartz, Phelim Kine, and Robbie Gramer, 2100K] reports people both inside and outside the State Department were struggling Thursday to understand how a new plan to revoke Chinese students’ visas will work — and whether it will end up being a blanket ban on Chinese nationals studying in the United States. While the administration could begin voiding visas imminently, a State Department official familiar with consular issues, granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said embassies had yet to receive official instructions on how to implement the plan, which also includes revising visa criteria to increase scrutiny of future applicants from China and Hong Kong. Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced late Wednesday that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security will “aggressively revoke” visas for Chinese students with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in “critical fields.” But that isn’t easy to put into practice, and the manner in which it is done will say a lot about the Trump administration’s ultimate goals. Reviewing all Chinese student visas could be a daunting task for the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security. There were around 277,000 Chinese students in the United States during the 2023 to 2024 school term, government data shows. “It’s wild,” said one State Department official involved in the discussions about how to implement the directives. “It’s going to be a massive headache for us.” The person, and others, were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal processes. The administration may be hoping the threat alone will prompt students to reconsider attending U.S. institutions, in the same way that it has encouraged undocumented migrants to self-deport.

The Hill [5/29/2025 10:18 AM, Lexi Lonas Cochran, 18649K] reports Harvard University’s international students are in turmoil as some seek to transfer schools and others are afraid to attend graduation or even to be separated from their families in the U.S., according to a court filing from Maureen Martin, the university’s director of immigration services, on Wednesday. Martin detailed a long list of consequences of the Trump administration’s directive that seeks to block Harvard’s ability to admit foreign students and told current ones they would have to transfer or leave the country. Despite a judge putting a temporary pause on the measure, the students are apparently trying to figure out how they can get out of Dodge. "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," Martin wrote. Some students have canceled plans to visit family as reports come in that those with Harvard visas are undergoing extra screening at airports on the way back to the U.S., including a former head of state who is currently a fellow at the university, and are afraid to be separated from family in the U.S. Martin knows of at least 10 international students who had their visa applications denied following the government’s revocation notice. "Too many international students to count have inquired about the possibility of transferring to another institution," she said, while others have revoked or deferred their acceptance.

Wall Street Journal [5/29/2025 9:00 PM, Shen Lu, Liyan Qi, and Ming Li, 646K] reports a Trump administration announcement Wednesday that it would “aggressively” begin revoking visas for Chinese students confronts universities across the U.S. with the prospect of a hit to their finances and talent pool. The move comes on top of a push to bar Harvard University from enrolling international students as part of the president’s battle with the school. The Trump administration has also paused new student-visa interviews while it prepares new measures to vet applicants’ social-media accounts, according to a State Department cable. American universities significantly increased their enrollment of Chinese students in the years following the 2008-09 financial crisis, when many suffered budget shortfalls. Typically, Chinese undergraduates pay full tuition, a critical source of revenue for universities. One in every four international students comes from China, and Chinese students form a particularly large share of the student body at top U.S. schools. After they graduate, many assume key roles in U.S. science and engineering endeavors. A big decline in Chinese enrollment could severely cut into schools’ bottom line and damage U.S. competitiveness, say U.S. experts. “The economic costs are apparent,” said Yingyi Ma, a sociologist at Syracuse University who studies international students in the U.S. “The talent cost has even graver consequences.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Wednesday the U.S. will revoke visas of students, including those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields. Many Chinese students had already started looking elsewhere. For the past six years, the U.K. has been the most popular studying-abroad destination for Chinese students, according to a recent report by New Oriental Education & Technology Group. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman on Thursday condemned Washington’s action as politically motivated and discriminatory.

CBS News [5/29/2025 10:19 AM, 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 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.The AP [5/29/2025 2:55 PM, Staff, 48304K] reports a that the decision is another legal setback for President Donald Trump’s plans for mass deportation, but it may prove temporary and its immediate impact was unclear. U.S. District Judge Indira Talwani in Boston sided with people who were already admitted to the United States but were unable to renew their short-term permits. They cover parole policies that benefited Afghans, Ukrainians, Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and children from Central American countries trying to join their parents in the U.S., among others. Talwani, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, said two orders by Department of Homeland Security officials to suspend renewals pending further review were unlikely to survive a legal challenge. One of the orders “gives no reasoned explanation” for the actions, she wrote. “The ‘pause’ has now been in place for three months; the pause is, in effect, an indefinite suspension,” she wrote. Tricia McLaughlin, a Homeland Security spokeswoman, said the administration acted within its authority. “The Biden Administration abused the parole authority to allow millions of illegal aliens into the U.S. which further fueled the worst border crisis in U.S. history. Under federal law, Secretary (Kristi) Noem - in support of the President - has full authority to cancel or modify these policies. Doing so is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect our national security,” McLaughlin said. Bloomberg Law [5/29/2025 10:52 AM, Andrew Kreighbaum, 1707K] reports President Donald Trump has targeted parole programs for termination as part of a larger effort to end lawful humanitarian programs for immigrants to travel to or remain in the US. Plaintiffs sued the Department of Homeland Security earlier this year over the cancellation of the Uniting for Ukraine program, a parole process for Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela, and the "Operation Allies Welcome" for Afghans fleeing the Taliban. They also challenged the freeze on new benefits that blocked parolees from applying for another legal status in the US. Talwani, an Obama appointee, granted plaintiffs’ emergency request for a preliminary injunction, finding that they were likely to succeed with claims that the benefit freeze was arbitrary and capricious. Homeland Security spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin said that DHS Secretary Kristi Noem has full authority to modify or cancel the previous administration’s parole policies. "Doing so is a promise kept to the American people to secure our borders and protect our national security," she said in a statement. "We have the law, the facts, and common sense on our side."

The Hill [5/29/2025 10:42 AM, Lexi Lonas Cochran, 18649K] reports a federal judge said Wednesday the Trump administration’s attempt to deport Mahmoud Khalil, a green card holder and former pro-Palestinian activist at Columbia University, is likely unconstitutional. "[T]he Court provides its conclusion: the Petitioner is likely to succeed on the merits of this unconstitutional vagueness argument," District Judge Michael Farbiarz wrote, chastising the government’s justification that Khalil could pose a threat to the foreign policy of the U.S. But Farbiarz still did not order Khalil’s release because he does not believe Khalil’s lawyers have properly responded to the government’s allegations that he did not disclose all of his former work on his permanent residency application. "The Petitioner’s legal briefs still make no substantial argument as to the failure-to-disclose claim — even as lengthy supplemental briefs have been filed," he wrote. The judge said he will consider Khalil’s request for a release as additional information is provided. Khalil has been detained since March 8 and missed the birth of his first child after the federal government arrested and sought to deport him over his participation in last year’s student protests. The Trump administration later added that he did not disclose prior work on his permanent residency application, such as his time at the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestinian Refugees, employment with the Syria Office in the British Embassy in Beirut past 2022 and was a member of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest group.

FOX News [5/29/2025 6:05 PM, Stepheny Price, 46878K] reports an illegal immigrant from Venezuela who was allegedly caught posing as a high school student in Ohio will no longer face local charges and is now being prosecuted in a federal court. Anthony Labrador-Sierra, 24, was arrested May 21, after he allegedly enrolled in a public high school using fraudulent documents. On Thursday, the Perrysburg Municipal Court confirmed to Fox News Digital all local charges had been dropped against Labrador-Sierra and that his case had been handed over to federal authorities. Labrador-Sierra faced a judge in the case and waived his right to a preliminary hearing, according to WTVG. He will now appear before a grand jury that will oversee his case. Detectives worked with U.S. Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and discovered Labrador-Sierra is a 24-year-old from Venezuela. Investigators also learned Labrador-Sierra allegedly used fraudulent documents to enroll in Perrysburg schools and was posing as a 16-year-old student. Moreno called on Noem and Patel to launch investigations immediately, asking them to take any and all lawful measures to enforce federal immigration and criminal laws against Labrador-Sierra. The U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of Ohio also noted that Labrador-Sierra is alleged to have submitted false information to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services about his date of birth in applications for Temporary Protective Status (TPS) and Employment Authorization Documents in 2024 and 2025. DHS told Fox News it has located Labrador-Sierra’s information under a different spelling of his name, adding he is a visa overstay who first came to the U.S. in 2019.

The Hill [5/29/2025 10:05 AM, Rebecca Beitsch, 5801K] reports the Trump administration said it is working to secure the return of a Guatemalan man wrongly deported to Mexico — a shift after refusing to do so for others removed in error. In a late Wednesday court filing, Justice Department officials said they were securing a flight for a man listed in court documents only as O.C.G. Lawyers for the man contested his removal as part of a broader case before Massachusetts-based U.S. District Court Judge Brian Murphy. He is one of a number of plaintiffs who have sued over plans to remove them from the country. O.C.G.’s attorneys have said their client is gay and was already protected from being returned to his native Guatemala. But they argued the Trump administration failed to account for his fear of being deported to Mexico, where he was previously raped and extorted. The government filing indicates Trump officials have arranged to give the man "Significant Public Benefit Parole," a form of humanitarian parole that would allow him to enter the country. They also said they plan to arrange a flight for him on the return leg of a deportation flight. The Washington Times [5/29/2025 9:01 AM, Stephen Dinan, 2106K] reports that the case marks a rare admission of wrong on the part of the new government as it pursues President Trump’s aggressive deportation orders. Homeland Security initially said officers had checked with the man to see if he had a problem with being deported to Mexico. Department systems said he answered in the negative. But later, the department said it appeared that the notation was in error, and it could not find anyone who had actually asked the man. "This is a really big deal. It’s a really big deal to lie to the court under oath," U.S. District Judge Brian Murphy told the administration in a hearing last week. "I could not take this more seriously.” OCG is from Guatemala and had been ordered deported but had been granted withholding of removal because he faced danger if sent home. Trump officials went looking for what’s known as a "third country" to take him, and said Mexico agreed. But OCG had also had been kidnapped and raped in Mexico before, which made his deportation to that country worrying. Indeed, his lawyers told the court he had already fled Mexico to go to Guatemala, where he was in hiding and paralyzed with fear.

San Diego Union Tribune [5/29/2025 6:27 PM, Karen Kucher, 1611K] reports officials said DNA testing of remains found on a Torrey Pines beach last week showed they were from a 10-year-old girl reported missing after a suspected smuggling vessel capsized off the Del Mar beach on May 5. The county Medical Examiner’s Office said Mahi Brijeshkumar Patel died when the panga overturned in heavy surf off Del Mar, sending more than a dozen people into the sea. First responders, including firefighters and lifeguards, rushed to the scene after the boat flipped over and found three people who had died and four who were taken to a hospital for treatment. Coast Guard boats and aircraft scoured the ocean for hours, searching for survivors in an area of 520 square nautical miles, before the search was suspended later that night. Among those who drowned was the girl’s 14-year-old brother, Prince Brijeshkumar Patel. The children’s parents, who are from India, had been hospitalized after the boat capsized. Their current conditions are not known. Two Mexican nationals also died, one of whom was identified as Marcos Lozada-Juarez. Eight boat passengers were found hours later after a tip led federal agents to a house in Chula Vista. According to court documents, two of the defendants facing federal charges were believed to have moved the missing migrants to the South County home. Her cause of death is listed as pending. Five people have been charged in San Diego federal court in connection with the suspected smuggling attempt. U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recommended that the Department of Justice seek the death penalty against two of the men. Telemundo20 [5/29/2025 4:38 PM, Staff, 37K] reports that the girl’s parents were notified, and DNA testing confirmed her identity. The medical examiner is still determining the cause of death. Three people, including a child, died, while four others were injured, and several others remain missing. Sources close to the investigation say the captain and co-captain were arrested by U.S. Customs and Border Protection on suspicion of human smuggling. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will ask the Department of Justice to seek the death penalty against suspected human traffickers, relying on the Immigration and Naturalization Act (ICE) and the federal death penalty statute.

FOX News [5/29/2025 5:17 PM, Matt Finn, 46878K] reports for the second week in a row, the Department of Homeland Security carried out a dramatic, early-morning raid in Los Angeles targeting transnational organized crime rings. This week’s bust netted fourteen arrests from an Armenian fraud ring that investigators say stole $30 million in COVID relief and Small Business loans meant to help taxpaying Americans. Fox News was exclusively embedded with DHS in the multi-agency sting that included the IRS and the Small Business Administration. Thirteen of the suspects are Armenian-born but have become naturalized. At least one of the suspects faces deportation. After the fourteen suspects were arrested, they were brought to an unmarked, specially designated processing center to be booked. Law enforcement seized approximately $20,000 in cash, two money-counting machines, paper cash bands or currency straps in denominations of $2,000 and $10,000, multiple cell phones, multiple laptops, two loaded semi-automatic 9mm handguns, and boxes of 9mm ammunition. The suspects are charged with a range of crimes from conspiracy, wire and bank fraud to money laundering. Authorities say some of the money was spent on houses and luxury goods, other amounts were sent to Armenia, making it harder for the U.S. to trace.

FOX News [5/29/2025 10:11 AM, Diana Stancy, 46878K] reports new State Department reorganization plans will cut or consolidate more than 300 of the agency’s offices and bureaus as part of a massive overhaul seeking to streamline the department, according to agency officials. Secretary of State Marco Rubio first announced plans in April to restructure the agency because the department was "bloated, bureaucratic, and unable to perform its essential diplomatic mission.” The State Department submitted a notice to Congress Thursday disclosing plans for the overhaul — the largest restructuring for the agency since the Cold War, senior State Department officials told Fox News Digital. The agency’s overhaul aims to cut red tape so the department can respond to threats more quickly, place greater emphasis on the agency’s "primary mission" representing the U.S. abroad and eliminate "bureaucratic overgrowth" in Washington, the congressional notice said. "We have too many godd--- offices," a senior State Department official told Fox News Digital. "We’re trying to shrink offices rather than create them.” The State Department’s plans will slash or merge 311 existing domestic offices, ultimately eliminating up to roughly 3,400 State Department personnel, who make up between 15% and 20% of the agency’s domestic headcount, according to State Department officials. The agency currently boasts roughly 700 offices, meaning the reorganization will cut or join more than 40% of the offices. "We are really addressing a significant portion of the department’s domestic offices and sort of merging them, combining them, trying to make them more efficient," the senior State Department official said. Staff have not received notifications regarding the reduction in force yet, but they are expected to receive an update on reductions in force by July 1. Whereas three offices overseeing sanctions issues previously existed, the overhaul will merge all of those branches together to make it more clear who to report to, according to the official. However, a few additions are in the works. The plans also include adding approximately nine new offices, the State Department officials said. New positions include a deputy assistant secretary for democracy and Western values, as well as new immigration security offices under the agency’s bureau of population, refugees and migration to tackle President Donald Trump’s immigration priorities. Likewise, the restructuring adds a new bureau of emerging threats that will address issues pertaining to artificial intelligence, hypersonic weapons and space.

Reported similarly:
DailySignal [5/29/2025 11:20 AM, Bradley Devlin, 558K]

Axios [5/29/2025 11:11 PM, Russell Contreras, Marc Caputo, 13599K] reports the State Department plans to create an "Office of Remigration" in a sweeping reorganization drive tied to the Trump administration’s efforts to deport millions of immigrants, a department official told Axios Thursday. The proposed new office would signal the State Department’s shift from helping refugees to removing immigrants, even as it employs the term "remigration" — a concept that critics say has a troubled history in Europe, where it’s used by far-right groups. The State Department on Thursday announced a proposed overhaul that would cut various programs and staff. The Office of Remigration would be part of the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, a State Department official said. The proposal calls for an even deeper cut to domestic staffing than the 15% reduction that was floated in April. The department also intends to eliminate several divisions overseeing America’s 20-year presence in Afghanistan, including an office responsible for resettling Afghan allies who supported U.S. military operations. In Europe, the concept of remigration calls for the mass deportation or coerced repatriation of non-white immigrants and their European-born descendants. It’s a term that’s been used by far-right politicians, such as Austria’s Herbert Kickl and Germany’s Alternative for Germany (AfD) party leader, Alice Weidel. Liberal and moderate critics in Europe say "remigration" has historically been used as a euphemism for ethnic cleansing. The term was popularized by Martin Sellner, a millennial influencer of Europe’s far-right. "The way that it worked before, Population Refugee Migration was basically an entire bureau dedicated to bringing people into the United States," said the State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "It had the migration function — it’s in the name — we’re just reversing the flow of migrants who shouldn’t be here to go out of the country." A more detailed proposal sent to Congress proposes prioritizing migration and border issues over refugee resettlement. The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration’s "existing migration functions will be consolidated into three new functional offices under a (Deputy Assistant Secretary of State) for Migration Matters." "Reflecting core administration priorities, these offices will be substantially reorganized to shift focus towards supporting the Administration’s efforts to return illegal aliens to their country of origin or legal status," the document said. The Office of Remigration would be one of these new "functional offices" and is described as a "hub for immigration issues and repatriation tracking."

