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.

Federal News Network [10/17/2025 5:26 PM, Jory Heckman, 986K] reports the Trump administration is doubling down on its plans to keep paying some frontline federal law enforcement employees during the government shutdown, while many civilian government workers risk missing their first full paycheck next week. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted on X on Thursday afternoon that more than 70,000 federal law enforcement officials — including employees from Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Secret Service, as well as federal air marshals and other "critical mission areas" will be paid for all hours worked during the shutdown. Noem wrote that these federal law enforcement employees will receive a "super check" by Oct. 22 that covers shutdown days already worked without pay, their overtime and their next pay period. A DHS spokesperson said in a statement Friday that the One Big Beautiful Bill Act will ensure that these 70,000 employees "will be having their pay covered during the Democrats’ government shutdown." The spokesperson said CBP border patrol agents, ICE deportation officers, Secret Service special agents and Transportation Security Administration air marshals are specifically covered by this announcement. USA Today [10/17/2025 10:19 AM, Melina Khan, 67103K] reports "DHS remains deeply grateful to our law enforcement for their continued professionalism, vigilance, and service under challenging circumstances," Noem added. Much of DHS is considered "essential" to government operations, so officers have remained on duty during the shutdown. The shutdown entered its 17th day on Oct. 17 with no end in sight as lawmakers are at an impasse over federal funding allocations for the 2026 fiscal year. A tenth vote on Oct. 16 failed to reopen the government, and the Senate will vote again on a House-passed measure on Oct. 20. By that point, the shutdown will become the third-longest in history. Noem said DHS officers will receive a "super check" on Wednesday, Oct. 22, covering all hours worked during the shutdown as well as the next pay period.

Reported similarly:
Breitbart [10/17/2025 4:11 PM, Hannah Knudsen, 2416K]

The AP [10/17/2025 5:54 PM, Jack Brook, 31753K] reports the FBI has accused a Louisiana resident of participating in the Hamas-led attack on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, then lying about his past and fraudulently obtaining a visa to live in the U.S. According to an FBI criminal complaint unsealed this week, Mahmoud Amin Ya’qub Al-Muhtadi armed himself and gathered a group to cross from the Gaza Strip into southern Israel during the attack that left more than 1,200 people dead. Hamas fighters also kidnapped more than 250 people, including dozens of American citizens, during the raid. This week, Hamas released the 20 remaining living hostages after the two sides agreed to a tenuous ceasefire in the Palestinian territory. Al-Muhtadi was an operative of the Gaza-based military wing of the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine, according to the complaint prepared by FBI Supervisory Special Agent Alexandria M. Thoman O’Donnell and submitted to a federal judge on Oct. 6. O’Donnell serves on a task force investigating the murder and kidnapping of American citizens during the attack two years ago. On his U.S. visa application, Al-Muhtadi denied he had ever been involved in terrorist activities, and became a legal permanent resident in 2024, the complaint says. The complaint says he could face charges for visa fraud and for conspiring to provide support for a foreign terrorist organization. Al-Muhtadi was arrested Thursday, according to the Justice Department. Attorney General Pam Bondi said that the Justice Department remains "dedicated to finding and prosecuting those responsible for that horrific day, including the murder of dozens of American citizens." "We will continue to stand by Jewish Americans and Jewish people around the world against anti-Semitism and terrorism in all its forms," Bondi said. The Free Beacon [10/17/2025 3:09 PM, Adam Kredo, 411K] reports Al-Muhtadi, also known as Abu Ala, allegedly served as an operative in the Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine’s (DFLP) military wing, a Gaza-based terror outfit that stormed through Israel on Oct. 7. When Al-Muhtadi "learned about the Hamas invasion," he allegedly "armed himself, alerted others, and crossed into Israel with the intention of assisting in Hamas’s terror attack," according to the criminal complaint, which is based on testimony from an FBI agent. Federal investigators determined al-Muhtadi was present in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, "the location of a horrifying massacre by Hamas and its supporters," based on geolocational data gathered from his cell phone. Israel’s security services provided additional information about al-Muhtadi’s terrorist ties, the complaint states. Shortly after Hamas breached Israeli territory, al-Muhtadi began "coordinating a group of armed fighters to join him in traveling from Gaza into Israel to participate in Hamas’s attack," the complaint alleges. About three hours after the first wave of fighters crossed into Israel, al-Muhtadi arrived near Kfar Aza. Hamas and Gazans murdered more than 60 civilians in that kibbutz, including at least 4 Americans, and kidnapped 19 others. One of the 19 kidnapped was also American. On June 26, 2024, less than a year after Oct. 7, an individual named "Mahmoud Almuhtadi" submitted an immigrant visa application to the Biden administration’s State Department. The alleged terrorist swore in the document he was not a member of a militant organization and "did not seek to engage in terrorist activities while in the United States," according to portions of that application described in the complaint. By Sept. 12, al-Muhtadi had entered the United States via Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, where he was photographed upon arrival. In the subsequent weeks and months, al-Muhtadi allegedly exchanged messages with his terrorist allies abroad, and even posted pictures of himself draped in a keffiyeh loading a nine-millimeter handgun. "Additional photographs show what appear to be al-Muhtadi’s children handling and posing with what appears to be the same gun," according to the complaint. Witnesses in Tulsa, Okla., where al-Muhtadi lived at the time, confirmed the photos were taken in his apartment. The State Department did not immediately respond to a Washington Free Beacon request for comment on al-Muhtadi’s visa application and the ensuing review process, which typically includes a scan of the applicant’s social media feeds. The Washington Examiner [10/17/2025 6:28 PM, Emily Hallas, 1394K] reports that "After hiding out in the United States, this monster has been found and charged with participating in the atrocities of October 7 — the single deadliest day for Jewish people since the Holocaust," Attorney General Pam Bondi said in a statement. "While nothing can fully heal the scars left by Hamas’s brutal attack, this Department’s Joint Task Force October 7 is dedicated to finding and prosecuting those responsible for that horrific day, including the murder of dozens of American citizens. We will continue to stand by Jewish Americans and Jewish people around the world against anti-Semitism and terrorism in all its forms," she added.

Reported similarly:
Daily Wire [10/17/2025 7:05 AM, Hank Berrien, 2494K]

The Daily Wire [10/17/2025 4:09 AM, Leif Le Mahieu, 2494K] reports multiple people reportedly survived a U.S. strike on Thursday that targeted a boat carrying suspected drug traffickers in the Caribbean. An American official told Fox News that there were two to three survivors after the U.S. carried out a strike targeting a "big" drug boat that was partially submerged under water. A search and rescue helicopter was sent out to the site of the strike in international waters "Under my Standing Authorities as Commander-in-Chief, this morning, the Secretary of War, ordered a lethal kinetic strike on a vessel affiliated with a Designated Terrorist Organization (DTO) conducting narcotrafficking in the USSOUTHCOM area of responsibility — just off the Coast of Venezuela," Trump posted on Truth Social. "Intelligence confirmed the vessel was trafficking narcotics, was associated with illicit narcoterrorist networks, and was transiting along a known DTO route," Trump added. "The strike was conducted in International Waters, and six male narcoterrorists aboard the vessel were killed in the strike. No U.S. Forces were harmed. Thank you for your attention to this matter!!!!!!". CNN [10/17/2025 12:31 PM, Kylie Atwood, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen, Katie Bo Lillis, 606K] reports that the strike, which President Donald Trump confirmed Friday, was the sixth known strike on a boat allegedly involved in drug trafficking. But it appeared to mark the first time an attack had not killed everyone on board. The detention marks the first time that the Trump administration’s military campaign targeting drug traffickers has resulted in the US holding prisoners, and it sets up a complicated legal and policy situation for the administration. It is unclear what the US is going to do with the survivors being held, the sources said. The US has deployed scores of military assets to the Caribbean as it continues to promise further strikes on alleged drug boats, part of the administration’s effort to drive down drug flow into the US and pressure Nicolás Maduro, Venezuela’s authoritarian president. Asked about what happened to the survivors of the strike during an event at the White House Friday, Trump did not address the status of the detainees but said that US forces had “attacked a submarine, and that was a drug carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs.” “Just so you understand this was not an innocent group of people,” he said. “I don’t know too many people that have submarines, and that was an attack on a drug carrying loaded up submarine.” Trump, who confirmed earlier in the week that he’d authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela, also had harsh language for Maduro on Friday: “He doesn’t want to fuck around with the US.” The threat came when Trump was asked about reports that Maduro offered preferential access to the nation’s natural resources in exchange for lowering the temperature after the US conducted the series of Caribbean strikes. US Southern Command, which is responsible for military operations in the region, referred CNN to the White House for comment when asked about Thursday’s strike and the survivors.

Reported similarly:
NBC News [10/17/2025 2:16 PM, Courtney Kube and Mosheh Gains, 34509K]

Bloomberg [10/17/2025 3:13 PM, Courtney McBride, 18207K] reports President Donald Trump said the US military struck a submarine designed for drug trafficking, amid reports that some aboard the vessel had survived — a first in the administration’s offensive against purported narco-traffickers. “We attacked a submarine, and that was a drug-carrying submarine built specifically for the transportation of massive amounts of drugs,” Trump told reporters at the White House on Friday. “Just so you understand, this was not an innocent group of people. I don’t know too many people that have submarines, and that was an attack on a drug-carrying, loaded-up submarine.” Moments earlier, in response to a reporter’s question, Secretary of State Marco Rubio had declined to address details of the attack, saying only that the US is conducting “an ongoing narco-terrorist operation.” Reuters reported earlier Friday that the US Navy was holding two survivors on one of its vessels following an attack that left two others dead, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter. CNN [10/17/2025 6:42 PM, Kylie Atwood, Natasha Bertrand, Natasha Bertrand, Zachary Cohen, and Katie Bo Lillis, 18595K] reports that the strike, which President Donald Trump confirmed Friday, was the sixth known strike on a boat allegedly involved in drug trafficking. But it appeared to mark the first time an attack had not killed everyone on board. The detention marks the first time that the Trump administration’s military campaign targeting drug traffickers has resulted in the US holding prisoners, and it sets up a complicated legal and policy situation for the administration. It is unclear what the US is going to do with the survivors being held, the sources said.

Reported similarly:
Axios [10/17/2025 3:39 PM, Julianna Bragg, 12972K]

Breitbart [10/17/2025 12:30 PM, Christian K. Caruzo, 2416K] reports three U.S. B-52 bomber aircraft flew for hours near the coast of Venezuela on Wednesday, ABC News reported on Thursday. ABC, citing flight tracking data, reported that the three B-52 bombers took off from Barksdale Air Force Base in Louisiana and flew for hours near the coast of Venezuela. A U.S. official confirmed to ABC on Thursday that a special operations aviation unit conducted training exercises in international waters near Venezuela this month. An unnamed U.S. Global Strike Command spokesperson confirmed to CBS that the bombers flew near Venezuela. CBS, citing tracking data from the flight site Flightradar24, detailed that the planes circled in the Caribbean sea about 150 miles north of Venezuela. The bombers flew near Venezuela amid rising tensions between the United States and the socialist regime there over the U.S. military presence in Caribbean international waters. President Donald Trump ordered operations there as part of ongoing efforts to combat Latin American drug cartels in the area and curb the flow of drugs entering the United States. The military operations have so far resulted in several Venezuelan drug-laden vessels struck down in precision strikes since September. Reuters reported on Friday that, according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity, there were survivors among the crew of a vessel struck on Thursday.

CNN [10/18/2025 12:00 AM, Isabelle Khurshudyan, Zachary Cohen, Ines Capdevila, 18595K] reports that, as President Donald Trump weighs military action inside Venezuela, building up forces in the Caribbean and flying B-52 bombers off the country’s coast this week, Nicolás Maduro is responding in kind, repositioning troops, mobilizing "millions" of militia and denouncing US activity in the region – a sign of defiance from the strongman as the two leaders are locked in a standoff. Trump administration officials have privately acknowledged that the intensifying US pressure campaign is aimed at ousting Maduro, a goal that was also a target of Trump’s first term in office when the White House recognized Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó as the legitimate president of the country in 2019. But as the Trump team ratchets up the pressure this fall, Maduro has in turn ramped up the rhetoric and propaganda for Venezuelans while calling for new military exercises by the Bolivarian National Armed Forces, which has some 123,000 members. In recent weeks, the US military has moved warships and other weaponry into the region and has targeted boats off the Venezuelan coast it says are transporting drugs. Then on Wednesday, Trump acknowledged that he’d authorized the CIA to conduct covert action in Venezuela and said the United States was considering strikes on Venezuelan territory. "We are certainly looking at land now, because we’ve got the sea very well under control," the president told reporters Wednesday. Maduro has claimed that his volunteer militias now have more than 8 million reservists, though experts have called into question that number as well as the quality of the troops’ training. As of October 17, 20 out of 23 Venezuelan states have been militarized as part of the Maduro’s military mobilizations, called Independence 200. On his Truth Social account last month, Trump mocked a video of women, some who appeared to be overweight, running with guns during a purported training for the Venezuelan militia. The Trump administration has been quietly laying the groundwork for potential military action inside Venezuela for months by tying Maduro to drug traffickers and cartels that officials have designated as terror groups who pose an imminent threat to the US. But to date, there is no indication that Trump has decided to take that step or target the Venezuelan leader directly. Instead, the goal has been to pressure Maduro to step down on his own, sources told CNN, in part by establishing a credible threat of US military action if he does not. The recent strikes against alleged drug boats in the Caribbean are a clear message to Maduro, the sources said, noting the administration has been very intentional about linking the Venezuelan leader to trafficking groups and cartels. Trump said Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to operate inside Venezuela to clamp down on the flows of migrants and drugs from the South American nation, but stopped short of saying they would be attempting to remove Maduro. The remarks are Trump’s most expansive comments on his decision to expand the CIA’s authority to conduct lethal targeting and carry out covert action in the region, which CNN first reported last week. In a televised speech Wednesday, Maduro denounced what he described as the CIA’s record of regime change and coups d’état around the world. "But our people are clear, united, and aware. They have the means to once again defeat this open conspiracy against the peace and stability of Venezuela," he said on state television.

Univision [10/17/2025 8:35 PM, Staff, 5004K] reports President Donald Trump said Friday from the White House that Venezuelan Nicolás Maduro sent him a message offering him "everything," including the country’s vast natural resources, to prevent the escalation of bilateral tensions. Trump was asked by the press if "Maduro offered everything in his country, all natural resources, even with a recorded message to you in English, offering mediation." The president responded that "he offered everything, you’re right. And you know why? Because he doesn’t want to mess with the United States." Various US media reports in recent days claim that the Venezuelan regime, using secondary diplomatic channels, has attempted to negotiate with Trump to reduce the current tension, in which the US has amassed thousands of soldiers, warships, spy planes, fighter bombers, and authorization for the CIA to carry out lethal covert operations in the South American country in Caribbean waters near Venezuela. All this under the pretext of fighting against cartels that send drugs to the United States, pointing to Venezuela as the alleged starting point for illegal maritime shipments. On Thursday, the Miami Herald reported that two members of Maduro’s inner circle, Delcy Rodríguez and Jorge Rodríguez—executive vice president and president of the legislature, respectively—have been promoting for several months a scenario in which Maduro would step down from power for a medium-term transition in Venezuela, in which the current ruling apparatus would not be dismantled while the doors are opened to U.S. companies to exploit Venezuela’s vast energy and mineral resources. And last week, New York Times reported that Maduro’s regime had offered the US a dominant share in Venezuela’s wealth. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves, with 303 billion proven barrels, the tenth largest gas reserves, and mineral wealth such as gold, bauxite, coltan, iron, and diamonds. According to both newspapers, the offers were flatly rejected by the US government, which even ordered its special envoy, Richard Grenell, to end contacts with Maduro’s regime, according to the NYT. On Friday, Maduro denied the Miami Herald’s version that Delcy Rodríguez had negotiated with the US for his alleged departure from power. "They tried to create an intrigue that we were divided, that we were at odds. No one believed that. That is simply impossible," Maduro said at an event with Rodríguez, according to AFP. "They are idiots. Stupid, stupid, stupid, you are very stupid," he added in English. On Thursday, Delcy Rodríguez had already described the report as false and psychological warfare. However, Maduro did not comment on Trump’s Friday statements about his alleged offers.

USA Today [10/18/2025 5:05 AM, Cybele Mayes-Osterman, 67103K] reports the Trump administration is poised to massively raise the stakes in its feud with the regime of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, who it accuses of supporting narcotrafficking and collusion with drug cartels. President Donald Trump’s startling Oct. 15 announcement that on-land strikes against Venezuela could come soon, which follows six strikes on Venezuelan boats that have killed more than two dozen people, raises questions as to what caused Trump’s sudden aggression and where it will lead. Maduro has already offered Venezuela’s natural resources, Trump said Oct. 17. "You know why? Because he doesn’t want to f--- around with the United States," he added. The CIA also has received the green light from Trump to carry out secret operations inside Venezuela, the president confirmed in the same press conference. "I authorized for two reasons really," Trump told reporters. "Number one, they have emptied their prisons into the United States of America...they came in through the border. The other thing are drugs.”

The Hill [10/17/2025 6:00 AM, Laura Kelly, 12595K] reports President Trump is ramping up military pressure on Venezuela’s authoritarian leader Nicolás Maduro, raising the prospect of strikes inside the country, which would mark a major escalation from already controversial military attacks against alleged drug trafficking boats in international waters. Trump’s confirmation on Wednesday that he authorized the CIA to carry out covert land strikes inside Venezuela is amplifying the possibility he could seek regime change in Caracas. Such a move would return the U.S. to engagement in Latin America, where it pursued what is understood as a failed 20th-century policy of military intervention. "One thing that’s been surprising to me, is even sort of in private conversation, people are very, very careful with this issue," a House Democratic aide told The Hill, requesting anonymity to comment on internal discussions. "Nobody is at all concerned about Maduro himself. … I don’t know anybody who’s shedding a tear for the guy. … I think the general feeling is more fear, not the fear of Trump succeeding, fear of Trump failing in a way he hasn’t predicted." At least one potential danger is whether Trump’s revelation of CIA operations in Venezuela will trigger blowback from Caracas. "This is no longer a covert operation, maybe not even clandestine … if something goes wrong there’s no deniability for CIA operatives," said Evelyn Farkas, executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University and a former senior Pentagon official in the Obama administration.

AP [10/17/2025 3:12 PM, Staff, 31753K] reports the U.S. Treasury Department slapped sanctions on the former head of Haitian presidential security when the leader of the Caribbean nation was assassinated, and the leader of a Haitian gang Friday. The agency said the two men supported a coalition of gangs that the Trump administration designated as a foreign terrorist organization earlier this year. The sanctions were placed on Dimitri Herard, a former police officer who was imprisoned in connection with the assassination of former President Jovenel Moïse in 2021. The Treasury wrote in a statement that since he escaped from prison in 2024, he “colluded” with Haiti’s most powerful gang coalition, Viv Ansanm, which has brought the country to its knees in recent years. Officials said Herard provided “training and firearms” to gang leaders, and “directly backs the Viv Ansanm’s coordinated attacks against State institutions.” The department also sanctioned Kempes Sanon, the head of the Bel Air gang, one of the many criminal groups that make up Viv Ansanm’s gang coalition. Besides helping the coalition consolidate power in the Caribbean nation, the Treasury accused Sanon of “indiscriminate civilian killings, extortion, illicit taxation, and kidnappings in Haiti.” “Today’s action underscores the critical role of gang leaders and facilitators like Herard and Sanon, whose support enables Viv Ansanm’s campaign of violence, extortion, and terrorism in Haiti,” wrote Bradley T. Smith, director of the Office of Foreign Assets Control, in a statement.

