A fugitive wanted for first-degree murder in Miami Gardens is on the run, according to the Miami Gardens Police Department. MGPD homicide detectives and agents from the U.S. Marshals Task Force have actively attempted to locate Yalanski Dawkins, 45, for a homicide that occurred on Jan. 5, 2025. MGPD said that Dawkins has been known to frequent the Orlando area.Dawkins should be considered armed and dangerous. Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Dawkins is asked to contact Miami Gardens Police Homicide Detective H. Baez at 305-474-2082 or at 305-474-6473 or Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS (8477) >> This is a developing news story and will be updated as more information is released.
ORLANDO, Fla. —
A fugitive wanted for first-degree murder in Miami Gardens is on the run, according to the Miami Gardens Police Department.
MGPD homicide detectives and agents from the U.S. Marshals Task Force have actively attempted to locate Yalanski Dawkins, 45, for a homicide that occurred on Jan. 5, 2025.
MGPD said that Dawkins has been known to frequent the Orlando area.
Dawkins should be considered armed and dangerous.
Anyone with information on the whereabouts of Dawkins is asked to contact Miami Gardens Police Homicide Detective H. Baez at 305-474-2082 or at 305-474-6473 or Miami-Dade County Crime Stoppers at 305-471-TIPS (8477)
>> This is a developing news story and will be updated as more information is released.
California Democrats have assumed leading roles in their party’s counter-offensive to the Trump administration’s massive immigration crackdown — seizing on a growing sense, shared by some Republicans, that the campaign has gotten so out of hand that the political winds have shifted heavily in their favor.
They stalled Department of Homeland Security funding in the Senate and pushed the impeachment of Secretary Kristi Noem in the House. They strategized against a threatened move by President Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act and challenged administration policies and street tactics in federal court. And they have shown up in Minneapolis to express outrage and demanded Department of Justice records following two fatal shootings of U.S. citizens there.
The push comes at an extremely tense moment, as Minneapolis and the nation reel from the fatal weekend shooting of Alex Pretti, and served as an impetus for a spending deal reached late Thursday between Senate Democrats and the White House to avert another partial government shutdown. The compromise would allow lawmakers to fund large parts of the federal government while giving them more time to negotiate new restrictions for immigration agents.
“This is probably one of the few windows on immigration specifically where Democrats find themselves on offense,” said Mike Madrid, a California Republican political consultant. “It is a rare and extraordinary moment.”
Both of the state’s Democratic senators, Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, came out in staunch opposition to the latest Homeland Security funding measure in Congress, vowing to block it unless the administration scales back its street operations and reins in masked agents who have killed Americans in multiple shootings, clashed with protestors and provoked communities with aggressive tactics.
Under the agreement reached Thursday, the Department of Homeland Security will be funded for two weeks — a period of time that in theory will allow lawmakers to negotiate guardrails for the federal agency. The measure still will need to be approved by the House, though it is not clear when they will hold a vote — meaning a short shutdown still could occur even if the Senate deal is accepted.
Padilla negotiated with the White House to separate the controversial measures in question — to provide $64.4 billion for Homeland Security and $10 billion specifically for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement — from a broader spending package that also funds the Pentagon, the State Department and health, education and transportation agencies.
Senate Democrats vowed to not give more money to federal immigration agencies, including ICE and Customs and Border Protection, unless Republicans agree to require agents to wear body cameras, take off masks during operations and stop making arrests and searching homes without judicial warrants. All Senate Democrats and seven Senate Republicans blocked passage of the broader spending package earlier Thursday.
“Anything short of meaningful, enforceable reforms for Trump’s out-of-control ICE and CBP is a non-starter,” Padilla said in a statement after the earlier vote. “We need real oversight, accountability and enforcement for both the agents on the ground and the leaders giving them their orders. I will not vote for anything less.”
Neither Padilla nor Schiff immediately responded to requests for comment on the deal late Thursday.
Even if Democrats block Homeland Security funding after the two-week deal expires, immigration operations would not stop. That’s because ICE received $75 billion under the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year — part of an unprecedented $178 billion provided to Homeland Security through the mega-bill.
Trump said Thursday he was working “in a very bipartisan way” to reach a compromise on the funding package. “Hopefully we won’t have a shutdown, we are working on that right now,” he said. “I think we are getting close. I don’t think Democrats want to see it either.”
The administration has eased its tone and admitted mistakes in its immigration enforcement campaign since Pretti’s killing, but hasn’t backed down completely or paused operations in Minneapolis, as critics demanded.
This week Padilla and Schiff joined other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee in calling on the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good by immigration agents in Minneapolis. In a letter addressed to Assistant Atty. Gen. for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon, they questioned her office’s decision to forgo an investigation, saying it reflected a trend of “ignoring the enforcement of civil rights laws in favor of carrying out President Trump’s political agenda.”
Dhillon did not respond to a request for comment. Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche said there is “currently no basis” for such an investigation.
Schiff also has been busy preparing his party for any move by Trump to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give the president broad authority to deploy military troops into American cities. Trump has threatened to take that move, which would mark a dramatic escalation of his immigration campaign.
A spokesperson confirmed to The Times that Schiff briefed fellow Democrats during a caucus lunch Wednesday on potential strategies for combating such a move.
“President Trump and his allies have been clear and intentional in laying the groundwork to invoke the Insurrection Act without justification and could exploit the very chaos that he has fueled in places like Minneapolis as the pretext to do so,” Schiff said in a statement. “Whether he does so in connection with immigration enforcement or to intimidate voters during the midterm elections, we must not be caught flat-footed if he takes such an extreme step to deploy troops to police our streets.”
Meanwhile, Rep. Robert Garcia of Long Beach, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, announced he will serve as one of three Democrats leading an impeachment inquiry into Noem, whom Democrats have blasted for allowing and excusing violence by agents in Minneapolis and other cities.
Garcia called the shootings of Good and Pretti “horrific and shocking,” so much so that even some Republicans are acknowledging the “severity of what happened” — creating an opening for Noem’s impeachment.
“It’s unacceptable what’s happening right now, and Noem is at the top of this agency that’s completely rogue,” he said Thursday. “People are being killed on the streets.”
Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Fremont) went to Minneapolis this week to talk to residents and protesters about the administration’s presence in their city, which he denounced as unconstitutional and violent.
California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta has gone after a slew of Trump immigration policies both in California and across the country — including by backing a lawsuit challenging immigration deployments in the Twin Cities, and joining in a letter to U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi denouncing the administration’s attempts to “exploit the situation in Minnesota” by demanding local leaders turn over state voter data in exchange for federal agents leaving.
California’s leaders are far from alone in pressing hard for big changes.
Cardinal Joseph Tobin, the head of the Archdiocese of Newark (N.J.) and a top ally of Pope Leo XIV, sharply criticized immigration enforcement this week, calling ICE a “lawless organization” and backing the interruption of funding to the agency. On Thursday the NAACP and other prominent civil rights organizations sent a letter to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) arguing that ICE should be “fully dissolved” and that Homeland Security funding should be blocked until a slate of “immediate and enforceable restrictions” are placed on its operations.
Madrid, the Republican consultant, said California’s leaders have a clear reason to push for policies that protect immigrants, given the state is home to 1 in 4 foreign-born Americans and immigration is “tied into the fabric of California.”
And at a moment when Trump and other administration officials clearly realize “how far out of touch and how damaging” their immigration policies have become politically, he said, California’s leaders have a real opportunity to push their own agenda forward — especially if it includes clear, concrete solutions to end the recent “egregious, extra-constitutional violation of rights” that many Americans find so objectionable.
However, Madrid warned that Democrats wasted a similar opportunity after the unrest around the killing of George Floyd by calling to “defund the police,” which was politically unpopular, and could fall into a similar pitfall if they push for abolishing ICE.
“You’ve got a moment here where you can either fix [ICE], or lean into the political moment and say ‘abolish it,’” he said. “The question becomes, can Democrats run offense? Or will they do what they too often have done with this issue, which is snatch defeat from the jaws of victory?”
Susie Wiles, left, the White House chief of staff in the Trump administration, may be a key witness for the defense in the upcoming trial in Miami of ex-GOP congressman David Rivera. Rivera, who represented a district in Miami-Dade, is accused of being an unregistered agent for Venezuela. When Wiles was a lobbyist, she represented a Venezuelan media company trying to expand into the U.S. market.
Win McNamee
Getty Images
Soon after Susie Wiles ran Donald Trump’s successful 2016 presidential campaign in Florida, she moved to Washington to join Brian Ballard’s lobbying firm, which was mainly known for its political clout and connections to Florida’s GOP governors.
With her ties to Trump, Wiles brought an instant cachet to Ballard Partners. Among the firm’s new stable of D.C. clients was an improbable, though wealthy, Venezuelan businessman, Raul Gorrin, who was close to President Nicolás Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez, the leader of Venezuela’s socialist revolution.
Gorrin, a lawyer who owned a TV station in Caracas, retained Ballard’s firm in June 2017 to help him expand Globovision as a Spanish-speaking television affiliate in the United States — a challenge given that the city of Miami had declared him persona non grata because of his ties to Maduro. The Federal Communications Commission also has strict limits on foreign ownership of U.S. TV and radio stations.
Gorrin was also hoping to gain access to the new Trump administration, which was threatening economic sanctions against the Maduro regime and Venezuela’s oil industry.
Wiles, whom Trump picked as his White House chief of staff after he won a second presidential term in 2024, may soon have to face questions about her and her former lobbying firm’s relationship with Gorrin. An upcoming federal trial in Miami focuses on criminal charges against former Miami-Dade Republican Congressman David Rivera and political consultant Esther Nuhfer, who are accused of secretly lobbying for the Venezuelan government in 2017 and 2018. Wiles could not be reached for comment this week.
Former U.S. Rep. David Rivera walks out of court after his first Miami federal court appearance before Magistrate Judge Jonathan Goodman on Tuesday, Dec. 20, 2022. Pedro Portal Miami Herald file
The defense team’s effort to seek the testimony of Wiles, as well as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Florida’s former U.S. senator, has heightened the stakes of the high-profile case, which is headed for trial a few months after Trump sent the U.S. military to Venezuela in early January to seize Maduro. He and his wife, Cilia Flores, are being held at a federal lockup on drug-trafficking charges in New York.
Lawyers for Rivera and Nuhfer are seeking Wiles’ testimony at the trial starting in mid-March. Rivera and Nuhfer are accused of being unregistered foreign agents for the Venezuelan government. They’re also accused of trying to “normalize” relations between the Maduro regime and the United States while Rivera’s consulting firm landed a head-turning $50-million lobbying contract with the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company.
The two defendants have strongly denied the allegations, and hope to undercut the government’s case by showing they were not doing Maduro’s bidding but rather were attempting to get him removed from power. They also want to show that Wiles’ former lobbying firm was attempting to lobby Trump, on behalf of Gorrin, to bring about a regime change in Venezuela.
The lead federal prosecutor, Harold Schimkat, said at a Miami federal court hearing last week that the government will try to quash Wiles’ subpoena, saying: “We don’t see her connection to this case at all.”
But defense attorneys for Rivera and Nuhfer wrote a letter to the White House seeking Wiles as a witness, saying they want to question the former Ballard lobbyist about her “extensive communications” regarding the firm’s $50,000-a-month representation of Gorrin in 2017 and 2018.
The lawyers plan to question her and other Ballard lobbyists about their work to expand Gorrin’s Venezuelan TV station onto AT&T and Comcast broadcast platforms in the United States. But they also want to ask her about what they view as the Ballard firm’s discreet effort to help Gorrin gain access to Trump and other high-ranking officials to broker a regime change in Venezuela — a critical message that they say would help Rivera and Nuhfer’s defense.
Key letter written by Wiles’ former lobbying firm
The lawyers plan to zero in on a Ballard-drafted letter obtained by the Miami Herald that underscored Gorrin’s goal to ease out Maduro as Venezuela’s president and replace him with an opposition leader aligned with the U.S. government. Their bold bid to subpoena Wiles also parallels their effort to seek similar testimony from Rubio, who as Florida’s senator privately met with Rivera, Nuhfer and Gorrin at a hotel in Washington in 2017.