Washington Post [5/30/2025 2:26 AM, Brianna Tucker and Frances Vinall, 32099K] reports President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would nominate Paul Ingrassia, a 30-year-old lawyer and former right-wing podcast host, to lead the U.S. Office of Special Counsel (OSC), an independent watchdog agency that oversees federal personnel issues and plays a crucial role in protecting whistleblowers within the government. “Paul is a highly respected attorney, writer, and Constitutional Scholar, who has done a tremendous job serving as my White House Liaison for Homeland Security,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social. “Paul holds degrees from both Cornell Law School and Fordham University, where he majored in Mathematics and Economics, graduating near the top of his class. Congratulations Paul!” In a separate post on X, Ingrassia thanked Trump and said he would work to revitalize "Fairness" in enforcement of the Hatch Act, a law that prohibits federal employees from using their positions to advance partisan political goals that has been weakened under the Trump administration. Trump and his allies have been accused of violating the Hatch Act on numerous occasions. During the last Trump administration, the OSC recommended that high-profile White House adviser Kellyanne Conway be removed from her job due to violations of the act. Biden administration officials were also accused of Hatch Act violations by the office. Ingrassia, the current White House liaison for the Department of Homeland Security, has publicly advocated for white supremacist and antisemite Nick Fuentes, publishing a Substack titled "Free Nick Fuentes" and writing on X that "dissident voices" such as Fuentes should have a place in conservative politics. He was also part of a legal team representing self-described misogynist influencer Andrew Tate, who has been charged with human trafficking and forming an organized-crime group in Romania, as well as rape, actual bodily harm and human trafficking in the United Kingdom. Earlier this year, Ingrassia likened Tate to "the embodiment of the ancient ideal of excellence.” He previously hosted a conservative political podcast called "Right on Point" with his sister, Olivia Ingrassia. A post on social media from the podcast’s account in December 2020 called for Trump to "declare martial law and secure his re-election," while promoting the debunked conspiracy theory that Trump won that year’s presidential election. If confirmed by the Senate, Ingrassia will replace Hampton Dellinger, the former head of the OSC. A Biden appointee and former state deputy attorney general for North Carolina, Dellinger was fired earlier this year by the Trump administration.

Washington Post [5/29/2025 4:34 PM, Gary Winslett, 32099K] reports in a unanimous ruling that is a setback for the White House (and a triumph for markets and Walmart shoppers), the U.S. Court of International Trade on Wednesday struck down Trump’s sweeping tariff regime as an unconstitutional power grab. The three-judge panel, including one Trump appointee, ruled that the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the 1977 law that Trump has been using to cause trade chaos, doesn’t give the president carte blanche to slap tariffs on virtually every country on Earth. The decision invalidates the tariffs Trump announced on April 2, which he refers to as "Liberation Day," along with his fentanyl-related tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. But it also leaves the president with options to continue his trade war — as well as a politically face-saving way to back out of it. The court didn’t mince words: These tariffs exceed "any tariff authority delegated to the President under IEEPA" and represent "an improper abdication of legislative power." The judges issued a permanent injunction blocking implementation immediately. The Trump administration is almost certain to appeal. But the legal reasoning is rock-solid and grounded in basic constitutional principles that Congress — not the president — controls trade policy. The court noted that Trump’s imposition of these tariffs actually "responds to an imbalance in trade," and therefore they fall under the narrower balance-of-payments authorities outlined in Section 122 of the Trade Act of 1974. This is bureaucratic legalese for saying Trump was using emergency powers to address routine trade deficits, which are what Section 122 was designed to handle. Section 122 allows the president to impose up to 15 percent tariffs for 150 days to address "large and serious United States balance-of-payments deficits." So when the court noted that Trump’s announcement of tariffs "responds to an imbalance in trade" and "thus falls under the narrower, non-emergency authorities in Section 122," it was essentially saying: If you want to address trade deficits, use the law Congress actually wrote for that purpose with its built-in constraints. The ruling forces the administration back to using slower, more normal statutory authorities such as Section 122 and Section 232, which come with actual procedural guardrails. Under the IEEPA, Trump could wake up on a random Tuesday, declare a trade emergency for some random reason and impose 50 percent tariffs that day. This ruling says that behavior was always outside the bounds of the law. If Trump wants to do impose protectionism on the American consumer on national security grounds, he has to use Section 232 (which is actually about national security), and that requires lengthy investigations, public notice and comment periods, and Commerce Department reviews that can take months. He can’t just whim and bluster his way to protectionism anymore, at least not without directly defying a court order. The Trump administration has three options from here: defy the court, pivot or take the gift.

The Hill [5/29/2025 10:00 AM, Sheldon H. Jacobson, 18649K] reports President Trump’s recent trip to the Middle East was all about making deals. He returned with promises of trillions of dollars of future purchases and investments in the United States. He also was given a gift by Qatar, a Boeing 747 luxury jetliner that he hopes to use as Air Force One, after which it will be housed at his presidential library. Of course, modifying the airplane to meet the safety and security standards of Air Force One will likely take several years, costing taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, making the gift rather costly. Any time a negotiation or event works out well, Trump is quick to take credit for it. Yet when things go sour, it appears that the kneejerk reaction is to blame it on former President Biden. President Trump has been in office since Jan. 20, 2025 — four months. This is fast approaching 10 percent of his second term next month. He has issued an unprecedented number of executive orders covering a swath of issues, including energy, immigration, climate and DEI, to name just a few. Those garnering the most attention have focused around tariffs on goods imported into the nation, with the intent to reduce the trade deficit by encouraging more domestic production. Yet whenever unfavorable news comes in, the first response has been to blame his predecessor. This has become the theme of the administration. For example, when Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem was asked about overspending her budget during a Senate Appropriation Committee meeting, her answer was that it was Biden’s fault. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins blamed Biden for the rising agriculture trade deficit, even though the dollar value of agriculture exports from 2021-2024 were the highest ever recorded. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blamed Biden for the recent U.S. credit rating downgrade by Moody’s, even though every president since Herbert Hoover has contributed to the growing national debt.

New York Times [5/30/2025 1:00 AM, Kathleen Kingsbury, 138952K] reports that, in 1950, though it didn’t know it yet, the American government held one of the keys to winning the Cold War: Qian Xuesen, a brilliant Chinese rocket scientist who had already transformed the fields of aerospace and weaponry. In the halls of the California Institute of Technology and M.I.T., he had helped solve the riddle of jet propulsion and developed America’s first guided ballistic missiles. He was made a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, worked on the top-secret Manhattan Project and was sent to Germany to interrogate Nazi scientists. Dr. Qian wanted the first man in space to be American — and was designing a rocket to make it happen. Then he was stopped short. At the height of his career, there came a knock at the door, and he was handcuffed in front of his wife and young son. Prosecutors would eventually clear Dr. Qian of charges of sedition and espionage, but the United States deported him anyway — traded back to Communist Beijing in a swap for about a dozen American prisoners of war in 1955. The implications of that single deportation are staggering: Dr. Qian returned to China and immediately persuaded Mao Zedong to put him to work building a modern weapons program. By the decade’s end, China tested its first missile. By 1980, it could rain them down on California or Moscow with equal ease. Dr. Qian wasn’t just rightly christened the father of China’s missile and space programs; he set in motion the technological revolution that turned China into a superpower. His story has been top of mind for me (I’ve been working on a biographical book project on him for several years now) as we’ve watched the Trump administration ruthlessly target foreign students and researchers. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio turned up the pressure, announcing that the 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.” There are some one million foreign students in the United States — more than 250,000 of them Chinese. Dr. Qian’s deportation should serve as an important cautionary tale. It proved an American misstep, fueled by xenophobia, that would forever alter the global balance of power.

FOX News [5/29/2025 3:25 PM, Cameron Arcand, 46878K] reports the Trump administration has a new goal of 3,000 arrests of illegal immigrants daily, which was publicly confirmed by White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. His response comes after an Axios report that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Miller were said to be backing the 3,000 daily figure in a meeting last week at ICE headquarters. On "America’s Newsroom" on Thursday morning, border czar Tom Homan reaffirmed his statement, saying that officials are "asking for an increase" in arrests. During Trump’s first 100 days, ICE arrested 66,463 illegal immigrants, and more than 65,000 illegal immigrants were deported. Of that figure, more than 17,000 had criminal convictions or charges for crimes such as driving under the influence, assault, or "weapon offenses," according to ICE. The agency deported 17,200 people in April, which is roughly 4,000 higher than the year prior, when former President Joe Biden was in office, according to NBC News. "Under Secretary Noem, we are delivering on President Trump and the American people’s mandate to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens and make America safe," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated. The goal increases as the administration pushes Congress to pass the reconciliation bill, which has just been passed by the House. The bill is expected to ramp up funding to get 10,000 more ICE agents and tens of thousands more beds for detention facilities. Univision [5/29/2025 7:20 PM, Staff, 4992K] reports that this new goal of daily arrests is the latest example of growing pressure on authorities across the country to increase immigration arrests and enforce one of Trump’s main campaign promises on mass deportation of undocumented people from the United States. The "border czar," Tom Homan, again acknowledged Thursday that the White House is not satisfied with the number of arrests, so the number of agents dedicated to this work has increased "significantly." "We anticipate a rapid increase in the number of arrests," he warned. This discontent with the level of arrests and deportations has also been reflected in the government’s restructuring of ICE leadership and released Thursday.

Reported similarly:
The Hill [5/29/2025 10:03 AM, Rebecca Beitsch, 18649K]
Washington Examiner [5/29/2025 3:14 PM, Emily Hallas, 1934K]

CNN [5/29/2025 4:00 PM, Priscilla Alvarez, Evan Perez, Sean Lyngaas and Holmes Lybrand, 21433K] reports the Trump administration is building up federal manpower and resources to meet the White House’s desire to triple the number of daily immigration arrests – signaling a renewed push to go well beyond efforts from previous administrations. The White House is putting intense pressure on law enforcement agencies across the government to meet a goal of a million deportations a year. That’s led to a surge of agents and officers across the federal government focusing their attention on arrests and deportation efforts – and in some cases straining resources. At the FBI, hundreds of agents have been reassigned to immigration-related duties, raising concerns among agents that the shift could hinder important national security investigations, including into terror threats and espionage by China and Russia, according to people familiar with the matter. Top FBI officials have provided little guidance to field offices on how agents are expected to increase immigration arrest numbers while also working their top priority cases, the sources said. Senior FBI officials in New York this week sent an email to its workforce of more than 1,000 agents promising overtime pay if they helped with "enforcement and removal operations," according to an email obtained by CNN. FBI agents who work on the enforcement and removal "surge" through the end of the fiscal year, which is September 30, could earn a transfer "to the division of their choosing," the email said. Immigration arrests have hovered around 1,000 a day, but Trump officials are pushing for that to be tripled as they also seek to accelerate the pace of deportations.

NBC News [5/30/2025 5:00 AM, Suzanne Gamboa, 44540K] reports after Julio David Pérez Rodríguez attended an immigration hearing last week in pursuit of a refugee status in the U.S., the Cuban national was stopped by undercover agents at an elevator, handcuffed and taken into custody. “If I have done nothing illegal, why do you have me handcuffed?” the 22-year-old implored in Spanish amid tears. The arrest in Miami was captured in an emotional video aired by Noticias Telemundo. “We’re coming to this country to seek freedom. ... What is happening with this country?” he said before plainclothes officers whisked him away. Pérez Rodríguez is one of dozens of immigrants caught in similar dragnets drawn in cities around the country since last week, as the reality of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation operation penetrates further into American families’ consciousness. Many of those who saw loved ones handcuffed and taken away had accompanied their family members to ongoing immigration processes seeking asylum or hoping to make a case before a judge to stave off deportation, a legal process long afforded to immigrants and spelled out for immigration judges in court practice manuals. The arrests are happening immediately after immigration cases are dismissed or closed, leading some people to express joy, give thanks in prayer or celebrate, only to have all that replaced by sorrow, fear and anger, as they are handcuffed and taken into custody, said Billy Botch, an observer who works for the American Friends Service Committee Florida, a social justice nonprofit formed by Quakers. "We are talking about people who are already complying with the legal court process and who have claims of asylum or have other legal protection," Gregory Chen, senior director of government relations for American Immigration Lawyers Association (AILA), told NBC News. "They should have a right to a fair day in court." Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the Trump administration is reinstating the rule of law after President Joe Biden adopted policies that "allowed millions of unvetted illegal aliens to be let loose on American streets." But immigration attorneys and advocates said the dragnets appear to be an attempt by the Trump administration to bypass constitutional due process protections for immigrants.

New York Post [5/29/2025 4:10 PM, Josh Christenson, 49956K] reports the Biden administration failed to investigate more than 7,300 reports of human trafficking involving child migrants and tens of thousands of other concerning leads, startling findings from the Department of Health and Human Services released Thursday show. HHS is poring over 65,605 backlogged reports from the last administration as part of an interagency probe into cases of unaccompanied migrant kids who may have been abused by sex predators or trafficked by gangs like MS-13. Since launching the investigation in February, the department has processed 18,868 cases — but still has 1,688 of possibly fraudulent sponsors receiving the kids, 7,346 human trafficking reports and another 46,311 other tips from grantees, staff and unaccompanied minors themselves to vet. So far that’s led to 528 investigative leads, 36 prosecutions taken up by US attorneys’ offices, 25 arrest warrants, 11 arrests, seven indictments and three convictions — with roughly 28% of the backlog worked through under President Trump. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) published the HHS statistics in a letter sent to Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday, asking for "an immediate update on governmentwide efforts to find and rescue children who were placed in harm’s way."

NewsMax [5/29/2025 5:02 PM, Mark Swanson, 4622K] reports Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, asserted that the Biden administration ignored or dismissed more than 65,000 reports of unaccompanied migrant children at risk or in potential danger, including more than 7,300 reports of human trafficking. Under former President Joe Biden’s Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), "thousands of children may have been placed in harm’s way nationwide," Grassley wrote in a letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Tuesday. Grassley is working with the Trump administration to get through a backlog of 65,605 reports of concern for unaccompanied alien children (UAC), he wrote in a release on Thursday. In the release, Grassley said the Trump administration has processed more than 28% of the backlog, which so far has netted seven indictments, 11 arrests and three convictions. Another 36 investigations have been accepted for prosecution by U.S. attorneys, he wrote. At issue is that Biden’s ORR placed UACs with more than 100 sponsors that were poorly vetted and warranted investigation by the FBI or Homeland Security Investigations. In the letter, Grassley asked Kennedy for "immediate update on governmentwide efforts to find and rescue children who were placed in harm’s way." HHS still has 46,311 backlogged cases to work through, Grassley said in the letter. Further, Grassley also asked Kennedy to provide an update on steps his HHS has taken to remedy findings from an inspector general’s report that in addition to failing to properly vet 100-plus sponsors, Biden’s ORR failed "to provide necessary information to law enforcement at DHS to help them find and protect children."

New York Times [5/29/2025 9:16 PM, Neil Vigdor, 138952K] reports that, in its former life, the charter plane with the tail No. N917XA went by the moniker Trump Force Two. The ubiquitous red, white and blue livery logged thousands of miles last year as the campaign plane of JD Vance, who was elected as President Trump’s vice president in November. But that plane — the same one the campaign offered rides on to entice donors to give money — is now carrying out a much different and clandestine kind of task for the Trump administration. The Boeing 737 has been chartered more than a dozen times this year by the federal government to deport migrants to several Central American countries, according to public aviation logs and a group that tracks the flights. The Trump-Vance campaign rode to victory in part on its vow to undertake the largest deportation push in American history. The Trump administration has since expanded the range of people who can be targeted for removal, sped up the deportation process for others and, in some cases, tightened the rules for legal immigrants. In 2018, during President Trump’s first term, the plane was used for at least three deportation flights that took about 360 migrants to El Salvador and Guatemala, according to the Center for Human Rights at the University of Washington. The center obtained the data through a public records request. A fourth flight, chartered by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement as part of what is known as its ICE Air program, was used to transfer about 144 migrants between detention centers in the United States. The repurposing of Mr. Vance’s former campaign plane for migrant deportation flights was first reported by The Arizona Mirror. The publication tallied an additional 35 flights made by the plane in 2020 between ICE hubs in the United States and Central and South American countries. It was not clear whether Mr. Vance, who represented Ohio in the Senate before being elected vice president, was aware of the plane’s history. A spokesman for the vice president’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Thursday.

