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 [11/18/2025 3:02 AM, Andrew Jeong, 24149K] reports more than 130 people have been arrested in the first two days of the Department of Homeland Security’s immigration raids in Charlotte, the agency said Monday, in the latest Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration. In a news release, DHS said 44 of those people, who are suspected of being in the United States illegally, had criminal records that ranged from driving under the influence to assault with a dangerous weapon. While the release provided information about 11 of those arrested, the agency could not be immediately reached for comment on questions about the identities of the other people arrested or what charges they faced. Mayor Li Vyles (D) said in a Monday social media post that residents had expressed “concern, fear, and uncertainty” in response to the increased presence of Border Patrol operations in Charlotte. “First and foremost, the rights and constitutional protections of every person in Charlotte — regardless of immigration status — must be upheld,” said Vyles, who was reelected earlier this month. She added that she was “deeply concerned” with videos of the operation that she had seen. The operation began Saturday in the latest Democratic-run city targeted in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Instead of troops, the administration is relying on law enforcement from agencies under Homeland Security purview. NewsNation [11/17/2025 8:13 PM, Rob Taub, Ali Bradley, 8017K] reports two hundred migrants have been arrested by the U.S. Border Patrol since the start of "Operation Charlotte’s Web" in North Carolina this weekend, sources confirmed to NewsNation. The Department of Homeland Security says among those taken into custody are 44 migrants whose criminal records include aggravated assault, assault with a dangerous weapon, assault on a police officer, battery, driving under the influence and hit-and-run. Arrests also included two known gang members, DHS added. "There is absolutely no excuse to continue allowing criminal illegal aliens to terrorize our American communities," said a DHS spokesperson. "These are violent assailants, gang members and repeat offenders who have zero regard for the rule of law in our country. They are here illegally, should never have been here in the first place.” Sources said they’re still counting the migrants and that the number could increase. Border Patrol agents have continued to ramp up efforts in Charlotte as 161,000 migrants who have previously been ordered to leave the United States are living in and around the city. The DHS blamed the move on state officials, saying migrants in the U.S. illegally fled to the Democratic-led city because of so-called "sanctuary" policies they believed would protect them. The agency sent out a release that included a list of migrants they called "the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens," who they say were released onto North Carolina streets because of those policies. The department did not link the operation to any single event. Party leaders from the state have expressed differing opinions on the operation, including Democratic Gov. Josh Stein, who said the presence of what he calls "masked, heavily armed agents driving unmarked cars targeting American citizens" is not making the city safer. "This is not making us safer," Stein said in a video posted on social media. "It’s stoking fear and dividing our communities.” Axios [11/17/2025 5:24 PM, Megan Stringer, 12972K] reports more than 140 undocumented immigrants were arrested during a raid targeting gang members in San Antonio on Sunday, the FBI confirmed. The arrests by a new multi-agency task force appear to be the beginning of a larger effort to crack down on international criminal organizations in South Texas. The operation, which included state police, targeted Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan gang, an FBI press release said. In other high-profile raids that officials said targeted Tren de Aragua, arrests have not often resulted in charges or prosecutions. But they have resulted in deportations, per news reports. Around 2am on Sunday, multiple agencies conducted "court-authorized activity" near Basse Road and San Pedro Avenue on the North Side, at what appears to be a food truck park, per KSAT. Neighbors reported seeing helicopters. One woman who works at a food truck told News 4 that "a couple with a baby in their arms" was taken. Unauthorized immigrants from Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico and other South American countries were taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the FBI’s San Antonio office said. The new regional Homeland Security Task Force, HSTF-South Texas, will focus on targeting "sophisticated cartels, foreign terrorist organizations, and transnational gangs," the FBI said. It announced the task force Monday and said it had been in place since at least late October. The AP [11/17/2025 6:16 PM, Erik Verduzco, Gary D. Robertson and Brian Witte, 31753K] reports that the Trump administration has made Charlotte, a Democratic city of about 950,000 people, its latest focus for an immigration enforcement surge it says will combat crime, despite fierce objections from local leaders and declining crime rates. City residents reported encounters with immigration agents near churches, apartment complexes and stores. “We’ve seen masked, heavily armed agents in paramilitary garb driving unmarked cars, targeting American citizens based on their skin color, racially profiling and picking up random people in parking lots and off of our sidewalks,” Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat, said in a video statement late Sunday. “This is not making us safer. It’s stoking fear and dividing our community.” Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that Border Patrol officers had arrested “over 130 illegal aliens who have all broken” immigration laws. The agency said the records of those arrested included gang membership, aggravated assault, shoplifting and other crimes, but it did not say how many cases had resulted in convictions, how many people had been facing charges or any other details. Stein acknowledged that it was a stressful time, but he called on residents to stay peaceful. If people see something they feel is wrong, he said, they should record it and report it to local law enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees Customs and Border Protection, has said it is focusing on North Carolina because of so-called sanctuary policies, which limit cooperation between local authorities and immigration agents. However, most North Carolina county jails have long honored “detainers,” or requests from federal officials to hold an arrested immigrant for a limited time so agents can take custody of them. But some common, noncooperation policies have existed in a handful of places in the state, including Charlotte, where the police do not help with immigration enforcement. In Mecklenburg County, which includes Charlotte, the jail did not honor detainer requests for several years, until after state law effectively made it mandatory starting last year. DHS alleged that about 1,400 detainers across North Carolina had not been honored, putting the public at risk.

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FOX Business [11/17/2025 5:05 PM, Staff, 10085K] reports DHS assistant secretary for public affairs Tricia McLaughlin discusses the efforts to crack down on illegal immigration in Charlotte, N.C. on ‘Kudlow.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [11/17/2025 9:06 PM, Staff, 40621K] reports Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem responds to the targeting of law enforcement officers on ‘Jesse Watters Primetime.’ [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NewsMax [11/17/2025 10:00 AM, Brian Freeman, 4109K] reports leadership in Charlotte, North Carolina, has failed its citizens by trying to protect illegal aliens who are in the city, said Tricia McLaughlin, the Department of Homeland Security’s assistant secretary for public affairs, on Newsmax Monday. McLaughlin told Newsmax’s "Wake Up America" that, "Charlotte is a beautiful place, but in this case, its leadership has absolutely failed it. "We know that there are more than 1,400 criminal illegal aliens who are in their jails, and they refuse to turn over those individuals to ICE law enforcement." She emphasized that this situation creates "a revolving door of justice, and these criminal illegal aliens will go back onto Charlotte’s streets" to commit more crime. McLaughlin pointed out that "we are talking about ... people who pose real public security threats to the American people, and so, of course, we are surging resources there and we won’t stop until Charlotte is safer.” The DHS’ assistant secretary for public affairs also stressed that "if you’re obstructing justice ... then you can expect to be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law." McLaughlin said that DHS was successful in its raids in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles despite similar leftist activists there.

Breitbart [11/17/2025 8:28 AM, Bob Price, 2416K] reports a U.S. citizen weaponized a van against law enforcement officers this afternoon near University City in Charlotte, triggering a high-speed pursuit through densely populated streets. The suspect attempted to ram multiple police vehicles before being boxed in and arrested. One officer was injured, and a firearm was recovered from the van. Authorities say the suspect has a history of resisting arrest and disruptive conduct. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) officials released a video showing a white work van driving recklessly into an area where U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers were conducting a targeted immigration operation. The van, driven by a U.S. citizen with a criminal history, came dangerously close to three officers. DHS officials report that after nearly striking the officers, the driver attempted to flee. He allegedly led pursuing officers on a dangerous high-speed chase through a densely populated area. Officials say the man, later identified as a U.S. citizen, attempted to ram law enforcement vehicles. "As agents were boxing him in — the driver proceeded to ram law enforcement vehicles in an attempt to escape," officials stated. "When the driver was arrested, a firearm was found in the vehicle." Sadly, one officer was injured in the pursuit.

FOX News [11/17/2025 8:57 AM, Staff, 40621K] Video: HERE reports a driver in a white van was filmed fleeing from law enforcement officers conducting an immigration operation, according to video released Sunday by the Department of Homeland Security.

FOX News [11/17/2025 3:10 PM, Staff, 40621K] reports DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin has the latest on the incident on ‘America Reports.’. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Axios [11/17/2025 8:36 PM, Zachery Eanes, Mary Helen Moore, 12972K] reports the Trump administration will deploy federal Border Patrol agents to Raleigh on Tuesday for its immigration crackdown, Raleigh Mayor Janet Cowell told Axios Monday night. Cowell said in an interview she had been notified of a pending U.S. Customs and Border Protection operation by the Raleigh Police Department and Gov. Josh Stein’s office. The operation, which Cowell said was uncoordinated with the city, comes after the U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents have carried out multiple days of arrests in Charlotte. The Assembly was first to report that CPB would operate in Raleigh, citing Democratic legislative sources briefed by Stein’s office. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, declined to discuss Border Patrol’s plans. "Every day, DHS enforces the laws of the nation across the country. We do not discuss future or potential operations," McLaughlin said in a statement. The Trump administration is targeting immigration enforcement in Democratic-run cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and most recently Charlotte. So far, the Triangle has not seen mass immigration enforcement, but nearby Charlotte has seen more than 130 arrests since Saturday. In Charlotte, agents have reportedly stopped at construction sites, Home Depot, an international grocery store, a country club and various other locations. Gov. Stein told Axios in a statement that his office was aware of the reports. He encouraged Raleigh residents to remain peaceful and record and report wrongdoing. "I call on federal agents to target violent criminals, not neighbors walking down the street, going to church, or putting up Christmas decorations. Stop targeting people simply going about their lives because of the color of their skin, as you are doing in Charlotte," he wrote in the statement. Cowell stressed Raleigh is a safe city, and said she was planning to put a statement out about the arrival of immigration agents. "Our property crimes are down ... violent crimes are down," she said. "This is a safe and good community, and it is concerning that we have uncoordinated efforts [from DHS]. We will follow the law and we’re trying to work with our residents and keep everything under monitor tomorrow." The Raleigh Police Department isn’t involved in immigration enforcement, the city said in a statement Monday night. Durham Mayor Leonardo Williams released a joint statement late Monday on behalf of city, county and school officials, without saying whether the city will also be targeted. The statement denounces "any effort that promotes exclusion, incites fear, undermines human rights and compromises safety."

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New York Times [11/17/2025 7:21 PM, Jess Bidgood, 135475K] reports the last time Gregory Bovino made national headlines, the high-profile Border Patrol official appeared to be lobbing a canister of tear gas into a crowd of Chicagoans. It was the kind of aggressive confrontation — one for which a judge later admonished him — that made him a MAGA star as he became the face of President Trump’s immigration crackdown in Los Angeles and Chicago, two symbols of blue America. Over the weekend, Bovino turned up somewhere different, my colleagues Eduardo Medina and Bernard Mokam reported: a Home Depot parking lot in Charlotte, N.C., flanked by more than a dozen federal agents. When a woman asked what they were doing, a masked agent said they were searching for criminals. The Border Patrol operation in Charlotte, which continued today, has included agents fanning out across immigrant enclaves in one of America’s fastest-growing cities. It resulted in at least 130 arrests through Sunday and, as Eduardo noted, it startled people in a place where business reigns supreme. It also brought one of the Trump administration’s showiest crackdown strategies into a purple state — creating a rare test of one of his core priorities in fiercely contested political territory. “There is going to be a political response to this,” said Edwin Peacock III, a moderate Republican on the Charlotte City Council who lost his race for an at-large seat in this month’s elections. “If it’s anything like last Tuesday night, I can assure that it’s not going to be a good night for anyone in the Republican Party if this kind of activity continues to haunt American cities.” Mecklenburg County, which contains Charlotte, has for decades drawn large numbers of Latino immigrants. The city itself has major corridors that are filled with Hispanic businesses and churches — places that were quiet over the weekend. It is one of North Carolina’s largest Democratic strongholds — the other is Wake County, which includes Raleigh and parts of the state’s university-rich Research Triangle — but it’s a place where Trump made gains in 2024 after the county shifted ever more toward Democrats in both the 2016 and 2020 elections. He may have been helped, in part, by his improved performance with Latino voters. In 2020, exit polling found that Trump won 42 percent of Latino voters in North Carolina, compared with 57 percent for Joe Biden. By 2024, the same exit polling suggested that Trump’s standing with Latino voters had improved: He won half of the state’s Latino voters, compared with 49 percent for Vice President Kamala Harris. None of that helped Peacock on election night a couple of weeks ago. Peacock lost his race for an at-large seat by more than 40,000 votes as voters turned out to rebuke Trump. He thinks immigration raids like the one over the weekend will make it even harder for Republicans to win support in bluer parts of the state — which could affect his party’s overall performance in the midterms, when North Carolina will hold a marquee Senate race. “The White House is clearly calculating that, ‘We have a mandate to do this,’ and I don’t disagree with that — they do — but there’s obviously a consequence,” Peacock told me today.

NewsNation [11/17/2025 9:32 AM, Taylor Delandro, 8017K] reports North Carolina is the latest state to unwillingly receive federal agents as part of President Donald Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration. North Carolina Republican Party chair Jason Simmons told "Morning in America" that Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are surging into cities such as Charlotte in response to nearly 1,400 detainers that North Carolina is expected to turn over. He said local law enforcement officials are unwilling to work with ICE and that the deployments reflect Trump’s campaign promises. "We want to ensure that what President Trump campaigned on — securing our border and making our cities safe — is what you’ll see continuing going on into these communities," Simmons said. Anderson Clayton, chair of the state’s Democratic Party, argued North Carolina should rely on local and state law enforcement rather than federal agents and told NewsNation the federal presence is "attacking communities" and leading to the detainment of U.S. citizens. "People deserve to feel safe in their communities," she said. We want to make sure people do, but it doesn’t look like attacking and arraigning U.S. citizens right now. "It’s making people less safe and less secure when they’re going to work, and when they’re going to school right now, and I don’t think anybody in our communities was asking for that." The federal government did not provide a full explanation for the operation, dubbed "Charlotte’s Web," or how many people have been detained, but the Department of Homeland Security blamed the move on state officials, saying illegal immigrants fled to the Democratic-led city because of so-called sanctuary policies they believed would protect them.

CNN [11/17/2025 9:07 AM, Randi Furman, 18595K] reports as North Carolina becomes the latest target of Trump’s immigration crackdown, Charlotte City Council Member-elect JD Mazuera Arias speaks with CNN News Central’s Sara Sidner about what his city does next. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

NBC News [11/17/2025 8:03 PM, Nicole Acevedo, Ryan Chandler, Suzanne Gamboa and Julia Ainsley, 34509K] reports Jonathan Ocampo has called this Southern city home for six years, but, after immigration enforcement descended here over the weekend, the American citizen of Colombian descent said he doesn’t leave the house without his U.S. passport. "I’m carrying it here right now, which is sad," he told NBC News. Ocampo said he worries that his father, a citizen who has been in the country for 40 years, could be targeted because of being Hispanic-looking and speaking what he described as very broken English. "It’s just scary," he said. According to the Department of Homeland Security, more than 130 people have been arrested since Border Patrol began an immigration enforcement push it calls "Operation Charlotte’s Web" on Saturday, putting many residents and business owners of the state’s largest city on edge. A popular Latino bakery was closed Monday over fears of Border Patrol activity. Several small businesses in a shopping center also shut their doors Monday after immigration authorities were seen smashing the car window of a Honduran-born U.S. citizen, Willy Aceituno, over the weekend. Aceituno told NBC affiliate WCNC he was getting breakfast when he noticed immigration authorities chasing two people. Three vehicles then surrounded his car, and agents began asking about his immigration status. "I was scared," he said. Aceituno, who recorded the incident, is seen on video staying inside his car and telling agents that if they broke the window they’d have to pay for it. An agent ultimately shattered the window, opened Aceituno’s car door and pulled him to the ground. DHS accused Aceituno on social media of "trying to distract officers so others could evade the law.” DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement that those arrested in North Carolina "have all broken the immigration laws of our country.” The deployments in Charlotte are the latest in a string of high-profile immigration enforcement actions targeting specific cities across the country, such as Los Angeles, Portland, Oregon, and, most recently Chicago, where hundreds of the people arrested did not have criminal histories, according to the Chicago Tribune.

FOX News [11/17/2025 12:45 PM, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, 40621K] Video: HERE reports that screaming and whistles filled a wooded stretch of Charlotte, North Carolina, on Sunday as protesters surrounded federal agents carrying out Operation Charlotte’s Web, a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) mission aimed at arresting people with criminal immigration warrants. DHS said Friday it had "surged law-enforcement resources" into the city to capture "criminal illegal aliens terrorizing Americans." Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the effort was meant to "remove public-safety threats and restore order." By Saturday afternoon, video from the scene showed furious residents shouting, "Get the f--- out of my city!" as Border Patrol and Homeland Security agents pushed through trees amid the operation. "F--- you! Get out!" one protester screamed, waving his arms toward a group of agents in tactical gear. Another yelled, "Our city — not yours! An agent, holding up a gas canister, turned and shouted back, "This is tear gas! Stop following us!" In another tense moment captured on video, an agent identifying himself as Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) tried to calm the crowd as protesters surrounded him with phone cameras rolling. Female protester: "How do you know they’re illegal before you cuff them? That’s a Fourth Amendment violation!" HSI agent: "Our job here is to protect the folks doing enforcement. We’re bound by what’s reasonable under the law." [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [11/17/2025 12:33 PM, Staff, 40621K] reports that a tense exchange caught on video shows a woman challenging a Homeland Security Investigations agent about immigration arrests as crowds surrounded officers during Operation Charlotte’s Web. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CNN [11/17/2025 8:59 AM, Kara Harris, 18595K] reports Mecklenburg County Commissioner and Chair, Mark Jerrell, tells CNN’s Audie Cornish that a legal resident’s car window was smashed during a federal immigration raid in Charlotte, raising concerns about profiling and lack of communication from authorities. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [11/17/2025 2:01 PM, Staff, 40621K] reports that the ‘Outnumbered’ panel discusses reports of Charlotte’s alleged human trafficking crisis. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Washington Examiner [11/18/2025 5:00 AM, Mia Cathell, 1394K] reports a Party for Socialism and Liberation chapter, known for its left-wing protests, led a mass uprising in Charlotte this weekend against Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Thousands of activists took to the streets of Charlotte on Saturday for an “emergency” march, carrying uniform signage bearing the name of a national socialist organization responsible for fomenting much of the recent anti-ICE unrest across America. The foreign-funded Party for Socialism and Liberation’s Charlotte chapter organized the citywide resistance in response to U.S. Border Patrol launching a large-scale deportation operation, dubbed Operation Charlotte’s Web, in the so-called “sanctuary city” over the weekend. During the demonstration, activists at the forefront of the march unfurled a banner displaying the organization’s branding. Protesters were seen waving Mexican flags and chanting “Chinga La Migra,” a Spanish slogan that roughly translates to “F*** ICE.”

Daily Wire [11/17/2025 10:58 AM, Jennie Taer, 2494K] reports an alleged illegal immigrant terrorist was working as a truck driver in the United States using a Pennsylvania-issued commercial driver’s license, the Department of Homeland Security revealed Monday. Local authorities pulled over Uzbek national Akhror Bozorov, 31, on Nov. 9 when it was discovered that he had an Interpol warrant for allegedly distributing terrorist propaganda calling for jihad online and recruiting fellow terrorists, federal law enforcement sources told The Daily Wire. Immigration and Customs Enforcement later took him into custody. Bozorov crossed the California border illegally in 2023 and was swiftly released into the country when the Biden administration was pushing Border Patrol to move people out of custody as quickly as possible. His warrant was issued the year before he came to the United States, but border agents didn’t find any such red flags because they didn’t have enough time to properly vet him, sources said. "Not only was Akhror Bozorov — a wanted terrorist — RELEASED into the country by the Biden administration, but he was also given a commercial driver’s license by Governor Shapiro’s Pennsylvania. This should go without saying, but terrorist illegal aliens should not be operating 18-wheelers on America’s highways," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a Monday statement. "Biden and Mayorkas allowed countless terrorists to come into our country. President Trump and Secretary Noem unleashed ICE to target these national security threats," she added. Acting Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Todd Lyons recently issued a dire warning that the issue has increased the potential for a terrorist attack on U.S. soil. "We don’t know what they’re carrying across state lines in an 18-wheeler, terrorists will stop at nothing to harm the United States, and it is well within the realm of possibility that some of these trucks … could be carrying toxic chemicals, bombs, or God knows what," Lyons said.