Washington Times [10/17/2025 5:17 PM, Stephen Dinan and Alex Swoyer, 852K] reports anti-ICE protests and sanctuary jurisdictions are taking their toll, forcing the agency to divert its personnel and hindering its ability to reach higher arrest and deportation numbers, acting Director Todd Lyons told The Washington Times, putting the blame on political rhetoric. In a wide-ranging interview with The Washington Times, he defended U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s efforts and scolded sanctuaries run by Democrats for stoking the rhetoric, attacks and mayhem that have besieged his officers. He also shot down many myths he said have grown around the agency, including that it’s arresting U.S. citizens and sending agents to round up children at schools. That latter one is particularly pernicious to Mr. Lyons, who said his agents and officers showing up at schools are actually trying to locate and rescue some of the hundreds of thousands of migrant kids the Biden administration caught and released into the U.S. and then lost track of. Known officially as unaccompanied alien children, or UACs, the kids were one of the more troubling parts of the Biden border surge. Roughly half a million were encountered during the Biden years, and most of those were released to sponsors. But the numbers were so overwhelming that the government was pushing kids out the door without much vetting, leading to some dangerous and heartbreaking situations. An inspector general said the government had lost track of roughly 300,000, and the Biden administration mishandled some 65,000 reports of problems. The new administration vowed to try to locate as many of them as possible and, if they’re not with their sponsors, try to reunite them with their families, Mr. Lyons said. As of July, it had located 13,000. “Yet we’re being accused of ‘Oh, you’re going to schools and rounding up children,’” Mr. Lyons said. “All we’re trying to do is locate these poor kids. And that’s the last known address we have. Yet you have some media outlets or some elected officials that will put that spin on it, that this great mission that we’re trying to do to locate and find and help these poor children is being torn apart in the news or for political rhetoric.” He said they had cases of what they called “super-sponsors,” who claimed 30 or 40 children from the government. “And then you go there, and that address is a 7-Eleven or it just doesn’t exist anymore,” he said. “So then you have to wonder, where do these children go?” Mr. Lyons also rebuffed claims that his agency is snaring — or, in some of the more overheated rhetoric, “kidnapping” — U.S. citizens. “That’s not the case. ICE, when we go out and make an arrest, we know exactly who we’re going for. It’s intelligence-driven, target-based,” he said.

Washington Times [10/17/2025 5:02 PM, Staff, 852K] reports hello, I’m Alex Swoyer. Welcome to the Washington Times’ interview with Todd Lyons, Director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The man who oversees the government’s deportation force, ICE, is at the center of the immigration debate right now, clashing with sanctuary cities and anti-ICE protesters as it moves to carry out President Trump’s plans for mass deportations. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

FOX News [10/17/2025 5:13 PM, Peter Pinedo, 40621K] reports the Trump Department of Homeland Security is criticizing a Democratic judge for taking "activism to a whole new level" by harboring an illegal gang member who just pled guilty to illegally possessing firearms and destroying evidence. Federal authorities arrested Cristhian Ortega-Lopez, a Venezuelan national who illegally entered the country in 2023 during the Biden administration, in February at the home of former Dona Ana County Magistrate Judge Jose Luis "Joel" Cano, 67, and his wife Nancy Ann Cano, 68. Based on his tattoos and social media activity showing firearms as well as distinctive hand signs and clothing, the Justice Department believes Ortega-Lopez is a member of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan transnational criminal group recently designated a foreign terrorist organization by the Trump administration. This month, Ortega-Lopez pled guilty to illegally possessing firearms and conspiracy to destroy evidence. Commenting on the plea, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said the judge’s action is part of a wider pattern of "sanctuary politicians" subverting U.S. law to harbor criminal illegal immigrants.

Bloomberg Law [10/17/2025 4:42 PM, Jacqueline Thomsen, 803K] reports Emil Bove, in one of his first opinions as a federal appeals court judge, said the judiciary should show deference to the executive branch in a case challenging a deportation order. Bove, who recently served as a top Justice Department official in President Donald Trump’s administration, wrote the concurring opinion over a petition for review of a removal order. He was part of a three-judge motions panel, alongside Judge Cheryl Ann Krause and Senior Judge Richard Lowell Nygaard, that transferred the case to the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit and denied an emergency motion to pause the removal order while the case plays out. Bove said he had also dissented from an administrative stay that the panel issued earlier in the case. The emergency motion for a stay "should not have interfered with DHS operations for an instant," he said, referring the Department of Homeland Security. The petitioner overstayed his authorized entry in the US, waived the right to challenge his removal, and filed the petition in the wrong court, Bove said. The administrative stay delayed the deportation for more than six days, he added. The courts are supposed to respect the functions of other branches and be deferential to executive actions, Bove said.

Washington Examiner [10/17/2025 11:35 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 1394K] reports over 250,000 Americans have applied to become federal law enforcement with the Department of Homeland Security’s Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Washington Examiner has learned. The U.S. Border Patrol has received over 100,000 applications during President Donald Trump’s second term, Chief Mike Banks shared during an interview with the Washington Examiner this week. ICE has received 175,000 applications throughout an ad blitz that the DHS launched earlier this summer. It will hire 10,000 applicants. Although fewer people have applied to Border Patrol, its recruitment haul is a bigger success given that all of the attention — and massive sign-up bonuses — are being offered by ICE. Despite the big incentives at ICE, Border Patrol has a huge appeal. "Our recruitment numbers are actually through the roof, and I attribute a big part of that to the support we’re getting from this administration," Banks said. "We’ve had over 100,000 applicants. We averaged, we’re averaging about 12,000 applicants a month.”

The Washington Post [10/17/2025 6:03 PM, Mark Berman and Justin Jouvenal, 24149K] reports the Trump administration on Friday asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pause a lower court ruling and allow President Donald Trump to deploy troops in Illinois, ramping up federal efforts to send the National Guard into the Chicago area. Trump’s administration has placed or attempted to place troops in several cities, including Chicago, Portland, D.C. and Los Angeles, prompting legal challenges from local and state officials. This case marks the first time Trump’s administration has asked the Supreme Court to weigh in on the issue. A federal judge this month blocked Trump’s effort to deploy troops in and around Chicago, and an appeals court left that order in place. Trump has said the troops are necessary to protect immigration officers and fight crime. Local and state leaders opposing the deployments said Trump’s actions were unlawful and unnecessary, and they have pushed back against his portrayals of their communities as besieged by crime as detached from reality. Politico [10/17/2025 5:21 PM, Josh Gerstein, Kyle Cheney and Shia Kapos, 2100K] reports Solicitor General D. John Sauer filed an emergency appeal with the high court Friday, seeking to lift lower-court rulings that are currently preventing Trump from deploying National Guard troops he pressed into federal service to aid Immigration and Customs Enforcement personnel in Illinois. Sauer argued that a temporary restraining order issued by a federal district judge in Illinois “improperly impinges on the President’s authority and needlessly endangers federal personnel and property.” In response to the appeal, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said on X: “Donald Trump will keep trying to invade Illinois with troops — and we will keep defending the sovereignty of our state. Militarizing our communities against their will is not only un-American but also leads us down a dangerous path for our democracy.” The appeal marks the first time the high court will consider Trump’s efforts to federalize state-run National Guard troops and deploy them into states led by Democratic governors who have opposed the extraordinary moves. It comes one day after a federal appeals court panel voted, 3-0, to leave in place the Chicago-based district judge’s restraining order that prevents Trump from putting the guard troops on the streets in Illinois. The AP [10/17/2025 6:37 PM, Mark Sherman] reports that the temporary restraining order entered last week by U.S. District Judge April Perry "improperly impinges on the President’s authority and needlessly endangers federal personnel and property," the solicitor general said in its petition asking the high court to stay Perry’s order while the case plays out in the courts. The 43-page petition also asked for an immediate administrative stay "given the pressing risk of violence," but the court had taken no action on that as of 5 p.m. Friday. The filing said Illinois’ resistance to a National Guard deployment mirrors similar actions still unfolding in California and Oregon. It asked that President Donald Trump be allowed to deploy some 700 troops in Illinois — 300 from the Illinois National Guard and another 400 federalized out of Texas earlier this month. The Supreme Court asked lawyers for Illinois to respond by 5 p.m. Eastern time on Monday.

Reported similarly:
NBC News [10/17/2025 5:28 PM, Lawrence Hurley and Natasha Korecki, 34509K]
Daily Caller [10/17/2025 4:50 PM, Katelynn Richardson, 835K]
USA Today [10/17/2025 5:07 PM, Bart Jansen, 67103K]

The New York Times [10/17/2025 6:47 PM, Mattathias Schwartz, 135475K] reports a federal judge in Chicago issued on Friday an order requiring federal immigration agents who are already equipped with body cameras to turn them on while conducting immigration arrests and interacting with protesters and other members of the public in the Chicago area. The ruling from Judge Sara L. Ellis of Federal District Court for the Northern District of Illinois is intended to monitor the government’s compliance with an earlier order setting strict limits on federal agents’ use of tear gas and requiring them to give protesters warnings to disperse. Both orders apply to 18 counties that span the northern part of Illinois, including all of the Chicago region. The body camera requirement has several limitations. It applies to only immigration agents who already have cameras and have been trained to use them. Undercover agents are exempt, and agents don’t have to turn the cameras on in certain places, including jails and ports of entry. Judge Ellis gave the government until Oct. 24 to file with the court its policies implementing the new directive. In a hearing on Thursday, Judge Ellis said she was “profoundly concerned” about whether the Trump administration was obeying her requirements that agents warn protesters to disperse and limit the use of tear gas. On Friday, Judge Ellis reiterated her demand that federal immigration officials appear in her courtroom next week to answer questions about how agents have behaved toward protesters and residents during a Trump administration crackdown on illegal immigration in recent weeks. As agents from Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement have conducted arrests and raids, Chicago area residents have protested, especially near an ICE facility in the suburb of Broadview, Ill. Residents have also clashed with immigration agents as the agents have carried out operations along Chicago streets, using tear gas at times. It was uncertain which federal official — a leader of ICE or of Customs and Border Protection — would appear before Judge Ellis in the hearing that is scheduled for Monday. Judge Ellis suggested that she would be satisfied so long as it was “someone with knowledge” who can “tell what is happening and what has been happening over the last week.” The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Judge Ellis’s new order. On Thursday, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the department, said that requiring officers to wear body cameras would be “an extreme act of judicial activism.” Reuters [10/17/2025 7:49 PM, Diana Novak Jones, 36480K] reports that protesters, journalists, and clergy sued Trump, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal officials earlier this month, alleging they were deliberately targeted and brutalized during demonstrations. The lawsuit seeks a court order declaring the administration’s conduct unconstitutional. The lawsuit also seeks a court order preventing law enforcement officers from threatening arrest or using riot-control weapons - such as tear gas or rubber bullets - against individuals who do not pose a threat, or unless proper warnings are given. Ellis entered a 14-day temporary restraining order on October 9, agreeing that the groups had put forward evidence that federal law enforcement had retaliated against them. The order barred federal law enforcement from using force or riot-control weapons against journalists, protesters and clergy unless they pose a threat and required the officers to wear visible identification.

Reported similarly:
(B) CBS Mornings [10/17/2025 10:08 AM, Staff]

CBS Chicago [10/17/2025 5:27 PM, Sara Tenenbaum and Sabrina Franza, 39474K] reports a federal judge again Friday ordered agents in Chicago for immigration operations to wear and turn on their body cameras, telling them "that was not a suggestion.” U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued the order Thursday, citing concerns about increasingly violent clashes between federal agents deployed in Operation Midway Blitz and the public, and their use of tear gas against protesters. Ellis said her order requires any federal agents working under Operation Midway Blitz to wear body cameras and keep them on during all "law enforcement activities.” In a follow up hearing Friday, as Judge Ellis prepares to hear testimony from Customs and Border Protection and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Monday about their use of tear gas and other deterrents in Chicago’s East Side neighborhood earlier this week, she reiterated her requirement for body cameras. "Maybe I wasn’t clear yesterday; that wasn’t a suggestion," she told lawyers for the Trump administration. "I am modifying the temporary restraining order to include body-worn cameras.” "It’s not up for debate," she added. Federal agents at large wear body cameras but federal agents in Chicago have not been. A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security called the ruling an "extreme act of judicial activism.”

Chicago Tribune [10/17/2025 6:15 PM, Sam Charles, Caroline Kubzansky, and Rebecca Johnson, 4829K] reports newly released - though heavily redacted - video by Chicago police sheds new light on the arrest of a U.S. citizen the night that federal immigration agents stormed a troubled South Shore apartment building as part of the immigration crackdown known as "Operation Midway Blitz." The body camera footage, released to the Tribune on Friday through a public records request, offers a small window into the Sept. 30 military-style enforcement operation some have suggested was largely made for cameras and the Trump administration’s social media feeds. But the video itself was blurred by the Chicago Police Department, further limiting its value in showing what occurred that night. It also backs up the Police Department’s assertion in the days after the raid that its officers did not participate in the mission itself. Officers instead arrived at the building to collect 46-year-old Nathan Howard, whom federal officials had detained alongside about three dozen others and found to have a warrant. The three videos released to the Tribune total more than 76 minutes in length, though all are visually redacted so that no faces are recognizable.

The Hill [10/17/2025 7:14 AM, Damita Menezes, 12595K] reports federal immigration authorities arrested a suburban Chicago police officer Wednesday after discovering he had been living in the United States illegally for more than a decade. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested Radule Bojovic, 33, a native of Montenegro who was serving as a sworn officer with the Hanover Park Police Department. The arrest occurred during a targeted enforcement as part of Operation Midway Blitz in Rolling Meadows. Bojovic overstayed a B-2 tourist visa that required him to leave the country by March 31, 2015, according to ICE officials. He had been working as a police officer despite his immigration status and is the second police officer to be arrested this year. In July, Maine police officer Jon Luke Evans of Jamaica was arrested by immigration authorities and agreed to voluntarily leave the country. "Illegal aliens are prohibited from owning or possessing firearms — full stop," said Sam Olson, director of ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations Chicago Field Office. "This is the second known instance in recent months of a local police department hiring an illegal alien and unlawfully issuing him a firearm while on duty in violation of federal law." USA Today [10/17/2025 8:42 AM, Jeanine Santucci, 67103K] reports that, a native of Montenegro, Bojovic was accused of overstaying a B2 tourist visa since 2015. Bojovic is the latest public official to be arrested by ICE, after a Des Moines, Iowa, public schools superintendent was also accused of being in the country illegally. A Maine police officer was also arrested by ICE earlier this year and agreed to leave the country voluntarily. Bojovic’s arrest on Oct. 15 was part of Operation Midway Blitz, the crackdown by federal authorities on Chicago as part of President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration enforcement activities in cities. "Governor J.B. Pritzker doesn’t just allow violent illegal aliens to terrorize Illinois’s communities, he allows illegal aliens to work as sworn police officers," Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. "Radule Bojovic violated our nation’s laws and was living ILLEGALLY in the United States for 10 years – what kind of police department gives criminal illegal aliens badges and guns?"

Reported similarly:
FOX News [10/17/2025 2:46 PM, Sarah Rumpf-Whitten, 40621K]

NewsNation [10/17/2025 2:28 PM, Mills Hayes, 8017K] reports authorities have detained nearly a dozen people as of Friday morning in Broadview, Illinois, amid ongoing protests outside an ICE processing facility. Illinois state police in riot gear were seen pushing protesters back with wooden batons as a crowd gathered ahead of the designated protest window of 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The location has been the site of frequent — and at times violent — clashes between federal agents and protesters. Fencing that had previously surrounded the facility has been removed. The face-off between demonstrators and authorities comes just a day after a judge in Illinois ordered federal officers to wear body cameras during immigration operations, citing growing concerns over clashes with protesters. However, some protesters outside the facility told NewsNation they were not convinced the cameras would hold agents accountable. U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis issued the order Thursday, saying she was startled by reports that agents used tear gas during confrontations with the public. The ruling followed a viral video showing federal agents deploying tear gas on crowds Tuesday. Ellis said she was “profoundly concerned” the agents had violated her order from last week, which required them to wear visible badges and banned certain crowd-control tactics. She said she now wants all Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents involved in “Operation Midway Blitz” to wear body cameras and keep them activated during operations. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

(B) GMA3 [10/17/2025 1:26 PM, Staff] reports that at the ICE facility in Broadview, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed at least nine protesters were arrested and then put into the back of Cook County Sheriff’s vehicles after confrontations with police. The interim head of the Chicago ICE field office is leaving his post effective today. The news came out in a court filing about a hearing on Monday where Russell Hott was summoned to appear. Yesterday, a judge said she was profoundly concerned with some of the actions federal agents have taken during this immigration crackdown. Hott was being asked to testify on Monday about several incidents involving agents allegedly violating the judge’s order not to use tear gas against peaceful protesters without warning.

CBS Chicago [10/17/2025 9:40 PM AM, Todd Feurer, 39474K] reports U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) is calling for federal government watchdogs to launch an investigation into immigration agents’ tactics amid an ongoing enforcement operation in the Chicago area, citing "troubling patterns" of excessive force and unlawful arrests. Duckworth sent a letter to the inspectors general for the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security calling for a joint investigative task force into federal agents’ use of force amid Operation Midway Blitz, and to recommend any necessary corrective actions. "The people of Chicago, and the United States, deserve transparency and accountability when Federal officers operate in their neighborhoods. A joint effort by your offices will help ensure that investigations are impartial, comprehensive and not hindered by jurisdictional silos, conflicts or interest or improper influence," Duckworth wrote. The senator noted that a federal judge already has issued a temporary restraining order blocking federal agencies from using certain forceful tactics to suppress protests or prevent journalists from covering those protests.

Chicago Tribune [10/17/2025 5:12 PM, Caroline Kubzansky, 4829K]
Illinois State Police arrested 11 people in a scuffle with hundreds of protesters demonstrating Friday morning outside U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Broadview processing center. The arrests are the latest to come from a string of protests outside the west suburban facility as the Trump administration’s so-called "Operation Midway Blitz" wears into its second month in and around Chicago. Local officials have struggled to manage hundreds of people who gather mainly on Fridays and Sundays outside the processing center, where federal agents have repeatedly deployed chemical crowd controls and less-lethal ammunition in an attempt to subdue crowds. Friday’s confrontation was the first in almost a month to take place on Beach Street after federal officials removed what the town called an illegally constructed fence from outside the facility. Protesters began to chant around 8 a.m. Friday, in violation of Broadview Mayor Katrina Thompson’s recently issued order that protests only occur between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. Thompson has been highly critical of federal agents’ actions outside the processing center, declaring that "this is not Putin’s Russia" and demanding federal authorities cooperate with a set of criminal investigations. On Monday, Thompson shrank the designated protest area previously established alongside state and Cook County sheriff’s police, saying demonstrations last week "degenerated into chaos" at the expense of the village’s roughly 8,000 residents. At the site on Friday, protesters around 8:05 a.m. pushed toward the ICE building, overpowering a handful of state police and Broadview officers. About five minutes later, dozens of state police in helmets with batons walked toward the crowd and began pushing them back. Troopers tackled and dragged several people, including a woman with an accordion. None of the people arrested appeared to be seriously injured. All sat quietly on a curb with their hands zip-tied as legal observers shouted for their names and dates of birth behind a set of concrete barricades in a so-called media area. A group of federal agents in military fatigues stood about a hundred feet away beside the building itself, watching quietly as sheriff’s police loaded arrestees into a van. State police said in a statement released Friday morning that officials had issued "repeated instructions" for demonstrators to move and said that blocking the street created traffic safety issues and made it more difficult for lawyers and other third parties to get into the processing center building.