CNS News [5/29/2025 12:27 PM, Craig Bannister, 125K] reports that Officers of ICE Boston worked alongside agents of FBI Boston, DEA New England, DHS, ATF Boston, and the U.S. Coast Guard yesterday in arresting around 40 illegal aliens between Martha’s Vineyard and Nantucket. Many of those arrests had previously been arrested, including a documented member of MS-13 and at least one child sex offender. No names of arrested individuals were provided. Kimberly Milka, acting special agent in charge of the FBI’s Boston division, provided details about the operation: "This operation highlights FBI Boston’s ongoing commitment to supporting our partners at the Department of Homeland Security with identifying and apprehending those who are breaking the law by violating our immigration laws and, in some cases, committing crimes that endanger public safety.” This isn’t even the first time that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been to the Vineyard. Last September, ICE reported that it arrested a Salvadoran man who was wanted for "crimes against humanity" and a Brazilian man wanted for international drug trafficking. Thiago Alves, owner of L&R Electrical Services, confirmed that one of his workers had been stopped by officers who were with the FBI and ICE. According to Alves, ICE is respecting immigrants and their documentation as it continues its work to secure the nation’s borders.

CBS New York [5/29/2025 3:34 PM, Derick Waller, 51860K] Video HERE reports Columbia University student Yunseo Chung has a court hearing on her deportation case Thursday in New York City. A crowd of about 80 supporters gathered outside the courthouse around noon. Chung, a 21-year-old Korea native and green card holder, is suing the federal government after she learned U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wanted to deport her. ICE alleges she engaged in what it calls pro-Hamas protests, which she denies. Chung’s lawsuit claims ICE started targeting her after she was arrested and given a citation during a March 5 protest over Columbia taking disciplinary action against students who had been involved in pro-Palestinian demonstrations on campus. The Department of Homeland Security confirmed it was seeking to deport Chung, saying she "engaged in concerning conduct," and characterizing the protest as "pro-Hamas." Chung’s attorneys called the idea that her speech in support of Palestinians could jeopardize U.S. foreign policy "a preposterous proposition."

CBS New York [5/29/2025 11:03 PM, Marcia Kramer, Ali Bauman and Doug Williams, 51860K] Video: HERE reports one day after police clashed with people protesting federal immigration tactics in New York City, the NYPD is bracing for more demonstrations. After more than 20 people were arrested Wednesday, protests calling for the release of a Bronx public school student detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement started growing again Thursday. The demonstrations are in response to ICE’s "expedited removals" policy, which has agents arrest asylum seekers when they appear for routine court hearings. New York is one of four cities where ICE agents have acted under the policy. Several people were detained this week at the federal immigration court at 26 Federal Plaza in Lower Manhattan. In an interview Thursday with CBS News’ Major Garrett, Gov. Kathy Hochul said she is willing to work with ICE agents on criminal investigations, but said agency’s recent actions are "wrong on so many levels and we have to stand up and call it out for what it is.” "This is the complete opposite of what President Trump promised to run when he ran and what he told me in many conversations, that they’re going after the worst of the worst, the people who’ve committed crimes in their own countries, people that are committing crimes in our state and harming others," Hochul said. "I mean, I’ll work with ICE, and I’ve said this hundreds of times, that those are the people I also want out of my state, but those who are following the rules, going down to Immigration Court, to have their required meeting on their path to asylum, they’re just sitting ducks now.” While the Department of Homeland Security has not confirmed details of what happened inside the federal building, or if it was part of an operation ongoing, witnesses told CBS News New York it appeared masked ICE agents were waiting outside elevators. "For reasons of operational security, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement does not discuss law enforcement tactics or confirm current, ongoing or future operations," DHS said in a statement to CBS News New York.

New York Times [5/30/2025 3:00 AM, Ana Ley, 138952K] reports that, in the vast farmlands of northern New York, where horse-drawn buggies and tractors wind through miles of apple orchards and raspberry bushes and flocks of grazing sheep, workers wait. And watch. They have seen federal agents sweep away a mother and her three children from their home on a dairy in the village of Sackets Harbor, N.Y. And they have heard about the food vendor arrested by the immigration police after she hit a deer in a snowstorm and sought help from a neighbor who reported her to the authorities. Officers then took her husband from work and their daughters, 6 and 9 years old, from school. As the nation’s battle lines sharpen on immigration, tension engulfs farmworkers who, in many respects, embody the fraught, sometimes contradictory nature of the debate. The business owners who depend on migrant work — many of them supporters of President Trump — feel anxious about the prospect of losing a crucial labor force. In the surrounding communities, there is palpable acrimony between those who think migrants should be allowed to stay in the country and those who want them to go. Afraid of being next amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration, some laborers have not left their homes for weeks except to go to work, canceling dance parties and quinceañeras. Two longtime housemates said that they ended their weekend ritual of going shopping at the mall. One woman decided not to go to church with her family over Easter. A teenage girl burst into tears at the kitchen table as her mother explained that she was afraid to go out for ice cream. More than a dozen laborers and their children shared their stories with New York Times, saying they feel tormented by what they described as cruel and chaotic deportation efforts aimed at their community. In rural New York, some immigrants have been briefly detained and then released, while others with legal papers languish in custody, leaving many confused about who is being forced out of the country and who gets to remain. “I feel outraged by what is happening,” Luis Enrique Gomez García, a lumber mill worker from Guatemala, said in Spanish. Eleven days after his wife crashed into a deer on Jan. 24, Mr. Gomez García was arrested on his way to his job and held at a detention center with his two young daughters despite having a work permit. He and his wife are seeking asylum. “The way they took me — I was furious because I was 100 percent sure that I was doing things correctly,” he said. “But they took me.”

CBS Pittsburgh [5/29/2025 6:42 PM, Mamie Bah, 51860K] Video: HERE reports Jaime Martinez, the community defense organizer with Casa San Jose, said the non-profit organization’s hotline received multiple reports on Wednesday about Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in the eastern part of the city. "We heard of five different detentions yesterday alone," said Martinez of Casa San Jose, which serves immigrant communities. One of the detentions happened in Wilkinsburg. Video shows a Hispanic man in handcuffs being walked by FBI agents into a van. KDKA has learned those agents were assisting the Department of Homeland Security with immigration enforcement. Wilkinsburg Mayor Dontae Comans posted about it on his Facebook page on Wednesday. "Everyone here, we’re family," Comans said on Thursday. "We’re Wilkinsburg, and we just want to protect each other. We have ordinances that protect everyone, no matter what part of life you’re from.” KDKA’s Mamie Bah asked, "What do you say to people who say you shouldn’t be here illegally?". "That’s how this country started." Mayor Comans said. "It’s all about getting that path to being a resident, and I feel like we need to help them.” In a statement to KDKA, a spokesperson for the FBI wrote, in part, "The FBI in Pittsburgh continues to provide investigative, technical, and analytical support to our partners at the Department of Homeland Security in their immigration operations all over the region as directed by the attorney general.”

Daily Wire [5/29/2025 12:51 PM, Spencer Lindquist, 3816K] reports Nashville’s Democrat mayor released the names of multiple federal law enforcement agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), drawing ire from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Sen. Marsha Blackburn, who say that the mayor is putting law enforcement at risk. Mayor Freddie O’Connell’s office released information on interactions between ICE agents and Nashville emergency service personnel, dropping data that included the names of federal law enforcement personnel. O’Connell says their names were released by mistake, but the Department of Homeland Security isn’t convinced. "They claimed it was a mistake. There’s zero chance it was a mistake and there will be repercussions," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin charged in response to the incident. "Our ICE enforcement officers are already facing a 400% increase in assaults against them and he’s essentially handing over intelligence to these criminal gangs so they can target our ICE enforcement officers. It’s wrong. It’s beneath the city of Nashville.” The Nashville Mayor is protecting illegal aliens and gang members over his constituents. "The Nashville Mayor is protecting illegal aliens and gang members over his constituents," DHS charged. The doxxing of the federal agents by O’Connell’s office comes just after Congressman Andy Ogles (R-TN) confirmed that the House Judiciary Committee and Homeland Security launched investigations into O’Connell, who condemned ICE after agents carried out enforcement operations in Nashville and signed an executive order requiring city officials to report any correspondence with ICE agents. Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) also blasted O’Connell, accusing him of "putting ICE agents and law enforcement in harm’s way by releasing their names for criminal gangs to see.”

FOX News [5/29/2025 5:49 PM, Alexandra Koch, 46878K] reports an illegal immigrant was recently arrested in Florida after allegedly attacking a couple trying to repossess his car, according to local law enforcement. Enio Corgozinho is charged with aggravated battery, simple battery and burglary with battery, FOX 35 Orlando reported. A husband and wife were repossessing Corgozinho’s car when he hit the woman in the chest, stomach and left arm, before pulling her out of his car, according to Lake County Sheriff’s Office records. He also allegedly pushed the husband, who was driving the tow truck. Following the alleged assault, the wife stopped breathing and later suffered a stroke, causing her to lose oxygen to the brain for eight minutes after the attack, her husband told FOX 35. In 911 audio of the incident, the woman’s husband could be heard yelling at who appeared to be Corgozinho. "Please! He’s attacking my wife," the man told 911. "Back away," he yelled, seemingly at Corgozinho. After deputies arrived, body camera video shows personnel repeatedly demanding Corgozinho turn around and get on his knees, according to the report. Corgozinho is in custody under an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) hold, pending further legal proceedings.

Telemundo [5/29/2025 6:49 PM, Staff, 177K] reports arrests of immigrants with I220-A continued today in Miami immigration court. A relative took a photo of the moment a man was arrested on the third floor of the court. Yanet Correa is a permanent resident but her husband was arrested although "since he arrived in this country all he has done has been working and working as a mule. This is an injustice," she says. Yanet Piñeiro’s husband’s lawyer claims he has been a victim of the system. "When the person enters the border, they choose to prosecute you under a law and now here in court they have decided to prosecute him under a different law." Yulisa Hernandez, an asylum seeker, says that today "they arrested about 8 (people) and I have an appointment for Tuesday. But I don’t know what’s going to happen.’ Here these vans arrived early, which family members claim are used to transfer the detainees. Immigration lawyer Antonio Ramos says that "literally, no one can prevent an arrest of ICE, not even a judge or a lawyer. Thomas Kennedy of the Florida Immigrant Coalition has posted a video on his social media and claims that this arrest occurred in a hallway at the Miami immigration court. National security secretary Kristi Noem says this is arresting and deporting criminals and people who were not vetoed when they entered the country. But these people are now being vetoed and what’s going to happen is that it’s going to scare people and they’re not going to go to their court hearings that creates more chaos in our immigration system.

AP [5/29/2025 4:49 PM, David Fischer and Mike Schneider, 3077K] reports that a federal judge heard arguments Thursday on whether Florida’s attorney general should be held in contempt or sanctioned for not following her order prohibiting the enforcement of a new state law making it a misdemeanor for people in the U.S. illegally to enter Florida. U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams didn’t make an immediate decision following an almost two-hour court hearing. Attorney General James Uthmeier didn’t attend the court session in Miami. The federal judge had specified in a ruling last month that her temporary restraining order against enforcing the Florida law applied to all of the state’s local law enforcement agencies. She later noted that there was a substantial likelihood that the Florida law would be found unconstitutional. But Uthmeier sent out an April 23 letter to Florida’s law enforcement agencies saying that he couldn’t prevent law enforcement officers from enforcing the law “where there remains no judicial order that properly restrains you from doing so.” “As set forth in the brief my office filed today, it is my view that no lawful, legitimate order currently impedes your agencies from continuing to enforce Florida’s new illegal entry and reentry laws,” he said in the letter.

Telemundo [5/29/2025 2:36 PM, Staff, 3352K] reports he asked the President of the United States to give him "papers" in a viral song. Months later, he’s fighting deportation in an immigration detention center. This is the case of Venezuelan singer Claudio David Balcane González, 26 years old and known as Davicito59, one of the performers of Donaltron, a song heard by millions that mischievously criticizes the immigration policy of the Republican president and his treatment of immigrants like him. Balcane, a Venezuelan immigrant who arrived in the United States legally in 2024 after scheduling an appointment through the CBP One app, has told several media outlets that immigration agents arrested him last month in Chicago, Illinois. Since then, he told The Washington Post, he has been detained at the Dodge County Detention Facility in Wisconsin, accused of belonging to the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, a charge for which the government has not presented evidence, and which he denies.

Telemundo 48 El Paso [5/29/2025 5:45 PM, Staff, 9K] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportation officers have removed 36-year-old Miguel Sifuentes Jimenez, a Mexican citizen wanted in his home country for possession of methamphetamine and firearms. Sifuentes Jiménez was handed over to Mexican authorities at the top of the Lerdo Bridge on Stanton Street, on the international border between the United States and Mexico. The last time Sifuentes entered the United States illegally was on May 3, 2021, crossing on foot across the Santa Teresa International Bridge. The following day, he was processed for reinstatement of a previous deportation order and appeared for trial. After serving his sentence, he was released from the Luna County Detention Center in Deming, New Mexico. He was ordered removed from the United States for the first time on January 9, 2013, and was returned to his home country on January 28, 2013, from Calexico, California. His criminal record in the United States includes convictions in California for burglary in 2008, for which he was sentenced to 364 days in jail; aggravated battery against his spouse, a misdemeanor, in 2009, for which he was sentenced to 60 days in jail; and inflicting bodily injury on his spouse/common-law partner, a felony, in 2011, for which he received a two-year sentence.

The Dallas Express [5/29/2025 3:49 PM, Logan Washburn] reports the illegal alien who allegedly killed a teen at Grapevine Lake was previously arrested and released during former President Joe Biden’s administration, as reported by The Dallas Express. However, other local news outlets have largely overlooked this fact. After police arrested two suspects who allegedly fled after 18-year-old Ava Moore was killed on Grapevine Lake over Memorial Day weekend, officials announced they were illegal aliens who had been arrested – and released – under Biden’s administration, as The Dallas Express reported at the time. After Gonzalez allegedly killed Moore with a jet ski on May 25, Gonzalez and Perozo fled the scene. The Grapevine Police Department and Texas Game Wardens launched a multi-day manhunt and ultimately captured Gonzalez and Perozo on May 27. Gonzales entered America illegally on September 28, 2023, and Perozo entered illegally on January 22, 2023, the Department of Homeland Security announced Wednesday. Both were "released by the previous administration into the country." ICE has lodged immigration detainers with the suspects, and both are now "in removal proceedings." "Ava Moore was a patriot serving her country when she was killed by an illegal alien in a hit-and-run over Memorial Day weekend. This senseless tragedy was 100 percent preventable," said DHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin in a press release.

(B) NBC News Daily [5/29/2025 1:24 PM, Staff]
The eventual court hearings for suspects in the deadly hit and run jet ski crash on Grapevine Lake will be announced. Both suspects are still being held at Tarrant County Jail. According to jail records, Gonzalez is held on a $500,000 bond; Perozo on a $3,200 bond. Both have a magistrate warning on file. According to Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials, both now face possible deportation. ICE confirmed that Gonzalez and Perozo are Venezuelan nationals who entered into the United States’ southern border in 2023. ICE says they have launched immigration detainers with the local facility in north Texas. Local and state officials say that this is still a very active investigation and more charges could be added.