“I happen to know that my government wants a way out, a way to save their skins and fortunes,” says the June 24, 2017, draft letter, which Gorrin had hoped to deliver to Trump at a presidential victory event in Washington four days later. “The opposition, on the other hand, wants a way in but is not unified in how to achieve its goals.
“The domestic violence and poverty and failure of our economic infrastructure is killing my beautiful country,” the letter, signed by Gorrin, goes on to say. “Please tell me who I can work with in your administration to bring about the change we desperately need.”
Gorrin had wanted to deliver the letter to the president at a Trump victory event at the Trump International Hotel on June 28, 2017, but was unable to do so because of restrictions imposed by the Secret Service. While he attended the event, Gorrin never met Trump.
Gorrin meets with Pence in Doral
Later that year, el Nuevo Herald reported that Gorrin met then-Vice President Mike Pence at an event in Doral where he gave a speech to Venezuelan supporters. Brian Ballard set up the meeting between Gorrin and Pence after his lobbying firm retained Gorrin as a client in June 2017, according to lawyers for Rivera and Nuhfer.
Globovisión president Raúl Gorrín shakes hands with Vice President Mike Pence after Pence spoke at an event in Doral, Florida, in 2017. Miami Herald File
At the time, Ballard Partners denied any knowledge of Gorrín’s efforts to influence the Trump administration’s approach to Venezuela or shape a transition of power, el Nuevo Herald reported.
“We’re trying to serve Globovision’s needs in U.S. markets and in various other regulatory things that come up,” Brian Ballard, the firm’s founder and a former lobbyist for Trump’s Florida business dealings, said back then.
Ballard, who authorized taking on Gorrin as a client, is expected to be called as a witness at the trial of Rivera and Nuhfer. He declined an interview request from the Herald.
In a statement issued this week by his lobbying firm’s lawyer, Curt Miner, Brian Ballard stressed that it “had no involvement in Mr. Rivera’s consulting contract with PDVSA,” Venezuela’s national oil company. The state-owned company’s U.S. subsidiary, PDV USA, hired Rivera’s consulting company in March 2017.
“Ballard Partners’ work for Globovision involved Globovision’s efforts to expand its TV network into the U.S. market,” Ballard said in the statement to the Herald. “We fully complied with all legal and regulatory requirements in our work for Globovision. Ballard Partners, if needed, stands ready to be a witness at the trial.”
Technically, Ballard Partners registered as a lobbyist for Gorrin’s company, Globovision, not the businessman himself. But the Washington lobbying firm did not have to register with the government as a foreign agent because of an exemption for representing a nonpolitical, commercial client.
Trump’s presidency has been good for Ballard’s business. The Tallahassee-based firm reported $88.3 million in federal lobbying revenue in 2025. Ballard, which quadrupled its revenue over 2024 and now ranks as the top lobbying firm in Washington, also recently announced an expansion of its consulting services focusing on Venezuela, Latin America, Mexico, Canada and Greenland — in the aftermath of Maduro’s ouster as president.
Letter implores Trump to help broker change in Venezuela
Ballard’s statement to the Herald, however, did not address his lobbying firm’s draft letter for Gorrin. The letter begins with Gorrin complimenting Trump about his “patriotism” and agenda “to make America great again,” saying he has “no doubt” that the president “will succeed.”
“I too am a businessman from Venezuela and love my country,” the letter said. “I want for my country exactly what you are doing for America. I want to make Venezuela great again. We need change and dialogue and peace and progress and democracy.”
“I believe in my heart and soul that if you could direct me to someone in your administration to work with, I will devote every waking minute to a successful resolution of the crisis in Venezuela,” the letter continued. “Like you, I am a businessman who also understands how to negotiate through complicated problems.”
The draft letter for Gorrin was a project handled by another partner in Ballard’s lobbying firm, Sylvester Lukis, according to emails between Lukis and others, including a Miami businessman, Hugo Perera, who also communicated with Gorrin about the letter.
It is unclear if Wiles knew about the draft letter. Other emails show that she was focused on promoting Gorrin’s TV station, Globovision, and corresponded by email with one of the network’s executives as well as Gorrin, Lukis, Ballard, Perera and others, records show.
Fisher Island neighbors
In 2017, Nuhfer introduced Rivera to Perera, who then put them together with Gorrin, who was Perera’s neighbor on exclusive Fisher Island. In turn, Gorrin helped Rivera land his $50-million contract with Venezuela’s oil subsidiary, PDV USA, known as Citgo, which is based in Houston.
Court records show that PDV USA paid Rivera $20 million over a few months in 2017 for “international strategic consulting services,” but then cut him off, saying in a 2020 lawsuit that he did not perform much work to help the company expand its refining business in the United States.
For making the introductions to Gorrin, Rivera paid Perera about $5 million, but has since had a falling out with him. Perera was not charged in the government’s case against Rivera and Nuhfer. Instead, he is cooperating as a witness against them, which has led to Rivera suing him.
Separately, as part of his PDV USA contract, Rivera also paid about $4 million each to Nuhfer and Gorrin. During this same period in 2017, Nuhfer also had a separate consulting contract with Gorrin to push the expansion of his TV station, Globovision, into the U.S. market. Gorrin paid $3.75 million to Nuhfer, Rivera and Perera, according to court records.
This was separate from the $50,000-a-month retainer Globovision had with Ballard Partners to lobby on its behalf.
“The actual reason for the payment, as Ms. Wiles’ similar and concurrent Globovision efforts can corroborate, was likewise to expand Globovision onto ATT and Comcast broadcast platforms and had nothing to do whatever with the normalization of relations for the Venezuelan government of President Maduro,” according to a Dec. 22, 2025, letter sent by lawyers for Rivera and Nuhfer to the White House seeking Wiles’ testimony at their trial.
However, according to their indictment, Rivera and Nuhfer arranged meetings with an unidentified U.S. senator in Washington — Rubio —on two occasions at a private residence and a hotel in the nation’s capital to discuss the U.S.-Venezuelan normalization plan in 2017.
Rivera told Rubio at the residence that Gorrin had persuaded Maduro to accept a deal whereby he would hold free and fair elections, the indictment says. Then, Rivera, Nuhfer and Gorrin met with Rubio at the hotel, with a Venezuelan opposition leader participating by phone, to discuss Venezuela’s issues.