Chicago Tribune [10/17/2025 5:49 PM, Gregory Royal Pratt and Caroline Kubzansky, 4829K] reports a battery of armed agents covering their faces entered the open-air shopping staple of the Back of the Yards neighborhood Thursday morning and took a number of people away. Community members said there were more than a dozen arrests. The Department of Homeland Security in a post on X Friday said 13 had been detained in the raid and alleged they were guilty of various crimes but provided no specifics and did not release any names. As President Donald Trump’s "Operation Midway Blitz" continues ripping through the city’s immigrant communities, businesses across Chicago have pledged support to immigrant communities by posting "ICE is not welcome here" signs in storefront windows. But in heavy immigrant neighborhoods, like the Back of the Yards community where Swap-O-Rama is located, protecting customers and employees is not theoretical. The raids have forced lower-wage workers to make an agonizing choice: whether to risk their own already precarious livelihoods and safety to protect the well-being of their neighbors and customers.

Politico [10/17/2025 11:38 AM, Dasha Burns, 13586K] reports J.B. Pritzker has been clashing with Donald Trump for years, but the acrimony reached new heights with the president’s recent declaration that the Illinois governor should “be in jail.” In a new interview with The Conversation, Pritzker brushed it off. “I’m not afraid for me,” he said. “I’m afraid for the people of Illinois and the people of the United States with the attitude of this president.” A billionaire who’s positioned himself as a blue-state governor willing to take Trump head on, Pritzker is seeking his third term next year and is widely seen as a potential 2028 Democratic contender. Pritzker may not have wanted a battle with the White House, but Trump’s decision to send National Guard troops over the governor’s objections to buttress an increasingly controversial ICE enforcement operation is certainly raising Pritzker’s profile. That’s particularly true as Democrats are desperate to find a path back to relevance after being shut out of power in Washington. In the interview, Pritzker said Democrats should be able to fight for lower health care premiums in a shutdown battle while also protecting American democracy from a Trumpian power grab. He added that he was particularly worried Trump would try to use the troop deployments as a pretext for interfering in the midterm elections. “I think it’s not very far away from him offering and providing the military to protect the polling places across America, but particularly in blue states and blue cities, with the idea that they could confiscate the ballot boxes if they think there is fraud in the election,” he said. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

New York Post [10/17/2025 6:29 PM, Mikella Schuettler, 42219K] reports an Oregon man has been charged with shining a green laser at a US Customs and Border Protection helicopter in Portland amid rowdy anti-ICE protests in the city, federal prosecutors announced Thursday. Brian Keith Kapileo Nepaial, 38, allegedly pointed the device at a federal chopper on Oct. 3, forcing the pilots to land the aircraft early, the Oregon US District Attorney’s Office said in a press release. When the FBI searched Nepaial’s home a week later, they found a laser, along with more than 100 grams of methamphetamine and "evidence of drug trafficking," according to the DA’s office. Nepaial allegedly pointed the laser at the CBP helicopter as it was passing over his home while he was smoking on the porch, according to federal court documents. The pilots circled back over the house, and watched Nepaial creep back into his home. "Laser strikes are a serious matter with potentially deadly repercussions. They put the lives of the pilots and the public at risk," said Scott E. Bradford, US Attorney for the District of Oregon.

Washington Post [10/17/2025 2:29 PM, Meagan Flynn and Emma Uber, 24149K] reports that D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser pledged to a packed room Thursday night that she was working to disentangle D.C. police from working alongside federal immigration authorities, as some in the crowd shouted in protest and others made emotional pleas to the mayor.

Get concise answers to your questions. Try Ask The Post AI. “People want you to fight back!” one protester yelled as an officer escorted him out of the room at the Lamond-Riggs library in Northeast Washington, accusing Bowser (D) of “selling home rule down the river” and calling her a “traitor.” Federal immigration authorities under the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) — which also houses U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) — continue to patrol with D.C. police as part of a federal task force more than a month after the end of President Donald Trump’s 30-day emergency order, in which President Trump seized control of D.C. police and sent hundreds of federal officers and National Guard troops into city streets. “We want to get the Homeland Security agencies off of the task force. And I am working on that,” Bowser said Thursday during the Ward 5 Leadership Council meeting in her old neighborhood. The issue has outraged residents and posed an immense challenge for the three-term mayor, who is powerless to remove federal immigration authorities but whom residents are looking to for answers and guidance during a highly uncertain time.

CNN [10/18/2025 7:00 AM, Eric Levenson and Josh Campbell, 18595K] reports a series of public statements from the Department of Homeland Security during its migrant crackdown in Chicago and across the country has been contradicted or undermined by local officials, a civil rights attorney and a legal filing. These issues have been particularly notable in three prominent incidents: the arrest of a WGN employee, the shooting of a US citizen accused of ramming police vehicles and ICE’s detention of a 13-year-old in Massachusetts. A closer look at the incidents underscores the broader skepticism of the Department of Homeland Security’s statements as federal agents have moved into city streets in Chicago and elsewhere. Last week, a federal judge temporarily halted the Trump administration’s deployment of National Guard troops in Illinois, saying its statements about protests were "not reliable." The administration had highlighted several arrests for carrying weapons and assaulting federal agents – but the judge responded that federal grand juries had refused to indict at least three of those arrested, indicating a lack of probable cause. "In addition to demonstrating a potential lack of candor by these affiants, it also calls into question their ability to accurately assess the facts," US District Court Judge April Perry wrote in her order of those incidents.

NewsNation [10/17/2025 6:05 PM, Safia Samee Ali, 8017K] reports President Donald Trump has touted the success of his deployment of the National Guard and other federal agents to crack down on immigration and crime, but residents in these cities say this presence has damaged their sense of safety. Trump has sent national law enforcement to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Portland, Memphis and Chicago. Since the national deployments, five cities have become roiled in protests and violent clashes between residents and law enforcement over the federal presence, which includes agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement tasked with deportations and the National Guard. Trump has already alluded to San Francisco, Boston and New Orleans as next in line for federal intervention.

New York Times [10/17/2025 5:02 AM, Marcela Valdes, 153395K] reports Donald J. Trump has been railing against sanctuary cities for a decade, describing them as hotbeds of crime and magnets for undocumented immigrants. Attacking them was a staple of both of his presidential campaigns. So it was hardly a surprise when he signed an executive order in April directing the attorney general and the homeland security secretary to “pursue all necessary legal remedies and enforcement measures” to force cities and states to implement federal immigration laws. A White House news release that accompanied the executive order quoted a note that the president posted on Truth Social a few weeks earlier: “No more Sanctuary Cities!” he wrote. “They protect the Criminals, not the Victims. They are disgracing our Country, and are being mocked all over the World. Working on papers to withhold all Federal Funding for any City or State that allows these Death Traps to exist!!!” In the six months since, we’ve learned what “enforcement measures” look like: hundreds of officers from several federal agencies swarming city centers, apprehending unauthorized migrants — and sometimes American citizens — during raids and traffic stops. In June, this drama unfolded in Los Angeles. In August, in Washington, D.C. It’s now happening in Chicago, and — pending court challenges — may happen in Portland, Ore. More than 300 sanctuary jurisdictions exist in the United States — including those four cities and several entire states, according to the political scientists Loren Collingwood and Benjamin Gonzalez O’Brien. Some have passed laws barring city employees from asking individuals about their immigration status. Others will not honor requests from Immigration and Customs Enforcement to detain people unless they are suspected of violent crimes.

Washington Post [10/17/2025 12:25 PM, Anumita Kaur, 24149K] reports a Florida city council member has drawn the ire of national Indian American groups, members of Congress and local residents after he published a stream of social media posts disparaging Indians in the United States and calling for their mass deportation. Palm Bay council member Chandler Langevin, who was elected last year, lambasted Indians in posts on X, writing over about three weeks this fall that Indians come to the U.S. to “drain our pockets” and then return to India, “or worse … to stay.” Outrage over his comments has upended the community and rippled beyond it. Since Sept. 29, residents and members of regional and national Indian American groups have flooded meetings at Palm Bay’s city council chambers, released statements denouncing his remarks and demanded his resignation. Late Thursday, Langevin’s fellow council members voted 3-2 to censure him. “We’re all overwhelmed by everything,” Mayor Rob Medina, who is a member of the council, said during the meeting. “This nation was founded on immigrants. … We are all part of the very fabric of the flag, our banner, the United States of America.” National advocacy group Hindus for Human Rights has published a letter calling on Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) — who under Florida law has the power to suspend municipal officials — to remove Langevin from office. At an Oct. 2 council meeting, Bharat Patel, the former chair of the Asian American Hotel Owners Association, said the council member’s remarks “echo some of history’s darkest rhetoric,” potentially even inspiring acts of violence. Prashant Patel, president of the Indian American Business Association and Chamber, told council members that Langevin’s actions are deeply polarizing. In a phone call with The Washington Post on Wednesday, Langevin said he had aimed to start “discourse” about immigration policies. “I’m not the first Republican to make a mean tweet,” he said.

CBS Los Angeles [10/17/2025 8:34 AM Laurie Perez, Matthew Rodriguez, 39474K] reports an immigration activist was detained for several hours after a federal agent allegedly rammed his pickup truck in Ventura County on Thursday morning. Leo Martinez, a well-known activist with the watchdog group VC Defensa, said he was driving around Oxnard after learning that four Immigration and Customs Enforcement cars were patrolling an industrial area. He admitted to following and observing the agents but claimed he stayed at a distance. He said that he was turning around when the agents tried to keep him from leaving. "I’m trying to get out and do a few circles, trying to get out," Martinez recalled. "That’s when they hit me the first time, and then they came through in the video that shows when they hit me really hard." While the video doesn’t show the first collision, it does show the federal agent’s vehicle accelerating and ramming Martinez’s truck from the side. Oxnard Police Chief Jason Benites said his department received a call reporting an alleged road rage incident and another from ICE agents claiming they were in pursuit of a truck that struck their SUV. Officers from the Oxnard Police Department responded and pulled Martinez over to the side of the road. Oxnard police chief said federal agents claimed Martinez had intentionally assaulted them with his pickup. Martinez disputed the allegation, claiming it was an attempt to intimidate him. He said he didn’t stop after the first collision because he wanted to find witnesses.

Axios [10/17/2025 6:13 PM, Josephine Walker, 12972K] reports Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem recently lamented that Chicago businesses prohibited federal officers from using their bathrooms or eating in certain restaurants, as owners argue is their right under the Third Amendment of the Constitution. Previously relegated to niche online communities like the HistoryMemes Reddit, the Third Amendment is receiving almost as much attention as its big siblings, the First and Second Amendments. The Third Amendment prohibits the forcible housing of the military in a civilians’ house during peacetime, and requires any change to that status to be codified by law during times of war. The amendment is "not considered controversial" and its merits have never been litigated before the Supreme Court, according to Cornell University’s Legal Information Institute. The Amendment specifically pertains to civilians’ homes, but social media users are tying it to other types of personal property as well. Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin slammed the way Noem was turned away from a Chicago municipal building while on her way to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid in an emailed statement to Axios. "She didn’t ask for a meeting. She asked to use the restroom. This is insane." The Trump administration rolled back restrictions on immigration enforcement in churches, hospitals and schools earlier this year, opening the floodgates for officers to access traditionally safe spaces to conduct raids. The rollback has confused staffers unaccustomed to navigating law enforcement demands while adhering to industry protocols.

New York Times [10/17/2025 6:37 PM, Jill Cowan, 135475K] reports federal prosecutors in Los Angeles downgraded a charge against David Huerta, the labor leader who was arrested during an immigration raid this summer, to a misdemeanor from a felony. The arrest had helped touch off a wave of protests against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. Mr. Huerta, the California president of the Service Employees International Union, faces one misdemeanor count of obstruction of a federal officer, which has a maximum sentence of one year in prison. Prosecutors claim that Mr. Huerta impeded federal agents by walking across a driveway and trying to block a car as heavily armed officers conducted an immigration raid on a clothing wholesaler near downtown Los Angeles on June 6. Mr. Huerta was arrested that day and initially charged with conspiring to impede an officer — a felony offense that holds a sentence of up to six years in federal prison. He was released after about three days in federal custody on a $50,000 bond. A spokesman for Bill Essayli, the acting U.S. attorney in Los Angeles, declined to comment on Mr. Huerta’s charge or respond to a question about why the charge was downgraded. After Mr. Huerta was arrested, Mr. Essayli said on X that he would arrest and prosecute anyone accused of impeding federal agents. “I don’t care who you are,” he wrote. Mr. Huerta and his supporters have described the accusation as a baseless attempt to intimidate those who speak out against President Trump. “I am being targeted for exercising my constitutional rights for standing up against an administration that has declared open war on working families, immigrants and basic human dignity,” Mr. Huerta said in a statement on Friday. “If the goal was to instill fear, it has failed.” On June 6, Mr. Huerta, a longtime labor and immigrant rights advocate, went to the site of the raid at Ambiance Apparel, a business in a warehouse district, to join a group of demonstrators. In court documents, federal officials said Mr. Huerta and others yelled at agents and encouraged protesters to walk in a circle and block a driveway. At one point, Mr. Huerta stood in the path of a white law enforcement van, and an agent “put his hands” on him, according to federal officials. An agent said in court documents that he saw Mr. Huerta push back. Then Mr. Huerta was pushed to the ground and handcuffed, according to video that was widely circulated on social media. Footage showed Mr. Huerta’s head on a curb, surrounded by federal agents. He was briefly hospitalized with a head injury.

AP [10/18/2025 12:07 AM, Lisa Mascaro, Safiyah Riddle and Kevin Freking, 30493K] reports protesting the direction of the country under President Donald Trump, people will gather Saturday in the nation’s capital and communities across the U.S. for "No Kings" demonstrations — what the president’s Republican Party is calling "Hate America" rallies. This is the third mass mobilization since Trump’s return to the White House and it is expected to be the largest. It comes against the backdrop of a government shutdown that not only has closed federal programs and services, but is testing the core balance of power as an aggressive executive confronts Congress and the courts in ways that organizers warn is a slide toward American authoritarianism. Trump himself is away from Washington at his Mar-a-Lago home in Florida. "They say they’re referring to me as a king. I’m not a king," Trump said in a Fox News interview airing early Friday, before he departed for a $1 million-per-plate MAGA Inc. super PAC fundraiser at Mar-a-Lago. Protests are expected nearby Saturday. While the earlier protests this year — against Elon Musk’s cuts in spring, then to counter Trump’s military parade in June — drew crowds, organizers say this one is building a more unified opposition party movement. Top Democrats such as Senate Leader Chuck Schumer and Independent Sen. Bernie Sanders are joining in what organizers view an antidote to Trump’s actions, from the administration’s clampdown on free speech to its military-style immigration raids. "There is no greater threat to an authoritarian regime than patriotic people-power," said Ezra Levin, a co-founder of Indivisible, among the key organizers. As Republicans and the White House dismiss the protests as a rally of radicals, Levin said their own sign-up numbers are growing. More than 2,600 rallies are planned in cities large and small, organized by hundreds of coalition partners. They said rallies are being planned within a one-hour drive for most Americans. Republicans have have sought to portray participants in Saturday’s rallies as far outside the mainstream of American politics, and a main reason for the prolonged government shutdown, now in its 18th day. From the White House to Capitol Hill, GOP leaders disparaged the rallygoers as "communists" and "Marxists.” They say Democratic leaders, including Schumer, are beholden to the far-left flank and willing to keep the government shut down to appease those liberal forces. "I encourage you to watch — we call it the Hate America rally — that will happen Saturday," said House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La. "Let’s see who shows up for that," Johnson said listing off groups including "antifa types," people who "hate capitalism" and "Marxists in full display.”

Reported similarly:
CNN [10/17/2025 7:00 AM, Lauren Mascarenhas, Josh Campbell, 606K]
Univision [10/17/2025 7:05 PM, Staff, 5004K]

Los Angeles Times [10/18/2025 6:00 AM, Jenny Jarvie and Nathan Solis, 14862K] reports when millions of demonstrators took to the streets in June for "No Kings Day" — depicting President Trump as a wannabe monarch intent on violating American democratic norms — it was still fairly early in his administration. The immigration raids in Los Angeles were just getting under way and Trump had deployed military troops to the city to clamp down on protests. But four months later, many Americans feel Trump’s threats and norm-shattering actions have only gotten more intense as protesters prepare to take part Saturday in more than 2,700 "No Kings" demonstrations scheduled across the country. In that period, the Trump administration has ramped up immigration raids across L.A. and Chicago and deployed National Guard troops to Washington D.C. It has also pressured universities to comply with his agenda or lose funding, fired government officials he deems insufficiently loyal and embarked on an aggressive sweep of prosecutions of political opponents. "We’re seeing an escalation, right?," said Hunter Dunn, a spokesman for 50501, one of the "No Kings" coalition’s core organizing partners. "We are watching as ICE’s mass deportation program is speeding up and becoming even more aggressive than it was. What happened in Los Angeles is now happening in Memphis, in D.C., in Chicago." But the second "No Kings" protest comes with some existential questions for organizers who trying to mount a sustained protest movement. What is the most effective way to challenge Trump? And how do you make noise without playing into the president’s hands? Saturday’s revival of the massive series of demonstrations — organized around the slogan "No Thrones. No Crowns. No Kings" — will voice left-wing concerns that the Trump administration is embracing authoritarian tactics and unraveling U.S. democracy. But it will also include a broader range of issues, including rising prices and rollbacks of environmental protections.

FOX News [10/17/2025 10:50 AM, Emma Colton Fox, 40621K] reports "No Kings" protests against President Donald Trump and his administration’s policies are set to kick-off in cities nationwide Saturday to declare, "America has No Kings.” "We’re standing together against the abuses of power, cruelty, and corruption. On October 18, we gather to remind President Trump and his enablers: America has No Kings!" the movement’s website states of the upcoming Saturday protests. The Saturday protests are expected to focus on Trump’s immigration policies, including Trump’s alleged "authoritarian takeovers of cities—deploying federal forces, seizing local police departments, and funding mass detention and deportation operations," as well as the movement’s ongoing claims that Trump is conducting himself more like a monarch than a president.

NewsMax [10/17/2025 9:47 AM, Sandy Fitzgerald, 4109K] reports Saturday’s nationwide "No Kings II" demonstrations could attract extremist elements linked to the antifa movement seeking to incite violence and disrupt public order, federal officials are warning. While organizers are promoting the events as peaceful, anti-authoritarian demonstrations opposing President Donald Trump’s policies, the administration says far-left activists associated with antifa have a record of embedding in mass protests, The Baltimore Sun reported Friday. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, in an interview with Spotlight on Maryland, a collaboration between The Sun, WJLA in Washington, D.C., and FOX45 News, said earlier this week that he is concerned about who is funding and organizing the protests. "I am concerned about antifa infiltrating and participating," he said. Duffy pointed to the recent assassination of conservative leader Charlie Kirk as an example of escalating political violence in the United States. Duffy added that the "No Kings" movement misrepresents Trump’s reelection victory and feeds false narratives about American governance. The "No Kings" movement describes itself as committed to nonviolent action and calls on citizens to reject authoritarianism. But during the first "No Kings Day" on June 14, violence erupted in several cities despite mostly peaceful gatherings elsewhere.