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Washington Examiner [11/17/2025 1:51 PM, Staff, 1394K] reports that Illinois truckers are applauding a federal rule and hope the state enforces a pause on non-domiciled commercial driver’s licenses (CDLs), saying it protects American jobs and restores trust in licensing. In late-September, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration ordered states to pause non-domiciled CDLs for drivers on temporary visas. Illinois’ Secretary of State’s office, which oversees CDL licensing, did not respond to The Center Square’s requests for comment or confirm whether the pause is officially in effect. Media reports, based on emails obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, indicate the state has quietly stopped issuing these licenses. For local truckers, enforcement of federal law is long overdue. Zach Meiborg, owner of Meiborg Brothers Trucking and Logistics, said the pause is a positive development but stressed that broader compliance is still critical. "What’s needed right now is enforcement of the current laws and regulations to get rid of the people that aren’t following the laws and regulations," Meiborg said. "About 50% of us follow the rules and 50% break every rule out there. Hiring a non-domiciled CDL holder in Illinois isn’t necessarily against state rules because the state has issued a legal license, but the state is breaking federal rules. That guy is supposed to be able to pass a CDL test written in English." Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin called the case "reckless and incredibly dangerous," saying, "DHS is working with our state and local partners to get illegal alien truck drivers who often don’t know basic traffic laws off our highways."

The Hill [11/17/2025 9:55 AM, Zach Schonfeld, 12595K] reports that the Supreme Court will review the legality of a now-rescinded immigration policy that turned away noncitizens attempting to cross the border from Mexico without considering their asylum claims, the court announced Monday. Federal law guarantees a noncitizen who "arrives in the United States" may apply for asylum. The case concerns whether that extends to someone stopped on the Mexican side of the U.S.-Mexico border. "In ordinary English, a person ‘arrives in’ a country only when he comes within its borders," Solicitor General D. John Sauer wrote in court filings. "An alien thus does not ‘arrive in’ the United States while he is still in Mexico." Under that interpretation, the federal government from 2016-21 employed a "metering" policy to address an influx of migrant arrivals. It enabled the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to turn back migrants just before they crossed the border and refuse to inspect their asylum claims. Though the metering policy was rescinded, the Trump administration insisted the Supreme Court should still get involved to provide legal clarity given the likelihood the policy could return. Sauer wrote that a lower court ruling declaring the policy illegal "deprives the Executive Branch of a critical tool for addressing border surges and for preventing overcrowding at ports of entry along the border.” But Al Otro Lado, an immigration advocacy and aid organization that filed the lawsuit alongside 13 asylum-seekers, said any decision by the high court would have "little ongoing significance." The AP [11/17/2025 12:40 PM, Mark Sherman, 4722K] reports that the case will be argued in the late winter or early spring. Metering was first used during President Barack Obama’s administration when large numbers of Haitians appeared at the main crossing to San Diego from Tijuana, Mexico. It was expanded to all border crossings from Mexico during Trump’s first term in the White House. The practice ended in 2020 when the coronavirus pandemic led the government to restrict asylum-seekers even more severely. President Joe Biden formally rescinded the use of metering in 2021. Still, the Justice Department said it wanted the justices to hear the case because the court rulings took away "a tool that administrations of both parties have deemed critical for controlling the processing of inadmissible aliens during border surges." U.S. District Judge Cynthia Bashant ruled in 2021 that metering violated the migrants’ constitutional rights and a federal law requiring officials to screen anyone who shows up seeking asylum. Bloomberg Law [11/17/2025 11:52 AM, Staff, 803K] reports that the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 2-1 last year the policy, known as "metering," violated the Constitution. The policy was used under both Barack Obama and Donald Trump during his first term, but was rescinded by President Joe Biden. It’s the latest chance for the Supreme Court to weigh in on the scope of restrictions the executive branch can place on immigration. The metering policy allowed immigration officials to turn back noncitizens without valid travel documents at the border when ports of entry were at capacity. The immigration advocacy organization Al Otro Lado sued, saying the policy violated federal law. The Immigration and Nationality Act requires the government to "inspect and refer for processing" any asylum seeker who is present in the US or reaches a designated port of arrival. Border encounters have fallen to record lows since Trump retook office in January. Customs and Border Protection reported about 11,700 migrant encounters at the southern border in October, down from more than 100,000 the same month last year. The totals include arrivals at ports of entry and illegal crossings between ports. Daily Wire [11/17/2025 11:44 AM, Hank Berrien, 2494K] reports Al Otro Lado, an immigrant-rights group, and several asylum seekers challenged the policy in federal court, arguing that it violated statutory duties to inspect and process applicants. The Ninth Circuit, in a 2-1 decision, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs. Judge Michelle Friedland’s majority opinion held that asylum seekers who reach the border and encounter U.S. officials have "arrived in" the United States for statutory purposes, even if physically located on the Mexican side of the line. She concluded that once an asylum seeker presents at the border, the government must inspect and process that individual.A sharply divided Ninth Circuit declined to rehear the case en banc. In dissent from that denial, Judge Daniel Bress - joined by eleven others - argued that the panel’s interpretation "violates clear statutory text," improperly applies U.S. law extraterritorially, and radically departs from longstanding understandings limiting asylum processing obligations to persons actually within U.S. territory.

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Washington Examiner [11/17/2025 11:38 AM, Jack Birle, 1394K]|
San Diego Union Tribune [11/17/2025 8:48 PM, Alex Riggins, 1538K]

FOX News [11/17/2025 3:54 PM, Breanne Deppisch, 40621K] reports U.S. District Judge James Boasberg ordered lawyers for the Trump administration and for a class of deported Venezuelan migrants to come to court Wednesday to discuss the case’s status and the long-stalled question of whether the administration willfully defied his earlier court order and acted in contempt. The new updates, codified in a minute order on Monday, are almost certain to spark fresh ire from President Donald Trump and his allies in a major immigration fight that has stretched on for more than nine months. At issue is the Trump administration’s use of the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 wartime immigration law, to deport 252 Venezuelan migrants from the U.S. to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador in March. Boasberg had issued an emergency order in March blocking the Trump administration’s use of the law to immediately deport migrants to a third country, and ordered officials to return any planes that had already left US soil. Despite his order, hundreds of migrants arrived in El Salvador hours later — where they remained until July, when they were removed again from CECOT to Venezuela as part of a broader prisoner exchange that involved the return of at least 10 Americans and permanent U.S. residents detained in Venezuela. Trump officials have argued that the individuals removed were alleged members of the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua. But lawyers for the ACLU and other groups representing the migrants have vehemently disputed that claim, citing several reports from major news outlets that separately concluded that just a handful of individuals deported under the 18th century law had serious criminal records. The Alien Enemies Act has been used three times previously in U.S. history, and most recently during World War II. Boasberg tried for months without success to obtain information about the individuals who were deported to CECOT, and to obtain information about who in the Trump administration had ordered the flights in violation of his temporary restraining order.

New York Times [11/17/2025 7:38 PM, Laurel Rosenhall, 135475K] reports the Trump administration has filed a lawsuit against Gov. Gavin Newsom, challenging a California law he recently signed that prohibits law enforcement officers from wearing masks, a practice that became common this year amid the president’s immigration crackdown. The suit claims that the mask ban, and a companion measure requiring federal agents to wear identification, are unconstitutional because states do not have the power to regulate federal agencies. It says federal law enforcement agencies will not comply with the pair of state laws, which take effect on Jan. 1, and asks the court to strike them down. “California’s anti-law enforcement policies discriminate against the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents. These laws cannot stand,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. Several states have introduced measures to ban masking by immigration agents, but California was the first to pass one into law. The lawsuit comes as little surprise. Mr. Newsom himself said in July that he was “looking at the constitutionality” of the bill, months before signing it in September. Legal experts predicted it would be challenged in court, where numerous conflicts between California and the Trump administration are now playing out. “If the Trump administration cared half as much about public safety as it does about pardoning cop-beaters, violating people’s rights, and detaining U.S. citizens and their kids, our communities would be much safer,” Izzy Gardon, a spokesman for Mr. Newsom, said in a statement. Supporters have argued that the measure is constitutional because state and local governments can require federal agencies to follow general laws, such as speed limits. The mask law applies to both federal and local law enforcement agents in California. Scott Wiener, a Democratic state senator who wrote the bill, vowed to fight to defend it. “We see I.C.E. and other federal agents going into communities with these ski masks, just terrorizing communities, where you don’t even know if someone is an actual agent or not,” Mr. Wiener said in a video posted on social media. “It causes fear, and it’s unacceptable in a democracy.” The lawsuit claims that officers must have the option to shield their identities because of the threats and violence they face on the job. It cites a huge increase in assaults and death threats against officers, and says websites publish agents’ personal information “to harass and threaten them and their families.”

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Politico [11/17/2025 5:42 PM, Josh Gerstein, 2100K]
Los Angeles Times [11/17/2025 7:10 PM, Katie King, 14862K]
FOX News [11/18/2025 2:13 AM, Landon Mion Fox, 40621K]
San Francisco Chronicle [11/17/2025 5:22 PM, Bob Egelko, 4722K]

AP [11/17/2025 10:15 PM, Staff, 31753K] reports federal officials on Monday charged a man believed to be the captain of a boat carrying migrants that capsized near San Diego, killing four passengers. The man, a Mexican national, was charged with two counts of bringing people into the country illegally. U.S. Border Patrol agents were notified at about 11:30 p.m. Friday of a small boat crossing the international maritime boundary between Mexico and the U.S. The Border Patrol found the wooden skiff in the surf off Imperial Beach after it had overturned in high waves. Six people were found on the beach just before midnight, one of whom was pronounced dead and another who was rescued after being found under the boat. About two hours later, authorities received a report of someone in the water near Imperial Beach Pier. A Coast Guard crew responded and found three people in the ocean, all dead. The five survivors were transported to a hospital for treatment. According to the complaint, several passengers said the boat had engine problems. They urged the captain to return to Mexico, but he refused. One man was trapped inside the cabin below deck when the boat overturned and submerged with him and several others inside, the complaint said. He was freed after Border Patrol agents flipped the boat over. Another was injured after he was trapped under the boat and a piece of metal penetrated his leg, the complaint said. The suspected captain faces up to life in prison or the death penalty if convicted. “Maritime smuggling is extremely dangerous, and we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law every individual responsible for these preventable tragedies,” U.S. Attorney Adam Gordon said in a press release. Another man was a passenger on the boat and charged for being deported and trying to enter the U.S. again illegally. He was first removed from the U.S. in 2012 and most recently on Nov. 3 of this year. Migrants are increasingly turning to the risky alternative offered by smugglers to travel by sea to avoid heavily guarded land borders, including off California’s coast. Vessels leave Mexico in the dead of night and sometimes chart hundreds of miles (kilometers) north. There have been several incidents in recent years of migrant vessels capsizing en route to California.

Reported similarly:
San Diego Union Tribune [11/17/2025 11:10 PM, Alexandra Mendoza and Teri Figueroa, 1538K]

Daily Wire [11/17/2025 10:21 AM, Tim Pearce, 2494K] reports the U.S. military announced another strike against suspected drug traffickers in the Pacific Ocean on Sunday as President Donald Trump suggested diplomatic talks could soon take place with Venezuela. The strike, delivered on Saturday, marks at least 21 times the U.S. military has blown up a boat or submarine in international waters around South America in the administration’s effort to curb the flow of illicit drugs into the United States. "On Nov. 15, at the direction of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, Joint Task Force Southern Spear conducted a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel operated by a Designated Terrorist Organization. Intelligence confirmed that the vessel was involved in illicit narcotics smuggling, transiting along a known narco-trafficking route, and carrying narcotics," U.S. Southern Command announced in a post on X that was shared by Hegseth. "Three male narco-terrorists aboard the vessel were killed. The vessel was trafficking narcotics in the Eastern Pacific and was struck in international waters," it added. The latest strike comes as tensions between the United States and Venezuela have soared over U.S. military buildup in the region and tough talk from Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, who the U.S. views as illegitimate and a significant factor in drug smuggling to the United States. Trump said Sunday evening that the United States and Maduro’s regime may be opening discussions soon. In the middle of a rally in Caracas on Thursday, Maduro told CNN that he would like the American people to reject war with Venezuela. His message to Americans was "to unite for the peace of (the Americas). No more endless wars. No more unjust wars. No more Libya. No more Afghanistan.” Asked what his message is to Trump, Maduro said, "Yes peace, yes peace.” Maduro has warned against potential U.S. military action, mobilizing Venezuela’s military and volunteer forces. He has also appeared to deploy additional air-defense systems, including Russian-made units.

Reported similarly:
NBC News [11/17/2025 6:16 AM, Staff, 34509K]

Reuters [11/17/2025 2:23 PM, Sarah N. Lynch, 36480K] reports that months before the U.S. military began launching airstrikes against suspected drug vessels, former Justice Department No. 2 official Emil Bove told employees the government should just "sink the boats" rather than prosecute the people on board, three witnesses told Reuters. Bove, the former acting deputy attorney general, made similar remarks on at least three separate occasions between November 2024 and February 2025 when the topic of maritime drug cases was broached, the witnesses said. All three were granted anonymity to detail internal Justice Department discussions. NPR first reported the news on Monday. The witnesses now view Bove’s remarks as a harbinger of the unprecedented militaristic approach the Trump administration is taking by bombing suspected drug vessels, rather than the traditional response of seizing the ships, confiscating the drugs and arresting those on board. Reuters could not determine whether Bove, who left the department in early September to begin serving as a judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, was directly involved in discussions with the Pentagon about the plans to strike suspected drug vessels. Bove declined to comment through a court spokesperson. A Justice Department spokesperson downplayed the recollections of the witnesses, calling them "disgruntled," but did not dispute their account.

Reuters [11/17/2025 8:58 PM, Andrea Shalal, Gram Slattery and Steve Holland, 36480K] reports President Donald Trump said on Monday he has not ruled out putting American forces on the ground in Venezuela, while expressing a willingness to hear directly from Nicolas Maduro regarding the Venezuelan leader’s proposals to avert further U.S. military escalation. Asked if he would rule out U.S. troops on the ground in the South American country, Trump said: "No, I don’t rule out that, I don’t rule out anything.” Still, questioned if he would speak to Maduro directly, Trump told reporters at the White House: "I probably would talk to him, yeah. I talk to everybody.” The U.S. has been waging a campaign of deadly strikes against suspected drug trafficking boats off the Venezuelan coast and the Pacific coast of Latin America. Maduro has repeatedly alleged that a U.S. military buildup in the Caribbean is designed to drive him from power. Taken as a whole, Trump’s comments suggest he is willing to dramatically escalate his administration’s confrontation with Venezuela, even as he is open to seeking an off-ramp if presented with an interesting enough proposal from the Venezuelan government. The U.S. president also said he would like to knock out cocaine factories in Colombia, while stopping short of announcing any direct military intervention there. While Trump has focused his Venezuela-related efforts on tamping down the flow of narcotics, he is also aware that the nation - which holds the world’s greatest known oil reserves - is "a very resource-rich country," a senior White House official told Reuters. "Just because the president is perhaps interested in hearing what Venezuela has to say does not take off his military options from the table," cautioned the official, who requested anonymity to discuss diplomatic conversations. The official said there were many advantages that Venezuela could offer U.S. firms, though the main priority now is stopping drugs. On Sunday, the Trump administration designated the Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. The U.S. has alleged that the group is made up of high-ranking Venezuelan officials, including Maduro. Some independent researchers have said that while Venezuelan officials are involved in drug trafficking, there is little proof of a top-down, hierarchical organization that could be traditionally called a cartel. The Pentagon said on Sunday before Trump’s latest comments that the U.S. Navy’s largest aircraft carrier, the Gerald R. Ford, with 5,000 military personnel and dozens of warplanes on board, and its strike group moved into the Caribbean. That added to the eight warships, a nuclear submarine and F-35 aircraft already sent to the region. So far, the Trump administration has focused its efforts on bombing boats allegedly carrying drugs that have departed from the shoreline of Venezuela and other Latin American countries. Human rights groups have condemned those strikes as extrajudicial killings of civilians. The White House says the U.S. is at war with drug cartels and courts aren’t needed in armed conflicts.

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [11/17/2025 10:45 AM, Nick Gilbertson, 2416K]
DailySignal [11/17/2025 11:22 AM, Virginia Allen, 549K]

NPR [11/17/2025 5:03 AM, Ryan Lucas, 28013K] reports that, at a Justice Department conference in February, then-acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove told the department’s top drug prosecutors that the Trump administration wasn’t interested in interdicting suspected drug vessels at sea anymore. Instead, he said, the U.S. should "just sink the boats," according to three people present for the speech. At the time of Bove’s comments, President Trump had only been back in office for a month. The White House had made clear that combatting drug cartels and transnational criminal gangs was a priority, but few could envision that six months later the U.S. would be blowing up suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific Ocean. Since the first deadly attack on what the government says was a narco-trafficking vessel off the Venezuelan coast on Sept. 2, the U.S. has conducted some 20 strikes in international waters, killing more than 75 people. The administration says the boats were carrying drugs and posed a direct threat to the United States, but it has not provided any public evidence to support those assertions. Bove’s remarks, which have not previously been publicly reported, suggest at least some members of the administration were considering this policy shift as early as six months before the boat strikes began. NPR spoke about the Trump administration’s policies with nine current and former U.S. officials who worked to combat transnational crime. They described a dramatic policy shift, from interdicting suspected drug boats, seizing the drugs, detaining and often prosecuting the crew, as the U.S. has done for decades — to blasting them out of the water and killing those on board. All of the individuals spoke to NPR on condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. They questioned the legality of the deadly strikes — many referred to them as murder — and expressed doubts that the new policy would be more effective at stemming the flow of illicit drugs into the United States. Several of them said it may ultimately prove counterproductive. "There’s an awful lot of frustration with the administration abandoning what has been one of the most effective ways of going after organized crime in favor of things that sound macho but get you nowhere," said one former DOJ official who worked on maritime interdictions. "The most devastating thing is killing people on the high seas without any due process or evidence of violence. Just preemptive strikes.” In a statement, a Justice Department spokesperson said that the department "along with the entire Trump Administration is committed to ending the illegal trafficking of deadly drugs into our country and leaks from disgruntled former employees will not distract us from our mission.” More than six months before the strikes began, Bove addressed a conference for the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces, known as OCDETF, at the Justice Department’s National Advocacy Center on the University of South Carolina campus.

Axios [11/17/2025 2:23 PM, Josephine Walker and Avery Lotz, 12972K] reports that the U.S. continues to conduct deadly strikes off of Venezuela and is assembling unprecedented firepower for what could become a full-on military conflict. The big picture: President Trump and his administration have been quiet about who has been killed and on what evidence, but the swell of American forces coalescing off Venezuela’s shores has escalated tensions between Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Washington. Driving the news: Trump told reporters on Friday that he has "sort of" decided how to continue operations in Venezuela, but added that he couldn’t tell reporters "what it would be." On Sunday, he said that there was "no update" yet, but that he "may be having some discussions" with Maduro moving forward. Between the lines: The operations have targeted what the administration has called narco-terrorist drug vessels — but the underlying potential to spark regime change is also at play, Axios’ Marc Caputo previously reported. The present tension is years in the making. The U.S. and others in the international community have alleged Maduro, now in his third term, has retained power through manipulation and stolen elections. Trump has also made the disputed claim that Maduro is in league with drug gangs and heads the Cartel de los Soles, which the State Department designated this week as a Foreign Terrorist Organization. Maduro has denied the allegation.

CNN [11/17/2025 2:08 PM, Nick Paton Walsh, 18595K] reports that in the vacillating contours of US President Donald Trump’s foreign policy, little should surprise. And outlying moments of apparent success against Iran’s nuclear program (even if short-lived), are uneasily partnered with moments of fleeting fancy, like seizing Greenland (remember that?). But the looming possibility of military action against Venezuela – across a wide spectrum of violent options – drags the White House into realms of foreign involvement it has always said it loathed. And it puts it squarely in opposition to the lessons of the past two decades of US Republican military endeavors, and plenty of decades of regional experience before that. Just what exactly does the Trump administration want to do here, and how long does it think it will take to achieve? These are two questions an administration conventionally seeks to publicly and painstakingly lay out the answers to before military action. But it remains mired in confusion. And the variables do not look good. The most slender goal of military action is to stop drug trafficking. Yet this is something exceptionally hard to achieve with targeted strikes. Firstly, Venezuela is not the hub of narco-trafficking: that is a route which begins in neighboring Colombia, and ends on the US border in Mexico. Venezuela has been a facilitator, even permitting its territory to be used to launch the planes that carry Colombian cocaine north, and harboring depots and processing plants which operate in a climate of greater impunity than in Colombia. But it is at worst a tenth of the problem, not its heart. Secondly, the drug trade is so unspeakably profitable, no kinetic activity can really stop it.