Telemundo [5/29/2025 7:48 PM, Celeste Rhodes de Juarez, 3352K] reports everything is ready for Shirly Guardado, the wife of Army Sergeant Ayssac Correa, who has been detained for eleven weeks at the Montgomery Processing Center (Texas) to be deported back to Honduras, where she has neither family nor acquaintances. Guardado, 27, had no hearing before a judge: the expedited deportation process was applied to her and has an order to be expelled this Friday. Since then, she has only seen her son by video calling and her husband behind a glass in the visitor room of the detention centre. The nightmare for this family began on March 13 when Guardado was arrested at her workplace. She was running because she was going to work. "He bathed, kissed me and left," Correa recalls in an interview with Noticias Telemundo. Today he claims to be living his worst nightmare: "I always imagined a family, and this Administration came and ruined everything," says the 25-year-old sergeant. Shortly after that farewell, his wife called him: Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents had arrested her. She was handcuffed and transported to a detention centre. The officers showed up disguised as transit agents. He was told she had been involved in an accident and should accompany them. They never showed an arrest warrant. The couple did not imagine that their son Kilian, then just ten months old, was about to lose his daily contact with his mother. "It was all a lie for him to leave the building," Correa says. But since she was sure of her innocence, she came out. And there she was arrested. His lawyer, Martin Reza, claims that he exhausted all legal remedies without any success. Reza believes his deportation order meets internal goals imposed by the Donald Trump administration. You’re trying to meet certain numbers. Stephen Miller wants them to deport everyone, and the easiest to deport are those who already have outstanding orders, he says. In a recent meeting cited by several media outlets, Miller and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem instructed ICE to make at least 3,000 arrests a day. Correa comes from a family of military tradition. His great-grandfather fought in Vietnam and his grandfather served in the Air Force. For me, it was an honor. I started in 2018 and was displaced to Syria. But now I’m completely disappointed. I feel like the country I’ve given so much to death has stabbed me in the back. ‘I’m not afraid to say what happened. With all this they just lost someone who was willing to give his life for his country. I don’t want to continue serving a country that doesn’t care for its people or its soldiers.’

NewsNation [5/29/2025 6:30 PM, Kelly Wiley, 5801K] reports the Texas Department of Public Safety on Wednesday released body camera video showing the moment troopers and federal agents pulled over an undocumented couple in April in front of an Austin middle school. Federal authorities transported Omar Gallardo Rodriguez, his partner Denisse Parra-Vargas, and their three children, two of whom were born in the United States, to Mexico within a week after the traffic stop. Video shows Rodriguez being taken into custody following the traffic stop on April 30. Body camera footage shows a masked federal agent telling Parra-Vargas they planned to place an ankle monitor on her, after which she would have 24 hours to pick up her children and report back to federal authorities. "When she comes back tomorrow, we’ll send them all together as a family, and we won’t prosecute him since he has been deported before," the federal agent is heard saying to a trooper who was translating to Parra-Vargas and Rodriguez in Spanish. NewsNation affiliate KXAN also obtained a 56-minute dashcam video of the interaction through a public information request to the DPS. The dashcam video has no audio. The dashcam video begins as troopers follow Rodriguez’s white truck from the intersection of Middle Fiskville Road and East Rundberg Lane to Dobie Middle School’s campus. DPS officials said the traffic stop was initiated over expired plates. It’s unclear when troopers signaled for Rodriguez to pull over, but the video shows he parks near the back of the school. Video shows that the stop occurred in the middle of the school’s morning drop-off as school buses were pulling in and out. The family’s legal team said Rodriguez and Parra-Vargas had just dropped off their school-age children at a nearby school when they were stopped. The first interaction shown is between two troopers and the couple while they are still in the truck. It lasts less than four minutes before the troopers walk away. Less than 10 minutes after the troopers walked away, footage shows a federal agent walk toward the vehicle and arrest Rodriguez. According to ICE, Rodriguez had been deported three times before. The agency said he was jailed in Travis County for family violence in 2006 and again in 2014 after his third charge of driving under the influence. According to her legal team, Parra-Vargas was denied asylum after coming to the country in 2016. The DHS stated that a judge ordered the mother of three to leave the US in 2019. DHS told KXAN Parra-Vargas was taken into ICE custody and "chose to bring her children with her to Mexico." The video DPS provided doesn’t show Parra-Vargas being detained. At the end of the video, Parra-Vargas is waiting next to her family’s white truck.

FOX News [5/29/2025 6:52 PM, Louis Casiano, 46878K] reports an illegal immigrant teenager who was spared jail time after he was convicted of killing a Colorado woman in a high-speed crash has been arrested, along with his family, by immigration authorities. The 16-year-old from Colombia was sentenced to probation and community service for the July 2024 death of Kaitlyn Weaver, 24, in Aurora after striking a plea deal with prosecutors. The teen, who has not been publicly named because of state laws that shield the identity of underage criminal suspects, was arrested May 20 along with his family, who were also living in the United States illegally, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said. "The minor was convicted in Colorado’s 18th Judicial District and was sentenced to probation and community service," an ICE spokesperson told Fox News. "As part of its routine operations, ICE arrests aliens who commit crimes and other individuals who have violated our nation’s immigration laws. All aliens in violation of U.S. immigration law may be subject to arrest, detention and, if found removable by final order, removal from the United States, regardless of nationality.” The teen will remain in ICE custody pending an immigration hearing, the agency said. Weaver died after she was sitting in her vehicle at a stop sign and the teen T-boned Weaver’s vehicle at an intersection. He was in a Jeep with other minors racing in a residential neighborhood at speeds of up to 90 mph, authorities said. Weaver was kept on life support for two days before she was taken off after her organs were donated.

Univision [5/29/2025 4:14 PM, Claudia Carrera, 4992K] reports the migrant community in California is experiencing days of growing fear and uncertainty as ICE intensifies its immigration operations, including warrantless detentions and arrests in sensitive locations such as immigration appointments and residency interviews. Videos have circulated on social media and in the media showing ICE agents smashing car windows and detaining suspected undocumented immigrants without showing warrants. These images have caused deep concern among migrants, who say they live in constant fear of being deported. Recently, President Donald Trump’s administration ordered ICE to detain 3,000 people per day, tripling the previous figure. Although statistics show that fewer people are being deported than under previous administrations, arrests have become more aggressive and visible, even affecting U.S. citizens.

NBC Bay Area [5/29/2025 12:22 PM, Gia Vang, 57K] reports that the wife of a man who was detained after his asylum hearing in San Francisco last week is speaking out and pleading for help. Shaylyn Ordaz said her husband, Anyelo, was following the rules. He showed up to his asylum hearing, but on his way out, he was handcuffed and walked into a waiting vehicle by ICE agents in plain clothes. "As soon as we walked out, there were, I don’t know, four, five, six agents waiting right there," Ordaz said. "They grabbed him. One of them grabbed me, and they pulled us apart. I heard the handcuffs, and my husband is not a criminal. So that just kills me." The Alameda County man came to the U.S. in January 2024 from Colombia, seeking asylum because of his sexual orientation. He also has a pending I-130 application to officially document a family relationship with Shaylyn, an American citizen. Ordaz said her husband is a man of God and doesn’t have a criminal record. Ordaz said the judge did not dismiss Anyelo’s case on Friday, but he was still detained. He was later released, but detained again that same day. Anyelo was taken to a detention center in McFarland, about 30 miles north of Bakersfield. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Telemundo [5/29/2025 9:44 PM, Marinee Zavala, 37K] reports a series of new videos show the techniques federal agents have used in San Diego to detain the undocumented immigrant community. This time, they focused on vendors who set up shop outside the Petco Park baseball stadium. On Tuesday night, May 27, at the end of the San Diego Padres game, vendors captured on video several agents wearing badges and t-shirts displaying the initials of Homeland Security Special Agents (HSI), who surrounded Celsa Ramirez, who for years has been selling flowers in the area.  "! ICE! You can be quiet mother," the vendors could be heard shouting at Celsa as she was cornered. Who recorded the video that night is a man who also sells hot dogs in San Diego and preferred not to share his identity for security reasons, however, he assured TELEMUNDO 20, that before approaching Celsa, federal agents approached him and his fellow merchants. "They asked me for an ID and I showed them my ID and everything was fine, but the problem was that they were waiting for more workers to arrive to board them and at that moment the lady arrived," said the person who recorded the video. The merchants indicated that they were saddened to hear about the arrest of Celsa Ramirez. In Tania’s case, she indicated that a few minutes earlier she had exchanged greetings with her. "I was very sad, I even cried that day, because it made me feel very sad to see the lady and five minutes later to know that she had been taken away, it made me very sad," said Tania Licea, a worker at Gaslamp San Diego. She said that Celsa is originally from Cuernavaca and supports her 85 year old mother. She indicated that she is one of the few women who were allowed to enter the sites to sell her flowers, because of the trust that the businesses in the area have in her. "She is very well liked and works very well, she is very pretty, very kind, she has earned her place there," Tania explained. In the videos from before the game began, the merchants said they captured what appears to be the moment when the agents came out of the parking lots wearing vests, stopped people in the streets and culminated with the interrogation of those selling hot dogs, a situation that highlights the concern about the expansion of these federal government operations in the country. "This is not the way the federal government should be in San Diego, or any place, this is not criminality, this does not deserve to be harassed, intimidated in the street because you are trying to live and support your family," said Alor Calderon, director of the Center for Labor Rights in San Diego. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Univision [5/29/2025 3:13 PM, Patricia Vélez Santiago, 4992K] reports Antonio Báez was working in a construction warehouse in Toa Baja, a town near Puerto Rico’s capital, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrived to conduct an "inspection" as part of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants. To avoid arrest, the 52-year-old Dominican immigrant climbed onto the roof of the warehouse, which was about 30 to 35 feet high, according to an image of the site obtained by Univision News. ICE detained 13 undocumented immigrants at the facility on March 28. Báez was not one of them. However, while trying to hide, the father of four died. It’s unknown exactly what happened between the time Báez climbed onto the roof during the ICE operation and when he was found seriously injured on the ground hours later. This immigrant’s case also falls into a gray area, making it difficult to conclude whether there is any responsibility for what happened to him.

Bloomberg [5/29/2025 6:25 PM, Hadriana Lowenkron, 19320K] reports the US State Department has notified Congress that it will shut down the office that helped resettle Afghan refugees who assisted the American war effort, provoking an outcry from nonprofit groups that helped evacuate people when the Taliban retook control of the country in 2021. The elimination of the Office of the Coordinator for Afghan Relocation Efforts was disclosed in a letter to Congress outlining efforts to reorganize the department. A copy of the document was seen by Bloomberg News. The office’s functions will be “realigned” to the Afghanistan Affairs Office and the role of special representative for Afghan reconstruction will also be eliminated. The changes are part of a broader plan that will also include cuts to the federal workforce in the wake of a larger dismantling of the US government under President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency program, and will take place by July 1, according to the notification. More than 300 offices will be reorganized “to refocus on core US foreign policy objectives and the needs of contemporary diplomacy.” “The planned changes are also reflective of the administration’s and secretary’s broader efforts to streamline government functions, eliminate redundancy, and enhance accountability,” according to the letter. “The CARE Office was established to fix the failures of the US withdrawal,” Shawn VanDiver, a veteran and president of AfghanEvac, a nonprofit organization that helps resettle Afghan allies, said in a statement. “Eliminating it — without public explanation, transition planning, or reaffirmation of mission — is a profound betrayal of American values and promises.”

Bloomberg Law [5/30/2025 4:30 AM, Melvin Warshaw and David Lesperance, 1700K] reports incidents of Trump administration border patrol agents pressuring re-entering green card holders into unknowingly abandoning their green card status are rampant. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers are confiscating green cards and placing re-entering individuals in holding rooms. While their motive for this heightened scrutiny of re-entering green card holders may be to weed out undesirables, one catastrophic consequence for certain green card holders is an unexpected series of tax events that could wipe out their lifetime wealth. Once an individual is issued a green card subjecting them to worldwide US tax, such an individual needs to undertake certain affirmative actions in order to terminate that status. If you live outside the US without officially abandoning your green card or having it revoked, you are still a US taxpayer in the eyes of the IRS. In other words, after you receive your green card, you remain a US taxpayer until that green card status is cancelled either voluntarily or through administrative process. There is a troubling increase in the cases where green card holders are being detained, questioned, and even pressured to give up their green cards at US ports of entry. These cases often involve fear, confusion, and sometimes coercion, and can lead to devastating family consequences but also financial consequences, as discussed below. Although there has been no formal policy change by the American government, Customs Border Patrol (“CBP”) officers have wide discretion to allow non-US citizens to enter the country. Under the current enforcement climate, non-citizens of all statuses including green card holders face heightened scrutiny and a narrowing of the exercise of prior discretion.

FOX News [5/29/2025 8:15 AM, Diana Stancy, 46878K] reports the Trump administration is targeting international students with student visas and permanent residents who hold a green card as part of its immigration crackdown. And while green card holders may legally remain in the U.S. indefinitely, work in the country, and are protected by U.S. laws, the Trump administration has made clear that the demographic is not off limits from its mass-deportation agenda. Can the federal government deport those who are green card holders and are here in the U.S. legally? Yes. According to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, green card holders are only protected if they "do not commit any actions that would make you removable under immigration law." Green card holders are "required to obey all laws of the United States and localities," file taxes annually, register for the draft if the green card holder is a male between the ages of 18 and 25, and are also "expected to support the democratic form of government," per U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. Should a green card holder violate certain provisions included in the Immigration and Nationality Act, they could face deportation. The possibility of deporting green card holders attracted increased scrutiny after U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested anti-Israel activist Mahmoud Khalil in March. Khalil, who is a Palestinian raised in Syria and a permanent U.S. resident with a green card who first came to the U.S. on a student visa in 2022, played a major role in the protests against Israel while at Columbia University as a graduate student. The Department of Homeland Security said Khalil was arrested to protect U.S. national security, and claimed that Khalil "led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization." Additionally, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said at the time any Hamas supporters in the U.S. would suffer similar fates and have their green cards pulled, and face deportation.

Reuters [5/29/2025 6:16 AM, Amira Karaoud, 51390K] reports Afghan asylum-seeker Wazir Khan Zadran and his family arrived in Kentucky nearly four years ago as the U.S. military withdrew from his country. Now, he worries about the future of his children, especially his girls, if they are forced to return to Afghanistan. The Trump administration said it will end Temporary Protected Status for Afghans in July - raising the threat of being sent back to Afghanistan, where the Taliban rule according to Islamic law, if their asylum case is unsuccessful. "The future of children is bright here and they can study here, they can have a good future here. If we go back to my country, they are not good, especially for the girls," Zadran said. "They cannot go to school, they cannot go to university, they can do nothing. So, I hope they will do some things for the refugees of Afghanistan." Afghans in the U.S. can still request asylum, the Trump administration says. "Although TPS was terminated as required by law, any Afghan who fears persecution is able to request asylum," said Tricia McLaughlin, Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs at the Department of Homeland Security, adding that those with TPS revoked can apply for financial assistance to get resettled elsewhere. More than 70,000 Afghans entered the U.S. under former President Joe Biden’s ‘Operation Allies Welcome’ initiative following the Taliban takeover in 2021, according to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Over 300 settled in Bowling Green, an agricultural and manufacturing city that has received refugees over the decades from Cambodians to Bosnians to Congolese.

Telemundo [5/29/2025 941 PM, Staff, 177K] reports faith, for many, has no borders. But for dozens of foreign religious serving in the Archdiocese of Miami, the limit on their visas could become an insurmountable barrier. Currently, about 40 priests in the archdiocese exercise their vocation in the United States under the religious visa R-1, a temporary permit that allows them to serve local communities for up to five years. Archbishop Thomas Wenski does not hide his concern. Amid a growing shortage of vocations in the country, the archdiocese depends on the arrival of priests from Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe to attend to a diverse and expanding parishioner. "We are looking elsewhere for them to come and assist the people of God here in the Americas," Wenski explained. Faced with this situation, a legislative proposal has emerged that could bring relief: the Religious Labour Force Protection Act. The initiative would allow religious workers on a R-1 visa and pending applications to obtain permanent residence under the EB-4 category to remain legally in the country beyond the five-year limit. Currently, this period is insufficient in the face of the long waiting times that may involve the processing of the "green card." Immigration lawyer Evelyn Batista says many face waiting a decade or more to complete the residency process. The government can only grant about 10,000 EB-4 visas per year. That has led to a huge delay, he said. According to their estimates, religious account for approximately 30 per cent of the total 150,000 applications in this category. If this law is not passed, the consequences would be severe. We could lose 25% of our priests and 8% of our nuns," Batista warns. A loss that strikes not only the church, but also the communities that depend on these leaders for spiritual accompaniment, social services and pastoral activities.