Reuters [10/18/2025 6:03 AM, Brad Brooks, 36480K] reports more than 2,600 "No Kings" protest events are scheduled to take place on Saturday in all 50 U.S. states, a mass mobilization against President Donald Trump’s policies on immigration, education and security that organizers say are pushing the country toward autocracy. The protests -- big and little, in cities, suburbs and small towns across the U.S. -- follow similar demonstrations in June and will gauge the frustration level of opponents of a conservative agenda that has rolled out quickly. Since Trump took office 10 months ago, his administration has ramped up immigration enforcement, moved to slash the federal workforce and cut funding to elite universities over issues including pro-Palestinian protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, campus diversity and transgender policies. Residents in some major cities have seen National Guard troops sent in by the president, who argues they are needed to protect immigration agents and to help combat crime. "There is nothing more American than saying ‘we don’t have kings’ and exercising our right to peacefully protest," said Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible, a progressive organization that is the main organizer of the No Kings marches. Trump has said very little about Saturday’s protests. But in an interview with Fox Business aired on Friday he said that "they’re referring to me as a king -- I’m not a king."

Reported similarly:
NPR [10/18/2025 6:01 AM, Alana Wise, 28013K]

Washington Examiner [10/17/2025 8:13 AM, Brady Knox, 1394K] reports Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) and Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R-VA) announced the deployment of their states’ National Guard in anticipation of "No Kings" protests. Abbott was the first to announce the deployment of the Texas National Guard to Austin through a foreboding statement on X, warning that any disorder wouldn’t be tolerated. "Today, I directed the Dept. of Public Safety and National Guard to surge forces into Austin ahead of an Antifa-linked protest. Texas will NOT tolerate chaos. Anyone destroying property or committing acts of violence will be swiftly arrested. Law and order will be enforced," Abbott said in a post on X. Youngkin spokesman Peter Finocchio told VPM News that the governor’s office put the Virginia National Guard in a state of readiness in anticipation of the protests. "The Governor has authorized state active duty for training to help ensure the Guard will be ready to respond if needed to help keep people safe," he said, adding that the governor’s office was coordinating with both law enforcement and protest organizers. Virginia National Guard spokesman A.A. "Cotton" Puryear told the outlet that it hadn’t received a formal request for assistance, but personnel "will be on state active duty conducting training.”

The Hill [10/18/2025 6:00 AM, Mike Lillis, 12595K] reports defiant Democrats are embracing this weekend’s "No Kings" rallies, bashing the GOP’s attacks on the anti-Trump protests as an assault on free speech while urging voters to take to the streets. "Showing up to express dissent against an out-of-control administration, that’s as American as motherhood, baseball and apple pie," House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) said Friday. The pushback comes in response to Republican leaders who have spent much of the last week trying to brand the planned protests as "hate-America" demonstrations backed by left-wing extremists vying to undermine the country’s democratic traditions. "We call it the ‘hate America’ rally that will happen Saturday. Let’s see who shows up for that," House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters in Washington this week. "I bet you you’ll see Hamas supporters, I bet you’ll see antifa types, I bet you’ll see the Marxists on full display — the people who don’t want to stand and defend the foundational truths of this republic.” Hardly backing down, Democrats have countered those broadsides by emphasizing that one foundational truth of the republic is the right to protest the government, which is enshrined in the First Amendment. With that in mind, many are not only endorsing the No Kings demonstrations on Saturday, they’re planning to join them. "I’ll be at a rally. I’ll be holding an American flag in my hand," said Rep. Pete Aguilar (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. "It seems that Speaker Johnson and House Republicans only believe that free speech matters if you agree with their speech." The rallies are the latest flashpoint in the messaging battle between the two parties over the actions of President Trump, whose second term in the White House has featured aggressive efforts to gut the government and overhaul the way Washington works, even when those gambits defy congressional intent.

CBS News [10/17/2025 7:29 PM, Dawn White, 39474K] reports more than 2,000 rallies are scheduled nationwide this weekend, including several in North Texas. The events are part of the "No Kings" protest movement, which is critical of President Trump and his administration. About 10,000 people turned out for the Dallas "No Kings" rally in June. Co-lead organizer Samantha Mitchell said they’re expecting a similar crowd for Saturday’s protest. "The great thing is that we haven’t received any credible threats," Mitchell said. Mitchell said security plans with Dallas police are in place. "We fully expect to have officers on bicycles as well as on foot. We know there will be some vehicle units stationed nearby," Mitchell said. "We’re also going to have probably some ambulances stationed nearby, just in case.” About 1,000 people rallied at Denton’s "No Kings" protest this summer. Safety team leader Jon Pattison said both volunteers and law enforcement are part of their security measures. "We’ve been training a group of peacekeepers of our volunteers. We’ve been in touch with the Denton City Police. The Denton County Sheriff’s will be there," Pattison said. Counter protestors are expected at many of the North Texas rallies. "We’re telling our protesters, please don’t engage," Pattison said. "They are exercising their First Amendment right, just like we are," Mitchell said. "For violence, though, all of our safety team are trained in de-escalation techniques. They have attended trainings hosted by the ACLU as well as law enforcement agencies.” Organizers have a message for attendees to keep the events peaceful. "We would love to instruct folks to channel any of their rage, any of their fear into joy, because joy is also a form of resistance," Mitchell said. "Please follow the request of the peacekeepers, and we’re on Denton County property there at the square. There are no weapons of any kind allowed, so keep them at home," Pattison said. Gov. Greg Abbott said he’s deploying the Texas National Guard and Texas Department of Public Safety to the "No Kings" rally scheduled in Austin. North Texas law enforcement agencies said they haven’t heard about troops being sent here.

New York Times [10/17/2025 5:37 PM, Carol Rosenberg, 135475K] reports U.S. officials have deported 18 migrants who were being held at the Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, leaving the temporary holding site vacant once again. Charter aircraft transported the men to Guatemala and El Salvador on Thursday and Friday, according to officials, who were not authorized to discuss the operations and spoke on condition of anonymity. The identities and nationalities of the detainees were not immediately known. The operation cleared the base of migrants six days before a federal court hearing in Washington. Civil liberties lawyers are challenging the legality of holding migrants at the base from previous detention on U.S. soil. The migrants who were moved out of Guantánamo had arrived there on Monday from a Homeland Security Department hub in Alexandria, La. Some of them were categorized as “low threat illegal aliens” and were held in a dormitory-style lockup near the base’s airstrip. Others considered more dangerous were held at a prison, called Camp 6, that was built for Qaeda suspects. No breakdown was available.

Reuters [10/17/2025 7:31 AM, Wilfredo Pineda, 36480K] Video: HERE reports fearing detention by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers and being separated from her two young daughters, Yessenia Ruano self-deported back to El Salvador with her family from the United States in mid-June. Now, Ruano, a 38-year-old elementary school teacher, and her family are seeking to rebuild their lives in the Central American country she fled more than a decade ago to escape poverty and violence, and to chase the American dream. She arrived in Milwaukee in 2011, where she had family, and for 14 years built a new life: she married a Salvadoran man, had twin daughters, bought a house, and was in the process of trying to get a visa. While her life in the U.S. was happy, her journey there had been traumatic. Having paid a smuggler to get her to the U.S., she was held against her will in the U.S. until she could pay off her debts. That led Ruano many years later to apply for a T visa, available to victims of human trafficking that allows people to remain in the U.S. legally if they help authorities detect or prosecute criminal cases. Ruano worked at a public school and went to the ICE offices once a year to report. But since President Donald Trump took office in January, everything changed: she now had to go to ICE once a month. At the end of May, ICE officials warned her that she had to return to El Salvador until the process concluded or else be detained and deported. "I was afraid of persecution as part of the government’s anti-immigrant policy," she said in an interview at her mother-in-law’s house in Tamanique, a small mountain town near the capital, San Salvador, where she now lives with her daughters and husband. "So I decided to start over." ICE did not respond to a request for comment.

CBS News [10/17/2025 12:08 PM, Joe Walsh, 39474K] reports a federal judge has lifted travel restrictions for Mahmoud Khalil, allowing the Palestinian activist to speak at rallies and other events across the U.S. as he fights his deportation case brought by the Trump administration. Khalil, who was freed from a Louisiana immigration jail in June after missing the birth of his first child, had asked a federal magistrate judge to lift the restrictions that limited his travel to New York, New Jersey, Washington, D.C., Louisiana and Michigan. "He wants to travel for the very significant First Amendment reasons that are at the bottom of this case," his lawyer, Alina Das, said during a virtual hearing Thursday. "He wants to speak to issues of public concern.” An attorney for the government, Aniello DeSimone, opposed the move, arguing that Khalil "has not provided enough of a reason why he couldn’t attend these and other events telephonically.” The magistrate judge, Michael Hammer, agreed Thursday to allow Khalil to travel, noting he is not considered a flight risk and had not violated any of his release conditions. Hammer granted the government’s request that Khalil, a green card holder, alert U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement about his travel plans ahead of time.

New York Times [10/17/2025 5:03 AM, Staff, 153395K] reports Russia has launched a new and dangerous campaign of provocation against NATO. Over the past six weeks, it has sent drones over Poland and Romania and flown fighter jets into Estonia. Russia was also very likely behind drone flights that disrupted activity at airports in Denmark, Belgium and Germany. President Vladimir Putin has unconvincingly denied responsibility for all these acts and in fact seems happy for the world to believe Russia is behind them. His goals are to scare, exhaust and divide Europeans, causing them to question their support for Ukraine and undermine its efforts to repel Russia’s invasion. Ultimately, he also wants to make the United States look weak and fragment the NATO alliance. Responding wisely to him is vital for Washington and Europe. It is not easy. Striking back hard risks escalating conflict, while doing nothing conveys a weakness that invites future aggression. NATO allies are aware that Russia is testing them and so far have done a good job of responding. They have denounced the incursions, forthrightly blamed Russia for them and met this month in Copenhagen in a show of unity. “We are not at war,” Chancellor Friedrich Merz of Germany said recently, “but we are no longer at peace either.” There is more to do. European leaders should make clear that Russian aggression against NATO countries risks a forceful response, including the shooting down of drones — as the West has already done — and potentially of Russian fighter planes that enter NATO airspace.

Roll Call [10/17/2025 6:40 AM, Rep. Allen West, 548K] reports "This is the historic dawn of a new Middle East," President Donald Trump declared in his speech to Israel’s parliament, the Knesset, after securing a historic Middle East peace deal. As Trump works to promote "peace through strength" in the Middle East and around the globe, our president is also working to ensure that we can produce critical materials needed for U.S. national security purposes, right here at home. Trump’s 50 percent tariffs on steel and aluminum are allowing us to rebuild domestic industries while foreign countries like Canada unfairly subsidize their domestic industries, which kills off American manufacturing jobs. Having served my country in uniform for 22 years and then continuing my oath of service in the United States Congress, I firmly believe that we must manufacture critical metals like aluminum and steel here at home for national security purposes. Aluminum is a critical component of fighter jets, tanks and body armor used by our patriots who keep America safe. During my time in Congress, it became clear to me that foreign countries were taking advantage of us when it comes to trade policy. To stop the cheating, Trump imposed Section 232 tariffs on foreign aluminum and steel imports during his first term in office. But after the 2020 election, Canadian aluminum imports skyrocketed under President Joe Biden, and U.S. primary aluminum production experienced an alarming 30 percent decline. As a direct consequence of Biden’s failed policies, three U.S. aluminum smelters were forced to shut down. In Missouri, Kentucky and Washington, more than 1,700 American aluminum workers lost their jobs, which decimated communities across America’s heartland. With U.S. smelters closed, globalist aluminum producers expanded their operations in Canada. Shockingly, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development found in an independent report that Canada’s aluminum industry is propped up by more than $850 million in government subsidies.

Washington Post [10/17/2025 11:29 AM, Eva Dou, 24149K] reports the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency has been rapidly building out its surveillance capabilities in recent weeks, signing a string of contracts for technologies to identify individuals by their irises or facial features and to monitor their cellphone activity, social media posts and physical movements, according to a review of federal spending disclosures. The blitz of surveillance purchases is motivated in large part by ICE’s intensive, nationwide campaign to find and deport undocumented immigrants. But documents show that some of the technology may also be used to target what the administration regards as anti-ICE extremist groups. Late last month, President Donald Trump declared “Antifa” a domestic terrorist organization in the wake of violent clashes and a Dallas shooting at an ICE facility, ordering all federal agencies to devote resources to investigating what he defined as “a militarist, anarchist enterprise that explicitly calls for the overthrow of the United States Government, law enforcement authorities, and our system of law.” Shortly after Trump’s executive order, ICE’s acting director, Todd M. Lyons, told Glenn Beck in an interview that the agency will deploy some of its elite investigative officers to probe anti-ICE protester networks. “We have some of the best special agents, criminal investigators,” Lyons said on Beck’s podcast. “We are going to track the money. We are going to track these ringleaders.” Lyons said the investigations will focus on “ringleaders” and “professional agitators” who he said are out to turn protests into violent confrontations. But Democratic lawmakers, civil rights watchdogs and former officials have expressed concern that ICE now has a green light not only to monitor immigrant communities, but also to carry out broad surveillance of Americans exercising their First Amendment right to oppose government action.

Reported similarly:
NewsMax [10/17/2025 5:22 PM, Jim Thomas, 4109K] re

Blaze [10/17/2025 2:00 PM, Candace Hathaway, 1442K] reports that Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers have arrested a child predator, a murderer, and other violent illegal-alien criminals this week, according to a Department of Homeland Security press release obtained exclusively by Blaze News. ICE continues to take the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets despite the ongoing government shutdown, the release noted. "Nothing will slow ICE down, not even the Democrats’ government shutdown," it read. Sergio Ivaan Martinez, a 30-year-old child sexual predator from Mexico who was living in Dallas, Texas. According to the Texas Public Sex Offender registry, Martinez was previously convicted in early 2014 of aggravated sexual assault of a child and indecency with a child by contact. Law enforcement nabbed Chay Jungle Her, an illegal alien from Laos who was previously convicted of homicide-murder and assault with intent to do great bodily harm in Flint, Michigan. Jose Andres Gomez-Matarrita, an illegal immigrant from Costa Rica, had a criminal record in New Hanover County, North Carolina, for strangulation and second-degree kidnapping. ICE arrested Enzo David Fernandez-Morales, a Venezuelan national convicted of engaging in organized criminal activity in Hays County, Texas. Officers also locked up Leonardo Estupinan-Nazareno, an Ecuadoran national with a criminal history in Weston, Florida, for importation of cocaine. "The Democrats’ government shutdown is not slowing ICE down from removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from our streets," DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin stated. "Yesterday some of the dirtbags arrested included pedophiles, murderers, and drug traffickers," McLaughlin continued. "These criminal illegal aliens have no business remaining in this country to terrorize innocent Americans. ICE will NOT stop making America safe again even during the Democrats’ government shutdown."

Blaze [10/17/2025 6:32 PM, Carlos Garcia, 1442K] reports the Department of Homeland Security responded to an apparent threat to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from a group of thugs on social media. The video was posted to Instagram and other platforms and showed a group of young black males with the message, "ICE[,] We’re on the way. Word in the streets cartels put a $50K bounty on y’all.” The account is titled "Floridanamedjit" and belongs to an influencer with 26,000 followers on YouTube and 119,000 on Instagram. The official account for the DHS responded on the X platform in a statement that included the video. "FAFO. If you threaten or lay hands on our law enforcement officers we will hunt you down and you will find out, really quick," read the message. "We’ll see you cowards soon.” A previous report from the DHS indicated that criminal cartels had placed bounties on federal agents, including $50,000 for the assassination of high-ranking officials. Kidnapping or non-lethal attacks on agents could allegedly garner between $5,000 and $10,000, while intelligence-gathering on agents could allegedly garner $2,000. "These criminal networks are not just resisting the rule of law; they are waging an organized campaign of terror against the brave men and women who protect our borders and communities," said DHS Secretary Kristi Noem.

The Hill [10/17/2025 11:58 AM, Surina Venkat -, 12595K] reports Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) criticized the Trump administration following a ProPublica investigation that found more than 170 U.S. citizens had been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers this year. "This report is absolutely shocking," Jayapal, the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration Integrity, Security, and Enforcement, wrote on social platform X. "ICE does not have the authority to detain US citizens during immigration enforcement — full stop." "The Trump administration is out of control, violating the rights of American citizens," she continued. "They must be held accountable." The ProPublica investigation, published Thursday, identified cases of citizens being detained by ICE officers at raids or protests. Officers arrested about 130 U.S. citizens and held nearly two dozen for longer than a day without allowing them to call lawyers or family members. Reporters found at least three instances of pregnant people being detained and multiple instances of citizens being shot, tased, beaten or otherwise physically harmed by officers.

Blaze [10/17/2025 12:12 PM, Joseph MacKinnon, 1442K] reports that Jackie Norris, the chairwoman of the Des Moines Public School Board who once served as chief of staff to Michelle Obama, has pulled out of the race for Iowa’s open U.S. Senate seat as recommended by her Republican opponent, Rep. Ashley Hinson. Hinson stressed earlier this month that Norris, a champion of DEI, had "lost all shreds of credibility" over the role she played in the hiring of the Des Moines district’s former superintendent, a criminal illegal alien who was arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Sept 26. Ian Andre Roberts, a native of Guyana, has a lengthy criminal record. In addition to being convicted in 2012 of reckless driving and in 2022 of unlawful possession of a loaded firearm, Roberts — who served as superintendent and worked with children until late last month — was previously charged with criminal possession of narcotics with intent to sell; criminal possession of narcotics; and criminal possession of a forgery instrument. According to ICE, when agents went to arrest Roberts last month, he "identified himself then sped off, abandoned his vehicle, and hid in a brushy area about 200 meters away, where ICE officers located him with help from Iowa State Patrol officers.” "Ian Andre Roberts, a criminal illegal alien with multiple weapons charges and a drug trafficking charge, should have never been able to work around children," stated Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin.

Washington Examiner [10/18/2025 7:00 AM, Jack Birle, 1394K] reports the Trump administration has made courthouses a popular location to arrest illegal immigrants, but as more local governments work to block those arrests from happening, a legal showdown is brewing. Cook County, Illinois, became the latest jurisdiction to block federal immigration officials from conducting arrests of illegal immigrants inside and in the vicinity of local courthouses. The Tuesday administrative order from the court bars civil arrests, without a warrant, of a party or witness to proceedings at the local courthouse, within and around any of the Cook County courthouses. The order joins similar orders in the state of New York and other Democratic jurisdictions that have attempted to curb arrests of illegal immigrants in courthouses. "The fair administration of justice requires that courts remain open and accessible, and that litigants and witnesses may appear without fear of civil arrest," the order said. "The common law has long recognized this privilege to ensure individuals can fulfill legal duties without risking further legal jeopardy. Courts in Illinois and nationwide have consistently reaffirmed its necessity." "We aren’t some medieval kingdom; there are no legal sanctuaries where you can hide and avoid the consequences for breaking the law. Nothing in the Constitution prohibits arresting a lawbreaker where you find them," the spokesperson said in reaction to Cook County’s order. "The ability of law enforcement to make arrests of criminal illegal aliens in courthouses is common sense. It conserves valuable law enforcement resources because they already know where a target will be. It is also safer for our officers and the community. These illegal aliens have gone through security and been screened to not have any weapons," the DHS spokesperson continued. The spokesperson also renewed the claim that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is targeting the "worst of the worst" of illegal immigrants with its operations. Iowa Solicitor General Eric Wessan told the Washington Examiner he believes Cook County’s order is unconstitutionally interfering with federal immigration enforcement.