But Gorrin ultimately informed Rivera and Nuhfer that Maduro “refused to agree to hold free and fair elections in Venezuela in exchange for reconciliation with the United States,” according to the indictment.
In a statement, Rivera, who served as a Miami-Dade congressman for one term from 2011 to 2013, has defended his actions by saying he was really working for the U.S. subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company — not directly as a consultant for the Venezuelan government in the United States — and therefore he didn’t need to register as a foreign agent.
Rivera has also said that his work for PDVSA’s subsidiary in the United States had nothing to do with his separate lobbying efforts that aimed to remove Maduro from power and replace him with an opposition leader.
“Every leader of the Venezuelan opposition I worked with in 2017 — Julio Borges, Lilian Tintori, Henry Ramos Allup — was all done through Raul Gorrin,” Rivera told the Miami Herald. “I met them all through Gorrin.
“When Brian Ballard asked me if Gorrin would help the White House get opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez of prison, Gorrin immediately said yes and helped get Lopez released days later,” Rivera said.
Ballard did not address this or other related matters with the Herald.
Lopez was released from a Venezuelan military prison to house arrest in July 2017, after serving over three years of a nearly 14-year sentence for leading anti-government protests against Maduro. Lopez fled to Spain in 2020.
Ultimately, Gorrin’s efforts on multiple lobbying fronts failed to pan out in the United States. Instead, the first Trump administration imposed sanctions on the Maduro government, Venezuela’s oil industry, government officials and others, including Gorrin.
Gorrin charged in Miami federal court
Gorrin, who is still in Venezuela, was charged in 2018 and again in 2024 with foreign corruption and money laundering in Miami federal court. Ballard stopped representing Gorrin in August 2018, citing a Miami Herald story that had revealed Gorrin was under criminal investigation.
In late 2024, Rivera was charged separately in Washington, with being an unregistered agent for Gorrin. He was accused of trying to lobby a Trump administration official between 2019 and 2020 on behalf of the Venezuelan businessman, whom federal authorities say paid the former congressman $5.5 million while trying to get himself removed from the government’s sanctions list.
Gorrin, who is considered a fugitive by federal prosecutors, provided the Herald with a brief statement through Rivera.
“Susie Wiles was always very professional and very capable,” Gorrin said. “President Trump is fortunate to have her by his side.”
Democratic lawmakers and candidates for office around the country increasingly are returning to the phrase, popularized during the first Trump administration, as they react to this administration’s forceful immigration enforcement tactics.
The fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Nicole Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent this month in Minneapolis sparked immediate outrage among Democratic officials, who proposed a variety of oversight demands — including abolishing the agency — to rein in tactics they view as hostile and sometimes illegal.
Resurrecting the slogan is perhaps the riskiest approach. Republicans pounced on the opportunity to paint Democrats, especially those in vulnerable seats, as extremists.
An anti-ICE activist in an inflatable costume stands next to a person with a sign during a protest near Legacy Emanuel Hospital on Jan. 10 in Portland, Ore. The demonstration follows the Jan. 7 fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis as well as the shooting of two individuals in Portland on Jan. 8 by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.
(Mathieu Lewis-Rolland / Getty Images)
“If their response is to dust off ‘defund ICE,’ we’re happy to take that fight any day of the week,” said Christian Martinez, a spokesperson for the National Republican Congressional Committee. The group has published dozens of press statements in recent weeks accusing Democrats of wanting to abolish ICE — even those who haven’t made direct statements using the phrase.
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) amplified that message Wednesday, writing on social media that “When Democrats say they want to abolish or defund ICE, what they are really saying is they want to go back to the open borders policies of the Biden administration. The American people soundly rejected that idea in the 2024 election.”
The next day, Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) introduced the “Abolish ICE Act,” stating that Good’s killing “proved that ICE is out of control and beyond reform.” The bill would rescind the agency’s “unobligated” funding and redirect other assets to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security.
Many Democrats calling for an outright elimination of ICE come from the party’s progressive wing. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) said in a television interview the agency should be abolished because actions taken by its agents are “racist” and “rogue.” Jack Schlossberg, who is running for a House seat in New York, said that “if Trump’s ICE is shooting and kidnapping people, then abolish it.”
Other prominent progressives have stopped short of saying the agency should be dismantled.
A pair of protesters set up signs memorializing people who have been arrested by ICE, or have died in detention, at a rally in front of the Federal Building in Los Angeles on Friday.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Sen. Alex Padilla, (D-Calif.) who last year was forcefully handcuffed and removed from a news conference hosted by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, joined a protest in Washington to demand justice for Good, saying “It’s time to get ICE and CBP out,” referring to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
“This is a moment where all of us have to be forceful to ensure that we are pushing back on what is an agency right now that is out of control,” Rep. Robert Garcia, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on social media. “We have to be loud and clear that ICE is not welcome in our communities.”
Rep. Ken Calvert (R-Corona) said Democrats seeking to abolish ICE “want to go back to the open borders policies of the Biden administration.”
(Jose Luis Magana / Associated Press)
Others have eyed negotiations over the yearly Homeland Security budget as a leverage point to incorporate their demands, such as requiring federal agents to remove their masks and to turn on their body-worn cameras when on duty, as well as calling for agents who commit crimes on the job to be prosecuted. Seventy House Democrats, including at least 13 from California, backed a measure to impeach Noem.
Rep. Mike Levin (D-San Diego), who serves on the House Committee on Appropriations, said his focus is not on eliminating the agency, which he believes has an “important responsibility” but has been led astray by Noem.
He said Noem should be held to account for her actions through congressional oversight hearings, not impeachment — at least not while Republicans would be in control of the proceedings, since he believes House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) would make a “mockery” of them.
“I am going to use the appropriations process,” Levin said, adding that he would “continue to focus on the guardrails, regardless of the rhetoric.”
Chuck Rocha, a Democratic political strategist, said Republicans seized on the abolitionist rhetoric as a scare tactic to distract from the rising cost of living, which remains another top voter concern.
“They hope to distract [voters] by saying, ‘Sure, we’re going to get better on the economy — but these Democrats are still crazy,’” he said.