Breitbart [11/17/2025 9:18 PM, Staff, 2416K] reports President Donald Trump said Monday he will talk to Venezuela’s Nicolas Maduro, as Washington’s military buildup stokes tensions, and added that he would be "OK" with US anti-drug strikes inside Mexico. Trump has dramatically increased the number of US forces in the Caribbean region to tackle what he calls drug traffickers based in a number of Latin American countries including Venezuela and Mexico. "At a certain period of time, I’ll be talking to him," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office when asked if he would speak to Maduro, while adding that the Venezuelan president "has not been good to the United States.” Asked if he would rule out US troops on the ground in Venezuela, Trump replied: "No, I don’t rule out that, I don’t rule out anything. "We just have to take care of Venezuela," he added. "They dumped hundreds of thousands of people into our country from prisons.” Hours later, Maduro said on his weekly television show that he was ready to talk "face to face" with anyone in the United States "who wants to talk to Venezuela.” A contingent of US Marines is currently conducting military exercises in Trinidad and Tobago, the second such maneuvers in less than a month between Washington and the small English-speaking archipelago located about 10 kilometers (six miles) from the Venezuelan coast. But Trinidad and Tobago’s leader said Monday that the small island nation would not allow its territory to be used to attack Venezuela, nor was it ever asked to. "The US has NEVER requested use of our territory to launch any attacks against the people of Venezuela," said Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, a close Trump ally, in a WhatsApp message to AFP. "Trinidad and Tobago will not participate in any act that could harm the Venezuelan people," she added, emphasizing that Washington and Caracas should resolve their differences through dialogue. Venezuela has accused Washington of seeking regime change in Caracas with its military build-up including an aircraft carrier group, warships and several stealth jets. Washington accuses Maduro of leading a "terrorist" drug cartel, a charge he denies.

Daily Caller [11/17/2025 1:11 PM, Caden Olson, 835K] reports that the U.S. government intends to designate a cartel it says is headed by Venezuela’s socialist dictator, Nicolás Maduro, as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), according to a Sunday press release. The designation targets the Venezuelan-based Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), and cites terrorist violence and drug trafficking as the basis for the new foreign terrorist label. A Sunday press release from the State Department commits to use "all available tools to protect our national security interests and deny funding and resources to narco-terrorists." "[T]he Cartel de los Soles is headed by Nicolás Maduro and other high-ranking individuals of the illegitimate Maduro regime who have corrupted Venezuela’s military, intelligence, legislature, and judiciary," Secretary of State Marco Rubio wrote on Sunday evening. "Neither Maduro nor his cronies represent Venezuela’s legitimate government. Cartel de los Soles by and with other designated FTOs including Tren de Aragua and the Sinaloa Cartel are responsible for terrorist violence throughout our hemisphere as well as for trafficking drugs into the United States and Europe." The terrorist label seeks to hinder the cartel’s ability to utilize American assets by banning "material support or resources" from U.S. personnel, deeming members of the cartel inadmissible to the U.S., and requiring American financial institutions to take possession of funds related to the cartel, according to the State Department’s press release.

Reported similarly:
The Hill [11/17/2025 11:03 AM, Sarah Fortinsky, 12595K]

CNN [11/17/2025 7:35 PM, Michael Rios, Katie Bo Lillis, Priscilla Alvarez, 606K] reports that, as the Trump administration ramps up the pressure on Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro, experts and former government officials have raised concerns about its move to designate Cartel de los Soles as a foreign terrorist organization. They argue it is not a formally organized cartel similar to criminal organizations in Colombia and Mexico, and it’s a stretch to suggest Maduro leads it, though there is government involvement in the drug trade. They suggested the designation provides the administration a justification to take military action against the Venezuelan government. US President Donald Trump said as much on Sunday, telling reporters that the designation could allow the US military to target Maduro’s assets and infrastructure inside Venezuela. CNN has reached out to the State Department for comment. Cartel de los Soles, which means cartel of the suns in English, is used to describe a decentralized network of Venezuelan groups within the armed forces linked to drug trafficking, say experts. But given its lack of hierarchy and structure, some say it can’t be compared to traditional cartels that have been designated as terror groups by the US, and others suggest it technically doesn’t exist in a conventional sense. "They’re designating a non-thing that is not a terror organization as a terrorist organization," said Brian Finucane, a former State Department lawyer who specializes in war powers issues. Another former senior US government official said Cartel de los Soles was "a made-up name used to describe an ad hoc group of Venezuelan officials involved in the trafficking of drugs through Venezuela. It doesn’t have the hierarchy or command-and-control structure of a traditional cartel.” The official said the Trump administration’s assertions are based on "bad intel" likely from the Defense Intelligence Agency or the Drug Enforcement Administration that doesn’t stand up to scrutiny before the greater intelligence community, or that "it is purely political.” CNN has reached out to the DIA and DEA for comment.

Reuters [11/17/2025 6:24 PM, Staff, 36480K] reports President Donald Trump said Monday he supports aggressive action against drug cartels and narcotics production in Mexico and Colombia, his latest saber-rattling in the region after a series of strikes on small boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. Trump has intensified his campaign against maritime drug trafficking, authorizing more forceful interdiction operations and giving U.S. forces expanded authority to disable or sink vessels suspected of carrying narcotics. Asked at an event in the Oval Office whether he backed similar ground strikes in Mexico to stem drug trafficking, Trump said: “OK with me, whatever we have to do to stop drugs.” While he stopped short of announcing any direct U.S. military intervention, he later raised the prospect of targeting cocaine laboratories in Colombia. “Would I knock out those factories? I would be proud to do it personally,” Trump said. “I didn’t say I’m doing it, but I would be proud to do it because we’re going to save millions of lives.” Trump’s comments are in contrast to remarks by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who last week said there would be no U.S. military intervention in Mexico and that cooperation between the two countries was at an "all-time high." "We’re not going to take unilateral action or go in and send American forces into Mexico, but we can help them with equipment, with training, with intelligence sharing, with all kinds of things that we could do if they asked for it," Rubio said to reporters in Canada. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum, who has repeatedly boasted about good relations with Trump and his administration, denied earlier this month that any unilateral U.S. military action would take place following reports the U.S. had begun detailed planning for a new anti-cartel mission inside the country, including sending troops and intelligence officers to Mexico.

Telemundo52 [11/17/2025 3:45 PM, Staff, 76K] reports US President Donald Trump declared on Monday that he is not "happy" with Mexico’s fight against drug trafficking, and therefore does not rule out an attack against the cartels in that country. Trump asserted that he is holding talks with the Mexican government and that the Latin American country "knows" what his position is. Trump’s words represent a change in tone, as until now he has praised Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum for her cooperation with the United States in the fight against drug trafficking. The president made these statements to the press in the Oval Office amid Operation Southern Spear, which he has ordered to combat drug trafficking in Latin America and which has especially raised tensions with Venezuela over a possible US attack within its territory.

NPR [11/17/2025 4:25 PM, Sergio Martínez-Beltrán, 28013K] Audio: HERE reports DOJ records show that more than 600 arrests in Chicago’s recent immigration enforcement operation may have violated a federal consent decree. And of those arrested, fewer than 3% had criminal records.

Chicago Tribune [11/17/2025 6:00 AM, Dan Petrella, 4829K] reports Gov. JB Pritzker’s chief of staff took to social media last week to call out federal agents for taking a break from their militarized immigration enforcement operation in the Chicago area to play tourist and pose for group photos in front of the iconic Cloud Gate sculpture in Millennium Park. "These jerks went to the Bean this morning where they took a picture where instead of saying ‘cheese’ they said ‘Little Village’ — the name of the community they terrorized over the weekend," Pritzker chief of staff Anne Caprara wrote, sharing a link to a Block Club Chicago story documenting the photo op. "The only good thing is we will be handing over this picture to the Illinois Accountability Commission," Caprara wrote, referring to the body Pritzker formed late last month in order to "create an official public record" of the "impropriety, brutality and harassment perpetrated" by federal agents participating in the monthslong crackdown known as "Operation Midway Blitz.” But more than three weeks after Pritzker drew national attention for creating the commission through an executive order, there is no apparent way for members of the public who have experienced or witnessed excessive force or other misconduct by federal immigration agents to report those allegations directly to the commission. "I want to encourage all Illinoisans who have witnessed or experienced concerning conduct by federal agents to stay tuned at www.ilac.illinois.gov … for details in the days and weeks ahead," Pritzker said at the Oct. 23 news conference where he announced the commission. "Donald Trump is counting on your silence. We are counting on your courage.” Even as the controversial head of the federal operation, Border Patrol Cmdr. Gregory Bovino, has left Chicago in recent days, the commission’s website remains bare bones, with a phone number to contact an outside organization added Friday only after an inquiry from the Tribune. As of Friday, the site still did not provide an email address or other digital method for contacting the commission to share the type of eyewitness cellphone videos the governor has repeatedly asked the public to record and hand over since the chaotic, violent crackdown began in early September. In response to questions the Tribune initially raised Nov. 10, the governor’s office in an emailed statement this past Friday referred the public to contact an advocacy group that has been tracking the federal enforcement actions, stating "members of the public who wish to share information can contact the (Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights) Family Support Network & Hotline at 1‑855‑HELP‑MY‑FAMILY (1‑855‑435‑7693), listed on the commission’s website.”

Chicago Tribune [11/17/2025 8:36 PM, Tess Kenny, 4829K] reports Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson signed a declaration of civil emergency after a series of reported threats against the village and its elected officials through the course of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, the village announced in a news release Monday. With the declaration, Village Board meetings will be held remotely, starting with a meeting scheduled Monday night. The announcement comes after two Broadview police officers were injured in a skirmish Friday during a protest outside the U.S. Immigration and Customs processing center in Broadview that resulted in 21 arrests. According to the village’s release, Broadview received a bomb threat against its municipal building over the phone Sept. 4. A month and a half later, the village further stated, a death threat was made against Thompson on Oct. 13. The FBI has been notified of the threat against Thompson, the village said. In response to questions about the reported threat, a spokesperson for the FBI’s Chicago field office wrote in an emailed statement to the Tribune, "While Department of Justice policy prevents the FBI from commenting on the nature of investigations that may or may not be occurring, we take all potential threats seriously.” Threats further escalated over the weekend after a group of "out-of-town protesters, non-Broadview residents, attempted to storm Village Hall and explicitly threatened to ‘shut down’" Monday’s board meeting, the village’s release said, citing the Broadview Police Department. "Since ICE’s Midway Blitz and the subsequent, intensifying protests began, the serious and credible bomb and death threats and the threat to disrupt village government has left me with no alternative but to declare a civil emergency in Broadview," Thompson said in a statement. Thompson’s executive order declares that until she deems "the emergency no longer imminent," regularly scheduled board meetings will be held remotely and accessed publicly through YouTube livestream. The order also comes as the Department of Homeland Security announces the launch of "Operation Charlotte’s Web," the agency’s latest immigration sweep targeting Charlotte, North Carolina.

Chicago Tribune [11/17/2025 7:23 PM, Jason Meisner, 4829K] reports at least six Venezuelan nationals arrested in a controversial immigration raid on a South Shore apartment building in September are among hundreds who could soon be released on bond amid allegations that Operation Midway Blitz agents repeatedly violated a consent decree limiting warrantless arrests. The immigrants from the Sept. 30 raid at 7500 S. South Shore Drive appeared on a list released Friday of some 614 arrestees identified in an ongoing lawsuit alleging the Department of Homeland Security ignored the terms of the 2022 in-court settlement that puts a higher bar on making arrests without a prior warrant or probable cause. All six people from the South Shore raid who are on the list were confirmed to the Tribune by plaintiffs’ attorneys. They are all still in custody in the U.S. and were ranked in the "low" safety risk category, even by the government’s notably low standard. The South Shore operation had been billed as an attempt to arrest gang members in the country illegally. But a low risk category indicates there is not only a lack of any serious criminal history in their background, but also no identifiable ties to gangs or other factors that would trigger mandatory detention. The list was turned over by order of U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Cummings, who said he will grant a $1,500 bond to anyone who is still in custody in the U.S. and who is not confirmed by the government to be a safety risk or subject to a prior removal order. Attorneys with the Department of Justice told Cummings on Friday they were not seeking to keep anyone marked "low" in custody, meaning the six are likely to be released on bond sometime this week, unless Cummings or the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals grants the government a stay on the order pending appeal. The Trump administration has claimed the militaristic, middle-of-the-night South Shore raid, which included agents with high-powered weapons rappeling from helicopters and breaking down apartment doors, targeted known Tren de Aragua gang members and their associates. The Tribune reported exclusively last month that no public criminal charges have been filed against anyone in connection with the raid.

FOX News [11/17/2025 5:03 PM, Greg Wehner, 40621K] reports Mayor Katrina Thompson of Broadview, Illinois declared a "civil emergency" Monday, citing "serious and credible bomb and death threats" and warnings of attempts to disrupt village government after out-of-town protesters threatened to storm Village Hall and "shut down" the local board meeting. Village officials told Fox News the meeting, originally scheduled in person, was moved online after law enforcement warned of possible disruptions tied to Friday’s unrest outside the federal immigration processing center in Broadview. Officials said the FBI has been notified and is investigating multiple threats against the mayor and her staff. "I will not allow threats of violence or intimidation to disrupt the essential functions of our government," Thompson said. "I will not allow our staff or residents to be placed in harm’s way.” In a statement released Monday, the village said the emergency order followed a series of escalating threats — including a September 4 telephone bomb threat targeting Village Hall and an October 13 death threat against Thompson. The situation intensified Friday when a group of non-resident protesters tried to storm Village Hall and vowed to disrupt Monday’s Board of Trustees meeting, according to Broadview Police. During the same day’s protests near the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility, officials said 21 people were arrested after demonstrators clashed with Broadview Police, Illinois State Police, and Cook County Sheriff’s deputies. Two Broadview officers were injured, along with a state trooper and a sheriff’s deputy. "The order is designed to preserve the continuity of governance in light of imminent threats against the lives of village officials and public property," Thompson said in the village’s statement.

Chicago Tribune [11/17/2025 7:33 PM, Alice Fabbre and Jeremy Gorner, 4829K] reports the Texas National Guard has departed Illinois, ending a futile 41-day deployment in which its soldiers spent less than 24 hours working in support of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation mission. The troops, who had been living at a U.S. Army Reserve training center in southwest suburban Elwood, left the facility around 1 p.m. Monday, according to a memorandum obtained by the Tribune. Additionally, any military personnel not permanently assigned to the Elwood facility would leave the site by Friday, the memo stated. In the memo, which was sent to local government officials on Monday, an official with Homeland Operations, 88th Readiness Division in Fort Sheridan, wrote that the "status of forces at the Joliet Local Training Area (JLTA), Elwood" had changed. As of 1 p.m., "all Soldiers that were utilizing the JLTA for living accommodations have departed the property. All established support requirements with your agencies beyond your normal scope of duties may cease at this time. There will still be a small element providing access control while contracted entities remove their equipment," the memorandum stated. Currently there is no definitive timetable for when the contractor will complete this action, however the Task Force Commander has directed that Friday will be the last day for any Military Personnel not permanently assigned to the Elwood Reserve center to be on site.” The departure marks yet another sign that Operation Midway Blitz — the name given to Trump’s immigration crackdown — is winding down.

NBC News [11/17/2025 7:59 PM, Mosheh Gains and Raquel Coronell Uribe, 34509K] reports hundreds of federalized National Guard members sent to Illinois and Oregon will return to their home states as early as this week, a defense official told NBC News on Monday. The official said that 200 California National Guard members activated for the greater Portland area will head back home, leaving 100 members of the Oregon National Guard in place. In Illinois, 200 Texas National Guard members will depart the state, leaving 300 Illinois guard members there. The remaining guards will be conducting training, but are not on mission to protect federal property or personnel. ABC News first reported the development. Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, a Democrat, on Monday celebrated the out-of-state guard members going home, saying that Trump’s "disregard for the rule of law has real human consequences.” "Members of the Oregon National Guard, who are our friends and neighbors, have been away from their families and jobs for 50 days on an unnecessary deployment," Kotek said. "With the holidays approaching, every single member deserves to go home.” The office of Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday night. The forthcoming departures come amid a monthslong legal standoff between the states and President Donald Trump, who first federalized California and Texas guard members for Oregon and Illinois, respectively, as part of his administration’s efforts to curb crime in Democratic-led cities like Portland and Chicago. Trump in September directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to mobilize National Guard forces to Portland during protests opposing the administration’s immigration enforcement policies. Days later, Trump authorized guard members for Illinois. The president had federalized 500 guard members, 200 of which were from Texas and the rest from Illinois. Court fights have prevented the deployment of federalized forces in Oregon and Illinois. Both Pritzker and Kotek repeatedly opposed the administration’s efforts to send in the guard. Oregon and Illinois separately sued the government for deploying the guard to their states; California objected that its state’s guard be deployed to Oregon, and argued in Oregon’s case against the government.

Reported similarly:
AP [11/17/2025 8:28 PM, Julie Watson, 1538K]

AP [11/17/2025 11:08 PM, Adrian Sainz and Jonathan Mattise, 2416K] reports a Tennessee judge on Monday blocked the use of the National Guard in Memphis under a crime-fighting operation by President Donald Trump but also put the order on hold, giving the government five days to appeal. Davidson County Chancellor Patricia Head Moskal’s decision sides with Democratic state and local officials who sued, contending that Republican Gov. Bill Lee cannot deploy the Tennessee National Guard for civil unrest unless there is rebellion or invasion, and even then, it would require action by state lawmakers. The plaintiffs also said another provision spells out a need for a request from a local government to use the Guard in some scenarios, including a “breakdown of law and order,” they said. Moskal agreed that the defendants have a likelihood of success in their lawsuit based on their claims that calling the National Guard into the city violates the state’s military code and that they have shown “they are suffering or will suffer irreparable harm” if the injunction isn’t granted. But she also paused the order for at least five days so that the government has time to file an “immediate application for permission to appeal,” without providing her reasoning for that timeline. The state has said Tennessee law gives the governor “the authority to dispatch the Guard when needed and to determine when that need exists.” The judge concluded that the governor’s power as commander-in-chief of the National Guard “is not unfettered.” In a statement posted on the social platform X, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, a plaintiff in the case, said he is pleased with the decision. “The injunction does not take effect immediately, and the state has a chance to seek leave to appeal,” he wrote. “However, this is a positive step toward ensuring the rule of law applies to everyone, including everyday Tennesseans and even the Governor.” Skye Perryman, president and CEO of Democracy Forward whose legal team is representing the plaintiffs, in a statement called the ruling “a powerful affirmation that no one—not a president, not a governor—is above the law.” Spokespeople for the governor’s office and the state attorney general’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment late Monday.

Washington Post [11/17/2025 6:55 AM, Jennifer Hassan, 24149K] reports President Donald Trump has signaled he may meet with New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani after months of criticism and threats, telling reporters “we’ll work something out.” “The mayor of New York, I will say, would like to meet with us,” Trump told reporters Sunday night, referring to the 34-year-old democratic socialist mayor-elect whom he threatened to arrest just months ago in the run-up to New York’s election. He said Mamdani “would like to come to Washington.” Trump has branded Mamdani as “bad news” and a “total nutjob,” seeking to portray him as the face of an extremist opposition, and repeatedly threatened to stop federal funds from going to New York if Mamdani won the election. Mamdani, soon to be the city’s first Muslim mayor, has referred to himself as Trump’s “worst nightmare,” and vowed to fight the president “every step of the way.” In response to Trump’s July threat to arrest him if he blocks Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids in New York, Mamdani accused the president of attacking democracy. “We will not accept this intimidation,” said Mamdani, who is of Indian descent but was born in Uganda and moved to the United States at age 7 before becoming a naturalized U.S. citizen in 2018. In his acceptance speech earlier this month, Mamdani spoke to the president directly: “So Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you: Turn the volume up,” he said. “If anyone can show a nation betrayed by Donald Trump how to defeat him, it is the city that gave rise to him,” Mamdani said as the global left celebrated his win — which sparked criticism in countries he has criticized, including Israel. It is unclear when a meeting might take place, but Trump said Sunday that “we want to see everything work out well for New York.” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said no date has been set, the Associated Press reported. Mamdani will be sworn in as the 111th mayor of New York on Jan. 1. Representatives for Mamdani and the White House did not immediately return requests for comment early Monday. Mamdani told NBC New York last week that he would be contacting the White House as he prepares to take office, saying the relationship “will be critical to the success of the city.” When asked what a conversation with Trump may sound like, Mamdani replied: “I’ll say that I’m here to work for the benefit of everyone who calls the city home and that wherever there is a possibility for working together towards that end, I’m ready,” the Democrat said. “And if it’s to the expense of those New Yorkers, I will fight it.”

Bloomberg [11/17/2025 11:39 PM, Robert Burnson, 18207K] reports a federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s request to strike down a New York law prohibiting immigration agents from making arrests at or near state courthouses. The judge also dismissed the administration’s move to force state law enforcement agencies to share information with federal agents in their pursuit of undocumented immigrants. In her 41-page ruling Monday, US District Judge Mae D’Agostino in Albany concluded that the federal government’s lawsuit was an improper attempt by the administration “to commandeer New York’s resources to aid in federal immigration efforts.” The ruling marks another setback for President Donald Trump and his effort to mass-deport millions of immigrants living in the US without legal status. As part of that effort, immigration enforcement agents have shown up at courthouses around the country to arrest migrants as they arrive for court hearings.