Blaze [10/17/2025 3:20 PM, Joseph MacKinnon, 1442K] reports fresh off being schooled by Chicago residents on how illegal border crossings are indeed criminal, ex-CNN talking head Don Lemon suggested that non-whites in America should take up arms against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. At the outset of his recent appearance on Wajahat Ali’s podcast "The Left Hook," Lemon noted, "I’m tired of like all the niceties because that doesn’t work in this administration. That doesn’t work in this era. You got to dispense with the niceties and ... ‘let’s just be civil.’". After expressing the extremist sentiment a recent poll indicated is common to a plurality of liberals, Lemon told Ali, "I think that these are the times that the Second Amendment was written for.” Ensuring that there could be no confusion as to his meaning, Lemon characterized the Trump administration as "tyrannical," then noted that the Second Amendment’s raison d’être is to ensure Americans can fight a tyrannical government. Lemon, who previously criticized Republicans for defending the Second Amendment, further suggested that those individuals who are being targeted by ICE "need to really figure out what the Second Amendment is really about and go out, and do it legally, and purchase some things because you never know when someone’s going to come to your house and knock on the door and try to take you away.” Later in the podcast, Lemon once again suggested that individuals should be armed and ready in case federal immigration officials come to their residences. "If you believe in the Second Amendment, if you believe in the Constitution — black people, brown people of all stripes, whether you’re an Indian-American or a Mexican-American or whoever you are — go out in your place where you live and get a gun legally," said Lemon. "Get a license to carry legally, because when you have people knocking on your door and taking you away without due process as a citizen, isn’t that what the Second Amendment was written for?". When asked about the apparently inciting nature of Lemon’s remarks, Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement to Blaze News, "Don Lemon’s comments calling for people to ‘arm up’ with guns to use against ICE law enforcement officers are unhinged.” "Calling for violence against law enforcement is un-American — officers are already facing a 1000% increase in assaults against them including terrorist attacks, cars being used as weapons, rocks thrown at them, and shot at," continued McLaughlin. "Words have consequences, and this type of rhetoric is going to get one of our officers killed.”

Reported similarly:
FOX News [10/17/2025 8:30 AM, Lindsay Kornick Fox, 40621K] Video: HERE
NewsMax [10/17/2025 1:36 PM, Jim Mishler, 4109K]

Daily Caller [10/17/2025 8:20 PM, Hailey Gomez, 835K] reports that, Jessica Tarlov, a Democrat strategist and co-host on Fox News’ "The Five,"attempted Friday to explain the "intellectual" benefits of anti-U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) protesters dressing up as inflatable animals. With ongoing protests at Portland’s ICE facility, an individual dressed as an inflatable frog has gone viral and appeared to inspire more activists to do the same. Listing reasons as to why protesters will be out for the "No Kings" rallies nationwide, Tarlov said people will be "peacefully protesting" the Trump administration’s crackdown against illegal immigrants in the U.S. "Then why are they always dressed like a furry, screaming about boys and girls?" Fox’s Joey Jones asked. "They are ridiculous.” As Tarlov attempted to argue, Jones continued to say that if the activists wanted to make an "intellectual argument" then "dressing up like a unicorn and running out there and screaming every time" is not the way. "It is an intellectual argument to say, [DHS Secretary] Kristi [Noem], ‘You’re making it up about what’s going on here at that ICE facility, because I’m dressed as Pikachu and posing no threat.’ They arrested a guy who was singing," Tarlov responded. "His voice was terrible, Jessica," Fox’s Jesse Watters teased. Since the protests in Portland began over the summer, President Donald Trump deployed National Guard troops to the Democrat-led city and others to address attacks against ICE. The president’s decision came as ongoing assaults from the militant far-left network Antifa persisted, with authorities arresting and charging dozens of rioters outside the ICE facility. While Democrats have downplayed the violence, conservative journalist Nick Sortor and Post Millennial reporter Katie Daviscourt have had multiple altercations with Antifa while reporting on the ground. On Oct. 2, Sortor was arrested by local authorities for "disorderly conduct" after Antifa became agitated as he was recording them. In a video shared on X, an Antifa member dressed in all black repeatedly confronted Sortor as he said he was simply trying to cross the street. The person appeared to throw the first swing, which Sortor then appeared to defend against, ending with him landing on his back in a nearby planter. In an interview with Fox News following his arrest, Sortor criticized local authorities for failing to act against Antifa members. Sortor’s arrest came just after Daviscourt was assaulted by an Antifa member, leaving her with a black eye. Despite identifying her attacker to the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) officials, no arrest was made.

Los Angeles Times [10/17/2025 9:40 PM, Lorraine Ali, 14862K] reports there you are, sitting in traffic in your car, listening to Taylor Swift on Spotify because it’s easier than subjecting yourself to a new, more challenging artist. An ad pops up in your stream. It’s serious stuff, evidenced by the dystopian tone of the narrator: "Join the mission to protect America," the serious man’s voice commands, "with bonuses up to $50,000 and generous benefits. Apply now … and fulfill your mission.” It’s an Immigration and Customs Enforcement recruitment ad, part of the Trump administration’s investment of $30 billion to add more than 10,000 deportation officers to its ranks by the end of the year. You would have been spared the outrage if only you had paid for Spotify’s ad-free tier of service, but there’s no way the audio streamer is getting your money now. You’ll be switching to, say, Apple Music. Maybe Tidal? The experience of being subjected to recruitment ads for a domestic military force, assembled by a power-hungry president, has generated intense backlash that’s culminated this week in calls for boycotts of streaming services and platforms that have featured ICE spots. They include Pandora, ESPN, YouTube, Hulu and Fubo TV. Multiple HBO Max subscribers bemoaned on X that they were subjected to ICE recruitment videos while watching All Elite Wrestling: "Time to be force-fed ICE commercials against my will for two hours again #WWENXT," @YKWrestling wrote. Recruitment ads — Uncle Sam’s "I Want You" poster comes to mind — are an American staple, especially in times of war. But the current recruitment effort is aimed at sending forces into American cities, predicated on exaggerated claims that U.S. metro areas are under siege and in peril due to dangerous illegal immigrants, leftist protesters and out-of-control crime rates. The data, however, does not support those claims. The American Immigration Council found that from 1980 to 2022, while the immigrant share of the U.S. population more than doubled (from 6.2% to 13.9%), the total crime rate declined by over 60%. Yet there’s a far scarier doomscape on the horizon if ICE’s recruitment efforts are successful: a mercenary army loyal only to Trump, weaponized to keep him on the throne. If that sounds more dystopian than the aforementioned Spotify ad, consider that the administration has spent more than $6.5 million over the past month on a slew of 30-second commercials aimed at luring in police officers. The ads aired on TVs in more than a dozen cities including Chicago, Seattle and Atlanta and opened with images of each specific metro area’s skyline. Then came the commanding narration: "Attention, Miami law enforcement!" It’s followed by the same messaging that is used in ICE ads across the country: "You took an oath to protect and serve, to keep your family, your city, safe. But in sanctuary cities you’re ordered to stand down while dangerous illegals walk free — Join ICE and help us catch the worst of the worst. Drug traffickers. Gang members. Predators.” But are the ads working? It’s hard to say since transparency isn’t a hallmark of the MAGA White House. For what it’s worth, a Sept. 16 press release from the DHS claimed that it had received more than 150,000 applications in response to its campaign and had extended 18,000 tentative job offers.

FOX News [10/17/2025 12:00 PM, Gabriel Hays, 40621K] reports country singer Bryan Andrews has gone viral for a video he posted Oct. 9 calling out Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids and Christians who support them. In a TikTok clip recorded from inside his car, Andrews accused the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and ICE of separating immigrant families and deporting undocumented immigrants without warrants or due process. "We got the Department of f------ Homeland Security out here sharing hype videos of ICE agents flying in on American cities, banging in doors, jacking people out of their houses, zip-tying them in the streets naked, and then carting them off in the back of U-hauls with no warrants or due process like it’s a f---- trailer to the newest Call of Duty game," Andrews said. Andrews’ video has received over one million views since he posted it last week. He appeared to reference videos recently uploaded by DHS that showed agents arresting individuals and clashing with protesters, set to motivational background music. The singer on Thursday offered a follow-up comment on Instagram addressing the controversy: "It has come to my attention that some people have become very upset by a video I posted entitled, ‘Crash Out.’" He added that "after a long day of receiving unimaginable DMs, comments etc., I have since reflected on things quite a bit and have prepared an official statement that I would like to issue at this time." He concluded, "I stand by every word I said."

CBS Boston [10/17/2025 1:48 PM, Brandon Truitt and Mike Toole, 39474K] reports U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said it had arrested more than 1,400 people in Massachusetts on suspected immigration violations over the past month in the latest round of the Trump administration’s crackdown on undocumented immigrants in the Boston area. Operation Patriot 2.0, as the agency called it, was run from September 4th to 30th. It said more than 1,461 people were taken into custody in the first Operation Patriot in the state, back in May. From a total of 1,406 undocumented people detained in Massachusetts last month, more than 600 had "significant criminal convictions or pending criminal charges for crimes committed in the United States or were known foreign fugitives," ICE said in a statement released on Thursday. "Six of those arrested were documented members of transnational criminal gangs while several others were gang associates," the statement said. "Three of those arrested were known or suspected terrorists.” Among those arrested, according to ICE, were 24-year-old Anderson Stephen Hernandez-Vasquez of Guatemala, who served two years in prison in Woburn for child rape. However, WBZ-TV found that at least some of those arrested in Massachusetts in September had no record of having committed violent or other crimes. They include Jhon Palacio-Morales of Lowell, who was wrongfully arrested outside his home on September 8, according to his partner. His family said he has no criminal history and was legally allowed to enter the U.S. from Columbia in 2022. But ICE said Palacio-Morales "is an illegal alien" who "unlawfully entered the United States.”

New York Times [10/17/2025 9:03 PM, Luis Ferré-Sadurní and Olivia Bensimon, 135475K] reports federal agents arrested two Venezuelan men on Thursday outside a Times Square hotel in New York City that is being used as a migrant shelter, according to the Department of Homeland Security, which accused the men of belonging to a Venezuelan gang. Video shot by a witness and obtained by New York Times shows about a dozen federal agents in plain clothes arresting several people on West 44th Street, around the corner from the entrance of the Row NYC, a hotel that is home to more than 800 migrant families. The arrests, in broad daylight on the crowded sidewalks of Midtown Manhattan, rattled migrants residing at the Row and shook the theater district, which is heavily trafficked by tourists. A spokeswoman for D.H.S., the parent agency of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, said the two men arrested were in the country illegally and were part of Tren de Aragua, a Venezuelan street gang that the Trump administration has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. The partner of one of the men who was arrested denied that he had gang ties. Video of the arrests shows agents — some wearing vests that said F.B.I., others that said Homeland Security Investigations — taking away several people in handcuffs and placing them in unmarked vehicles as passers-by hurled expletives at them in the heart of Manhattan’s theater district. “They’re taking all of them!” a woman exclaims in Spanish in the video. City officials said that the agents did not enter the shelter, which would have required them to present a judicial warrant. A spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams said that the Police Department was not involved in the arrests and that City Hall was “actively reviewing the incident.” “As the mayor has consistently stated, New York City does not participate in civil immigration enforcement,” Liz Garcia, the spokeswoman, said in a statement. The arrests were first reported by The City, a digital news outlet. The arrests took place as migrant parents were waiting for school buses to drop off their children near the Row, causing some to run at the sight of the agents. Maria Diaz, 30, said her partner, Cristofer Hernandez, 25, was one of the Venezuelan men arrested. She said that the agents seized him while he was standing at West 44th Street and Eighth Avenue, waiting for Ms. Diaz’s daughter to return from school. She said that Mr. Hernandez, who had been staying at the Row, was speaking on the phone with Ms. Diaz’s daughter when the girl heard him tell agents: “I’m waiting for my daughter! I’m waiting for my daughter!” Ms. Diaz said that she received a call from Mr. Hernandez shortly after he was arrested. He told her that the agents had taken him to 26 Federal Plaza, the ICE offices in Lower Manhattan, where he was being held. “They told him to communicate with a lawyer and that he’ll be transferred or deported,” Ms. Diaz said outside the Row on Friday. The D.H.S. spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said that Mr. Hernandez was a Tren de Aragua gang member who had previously been arrested in New York for criminal possession of drugs and petit larceny.

FOX News [10/17/2025 4:55 PM, Rachel Wolf, 40621K] reports an Ohio state legislator is looking to penalize sanctuary cities and push law enforcement to cooperate with federal authorities amid President Donald Trump’s illegal immigration crackdown. Ohio state Rep. Josh Williams, a Republican running for U.S. House, is introducing the Protecting Ohio Communities Act, known as House Bill 26, which includes a 10% cut in funds from the state for areas deemed to be "sanctuary jurisdictions." Under Ohio’s constitution, home rule authority gives municipalities the "authority to exercise all powers of local self-government and to adopt and enforce within their limits such local police, sanitary and other similar regulations, as are not in conflict with general laws." Williams said he hopes the Trump administration will follow suit and apply "conditional funding to our states who are refusing to cooperate and even sometimes obstructing our enforcement efforts."

NewsNation [10/17/2025 2:15 PM, Jeff Arnold, 8017K] reports that federal immigration agents have a set of rules to arrest people in the country illegally, in part set by a court decision limiting how agents arrest someone without a judicial warrant or probable cause. Critics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement say they’re operating outside those rules, including Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes. Fuentes was briefly detained by federal agents after questioning if they had a warrant for an immigrant receiving medical care in a local emergency room. In an interview with NewsNation, she accused ICE of waging war on Chicago’s Latino communities. Fuentes said she was never shown a judicial warrant at the hospital. "This is typical behavior of ICE agents across the city of Chicago," Fuentes told NewsNation, adding, "What we’re seeing is a real assault on the people of Chicago." The agency has rebuffed critics who state ICE is operating outside the law, saying its officers always comply with all court orders and reiterated its push to target the "worst of the worst" criminals. "We’re going out on crime-based intelligence reports and targeting. And if we get our target and there are other people that are not legally supposed to be here, then we’re going to go ahead and take them into custody," acting ICE Director Todd Lyons told NewsNation on Thursday. So-called "collateral arrests" made while ICE is on patrol have become a point of contention in the courts. Tricia McLauglin, the assistant DHS secretary, said in an emailed statement to ABC7 in Chicago that DHS "complies with all lawful court orders and is addressing the recent legal ruling in court." Spokespersons for DHS and ICE did not respond to requests for comment from NewsNation on the judge’s consent decree decision. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

Blaze [10/17/2025 5:24 PM, Julio Rosas, 1442K] reports the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement processing facility in Broadview has been the site of many rowdy and sometimes violent protests as Operation Midway Blitz is well under way. With rioters consistently attempting to block the building’s driveway and road to disrupt operations, the federal government installed a temporary security fence to keep crowds at a distance. That changed this week after a judge ruled the fence must come down after a lawsuit was brought by the city, saying the installment prevented emergency services from reaching other buildings behind the fence. The fence was effective in preventing agitators from blocking the driveway and forced the crowds to switch locations to gather. Border Patrol and ICE agents still had to repeatedly clear the roads to allow federal vehicles to reach the facility. Perhaps in an attempt to prevent the National Guard from being deployed, the Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriff’s Office have sent manpower to assist federal agents in keeping the roads clear. While the extra manpower has been put to use with the disruptive anti-ICE crowds, ICE says the removal of the fence means agents cannot use yet another tool in their toolbox to keep themselves, detainees, and the facility safe.

Reuters [10/17/2025 2:35 PM, Renee Hickman, 19051K] reports a suburban Chicago police officer arrested by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Thursday was legally authorized to work in the U.S. and had completed a full background check by the FBI, according to the Village of Hanover Park, where he was employed. Radule Bojovic, who was born in Montenegro, was arrested "during a targeted enforcement action," according to a press release from the Department of Homeland Security. DHS said Bojovic was in the country illegally after overstaying a B2 tourist visa more than 10 years ago. But a statement from the Village of Hanover Park later on Thursday said its police department received a work authorization card for Bojovic issued by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which had recently been renewed. The Village also said Bojovic had successfully completed a background check with the FBI and the Illinois State Police. "The bottom line is that all information we received from the federal government indicated that Officer Bojovic is legally authorized to work in the United States as a police officer. Clearly, without that authorization, the Village would not have hired him," the statement said. Bojovic was being held in immigration detention at the Clay County Justice Center in Brazil, Indiana, on Friday morning, according to ICE’s online detainee locator. The Village’s statement said Bojovic had been placed on administrative leave during his immigration proceedings and that he would return to duty if he were allowed to remain legally in the U.S. Since the administration of U.S. President Donald Trump launched its federal immigration enforcement blitz in the Chicago area last month, about 1,500 people have been arrested, according to DHS.The use of tear gas and other chemical munitions by federal immigration agents to disperse crowds during arrests has increasingly come under scrutiny by civic leaders and residents. Some, including Democratic Illinois Governor JB Pritzker, have also questioned the veracity of statements issued by the DHS about the incidents.

New York Times [10/17/2025 12:00 PM, Christina Morales, 153395K] reports at Guerrero Auto & Body Repair in Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, fall is typically a busy time of year when customers bring in their vehicles for tuneups before the winter. But since September, when the Trump administration began aggressively stepping up its immigration enforcement in the city, business at the garage has dropped 60 percent, said Marlene Arroyo, who runs the business with her father. “We’re literally hanging onto a thread,” she said. The president’s deployment of federal forces into the city has driven up both arrests and tense confrontations with residents. Several business owners say it also has tamped down the local economy, particularly in neighborhoods with higher proportions of immigrants, raising worries of larger consequences for the city. It is unclear so far exactly how much the president’s crackdown, Operation Midway Blitz, is affecting Chicago’s economy as a whole. Economic data does not appear to have emerged yet to indicate any trend, and city officials and local economists have not commented on any impact. But several businesses in the city say they have seen a significant decline in revenue since the aggressive federal enforcement began. Some neighborhoods that once abounded with local customers and street vendors selling tamales and aguas frescas are now largely empty. Many residents — even those who are U.S. citizens or legal residents — fear getting caught up in immigration sweeps or being temporarily detained while going out to shop or eat. Some businesses lock their doors until they can verify that people wanting to enter are genuine customers and not agents making a raid. Several business owners said the impact was worse than what they experienced during the coronavirus pandemic, with some saying that they would have to shut down within months, if such circumstances persisted.