Dozens of Angelenos and D.C.-area organizers, along with local activists, rally in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on Friday. Democrats have for years struggled to put forward a unified vision on immigration — one of the top issues that won President Trump a return to the White House.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Democrats have for years struggled to put forward a unified vision on immigration — one of the top issues that won President Trump a return to the White House. Any deal to increase guardrails on Homeland Security faces an uphill battle in the Republican-controlled Congress, leaving many proposals years away from the possibility of fruition. Even if Democrats manage to block the yearly funding bill, the agency still has tens of billions of dollars from Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
Still, the roving raids, violent clashes with protesters and detentions and deaths of U.S. citizens and immigrants alike increased the urgency many lawmakers feel to do something.
Two centrist groups released memos last week written by former Homeland Security officials under the Biden administration urging Democrats to avoid the polarizing language and instead channel their outrage into specific reforms.
“Every call to abolish ICE risks squandering one of the clearest opportunities in years to secure meaningful reform of immigration enforcement — while handing Republicans exactly the fight they want,” wrote the authors of one memo, from the Washington-based think tank Third Way.
“Advocating for abolishing ICE is tantamount to advocating for stopping enforcement of all of our immigration laws in the interior of the United States — a policy position that is both wrong on the merits and at odds with the American public on the issue,” wrote Blas Nuñez-Neto, a senior policy fellow at the new think tank the Searchlight Institute who previously was assistant Homeland Security secretary.
Roughly 46% of Americans said they support the idea of abolishing ICE, while 43% are opposed, according to a YouGov/Economist poll released last week.
Sarah Pierce, a former policy analyst at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services who co-wrote the Third Way memo, said future polls might show less support for abolishing the agency, particularly if the question is framed as a choice among options including reforms such as banning agents from wearing masks or requiring use of body cameras.
“There’s no doubt there will be further tragedies and with each, the effort to take an extreme position like abolishing ICE increases,” she said.
Laura Hernandez, executive director of Freedom for Immigrants, a California-based organization that advocates for the closure of detention centers, said the increase in lawmakers calling to abolish ICE is long overdue.
“We need lawmakers to use their power to stop militarized raids, to close detention centers and we need them to shut down ICE and CBP,” she said. “This violence that people are seeing on television is not new, it’s literally built into the DNA of DHS.”
Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-Mich.) introduced the “Abolish ICE Act.”
(Paul Sancya / Associated Press)
Cinthya Martinez, a UC Santa Cruz professor who has studied the movement to abolish ICE, noted that it stems from the movement to abolish prisons. The abolition part, she said, is watered down by mainstream politicians even as some liken immigration agents to modern-day slave patrols.
Martinez said the goal is about more than simply getting rid of one agency or redirecting its duties to another. She pointed out that alongside ICE agents have been Border Patrol, FBI and ATF agents.
“A lot of folks forget that prison abolition is to completely abolish carceral systems. It comes from a Black tradition that says prison is a continuation of slavery,” she said.
But Peter Markowitz, a law professor and co-director of the Immigration Justice Clinic at the Cardozo School of Law, said the movement to abolish ICE around 2018 among mainstream politicians was always about having effective and humane immigration enforcement, not about having none.
“But it fizzled because it didn’t have an answer to the policy question that follows: If not ICE, then what?” he said. “I hope we’re in a different position today.”
A Los Angeles County district attorney’s office employee was “wrongfully detained” by federal immigration agents on Friday, according to an internal e-mail obtained by The Times.
L.A. County Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman called the incident “unacceptable” in an office-wide memo sent out on Friday evening.
“A member of our Office was wrongfully detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). I can thankfully report that, shortly after, our employee was released and is safe,” Hochman wrote. “This incident is unacceptable. Our employee is a dedicated public servant who serves the people of Los Angeles County with professionalism and integrity. This troubling situation caused great distress to our colleague, our co-worker’s family, and our entire Office family.”
The reason for the person’s detention was not immediately clear. A spokesman for Hochman declined to comment further and referred questions to ICE. Representatives for ICE did not respond to inquiries from The Times. .
Two law enforcement officials with knowledge of the incident, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to talk candidly, said the employee was not a prosecutor. The employee was also not engaged in protest activity, the officials said.
In the e-mail, Hochman said he personally reached out to federal authorities on Friday to make them aware of the situation and “urge them to be more respectful of the rights of those who reside in our community and ensure this wrongful conduct does not occur again.”
In the months since ICE and Border Patrol agents began carrying out President Trump’s sweeping immigration raids in U.S. cities, civil liberties groups have repeatedly sued the Department of Justice alleging agents are making stops based on race rather than reasonable suspicion.
After ICE and Border Patrol agents spent months raiding car washes and Home Depot parking lots around L.A. County, a federal judge in October found sufficient evidence that agents were violating the 4th Amendment by relying on the race, language and vocation of targeted individuals to form “reasonable suspicion” for arrest.
The American Civil Liberties Union recently lodged a lawsuit against federal authorities on similar grounds over their behavior during chaotic and tense raids in Minneapolis. The Trump administration has maintained it is conducting tightly targeted operations and only going after the “worst of the worst,” but data show many of those arrested in Los Angeles during the raids had no criminal record.
A day after a woman in Minneapolis was killed by an immigration federal agent, clergy leaders and advocates gathered on the steps of the downtown Los Angeles federal immigration building to honor her and denounce the killing.
Holding printed out photos of Nicole Renee Good, the woman shot in the head by a federal immigration agent, a crowd of about 100 people gathered on Thursday morning for a vigil organized by the Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice and joined by immigrant rights groups. They held signs that read “Justice for Renee.”
“We stand holding the fear and the terror and the sorrow, the deep grief that has transpired needlessly,” said Rev. Francisco Garcia. “Murder at the hands of our tax dollars. State sanctioned. This cannot be, this cannot stand, and we offer our continued witness to stand against these atrocities, against this evil.”
A woman protests the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good, while joining dozens who protested her death Wednesday by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on January 8, 2026.
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
One woman held a sign that read: “End ICE death squads.”