Wall Street Journal [11/17/2025 4:29 PM, James Fanelli, Jack Morphet, and Corrie Driebusch, 646K] reports New York state officials and Wall Street executives are teaming up to avoid a federal takeover of New York City, hoping to make the case to President Trump that a surge in law enforcement would be bad for business. Over the past several months, Gov. Kathy Hochul’s administration has been mapping out a way to protect New York from National Guard deployments and increased immigration enforcement that Trump has ordered for other U.S. cities. The effort comes at a critical moment for New York City, whose newly elected mayor, Democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, has drawn Trump’s ire. New York officials aim to follow the playbook that San Francisco successfully used last month to keep out National Guard troops. Silicon Valley chief executives, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Salesforce’s Marc Benioff, as well as San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, texted and called Trump to warn him that a deployment would hurt local businesses and have a ripple effect on the national economy. At the time, Trump wrote on social media that the federal government was preparing to “surge” San Francisco. “But friends of mine who live in the area called last night to ask me not to go forward with the surge,” he said. A similar approach in New York has won wide approval among business leaders, said Jackie Bray, New York’s homeland security and emergency services director who is leading the state’s effort. The campaign is still in its opening stage and taking a wait-and-see approach. State officials haven’t yet asked business leaders to do outreach to Trump because there is no immediate threat of a takeover.

Daily Wire [11/17/2025 12:47 PM, Leif Le Mahieu, 2494K] reports the Trump administration is backing more legislation that would crack down on crime in the nation’s capital and support police, according to an official White House document obtained by The Daily Wire. In a statement of policy from the Office of Management and Budget, the White House came out in support of a pair of Republican-backed bills that would require mandatory detention for certain violent crimes like armed robbery and removing cumbersome restrictions on police officers. Both proposals were advanced by the House Oversight Committee on Monday. "Together, these bills would hold criminals accountable and empower law enforcement officers," the statement of policy said. "Their reforms would help make America’s Federal city more safe, free, and beautiful and critically advance the President’s broader law and order agenda.” The policy statement indicated that the White House backed New York Rep. Elise Stefanik’s the District of Columbia Cash Bail Reform Act of 2025 (HR 5214) and Georgia Rep. Andrew Clyde’s Common-Sense Law Enforcement and Accountability Now in DC (CLEAN DC) Act of 2025 (HR 5107). Stefanik’s legislation would "require mandatory pretrial detention for defendants charged with certain enumerated public safety and order crimes. The movement to end cash bail and release dangerous criminals so they can commit more crimes is one of the primary reasons large cities have experienced so many repeat offenders and preventable tragedies. Washington, D.C. is a prime example and this bill will make the streets of our Federal city safer," according to the statement of policy. Clyde’s legislation would "reverse unnecessary and detrimental restrictions placed on officers of the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). For example, those restrictions include removing all officers and police union representatives from the Police Complaints Board, requiring juries to consider whether an officer consulted with mental health, behavioral health, or social workers before using deadly force, and imposing approval hurdles for the use of riot gear and less-lethal Projectiles.”

Washington Post [11/17/2025 3:36 PM, Emma Uber, 24149K] reports a man stopped by D.C. police earlier this month for driving a moped on the sidewalk was then detained by masked immigration agents, a bystander’s video shows, an incident that prompted renewed questions about the city’s role in the Trump administration’s ramped-up immigration operations. The man is the latest to be stopped by city police for a nonviolent traffic infraction, then end up in a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center, even as D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) says she is working to end D.C. police patrols with Department of Homeland Security agencies. Immigration authorities say that the man, who is from Venezuela, entered the country illegally two years ago and that a judge had signed a deportation order. The arrest comes as some D.C. residents have expressed mounting frustration with city officials for not extricating the local police department from President Donald Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda. Bowser has repeatedly said D.C. police are not patrolling with ICE but has acknowledged that Homeland Security agents who enforce immigration laws are working on task forces alongside D.C. police.

The Hill [11/17/2025 7:04 PM, Max Rego, 12595K] reports Martha White, the granddaughter of "Charlotte’s Web" author E.B. White, slammed the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) for using the novel’s name to refer to its Charlotte immigration enforcement operation. The Trump administration has called the endeavor "Operation Charlotte’s Web.” "He believed in the rule of law and due process," Martha White said in a statement. "He certainly didn’t believe in masked men, in unmarked cars, raiding people’s homes and workplaces without IDs or summons.” The 1952 children’s novel features Charlotte the spider protecting Wilbur the pig from being slaughtered. It took the top spot in a 2012 School Library Journal poll of the top 100 children’s novels. Gregory Bovino, the Customs and Border Protection official heading the operation, quoted the novel on the social platform X on Sunday, saying, "Wherever the wind takes us. High, low. Near, far. East, west. North, south. We take to the breeze, we go as we please.” DHS launched the operation on Saturday, saying in a release that it will target undocumented migrants who have committed crimes. The agency added that nearly 1,400 detainers from Immigration and Customs Enforcement have not been honored by local authorities. "We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Hill on Saturday.

Reported similarly:
AP [11/17/2025 5:06 PM, Staff]
FOX News [11/18/2025 3:24 AM, Landon Mion Fox, 40621K]

New York Post [11/17/2025 6:55 PM, Staff, 42219K] reports why did the FBI either fail to track down major information about would-be Trump assassin Thomas Crooks — or fail to make it public? Indeed, shouldn’t the Bureau have been aware of Crooks’ alarming and visible social media profile long before he opened fire on President Donald Trump in Butler, Pa., last year? The information Miranda Devine shared in Monday’s Post directly contradicts public claims by then-FBI Director Chris Wray that Crooks was a mystery man with a thin or nonexistent online presence. The methods Devine’s source used — starting with Crooks’ phone number to track down his accounts on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora — can’t be alien to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. How could the feds miss the YouTube account "Tomcrooks2178" (which showed to other users as Tom Crooks), active from Jan. 14, 2019, to its suspension on July 14, 2024, the day after Butler? Federal officials supposedly monitor social media for signs of danger; did posts like the all-caps "MURDER THE DEMOCRATS" of Dec. 12, 2019, really set off no alarms? In fact, he got more spooky after he turned to the left, writing in August 2020, "the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building and set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders etc and try to assassinate them.” None of this speech is grounds for arrest — but it’s absolutely the kind of thing you expect to get someone onto the feds’ radar, and certainly stuff they should note after the author has come a fraction of an inch from succeeding in an assassination.

New York Post [11/17/2025 11:01 AM, James Bovard, 42219K] reports despite being charged with no crime, more than half a million Americans have been robbed by government agents on the nation’s sidewalks, highways and airports in recent decades. Federal law enforcement agencies arbitrarily confiscate more property from Americans each year than all the burglars steal nationwide. Asset forfeiture is a plague upon constitutional rights. Any BS pretext will do nowadays to nullify property rights. After the FBI illegally ransacked safe deposit boxes in Beverly Hills in 2021, federal prosecutors justified seizing bundled bills because they were wrapped with rubber bands, sufficient proof that the owners were "either a top-level drug trafficker or money launderer." Confiscation was also justified because one of the boxholders had a vehicle with Illinois license plates, and an FBI agent swore that "Chicago, Illinois is a hub of both drug trafficking and money laundering." Anthonia Nwaorie, a 59-year-old nurse living in Texas, was fleeced of $41,377 by Customs and Border Protection agents solely because she failed to fill out a federal form declaring she was taking more than $10,000 out of the United States. US Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) are championing the Fifth Amendment Integrity Restoration Act (FAIR) to fix forfeiture by requiring "clear and convincing evidence" before federal agencies can seize private property. The FAIR Act would also end the profit incentive for law enforcement to directly pocket what they plunder. It would severely weaken what Alban calls the "law enforcement-industrial complex." But for 30 years, that complex has routed efforts to fundamentally curb law enforcement tyranny. Forfeiture is an acid test of democracy. If politicians cannot even stop officialdom from pillaging hapless citizens on absurd pretexts, perhaps the Bill of Rights should be replaced by a simple notice: "Tough luck, chumps!"

New York Post [11/17/2025 6:00 AM, Miranda Devine, 42219K] reports we are all owed a better explanation from the FBI and Secret Service about the attempted assassination of Donald Trump 16 months ago at a campaign rally in Butler, Pa. The president himself remains unsatisfied with the answers he’s been given about the circumstances leading to 20-year-old Thomas Crooks climbing on a rooftop with an AR-15 style rifle and firing eight times at Trump, narrowly missing his head but hitting his ear. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service sniper, but not before he killed rallygoer Corey Comperatore, 50, and seriously wounded David Dutch, 58, and James Copenhaver, 75, who were sitting in the bleachers behind Trump. There is something very wrong with the official story and that invites conspiracy theories. The president demanded answers months ago. A man was murdered. What is going on? Then-FBI Director Chris Wray told Congress after the July 13, 2024, attack that the bureau had found nothing in Crooks’ online history that pointed to a motive or political ideology. A week later, Wray’s deputy Paul Abbate told Congress that comments posted on one of Crooks’ social media accounts "appear to reflect antisemitic and anti-immigration themes to espouse political violence and are described as extreme in nature.” Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that Abbate misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again. Among the 17 accounts uncovered by our source were ones on YouTube, Snapchat, Venmo, Zelle, GroupMe, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Chess.com and Quora. The online interactions from when Crooks was aged 15 to 17 give us a better understanding of his evolution into an assassin, and invite more questions about what — or who — reversed his ideology. "The danger Crooks posed was visible for years in public online spaces," says the source. "His radicalization, violent rhetoric and obsession with political violence were all documented under his real name. The threat wasn’t hidden.” The official narrative claimed he acted alone and without a clear motive, ideology or digital footprint.

Wall Street Journal [11/17/2025 4:01 PM, Karen Elliott House, 646K] reports Saudi Arabia’s brash young man in a hurry is poised to become a mature monarch on a mission. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman visits Washington this week determined to walk away with a strong defense pact with the U.S. as well as big investments in artificial-intelligence and commercial deals—including for enriching uranium in the kingdom. Much has changed since the crown prince’s last visit, seven years ago. The smiling young prince was feted as he visited six cities to meet President Trump and congressional leaders as well as Silicon Valley tycoons and Hollywood executives. Then came the gruesome killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul. The young man everyone wanted to see became the man no one wanted to be seen with. This is a time of sobering transition for the kingdom as Vision 2030, the crown prince’s modernization blueprint, enters its second decade. Over the first 10 years, MBS dispensed “giga” projects involving large-scale developments to diversify the kingdom off oil as if he were Santa Claus. Now the budget is stretched by too many expensive projects, low oil prices and failure to attract investment at the level the kingdom had hoped. Foreign direct investment by the second quarter of 2025 grew to $25 billion from a year earlier, but remains well off the $100 billion goal for 2030. So big projects are being stretched out and some young Saudis during my visit complained that high-paying jobs are increasingly hard to find, driving them to settle for less challenging and lower-paying positions. Coming to the White House, where Mr. Trump continues to push MBS for Saudi-Israeli recognition—and predicts it will occur by year’s end—puts the crown prince in a delicate spot. But if he secures a defense pact in which the U.S. promises to support Saudi Arabia against regional threats, as President Reagan did in 1981 during the Iraq-Iran war, that alone could justify the trip. A White House photo of MBS with Mr. Trump would enhance MBS’s stature at home. MBS also seeks to buy America’s most sophisticated jet fighter, the F-35, as part of the U.S.-Saudi defense deal. Promising Mr. Trump big Saudi investments in defense and the U.S. economy usually secures his cooperation.

Washington Post [11/17/2025 10:07 AM, George F. Will, 24149K] reports CIA personnel running the Airbridge Denial Program, a drug-interdiction operation in Peru between 1995 and 2001, wanted to avoid catastrophic mishaps, such as, they said, shooting down “a planeload of nuns.” Then they shot down a family of American missionaries. According to Tim Weiner in “The Mission: The CIA in the 21st Century,” all 15 shootdowns by CIA operatives and Peruvian allies between 1995 and 2001 violated explicit presidential rules about identifying and warning planes suspected of carrying drugs. Are there any rules regarding today’s “lethal kinetic strikes” on boats driven by “narco-terrorists” who are “poisoning” Americans? This language is from self-designated Secretary of War Pete Hegseth on X, where he notifies narco-terrorists: “We will kill you.” The tattooed tough guy is waging war. But not “hostilities.” Terrorism is indiscriminate violence intended to sow fear, thereby advancing political objectives. Drug trafficking is for-profit commerce. “Narco-terrorists” is a self-contradictory neologism coined to turn crime (drug trafficking) into war, thereby enabling lethal kinetic stuff by the war secretary. The Obama administration, pursuing regime change, assured Congress that U.S. participation in NATO’s 2011 intervention in Libya’s civil war involved “non-kinetic support” (intelligence, logistics, refueling). There also were, however, some kinetic-seeming attacks on Libyan air defenses and other targets. When two people survived an Oct. 16 boat strike, they were not taken into U.S. custody. They were sent to their home countries, Ecuador and Colombia. Strangely, or perhaps not, they were not detained for extensive interrogations that might have confirmed, or not, Trump administration suppositions about who is doing what with the boats. Also, a boat farther from a U.S. shore than Miami is from Philadelphia would need to refuel numerous times getting there. How would that work? The vessels allegedly are carrying fentanyl. Strange. Most of this comes to America overland from Mexico. South America, the boats’ origin, produces cocaine. Channeling his inner Humpty Dumpty (“‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean — nothing more nor less’”), Donald Trump has decided that this hypothetical fentanyl from Venezuela might be a “chemical weapon” (like mustard gas or sarin?). An odd one, that Americans pay for and ingest.

Federal Newswire [11/17/2025 11:55 PM, Staff] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced that it arrested several individuals with serious criminal convictions over the past weekend. According to ICE, 70 percent of all its arrests involve non-citizens who have been charged or convicted of crimes in the United States. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated, “While Americans were enjoying their weekend, ICE law enforcement officers were hard at work arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens across the country including convicted murderers, pedophiles, and rapists. Our law enforcement officers are working around the clock to arrest criminal illegal aliens released into American neighborhoods by the Biden administration. 70% of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the United States. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, America’s borders are closed to lawbreakers.”

Daily Wire [11/17/2025 11:07 AM, Leif Le Mahieu, 2494K] reports from coast to coast, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) continue to nab illegal aliens convicted of vile crimes like murder and the sexual assault of young children. The Department of Homeland Security on Monday shared a list with The Daily Wire of some of the "worst of the worst" picked up by ICE over the weekend. The list included those convicted from California to Florida, New York to Iowa, and Texas. "While Americans were enjoying their weekend, ICE law enforcement officers were hard at work arresting the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens across the country including convicted murderers, pedophiles, and rapists," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told The Daily Wire. McLaughlin told The Daily Wire that the vast majority of illegal aliens detained by the Trump administration had other serious criminal convictions or charges. "Our law enforcement officers are working around the clock to arrest criminal illegal aliens released into American neighborhoods by the Biden Administration," she said. "Seventy percent of ICE arrests are of illegal aliens charged or convicted of a crime in the United States. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, America’s borders are closed to lawbreakers.”

FOX News [11/17/2025 11:33 AM, Julia Bonavita and Brooke Taylor, 40621K] reports a Texas woman is recovering after police say an illegal immigrant previously released by the Biden administration after numerous prior arrests attacked her while she was jogging in a park. Authorities in Plano responded to a call regarding an alleged assault in Bob Woodruff Park at around 5 p.m. on Nov. 13, according to FOX 4. When police arrived, the victim reportedly informed them she had been jogging in the area when an unknown man struck her with a hammer at least twice. The woman fought back against her attacker, who then fled the scene, the outlet reported. The woman was taken to a hospital and received treatment for non-life-threatening injuries. Police later identified 17-year-old Sergio Noe de Nova Duarte as the suspected attacker after tying him to several items left at the scene, FOX 4 reported. Investigators reportedly found the hammer used in the alleged attack and duct tape, along with additional items authorities have not yet disclosed. Upon being taken into custody, immigration officials placed an arrest detainer on Duarte, according to a statement from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). Duarte is charged with aggravated kidnapping and bodily injury, according to DHS. "This criminal illegal alien should have never been loose in our communities to attack this woman jogging in a park with a hammer," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "Following this illegal alien’s arrest in 2024, the Biden Administration released this criminal illegal alien back into our communities. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, ICE lodged an arrest detainer to ensure this criminal illegal alien is never able to prey on innocent women in our country again.”

National Review [11/17/2025 5:40 PM, James Lynch, 109K] reports two illegal immigrants were arrested last week after being accused of repeatedly raping an unaccompanied migrant child who was illegally brought to the U.S. during the Obama administration. Felix Bustillo Diaz, 49, an illegal immigrant from Honduras, and Jose Gerber-Rivera, a 45-year-old Salvadoran illegal alien, are suspected of repeatedly raping Bustillo’s 12-year-old grand niece. The girl was smuggled into the U.S. by her Honduran mother in June 2014, according to federal authorities. The child’s mother was herself an unaccompanied minor at the time and brought the girl, then an infant, with her. The child was then left alone with Bustillo, a convicted criminal who ended up being her sponsor after he claimed to be her great uncle, marking a startling failure in the sponsor vetting process. Bustillo was convicted on a DWI in Harris County, Texas, in 2003, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told NR. They were brought into the custody of the Obama administration’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, a unit within the Department of Health and Human Service’s Administration for Children and Families. The Biden administration then granted Bustillo temporary protected status in 2024, a designation that the Trump administration terminated. Earlier this month, Bustillo was transferred from the Montgomery County processing center to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office to be held in custody. He was at the processing center after Immigration and Customs Enforcement detained him for immigration violations. Law enforcement brought Rivera into custody on November 4 in the Woodlands, Texas.

FOX News [11/17/2025 8:00 AM, Stepheny Price Fox, 40621K] reports the FBI is warning that criminals across several states are impersonating Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents to rob, kidnap and assault unsuspecting victims. In a bulletin posted last month, the bureau detailed several cases in which offenders identified themselves as immigration agents while wearing shirts or jackets marked with the ICE logo. The Oct. 17 bulletin, first reported by WIRED and obtained by the transparency group Property of the People via a public-records request, describes multiple cases of criminals posing as ICE agents. According to the FBI, victims have reported being threatened, robbed, kidnapped and even sexually assaulted by individuals posing as federal officers. Some of the incidents occurred in New York, Florida and North Carolina, the bulletin said. "Due to the recent increase in ICE enforcement actions across the country, criminal actors are using ICE’s enhanced public profile and media coverage to their advantage to target vulnerable communities," the FBI said. Officials say these impersonation scams are making it harder for communities to distinguish legitimate law enforcement operations from criminal activity — endangering both civilians and real officers. The FBI is urging local police departments to review identification protocols and reminding the public that impersonating a federal officer is a serious crime with significant penalties. Retired FBI Special Agent Jason Pack, who spent more than two decades with the bureau, told Fox News Digital that the criminals behind these schemes are deliberately exploiting fear and confusion.