Federalist [10/17/2025 7:25 AM, Jennifer Bos, 785K] reports President Donald Trump is in an ongoing struggle with Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, with Pritzker seeking to slander or stymie every effort Trump makes to restore law and order in the streets of Chicago and in Illinois more broadly. That struggle for law and order is personal for me. My daughter died after allegedly being left unresponsive in the home of an illegal alien from Mexico, and Illinois’ politicians put him right back on the streets. On Feb. 19, 2025, my daughter Megan, a vibrant 37-year-old and mother of two, went missing in Waukegan, Illinois, a few weeks after her release from jail on an old warrant related to her battle with addiction. To our horror, she was located, deceased, on April 10, 2025. For nearly two months, her body lay hidden in a bleach-filled trash can in the yard of Jose Luis Mendoza-Gonzalez, an illegal immigrant, just 100 feet from where I and volunteers had searched — from where we had hung missing persons posters in the weeks prior. We had even knocked on his door, just 10 days after I reported her missing … a mere tenth of a mile from where she had last been seen. Mendoza-Gonzalez is not charged with causing Megan’s death; this is still currently under investigation. Instead, he faces charges for what he allegedly did after she died: concealing her death (not reporting her death), two counts of abusing her corpse (moving her body twice), and obstructing justice (breaking her phone) — all Class 4 and "non-detainable" felonies under Illinois law. He has now also been charged with concealing a homicidal death and could still be eligible for release.

AP [10/17/2025 4:34 PM, Ryan J. Foley and Hannah Fingerhut, 19051K] reports the former superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district falsely claimed to be a U.S. citizen on a federal form and knowingly possessed several firearms illegally, according to a newly returned indictment that raises the prospect of a lengthy prison term. A federal grand jury issued the two-count indictment Thursday charging former Des Moines schools superintendent Ian Roberts with one count of making a false statement for employment and one count of unlawfully possessing a firearm while being in the country illegally. Together, the charges carry a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in prison. Roberts, who is originally from Guyana and worked for two decades in school districts across the U.S., was detained Sept. 26 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in a targeted operation that shocked the community. Authorities said Roberts lacked authorization to work in the U.S. and fled from agents who conducted a traffic stop while he was driving his district-issued Jeep Cherokee. Roberts was later apprehended in a wooded area with help from the Iowa State Patrol. Authorities found a handgun wrapped in a towel inside his car, investigators said, along with $3,000 cash. Des Moines Public Schools hired Roberts in 2023 to lead its district of about 30,000 students. Days after being detained, Roberts resigned from his job, which included an annual salary of $286,716. The indictment alleges that Roberts made a "false attestation" on a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services Employment Eligibility Verification form, known as an I-9, claiming he was a U.S. citizen when he knew he was not. Roberts’ attorney Alfredo Parrish said his client was not surprised by the indictment and would fight the charges at trial. "Dr. Roberts intends to enter a not guilty plea because he’s innocent of these charges," he said. "Our immigration system, as most Americans understand, is in shambles.”

NewsMax [10/17/2025 9:30 PM, Michael Katz, 4109K] reports an illegal immigrant living in Dallas who is accused of offering $10,000 bounties for the murder of Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials has been arrested. The Department of Homeland Security announced Friday that Eduardo Aguilar, a 23-year-old from Mexico who entered the United States illegally as a minor in 2018, was arrested Tuesday and charged with transmitting in interstate or foreign commerce a communication containing a threat. DHS said that in February 2019 an immigration judge issued Aguilar a final order of removal, adding his criminal history in the U.S. includes charges for violating liquor laws. DHS said he was found with a 9 mm handgun in his vehicle, adding that it is a felony for illegal aliens to possess firearms in the U.S. It is not yet known whether Aguilar will face a separate firearm charge. "Thanks to the quick work of law enforcement, this illegal alien who was offering $10,000 cash bounties for the murder of ICE law enforcement is in custody and facing federal charges," said DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. "We are thankful this illegal alien who had a firearm in his possession was arrested before he could kill one of our law enforcement officers. "Our agents are facing ambushes, terrorist attacks, and death threats, all because they dare to enforce the laws passed by Congress. We will not back down from these threats, and every criminal, terrorist, and illegal alien will face American justice.” The criminal complaint revealed an Oct. 9 post on Aguilar’s TikTok account, written in Spanish, that read, "10 dudes in Dallas with determination who aren’t afraid to," followed by two skull emojis often used to signify death. A second line in the post read, "10K for each ICE agent." The post, which appeared to have been removed from Aguilar’s account, showed a photo of Dallas in the background, according to a screenshot cited in the complaint. The FBI’s Dallas field office acted after receiving a tip from the city’s police department. "The FBI takes threats of violence to our law enforcement partners seriously and will thoroughly investigate anyone that commits these types of offenses," said Joseph Rothrock, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Dallas field office, in a news release. Aguilar made his initial appearance Wednesday in Dallas before U.S. Magistrate Judge Rebecca Rutherford, who ordered that he remain detained in federal custody. If convicted, Aguilar faces a maximum sentence of five years in prison. "Threats against our law enforcement officers are completely unacceptable," said Nancy Larson, acting U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas, in the release. "All threats against our agents and officers will be investigated thoroughly, and anyone who threatens or puts a bounty on agents will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent possible.”

Reported similarly:
CBS News [10/17/2025 12:17 PM, S.E. Jenkins, 39474K]
NBC News [10/17/2025 2:49 PM, Rebecca Cohen, 34509K]
CNN [10/17/2025 5:58 AM, Laura Sharman, 18595K]
Yahoo News [10/17/2025 11:30 PM, Mack Shaw, 59943K] r

CBS News [10/17/2025 8:50 PM, Doug Myers, 39474K] reports Dallas Mayor Eric L. Johnson is calling for a public review of Police Chief Daniel Comeaux’s decision to reject a $25 million federal offer from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, urging a joint committee meeting to determine whether the city should reconsider joining the 287(g) immigration enforcement program. The Republican mayor’s request follows Comeaux’s disclosure to the Community Police Oversight Board that he personally declined ICE’s $25 million offer, citing concerns about bringing unwanted attention to Dallas. The 287(g) program allows local law enforcement agencies to perform certain immigration duties under federal authority. Recent changes in Texas law now require county sheriff’s departments to participate in at least one of the program’s models. Johnson says the decision should be made transparently, with public input and a thorough analysis of both financial implications and public safety impact. In a memorandum sent Friday to city committee chairs - Cara Mendelsohn (Public Safety) and Maxie Johnson (Government Efficiency) - Mayor Johnson asked for a joint meeting to be convened as soon as possible. "Clearly, participation in ICE’s Task Force Model could offer substantial financial benefits to Dallas," Johnson said in the memo. "These funds could be used to hire additional officers without impacting the city’s budget. Declining ICE’s offer may mean forfeiting significant financial resources.” Johnson is requesting briefings during the meeting from both ICE representatives and the Dallas police chief regarding the rejected $25 million offer and the 287(g) program. He is urging the committees to evaluate the potential financial efficiencies and public safety benefits of participating in ICE’s Task Force Model. He also said public input should be considered in the decision-making process, followed by a thoroughly vetted recommendation from the committees to be presented to the full City Council for potential further action. Comeaux disclosed the rejection of the $25 million federal offer during a recent Community Police Oversight Board meeting. During the meeting, he clarified that social media posts suggesting Dallas police were helping ICE were inaccurate. Officers were assisting U.S. Marshals, Comeaux said. He emphasized that the department has had "very little interaction with ICE.” "We were contacted by the federal government, I think it was last week or within the last two weeks, and we were offered $25 million to be appointed 287(g)," Comeaux said. "We said absolutely no, not no. That was me who said that, turned it down. "There’s nothing happening in Dallas, but every time we do something like this, we’re bringing more attention to Dallas. We don’t need that attention. We don’t want to deal with that smoke.”

Breitbart [10/18/2025 5:13 AM, Ian Hanchett, 2416K] reports on Friday’s broadcast of NewsNation’s "On Balance," NewsNation West Coast Bureau Correspondent Nancy Loo talked about her ride-along with ICE agents in Portland, where ICE pursued an illegal immigrant who had managed to accrue multiple felony charges after receiving an order for removal back in 2023, and talked about other arrests by ICE in Portland. Loo said, “Because of sanctuary policies here in Oregon, DHS says immigration detainers are usually ignored by local law enforcement. So, as a result, in many cases, violent felons are just released, prompting complex and often dangerous ICE operations to track and apprehend felons who are in the U.S. illegally.” She then played footage of the ride-along and stated that ICE was “going after an illegal from Mexico with an order for removal in 2023. Since then, that target has racked up multiple felony charges, including assault.” After reporting that while she was with ICE, they stopped an individual, but he turned out not to be who ICE was looking for, Loo added, “Last month alone, ten arrests by ICE Portland made the DHS worst of the worst list, including murderers, rapists, and pedophiles. The operations to catch them are clearly hit and miss.”

FOX News [10/17/2025 7:53 AM, Michael Dorgan Fox, 40621K] reports Portland’s progressive-leaning City Council voted Wednesday to codify the city’s sanctuary status and ordered local police to further distance themselves from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). The council unanimously approved by a 12–0 vote both the "Protect Portland Initiative" and a new sanctuary city ordinance after a lengthy public meeting where dozens of residents testified in support, The Oregonian reported. The two measures make Portland’s sanctuary status legally binding and create a framework for how the city will track, respond to and resist federal immigration raids or enforcement actions. Portland Mayor Keith Wilson welcomed the City Council vote, calling it a "clear and powerful message" of unity against federal overreach. He said in a statement that the vote gives the city a formal framework in responding to federal government actions that "target our city. "We are a proud sanctuary city in a sanctuary state, and we will continue to live our values — even when federal directives make it difficult," Wilson said. The votes came as a federal judge in Oregon extended a temporary restraining order blocking the Trump administration from deploying National Guard troops to Portland.

Yahoo News [10/17/2025 3:07 PM, Jashayla Pettigrew, 59943K] reports several Oregon advocacy groups have accused federal authorities of unlawfully denying detainees access to legal representation. The lawsuit that Innovation Law Lab filed on behalf of Clear Clinic and Pineros y Campesinos Unidos del Noroeste on Thursday has alleged that the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Department of Homeland Security and Customs and Border Protection are violating the U.S. Constitution by neglecting to allow detained people to exercise their right to counsel before being transferred to another location. Attorneys who attempted to meet with Oregonians who were being held in the agencies’ Portland and Eugene offices were “denied access,” according to the complaint. In Portland specifically, plaintiffs claimed that CLEAR Clinic’s immigration lawyers have “repeatedly” been denied full or partial access to 20 of their current or potential clients over the past four to five months. Court documents further alleged that one attorney watched as law enforcement loaded detainees into vehicles with Washington plates and transported them elsewhere, and others waited at the local ICE facility for several hours as federal agents “gave them conflicting information” on why they couldn’t meet clients. Some agents have denied lawyers the ability to share documents with their clients, leaving them “unable to review critical documents,” according to Innovation Law Lab.

San Francisco Chronicle [10/17/2025 11:58 PM, Brooke Park, 4722K] reports a man suspected of pimping and human trafficking was arrested in South San Francisco Thursday, police said. During a probe into human trafficking, officers rescued a 30-year-old woman inside a hotel room in the 300 block of South Airport Boulevard. Detectives also arrested a 34-year-old man, of Pittsburg (Contra Costa County), suspected of pimping and pandering, police said. The man, whom police did not name, was also found in possession of a a firearm during the commission of a felony. Officers booked him into the San Mateo County jail without incident. The human trafficking investigation was a part of a nationwide initiative, dubbed Operation Coast to Coast, which has found and offered support services to multiple victims, police said. The South San Francisco Police Department worked with the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center and the San Mateo County District Attorney’s Office to identify and support human trafficking victims, police said.

CBS Chicago [10/17/2025 6:25 PM, Tara Molina, 39474K] reports an immigration and constitutional law expert said the Trump administration’s changes to federal policies are leaving many immigrants who believed they were safe from deportation in limbo. Hanover Park police officer Radule Bojovich was arrested this week by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, accused of overstaying a tourist visa, despite claims from the village that he had a valid work authorization card that was recently renewed. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have said Bojovic, who is from Montenegro, was living in the U.S. on a tourist visa that expired March 31, 2015, and illegally overstaying his visa by more than ten years. Hanover Park officials, however, said he was "legally authorized by the federal government to work in the United States" and that U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services had issued him a "valid and recently renewed" work authorization card. The village also said Bojovich passed a full background check both the Illinois State Police and FBI, and that a memo from the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed his immigration status allows him to carry a firearm while on duty. A spokesperson for Illinois State Police said all police officers submit to their background check, which "covers criminal history, not immigration status.” Bojovic was being held at the Clay County Justice Center in Indiana on Friday after his arrest. Northwestern Pritzker School of Law professor Paul Gowder, a constitutional law specialist who works at the intersection of immigration and constitutional law, spoke about changes to federal immigration policy under the Trump administration. "They’re trying to classify a bunch of people as removable who under the Biden administration would not have been understood as subject to removal," he said. "The Trump administration has been going in and initiating changes to a lot of the policies that are predicates for people getting work authorization. They’ve been going in and trying to revoke authorizations, revoke parole, revoke temporary protected status. There’s still disagreement about whether many of these changes they are trying to implement are legal, and so a lot of people can kind of be in a sort of limbo.”

Washington Examiner [10/17/2025 1:29 PM, Ross O’Keefe, 1394K] reports that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is suing the Trump administration after it placed a $100,000 fee on applications for H-1B visas. The chamber believes the administration is violating the Immigration and Nationality Act, which governs who can enter, work, and live in the United States. The business group, which touts itself as the "world’s largest business organization and network," says the fee is "not only misguided policy" but also "plainly unlawful.” "The President has significant authority over the entry of noncitizens into the United States, but that authority is bounded by statute and cannot directly contradict laws passed by Congress," the complaint says. "The Proclamation does precisely that: It blatantly contravenes the fees Congress has set for the H-1B program and countermands Congress’s judgment that the program should provide a pathway for up to 85,000 people annually to contribute their talents to the United States for the betterment of American society," the group added. While the chamber praised President Donald Trump for securing the border and for "pro-growth tax reforms," it disagreed with the fee and wanted it blocked. The group’s executive vice president, Neil Bradley, said the large new fee will make it "cost-prohibitive" for employers. "The new $100,000 visa fee will make it cost-prohibitive for U.S. employers, especially start-ups and small and midsize businesses, to utilize the H-1B program, which was created by Congress expressly to ensure that American businesses of all sizes can access the global talent they need to grow their operations here in the U.S.," he said.

Bloomberg [10/17/2025 1:33 PM, Staff, 18207K] Video: HERE reports some of the Trump administration’s policies, especially H-1B visa curbs, directly impact Indian Americans. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Mihir Sharma explains why they’ve been so silent.

Univision [10/17/2025 4:01 PM, Jorge Cancino, 5004K] reports the visa lottery, which grants 55,000 permanent residents (green cards) in the United States each year, is subject to changes that have delayed the publication of the application form for the fiscal year 2027 quota. According to the schedule for the popular competition, which attracts between 12 and 14 million people around the world each year, the State Department’s National Visa Center announces the call for applications in April. But this year, the agency remained silent. Early Friday, a State Department source told Univision News that, "The program continues, but there will be changes to the process." Shortly afterward, a spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry confirmed that "the Diversity Visa (DV) program is established by law, and the State Department will continue to implement it as required by law." The spokesperson did not provide a date or month for the announcement, nor did he provide any specific changes, nor did he provide dates for submitting applications.

San Francisco Chronicle [10/17/2025 9:01 AM, Patrick Aguilar, 4722K] reports there are almost 1.1 million licensed physicians in the United States. That may sound like a lot, but the country has struggled for decades to train enough physicians to meet its needs – and, in particular, to provide care in rural and underserved communities. Foreign-born physicians have long filled that gap, reducing the overall national shortage and signing up to practice in often overlooked regions and specialties. Today, 1 in 5 doctors licensed to practice in the U.S. were born and trained in another country. But the ability of physicians from other countries to obtain work in the U.S. may be threatened by the Trump administration’s aims of limiting foreign workers. In September, Trump issued a proclamation requiring employers sponsoring foreign-born workers through a type of work visa called an H-1B to pay a fee of US$100,000 to the government. The White House has signaled doctors may be exempt but has not clarified its position.

Houston Chronicle [10/17/2025 6:20 PM, Sam González Kelly, Erica Grieder and Julián Aguilar, 2983K] reports the federal government’s effort to ramp up immigration enforcement is likely contributing to sluggish job growth in Texas, according to a new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The recent crackdown by the Trump administration could be harming nearly one in five Texas businesses by limiting their ability to hire and retain foreign-born workers, the study noted. The study also says that actions taken under the Biden administration likely contributed to the current slowdown after the former administration ramped up its enforcement efforts months ahead of the 2024 election. The analysis said two specific enforcement actions, interior enforcement and the revocation of Temporary Protective Status, have altered the job market and frightened some immigrants from reporting for work and contributing to the state’s economy. "The stepped-up visibility and intensity of enforcement has produced a chilling effect. As fear spreads in immigrant communities, foreign-born individuals are more likely to miss work or school and less likely to venture out to shops and restaurants," the report states. The elimination of Temporary Protective Status, a federal designation for immigrants from countries in armed conflict or in the aftermath of environmental disasters, has also contributed to the stunted economic output. The revocation has resulted in millions losing work permits granted under the previous administration. Asylum seekers and immigrants seeking humanitarian parole were also affected. "Between 2021 and 2024, at least 4 million immigrants were granted work permits as part of their humanitarian parole or asylum seeker status. Additionally, almost 1.3 million immigrants had temporary protected status, which includes work authorization, in early 2025. Many of those work permits and other humanitarian protections are being revoked," the study notes. The Dallas Fed is one of twelve regional reserve banks in the Federal Reserve System, the central bank of the United States. It covers Texas as well as small portions of Louisiana and New Mexico. The study reports that about 13% of companies it surveyed faced hurdles in keeping and hiring employees. Among those, about 60% said they are unable to find qualified workers because they don’t have legal status or work permits. About half said they have seen a reduction in foreign-born applicants.

USA Today [10/17/2025 7:00 AM, Ronald J. Hansen, 67103K] reports perhaps only three companies have faced punishment for hiring undocumented immigrants in the 17 years since Arizona enacted a groundbreaking law intended to end the demand for illegal workers. The public largely stopped notifying authorities of suspected violations years ago, and no state law enforcement agency is routinely looking for violations, The Arizona Republic found. The nearly invisible enforcement numbers aren’t because businesses have flocked to E-Verify, the federal database state lawmakers encouraged employers to use to deter illegal hiring in the first place. Arizona has a lower use rate for that tool than states with similar employer-sanctions laws, even though E-Verify provides a legal shield for employers adding new workers. Instead, it appears Arizona’s employer sanctions law had its greatest effect a generation ago by contributing to an exodus from the state of undocumented immigrants that coincided with the Great Recession and the collapse of Arizona’s housing industry.

New York Times [10/18/2025 5:03 AM, Hamed Aleaziz, 153395K] reports in recent years, Border Patrol agents had been primarily focused on the southern border, scouring communities along the Rio Grande and other regions for migrants in the country illegally. Things have changed. These days, the U.S.-Mexico border is much quieter. So the Trump administration has tapped the agency to be a key part of its broader crackdown on migrants, deploying agents to chase down and arrest immigrants in cities farther away from the border, such as Chicago, Washington and Los Angeles. “While the Border Patrol has changed dramatically since its inception in 1924, its primary mission remains unchanged: to detect and prevent the illegal entry of individuals into the United States,” the agency says on its website. “Together with other law enforcement officers, the Border Patrol helps maintain borders that work —facilitating the flow of legal immigration and goods while preventing the illegal trafficking of people and contraband.” Border Patrol officers still have authority anywhere in the country, and the Trump administration has increasingly relied on them to carry out its mass deportation agenda. “Their ability to operate nationwide ensures Border Patrol can enforce immigration laws, combat smuggling and address national security threats anywhere in the United States,” said Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokeswoman. “And that immigration enforcement is not limited to border regions when individuals who evade detection at the border can still be apprehended.”