Good, a mother of three who had recently moved to Minneapolis, was driving her car Wednesday morning when she was stopped by federal immigration agents. Videos of the shooting have spread online and appear to show Good, 37, being told to get out of her car, with one agent walking and prying at the door handle. She is seen backing up when another agent stands in front of her car and, as she appears to drive forward, shoots her.
Good’s death has sparked protests that has put the city on edge as protesters have filled the streets, and similar protests have spread across the country.
In Sacramento, police said protesters vandalized a federal building during a march in response to the shooting. TV station KCRA reported that the protest was largely peaceful until a small group of protesters pushed open a security gate and threw rocks at parked cars and the building.
Ampara Rincon, holding a photo of Renee Nicole Good, watches as protesters leave flowers in Good’s memory a day after her shooting death by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on January 8, 2026.
The Trump administration has defended the agent’s action, with Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling it an “act of domestic terrorism” against ICE officers and accused Good of trying to run the agent over.
For months, the administration has contended that federal immigration actions are necessary in carrying out Trump’s mandate to secure the borders. On Thursday, the DHS released statistics that officials say demonstrate that ICE agents have faced an increase in vehicular assaults.
Local leaders have disputed the administration’s narrative that agents were defending themselves as Good attempted to run them down, with Mayor Jacob Frey calling the claim a “garbage narrative.” He called on the agency to withdraw its agents from the city.
For months, clergy leaders have organized vigils and marches in the downtown area after immigration raids began in Los Angeles last year. This time, they felt compelled to speak out because even though Minneapolis is some 1,900 miles away, Good’s death has been felt across the country, Rev. Carlos Rincon said.
“It’s a life that was taken in a horrible way,” Rincon said. “I felt that it was very important to be present, to lament, to pray, but also to denounce. You know what this administration is doing because it comes from the President.”
As an immigrant himself, Rincon said he has attended protests to bear witness. When a large protest broke out in Paramount last year, Rincon was there with a Bible and dressed in clergy wear to help de-escalate the conflict. Instead, he said, he was shot with rubber bullets and tear gassed by agents. Violent confrontations between federal immigration agents and bystanders have continued, and Rincon feared a moment like this was bound to happen.
“She made the ultimate sacrifice on behalf of our community, and I wanted to honor her,” he said.
For many, the shooting was a sign of escalation by an administration that they said has turned against its own citizens. In California, ICE agents have opened fire while conducting immigration stops. On Aug. 16, masked U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers surrounded a man driving his truck and smashed his driver’s side window. When he tried to drive away, one agent shot at the truck three times, leaving bullet holes in the side of the car.
Dozens attend a protest over the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good who was shot dead Wednesday by an ICE agent in Minneapolis, in front of the Federal Building in downtown Los Angeles on January 8, 2026.
In Chicago, Border Patrol agents shot a woman several times after they accused her of ramming her vehicle into an agent’s car. She was charged with felony assault, but the charges were ultimately dropped.
“We are experiencing fascism by an administration who is at war with its own citizens,” Martha Arevalo, executive director of CARECEN LA, said. “What we are seeing all over the country is unprecedented, and it’s an attack against all of us, undocumented or citizen, it doesn’t matter. We’re all at risk. We should all be worried. We should all be outraged.”
L.A. resident Kelsey Harper said she felt angry and shocked when she learned of Good’s death. She felt compelled to attend the event and support an end to immigration raids and violent confrontations.
“This only ends if enough people are active about it,” Harper said. “The most we can do is show up for each other.”
SACRAMENTO — The U.S. Department of Justice sued California on Monday to block newly passed laws that prohibit law enforcement officials, including federal immigration agents, from wearing masks and that require them to identify themselves.
Atty. Gen. Pamela Bondi said the laws were unconsitutional and endanger federal officers.
“California’s anti-law enforcement policies discriminate against the federal government and are designed to create risk for our agents,” Bondi said in a statement. “These laws cannot stand.”
The governor recently signed Senate Bill 627, which bans federal officers from wearing masks during enforcement duties, and Senate Bill 805, which requires federal officers without a uniform to visibly display their name or badge number during operations. Both measures were introduced as a response to the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration raids that are often conducted by masked agents in plainclothes and unmarked cars.
The lawsuit, which names the state of California, Gov. Gavin Newsom and state Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta as defendants, asserts the laws are unconstitutional as only the federal government has the authority to control its agents and any requirements about their uniforms. It further argued that federal agents need to conceal their identities at times due to the nature of their work.
“Given the personal threats and violence that agents face, federal law enforcement agencies allow their officers to choose whether to wear masks to protect their identities and provide an extra layer of security,” the lawsuit states. “Denying federal agencies and officers that choice would chill federal law enforcement and deter applicants for law enforcement positions.”
Federal agents will not comply with either law, the lawsuit states.
“The Federal Government would be harmed if forced to comply with either Act, and also faces harm from the real threat of criminal liability for noncompliance,” the lawsuit states. “Accordingly, the challenged laws are invalid under the Supremacy Clause and their application to the Federal Government should be preliminarily and permanently enjoined.”
Newsom previously said it was unacceptable for “secret police” to grab people off the streets, and that the new laws were needed to help the public differentiate between imposters and legitimate federal law officers.
The governor, however, acknowledged the legislation could use more clarifications about safety gear and other exemptions. He directed lawmakers to work on a follow-up bill next year.
In a Monday statement, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who introduced SB 627, said the FBI recently warned that “secret police tactics” are undermining public safety.
“Despite what these would-be authoritarians claim, no one is above the law,” said Wiener. “We’ll see you in court.”
Ever since the Trump immigration raids began in Los Angeles in June, local leaders and community activists have criticized agents for sometimes making it difficult to identify them as federal law enforcement officials or refusing to identify themselves at all.
Now, an unexpected new group has expressed its own concerns: the FBI.
Citing a string of incidents in which masked criminals posing as immigration officers robbed and kidnapped victims, the FBI recently issued a memo suggesting agents clearly identify themselves while they’re in the field.
The FBI explained its reasoning in a three-page document sent to police agencies across the country last month.
In the memo, the FBI says that criminals impersonating law enforcement “damages trust” between them and the community and that law enforcement has an “opportunity” to better coordinate with their local, state and federal partners. It calls for informational campaigns to educate the public about impostors and for agents to show their identification when asked while out in the field.