Los Angeles Times [5/29/2025 7:12 PM, Daniel Miller, et al., 14672K] repots the Trump administration’s announcement this week that Chinese students’ visas would be "aggressively" revoked has inflamed the uncertainty among the nation’s international students — and in California has ignited anger among leaders in the Chinese American community who said such a targeted action is "xenophobic.” Little has been disclosed about the administration’s plan, which represents yet another salvo in President Trump’s combative push to reshape higher education, which has roiled academia, disrupted campus life and spilled into courts across the country. On Wednesday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced in a social media post that the visa revocations will include "those with connections to the Chinese Communist Party or studying in critical fields," without elaborating on what areas of study would be targeted or whether the move would apply solely to college students. Rubio said in a statement that the U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security would revoke the visas, while also revising "visa criteria to enhance scrutiny of all future visa applications from the People’s Republic of China and Hong Kong.” Scholars and international students fear such an action could jeopardize the academic future of tens of thousands of Chinese students enrolled at colleges across the country, and threaten billions of dollars in tuition payments desperately needed by universities already facing the loss of research funding and other cuts effectuated by Trump’s education policies. The potential financial fallout is of acute concern in California, where Chinese students constitute the largest international group. About 51,000 Chinese nationals in California make up more than a third of the state’s nearly 141,000 foreign students. Trump’s plan was widely criticized Thursday by politicians, professors and others in California and beyond. For many, Rubio’s invocation of the Communist Party triggered dark recollections of past anti-Chinese policy, including 1882’s Chinese Exclusion Act, which banned immigration from China. Rep. Judy Chu (D-Monterey Park) called the visa decision "xenophobic," and said it would "only hurt America.” "This is yet another example of the Trump administration targeting Chinese people instead of the Chinese government, assuming that every Chinese person is a pawn for the Chinese Communist Party," Chu said. "That is what xenophobia is all about, and it is reminiscent of the Chinese Exclusion Act.” State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce said at a news briefing Thursday that the agency would not elaborate on the criteria that the U.S. would use in vetting visas. She said the department is thinking about "the nature of how we keep America safe and secure and more prosperous.”

Los Angeles Times [5/29/2025 10:45 AM, Andrea Castillo, 13342K] reports lawmakers this week condemned the Trump administration’s termination of humanitarian protections that have left a 4-year-old girl who is receiving critical medical treatment in Los Angeles vulnerable to deportation and death. On Tuesday, The Times published the story of S.G.V., who has short bowel syndrome — a rare condition that prevents her body from completely absorbing nutrients. She and her parents received temporary permission to enter the U.S. legally through Tijuana in 2023. In a letter Thursday to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, 38 congressional Democrats, including California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, urged her to reconsider the termination of the family’s legal status. “We believe this family’s situation clearly meets the need for humanitarian aid and urge you and this Administration to reconsider its decision,” the lawmakers wrote. “It is our duty to protect the sick, vulnerable, and defenseless.” Last month, S.G.V.’s family, who now live in Bakersfield, received notice from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services that their status had been terminated and that they had to leave the country immediately. Earlier this month, they applied again for humanitarian protections. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary in the Department of Homeland Security, said in a statement that the family is not actively in the deportation process and that their application is still being considered. The letter to Noem was led by Reps. Luz Rivas (D-North Hollywood) and Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles). Rivas said state legislators and constituents messaged her about the family, asking what she could do to help.

Washington Post [5/29/2025 6:04 PM, María Luisa Paúl, 32099K] reports Deysi Vargas’s 4-year-old daughter sleeps tethered to a special intravenous feeding system — a machine that pumps nutrients through a tube into her tiny body throughout the night. Four times each day, Vargas sets up a second, portable feeding system that delivers additional nutrients through a tube into her stomach. This delicate routine keeps the girl, who has short bowel syndrome — a condition in which the body cannot absorb enough nutrients from food — alive, Vargas said. But the 28-year-old mother, who hails from Oaxaca, Mexico, now fears it could end at any moment. Last month, the Department of Homeland Security revoked the family’s humanitarian parole, warning them in a letter: "It is time for you to leave the United States." Without continued access to her treatment at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, her attorneys and doctor warn, the girl could die within days. On Thursday, 38 Democratic members of Congress — including California Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff, and prominent progressives like Reps. Luz Rivas, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Pramila Jayapal and Ted Lieu — sent a letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi L. Noem urging her to reverse the decision. The family entered the United States legally in 2023 through an appointment secured through the Biden administration’s CBP One app, said their attorney, Gina Amato Lough. On July 30, 2023, Vargas, her husband and daughter were granted humanitarian parole — which allows individuals to temporarily live in the country for urgent humanitarian reasons — for two years, she said. It’s unclear whether DHS plans to respond to the lawmakers’ letter. In a statement to The Washington Post, a senior DHS official said, "Any reporting that Vargas and her family are actively being deported are FALSE. This family applied with USCIS for humanitarian parole on May 14, 2025, and the application is still being considered." Although the family has not been actively targeted for deportation — meaning, they have not received a final removal order or been placed in proceedings — they received three letters stating that their humanitarian parole, which had originally been granted through July 2025, had been revoked, said Amato Lough. The only reason they filed a new application for humanitarian parole on May 14, she noted, was because their status was terminated "prematurely." The filing came just one day after Vargas received notice that her work authorization had also been canceled.

NewsMax [5/29/2025 8:04 PM, Sam Barron, 4622K] reports that, under President Donald Trump, the border has never been more secure, border czar Tom Homan told Newsmax on Thursday. "Illegal crossings on the southern border are down 96%," Homan said on "The Record With Greta Van Susteren." "We have the most secure border in the history of this nation, even beating Trump 45. President Trump is a game-changer, and its success has been unprecedented.” Homan said Immigration and Custom Enforcement recruitment levels remain high. "Last month, Border Patrol had the highest recruiting numbers at any time in the history of the United States Border Patrol," Homan said. "Now that they know we’ve got President Trump in office, you get to do the job that you signed up for. You get to uphold the oath you took. "A lot of people want to come back and make America safe again. They want to secure our border and protect America," he said. "A secure border gives strong national security. Recruiting right now not a problem. "We just need Congress to pass that budget to give us money, to bring out more resources. We need money to hire people," Homan said. "That’s what we’re waiting on.” Despite the success of securing the border, Homan said a border wall at Mexico needs to be completed. "Every place they build a border barrier, illegal immigration went down, drug flow went down," Homan said. "But the walls also save lives. Women, children can’t get over that wall, which means they’re going to a place where there’s not a wall, and they’re going to be met with Border Patrol, who take care of the humanitarian needs." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NewsMax [5/29/2025 10:19 AM, Jim Morley, 4622K] reports earlier in May, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced that, in 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 President Donald Trump. Texas Attorney General Paxton told Newsmax on Thursday that "It’s pretty amazing that just following federal law, what a difference it can make.” "You watch what Donald Trump did. His first term was remarkable. He’d done the best job with immigration of any president in my lifetime. And then, of course, Joe Biden announced on day one that he wasn’t going to deport anybody. So Joe Biden completely ignored his constitutional role as president and accepted everybody here," Paxton said during an appearance on Newsmax’s "Wake Up America.” Over the weekend, Air Force Academy cadet Ava Moore was struck and killed by a jet ski on Grapevine Lake in Texas. Daikerlyn Alejandra Gonzalez, an illegal migrant, has been charged in her death. Paxton said Moore’s death would not have happened if the Biden administration had simply followed the law. "And then, of course, when President Trump was reelected, that all stopped. It’s amazing what doing the right thing actually does. And in this case that we’re talking about today likely would never have happened if Joe Biden had followed federal law and done his job. And there were numerous cases of this very same thing happening," he added.

NewsNation [5/29/2025 5:52 PM, Sandra Sanchez, 5801K] reports a pickup full of drugs from Mexico splashed down in the Rio Grande near Harlingen, Border Patrol officials said. The truck was seen being loaded onto a makeshift raft constructed from wooden pallets and 55-gallon drums on Wednesday evening, Border Patrol said Friday. Agents said the truck was successfully floated across the Rio Grande and off loaded onto U.S. soil. Then it was driven at a high speed through a gap in the border wall. Agents reported multiple people swimming in the river to recover several bundles of drugs from the submerged truck. The bundles were then floated back to Mexico. U.S. Border Patrol agents say they recovered five bundles of marijuana that had floated downriver from Las Rusias, a colonia in Cameron County. Border Patrol’s Search Trauma and Rescue unit (BORSTAR) has been called to conduct a diver assessment and possible retrieval of any drugs from the truck.

BorderReport [5/29/2025 7:06 PM, Sandra Sanchez, 5801K] reports two Texans pleaded guilty to smuggling migrants through South Texas, U.S. Attorney Nicholas Ganjei says. Mac Quese Howard, 20, and De Richardson Miller, 18, of Brownfield, Texas, admitted to conspiring to transport illegal aliens through Laredo, Texas, Ganjei says. Border Patrol agents say Howard and Miller tried to circumvent a Border Patrol checkpoint near Laredo. After they were pulled over for a traffic violation, three migrants were found hidden in the back seat of the SUV that Howard was driving. Both told law enforcement they had traveled from their home outside Lubbock to Laredo to transport migrants to San Antonio. They were expected to receive a total of $5,000, which they said they were going to split. U.S. District Judge Diana Saldaña is to impose a sentencing at a later date. Both face up to 10 years in federal prison and a possible $250,000 maximum fine.

NewsNation [5/30/2025 3:28 AM, Salvador Rivera, 5801K] reports U.S. Marines deployed to the San Diego region since late January have been installing razor wire along the border barrier as a deterrent to keep migrants from hopping over the wall. This week, they worked in an area known as Friendship Park, which lies on a bluff above the Pacific Ocean. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, this was a popular gathering spot for families and friends from both countries to interact with the border wall between them. Public access has yet to return, and now with the razor wire on the barrier, it’s unlikely it will happen while President Donald Trump is in office, said Dan Watman, who is part of a binational group known as Friends of Friendship Park. "It’s just sending that message of division and separation," Watman said. "We strongly believe this can’t last, it’s based on such a false narrative.” The installation of the razor wire, added Watman, "represents an abandonment of prior commitments made by U.S. federal officials.” He says back in December, acting U.S. Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Troy Miller pledged, in writing, to resume regular public access to the federal land at Friendship Park — and allow the cross-border Friendship Garden to be replanted. In July 2023, the San Diego-Union Tribune reported that Border Patrol officials had said the agency "remains committed to restoring the Bi-national Garden located within Friendship Park following the completion of construction activities," referring to replacement of border wall along the park. The Department of Homeland Security and the Border Patrol have said the new walls are needed to replace existing barriers that were falling apart and becoming a danger to the public, migrants and the agents who patrol the area. The Border Patrol had also indicated that it would allow public access to the area once the construction work was done. "We had plans and they were approved, but they put the wire right in the middle of where the garden was supposed to go.” Watman believes the concertina wire is dangerous to people on the south side of the barrier where public gatherings and community celebrations take place, especially on weekends. "I was talking to the Marine in charge of the operation when they were putting this in and he said to me, ‘I’m worried, these razor wires ride up against the wall and some little kid that doesn’t know could easily cut themselves on it.’". Since taking office, Trump has deployed thousands of active duty military personnel and other resources to the southern border as a way to keep drugs and migrants out of the U.S. Mexico has also sent members of its National Guard to the border to keep migrants from attempting to cross into the U.S. Watman believes most people in the San Diego-Tijuana region see all military intervention as unwarranted and "overkill.” "We need to be connected across cultural barriers and across borders, and if we do that we’ll be more secure, so this is really going in the complete opposite direction," he said.

AP [5/29/2025 5:20 PM, Alfredo Peña, 31733K] reports the bodies of five musicians, members of a Mexican regional music group who had gone missing, were found in the northern city of Reynosa along the Texas border, authorities said on Thursday. The musicians from the band Grupo Fugitivo, which played at parties and local dances in the region, had been reported missing since Sunday. Tamaulipas state prosecutors, who had been investigating their disappearance, said the men were kidnapped around 10 p.m. that night while traveling in a SUV on the way to a venue where they were hired to play. Their bodies were found on the fringes of Reynosa. Prosecutors said nine suspects believed to be part of a faction of the Gulf Cartel, which has strong presence in the city, have been arrested. Authorities were not immediately able to say why the men were slain, and did not deny reports by local media that the bodies had been burned. The genre they played – Mexican regional music, which encapsulates a wide range of styles including corridos and cumbia – has in recent years gained a spotlight as it’s entered a sort of international musical renaissance. Young artists sometimes pay homage to leaders of drug cartels, often portrayed as Robin Hood-type figures. It was not immediately clear if the group played such songs or if the artists were simply victims of rampant cartel violence that has eclipsed the city. But other artists have faced death threats by cartels, while others have had their visas stripped by the United States under accusations by the Trump administration that they were glorifying criminal violence. The last time the musicians were heard from was the night they were kidnapped, when they told family members they were on the way to the event. After that, nothing else was heard of them. Their disappearance caused an uproar in Tamaulipas, a state long eclipsed by cartel warfare. Their families reported the disappearances, called on the public for support and people took to the streets in protest.

(B) Good Morning America [5/29/2025 8:13 AM, Staff] reports that a newly released surveillance video shows a man attacking TSA officers one day after he assaulted a passenger in midflight. It happened in late December of last year. These are not 28-year-old Cameron Dylan McDougall’s only altercations. He pled guilty to multiple charges and faces up to two years in prison. He will be sentenced on Friday.

Bloomberg [5/29/2025 10:10 AM, Zahra Hirji, 19320K] reports FEMA officials recently denied two state requests for resilience funds after disasters, a departure from how previous administrations handled recovery efforts. When a series of deadly storms and tornadoes pummeled Arkansas in mid-March, downing power lines and tearing up homes, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders asked the federal government for money to not only help repair the damage, but also boost the state’s defenses against future disasters. On May 8, President Donald Trump approved the state’s request for funds to help individuals and families recover. But a week later, the Federal Emergency Management Agency told Huckabee Sanders, a Republican who was Trump’s press secretary during his first term, that it was denying the second pot of money — the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program — to help the state rebuild stronger, according to a rejection letter seen by Bloomberg News. Later in the month, the agency denied a hazard mitigation funding request from Virginia, weeks after Trump approved other aid as part of a major disaster declaration for mid-February winter storms. Virginia officials say they "are exploring the appeals process but do not have any further details.” The White House declined to comment on specific state requests for hazard mitigation funds. Spokesperson Abigail Jackson said the administration is monitoring states’ ability to spend hazard mitigation grants as it weighs new requests, adding that officials have seen large balances of unallocated and unspent funds. “We are working with states to assist them in identifying projects and drawing down balances in a way that makes the nation more resilient,” she added.

NBC News [5/29/2025 10:04 PM, Jacob Soboroff, Julia Ainsley, and Laura Strickler, 44540K] reports publicly, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said the Federal Emergency Management Agency needs to be reoriented or even done away with altogether. “We are eliminating FEMA,” Noem said at a televised meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet in March. But with hurricane season about to start, Noem has been quietly pushing behind the scenes to keep key employees in place and to approve reimbursements to states previously hit by disaster, sources familiar with the situation told NBC News. Trump himself talked about possibly “getting rid of” FEMA shortly after he was inaugurated for his second term, while he was touring North Carolina to see areas of the state damaged by Hurricane Helene. There has been no public indication that his administration, including Noem, is reconsidering that stance — indeed, the administration’s original acting FEMA administrator, Cameron Hamilton, was removed from the job one day after he testified at a congressional hearing that he does not think “it is in the best interests of the American people to eliminate” FEMA. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, has told NBC News that the move was not a response to his testimony. There does, however, appear to be some internal recognition that, absent a plan ready for how the country would move forward without FEMA, important elements of the agency and its work have to remain in place for now. State and local governments are entitled by statute to have 75% of their costs for disasters reimbursed by the federal government. Anything above that is determined by a fixed formula or, if the formula’s requirements are not met, by the president. In the past, the White House generally approved what FEMA officials determined was appropriate based on those formulas, leaving the homeland security secretary to function largely as a rubber stamp, according to two sources familiar with the disaster approval process. But with the White House pushing to downsize FEMA’s role and encourage more states to bail themselves out, at least as of last week, the White House had repeatedly pushed back against FEMA’s recommendations, according to one of the sources familiar with Noem’s recent actions. And Noem had gotten involved. Asked for comment on this article, McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said in a statement: “This is a sad attempt by the mainstream media to drive a false narrative that there is daylight between President Trump and Secretary Noem. To the media’s chagrin, there’s not. Secretary Noem has been implementing President Trump’s vision for the future of FEMA to shift it away from a bloated, DC-centric bureaucracy that has let down the American people.”