NewsMax [10/17/2025 11:56 AM, Staff, 4109K] reports Homeland Security’s border agency says it has fixed a loophole from the Biden era that let immigrants enter the United States illegally and claim asylum despite using fraudulent identification documents, according to a newly released audit. The Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general said in a report that agents at the border caught migrants using fake papers but failed to record the attempted fraud in the migrants’ official immigration files, known as A-files, reports The Washington Times. As a result, authorities reviewing asylum applications had no idea the individuals had tried to deceive border officers, which could have disqualified them. The audit warned that the oversight meant "individuals who pose a threat to national security" may have been released into the country. "Asylum may be granted to individuals suspected by CBP of committing fraud," the report stated. Investigators found that in some cases, Customs and Border Protection officers returned the fraudulent documents to the migrants, rather than sending them to the Fraud Document Analysis Unit, as required by CBP policy, and "in some cases returned them to aliens who were likely released into the United States," the inspector general’s office said. CBP said that it has implemented new safeguards and that the situation has improved substantially under the Trump administration.

The Hill [10/17/2025 7:14 AM, Steph Whiteside, 12595K] reports the popular Instagram account We Rate Dogs took a break from rating cute puppies to call out Customs and Border Protection for allegedly killing a family’s dog. The account has a large following and is dedicated to rating pictures of dogs and boosting dog-related GoFundMe campaigns. But it recently shared a news story from last month about an El Paso, Texas, family who said CBP agents raided their home in search of migrants and shot the family dog, Chop. "Unsurprisingly, they did not care enough to help the family as they tried to save him," We Rate Dogs wrote. "Even more unsurprising, they did not find any evidence of the migrants they were there to terrorize in the first place. Do not open your door for these f****** losers. Rest easy Chop.” The family said agents arrived at a home belonging to the adult son, who said he would allow agents to search his home and told them he put Chop, a rottweiler, in the bathroom for their safety. But when he went to get his ID, the family says agents entered the house, let Chop out and shot him. They say that the agents wouldn’t help them render aid to their pet, who bled to death on the floor. They also say the agent who shot the dog hid from them and wouldn’t provide a name. At the time of the story, CBP said it was looking into the incident.

NewsNation [10/17/2025 7:16 PM, Cameron Kiszla, 8017K] reports a Mexican man who turned himself in to federal agents in Riverside County and sought to be deported in accordance with ongoing immigration crackdowns allegedly had an ulterior motive: pitting the government against itself. As first detailed by Seamus Hughes’ Court Watch, Geovany Espinoza Norzagaray was facing methamphetamine distribution charges and had indicated he’d plead guilty once he took a trip to see his grandmother. When in Indio to see his grandmother, however, Norzagaray also "attempted to self-surrender at the Indio Border Patrol Station," prosecutors said in a motion. Despite claims by Norzagaray’s attorney that "he had traveled to the Border Patrol station to ask what would happen to his immigration status after his criminal case was over," prosecutors said they have evidence that he was trying to be deported before he could be convicted on the drug charges. "The defendant intentionally got himself arrested by the Border Patrol, showed up only with American and Mexican currency on his person, lied to Border Patrol agents and claimed he had never been arrested, and even attempted to speed up his deportation by asking to participate in an expedited removal program," prosecutors wrote.

NewsMax [10/17/2025 9:46 PM, Staff, 4109K] reports Mexican officials have begun dismantling a large migrant shelter in Nogales after occupancy rates plunged. The move signals that illegal border crossings have fallen sharply under President Donald Trump’s tightened enforcement policies. Nogales Mayor Juan Francisco Gim confirmed Tuesday that the shelter — built under the federal Mexico Embraces You program — will be scaled back. President Claudia Sheinbaum has announced that "we only have to keep 200 beds, and we have that capacity and more," Gim said at a press conference. The Nogales shelters was one of several border-city centers created to handle deportees from the U.S. But with crossings down, local and federal authorities have started repurposing the sites. Tents once set up on municipal sports fields are being removed. White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson credited Trump’s strict border policies for the downturn. In fiscal 2025, the Border Patrol recorded around 237,000 apprehensions of migrants crossing the southern border illegally — the lowest annual total since 1970. In July, about 4,600 attempted crossings were detected, a roughly 91.8% drop compared with July 2024. "President Trump has kept his promise and created the most secure border in history," Jackson said. "Word of the closed border has spread so far and wide that migrants aren’t even bothering to try. "They know they’ll be turned away.” Immigration and Customs Enforcement is now on pace to match the nation’s record for annual deportations, last set in 2012 under President Barack Obama. New U.S. Census Bureau data also show the overall foreign-born population dropped by 2.2 million between January and July 2025. Researchers estimate about 1.6 million of those were illegal immigrants who either left voluntarily or were deported.

Washington Examiner [10/17/2025 11:01 AM, Anna Giaritelli, 1394K] reports Mexican cartels are posting doctored images of President Donald Trump online that falsely claim his administration has reopened the southern border, as part of a criminal effort to convince migrants to pay them to get smuggled into the United States, according to the U.S. Border Patrol. Since Trump took office and brought illegal border crossings to the lowest levels in more than 50 years, the large majority of migrants seeking to get smuggled into the U.S. have given up. Cash-starved cartels, which are transnational criminal organizations, recently posted ads across social media platforms, including TikTok, purporting that America’s immigration laws have been suspended due to the government shutdown, according to Border Patrol Chief Mike Banks. "What we’re seeing is a lot of TikTok accounts, social media accounts, where they are creating, utilizing AI, creating false narratives, in some cases, claiming that the border’s back open, there’s a temporary asylum — ‘Hey, the government’s shut down so the border’s open," Banks said in an interview with the Washington Examiner on Wednesday. Images shared with the Washington Examiner by the Border Patrol show screenshots of the ads, including one of Trump waving as if in approval of the message posted on top of the picture.

AP [10/17/2025 3:53 PM, Gabriela Aoun Angueira, 19051K] reports current and former staff of the Federal Emergency Management Agency demonstrated against workforce and program cuts during a "FEMA Solidarity Rally" on Friday, a potentially risky act of protest because some of the same staffers were placed on leave after signing a public dissent letter in August. Several dozen people gathered outside the FEMA headquarters in Washington, D.C., calling on President Donald Trump to stop dismantling the agency charged with managing the federal disaster response. They warned that eliminating FEMA, something the president suggested he would consider, would put lives at risk and hurt communities. "It’s clear these disasters are becoming more frequent and more intense," Jeremy Edwards, the agency’s deputy director of public affairs under President Joe Biden, said at the rally. "Our country needs FEMA now more than ever. And right now, FEMA needs us, too.” The demonstration also was a call to support FEMA staff members who have been on paid administrative leave for nearly two months after signing a public letter of dissent in August. That letter criticized Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other Trump officials for cutting staff and programs. "Try as they might to run us over, we are not backing down, and we are putting up one hell of a fight," said Phoenix Gibson, one of the few current FEMA employees who publicly signed the dissent letter. Demonstrators waved signs that said "FEMA Saves Lives" and "Hands off FEMA" while speakers paid tribute to FEMA’s staff and mission, which they said has been under attack by the Trump administration. Organizers said they want Noem to reinstate signers of the August declaration, for acting administrator David Richardson to resign and for FEMA staff to no longer be required to assist U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

Federal News Network [10/17/2025 6:22 PM, Justin Doubleday, 986K] reports current and former Federal Emergency Management Agency employees rallied on Friday to continue pushing back on staffing cuts and other “dangerous” changes at FEMA under the Trump administration. A few dozen people gathered outside FEMA headquarters in Washington on Friday for a “FEMA Solidarity Rally.” Attendees called on FEMA to reinstate staff who signed a public dissent letter and urging Congress to pass a bipartisan emergency management reform bill. The protest occurred as about 85% of FEMA staff work without pay through the shutdown. “The changes implemented over the past nine months are dangerous, and I urge everyone stand with us, speak out, push back and help protect the soul of this agency,” Phoenix Gibson, a public assistance mitigation specialist at FEMA, said during the hourlong rally. Nearly 2,500 staff have departed FEMA since the start of the Trump administration. Many of those employees took a deferred resignation or retired early as President Donald Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said they were moving to eliminate FEMA and push more disaster responsibilities to the states. While calls to eliminate the agency have cooled off, rallygoers said there is still a lack of transparency at FEMA under the Trump administration. “FEMA employees should be respected,” Michael Coen, Jr., FEMA’s former chief of staff under the Obama and Biden administrations, said at the protest. “Your leadership should stand up for you and be transparent with you.” The rally comes after current and former FEMA staff signed the “FEMA Declaration” in August. The public letter warns the staffing cuts and other changes at FEMA have left the agency unprepared to deal with a major disaster.

New York Times [10/17/2025 7:22 PM, Anna Griffin, 135475K] reports Alaska’s governor on Thursday asked for federal help in recovering from the remnants of Typhoon Halong, which lashed villages along the Bering Sea this week, saying it could be 18 months before people forced from their homes could return. Flooding from the typhoon overwhelmed western Alaska, and particularly communities in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, with the strength of a Category 2 hurricane on Oct. 11 and 12. In some spots, water levels rose as high as seven feet above normal, wiping out homes and leading to the evacuation of more than 2,000 people. At least one person died from the storm, and two people are missing. Most of the evacuees are Native Alaskans who live in unincorporated villages far from government services or even roads. Days after the storm hit, people were still being evacuated by military transport planes and helicopters. “I’m looking at people getting off flights right now,” Jeremy Zidek, a spokesman for the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, said Friday from Bethel, Alaska, the first stop for evacuees. “They’re just all so tired.” The governor, Mike Dunleavy, wrote President Trump on Thursday requesting that he declare a major disaster in the state and rush both logistical and financial help. He described the damage as catastrophic in nature. Mr. Dunleavy, a Republican, noted in his letter to the president that over the past 12 months, he had declared 14 state disasters in Alaska, including landslides, floods and two glacial lake outbursts that flooded parts of Juneau. He said the Alaska Air and National Guard were in the middle of the “largest domestic/humanitarian evacuation operation in state history” and were still working to move storm survivors inland. Emergency crews in Alaska have warned that in many cases, entire villages will need to be rebuilt. “These are very small, isolated, remote communities,” Mr. Zidek said. “They’re also very tight-knit communities that rely on subsistence hunting and fishing.” Five months ago, the Trump administration canceled a $20 million grant intended to protect one of the hardest-hit communities, Kipnuk, from extreme flooding. The grant was issued by the Environmental Protection Agency under President Joseph R. Biden Jr., and Trump administration officials said it was “no longer consistent” with the agency’s priorities. It was not clear whether the work funded by the grant would have prevented damage this week in Kipnuk, which is built on permafrost that is melting. Mr. Zidek said one of the challenges with helping people return home was the remoteness of the villages hit hardest by the storm. Simply restoring power will take time, he said, and winter is coming. “We’re going to need a lot of help, and this is going to take a long time,” he said. “Fortunately or unfortunately, here in Alaska we’re really good at responding to disaster.”

Reported similarly:
CBS News [10/17/2025 11:43 PM, Staff, 39474K]

NPR [10/17/2025 4:02 PM, Sage Smiley, 28013K] reports in the late night hours of Oct. 11, the remnant of Typhoon Halong slammed Alaska’s southwest coast, bringing hurricane-force winds and record flooding to numerous Alaska Native villages on the coast. According to the state, more than a thousand people are displaced – some have no home to return to. One woman was found dead, and two of her family members remain missing. The state of Alaska’s Emergency Operations Center is in its highest-possible level of emergency response. Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy has called for a federal disaster declaration for the region. The remnant of Typhoon Halong had sweeping impacts across the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta – an area in Western Alaska hundreds of miles from the U.S. road system and about the size of Oregon, with dozens of small villages scattered throughout. The coastal villages of Kipnuk and Kwigillingok took the brunt of the storm, and are being almost entirely evacuated, per the State Emergency Operations Center. In addition, regional health officials have listed more than a dozen villages where substantial damage has been reported, and the state says that nearly 50 have reported some impacts. Damages are still being assessed and it’s not clear yet how many people will be permanently displaced. The evacuation process was significantly slowed by the remoteness of the area. With runways damaged in at least one village, some evacuations had to rely on helicopters. U.S. Coast Guard rescue crews recounted moving people out of communities six at a time. The region is also still recovering from major flooding in August of last year – Kipnuk, one of the villages hardest hit by the remnants of Typhoon Halong, received one of the first-ever federal disaster declarations for an Alaska tribe in the wake of that flooding.

(B) THV11 Morning News 6 a.m. [10/17/2025 7:44 AM, Staff] reports that hundreds of residents from storm-ravaged coastal villages in western Alaska are arriving in Anchorage this morning. It is one of the biggest evacuations in state history. At least one person is dead and two are missing after record flooding. Remnants of a typhoon brought a six-foot storm surge last weekend, washing away homes. People had to be rescued from their rooftops by US Coast Guard helicopters. About 1500 people are now staying at a Red Cross shelter.

NPR [10/18/2025 5:00 AM, Sam Gringlas, 28013K] reports most of the effects of the ongoing government shutdown are far-removed from the halls of Congress. But the situation facing one group of federal employees who are working without pay is difficult for lawmakers to overlook: The Capitol Police officers who protect them every day. The officers missed their first full paycheck Oct. 10th. "They’re asked to be everything to everybody," said Terry Gainer, a former Capitol Police chief. "You need to be ready at the drop of a hat to take very aggressive enforcement action, but you also have to be a person who will welcome visitors and be a tour guide.” Gainer says the job is tougher than ever, as public officials face growing threats and violence. Gesturing toward two officers guarding the ornate Senate Reception Room, Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., says she feels for the force’s more than 2,000 officers and that Democrats are to blame for the impasse. "These men and women are paying the price," Britt said. "It’s absolutely selfish and ridiculous. It’s heartbreaking. People have mortgages, they have families." Officer Gus Papathanasiou, the Capitol Police union chair, called on lawmakers last week to end the shutdown, writing in a statement that "Banks and landlords do not give my officers a pass.”

Bloomberg Government [10/17/2025 6:27 PM, Zach Williams, 38K] reports Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem authorized the US Coast Guard to spend $200 million as soon as Friday on luxury jets as the government shutdown nears the end of its third full week. Two new Gulfstream Aerospace Corp. G700 jets will transport senior officials and department staff while helping maintain maritime border security, according to an Oct. 15 congressional notification obtained by Bloomberg Government. Current G550 aircraft used by the department are increasingly obsolete with rising maintenance costs, according to the document. The timing of the purchase sparked criticism from a top House Democrat on Friday.

ABC News [10/17/2025 1:32 PM, Megan Forrester, 30493K] reports that in the aftermath of a destructive typhoon, historic floodwaters have destroyed remote communities across western Alaska, causing hundreds of evacuations that could continue for days, officials said. "This is still a very much fluid situation; we are still in the process of evacuating hundreds of people from the affected towns," Michelle Torres, the outreach branch chief for the state of Alaska, told ABC News on Thursday. These devastating floods were fueled by remnants of Typhoon Halong, which originated in the northern Philippine Sea on Oct. 5. This typhoon brought the massive flooding to these western regions of Alaska on Saturday night into Sunday, sweeping across the west coast of the state on Monday and dumping more than 6 feet of water in some areas. Along with coastal flooding, wind gusts reached 50 to 100 mph in some of the 49 communities affected. Remote, coastal towns have been hit the hardest by the floods, including Kipnuk, Alaska, which is about 500 miles from Anchorage. So far, 264 people were evacuated on Thursday and 211 on Wednesday from these impacted communities by the Alaska National Guard, according to Jeremy Zidek from the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management. The evacuations of these flooded-out, smaller communities will continue "for days" as there are likely hundreds left to be evacuated, Zidek said. Both local agencies and private charters are being used for the evacuations, Zidek said. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said on Thursday that the U.S. Coast Guard has rescued 38 people from the flood and helped "evacuate 28 people from a temporary shelter.” "The Coast Guard continues to support the state of Alaska’s response efforts in impacted communities," Noem said in a post on X on Thursday. [Editorial note: consult video at source link]

CyberScoop [10/17/2025 11:27 AM, Tim Starks] reports suspected Iranian hackers infiltrated former national security adviser John Bolton’s email account and threatened to release sensitive materials, his indictment alleges. The indictment on charges that Bolton mishandled classified information, released Thursday, comes after President Donald Trump’s unprecedented public call for the Justice Department to prosecute his enemies. Bolton served under Trump in his first term as national security adviser and since has become a critic. The passage of the indictment related to the Iranian hackers seeks to demonstrate a representative of Bolton knew his personal emails included information they shouldn’t have. In early July of 2021, according to the indictment, the Bolton representative contacted the FBI to alert the bureau about the apparent hack, and their suspicion that it was someone from Iran. The indictment states that it was “a cyber actor believed to be associated with the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

FOX News [10/17/2025 8:10 AM, Kurt Knutsson, 40621K] reports Microsoft is sounding the alarm, and this time, the warning hits home for everyday users. Hackers are now turning Microsoft Teams security threats into real-world dangers that go far beyond corporate networks. Using Teams, cybercriminals gather intel, pose as trusted contacts, trick people into sharing private data and even spread malware that can steal passwords or lock up personal files. What was once a simple video chat and collaboration tool has become a high-value target for cybercriminals and even state-backed hackers. Whether you use Teams for work, school or staying in touch, the risks are real and growing. We’ll break down how attackers abuse Teams, what Microsoft recommends and the simple steps you can take to protect yourself at home or on the job. Hackers exploit Microsoft Teams at every stage of an attack, using it to spy, impersonate, spread malware and even control compromised systems, and consumers are now in their sights, too.

Bloomberg [10/17/2025 5:18 PM, Staff, 18207K] Video: HERE reports Jaya Baloo, co-founder, COO, and Chief Information Security Officer at AISLE, explains why the F5 breach by state-backed Chinese hackers is a "terrifying" situation that could have an impact on hundreds of companies and thousands of devices. She speaks on “Bloomberg Tech.”

Breitbart [10/17/2025 11:45 AM, Lucas Nolan, 2416K] reports criminal organizations operating out of China have made more than $1 billion over the last three years by bombarding Americans with scam text messages, according to the Department of Homeland Security. Typical scam messages warn unsuspecting Americans of toll violations or postal fees, eventually asking for a credit card number. The Wall Street Journal reports that the United States is currently facing an onslaught of fraudulent text messages, which officials say has turned into a highly sophisticated, billion-dollar business benefiting criminal networks based in China. These scam texts, which often claim that the recipient owes money for unpaid tolls, U.S. Postal Service fees, or traffic violations, are designed to trick unsuspecting victims into providing their credit card information. Breitbart News previously reported on DMVs around the country warning consumers about fake text scams: As digital scams are becoming increasingly sophisticated, the latest round of phishing attempts is targeting unsuspecting drivers across the United States. DMVs in at least three states — New York, Florida, and California — have reported a surge in fake text messages that employ fear tactics to deceive recipients into divulging sensitive data.