Undocumented immigrants and U.S. citizens have been detained by masked people on city streets, in hospitals, courthouses, and outside schools and places of worship over the last several months. California has banned the use of masks among law enforcement agencies, but on Tuesday a cadre of masked agents gathered in an offsite Dodger Stadium parking lot while carrying out more raids.
A man seeking asylum from Colombia is detained by federal agents as he attends his court hearing in immigration court in New York City.
(Michael M. Santiago / Getty Images)
The FBI’s memo, obtained through a records request by the national security transparency nonprofit Property of the People, was prepared by the New York field office and first reported by Wired magazine. It details several instances where people impersonated immigration agents.
In Florida, a man pretending to be an ICE agent kidnapped a woman who was in the process of becoming a U.S. citizen. The suspect approached the woman on April 21, claimed he was there to pick her up and showed her his shirt that read ICE, the FBI said. The woman got in the suspect’s car and he drove her to an apartment complex, but she was able to escape.
In August, three men in black clothing and wearing vests robbed a New York restaurant and stole from their ATM. The suspects also beat the employees and tied them up. One of the employees willingly surrendered to the suspects when they heard them identify themselves as immigration agents, the FBI said.
The FBI also pointed to an April social media post where a man wearing a black jacket with an ICE patch stood outside a hardware store to intimidate day laborers. An image circulating on social media matching the description of the incident showed the man also wearing a red Trump hat.
“I don’t know if there is federal law that requires a standard police uniform,” David Levine, a professor of law at UC San Francisco said. “It’s good practice to have a distinguishing uniform. Because when you have federal agents dressing as ruffians, with scarves over their faces and glasses in a paramilitary fashion, then it’s so much easier for people to impersonate them.”
The FBI’s national press office did not respond to requests for comment, citing the government shutdown in an automated email response.
U.S. Border Patrol march after a show of force outside the Japanese American National Museum where Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a press conference on Aug. 14 in Los Angeles.
Levine says it’s a person’s constitutional right under the 4th Amendment to ask a masked, federal agent to identify themselves.
“It takes a cool head under a tense moment to ask someone, ‘What’s your name? I can’t see your badge? Can you identify yourself?’” Levine said. “It’s practically impossible to ask all of that when you’re being thrown to the ground. But you do have the right to ask.”
There are plenty of examples of people impersonating law enforcement in California in recent years.
In April 2018, Luis Flores-Mendoza of Santa Ana was sentenced to eight months in prison for posing as a federal immigration officer in an attempt to extort $5,000 from a woman, who reported him to the police. The following month, Matthew Ryan Johnston of Fontana was sentenced to two years in federal prison for impersonating an ICE agent. In 2023 and 2024, police in Southern California announced arrests in two separate cases where men were accused of impersonating police to conduct traffic stops.
State officials have sounded the alarm as well because of the Trump administration’s approach.
Earlier this year, after federal immigration raids in the Central Valley, two Fresno men were accused of posing as federal immigration agents and recording themselves harassing local businesses. The Fresno Police Department said the pair, who wore wigs and black tactical vests with letters deliberately covered up so they read “Police” and “ICE,” confronted people at nearly a dozen businesses. The department said the men appeared to have done it for social media purposes and declined to release their names.
Raymond Cruz, 56, places a sign on part of a “No Ice” mural in Inglewood on July 1.
(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
In March, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta issued a warning to Californians about the rise of ICE impersonators and scammers looking to take “advantage of the fear and uncertainty created by Trump’s mass deportation policies. “
“Let me be clear: If you seek to scam or otherwise take advantage of California’s immigrant communities, you will be held accountable,” Bonta said.
In June, two additional local cases popped up that weren’t included on the FBI memo.
In one, Huntington Park police arrested a man who they suspected of posing as a Border Patrol agent. Police said the man possessed an unlicensed handgun and copies of U.S. Homeland Security removal notices and a list of radio codes for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Huntington Park Police Chief Cosme Lozano speaks at a press conference after a 23-year-old man from Los Angeles was arrested by Huntington Park Police on suspicion of impersonating a law enforcement officer.
(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)
In the other, police in Los Angeles County arrested a man driving a decommissioned police cruiser with control lights and a siren. Authorities allege he had cocaine, a forged Homeland Security investigator’s badge and a pellet gun in his car.
In a statement, Property of the People Executive Director Ryan Shapiro said, “It’s rich the FBI thinks ICE has a PR problem in immigrant communities because of impersonators, while masked and militarized ICE agents are waging a daily campaign of terror against those very communities.”
“Anyone caught impersonating a federal immigration agent will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” a senior Homeland Security official said.
“Anyone who comes into immediate contact with an individual whom they believe is impersonating an immigration officer, or any law enforcement officer, should immediately contact their local law enforcement agency,” the official said.
Kash Patel, director of the FBI, left, President Trump, center, and Pam Bondi, U.S. attorney general, during a news conference in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 15.
(Jo Lo Scalzo/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
In a statement to The Times, the office of Mayor Karen Bass said it’s unacceptable for law enforcement officers to operate without properly identifying themselves.
“The Mayor has been supportive of state legislation that would require immigration officers to identify themselves as well as make it a crime for law enforcement officers to wear a face covering while performing their duties, except for specific circumstances such as protection from hazardous smoke.”
Los Angeles Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez, whose district includes MacArthur Park, Cypress Park and Pico Union, said the FBI’s memo simply confirms what locals have known all along, even as they create “confusion, fear, chaos and real danger.”
“Now even the FBI, under an administration that has aggressively expanded unconstitutional immigration enforcement, has confirmed that when agents don’t clearly identify themselves, it opens the door for violent impersonators to prey on vulnerable families,” Hernandez said in a statement. “That’s exactly why I co-authored the council motion requiring the LAPD to verify the identity of anyone claiming to be a law enforcement officer, and to strengthen penalties for impersonating an officer. When even Trump’s FBI is warning that unidentified agents put us at risk, it’s a clear sign that this problem can’t be ignored any longer.”
Still, not everyone thinks agents will heed the FBI’s advice. Even if agents were to begin identifying themselves during sweeps, the distrust stemming from the raids in the summer will stay with community members for some time, advocates say.