FOX News [11/17/2025 6:00 AM, Julia Bonavita, 40621K] reports a startling rise in human trafficking cases throughout one of the nation’s most populous states is putting both experts and parents on alert, with data indicating that criminals are targeting children in unprecedented numbers. North Carolina is ranked ninth in the country for human trafficking, according to data from the National Human Trafficking Hotline. In 2024, the state identified 301 cases of human trafficking involving 580 victims, the Hotline indicated. These cases involve instances of sex trafficking, labor trafficking and additional types of exploitation that may not be specified or remain unknown, according to the Hotline. In North Carolina, data indicates that in 2024, there were 145 reported cases of sex trafficking, 73 cases of labor trafficking, and 38 cases of both sex and labor trafficking. Hannah Arrowood, executive director of Present Age Ministries, spearheads a partnership with the Charlotte Metro Human Trafficking Task Force in an attempt to understand and combat the rise in cases. "It really is kind of like a perfect storm," Arrowood told Fox News Digital. "There are a lot of variables. One of the things that we have to know is that trafficking happens everywhere. It happens in every city and every town, whether you’re rural [or in a] city – it really doesn’t matter. But for Charlotte, one thing is that we have a lot of factors that attract demand.” The eye-watering number of cases is best explained by North Carolina’s sweeping interstate highway system, high demand for inexpensive labor throughout its agricultural industry, and increased amount of gang activity, experts said. "Part of the reason why Charlotte is such a huge trafficking hub is because of the highway system," Toby Braun, founder of American Special Investigative Group, told Fox News Digital. "A lot of these traffickers are running victims and may start in South Florida. From South Florida, they go to Atlanta, and from Atlanta, they pass through Charlotte. Oftentimes there, they may put them in safe houses.” According to Braun, victims will then be transported to other major cities throughout the country – like New York or Houston – after passing through Charlotte. "Charlotte is kind of like a central hub, or an epicenter," Braun said. "For the most part, it’s kind of a pit stop.” The number of Charlotte residents falling victim to trafficking can partially be attributed to the prevalence of gang activity within the city, with criminal organizations maintaining a firm grip on the area’s network, according to experts. "The Bloods have a huge stronghold in human trafficking," Braun said. "They’re one of the primary organized crime groups responsible for trafficking [in Charlotte]. For the most part, these are criminal networks. And that also makes it tougher, because of the kind of resources that they have and the ability to traffic people around, hide them in places and really stay undetected.” [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CBS News [11/17/2025 5:19 PM, Staff, 39474K] reports "They’re everywhere ... Anywhere where Hispanics are, they’re going," said Diana De Leon, a protester in Charlotte. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Blaze [11/17/2025 1:00 PM, Cooper Williamson, 1442K] reports that a criminal illegal alien is expected to be deported more than a decade after his deportation order, but CNN’s coverage of the case buries the violent details of his past. The Department of Homeland Security set the record straight as the criminal illegal alien is set to finally be removed Monday. According to the DHS, Russian-born Roman Antatolevich Surovtsev was arrested on August 1 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He is expected to be deported Monday in compliance with a final order of removal issued by an immigration judge in November 2014. CNN described Surovtsev as a "stateless person" given the fact that he fled the USSR and surrendered his citizenship. The 2014 deportation order also revoked his green card, the sole condition for his remaining in the United States. He has since routinely checked in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement until his arrest in August. Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin noted that Surovtsev has a "history of violence" with a rap sheet including "assault with a deadly weapon, multiple counts of burglary, multiple counts of carjacking, carjacking with a firearm, trespassing onto private property, multiple counts of taking a vehicle without owner consent, possession of a hypodermic needle/syringe, receiving stolen property, multiple counts of conspiracy to commit a crime."

Reuters [11/17/2025 4:57 AM, Jan Wolfe, 36480K] reports a U.S. judge rejected on Monday a Trump administration challenge to a New York law that blocks immigration officials from arresting individuals at, or near, state courthouses. Republican President Donald Trump has stepped up immigration enforcement in Democratic-led cities, such as New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., in his bid to deport record numbers of immigrants without legal status. In a 41-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Mae D’Agostino dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit that sought to block a 2020 state law known as the Protect Our Courts Act. The lawsuit, filed in June, said it violated the "supremacy clause," a constitutional provision by which federal law supersedes conflicting state laws. D’Agostino rejected that argument, saying New York was "protect[ing] its sovereign interests in the face of undue federal interference.” A Justice Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Since Trump’s return to the White House in January, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have adopted a strategy of arresting migrants appearing in court for their immigration cases. State courthouses have been an attractive venue for ICE, as people reliably appear for court dates and are typically screened by security. Advocates and some officials have resisted attempts by ICE to operate in state courthouses, saying such efforts risk disrupting court operations and dissuading millions of people from accessing the legal system. The New York law, enacted during Trump’s first term, says ICE agents can arrest people at or near courthouses only if they have a court order or criminal warrant signed by a judge. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi has said New York’s law and similar measures in other states endanger the public.

New York Times [11/17/2025 5:00 AM, Jenna Russell, 135475K] reports that, early on Election Day, Etel Haxhiaj pulled a campaign sign from the back seat of her car and found a spot on the sidewalk outside Blessed Sacrament Church, a polling place in Worcester, Mass. A cold wind tugged at the sign in her hands, threatening to blow it away. Ms. Haxhiaj, 45, was a two-term city councilwoman in the city. By that night, she would know the fate of her campaign for re-election. Voters would judge her handling of everyday municipal business, but many would also consider a thornier question: Should Ms. Haxhiaj have intervened in an immigration enforcement action on a street in her district? The encounter in May — a chaotic confrontation among residents, city police officers and federal immigration agents — had grabbed national attention after videos of it went viral. Ms. Haxhiaj had placed herself in the middle of it, standing between the police and an immigrant family. Six months later, she was fighting charges of assaulting an officer and interfering with the police. And she was facing a worrisome reality: Her actions in May could cost her the election, even in this diverse, immigrant-friendly, majority-Democratic city. The controversy had brought new campaign donations and support. But it had also set off a fierce backlash. An angry man had accosted Ms. Haxhiaj outside a supermarket as she walked with her children. A bomb threat had been sent to her city email: “This is what you lunatic progressive get,” it said in capital letters. Days before the election, a local firefighters union had rescinded its endorsement of her after receiving complaints from its members. Worcester is the second-largest city in Massachusetts, a liberal state where 61 percent of voters had supported Kamala Harris for president. But its politics are complicated. Moderate Democrats have long held power, but since 2020, more socially progressive Democrats have run for office, Ms. Haxhiaj among them. An immigrant from Albania, she became the first Muslim on the council in 2022. Another progressive, an immigrant from Vietnam, became the first openly nonbinary member the same year. As the newcomers pushed for racial justice, L.G.B.T.Q. protections and changes in policing, tensions ticked up. So did a perception among some voters that basic city business, like road repairs and snow removal, had taken a back seat. In that unsettled atmosphere, Ms. Haxhiaj’s clash with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the police had the effect of a match on dry kindling. Elsewhere in the lead-up to Election Day, progressive Democrats had big momentum. In New York, Zohran Mamdani led the race for mayor by a sweeping margin. In Boston, Mayor Michelle Wu would coast to victory unopposed. In Worcester, about 50 miles to the west, the picture was less clear. Would voters tolerate a council with diverse views and backgrounds, looser ties to business interests and vocal disagreements between members? It had never been in question that ICE would come to Worcester. President Trump’s border czar, Tom Homan, had not attacked the working-class city of 200,000 like he had Boston. But Worcester had long been a destination for refugees and asylum seekers, with lower rents and a constellation of organizations to help them.

Daily Caller [11/17/2025 12:56 PM, Derek VanBuskirk, 835K] reports that scammers were back to business as usual less than a month after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) cracked down on illegal immigrants allegedly selling luxury knockoffs on New York’s infamous Canal Street, according to a Sunday report. Despite the threat of deportation, dozens of these scammers have returned to Canal Street to allegedly continue selling fake designer bags, electronics and more in preparation for the holidays, according to the New York Post. ICE conducted an operation on Chinatown street Oct. 21 and arrested nine illegal aliens for various alleged crimes, including assaulting law enforcement, according to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) statement. "ICE conducted a targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation on Canal Street in New York City focused on criminal activity relating to selling counterfeit goods yesterday. ICE arrested nine illegal aliens with criminal histories including robbery, burglary, domestic violence, assaulting law enforcement, counterfeiting, drug trafficking, drug possession and forgery," Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in an Oct. 22 statement. "The majority of those arrested were released into the country by the Biden administration. Under President Trump and Secretary Noem, criminal illegal aliens are not welcome in the U.S," she continued. Those arrested entered the U.S. illegally largely from countries in Africa, including Senegal, according to the DHS.

Breitbart [11/17/2025 1:56 PM, Warner Todd Huston, 2416K] reports the Florida Highway Patrol (FHP) reported that troopers have arrested 6,200 illegal migrants during its partnership with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) this year. Florida Republican Gov. Ron De Santis had ordered the FHP to partner with ICE early this year, saying that state and local law enforcement agencies would be a “force multiplier” in deportations. “Interior enforcement atrophied under Biden so there will no doubt be a ramp up period,” DeSantis said in January, adding it is “all the more reason why states and localities need to assist the Trump administration with interior enforcement efforts.” The partnership “will be a force multiplier,” he said. De Santis was one of the first state governors to pledge to help Trump implement his immigration policies as the president prepared to take office for his second term in the White House. This month’s report on the number of illegal migrants grabbed up by the FHP proves that DeSantis was a man of his word. And the governor celebrated the numbers in a post to social media. “The state of Florida is leading. We’re showing what can be done when you work collaboratively with the federal government on an issue that’s very, very important to so many people,” he wrote on X on Thursday. Florida is a leading participant in the ICE 287(g) program, which authorizes ICE to work directly with local law enforcement to perform immigration enforcement actions. The state boasts 287 agencies participating in the program, according to CBS News.

Daily Caller [11/17/2025 11:16 AM, Jason Hopkins, 835K] reports a husband and wife duo accused of running a sophisticated sex ring in Louisiana are previously deported illegal migrants with lengthy rap sheets. Murillo Lazano-Vargas and Zabdi Danea Guzman-Diaz were apprehended by the East Baton Rouge Sheriff’s Office earlier in November on charges related to the promotion of prostitution, human trafficking by force and pandering, according to local outlet WAFB. The married couple are Mexican nationals who are not only living in the U.S. unlawfully, but had already been deported from the country before returning to allegedly launch their illicit brothel enterprise, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). "On November 6, ICE Homeland Security Investigations executed a search and arrest warrant for a human trafficking and sexual exploitation investigation," a DHS spokesperson stated to the Daily Caller News Foundation. "HSI Law enforcement rescued three victims of these barbaric criminals.” "Thanks to the brave men and women of ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], these human traffickers and predators are off the streets," the DHS spokesperson continued. "President Trump and Secretary Noem are dismantling transnational criminal networks.” Local law enforcement received a tip in January that an individual going by the moniker "Primo," later identified as Lazcano-Vargas, was overseeing a home in the Baton Rouge area where prostitution and human trafficking were allegedly taking place, according to WAFB. The Mexican national allegedly used WhatsApp to send explicit images of females to arrange meetings with clients, with investigators later determining that his wife was a co-conspirator in the scheme. Lazcano-Vargas was previously convicted for domestic abuse, child abuse and aggravated assault, and Guzman-Diaz was previously convicted of illegal entry, according to DHS. "Human trafficking is one of the most heinous crimes in our society, and I’m extremely proud of the tireless work of our detectives and partner agencies in bringing these individuals to justice," East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux said in a public statement.

Breitbart [11/17/2025 2:43 PM, John Binder, 2416K] reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has deported an illegal alien whom Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, Judge Hannah Dugan is charged with trying to help evade arrest by federal agents. Over the weekend, ICE agents deported illegal alien Eduardo Flores-Ruiz of Mexico. Flores-Ruiz crossed the southern border in 2013 and was apprehended by Border Patrol agents in Nogales, Arizona. He was swiftly deported to Mexico, but illegally crossed the border again, a felony. Flores-Ruiz also faced charges for strangulation and suffocation, battery, and domestic abuse. In April, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) arrested Dugan for allegedly helping Flores-Ruiz evade arrest by ICE agents by purposefully misdirecting agents from Ruiz inside a Wisconsin courthouse. "Eduardo Flores-Ruiz, a previously removed illegal alien has a laundry list of violent criminal charges, including strangulation and suffocation, battery, and domestic abuse," the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Tricia McLaughlin said: Judge Hannah Dugan’s actions to obstruct this violent criminal’s arrest take ‘activist judge’ to a whole new meaning. Thanks to the brave men and women of ICE law enforcement, this criminal is out of our country. If you are here illegally and break the law, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and remove you from our country. That’s a promise.

Breitbart [11/17/2025 6:07 PM, Elizabeth Weibel, 2416K] reports Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s (D-IL) office has fired a staffer who was accused of pretending to be an attorney to free an illegal alien from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) custody, according to a report. Fox News’s Bill Melugin shared a letter that Duckworth directed at Todd M. Lyons, the Acting Director of ICE. In her letter, Duckworth explained that she was responding to Lyon’s November 12, 2025, letter "regarding interactions between" her now-former staffer and ICE officials. Duckworth added that her "office has terminated the employment" of the staffer. "I am writing in response to your November 12, 2025 letter regarding interactions between an employee of my Senate Office and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers in the St. Louis ICE Field Office," Duckworth’s letter said. "Upon reviewing the matter, I can confirm that neither I nor my leadership team was aware of, authorized or directed what your letter describes as the employee’s conduct.” "My office has terminated the employment of said employee, effective November 17, 2025," Duckworth added. Duckworth’s letter came after Lyons sent the Democrat senator a letter informing her that Edward York — who was working in her office at the time — claimed that he was the lawyer for Jose Ismeal Ayuzo Sandoval, an illegal alien. Breitbart News’s Alana Mastrangelo reported that York, who had been a "Constituent Outreach Coordinator" for Duckworth, falsified "an official Department of Homeland Security (DHS) form," along with falsely claiming to be Ayuzo’s lawyer: York, a Constituent Outreach Coordinator for Duckworth’s Senate office, entered an ICE facility in St. Louis, Illinois, on October 29, "and in a discussion with a federal officer, claimed to be Mr. Ayuzo’s attorney," Lyons told Duckworth in his letter. From there, York "demanded to speak with his ‘client,’" the letter continues, adding, "This staff member allegedly did so to gain access to the detainee and seek his release from custody, and he accomplished it by falsifying an official Department of Homeland Security (DHS) form.” FOX News [11/17/2025 6:57 PM, Bill Melugin and Andrea Margolis, 40621K] reports that last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Acting Director Todd Lyons told the Illinois Democrat that her staffer, Edward York, claimed he was legally representing Jose Ismeal Ayuzo Sandoval. Sandoval, a 40-year-old illegal immigrant, had a DUI conviction and was previously deported four times to Mexico. According to ICE, the staffer made the claim to federal agents after entering an ICE facility in St. Louis, Illinois, on Oct. 29. "At approximately 1:29 p.m., an individual identified as Edward York, who, according to publicly available information, is employed as a Constituent Outreach Coordinator for your Senate office, entered the field office lobby, and in a discussion with a federal officer, claimed to be Mr. Ayuzo’s attorney.

Reported similarly:
NewsMax [11/17/2025 7:09 PM, Jim Mishler, 4109K]

Chicago Tribune [11/17/2025 2:18 PM, Madeline Buckley, 4829K] reports that a federal judge has allowed a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing center in Broadview to proceed as a class action, authorizing two former detainees to represent potentially hundreds of current and future immigration arrestees processed at the west suburban facility. The complaint, filed in October, accused Department of Homeland Security officials of cramming people into dirty holding cells and not providing enough food and water, among other problems, as they sought to boost immigration arrests during the Operation Midway Blitz enforcement operation. It also claims that officials blocked attorney access at the site and coerced people into signing voluntary deportation forms. It was filed on behalf of Pablo Moreno Gonzalez and Felipe Agustin Zamacona, who were detained there for several days in October. The two men sought to represent a class of detainees, but the class-action status needed approval from a judge. U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman on Monday handed the win to the plaintiffs, even though the government argued that detainees had differing experiences there, given that some were only held for a few hours. But Gettleman found that the plaintiffs overcame that hurdle, while also meeting requirements around numbers of potential class members. "Plaintiffs state that, according to ICE data, ICE detained 5,202 individuals at Broadview between January 1, 2025, and July 28, 2025," Gettleman’s order said. "These figures are from the period prior to the announcement of ‘Operation Midway Blitz,’ which caused a dramatic increase in immigration enforcement in the Chicago area.” The class is likely more than 1,000 people, the judge found.

Chicago Tribune [11/18/2025 4:58 AM, Richard Requena, 4917K] reports to thunderous applause from Skokie residents who rallied in support of immigrant rights beforehand, the Skokie Village Board further strengthened its village code to make it clear that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agents cannot use village-owned property for civil immigration enforcement. The Village Board took the action in a swift and unanimous way to approve the changes to its code on a first reading at its Nov. 3 meeting, a rare exception to how the Board usually approves an ordinance or resolution, i.e., in two readings across two meetings. The change took place just days after a violent Oct. 31 fracas involving Department of Homeland Security agents in nearby Evanston. North suburban schools have been going to indoor recess, closed campuses and keeping a closer eye on students. The village will also post new signs with the reinforced ordinance on village property, according to Village Manager John Lockerby. Nearby towns, including Evanston and Chicago, have created “ICE-free zones” in recent weeks. The resolutions are largely symbolic because the Illinois Trust Act already prohibits local governments from aiding federal immigration officers for civil arrests. Skokie’s prior ordinances also have language that prohibits local resources from aiding federal immigration officers that do not have a criminal warrant. The Village Board adopted the changes to its Human Relations chapter first in 2017, then made another update after President Donald Trump was sworn in to serve his second term in office. The new added language dictates that village property cannot be used as a “staging or debriefing area, processing location, operations base, or other support for civil immigration enforcement without a valid criminal warrant.” The ordinance also creates a precedent for the village to notify immigrants of their right to contact consulates, make support programs available for immigrants who are victims or witnesses to qualifying crimes and to promptly respond to requests for visa documents and forms.

Chicago Tribune [11/17/2025 5:48 PM, Jason Meisner and Laura Rodríguez Presa, 4829K] reports a father of two fatally shot by an immigration agent during a traffic stop in Franklin Park in September was struck in the left side of his neck before crashing the car into a semitruck, according to autopsy results obtained Monday by the Tribune. When paramedics brought Silverio Villegas González to the hospital, doctors found "apparent drug paraphernalia" in his possession, and toxicological studies later showed he had low levels of cocaine in his blood at the time of his death, the autopsy results showed. A relative of Villegas González, meanwhile, told the Tribune he did not use drugs and worried the information could be used to cast him in a misleading or negative light as the investigation into the shooting continues. The details, released more than two months after the Sept. 12 shooting, are virtually the only investigative records made public in the controversial case, which came in the early days of the Trump administration’s immigration-enforcement push known as Operation Midway Blitz. The investigation into the shooting was initially handled by the FBI, and notes from a Cook County medical examiner’s office investigator indicated he was told by an FBI agent at the scene that the agency "would be taking jurisdiction of the case." But sources later told the Tribune it was the U.S. Department of Homeland Security that was handling the follow-up investigation, including whether the officer was justified in opening fire. Villegas González, 38, had just dropped off his kids at day care and was on his way to work when agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement pulled him over near the intersection of Grand Avenue and Elder Lane, a largely residential area also near an animal hospital, a nail shop and a high school. In a statement released shortly after the shooting, DHS officials said Villegas González "refused to follow law enforcement commands and drove his car" at the agents, striking one and dragging him "a significant distance." "Fearing for his life, the officer discharged his firearm and struck the subject," DHS said. Both the agent and Villegas González were taken to nearby Loyola University Medical Center in Maywood, where Villegas González was pronounced dead. DHS officials originally said the agent who was dragged was in critical condition. But body-worn camera footage by Franklin Park police two weeks later showed the agent told police at the scene his injuries were "nothing major." The autopsy results, meanwhile, show Villegas González was struck in the left side of his neck by a bullet that traveled on a downward trajectory and wound up lodged in his lower-right chest, suggesting the gunfire came from someone above him on the driver’s side of the car. He also suffered graze wounds to the pinky and ring fingers on his left hand, the report showed. Toxicology tests showed Villegas González had relatively low amounts of cocaine and benzoylecgonine - a byproduct of the body breaking down the narcotic - in his blood at the time of his death, according to the 38-page report.

CBS Chicago [11/17/2025 6:16 PM, Sabrina Franza, 39474K] Video: HERE reports hundreds of migrants being held by the federal government are hoping to go free by the end of the week, after a judge determined their arrests might have been improper. Last week, a federal judge ordered hundreds of immigrants detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the Chicago area between mid-June and mid-October be released on bond, after he determined their arrests might have violated an earlier court order. Of the 607 people on that list, many of them don’t know they’re eligible for release, and their families don’t know how to reach them. Speaking to CBS News Chicago anonymously, one woman said her partner, who has been in the U.S. for 20 years, is being held at an ICE detention facility in Indiana. Through an interpreter, she explained he was pulled over in a drive-through and taken into federal custody in August. She worries for his health in detention. "His health is not at a good stage. He had cancer, and the doctor, the jail where he’s at, he knows about it, but he can’t help him," she said. When she saw his name on Friday on the list of detainees eligible for release, because of an ongoing lawsuit which claims his arrest and others were made without proper cause or warrant, she called him. "He is very disappointed; even more, he lost faith," she said. Immigration attorney William McLean noted the judge’s order requires the government to release those on the list by Friday once they’ve posted a $1,500 bond. McLean has multiple clients on that list, including one the government designated "high risk to public safety," due in part to his criminal record, which means that person will likely stay in detention. "But really, honestly, I’m not 100 percent sure what might go into it. It’s not only criminal convictions," McLean said.