The Hill [10/17/2025 10:41 AM, Ryan Mancini, 12595K] reports two people face terrorism charges — the first such charges directed toward anyone accused of being linked to antifa — in connection with a shooting outside the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas, on July 4. A federal grand jury indicted Cameron Arnold of Dallas and Zachary Evetts of Waxahachie, Texas. Both face seven charges, including three counts of discharging a firearm during, in relation to, and in furtherance of a crime of violence; and three counts of attempted murder of officers and employees of the United States. Arnold and Evetts are also accused of providing material support to terrorists. The charges stem from a shooting at the detention center where "a North Texas Antifa Cell of at least eleven operatives, clad in black and donning masks, some of whom were wearing body armor and carrying firearms" shot off fireworks at the facility, prompting Department of Homeland Security (DHS) correctional officers to investigate, authorities said.

NPR [10/17/2025 4:47 PM, Caroline Love, 28013K] reports a newly released police report offers personal details of the person responsible for last month’s shooting at a Dallas Immigration facility that killed two detainees and injured another, and experts think he may have been motivated more by notoriety than ideology. The parents of Joshua Jahn, who died by suicide, told local police their 29-year-old son was a "loner," according to a Fairview police report recently obtained by NPR. Fairview is a suburb north of Dallas, where he was living with his parents. According to the incident report, Jahn was unemployed and didn’t have friends or a romantic partner. The parents told the police Jahn "spent much of his time on his computer playing games and was ‘obsessed’ with AI technology." They said Jahn rarely engaged in conversation and that they "were generally not aware of his daily activities." The shooting at the Dallas Immigration and Customs field office was the second shooting at an ICE facility in North Texas in recent months. All of those killed were immigrants who were in ICE custody. Jahn left a note saying the attack was aimed at ICE agents, law enforcement said at a press conference the day after the shooting. Acting U.S. Attorney Nancy Larson said at a press conference a day after the shooting that Jahn likely acted alone and wasn’t affiliated with a particular group or entity. Public records from Oklahoma, where Jahn voted in the 2024 general election, indicate he was a registered independent. Jahn’s brother Noah told NBC News he didn’t think Jahn was interested in politics. Still, several conservative elected and government officials point to his actions as an example of far left extremism. The actual political philosophy of individuals who commit this kind of violence can be difficult to label. Oftentimes, their views are a hodgepodge from both the left and right, said Rachel Kleinfeld, a political violence expert and a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment’s Democracy, Conflict, and Governance Program. "These shooters tend to want to use violence as a way of making their lives meaningful," Kleinfeld said. "They often feel like their lives are really insignificant, unimportant. But if they commit an act of violence, they’ll be appreciated by one side or another." Larson said FBI agents found a collection of notes at Jahn’s home in Fairview where he took sole credit for the attack. One note said "yes, it was just me and my brain." Another said, "good luck with the digital footprint." The FBI office in Dallas told NPR it’s unable to comment on the investigation at this time because of the ongoing government shutdown. For someone who’s desperate to feel heard, any kind of infamy can be attractive, said Jon Lewis, a research fellow at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University. "A lot of these individuals who are so deep in these hyper-violence, really just dehumanizing online spaces, the idea of committing that very public act of violence is appealing," Lewis said. "It gives them a way to get their name out, to become someone who matters." Lewis said that ideology isn’t the point for online forums that promote extremism "Violence for the sake of violence can do the job," he said.

New York Post [10/17/2025 4:31 PM, David Propper, 42219K] reports the two Antifa agitators who are the first in the nation to face terrorism charges were part of a "cell" that stockpiled with more than 50 guns — including homemade weapons, according to authorities. Zachary Evetts and Cameron Arnold, who is also referred to as Autumn Hill, are feeling the consequences on the federal level after the Trump administration designated Antifa as a domestic terrorist organization last month. The pair were initially arrested along with nine more leftwing lunatics on attempted murder charges after the group allegedly opened fire on a local cop and unarmed federal officers outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas on July 4. Evetts and Arnold are now facing charges of providing material support to terrorists – a development that was slammed by their lawyers.

NPR [10/17/2025 4:57 PM, Caroline Love, 28013K] Audio: HERE reports what motivated the shooter who last month killed two detainees at a Dallas ICE field office? Experts say it’s less about politics and more about a desire for notoriety

New York Post [10/17/2025 11:40 PM, Ariel Zilber, 42219K] reports the agency that maintains America’s nuclear weapons stockpile is reportedly preparing to furlough about 80% of its workforce — highlighting the widening impact of the government shutdown as it enters its third week. Roughly 1,400 employees of the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) — a branch of the Department of Energy — will be sent home starting Monday, with only about 375 designated as essential staff expected to remain on the job, according to a notice obtained by Politico. The furloughs come as the agency’s funding has dried up due to a budget impasse that has closed much of the federal government for 17 days — now the third-longest shutdown in US history. "The Democrat shutdown is now jeopardizing our national security," White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox News Digital on Friday afternoon. "By refusing to pass the clean, bipartisan funding extension, the Democrats are causing funds to run out for critical programs, resulting in furloughs of personnel at the National Nuclear Security Administration who manage our nuclear stockpile.” Rogers added that the furloughs are "reckless and could be completely avoided if the Democrats simply voted to reopen the government and stopped holding the American people hostage.” Leading Democrats, however, reject the claim that they are to blame for the ongoing shutdown. "Every day that Republicans refuse to negotiate to end this shutdown, the worse it gets for Americans — and the clearer it becomes who’s fighting for them," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Fox Digital earlier in October of the shutdown. "Each day our case to fix healthcare and end this shutdown gets better and better, stronger and stronger because families are opening their letters showing how high their premiums will climb if Republicans get their way.” The NNSA oversees the safety and reliability of the nation’s nuclear warheads, manages the Navy’s nuclear propulsion systems and leads efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear materials to hostile states or terrorist groups. While it does not directly operate deployed weapons — that role belongs to the Pentagon — its scientific and technical work underpins America’s nuclear deterrent. House Armed Services Committee Chair Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) said Friday that the agency’s carryover funds were "about to run out.”

Reported similarly:
CBS News [10/17/2025 12:36 PM, Stefan Becket, Patrick Maguire, and Melissa Quinn, 39474K]

The Wall Street Journal [10/17/2025 11:41 AM, Sadie Gurman and C. Ryan Barber, 646K] reports the Justice Department on Thursday secured an indictment against John Bolton for allegedly mishandling classified information, making President Trump’s former national security adviser the latest of his prominent critics to face prosecution. Prosecutors said in court papers that Bolton, 76 years old, shared with two relatives more than 1,000 pages of “diary-like” entries that contained classified information about his daily activities as national security adviser. He would send the entries electronically, sometimes from his private AOL and Google email accounts, prosecutors said. The documents don’t identify the recipients, but people familiar with the matter said they were Bolton’s wife and daughter. The indictment indicates classified information may have been exposed when Iranian hackers got into Bolton’s personal email account and gained access to the material he had shared. A Bolton representative told the FBI his emails had been hacked in July 2021, but didn’t say that classified information was shared through the account. Bolton pleaded not guilty during an initial appearance in a Maryland federal courthouse on Friday morning. He was ordered to surrender his passport to his lawyer, and the magistrate judge imposed restrictions on his travel. On Thursday, he described the charges as part of an effort to intimidate Trump critics. “I look forward to the fight to defend my lawful conduct and to expose his abuse of power,” Bolton said. The AP [10/17/2025 3:25 PM, Staff, 31753K] reports that his criminal case is the third brought by the Justice Department in recent weeks against someone deemed adversarial to President Donald Trump. It also amplifies concerns that Trump is using the nation’s top law enforcement agency to punish political foes. Bolton didn’t comment to reporters as he entered the federal courthouse in Greenbelt, about 13 miles (21 kilometers) northeast of Washington. But he said Thursday in a statement after a grand jury returned the 18-count indictment against him that he has "become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts." The indictment, which was brought against Bolton on Thursday, also accuses him of sharing with his wife and daughter more than 1,000 pages of notes that included sensitive national defense information he had gleaned from meetings with other U.S. government officials and foreign leaders or from intelligence briefings. Authorities say some of the information was exposed when operatives believed to be linked to the Iranian government hacked Bolton’s email account he used to send the diary-like notes about his activities to his relatives.

ABC News [10/17/2025 11:46 AM, Pierre Thomas, Tia Humphries, Katherine Faulders, and Alexander Mallin, 30493K] Video: HERE reports former Trump national security adviser John Bolton has pleaded not guilty to all 18 counts of an indictment charging him with unlawful retention and dissemination of national defense information. Bolton entered his not guilty plea Friday morning in a hearing in federal court in Maryland before Chief Magistrate Judge Timothy Sullivan. He was indicted by a grand jury Thursday on charges that he allegedly unlawfully transmitted and retained classified documents. The indictment comes on the heels of the indictments of former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James as President Donald Trump continues what critics call a campaign of retribution against his perceived political foes. Bolton is charged with eight counts of unlawful transmission of national defense information as well as 10 counts of unlawful retention of national defense information. The Washington Examiner [10/17/2025 11:27 AM, Kaelan Deese, 1394K] reports that, when asked how he wanted to plead to the 18 counts, Bolton said he was "not guilty.” Bolton was released on his own recognizance. He may travel domestically but will have to seek approval before he can travel internationally, and he was required to surrender his passport and other travel documents to his defense counsel. The indictment, unsealed Thursday, accuses Bolton of transmitting and retaining more than 1,000 pages of classified "diary-like entries" containing information marked up to TOP SECRET/SCI level. Federal prosecutors said Bolton sent the materials to two relatives, reportedly his wife and daughter, who were not authorized to view them and later failed to alert the FBI that his personal email account had been compromised in a 2021 cyberattack allegedly carried out by Iran. "From April 9, 2018, through August 22, 2025, Bolton abused his position by sharing information relating to the national defense, including classified intelligence, with two unauthorized individuals," the charging documents read. FBI Director Kash Patel said the evidence showed Bolton "transmitted top secret information using personal online accounts and retained said documents in his house in direct violation of federal law." Patel praised the case as "meticulous work" by career agents and said, "Weaponization of justice will not be tolerated." Bolton pushed back sharply, casting the prosecution as a political vendetta. Breitbart [10/17/2025 9:33 AM, Simon Kent, 2416K] reports former National Security Advisor (NSA) John Bolton surrendered to authorities Friday after he was indicted by a federal grand jury on charges that allege he mishandled classified information. Bolton was silent as he entered the courthouse where he is expected to make an initial appearance before a judge on the 18-count indictment brought against him 24-hours earlier. NBC News reports it saw the man who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser during his first term leaving his home in Bethesda, Maryland, in a black sport utility vehicle Friday morning. The investigation into Bolton came into public view in August when the FBI searched his home in Maryland and his office in Washington for classified records he may have held onto from his years in government. The concerns over Bolton’s mishandling of classified information arose in 2020 when he published a memoir after having a falling-out with the president. Bolton denied any wrongdoing in a statement Thursday and said the charges were politically motivated, NBC notes.

Reported similarly:
New York Post [10/17/2025 12:19 PM, Josh Christenson and Caitlin Doornbos, 42219K]
Breitbart [10/17/2025 12:30 PM, Staff, 2416K]
CBS News [10/17/2025 3:06 PM, Melissa Quinn and Scott MacFarlane, 39474K]

Daily Caller [10/17/2025 12:42 PM, Harold Hutchison, 835K] reports George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley said that former National Security Advisor John Bolton appeared to engage in a pattern of "casual treatment" of classified material when discussing the former Trump administration official’s indictment during a Friday appearance on "Fox and Friends.” A federal grand jury indicted Bolton on 18 counts involving retention and transmission of classified information on Thursday. Turley told Fox News host Lawrence Jones that the "shocking" facts alleged in the indictment were "very damning" and that Bolton might not testify, due to comments he made during media appearances on other controversies involving classified documents. "It’s very damning and we still have to learn about the timeline of when this information was transmitted but certainly this information is classified at the highest levels because this is information that gets people killed," Turley said. "I mean, this is the type of information that if it gets out, can reveal sources and methods that represent really threatening consequences for national security.” Turley observed that a federal judge accused Bolton of undermining national security with the publication of a tell-all book in 2020, which was the subject of a lawsuit filed by the first Trump administration, which also opened a criminal investigation. Turley also noted that Bolton allegedly emailed classified information to family members and that he might have been hacked by the Iranian government.

The Hill [10/17/2025 8:54 AM, Ryan Mancini, 12595K] reports former National Security Advisor John Bolton compared the Trump administration to Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s secret police following the former national security adviser’s indictment on Thursday. "I have become the latest target in weaponizing the Justice Department to charge those he deems to be his enemies with charges that were declined before or distort the facts," Bolton said in a statement. "Then came Trump 2 who embodies what Joseph Stalin’s head of secret police once said, ‘You show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.’". Federal prosecutors say that Bolton sent more than a thousand pages of "diary-like entries" to two relatives and retained documents, writings and notes related to national defense. Those two individuals were Bolton’s wife and daughter, according to The Associated Press. Bolton has claimed the charges are part of Trump’s retribution campaign against him, which ramped up after the publication of his memoir "The Room Where It Happened.” The first Trump administration tried to block the publication of the book, which Trump officials claimed had classified information within its pages. The Department of Justice during the Biden administration decided against bringing charges. Thursday’s indictment also accuses Bolton of failing to notify the FBI that his email account stored classified and national defense information after it was hacked in 2021, allegedly by Iran.

NBC News [10/17/2025 2:30 PM, Katherine Doyle, 34509K] reports that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with President Donald Trump at the White House on Friday, with long-range Tomahawk missiles and the trajectory of the war with Russia on the agenda as Kyiv intensifies its push for U.S. military aid. "Hopefully they won’t need it, hopefully we’ll be able to get the war over without thinking about Tomahawks," Trump told reporters at the start of the meeting. "I think we’re fairly close to that." The sit-down follows Trump’s phone call Thursday with Russian President Vladimir Putin, during which Moscow warned that a U.S. decision to provide long-range Tomahawks to Kyiv would sharply escalate tensions. The missiles, which could be used to strike deep into Russia, would signal a "qualitatively new stage of escalation," the Kremlin said. Adding to the speculation, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised that more "firepower" was coming for Ukraine ahead of a NATO defense ministers’ meeting in Brussels this week. It is not clear whether the Tomahawks were part of that. The president sounded optimistic that an end to the conflict is still achievable, even as he conceded that it is "not an easy situation.” "I think President Zelenskyy wants it done, and I think President Putin wants it done," Trump said. "All they have to do is get along a little bit.” "In the meantime, we’ll have them keep a little bit of distance, and we’re going to see if we can get it done," he added.

The Hill [10/17/2025 7:58 PM, Ellen Mitchell, 12595K] reports that, Trump, feeling victorious after securing a ceasefire in the Middle East, projected optimism about ending the war that he once proclaimed he could resolve in one day. "I’m the mediator president, and I’m mediating a not easy situation," Trump said. "It should be easy.” The meeting, held as a working lunch with Trump and Zelensky sitting across from each other, was initially carried out in front of the press without any major explosions between the two sides. This was likely a welcome relief after a February Oval Office meeting escalated into a shouting match among Trump, Vice President Vance and Zelensky. But while Trump previously expressed increasing frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin and confidence that Ukraine could possibly regain all territory occupied by Russia, he tempered his stance Friday. "I think they’re both doing a great job" at negotiating, Trump said. "We have to get it done.” Trump appeared to dismiss Ukraine’s push to acquire long-range Tomahawk cruise missiles, saying it is not "easy" for Washington to provide the munitions. "It’s not easy for us to give … you’re talking about massive numbers of very powerful weapons," the president told reporters at the White House. "So, that’s one of the things we’ll be talking about. Hopefully, they won’t need it. Hopefully, we’ll be able to get the war over with, without thinking about Tomahawks," Trump said. The potential delivery of Tomahawk missiles has become a point of discussion after Trump signaled his openness to sending the weapons to Ukraine last weekend. Zelensky said Friday that Kyiv would not only rely on the missiles in its war against Russia, indicating that Ukraine could dispatch "thousands" of its drones to the U.S. in a swap for U.S.-made long-range missiles, which are typically launched from submarines and warships. "But [the] U.S. is a very strong production and the U.S. has Tomahawks and other missiles, very strong missiles, but they can have our thousands of drones," Zelensky added. "That’s why, where we can work together, where we can strengthen American production.”

Reuters [10/18/2025 12:56 AM, Doina Chiacu and Andrea Shalal, 34509K] reports U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said on Friday he expects to meet next week with Chinese Vice Premier He Lifeng in Malaysia to try to forestall an escalation of U.S. tariffs on Chinese goods that President Donald Trump said was unsustainable. Bessent made the announcement during a White House cabinet meeting and later confirmed plans for a meeting after a call with He on Friday evening. Bessent said on X the two officials "engaged in frank and detailed discussions regarding trade between the United States and China.” "We will meet in-person next week to continue our discussions," Bessent wrote. China state news agency Xinhua reported that He and Bessent had "candid, in-depth, and constructive discussions on major issues in bilateral economic and trade relations" in a video call, and agreed to a new round of trade talks as soon as possible. The two officials previously met in four European cities over six months to hammer out a tariff truce that brought duties down from triple-digit levels for each country. That agreement expires on November 10. A meeting in Malaysia would shift the venue to a Southeast Asian exporter that trades heavily with both China and the U.S. and whose goods are now subject to a 19% duty imposed by Trump. Malaysia also faces a threatened 100% U.S. tariff on its semiconductors and derivative electronics devices under a national security trade review. Trump earlier on Friday blamed Beijing for the latest impasse, a dispute over China’s sweeping new export restrictions on rare-earth minerals and magnets. He has threatened an additional 100% tariff on Chinese imports starting on November 1 unless Beijing scraps the restrictions. Asked whether such a high tariff was sustainable and what that might do to the U.S. economy, Trump replied: "It’s not sustainable, but that’s what the number is.” "They forced me to do that," he said in an interview with Fox Business Network that was broadcast on Friday. Trump also has threatened to impose new U.S. export controls that would halt supplies of "any and all critical software.” The new trade actions were Trump’s reaction to China dramatically expanding its export controls on rare-earth elements. China dominates the market for such elements, which are essential to tech manufacturing. Bessent and U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer on Wednesday blasted the restrictions as a threat to global supply chains. Trump also confirmed he would meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in two weeks in South Korea and expressed admiration for the Chinese leader. "I think we’re going to be fine with China, but we have to have a fair deal. It’s got to be fair," Trump said on FBN’s "Mornings with Maria," which was taped on Thursday.

New York Post [10/17/2025 11:41 AM, Ariel Zilber, 42219K] reports that President Trump said his threatened high tariffs on Chinese goods are "not sustainable," even as his administration presses ahead with sweeping trade penalties against Beijing in a deepening tariff standoff. "It’s not sustainable," Trump told Fox News’ Maria Bartiromo on "Sunday Morning Futures," when asked whether the massive levies could remain in place without hitting the US economy. "But that’s what the number is, it’s probably not, you know, it could stand, but they forced me to do that." Trump also sounded a more conciliatory note in his Friday interview with Bartiromo, particularly in light of reports that the president threatened to cancel a planned meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping. "I get along great with him," Trump said of Xi. "I think we’re going to be fine with China, but we have to have a fair deal. It’s got to be fair." The president’s remarks came as Washington and Beijing face the steepest trade confrontation in years — with US import taxes on Chinese products climbing as high as 145% in a tit-for-tat exchange that has rattled global markets. Trump’s latest tariff pause — a 90-day truce set to expire Nov. 10 — has kept those duties on hold while both sides attempt to reach new terms. But with China expanding export controls on rare earth minerals and the US announcing fresh restrictions on Chinese shipping, the path to a deal remains uncertain.

{End of Report} RETURN TO TOP