USA Today [5/30/2025 12:11 AM, Michael Loria, 75552K] reports as many as 17,000 people in Canada are being evacuated as active wildfires have charred hundreds of thousands of acres in the country, officials said, threatening to waft heavy smoke over the northern United States. Rising heat, winds, and dry air sparked blazes in the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Manitoba, according to the country’s Department of Natural Resources. Residents in the United States are expected to face poor air quality from the fires as soon as May 30. "This is a very serious situation," Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe said at a news conference on May 29. "I do fear things are going to deteriorate with the weather we have ahead of us in the days ahead.” Active blazes have burned 696,000 acres in Saskatchewan and 173,000 acres in Manitoba, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. A total of nearly 1.5 million acres have burned across the two provinces so far this year, according to the fire center. Moe said he expected the fires to worsen until a two or three-day rainfall event. Smoke from the blazes is expected to fall heavily over Midwestern states, including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan, and cut across the country to reach the Carolinas by May 31, according to FireSmoke Canada, a team of forecasters at the University of British Columbia. Canadian authorities have called in the military to help with the "sheer scale" of the evacuations, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew said at a news conference. "We’re talking about hours instead of days to move this amount of people," said Kinew, adding it was the largest evacuation "seen in most people’s living memory.” The two provinces have declared a state of emergency. The blazes also stretch into the province of Ontario, where 130,000 acres have burned. The smoke drifting over the United States from the Canadian blazes comes after American cities in the Northeast, Midwest, and Plains encountered unhealthy air quality due to the nightmarish wildfires in Canada in 2023. Over 6,000 blazes left more than 37 million acres burned, an area larger than England, according to Canada’s natural resources department. The American Lung Association’s 2025 "State of the Air Report" found that a growing number of Americans were living with poor air quality due to the Canadian fires, even as other means of pollution were reduced. The report was based on data through 2023. As of May 29, 1,500 blazes have charred 1.8 million acres across Canada. Smoke from the blazes is expected to waft over large parts of the United States starting in the Midwest, according to forecasters at FireSmoke Canada. Minnesota began feeling the impact of the blazes on May 29, according to the state’s Pollution Control Agency. Upper Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were expected to experience poor air quality by the evening. Smoke is expected to hit the Ohio Valley on May 30 and the Carolinas by the early hours of Saturday. Minnesota authorities warned of unhealthy levels of exposure to fine particles from the wildfires. Symptoms include everything from shortness of breath to heart attack and stroke.

CNN [5/29/2025 2:47 PM, Andrew Freedman, 21433K] reports massive wildfires burning out of control in western and central Canada are forcing thousands to flee as dire forecasts for the country’s fire season come to fruition. The intensifying blazes are also beginning to send hazardous smoke toward major cities in the United States. The premiers of Manitoba and Saskatchewan have declared states of emergency and much of Canada, from the Northwest Territories and Alberta to Quebec, are at "extreme" risk of wildfires on Thursday—the highest level on Environment Canada’s fire risk scale. There are just over 160 wildfires burning across Canada as of Thursday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center, and about half are uncontrolled. The country raised its National Preparedness Level to level 5 of 5 on Thursday, which is unusually high for this early in the fire season. Last year, Canada didn’t reach that level until July 15. In Manitoba, around 17,000 people are under evacuation orders, including the city of Flin Flon, Pimicikamak Cree Nation and the northern community of Cross Lake, along with Mathias Colomb Cree Nation, according to CNN’s Canadian news partner CBC News. The province’s state of emergency will remain in effect for a month and may be extended if conditions warrant, said Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew. "This is a moment of fear and uncertainty. This is a moment of concern," Kinew said, acknowledging this is the largest evacuation order in "in most people’s living memory.” "But I want to tell you that your fellow Manitobans will welcome you. We will get through this difficult period, and we’ll get through this trying period the way that we always do: by working together.” Wildfires have forced thousands of evacuations in neighboring Saskatchewan as well, CBC reported, and Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe declared a 30-day provincial emergency Thursday. It followed calls from First Nations leaders to take that step, noting "deep concerns" over resources to battle the fires. "It’s a very serious situation that we’re faced with in Saskatchewan. We do need some rainfall and we need that sooner rather than later," Moe said at a news conference.

CBS Chicago [5/29/2025 7:14 PM, Lauren Victory, 51860K] reports leaders in the Canadian Province of Manitoba have issued a state of emergency as wildfires continue to rage there, forcing thousands of people to evacuate. The inferno will impact the Chicago area too, with smoke descending downtown as soon as Friday. As anyone who was around two years ago will remember, this is not the first time a hazy, unhealthy back of air engulfed and choked Chicago. The fire is more than 1,300 miles away — almost a 24-hour drive — and in a different country. But CBS News Chicago Meteorologist David Yeomans explained why the smoke from what is burning in Manitoba will be down Chicago’s way very soon. In short, all the air will be flowing right toward Chicago from Canada. "[The] northwest wind going to drive the smoke right into our area," Yeomans said, "possibly for three days.” Smoky Chicago skies caused major health concerns multiple times in the summer of 2023. The city made national headlines in late June for having the worst air quality in the world. On one June day, several places in Cook County registered an AQI, or air quality index, of above 200 — considered "very unhealthy" by the Environmental Protection Agency. At one point on Tuesday, June 27, Chicago was at level 228. Beaches were closed and events were canceled around the Chicago area due to the smoke in the air that month.

San Francisco Chronicle [5/29/2025 5:56 PM, J.D. Morris, 4120K] reports the Trump administration could claw back about $140 million in federal funding that San Francisco already received to cover costs the city incurred during the pandemic, the Chronicle has learned. San Francisco spent well more than $400 million to shelter homeless people in hotels after COVID-19 began spreading five years ago. After the city applied for reimbursement, the Federal Emergency Management Agency under former President Joe Biden sent $148 million — and the city was expecting even more money. But this week, San Francisco officials learned that FEMA has indicated it now believes the city is entitled to be reimbursed for just $7 million of the total amount spent on the shelter-in-place hotels. While FEMA hasn’t officially requested any money back, city officials believe that determination lays the groundwork for the agency to seek a $141 million refund from the amount it already paid the city. San Francisco already spent the money. And the city is in a dire financial situation, with Mayor Daniel Lurie working to close a roughly $800 million shortfall in his inaugural budget proposal expected to be announced Friday. It’s not clear how FEMA arrived at its determination. FEMA’s decision, which San Francisco is expected to appeal, represents one of the largest direct hits the Trump Administration has tried to take against the city this year.

Tampa Free Press [5/29/2025 3:56 PM, Leslie Bolden, 100K] reports a new report concerning the aftermath of the August 2023 Lahaina, Hawaii, fires has ignited fierce criticism of the Biden Administration’s handling of the disaster, with a statement from an entity identifying as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) highlighting claims of severe survivor hardship and exploitation. The report, attributed to the Filipino-Hawaiian advocacy group Tagnawa, alleges that conditions for survivors were “appalling and inhumane.” Among its most shocking assertions is that one in six survivors was allegedly forced to engage in sexual acts in exchange for basic necessities such as food and housing. The Tagnawa report also claims that some women felt compelled to sleep in their cars due to safety concerns in FEMA-coordinated shelters. In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin condemned the findings, characterizing the situation as “FEMA’s horrific neglect and mismanagement under the Biden Administration.” “1 in 6 survivors of the Lahaina Fires were forced to engage in sexual acts in exchange for basic necessities like food and housing,” McLaughlin stated. “These women — our fellow American citizens — were so desperate for food that they had to resort to such extreme measures just to feed themselves in our own country. That’s unacceptable. That is un-American." McLaughlin’s statement further accused the Biden Administration and Homeland Security Secretary Mayorkas of misallocating FEMA funds. “While American citizens from Hawaii to North Carolina suffered, Biden and Mayorkas used FEMA as a piggy bank, spending hundreds of millions of American taxpayer dollars to housing illegal aliens, including at the Roosevelt Hotel that served as a Tren de Aragua base of operations and was used to shelter Laken Riley’s killer,” she alleged. The statement described these issues as “yet another outrageous example of the gross mismanagement and poor treatment of Americans under the prior administration,” and concluded with an assurance that, “This will never happen again under the leadership of President Trump and Secretary Noem.”

FOX News [5/29/2025 6:44 PM, Brooke Singman, 46878K] reports FBI Director Kash Patel said he has been forced to divert agents to investigate "copycats" of potential threats to President Donald Trump as a result of former FBI Director James Comey’s "86 47" social media post. Bureau officials told Fox News Digital it needs to be focused on "public safety, not cleaning up after political stunts.” Patel sat down for an interview with Fox News’ Bret Baier and revealed that the FBI has had to investigate "copycats" because of Comey’s "beachside venture.” "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 he did it?" Patel said. "That’s what I’m having to deal with every single day, and that’s what I’m having to pull my agents and analysts off because he thought it was funny to go out there and make a political statement," he continued. An FBI official told Fox News Digital that they cannot disclose the number of "copycat" incidents due to ongoing investigations but described the number to Fox News Digital as "significant.” Comey met with Secret Service officials in Washington this month for an interview about his "86 47" Instagram post, two sources briefed on the meeting told Fox News. Comey is under investigation for the now-deleted Instagram post that showed seashells arranged on a beach to read "86 47.” "What people need to understand is that every copycat threat forces the FBI to divert time, agents and resources; resources that should be spent saving lives and taking criminals and deadly drugs off our streets," an FBI official told Fox News Digital. "This kind of chaos was normalized by someone who knows better, and the director reminds lawmakers, especially in places like California and New York that have defended Comey, that we should be focused on public safety, not cleaning up after political stunts.”

Washington Times [5/29/2025 1:14 PM, Kerry Picket, 2106K] reports FBI Director Kash Patel said that soon-to-be-revealed information about bureau sources at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, will "surprise" and "shock" people. Mr. Patel said the FBI is investigating a set of cases that includes aspects of the Capitol breach by President Trump’s supporters. "People have had questions about Jan. 6 and whether or not there were FBI sources, not agent sources, on the ground during Jan. 6," Mr. Patel said on Fox News. "I told you I would get you the definitive answer to that, and we have, and we are in the process of working with our partners to divulge that information," he said. "I will tell you this: The answer to that question will surprise and shock people, because of what past FBI leaders have said about it.” Mr. Patel’s immediate predecessor, Christopher Wray, previously told Congress that FBI confidential human sources were around the Capitol during the riot, but he refused to elaborate to lawmakers about who they were and why they were there. Mr. Patel said that Mr. Wray’s admission was a "piece of the truth.” "Why it took a ton of time for questioning in Congress for the director to get to that point is what I’m trying to eliminate from the FBI," Mr. Patel said. "If Congress asks you a question under oath, whether or not there were sources in and around Jan. 6 at the Capitol, you, as the director of the FBI, need to know that and not deflect and give a D.C. answer.” The Washington Times first reported in July 2023 that an FBI whistleblower told the House Judiciary Committee that at least 25 FBI confidential human sources or informants were at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. However, according to the whistleblower’s disclosure to Congress, their presence there was considered to be "problematic" by agency leadership, and bureau personnel were ordered not to acknowledge that the informants were there.

Axios [5/29/2025 5:49 PM, Cuneyt Dil, 13599K] reports D.C. is gearing up for another month of big events and high security, starting with WorldPride festivities. Police are beefing up patrols for the special events in June, including a parade for WorldPride, the U.S. Army’s June 14 parade, and FIFA Club World Cup matches. There are no credible threats to WorldPride, which kicked off May 17 but heats up this weekend with Shakira’s welcome concert at Nats Park, said D.C. police chief Pamela Smith at a press conference on Thursday. Organizers expect over a million visitors in D.C. for the celebration that runs through June 8. LGBTQ+ groups have published travel advisories for transgender and non-binary travelers to the U.S. due to Trump administration policies. Security is being upped with new fencing. Meanwhile, free tickets are available for the U.S. Army’s 250th anniversary parade on June 14. More security and road closure details are expected to be announced in the coming days for the evening parade on Constitution Avenue. The Secret Service is taking the lead, marking it a National Special Security Event, which puts it on par with Inauguration Day. Later in the month, Audi Field will host three FIFA Club World Cup games.

NewsNation [5/29/2025 4:10 PM, Sierra Campbell, 5801K] reports when the Titan submersible imploded, no survivors were found. Now, nearly two years later, the U.S. Coast Guard has revealed that they found items that survived the implosion. The U.S. Coast Guard found a still-intact ink pen and other items while going through the remains of the Titan submersible. Investigators also found business cards, Titanic-themed stickers, remnants of clothing and human remains. All of those items have been cataloged by the Coast Guard’s Marine Board of Investigation.

CBS Austin [5/29/2025 6:31 PM, Skyler Shepard, 558K] reports over 28,500 pounds of cocaine was offloaded in South Florida on Thursday. This substantial seizure came after four separate interceptions in the Eastern Pacific Ocean during a recent patrol, according to the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG). The operations were conducted by the crew of the Thetis, a 270-foot medium endurance cutter based in Key West, with assistance from an MH-65 Dolphin helicopter crew from the Helicopter Interdiction Tactical Squadron (HITRON) in Jacksonville, the news release stated. The USCG said the drug interceptions occurred over the span of 10 days. On May 3, a maritime patrol aircraft identified two suspicious vessels 170 miles west of Mexico. The Thetis interdicted both, seizing 4,630 pounds of cocaine, with 4,608 pounds later transferred to Ecuadorian authorities for prosecution, according to the USCG. Then on May 5, a the USCG said its crews spotted a floating bale field 475 miles southwest of Colima, Mexico. The Thetis recovered 9,993 pounds of cocaine. On May 6, two vessels were observed dumping bales overboard 575 miles southwest of Acapulco. Despite losing visual contact due to a storm, the crew recovered 14,559 pounds of cocaine from three bale fields, according to the news release. Lastly, on May 10, another bale field was discovered 660 miles south of Acapulco, yielding 3,984 pounds of cocaine, the USCG stated. In total, the Coast Guard said the drugs were valued at around $211.3 million.

Reported similarly:
CBS Miami [5/29/2025 10:46 PM, Mauricio Maldonado, 51860K] Video: HERE

USA Today [5/29/2025 12:22 PM, Saleen Martin, 32092K] reports searchers have found a capsized boat along with human remains after a family went missing and was last seen in Alaska last year, officials have confirmed. 42-year-old David Maynard of Waco, Texas was on a boat with his wife, 37-year-old Mary, as well as their children, 11-year-old Colton and 8-year-old Brantley, when they went missing on Aug. 3, according to the Alaska Department of Public Safety, or DPS. They were boating in the Kachemak Bay near Homer, Alaska, southwest of Anchorage, DPS said. The U.S. Coast Guard searched for the family but eventually suspended the search. "The decision to suspend a search is never easy and involves the careful consideration of many factors including environmental conditions and search operations," U.S. Coast Guard Petty Officer Shannon Kerney previously told USA TODAY. "Our deepest condolences go out to the family, friends, and loved ones of the missing people during this unimaginably difficult time.” According to DPS, the Alaska Dive, Search, Rescue, and Recovery Team tried to use sonar equipment to find the boat the family was on, but found nothing initially. The family was on a 28-foot aluminum boat with four family members when the boat capsized around 7 p.m. 16 miles west of the Homer Spit, reported television station KCEN-TV and newspaper the Anchorage Daily News. In October, a few months after their disappearance, an Alaska jury declared the family of four dead, reported the Anchorage Daily News. In early May, the group found a boat in 180 feet of water. The team used a remotely operated vehicle to identify it as the missing boat the family was on; also on the boat were "potential human remains," DPS said. On May 27 and May 28, volunteers from Alaska Dive Search, Rescue, and Recovery Team and Alaska Wildlife Troopers took part in a diving operation and recovered three sets of remains from the sunken boat. The remains were taken to the state medical examiner’s office for positive identification and autopsies. Alaska Dive Search, Rescue, and Recovery Team said on social media that the team is searching for additional remains. "Identification of the remains will be released by DPS once the medical examiner completes their work," the team wrote.