FOX News [11/17/2025 9:55 PM, Greg Wehner, 40621K] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in Houston arrested more than 3,500 criminal illegal aliens, including child predators, murderers and gang members, during the longest government shutdown, despite many agents going without pay. ICE officials said the six-week operation, conducted from Oct. 1 through Nov. 12, marked one of the largest enforcement actions in recent years and underscored the agency’s commitment to public safety even as federal employees went without pay. "Our entire team understands how critical ICE’s mission is to public safety and national security, and despite many of them going without pay, they continued to show up every day and give everything they had to protect this community from dangerous criminal illegal alien gang members, child predators, murderers and rapists," ICE Enforcement and Removal Operation (ERO) Houston Field Office Director Bret Bradford said. ICE said the operation led to the arrest of 3,593 criminal illegal aliens across Southeast Texas, including 67 sex offenders, 51 child predators, 13 murderers, 10 fugitives and 23 gang members. Among those taken into custody were members of the MS-13 and Paisas gangs. Officials said the arrests also included hundreds of aliens with convictions for driving while intoxicated, aggravated assault, weapons offenses and burglary. Other convictions included aggravated kidnapping, drug-related offenses, human trafficking, making terroristic threats, prostitution, bribery and illegal reentry. Among those arrested was Brayan Josue Pineda-Ayala, a 23-year-old MS-13 gang member from Honduras who was released into the U.S. by the Biden administration in May 2024 and later allegedly committed a triple homicide in Dallas County. ICE arrested him on Oct. 7. ICE also arrested Froilan Mejia Olveram, a 44-year-old twice-removed criminal alien and convicted rapist from Mexico, on Oct. 23. ICE said Mejia had been encountered by agents in 2023 but could not be taken into custody due to the Biden administration’s enforcement guidelines. He went on to rape and assault a woman the following month and was later convicted, according to ICE. Other arrests included Baldomero Perez-Quezada, a 56-year-old four-time removed child predator from Mexico who was deported Oct. 31; Marco Dubon-Ayala, a 51-year-old from Mexico convicted of sexual indecency with a child; and Juan Jose Moreno-Renteria, a 40-year-old child predator from Mexico who had entered the U.S. illegally seven times. ICE said agents also arrested 10 fugitives wanted for serious crimes in the U.S. and abroad. Among them was Octavio Cruz-Garcia, a five-time-removed criminal alien from Mexico wanted for homicide in Harris County, Texas. Two Honduran brothers, Elder Antonio Cruz-Hernandez and Yony Roberto Cruz-Hernandez, were also arrested and remain in ICE custody pending repatriation to Honduras, where they are wanted for homicide. The arrests underscore the agency’s mission to remove violent offenders and ensure those wanted for serious crimes face justice. "As a result of those efforts, 51 dangerous child predators are no longer free to prey on our children, 10 fugitives have been apprehended and will now face justice for their alleged offenses, and thousands of other violent criminal aliens have been removed from local communities throughout Southeast Texas and will be removed from the United States," Bradford said. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [11/17/2025 8:06 PM, Louis Casiano, 40621K] reports a raid at a sex and human trafficking operation in San Antonio operated by members of Tren de Aragua gang (TdA) resulted in at least 140 illegal immigrants being arrested, authorities said Monday. The raid was part of a joint operation between the Texas Department of Public Safety and federal and local authorities, Texas Gov. Gregg Abbott said. On Monday, a regional Homeland Security Task Force was created to combat transnational criminal organizations. The aim of the task force is to dismantle drug cartels, foreign terrorist organizations, and criminal networks responsible for crimes like human trafficking, drug smuggling, and money laundering. Sunday’s raid was part of President Donald Trump’s executive order issued on Jan. 20 targeting transnational criminal organizations. More than 140 illegal immigrants from Venezuela, Honduras, Mexico and other South American countries were taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents. The raid involved multiple federal agencies. "The Homeland Security Task Force enables the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to bring its sophisticated investigative techniques to the table, which have been instrumental in capturing the most violent drug trafficking organizations in the United States and worldwide," said the Houston Field Division Special Agent in Charge Jonathan Pullen. "We look forward to working hand in hand with our federal and state counterparts in bringing down drug traffickers pumping poison into our neighborhoods and devastating our communities," he added. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, whose brother served as mayor of San Antonio, said he has asked the Justice Department and local agencies for more information on the raid. He claimed that raids conducted elsewhere have seen U.S. citizens and immigrants with no criminal record arrested. Meanwhile, in Houston, ICE arrested 3,500 criminal illegal aliens, including child predators and murderers, during the 43-day government shutdown. The suspects taken into custody include 13 people convicted of murder, 51 child predators, 67 sex offenders and 23 gang members, including an MS-13 gang member charged with a triple homicide in Dallas, authorities said. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Daily Caller [11/17/2025 12:05 PM, Christine Sellers, 835K] reports a suspected illegal alien was recently arrested after she sent nude photos to a 12-year-old Texas boy, authorities said. Officials arrested and charged Susanna Mendoza with solicitation of a minor after the boy’s parents contacted the Jasper County Sheriff’s Office (JCSO), according to a press release. Mendoza, 26, allegedly sent him nude images and vulgar text messages to try and entice him. The boy has since turned 13. The JCSO opened an investigation, which led to Mendoza’s arrest. The agency believed Mendoza was in the U.S. illegally because she allegedly threatened to flee the U.S. The sheriff’s office said they were going to contact federal authorities regarding the matter. The JCSO arrest Mendoza around 4:26 p.m. on Nov. 13 and took her to Jasper County Jail, according to the press release. The alleged crime follows the arrests of more than 150 illegal alien sex offenders across the state of Florida as part of Operation Dirtbag, an initiative led by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), according to a Nov. 13 press release from DHS. "The operation targeted child predators, rapists, and violent criminal illegal aliens with convictions including sexual assault of minors, rape, lewd and lascivious conduct, child exploitation, battery, and attempted homicide," the department said.

Univision [11/17/2025 1:56 PM, Staff, 5004K] reports a massive federal operation surprised residents of north San Antonio early Sunday morning, when helicopters, explosions, and dozens of patrol cars stormed the area of San Pedro Avenue and Basse Street, leaving more than 100 people detained. The operation began around 2:00 a.m. and was carried out by multiple agencies such as the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security (HSI), ICE, the Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and the San Antonio Police Department, according to sources consulted and witnesses who witnessed the intervention. Although the FBI had previously confirmed that it was a "court-authorized activity," the scale of the deployment was unknown until security cameras and videos recorded at the scene showed men and women being handcuffed and taken to official vehicles. According to preliminary information, those arrested include people from Honduras, Mexico, and Venezuela. Witnesses indicated that some of those detained may be minors, as large parties were held at the establishment every Friday. For now, authorities have not revealed the charges or the exact nature of the federal investigation.

Washington Times [11/17/2025 3:37 PM, Stephen Dinan, 852K] reports federal authorities have brought a gun trafficking case against an illegal immigrant after he allegedly used private sales at gun shows and cash payments to evade checks that would have flagged him as an illegal buyer. Andres Avila and his son, who is a U.S. citizen, were caught after they spent more than six hours at an Oklahoma gun show, where federal agents watched them buy firearms from various dealers. Agents said the father was on the phone as he struck deals with sellers, indicating he was making straw purchases for someone else. A federal agent told the court in an affidavit that they tied 78 guns to the son, 22, and father, 48, who, as an illegal immigrant, is prohibited from possessing firearms. When officers pulled over the men’s vehicle, they found what they called “large quantities of bulk ammunition.” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said the men “paid cash to purchase firearms from private sellers in an attempt to avoid law enforcement detection.” Authorities said Andres Avila’s wife and Anthony Avila’s mother, who was also arrested, is an illegal immigrant. The investigation was a joint effort by HSI, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Both father and son were charged with trafficking firearms. The father was also charged with being an illegal immigrant in possession of a firearm and ammunition.

Daily Caller [11/17/2025 10:25 AM, Hailey Gomez, 835K] reports before dawn broke over the quiet streets of a town an hour outside Portland, federal agents sat in their cars watching a small home in the middle of a suburban block. Their target, an illegal immigrant once charged with sex crimes against children, was believed to be inside. As sunrise first hit the driveway, a man stepped out and climbed into a car registered to the suspect. Agents noticed a child in the passenger seat. The team waited until the kid was safely dropped off at school before making their move. When agents finally closed in, the driver wasn’t the man they were after, but he wasn’t innocent either. He admitted to being in the country illegally, with prior convictions for driving under the influence and a hit-and-run. ICE agents took him into custody, even as their original target, a convicted child sex offender, remained at large. The arrest, which the Daily Caller News Foundation witnessed during a ride-along with ICE’s Portland field team, shows how Oregon’s sanctuary laws not only hinder immigration enforcement but also endanger the very communities they claim to protect. ICE’s initial target was deported 25 years ago but later returned, repeatedly encountering local law enforcement and charged with several counts of rape, sodomy and sexual abuse of a child. In 2011, the Mexican national was convicted of four counts of second-degree felony sex abuse, receiving just over eight years for his crimes. But he never served his full sentence, as ICE officials told the DCNF he was convicted again shortly after his release. "ICE did place a detainer on him. The detainer was not honored, and he has been released into our community," Laura E. Hermosillo, acting field director of the Portland ICE office, told the DCNF. "This is why sanctuary policies are so dangerous," Deputy Field Office Director Julio S. Hernandez told the DCNF. "So what happens is … the resources that we’re wasting here on the street, in other states like Arizona, we send two officers, they collect him at the jail, because he committed a crime, and then they bring him into ICE custody. Oregon doesn’t honor detainers, and they release.” Oregon first passed its sanctuary state legislation in 1987, later strengthening protections through the Sanctuary Promise Act in 2021. The law effectively created a safe haven for illegal immigrants by prohibiting state and local law enforcement from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement.

Los Angeles Times [11/17/2025 3:08 PM, Itzel Luna, 14862K] reports an off-duty law enforcement officer was arrested in Riverside County last week after pulling a firearm on a 17-year-old and detaining him on the side of the road. Gerardo Rodriguez, 46, was known by neighbors to be an agent employed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or Customs and Border Patrol, said Greg Kirakosian, a lawyer representing the teenager. The Department of Homeland Security, which oversees both agencies, did not immediately return a request for comment. The teenager had first driven by Rodriguez’s home in Temecula to drop some friends off at a nearby house at around 10 p.m. on Nov. 10, Kirakosian said. The minor drove back in the same direction to head home when he was stopped by Rodriguez, who pulled a gun on the minor as he was driving down the road. Rodriguez was taken into custody without incident Nov. 11 and charged with assault by a public officer, child endangerment and assault with a deadly weapon, the Sheriff’s Department said. He posted bail the same day and his next court date is scheduled Dec. 26, according to the Sheriff Department’s inmate locator.

CBS Los Angeles [11/17/2025 1:38 PM, Dean Fioresi and Laurie Perez, 39474K] reports that an off-duty public officer has been arrested after he allegedly pointed a gun at a teenager in Temecula before detaining him last week. It happened on Nov. 10 at around 10:40 p.m., when Riverside County Sheriff’s Department deputies were dispatched to the Sommers Bend community after learning of someone who was "brandishing a firearm" in the area, according to a news release from RSO. Upon arrival, deputies spoke with the reporting party, who told them that his 17-year-old son was "stopped by a subject in the roadway while driving in a residential neighborhood." He also told deputies that the man displayed a badge before ordering the teenager out of the car at gunpoint. The teen was eventually released to his parents after complying, deputies said. Family members say that he was on his way home from a party when the incident happened. Investigators with the Southwest Sheriff’s Station’s Investigation Bureau assumed the case and identified the suspect as 45-year-old Gerardo Rodriguez. Greg Kirakosian, the attorney representing the family, says that Rodriguez is an agent with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The teenager and his parents are Mexican-American U.S. citizens, Kirakosian told CBS Los Angeles. CBS Los Angeles has reached out to DHS, ICE and Customs and Border Protection for comment on the incident. They have not yet confirmed the family attorney’s statement that Rodriguez is a federal agent.

San Diego Union Tribune [11/17/2025 8:24 PM, Teri Figueroa, 1538K] reports two minors were rescued in San Diego County last month during a nationwide sweep targeting human trafficking, the California Attorney General’s Office announced Monday. The collaborative "Operation Coast to Coast" was carried out in 15 states and multiple cities during October, the office said. The goal was to share intelligence, identify trafficking victims and arrest traffickers. The office said 34 people were arrested as part of the multi-state operation, and 77 trafficking survivors were offered assistance and resources. Three minors were recovered, including two in National City. Locally, the operation led by the San Diego Human Trafficking Task Force had two fronts. One focused on "street-level contacts and recoveries" in National City. The other targeted hotel-based "outcall operations," in which undercover officers responded to online ads for sex involving suspected minors and arranged to meet in a hotel. Once there, the survivors were interviewed and offered support services. That side of the operation led to the recovery of two minors who authorities said were being trafficked on the street in National City. Another 13 adults were offered resources and support. Attorney General Rob Bonta said in statement that it is vital to handle the matter in "a manner that is trauma-informed and culturally competent. That’s why our special agents receive specialized training and experience to appropriately handle these cases with the sensitivity, compassion, and the care they deserve. ".

FOX News [11/17/2025 7:17 PM, Scott Thompson, 40621K] reports President Donald Trump hosted another meeting of the White House task force on FIFA ahead of next year’s World Cup in North America, and a new initiative will be implemented for ticketholders entering the United States. The FIFA task force announced a new system that would allow World Cup ticketholders to receive priority interviews to obtain visas. Trump spoke about what is being called the FIFA Pass while standing alongside FIFA President Gianni Infantino. While announcing the Prioritized Appointment Scheduling System, Trump also noted that the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have been working "tirelessly" to "ensure that soccer fans from all around the world are properly vetted and able to come to the United States next summer easily.” "I’ve directed my administration to do everything within the power to make the 2026 World Cup an unprecedented success. I think it’s going to be the greatest, and we are setting records on ticket sales," Trump added. Infantino added that FIFA expects "between five and 10 million people coming to America from… all over the world to enjoy the World Cup" next year. "With this FIFA Pass, we can make sure that those who buy a ticket that are legitimate football fans, or soccer fans… they can come and attend the World Cup in the best conditions – starting from getting their visa and then coming, of course, in the country to enjoy," Infantino said in the Oval Office. Trump strongly encouraged World Cup ticketholders from around the world to apply for their U.S. visas "right away.” Secretary of State Marco Rubio was also present in the Oval Office, telling reporters that "over 400 additional consular officers" have been deployed to embassies around the world to handle World Cup – related visa requests. "Our advice to everybody is: if you have a ticket for any of the games, you need to apply as soon as possible. If you haven’t done so as soon as possible, don’t wait until the last minute," Rubio said. "Your ticket is not a visa; it doesn’t guarantee admission to the U.S. It guarantees you an expedited appointment.” The World Cup, which will be held in Canada, Mexico, and the United States, is expected to attract six billion viewers worldwide, according to Infantino. He also expects one billion people to watch the World Cup draw on Dec. 5 at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Bloomberg [11/17/2025 3:34 PM, Hadriana Lowenkron, 18207K] reports Trump on Monday touted the creation of a “prioritized appointment scheduling system” which he said would allow World Cup ticket holders facing long wait-times for visas to speed up that process. Under the initiative, led by the US State Department, fans holding a ticket purchased through FIFA would get priority access to visa interviews, according to a release from the international soccer organization. The priority interviews are expected to be available in early 2026. “I think safety and security is the number-one priority for a successful World Cup,” said FIFA President Gianni Infantino, who joined Trump in the Oval Office Monday. The president’s comments followed a meeting of the White House task force on the World Cup, a group created to handle the logistical and security challenges surrounding the premier showcase for international soccer. The task force, established via executive order, is focused on coordinating various federal agencies in the planning, organization and execution of the tournament. Trump installed himself as chair and Vice President JD Vance as vice chair, with Andrew Giuliani, son of ally Rudy Giuliani, as the executive director.

Reported similarly:
Los Angeles Times [11/17/2025 4:39 PM, Anthony Solorzano, 14862K]
Politico [11/17/2025 5:03 PM, Sophia Cai, 2100K]
Reuters [11/17/2025 4:42 PM, Staff, 36480K]
Breitbart [11/17/2025 5:55 PM, Nick Gilbertson, 2416K]

New York Times [11/17/2025 5:45 PM, Adam Crafton, 153395K] reports FIFA secured a concession from the White House as President Donald Trump announced that match ticket-holders for next summer’s World Cup will have access to advanced appointments for tourist visas at U.S. overseas consulates – but FIFA’s respite was short-lived as Trump warned host cities including Seattle and Los Angeles may be in danger of having their games relocated due to "safety" concerns. In an extraordinary conference alongside FIFA President Gianni Infantino in the Oval Office, in which the World Cup trophy took pride of place, Trump also said he would be prepared to launch "strikes" in 2026 World Cup co-hosts Mexico due to concerns about drug trafficking. Trump and Infantino were joined by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem. The event was principally called to announce the new FIFA Priority Appointment Scheduling System (FIFA Pass) but Trump press conferences inevitably end up in different places and this one also encompassed the Epstein files and U.S.-Venezuela relations. One of the major concerns for FIFA’s government affairs team in the lead-up to the World Cup has been troublingly long wait times for visa appointments at U.S. consulates around the world. This threatens to impact fans of nations who have already qualified for the World Cup. The newly announced FIFA PASS for the U.S. does not equate to this. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio stated: "The United States is offering prioritized appointments so FIFA World Cup fans can complete their visa interviews and show they qualify." He warned "a ticket is not a visa and it doesn’t guarantee admission to the U.S." but said those who apply with a ticket could get an interview within "six to eight weeks".

Roll Call [11/17/2025 2:24 PM, Chris Johnson, 548K] reports that the Trump administration announced a drastic reduction on refugee admissions for fiscal 2026 as part of a tough-on-immigration approach, but a mixture of prior policies, a court challenge and the recent partial government shutdown have added to uncertainty over U.S. policy. The State Department last month said 7,500 refugees could be admitted during the year, under a proclamation that also makes as the only priority group white Afrikaners from South Africa, who are reportedly facing persecution under a new property confiscation law. That would be the lowest cap since the 1980 law that established the current refugee process. But the consultations the White House is supposed to have with Congress over the new cap didn’t happen, which the Trump administration said is because of the shutdown that ended last week. "No refugees will be admitted in Fiscal Year 2026 until the appropriate consultation with Congress is held," a State Department spokesperson said in a Monday email response to questions. The new cap would be a sharp decline from a cap of 125,500 refugees set under the Biden administration for fiscal 2025. But it is also more than current refugee admissions, which have been all but shut down since President Donald Trump signed an executive order in January shortly after he took office for his second term. Meanwhile, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit heard arguments in September on a lawsuit filed by the International Refugee Assistance Project that argues the abrupt termination in January was unlawful. The court soon could rule against the executive order on the basis it violated laws providing for the admissions of refugees as well as the Fifth Amendment.

Washington Examiner [11/17/2025 3:44 PM, Pedro Rodriguez, 1394K] reports Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) will soon file legislation to freeze all immigration to the United States until certain conditions are met. The PAUSE Act, which Roy announced on conservative commentator Benny Johnson’s talk show last week, would halt immigration until Congress puts an end to H-1B visas, chain migration, and sharia law in the country. Another one of the conditions Roy wants Congress to deal with during his immigration freeze is to end the decision of Plyler v. Doe, which requires children of illegal immigrants to be educated in the U.S. Roy then shifted his focus to addressing the presence of sharia law in the U.S., which he claimed was caused by unchecked immigration and goes against Western values.

Politico [11/17/2025 6:54 PM, Alice Miranda Ollstein, 2100K] reports the Trump administration on Monday proposed giving immigration officers authority to deny permanent residency to lawfully present immigrants who use Medicaid or other food and housing assistance programs, arguing that “government benefits should not incentivize immigration” and that immigrants should be “self-reliant.” It’s a twist on the so-called public charge rule from Trump’s first term, which the Biden administration stopped enforcing in 2021 and rescinded in 2022. The proposal Monday from the Homeland Security Department’s Citizenship and Immigration Services division would repeal the Biden administration’s 2022 rule. But instead of reviving the public charge rule from the first Trump term, the agency pledged to release guidance at an unspecified future date. That effectively would give more power to individual Citizenship and Immigration Services officers to make determinations about who they think is or could become a “public charge.” While the U.S. has long imposed restrictions on immigrants considered a burden on taxpayers, the Trump administration was the first to designate public health insurance a form of welfare. The Department of Homeland Security will accept public comment on the proposal to rescind the Biden rule over the next 30 days, and will review the feedback before issuing a final decision. Some health policy experts and immigrant rights advocates are warning that the change, if it takes effect, will cause both individual suffering and negative population-wide effects. They say the policy could burden already overwhelmed hospitals if immigrants skip preventive care because they lack health insurance and end up in the emergency room. They also predict it will make it harder to control both outbreaks of infectious diseases and chronic health conditions. The Trump administration estimated that the government would save $8.97 billion annually because people would drop out of Medicaid and other benefit programs due to the new policy — including “aliens as well as U.S. citizens who are members of mixed-status households.”

FOX News [11/17/2025 12:14 PM, Gabriel Hays, 40621K] reports the number of international students enrolling at U.S. colleges has fallen to its lowest level in more than a decade, according to a new report released Monday. International student enrollment at U.S. colleges for the fall 2025 semester dropped by 17%, NBCNews.com reported. That figure represents "the largest nonpandemic decline in the last 11 years," the report said, citing data from the Institute of International Education (IIE). The drop marks a steeper decline than the previous year, which saw only a 7% decrease in international student enrollment. About half of the 825 U.S. institutions surveyed by IIE reported declines in enrollment among international students. Fanta Aw, CEO of international education non-profit NAFSA: Association of International Educators, told NBC that "The U.S. is no longer the central place that students aspire to come to.” The expert pointed to new challenges that prospective students have in obtaining student visas. The Trump administration paused the scheduling of new visa interviews in May, which NBC reported has caused "long application backlogs" for foreign students seeking to study in the United States. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) announced a rule in August limiting the length of time people with student visas could remain in the U.S. to four years. A DHS press release said the proposal seeks to curb "visa abuse" and increase the agency’s ability to "properly vet and oversee these individuals.” The agency said foreign students have "taken advantage of U.S. generosity" and become "forever students" by remaining enrolled in colleges so they could stay in the U.S.

AP [11/17/2025 12:53 PM, Collin Binkley and Makiya Seminera, 31753K] reports foreign students enrolled at U.S. colleges in strong numbers this fall despite fears that a Trump administration crackdown would trigger a nosedive, yet there are signs of turbulence as fewer new, first-time students arrived from other countries, according to a new report. Overall, U.S. campuses saw a 1% decrease in international enrollment this fall compared with last year, according to a survey from the Institute of International Education. But that figure is propped up by large numbers of students who stayed in the U.S. for temporary work after graduating. The number of new students entering the United States for the first time fell by 17%, the sharpest decrease since the COVID-19 pandemic. Some universities are seeing backslides that have punched big holes in tuition revenue, but overall the falloff is less severe than some industry groups had forecast. Researchers credit colleges for helping students navigate visa issues through the summer. “I think colleges and universities did absolutely everything in their power to advocate to get these students to the United States,” said Mirka Martel, head of research, evaluation and learning for the institute. At DePaul University, a Catholic university in Chicago, the number of international graduate students fell by almost 62% this fall, a driving factor in recent spending cuts. The university president blamed student visa troubles and declining interest to study in the U.S., calling it a “massive” disruption. Overall, nearly 60% of colleges reported a decrease in new foreign students this fall, the survey found, while 30% saw increases and others held even. More than 800 schools responded to the survey, which offers an early look at trends before full data is released next year.

Washington Post [11/17/2025 6:00 AM, Todd Wallack, Maham Javaid and Susan Svrluga, 24149K] reports the number of newly enrolled foreign college students in the United States dropped 17 percent this fall after the Trump administration made it more challenging to obtain student visas, data released Monday by the Institute of International Education shows. The figures, based on a survey of more than 825 colleges and universities, provide one of the clearest views of the potential impact of measures President Donald Trump’s administration has taken that make it more difficult for foreign students to come to the U.S. That effort has included restricting travel from 19 nations; pushing schools to limit the number of foreign students; temporarily pausing student visa screening interviews while the government revamped procedures to include tougher social media rules; and canceling visas for students accused of crimes, overstaying their visa or participating in pro-Palestinian protests. The White House and Education Department did not respond Friday to requests for comment on the latest data, but an Education Department spokesman said in a statement earlier this month that colleges that receive taxpayer money should “prioritize expanding opportunities for American students.” The spokesman also said the administration wants to ensure that people who come to the United States to study “respect our laws, values, and national interests.” Many experts expect the numbers will continue to fall next year as many foreigners decide to study in other countries instead. The number of international students applying to study at U.S. colleges next year has fallen 9 percent so far, according to data collected from students who applied using the Common Application by Nov. 1. The largest drops occurred among applicants from Asia and Africa. Domestic applicants rose 7 percent. Some advocates argue the decline in new international students will ultimately hurt the U.S. economy because immigrants often play a key role in starting companies and working in research. “International students aren’t just tuition revenue,” said Chris Glass, a Boston College professor and researcher on international higher education. “A decline in international students is not just a matter for next year’s enrollment cycle for universities — it’s a strategic setback for America’s role as a hub of global talent, science and innovation.” Glass and others say universities depend on international students to help power research projects, bolster their revenue and help expose domestic students to a broader array of cultures and ideas. Foreign students make up about 6 percent of enrollment at U.S. colleges. Still, schools reported only a 1 percent overall decline in international students this fall, when taking into account students who have been in the United States for years, according to the Institute of International Education. That’s partly because the number of postgraduate students staying in the U.S. to pursue internships and other kinds of work-related training increased. Students on F-1 visas are typically eligible to stay in the U.S. for an extra one to three years for temporary employment related to their studies, called “optional practical training.” Despite the drop in international students, colleges and universities appear to be growing overall. The National Student Clearinghouse reported last week that postsecondary enrollment rose 2 percent this fall compared with a year ago, citing preliminary data.

Washington Examiner [11/17/2025 1:34 PM, David Zimmermann, 1394K] reports that over half of American colleges and universities have seen a drop in enrollment of international students, according to a new report that comes as the Trump administration cracks down on higher education. About 57% of the more than 825 institutions surveyed have reported a decrease in new international enrollment this fall, according to data published Monday by the Institute of International Education. Meanwhile, 29% reported an increase and 14% noted stability. New international enrollment has declined 17% for the new academic year, while overall international enrollment has dropped only 1% since last fall. The drop is primarily driven by visa application concerns (96%) and travel restrictions (68%) during President Donald Trump’s second term. Trump is particularly targeting schools that failed to punish students engaging in antisemitic, pro-Palestinian protests on campus since the war between Israel and Hamas started in October 2023. The Trump administration withheld federal grants from several universities to pressure them into capitulating to its demands on campus policies, particularly those amounting to civil rights violations. The administration has since made deals with Columbia University, Brown University, Cornell University, and the University of Virginia to settle those civil rights claims and restore federal funding.

Reported similarly:
Washington Times [11/17/2025 10:54 AM, Sean Salai, 852K]

Reuters [11/17/2025 2:04 PM, Staff, 36480K] reports that the United States is imposing visa restrictions on people in Nicaragua who have enabled illegal immigration to the country, the State Department said on Monday, including the owners of transportation companies, travel agencies and tour operators. The State Department said it has taken steps to revoke visas in some cases, according to a statement that did not provide specifics. "Investigations indicate the entities these individuals represent facilitated travel through Nicaragua, enabled by the Nicaraguan dictatorship’s permissive-by-design migration policies that destabilize the region and push illegal immigration to the United States," the department said. "The Department is revoking currently valid visas and imposing other restrictions to ensure these individuals cannot enter the United States." The Trump administration has carried out a massive crackdown on illegal immigration and ended temporary protective status for Nicaragua and a host of other countries. That status provides eligible migrants with work authorization and temporary protection from deportation. In April, the United States imposed visa restrictions on more than 250 officials of the Nicaraguan government of President Daniel Ortega, citing human rights abuses.

Bloomberg [11/18/2025 4:39 AM, S’thembile Cele and Reto Gregori, 18207K] reports the world and Group of 20 nations will move on with or without the US, South Africa’s foreign minister said, while pushing back against what he described as Washington’s White supremacist agenda. The US administration is “not listening because of its ideological bias,” Ronald Lamola told the inaugural Bloomberg Africa Business Summit in Johannesburg on Tuesday, held days ahead of a gathering of G-20 leaders in the city. That’s because of its views that “feed the agenda of White supremacy.” President Donald Trump ordered a US boycott of this weekend’s G-20 summit, the first of its kind to be held on the African continent, maintaining his false narrative that White Afrikaner farmers are being subjected to a genocide in South Africa. His administration has offered refugee status to Afrikaners and imposed 30% tariffs on some imports from Africa’s largest economy. “It’s a race-based policy executive order,” because Afrikaners aren’t being persecuted and don’t qualify for refugee status under the Geneva Convention, Lamola said. “It’s a clear agenda to pursue fear mongering.” American officials also stayed away from several preparatory meetings for the G-20 summit, frustrating attempts by the bloc’s other members to forge consensus on a range of issues and draft joint communiques. “The G-20 should send a clear message that the world can move on with or without the US,” Lamola said. “We will mark them absent and continue with the business” of the summit, he said, while conceding that implementing its resolutions won’t be easy.

Guam Daily Post [11/18/2025 3:55 AM, Nestor Licanto] reports Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has responded to the latest request by a Guam official to include the Philippines in the Guam-Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Visa Waiver program. In a Feb. 6 letter to Noem, Sen. Shawn Gumataotao wrote that inclusion of the Philippines will help the local tourism industry and Guam’s economic recovery from the adverse impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic. "At the time of this writing, Guam welcomed only 739,145 visitors in calendar year 2024 compared to 1,664,934 in 2019. Of the 17 countries where our guests originated from during calendar years 2019 and 2024, visitor arrivals from the Philippines ranked in the top 6 and top 4, respectively," Gumataotao wrote. Noem responded that DHS "conducts thorough screening and vetting to prevent exploitation of the immigrant and nonimmigrant visa processes, including identifying and, when necessary, denying entry to high-risk travelers." "DHS will continue to evaluate how programs like the Guam-Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands Visa Waiver Program align with President Trump’s mission to secure our borders and restore integrity to our immigration system," she added. Noem, while noncommittal, wrote that Gumataotao’s support to include the Philippines "will be taken into consideration as DHS continues this assessment."

Axios [11/17/2025 1:36 PM, Chelsea Brasted, 12972K] reports that New Orleans could spend the holidays with extra guests. Why it matters: With an outstanding Gov. Jeff Landry request for the National Guard and reports circulating that Border Patrol is heading here, federal law enforcement agents could soon be spotted on local streets, though they’d likely arrive with very different missions. The latest: Neither agency has yet confirmed when or if they plan to deploy to New Orleans. But ABC News reported Monday that multiple law enforcement sources confirmed about 200 Border Patrol agents will head here by the end of the week for "Operation Catahoula Crunch." When pressed for an update Monday, a spokesman with U.S. Customs and Border Protection pointed Axios New Orleans to a Department of Homeland Security statement that said "we will not stop enforcing the laws of our nation until every criminal illegal alien is arrested and removed from our country." Landry’s spokeswoman also said Monday she did not yet have an update on either the National Guard request or Border Patrol reports. Between the lines: The Trump administration has made a point this year to tap federal law enforcement agencies to crack down on undocumented immigrants and urban violence, primarily within Democrat-led cities, despite local protest and a flurry of legal challenges.

Telemundo [11/17/2025 7:47 PM, Staff, 57K] reports that, on Monday, Officer Justin de la Torre became the first Latino chief agent of the U.S. Border Patrol in the San Diego sector, on the California-Mexico border, where he was the agency’s spokesperson. "It is an honor to return to the sector where my career began" as a border patrol agent 25 years ago, said the incoming chief. De la Torre was most recently the sector chief in Yuma, Arizona. His career includes positions in three sectors of the Mexican border and in Washington, D.C. In San Diego, he replaces Agent Jeffrey Stalnaker, who served as acting chief in the sector. The new chief grew up in San Diego and joined the Border Patrol in January 2000, assigned to the Imperial Beach area, where the border wall enters the Pacific Ocean on the border with Mexico. De la Torre’s career has included work in the All-Terrain Vehicle Unit, the Foreign Smuggler Identification and Deterrence Program, the Sector Public Affairs Office, the San Diego Sector Air Mobile Unit, and the Border Patrol Tactical Unit. The Latino said he is taking on the position with the Border Patrol motto, "Honor First," which he hopes to imprint on every aspect of his service.

CBS Boston [11/17/2025 2:33 PM, Neal Riley, 39474K] reports that more than 270 TSA agents at Boston’s Logan Airport are getting a $10,000 bonus for showing up to work throughout the government shutdown, Homeland Security Sec. Kristi Noem said. TSA workers were among the federal employees who missed paychecks during the record-long shutdown. The Department of Homeland Security said the TSA officers receiving bonuses in Boston "had perfect attendance in the face of economic uncertainty." "Over 270 TSA officers at Logan Airport didn’t miss a shift," Noem said. "These public servants who went above and beyond to keep Americans safe will be receiving a $10,000 bonus. Americans can be proud of these men and women who keep us safe every day." The bonuses were paid for "using carryover funds" from the past Fiscal Year, the department said. President Trump had said last week that he would also be recommending a $10,000 bonus for air traffic controllers who worked during the shutdown, but warned those who called out of shifts would be "substantially docked." At a press conference in Houston announcing the bonuses, Noem did not specify exactly what criteria was used in deciding who should be awarded a bonus. "We’re going to look at every individual that did exceptional service during this period of time when there were so many hardships," she said.

CNN [11/17/2025 3:07 PM, Aaron Cooper] reports the Transportation Security Administration is investigating how someone was able to bring a meat cleaver on a Delta Air Lines plane in Portland, Oregon Thursday. "TSA is aware that a passenger departing Portland International Airport on Thursday passed through the security checkpoint with a meat cleaver in their carry-on bag," the agency said in a statement. "We take this matter very seriously." The knife, usually used for chopping thick cuts of meat, bone or tough vegetables, was found only after the passenger made it onto the flight from Portland to Salt Lake City. Delta Air Lines staff reported the "hazardous item" to TSA which notified police, the Port of Portland told CNN. No one was arrested and TSA and Delta "handled things from there," the port spokesperson said. It’s not clear why the passenger had the knife with them. TSA says it is working to "determine the circumstances surrounding this event" and "will take appropriate corrective action that could include additional training of the security screening workforce." Thursday, all passengers were taken off the plane and were rescreened before the flight took off.

The AP [11/17/2025 5:27 PM, Gabriela Aoun Angueira, 31753K] reports the acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency left his job Monday after just six months, according to the Department of Homeland Security, the latest disruption in a year of mass staff departures, program cuts and policy upheaval at the agency charged with managing federal disaster response. David Richardson, who in his brief term remained largely out of public sight, is leaving the post after he faced a wave of criticism for his handling of the deadly Texas floods earlier this year. He replaced previous acting head Cameron Hamilton in May. DHS did not comment on the details of Richardson’s departure, but a FEMA employee familiar with the matter told The Associated Press that Richardson resigned. The employee spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the changes with the media. "The Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Department of Homeland Security extend their sincere appreciation to the Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Administrator, David Richardson, for his dedicated service and wish him continued success in his return to the private sector," a DHS spokesperson told The Associated Press. After replacing Hamilton, who was fired one day after telling a House appropriations committee that he did not think FEMA should be eliminated, Richardson vowed to help fulfill President Donald Trump’s goal to push more disaster recovery responsibilities to the states and told FEMA employees he would " run right over " anyone who tried to obstruct that mission. But Richardson’s leadership was questioned by members of Congress and FEMA employees, particularly after remaining largely out of sight after the deadly Texas floods last July that killed at least 136 people. FEMA Chief of Staff and former cybersecurity official Karen Evans will assume the role on Dec. 1, according to DHS. The FEMA administrator is required by law to have emergency management experience, but the Trump administration has circumvented those requirements up to now by appointing temporary leaders. FOX News [11/17/2025 2:37 PM, Greg Wehner, 40621K] reports "Mr. Richardson led FEMA through the 2025 hurricane season, delivering historic funding to North Carolina, Texas, Florida, New Mexico and Alaska, and overseeing a comprehensive review that identified and eliminated serious governmental waste and inefficiency, while refocusing the agency to deliver swift resources to Americans in crisis.” "We anticipate the forthcoming release of the FEMA Review Council’s final report, which will inform this Administration’s ongoing efforts to fundamentally restructure FEMA, transforming it from its current form into a streamlined, mission-focused disaster-response force," the spokesperson continued. "Starting Dec. 1, FEMA Chief of Staff Karen Evans will step into this important role." The Daily Caller [11/17/2025 2:02 PM, Andi Shae Napier, 835K] reports that Richardson was overseeing the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction (CWMD) office before he took over for Cameron Hamilton in May, who was ousted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem for publicly refuting the administration’s goal to eliminate FEMA. Noem has since said the administration’s desire is to remake the agency rather than dismantle it entirely. Ted Budd and Thom Tillis have repeatedly requested relief funds for communities in the Tar Heel State that were impacted by Hurricane Helene in September 2024. The push for more funding has stretched into 2025, with Budd withholding his vote to confirm the DHS General Counsel nominee, James Percival, until the funds were received by Western North Carolina. "I am grateful to Secretary Noem for approving $155 million in public assistance funding to reimburse Western North Carolina communities following Hurricane Helene," Sen. Budd said in early November. "I remain very willing to use every lever of power I have as a U.S. Senator to ensure Western North Carolina is made whole and that federal funds are approved and disbursed on a rolling basis into the future.” FEMA did not immediately respond to the DCNF’s request for comment. Axios [11/17/2025 1:48 PM, Julianna Bragg, 12972K] reports Cameron Hamilton, the agency’s previous acting director, was fired in May after he told federal lawmakers he didn’t support the Trump administration’s plan to dismantle the agency. When Richardson was appointed to FEMA, he also retained his position as assistant secretary for the DHS’ weapons of mass destruction office. At a June briefing, Richardson shocked employees when he said he didn’t know the U.S. had a hurricane season — a remark DHS later said was a joke, according to multiple outlets. CBS News [11/17/2025 2:33 PM, Nicole Sganga, Jennifer Jacobs, and Michael Kaplan, 39474K] reports Richardson submitted his resignation Monday morning, according to five current and former homeland security officials familiar with the decision. He served as FEMA’s "Senior Official Performing the Duties" of administrator since May 8, 2025, when Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem abruptly removed his predecessor, Cameron Hamilton. Before leading FEMA, Richardson was Assistant Secretary for the Department of Homeland Security’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office. FEMA chief of staff Karen Evans will step into his role starting Dec. 1, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said. From the outset, Richardson’s leadership style garnered attention. In his first all-hands meeting he told agency staff: "Don’t get in my way … I will run right over you," and declared, "I and I alone speak for FEMA." In a statement, a DHS spokesperson expressed their "appreciation" to Richardson and wished him "continued success in his return to the private sector," and outlined some of the things he oversaw in his short tenure at the helm of FEMA. Critics—including current and former FEMA employees—have also pointed to bureaucratic bottlenecks under Noem’s leadership, including a directive that any expenditure over $100,000 require the DHS secretary’s personal sign-off. The Wall Street Journal [11/17/2025 3:24 PM, Tarini Parti and Joseph De Avila, 646K] reports that some agency employees said Richardson had been drafting FEMA’s hurricane-preparedness plan without input from the FEMA staff typically involved in those preparations. FEMA’s delayed response to the devastating Texas floods that killed more than 100 people in July also sparked backlash. Trump has called for terminating FEMA, with his administration undertaking efforts to overhaul how the government handles emergency management and disaster-relief funding. Some of those efforts have caused concern among lawmakers and confusion within the agency, as federal employees work to determine how to prepare for certain disasters and the future of FEMA itself.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [11/17/2025 5:26 PM, Scott Dance and Maxine Joselow, 135475K]
Washington Post [11/17/2025 12:48 PM, Brianna Sacks, 24149K]
The Hill [11/17/2025 2:18 PM, Rachel Frazin, 12595K]
NBC News [11/17/2025 2:20 PM, Denise Chow, Monica Alba, and Laura Strickler, 34509K]
CNN [11/17/2025 1:01 PM, Gabe Cohen, 18595K]
USA Today [11/17/2025 1:39 PM, Dinah Voyles Pulver, 67103K]
Washington Times [11/17/2025 3:21 PM, Mary McCue Bell, 852K]
Washington Examiner [11/17/2025 2:40 PM, David Zimmermann, 1394K]

(B) NBC News Daily [11/17/2025 3:07 PM, Staff] reports that the acting chief of the Federal Emergency Management Agency has resigned. David Richardson had only been on the job for about six months. Richardson faced intense criticism over the catastrophic flooding in Texas this past summer. FEMA’s Chief of Staff Karen Evans will take over the role on December 1st.