Reported similarly:
ABC News [5/29/2025 12:25 PM, Nadine El-Bawab, 31733K]

AP [5/29/2025 12:00 PM, Staff, 56000K] reports Cybercrime is predicted to cost the world $10.5 trillion USD in 2025, according to the ‘ 2025 Official Cybercrime Report ‘ from Cybersecurity Ventures. If it were measured as a country, then cybercrime would be the world’s third largest economy after the U.S. and China. This represents the greatest transfer of economic wealth in history, risks the incentives for innovation and investment, is exponentially larger than the damage inflicted from natural disasters in a year, and will be more profitable than the global trade of all major illegal drugs combined. Global cybercriminal activity has grown so large that, after years of rapid expansion, Cybersecurity Ventures believes the sector’s sheer economic weight will see growth plateau at 2.5 percent annually through 2031, at which point cybercrime will cost the world $12.2 trillion annually. “Cybercrime costs include damage and destruction of data, stolen money, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal and financial data, embezzlement, fraud, post-attack disruption to the normal course of business, forensic investigation, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, reputational harm, legal costs, and potentially, regulatory fines, plus other factors” said Steve Morgan, founder of Cybersecurity Ventures. Cybercriminals have proved resourceful in adapting to the changing enforcement environment, however: “Based on the inconsistent laws and difficulty in prosecuting, cybercrime unfortunately is easy to commit and very hard, if not impossible, to stop,” said Dr. Eric Cole, a former CIA hacker and founder of cybersecurity consultancy Secure Anchor, sponsor of the report.

New York Times [5/29/2025 9:51 AM, Jenny Gross,138952K] reports Victoria’s Secret’s website remained offline on Thursday, days after the lingerie company was hit by a cyberattack that has disrupted its online sales and sent its stock price lower. The company said that it had taken its website and some in-store services down as a precaution, with teams working around the clock to restore operations. Its physical stores remained open. As of Thursday morning, Victoria’s Secret’s share price had fallen 8 percent since Tuesday. The company did not confirm when the security incident took place, but shoppers reported seeing effects of the outage on social media earlier this week. It was unclear who perpetrated the attack on Victoria’s Secret, which is based in Reynoldsburg, Ohio. The cyberattack was the latest example of a high-profile digital breach at a major retailer, raising questions about companies’ preparedness and the security of customer data. Earlier this month, Marks & Spencer, the large British retailer, was hit by a cyberattack that left the company unable to process online orders for weeks. The company told customers that some personal customer data had been taken, though not usable card or payment details or account passwords. It said there was no evidence that the data had been shared, but said it was prompting customers to change their passwords regardless.

Axios [5/29/2025 4:08 PM, Sam Sabin, 13599K] reports SentinelOne says its services have been restored following an hours-long outage today that took down its commercial customer consoles — the interface security teams use to monitor and manage protections across their networks. Without console access, teams were effectively flying blind — unable to view threat telemetry, assess incidents in progress, or take manual response actions. While security teams didn’t have visibility, the products continued working in the background to block malicious activity. Security teams just couldn’t see what was being blocked or flagged during the outage. One of SentinelOne’s biggest competitors — CrowdStrike — suffered a major global outage last summer that knocked about 8.5 million Windows devices offline. SentinelOne has not yet disclosed the root cause of Thursday’s outage, but said its early internal data suggests it was not caused by a malicious cyberattack. "We apologize for the inconvenience," the company wrote in a blog post Thursday during the outages. The company has also been in the spotlight in Washington this year after President Trump signed a memo calling for an investigation into former CISA Director Chris Krebs, who at the time was a top executive at SentinelOne.

Washington Times [5/29/2025 8:02 AM, Vaughn Cockayne, 2106K] reports Google says a Chinese-backed hacking group exploited Google Calendar to infect government agencies with malware. Google Threat Intelligence explained Wednesday in a blog post that its researchers discovered the suspicious activity in October. They found an exploited U.S. government website used to host malware, dubbed "TOUGHPROGRESS" by the company. Google says the malware was ultimately delivered through spear-phishing emails containing bogus files. Google asserted with "high confidence" that the China-based hacking group APT41 was behind the malware operation.

FOX News [5/29/2025 6:57 PM, Louis Casiano and Liz Friden, 46878K] reports a top United States military general warned Thursday that terror groups in Africa are ramping up their ability to conduct attacks in the U.S. Gen. Michael Langley, the four-star Marine General who leads U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), said the Sahel region of the continent is now the "flashpoint of prolonged conflict and growing instability. It is the epicenter of terrorism on the globe.” Several terror groups have expanded drastically in the last three years. Al-Qaeda in the Lands of the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, is three times the size it was in 2022, he said, and has spread across Mali, Burkina Faso, and parts of Niger, which the U.S. military pulled out of last year. Jama’at Nasr al-Islam wal-Muslimin, a faction affiliated with Al-Qaeda, is now four times the size it was in 2022, expanding mainly in Burkina Faso. "We’re keeping a good eye on this because they could have the capacity to attack the homeland," Langley said in a call with reporters. "Throughout my travels across West Africa and through dialog here at the conference, the concerns shared by my peers match my own," he added. "One of the terrorist’s key goals now is access to the west coast of Africa. If they gain access to the vast coastline, they can diversify their revenue streams and evolve their tactics, more easily exporting terrorism to American shores.” He noted that the terror groups engage in illicit activity like smuggling, human trafficking and arms trading, which fund their nefarious actions and destabilize the region.

CBS Philadelphia [5/29/2025 5:40 PM, Staff, 51860K] Video: HERE reports police believe five guns were fired in the incident late Monday night at Lemon Hill in the city’s Fairmount Park, Deputy Police Commissioner Frank Vanore told CBS News Philadelphia on Thursday.

AP [5/29/2025 10:25 AM, Staff, 56000K] reports a Maryland teenager will serve at least a year in prison after being found guilty of threatening mass violence, including in a written account of a character who plans a school shooting. The teen was sentenced Wednesday to 10 years in prison with all but one year suspended, along with five years of supervised probation upon release, according to the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office. During the probation period, the teen will have to come to court every two weeks, receive mental health treatment, avoid two school campuses and stay off the chatting app Discord. The 19-year-old was arrested last year after investigators reviewed writings and other material, including internet searches and messages. The defendant was a high school student at the time. The investigation began after a person contacted police in the Baltimore area, saying he met the teen in a psychiatric facility. The person alerted authorities to the teen’s writings, which were labeled a fictional account by their author, according to court records. But investigators wrote that they believed the document was based on the teen’s life, not entirely fictional. The writings, which the teen called a memoir, spanned 129 pages and included an account of a character who plans a school shooting but ultimately is taken into law enforcement custody and then receives psychiatric treatment, according to police.

Washington Post [5/29/2025 8:17 PM, Maegan Vazquez, 32099K] reports Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) said Thursday that President Donald Trump would be breaking a promise if he went through with pardoning the two men who were convicted of plotting to kidnap her, claiming that he pledged not to do so during a conversation last month. In 2022, Barry Croft Jr. and Adam Fox were convicted of plotting to kidnap Whitmer in 2020 in one of the highest-profile domestic terrorism cases in recent memory. Prosecutors cast the men as violent anti-government extremists who planned to kidnap the governor from her vacation home over what they saw as overly restrictive pandemic policies, detonate a bridge to disrupt responding officers and ignite a civil war ahead of the 2020 election. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters that he would "take a look at" pardoning the men, adding, "I did watch the trial. It looked to me like somewhat of a railroad job.” Responding to Trump’s comments, Whitmer told Michigan Public Radio, "I talked to the president about a month ago and he asked me how I’d feel about this, and I said, ‘I think it would be the wrong decision.’. "And he said, ‘Okay, I’ll drop it,’" she added. When asked if she thinks Trump is serious about the potential pardons, Whitmer said that wasn’t clear. "When I talked to him before, we had a thoughtful conversation about it, and he said he’d drop it. So, I’m not sure what to make of this new revelation," she said in Thursday’s interview. The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Whitmer, who pointed out that she was one of the first politicians to condemn the assassination attempt Trump faced at a 2024 rally in Pennsylvania, said she would make her thoughts on the issue known to the White House over the weekend. Federal and state officials originally charged multiple people in the plot against Whitmer, arresting the men in an October 2020 sting that involved the use of informants and undercover FBI agents. The officers embedded with the men, who were associates of a militia group known as the Wolverine Watchmen. Among the six men who faced federal charges, two men — Ty Garbin and Kaleb Franks — pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors ahead of an initial trial. In that trial, the jury could not reach a unanimous decision on Croft and Fox but acquitted two other alleged co-conspirators, Daniel Harris and Brandon Caserta. In a second federal trial, Croft and Fox were convicted on two charges of conspiracy — one related to the kidnapping scheme and another to obtain and use a weapon of mass destruction. Croft also was convicted on another explosives charge.

CBS News [5/29/2025 11:22 PM, Charlie De Mar, 51860K] reports a U.S. Navy sailor was arrested in Illinois Thursday as the suspect in a mass shooting over Memorial Day weekend in South Carolina that wounded at least 10 people. Shawon Shamarion Williams, 19, was arrested by the Naval Criminal Investigative Service, or NCIS, and was booked into the Lake County Jail north of Chicago. The Navy sailor is assigned to Naval Station Great Lakes near North Chicago. Cellphone video shows the chaotic shooting scene from Memorial Day weekend. Ten people were shot as they got off a boat in Little River, South Carolina — a community near the North Carolina state line. Williams was taken into custody Thursday afternoon in Lake County, Illinois, Cmdr. Jessica L. McNulty, U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery spokeswoman, confirmed. Williams was a hull maintenance technician seaman, assigned to Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Great Lakes, McNulty said. NCIS transferred custody of Williams to local authorities, McNulty said. Police in South Carolina said Williams is expected to be charged with multiple counts of attempted murder and possession of a weapon during a violent crime. More people could be arrested in the case, police added. "We got shot coming off the boat," shooting victim Jeremy Evans said. "We were on the pier.” Evans was shot in the leg. He posted video of his recovery, and responded to the arrest Thursday by calling for justice. "When I got hit, I took my shorts off and wrapped it around my wound," said Evans. "We were involved in a mass shooting. Ten of us got sprayed on this deck.” Police said a private charter boat had just docked when a quarrel led to the shooting. "He started shooting and running backwards," Evans said. Williams was booked in the Lake County Jail on a fugitive of justice charge. He will appear in court Friday morning, where the extradition process is expected to begin.

New York Times [5/30/2025 3:18 AM, Charlie Savage and Alan Feuer, 330K] 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 Venezuela’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.

Reuters [5/29/2025 11:10 AM, Horacio Soria and Juan Bustamante, 51390K] reports Argentina’s security minister said on Thursday that 12 suspects were arrested for criminal acts linked to the Tren de Aragua gang, a group that the country classifies as a terrorist organization. "It is a highly dangerous gang and today 12 of its members are in prison", Security Minister Patricia Bullrich said in a press conference in Buenos Aires. Bullrich also said the group had carried out attacks on supermarkets, butcher shops, hardware stores using firearms and explosives and caused fatalities. The U.S. State Department designated the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua as a global terrorist organization in February saying it posed a threat to U.S. national security, foreign policy and economic interests. Meanwhile, Venezuelan government has maintained that the gang, with prison origins, was destroyed during raids in 2023 and no longer exists.

Los Angeles Times [5/29/2025 12:13 PM, Shawn Donnan, Erik Larson and Laura Curtis, 14672K] reports President Trump’s tariff strategy has been thrown into turmoil after a U.S. court issued a rare rebuke blocking many of the import taxes he has threatened and imposed on other countries. In a ruling issued late Wednesday, a three-judge panel for the U.S. Court of International Trade declared that the Trump administration had wrongly invoked a 1977 law in imposing his "Liberation Day" tariffs on dozens of countries and they were therefore illegal. It also extended that ruling to previous tariffs levied on Canada, Mexico and China over the security of the U.S. border and trafficking in fentanyl. On Thursday, a federal appeals court allowed the Trump administration to continue collecting tariffs temporarily, pausing the trade court’s ruling "until further notice" while it considers motions in the case. The matter could end up in front of the Supreme Court. The Court of International Trade ruling doesn’t affect Trump’s first-term levies on many imports from China or sectoral duties planned or already imposed on goods including steel, which are based on a different legal foundation that the Trump administration may now be forced to make more use of to pursue its tariff campaign. If the trade court decision holds, it would eliminate new 30% U.S. tariffs on imports from China, 25% tariffs on goods from Canada and Mexico and 10% duties on most other goods entering the U.S. Those tariffs and the prospect of retaliatory ones have been seen as a significant drag on U.S. and global growth and eliminating them — even temporarily — would improve prospects for the world’s major economies. A White House spokesperson dismissed the ruling as one made by "unelected judges" who should not have the power "to decide how to properly address a national emergency." Trump has invoked national emergencies as diverse as the U.S. trade deficit and overdose deaths to justify many of his tariffs. "Foreign countries’ nonreciprocal treatment of the United States has fueled America’s historic and persistent trade deficits," White House spokesman Kush Desai said in a statement. "These deficits have created a national emergency that has decimated American communities, left our workers behind, and weakened our defense industrial base — facts that the court did not dispute.” If the ruling isn’t reversed or ignored, one of the consequences could be greater fiscal concerns at a time when bond markets are questioning the trajectory of the U.S.’s mounting debt load. The Trump administration has been citing increased tariff revenues as a way to offset tax cuts in his "Big Beautiful Bill" now before Congress, which is estimated to cost $3.8 trillion over the next decade.

Wall Street Journal [5/29/2025 9:11 PM, Jan Wolfe and Alex Leary, 646K] reports a federal appeals court has temporarily put on hold a ruling that voided President Trump’s tariffs while it considers the administration’s challenge to the lower-court decision. In a brief order Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit said it was pausing Wednesday’s decision from the U.S. Court of International Trade until it can hear further legal arguments. The order, known as an administrative stay, didn’t rule on the merits of the litigation. Administrative stays are common in emergency appeals. The Federal Circuit, an intermediate appeals court in Washington, D.C., signaled it was prepared to move swiftly on the case, as the Trump administration had urged it to do. It asked a group of companies that challenged the tariffs to file a brief before June 5 laying out their arguments, and directed the Justice Department to reply by June 9. The order indicates the appeal will be heard by the full court, with 11 active judges participating. The appeals court’s move came as the Trump administration tried to secure a stay on the tariff ruling, which Justice Department lawyers said was “rife with legal error and upends President Trump’s efforts to eliminate our exploding trade deficit and reorient the global economy on an equal footing,” according to a filing with the Federal Circuit earlier on Thursday. Lawyers for the administration had asked the appeals court to step in on an emergency basis. If not, they said they were prepared to ask the Supreme Court to intervene, “to avoid the irreparable national-security and economic harms at stake.” The administration’s urgency underscores the stakes in the legal battle over tariffs for Trump’s sweeping trade agenda. Since taking office, the president has wielded tariffs as leverage in hopes of bolstering the U.S. economy and manufacturing base, bringing other countries to the table to negotiate more favorable trade deals and pursuing other national-security policies. Trump lashed out at the Court of International Trade panel that issued the decision—which included a judge he appointed during his first term, Timothy Reif—in a Truth Social post on Thursday night. “How is it possible for them to have potentially done such damage to the United States of America?” he wrote. “Is it purely a hatred of ‘TRUMP’? What other reason could it be?” “Hopefully, the Supreme Court will reverse this horrible, Country threatening decision, QUICKLY and DECISIVELY,” he added.