CBS News [11/17/2025 6:22 PM, Staff, 39474K] reports the acting head of FEMA, David Richardson, has resigned. Richardson faced criticism for his handling of the deadly Texas flooding over the July Fourth weekend. CBS News homeland security correspondent Nicole Sganga has the details. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Politico [11/17/2025 5:11 PM, Thomas Frank, 2100K] reports the Trump administration is considering moving the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s headquarters to Texas and putting the state’s top emergency manager in charge of the agency, two former senior FEMA officials told POLITICO’s E&E News. Moving the agency from its headquarters in Washington would create “huge challenges” coordinating with the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA and is located across town from the agency, according to one former official, who was granted anonymity so they could speak freely. Shortly after President Donald Trump took office, White House officials interviewed Nim Kidd, head of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, to run the nation’s disaster agency. After POLITICO’s E&E News reported the interview, Kidd posted a statement on his LinkedIn account acknowledging the interview but saying, “My work in Texas is not done.” On Monday, FEMA acting Administrator David Richardson resigned after a six-month tenure and is returning to the private sector. Starting Dec. 1, FEMA chief of staff Karen Evans will assume the role of acting administrator, a DHS spokesperson said. A panel appointed by Trump to review FEMA plans is expected to recommend moving the agency to Texas, which would accommodate Kidd and his refusal to leave his home state, according to a former FEMA official.

New York Times [11/17/2025 5:02 AM, Carol Rosenberg, 135475K] reports navy families, immigration detention employees and lawyers have been streaming back to the U.S. base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, to restart functions that were halted by the one-two punch of the government shutdown and Hurricane Melissa. About 1,000 people had returned by Saturday night to a slightly transformed scene. During the hurricane, driving rains soaked the base’s usually dusty brown fields, turning them green, and workers recently set up a huge Christmas tree and other holiday decorations near the base’s commercial district. A partially rebuilt pier was freshly painted, beaches were restored and piles of tree limbs, roof remnants and other debris awaited pickup around the 45-square-mile military installation. Schoolchildren and their teachers were returning to their classrooms on Monday for the first time in three weeks. They had been evacuated to a naval air station in the Florida panhandle for the storm, and then stayed on while Guantánamo’s remaining 3,000 residents cleaned up. The Navy has yet to tally the cost of the hurricane damage, but it said that four families who had been evacuated required new housing. Color-coded inspection notices on base buildings now warn which structures are unsafe or require repairs, and flags across the installation were at half-staff for former Vice President Dick Cheney, who died two weeks ago. Those returning to the base included an Army judge, who will preside over the first hearings in the U.S.S. Cole bombing case since May. During the weekslong slowdown, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth delegated the responsibility to negotiate plea agreements in the case to the deputy defense secretary, Steve Feinberg, who has been on the job since March. A former C.I.A. prisoner, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, is accused of helping to orchestrate the attack, in which suicide bombers blew a hole in the warship off Yemen on Oct. 12, 2000, killing 17 American sailors. If convicted, he could face the death penalty. The judge has scheduled the trial to start on June 1. Mr. Nashiri’s case has been in pretrial hearings since 2011. New hearings were scheduled for Monday, after court technicians restarted secured communications systems that were shut down in advance of the hurricane. Defense lawyers also returned to the base over the weekend for the first time since the government shutdown to meet with some of the 15 wartime prisoners. Legal travel and confidential communications were declared nonessential during the shutdown, another impediment to trial preparation. Other returnees included about four dozen Homeland Security employees, including Immigration, Customs and Enforcement officers, who were evacuated before the hurricane as nonessential workers. No detainees designated for deportation have been held at the base since Oct. 1, and none are expected until after Thanksgiving.

AP [11/17/2025 6:32 PM, Staff, 31753K] reports residents of the town of El Carmen blocked the highway, reporting that they had been without electricity for 22 days since Hurricane Melissa hit Cuba at the end of October.

FOX News [11/17/2025 5:59 PM, Stephanie Samsel, 40621K] reports the digital trail of President Donald Trump’s would-be assassin Thomas Crooks tells "quite a different story" than the FBI’s congressional statements about the 20-year-old, New York Post columnist Miranda Devine told "America Reports" Monday. In an op-ed Monday, Devine demanded a "better explanation" from the FBI and Secret Service about what led Crooks to attempt to assassinate Trump over a year ago in Butler, Pa. On July 13, 2024, Crooks fired off eight shots from a rooftop at Trump during his rally, killing 50-year-old firefighter Corey Comparatore and hitting Trump in the ear. He also injured two rally attendees. Devine credited a source for several online findings about Crooks, adding fresh scrutiny to the FBI’s statements about the investigation. The columnist described a commonality between Crooks and Charlie Kirk’s alleged assassin Tyler Robinson, who is charged with the murder of the late conservative activist.

Breitbart [11/17/2025 12:21 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 2416K] reports the individual who tried to assassinate President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, had an interest in "furries," according to reports. Thomas Crooks allegedly tried to take Trump’s life July 13, 2024, as a bullet struck his ear. Crooks allegedly killed Corey Comperatore, 50, and seriously injured two others who were at the Butler rally. There are still more questions than answers, despite the back and forth on Crooks’ ideology. He seemed to be pro-Trump before taking a dramatic switch in the other direction, as the New York Post detailed: Thanks to an enterprising source who uncovered Crooks’ hidden digital footprint, we can see that Abbate [former FBI Deputy Director] misled Congress by omission, because he left out an entire section of Crooks’ online interactions from January to August 2020 when he did an ideological backflip and went from rabidly pro-Trump to rabidly anti-Trump and then went dark, never seeming to post again. The source uncovered Crooks’ various accounts on platforms including YouTube, Snapchat, Discord, Google Play, Quizlet, Quora, and more and concluded that this individual "was not simply some unknowable lone actor" but someone who clearly left a "digital trail of violent threats, extremist ideology and admiration for mass violence.” Crooks’ anti-Trump rhetoric took off in 2020, deeming Trump’s followers sheep and Trump himself racist. In one post in August, Crooks wrote, "IMO the only way to fight the gov is with terrorism style attacks, sneak a bomb into an essential building and set it off before anyone sees you, track down any important people/politicians/military leaders etc and try to assassinate them.”

FOX News [11/17/2025 6:03 PM, Julia Bonavita, 40621K] reports authorities are searching for a group of suspects after police say they walked away with $175,000 in cash from a Virginia ATM in a rising crime trend nicknamed "jackpotting." The crime spree began on Oct. 3, when an unknown man approached an Apple Federal Credit Union drive-thru ATM in Fair Oaks, a suburb located inside of Fairfax, at around 10:20 p.m., FCPD said in a statement. The Fairfax County Police Department is now asking for the public’s help in identifying the suspects, who allegedly made off with $175,000 in cash from the ATM.

(B) NBC News Daily [11/17/2025 3:53 PM, Staff] reports police in northern Virginia say a small group of criminals ripped off an ATM for about $175,000. In 2018, the Secret Service warned banks and financial institutions about a new, somewhat high-tech method of manipulating ATMs to dispense all their money. Detectives are hoping surveillance video will help them find the thieves who took part in the first jackpot theft in Fairfax County.

Breitbart [11/17/2025 8:05 AM, Randy Clark, 2416K] reports four suspected illegal migrants drowned late Friday night when a smuggling vessel capsized in rough waters near Imperial Beach, California. The U.S. Coast Guard recovered the bodies and rescued several others after a "panga-style" boat overturned near Seacoast Drive, triggering a multi-agency search and rescue operation. Four survivors were hospitalized, and one individual was transferred to Border Patrol custody. The incident comes just days after another maritime incident involving suspected illegal alien smuggling off the San Diego coast, where a Coast Guard boat crew intercepted 12 suspected illegal aliens in a similar "panga-style" boat. In that incident, the boat operators refused to stop when encountered by the Coast Guard and attempted to flee. The Coast Guard boarding team pursued the vessel and fired disabling shots at the engine, forcing the smuggling vessel to stop. According to the Coast Guard, there were no injuries during the incident. Eleven suspected illegal aliens claimed to be citizens of Mexico, and one claimed to be a citizen of El Salvador. DHS Homeland Security Investigations is investigating the latest incident.

FedScoop [11/17/2025 5:40 PM, Madison Alder, 56K] reports the National Institutes of Health didn’t ensure that the entity housing personal health information of over 1 million people — including biosamples — implemented proper cybersecurity protocols, according to an internal watchdog. In a report publicly released Friday, the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Inspector General made five recommendations for the security of the All of Us program — a database of diverse health information from 1 million participants that’s meant to aid research — after finding weaknesses. According to the report, while the award recipient operating the program’s Data and Research Center implemented some cybersecurity measures, NIH failed to ensure other controls were addressed. The report found that NIH didn’t ensure that the awardee, which wasn’t identified, appropriately limited access to the program’s data and didn’t communicate national security concerns related to maintaining genomic data — or data relating to DNA. It also failed to ensure that weaknesses in security and privacy were fixed within a timeline outlined in federal requirements. In a response included in the report, NIH agreed with all of the recommendations and said it had already taken some action to implement them. For example, the awardee running the Data and Research Center had established a process for access control and planned to reevaluate the security categorization of the awardee with the national security concerns of genomic data in mind. The audit was initially conducted by the inspector general due to the threats that cyberattacks and the potential exposure of sensitive information can pose to the agency’s programs. The watchdog’s objective was to scrutinize the access, security and privacy controls of the program.

DefenseScoop [11/17/2025 4:45 PM, Jon Harper, 150K] reports the Defense Department recently announced a revised cyber force generation model aimed at bolstering recruitment, training and retention of digital warriors. But some analysts say the changes won’t solve fundamental problems that can only be fixed by creating a new cyber-focused military service. The Pentagon, meanwhile, appears to be leaving the door open for such a move. In a Nov. 6 press release, DOD officials wrote that the revised model “enables the Department to build mastery, specialization, and agility” in the cyber forces assigned to U.S. Cyber Command. Cybercom, headquartered at Fort Meade, Maryland, is the combatant command responsible for leading U.S. military operations in the digital domain. According to officials and other observers, the old way of doing things was problematic. Some have noted that it led to readiness shortfalls and disparities among the teams that each of the services contributed to the Cyber Mission Force under Cyber Command. “Since its inception over a decade ago, USCYBERCOM has relied on traditional military services’ man, train, and equip models to source its cyber forces. While appropriate for other warfighting domains, these traditional models have not met the unique requirements necessary to fight and win in the cyber domain,” officials wrote in the press release announcing the new approach.

CyberScoop [11/17/2025 3:30 PM, Matt Kapko, 122K] reports federal authorities and researchers alerted organizations Friday to a massively exploited vulnerability in Fortinet’s web application firewall. While the actively exploited critical defect poses significant risk to Fortinet’s customers, researchers are particularly agitated about the vendor’s delayed communications and, ultimately, post-exploitation warnings about the vulnerability. Fortinet addressed CVE-2025-64446 in a software update pushed Oct. 28, but did not assign the flaw a CVE or publicly disclose its existence until last week — 17 days later — when the company also confirmed the vulnerability has been exploited in the wild. By then, for some Fortinet customers, especially those that hadn’t updated to FortiWeb 8.0.2, it was too late. The path-traversal defect in FortiWeb, which has a CVSS rating of 9.8, allows attackers to execute administrative commands resulting in a complete takeover of the compromised device. Threat researchers from multiple firms, computer emergency response teams and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency issued warnings, with some including details about extensive attacks linked to the defect Friday. CISA also issued an alert and added the flaw to its known exploited vulnerability catalog Friday, requiring federal agencies to address the vulnerability within a short deadline of seven days. A Fortinet spokesperson said the vendor’s product security incident response team began addressing the vulnerability as soon as it learned of the defect, and those efforts remain underway. “Fortinet diligently balances our commitment to the security of our customers and our culture of responsible transparency,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

Federal News Network [11/17/2025 6:08 PM, Justin Doubleday, 986K] reports the Federal Communications Commission is set this week to vote on reversing cybersecurity rules for telecommunications providers that were put forward following the sweeping “Salt Typhoon” hacks. The FCC’s meeting on Thursday includes plans to consider an order to rescind a ruling and proposed rules published in the waning days of the Biden administration. The January ruling requires telecom operators to secure their networks under Section 105 of the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act. But current FCC Chairman Brendan Carr argues that ruling “exceeded the agency’s authority and did not present an effective or agile response to the relevant cybersecurity threats.” The proposed order would rescind the January ruling and withdraw proposed cybersecurity rules for telecom operators. Instead, the FCC “should instead continue to pursue an agile and collaborative approach to cybersecurity through federal-private partnerships that protect and secure communications networks and more targeted, legally sound rulemaking and enforcement,” according to a factsheet on the order of reconsideration.

NPR [11/17/2025 6:43 AM, Jenna McLaughlin, 28013K] reports researchers say hackers are using their tech skills to help criminals hijack cargo shipments in real life. [Editorial note: consult audio at source link]

New York Times [11/17/2025 5:46 PM, Santul Nerkar, 135475K] reports a Georgian man who plotted for Jewish children in New York to be fed poisoned candy on New Year’s Eve by a man dressed as Santa Claus pleaded guilty on Monday to soliciting hate crimes. The man, Michail Chkhikvishvili, was known as Commander Butcher and inspired violence around the world as a leader of the Maniac Murder Cult, a Russian and Ukrainian neo-Nazi group, prosecutors said. On Monday in Federal District Court in Brooklyn, he pleaded guilty to soliciting violent felonies and distributing information about an explosive device. Prosecutors will seek a sentence of up to 18 years for Mr. Chkhikvishvili, Nick Moscow, a federal prosecutor, said in court. Mr. Chkhikvishvili’s group, prosecutors said, has promoted violence against members of racial and ethnic minority groups. It has inspired brutal crimes, including a school shooting in Tennessee, a mass stabbing in Turkey and the murder of an older woman in Romania. “His incitement of hate crimes resulted in real-world violence,” Joseph Nocella Jr., the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. Mr. Chkhikvishvili helped publish and distribute the “Hater’s Handbook.” It called on the group’s followers to commit mass murder and offered instructions on how to do so. One of his proposed plots in 2023 included having a man dressed as Santa Claus feed candy laced with ricin to Jewish children on New Year’s Eve, prosecutors said. He told an undercover F.B.I. agent, who he thought was a co-conspirator, that “ricin would be most simple” to taint the candy. The cult’s ideological underpinnings are Satanism and Nazism, according to researchers at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy in West Point, N.Y. The cult developed a “scoring system” in which members are rewarded for brutal acts.

NPR [11/17/2025 10:56 AM, Carrie Kahn, 28013K] reports Ecuadorians voted on Sunday to reject a package of referendum measures that would have allowed foreign military bases in the country. The result is seen as a sharp political setback for President Daniel Noboa, the 37-year-old conservative leader and close ally of U.S. President Donald Trump. The proposal was heavily backed by Noboa as a crucial step to confront drug traffickers and violent gangs. Homicide rates in some Ecuadorian cities are amongst the world’s highest, as local gangs, backed by international trafficking cartels fight for territory. The president says roughly 70% of global cocaine flows through the country. Even so, voters decisively opposed the plan. Voters also rejected measures to cut public funding for political parties, create a constitutional assembly to rewrite the country’s constitution and reduce the size of Congress. For many, the vote was a referendum on Noboa’s leadership. Rosita Guichimillo, a 48-year-old Quito homemaker, said she feared the constitutional revisions would place too much power in the president’s hands. "If he rewrites the constitution, he’ll do it to serve himself … and ruin the country even more," Guichimillo said as she voted in the Ecuadorian capital under light showers.

FOX News [11/17/2025 6:54 AM, Chris Massaro, 40621K] reports that, as intense fighting between Russian and Ukrainian troops continues on the eastern frontline in the Donetsk, Kharkiv and Zaporizhzhia regions, a senior Ukrainian commander involved in the fighting there has appealed to the Trump administration for Tomahawk missiles. Maj. Oleh Shyriaiev, commander of the 225th Battalion in northern Ukraine, is holding the line and hoping for more U.S. support. "The main thing that we need is long-range missiles," Shyriaiev exclusively told Fox News Digital from an undisclosed location in the northeastern Sumy region of Ukraine’s front lines. "This war is the biggest war in the world since World War II," Major Shyriaiev said. Ukraine’s fight, he stressed, is not just to free itself from Russian aggression. Moscow has sought to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence since gaining independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. In fending off Russia’s invasion, Ukraine is looking to fulfill their 30-year hope of gaining complete independence from Moscow’s grip. "For the last 300 years, our confrontation, that is, the confrontation between Ukraine and Russia, has been our chance to gain independence. And I am sure that we will win this war," Shyriaiev said. U.S. long-range Tomahawk missiles would provide a useful option for Ukrainian forces to hold back Russian advances and get a better bargaining position to negotiate an end to the war. "Bolstering Kyiv’s long-range strike capabilities can help the Ukrainians impose greater costs on Moscow and undermine Russian offensive operations. Ultimately, this will provide Ukraine and the United States greater leverage to achieve peace," John Hardie, deputy director of the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Russia Program, told Fox News Digital. President Donald Trump at one point hinted he might send Ukraine long-range missiles. "If this war doesn’t get settled, I may send Tomahawks," Trump said in October when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy visited the White House. In a reversal of this sentiment, the president pulled back and told reporters aboard Air Force One on Nov. 2nd that the U.S. would not be sending Ukraine Tomahawk missiles for now. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Times [11/18/2025 3:24 AM, Farnaz Fassihi, 153395K] reports the United Nations Security Council on Monday approved President Trump’s peace plan for Gaza, a breakthrough that provides a legal U.N. mandate for the administration’s vision of how to move past the cease-fire and rebuild the war-ravaged Gaza Strip after two years of war. The Council’s vote was also a major diplomatic victory for the Trump administration. For the past two years, as the conflict between Israel and Hamas has raged, the United States had been isolated at the United Nations over its staunch support for Israel. The U.S. resolution calls for an International Stabilization Force to enter, demilitarize and govern Gaza. The proposal, which contained Mr. Trump’s 20-point cease-fire plan, also envisions a “Board of Peace” to oversee the peace plan, though it does not clarify the composition of the board. The resolution passed with 13 votes in favor and zero votes against. Russia and China, either of which could have vetoed it, abstained, apparently swayed by the support for the resolution from a number of Arab and Muslim nations: Egypt, Jordan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, as well as Indonesia, Turkey and Pakistan, which is a member of the Council. Mike Waltz, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, who addressed the Council before the vote, called Gaza “hell on earth” and held up a copy of the resolution, describing it as “a lifeline.” After the vote, Mr. Waltz thanked the Council for “joining us in charting a new course for Israelis, Palestinians and all the people in the region alike.” Security Council resolutions are considered legally binding international law, and although the Council does not have a mechanism for enforcing such resolutions, it can take measures to punish violators with penalties such as sanctions. In post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump wrote: “Congratulations to the World on the incredible Vote of the United Nations Security Council, just moments ago, acknowledging and endorsing the BOARD OF PEACE, which will be chaired by me, and include the most powerful and respected Leaders throughout the World.” He thanked various countries, including Russia and China, and said the vote “will lead to further Peace all over the World.” Still, the path forward is plagued by many uncertainties, with Israeli strikes continuing in Gaza and outbreaks of violence erupting in the West Bank. Among the next steps would be naming members of the Board of Peace, the body in charge of overseeing the transition in Gaza, and clarifying under whose authority the stabilization forces would operate.

Reported similarly:
New York Times [11/17/2025 6:09 PM, Matthew Cullen, 135475K]
Wall Street Journal [11/17/2025 6:47 PM, Robbie Gramer and Summer Said, 646K]
Washington Post [11/17/2025 6:51 PM, Karen DeYoung, 24149K]
AP [11/17/2025 8:07 PM, Edith M. Lederer, 31753K]
Reuters [11/17/2025 5:35 PM, Simon Lewis, 36480K] r
Axios [11/17/2025 5:27 PM, Barak Ravid, 12972K]
CBS News [11/17/2025 7:28 PM, Staff, 39474K] Video: HERE

Reuters [11/17/2025 12:18 PM, Staff, 36480K] reports the crew of an oil products tanker are safe and the vessel is anchored off Iran’s Bandar Abbas port, its manager said on Monday, after Tehran said it seized the ship in open Gulf waters last week. Iran confirmed on Saturday that its Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) had seized the Talara, a Marshall Islands-flagged tanker, over alleged cargo violations, Iranian state media reported. It was the first seizure of a tanker by Tehran since Israeli-U.S. strikes on Iran in June and has raised concerns for the safety of ships sailing through those critical waters with energy cargoes for world markets.

CBS News [11/17/2025 8:06 AM, Staff, 39474K] reports Japan said Monday that it had scrambled aircraft after detecting a suspected Chinese drone near its southern island of Yonaguni, which is close to Taiwan, on Saturday, as tension between the Asian adversaries spiked. On Sunday, Chinese coast guard vessels spent several hours in Japan’s territorial waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands, known as the Diaoyu in China and a frequent flashpoint, Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said. The incidents came amid escalating tension between the neighbors over remarks by Japan’s staunchly conservative new leader, who suggested Tokyo could intervene militarily in any hypothetical Chinese attack on Taiwan. Beijing insists Taiwan — which Japan occupied for decades until its 1945 defeat in World War II — is part of its territory, and the prime minister’s comments have sparked outrage among Chinese officials.

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