Washington Post [5/29/2025 7:47 PM, David J. Lynch, 32099K] reports a pair of courtroom defeats has blown a hole in President Donald Trump’s plan to use historically high tariffs to reshape global trade, raise hundreds of billions of dollars in new tax revenue and boost the fortunes of domestic manufacturers. Late Thursday, the administration celebrated a legal win, when a federal appeals court paused implementation of one of the court judgments and allowed the government to continue collecting the tariffs at issue. The White House may yet be able to prevail in a protracted legal struggle over the president’s favorite trade war weapon, an emergency powers act that dates to the Carter administration. But for now, officials are battling on multiple legal fronts to save his high-risk strategy while eyeing alternative ways of imposing sweeping import taxes if they fail. The twin courtroom setbacks show how Trump’s thirst for unilateral action and embrace of a maximalist legal strategy backfired, leading to a federal court ruling Wednesday that he overreached in his use of emergency powers to tackle chronic problems such as the trade deficit. More than four months into his term, Trump’s trade war strategy has led to a cul-de-sac of his own making. The administration can use other legal authorities to reimpose the tariffs, if its appeal fails. But that will take time. The president has spent four months charging headlong down a risky path and now may be forced to start over. The continuing uncertainty, meanwhile, has both diplomatic and commercial consequences. "If the Administration wants to pursue significant tariff changes, it will need to seek new authority from Congress or use other tariff-raising authorities. None of these statutes give the President the latitude in which he has operated in recent months," said John Veroneau, a former U.S. trade negotiator under President George W. Bush. "Since few members of Congress campaigned last year on raising tariffs, it seems highly unlikely that Congress would grant the president sweeping new authority to raise tariffs.” Trump’s second-term trade blitzkrieg, which he says is needed to protect the American working class from unfair foreign powers, has unnerved investors, cost U.S. businesses billions of dollars and left consumers fretting over renewed inflation. Still, White House officials on Thursday struck a confident pose, insisting that they would prevail with an appeal of the decision by the Court of International Trade, a specialized federal court in New York, which issued the first ruling rebuffing the president. Hours later, a federal appeals court granted their bid for a temporary stay, freezing the status quo while it considers the merits of the case.

FOX Business [5/29/2025 2:22 PM, Greg Norman, 9940K] reports the White House said the Trump administration is facing "another example of judicial overreach" after the U.S. Court of International Trade ruled Wednesday that President Donald Trump exceeded his authority with tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA). Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters that "America cannot function if President Trump or any other president, for that matter, has their sensitive, diplomatic or trade negotiations railroaded by activist judges. "President Trump is in the process of rebalancing America’s trading agreements with the entire world, bringing tens of billions of dollars in tariff revenues to our country, and finally ending the United States of America from being ripped off. These judges are threatening to undermine the credibility of the United States on the world stage," Leavitt said. "The administration has already filed an emergency motion for a stay pending appeal and an immediate administrative stay to strike down this egregious decision, but ultimately, the Supreme Court must put an end to this for the sake of our Constitution and our country," she added. The court said Wednesday that "The Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to ‘lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,’ and to ‘regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.’". "The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (‘IEEPA’) delegates these powers to the President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world," the court continued. "The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.” Leavitt said Thursday that "using his full and proper legal authority, President Trump imposed universal tariffs and reciprocal tariffs on Liberation Day to address the extraordinary threat to our national security and economy posed by large and persistent annual U.S goods trade deficits.” "President Trump correctly believes that America cannot function safely long term if we are unable to scale advanced domestic manufacture and capacity, have our own secure critical supply chains and our defense industrial base is dependent on foreign adversaries. Three judges of the U.S. Court of International Trade disagreed and brazenly abused their judicial power to usurp the authority of President Trump, to stop him from carrying out the mandate that the American people gave him," she added.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [5/29/2025 6:26 PM, Luke Broadwater, 138952K]

Bloomberg [5/29/2025 12:05 PM, Caroline Alexander, 19320K] reports senior White House officials downplayed the implications of a court ruling that blocked many of Donald Trump’s tariff measures, and expressed confidence about an appeal. “If anybody thinks this caught the administration by surprise, think again,” the US president’s trade adviser, Peter Navarro, said. “Nothing’s really changed.” The impact of the court ruling may indeed prove limited, two of Wall Street’s top investment banks cautioned, because other avenues to impose import duties can be taken. Trump’s power to “raise and escalate — it might be a little bit slower moving, but it is still there,” Michael Zezas, global head of fixed income and thematic research at Morgan Stanley, told Bloomberg TV. After weeks of back and forth, few traders or investors are willing to go all-in on the idea that tariffs will somehow disappear, something that became apparent today after the dollar gave up its earlier gains.

Roll Call [5/29/2025 8:04 PM, Ryan Tarinelli, 692K] reports the Trump administration on Thursday asked a federal appeals court to immediately block a lower court ruling that barred the United States from implementing tariffs involving dozens of countries. The government said in the filing that it plans to seek emergency relief from the Supreme Court on Friday if it doesn’t get "at least" interim relief from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. The administration’s emergency motion also slammed the lower court’s ruling as "unprecedented and legally indefensible," saying it upended the Trump administration’s efforts to "reorient the global economy on an equal footing.” "The injunction unilaterally disarms the United States in the face of the longstanding predatory trade practices of other countries — who, notwithstanding the injunction, remain free to impose punitive tariffs on American products," the administration argued in the filing. On Wednesday, 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.” Trump’s tariff decisions exceeded the authority given to him by Congress, the lower court found. The government in the emergency motion argued that the ruling threatens to "unwind" months of sensitive diplomatic negotiations and foreign policy decision-making at the expense of national security.

The Hill [5/29/2025 12:26 PM, Alex Gangitano, 5801K] reports that some tariffs on trading partners are set to remain in place following the sweeping ruling from the U.S. Court of International Trade that landed a huge blow to President Trump’s trade agenda. While the ruling declared that Trump’s "Liberation Day" tariffs, including "retaliatory" tariffs imposed on China and tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China aimed to stop the flow of fentanyl into the U.S., are all illegal, some were spared. Trump’s tariffs on specific products, which are in place on steel, aluminum and automobiles, were not struck down, largely because of the route the administration took to impose them. Trump leaned on a 1962 law, Section 232, that gave the president the power to take action when the Commerce secretary finds an import into the U.S. represents a threat to national security. Trump’s tariffs on steel and aluminum went into effect in March. The 25 percent tariff on aluminum represents a 15-point increase from the previous 10 percent levied on imports of the metal. The tariffs on steel have brought in nearly $1.3 billion in duties so far in fiscal 2025, which began from Oct. 1, 2024, and the tariffs on aluminum have brought in nearly $767 million so far, according to data from the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Trump’s tariffs on imported automobiles and auto parts went into effect this month after they were recently scaled back to spare foreign auto parts to avoid facing a double hit from the auto tariffs and his previously imposed import taxes on foreign metals. The tariffs on automobiles brought in nearly $1.2 billion in duties so far, according to the CBP.

ABC News [5/29/2025 9:21 AM, Beatrice Peterson and Luis Martinez, 31733K] reports Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard are leading a U.S. delegation to Singapore this week to attend the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia’s premier security conference, another signal of the Trump administration’s intensified focus on the Indo-Pacific region. Both Hegseth and Gabbard will attend the 22nd annual conference, hosted by the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which this year will have more than 550 delegates from 40 nations, including military, intelligence, business and security leaders, from across the Asia-Pacific, Europe and North America. Hegseth is expected to deliver a major speech to the conference highlighting the Trump administration’s national security focus on China. "He’ll provide an honest overview of the threat China poses to the region, underscore that our goal is to prevent war by establishing a credible shield of deterrence with our unmatched network of Allies and partners," said a senior U.S. defense official. "And he’ll footstomp that this network is only strong if our allies and partners invest in their own defenses. It must be a two-way street.” Gabbard is expected to "discuss major security challenges" with leaders, a source familiar with Gabbard’s plans told ABC News. This year’s U.S. delegation includes higher-level representation than in previous years, said the source. Both Hegseth and Gabbard are making their second visit to Asia seemingly reinforcing the Trump administration’s renewed focus on the region.

The Hill [5/29/2025 12:24 PM, Ashleigh Fields, 18649K] reports that attorneys general from 16 states filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Trump administration’s cuts to research grants funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Earlier this month, the NSF said it would no longer reimburse indirect costs for research exceeding 15 percent. The move comes after an April announcement that struck more than $200 million in funds for studies exploring diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in addition to misinformation. The coalition of states says that a federal law requires the NSF to increase the "participation of women and underrepresented minorities" in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). "This administration’s attacks on basic science and essential efforts to ensure diversity in STEM will weaken our economy and our national security," New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) said in a statement regarding the lawsuit. "Putting politics over science will only set our country back, and I will continue to fight to protect critical scientific research and education," she added. California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Washington are each listed as plaintiffs in the legal battle. The NSF did not immediately respond to The Hill’s request for comment on the legal challenge.

Axios [5/29/2025 2:01 PM, Brady Dale, 13599K] reports since it passed out of the Banking Committee in March, Sen. Bill Hagerty’s legislation on issuing stablecoins now specifically has language addressing conflicts of interest and national security protections. Stablecoin legislation in the Senate has addressed many of the Senate Democrats’ most pressing concerns, but still carries one notable exception. The revised version of the GENIUS Act does more to constrain stablecoin issuers to protect consumers, undermine criminal activity and secure the banking system. "GENIUS now in its current form is more prescriptive. Just in terms of specific requirements," James Rathmell, general counsel of Haun Ventures, tells Axios. The original legislation that cleared banking in March (S. 394) was a slimmer bill, one that primarily dealt with issuance. The majority leader exercised a special rule to let Hagerty bring a new version to the floor, S. 1582. The Senate agreed to a motion to proceed on the bill, by a vote of 69-31.

Washington Times [5/29/2025 10:41 AM, Mike Glenn, 2106K] reports the island of Guam is a critical element of the Defense Department’s increased focus on the Indo-Pacific region, but a lack of planning threatens to hobble the deployment of a new missile​ defense system on the island, according to a new government assessment. The U.S. territory is home to more than 170,000 Americans and hosts several important military installations. Guam is also closer to China than it is to Hawaii. The Pentagon is developing the Guam Defense System (GDS) to protect the island from missile attacks, particularly from China and North Korea. It will include missiles, interceptor batteries, command centers and radar systems. As of March 2025, the GDS included six missile launchers and one radar system. The Pentagon is planning to deploy additional systems to the island. "But, it has yet to determine how many personnel are needed to operate the systems, when those personnel will be deployed, and more," the U.S. Government Accountability Office said in a recent report. The Defense Department "needs this information to, for example, ensure it has enough time to also build military housing and other supporting facilities.” The Army is leading the effort to establish the system on the island. However, the report said the service lacks a long-term strategy for integrating with other military services in Guam to coordinate Army construction and installation support required for the Guam Defense System and its personnel.

The Hill [5/29/2025 10:36 PM, Rachel Scully, 18649K] reports the White House and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) are looking into a reported attempt at impersonating White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, according to a Wall Street Journal report. People familiar with the message told the outlet that an unknown individual sent text messages and made phone calls to multiple notable Republicans and business executives while pretending to be President Trump’s chief of staff in recent weeks. "The White House takes the cybersecurity of all staff very seriously, and this matter continues to be investigated," a White House official said. Sources told the Journal that the FBI and the White House are investigating who is behind the calls and their goal. U.S. intelligence agencies have looked into the situation, the outlet noted. "The FBI takes all threats against the president, his staff, and our cybersecurity with the utmost seriousness," FBI Director Kash Patel said in a statement to the Journal. "Safeguarding our administration officials’ ability to securely communicate to accomplish the president’s mission is a top priority.” The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment. Wiles reportedly told associates that her phone was hacked, with people noting that the phone in question is her personal phone, though the calls and text messages reportedly didn’t come from Wiles’s phone number. It could not be determined how the impersonator got access to Wiles’s contacts. The voice on the other end of the phone calls reportedly sounded like Wiles, according to those who heard them. Government officials say it’s possible that the individual used artificial intelligence (AI) to imitate her voice, according to the Journals’ report. There were a few moments during the exchanges that raised red flags for some of the lawmakers, most notably that the impersonator asked questions about Trump that Wiles wouldn’t not have asked, as she would have already known the relevant information. In one reported example, the individual on the other end of the line asked for a cash transfer. In many cases, the Journal noted the impersonator used incorrect grammar and the messages were different than how Wiles usually communicates. Wiles reportedly warned her contacts about the impersonator, though some had already engaged with the individual before realizing it wasn’t Trump’s chief of staff, the Journal reported. It’s reportedly not the first time Wiles was suspected of being hacked. The Journal noted that during last year’s presidential campaign, Iranian operatives hacked into Wiles’s email account and were able to access information on Trump’s then-running mate, Vice President Vance.

Reported similarly:
Wall Street Journal [5/29/2025 8:34 PM, Josh Dawsey, 646K]

AP [5/29/2025 6:37 PM, Staff, 1611K] reports an information technology specialist for the Defense Intelligence Agency was charged Thursday with attempting to transmit classified information to a representative of a foreign government, the Justice Department said. Prosecutors say Nathan Vilas Laatsch, 28, of Alexandria, Virginia, was arrested at a location where he had arranged to deposit sensitive records to a person he thought was an official of a foreign government, but who was actually an undercover FBI agent. The identity of the country Laatsch thought he was in communication with was not disclosed, but the Justice Department described it as a friendly, or allied, nation. It was not immediately clear if Laatsch, who was set to make a court appearance Friday, had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf. The Justice Department said its investigation into Laatsch began in March after officials received a tip that he had offered to provide classified information to another nation. Laatsch wrote in his email that he "did not agree or align with the values of this administration" and was willing to transmit sensitive materials, including intelligence documents, to which he had access, prosecutors said. He was arrested Thursday at a prearranged location after making additional plans for a drop-off.

Reported similarly:
ABC News [5/29/2025 9:11 PM, Alexander Mallin, 31733K]

NBC News [5/30/2025 1:08 AM, Evelyn Cheng, 44540K] reports U.S.-China trade talks "are a bit stalled," requiring the two countries’ leaders to speak directly, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox News in an interview Thursday local time. "I believe that we will be having more talks with them in the next few weeks," he said, adding that there may be a call between the two countries’ leaders "at some point.” After a rapid escalation in trade tensions last month, Bessent helped the world’s two largest economies reach a breakthrough agreement in Switzerland on May 12. The countries agreed to roll back recent tariff increases of more than 100% for 90 days, or until mid-August. Diplomatic officials from both sides had a call late last week. Still, the U.S. has pushed ahead with tech restrictions on Beijing, drawing its ire, while China has yet to significantly ease restrictions on rare earths, contrary to Washington’s expectations. "I think that given the magnitude of the talks, given the complexity, that this is going to require both leaders to weigh in with each other," Bessent said. "They have a very good relationship and I am confident that the Chinese will come to the table when President [Donald] Trump makes his [preferences] known.” Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping last spoke in January, just before the U.S. president was sworn in for his second term. While Trump has in recent weeks said he would like to speak with Xi, analysts expect China to agree to that only if there is certainty that there will be no surprises from the U.S. during the call. China has maintained communication with the U.S. since the agreement in Switzerland, Chinese Ministry of Commerce Spokesperson He Yongqian told reporters at a regular briefing Thursday. But regarding chip export controls, she said that "China again urges the U.S. to immediately correct its wrong practices ... and together safeguard the consensus reached at high-level talks in Geneva.” That’s according to a CNBC translation of her Mandarin-language remarks. When asked whether China would suspend rare earths export controls announced in early April, He did not respond directly. Restrictions on items that could have both military and civilian applications reflect international practice, as well as China’s position of "upholding world peace and regional stability," she said. This week, the Trump administration also announced it would start revoking visas for Chinese students. "The U.S. decision to revoke Chinese student visas is fully unjustified," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Thursday, according to an official English transcript. "It uses ideology and national security as pretext.”

Reported similarly:
Bloomberg [5/30/2025 5:04 AM, Richard Frost, 19320K]

Wall Street Journal [5/29/2025 3:01 PM, Michael R. Gordon, 646K] reports North Korea has supplied at least 100 ballistic missiles and more than 11,000 troops to Russia for its war against Ukraine, according to a new report issued Thursday by the U.S. and key allies that described the transfers as “flagrant violations” of United Nations resolutions. The missiles enabled Moscow to “increase its missile attacks against Ukrainian cities, including targeted strikes against critical civilian infrastructure,” according to the report. In return, Russia helped North Korea “to fund its military programs” and improve the accuracy of its ballistic missiles, it said. The report was prepared by the Multilateral Sanctions Monitoring Team, a group of 11 nations including the U.S. that have sought to document violations of U.N. Security Council sanctions imposed on North Korea in response to Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons and missile programs. The study paints a picture of extensive North Korea military support for Russia’s war effort, as Moscow has turned to the country and Iran to sustain what has become a bloody war of attrition with Kyiv. It comes as Ukraine has stepped up its appeals for continued European and U.S. military supplies, as support for Kyiv in the Trump administration has ebbed. The Russian Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to a request for comment.

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