“I don’t expect them to all of a sudden start walking around with no mask or start walking around and identifying themselves,” said Leo Martinez of VC Defensa, a coalition of local groups dedicated to protecting the immigrant and refugee populations of Ventura County. “More than anything, I think it’s a way for the FBI to put a little bit of distance between themselves and the ICE agents in the public relations sphere, but not really on the ground.”
A senior Border Patrol official who has become the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles and Chicago is due in court Tuesday to take questions about the enforcement operation in the Chicago area, which has produced more than 1,800 arrests and complaints of excessive force.The hearing comes after a judge earlier this month ordered uniformed immigration agents to wear body cameras, the latest step in a lawsuit by news outlets and protesters who say federal agents used excessive force, including using tear gas, during protests against immigration operations.Greg Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, one of nine sectors on the Mexican border, is himself accused of throwing tear gas canisters at protesters.U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis initially said agents must wear badges, and she banned them from using certain riot control techniques against peaceful protesters and journalists. She later said she was concerned agents were not following her order after seeing footage of street confrontations involving tear gas during the administration’s Operation Midway Blitz, and she modified the order to also require body cameras.Ellis last week extended questioning of Bovino from two hours to five because she wants to hear about agents’ recent use of force in the city’s Mexican enclave of Little Village. During an enforcement operation last week in Little Village and the adjacent suburb of Cicero, at least eight people, including four U.S. citizens, were detained before protesters gathered at the scene, local officials said.The attorneys representing a coalition of news outlets and protesters claim Bovino himself violated the order in Little Village and filed a still image of video footage where he was allegedly “throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.”Over the weekend, masked federal agents and unmarked SUVs were spotted on the city’s wealthier, predominantly white North side neighborhoods of Lakeview and Lincoln Park, where footage showed chemical agents deployed on a residential street. Federal agents have been seen and videotaped deploying tear gas in residential streets a number of times over the past few weeks.Bovino also led the immigration operation in Los Angeles in recent months, leading to thousands of arrests. Agents smashed car windows, blew open a door to a house and patrolled MacArthur Park on horseback. In Chicago, similar Border Patrol operations have led to viral footage of tense confrontations with protesters.At a previous hearing, Ellis questioned Kyle Harvick, deputy incident commander with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Shawn Byers, deputy field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about their agencies’ use of force policies and the distribution of body cameras. Harvick said there are about 200 Border Patrol employees in the Chicago area, and those who are part of Operation Midway Blitz have cameras. But Byers said more money from Congress would be needed to expand camera use beyond two of that agency’s field offices.
CHICAGO —
A senior Border Patrol official who has become the face of the Trump administration’s immigration crackdowns in Los Angeles and Chicago is due in court Tuesday to take questions about the enforcement operation in the Chicago area, which has produced more than 1,800 arrests and complaints of excessive force.
The hearing comes after a judge earlier this month ordered uniformed immigration agents to wear body cameras, the latest step in a lawsuit by news outlets and protesters who say federal agents used excessive force, including using tear gas, during protests against immigration operations.
Greg Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol sector in El Centro, California, one of nine sectors on the Mexican border, is himself accused of throwing tear gas canisters at protesters.
U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis initially said agents must wear badges, and she banned them from using certain riot control techniques against peaceful protesters and journalists. She later said she was concerned agents were not following her order after seeing footage of street confrontations involving tear gas during the administration’s Operation Midway Blitz, and she modified the order to also require body cameras.
Ellis last week extended questioning of Bovino from two hours to five because she wants to hear about agents’ recent use of force in the city’s Mexican enclave of Little Village. During an enforcement operation last week in Little Village and the adjacent suburb of Cicero, at least eight people, including four U.S. citizens, were detained before protesters gathered at the scene, local officials said.
The attorneys representing a coalition of news outlets and protesters claim Bovino himself violated the order in Little Village and filed a still image of video footage where he was allegedly “throwing tear gas into a crowd without justification.”
Over the weekend, masked federal agents and unmarked SUVs were spotted on the city’s wealthier, predominantly white North side neighborhoods of Lakeview and Lincoln Park, where footage showed chemical agents deployed on a residential street. Federal agents have been seen and videotaped deploying tear gas in residential streets a number of times over the past few weeks.
Bovino also led the immigration operation in Los Angeles in recent months, leading to thousands of arrests. Agents smashed car windows, blew open a door to a house and patrolled MacArthur Park on horseback. In Chicago, similar Border Patrol operations have led to viral footage of tense confrontations with protesters.
At a previous hearing, Ellis questioned Kyle Harvick, deputy incident commander with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, and Shawn Byers, deputy field office director for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, about their agencies’ use of force policies and the distribution of body cameras. Harvick said there are about 200 Border Patrol employees in the Chicago area, and those who are part of Operation Midway Blitz have cameras. But Byers said more money from Congress would be needed to expand camera use beyond two of that agency’s field offices.
Two people were injured, including a US marshal, during an immigration enforcement operation early Tuesday in Los Angeles, a law enforcement source tells CNN.An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s weapon discharged after an individual apparently rammed into a vehicle that was part of a team of ICE and US marshals engaged in immigration enforcement, the source said.The suspect’s condition is not currently known. The law enforcement source previously told CNN the suspect was “gravely wounded.”The US marshal who was injured in the incident is currently in stable condition, the US Marshals Central District of California confirmed in a statement.DHS said the incident took place during a “targeted enforcement traffic stop.”“ICE law enforcement officers, assisted by U.S. Marshals, pulled the illegal alien over in a standard law enforcement procedure. The illegal alien weaponized his vehicle and began ramming the law enforcement vehicle in an attempt to flee,” the agency said in a statement. “Fearing for the safety of the public and law enforcement, our officers followed their training and fired defensive shots. The illegal alien was shot in the elbow and one law enforcement officer was shot in the hand by a ricochet bullet. Both are in the hospital.”Investigators believe gunfire erupted after an ICE officer confronted the suspect’s vehicle and smashed a window with their service weapon, the law enforcement source said. While attempting to grab the suspect, authorities believe the agent’s weapon discharged, striking both the suspect and a deputy US marshal.CNN has reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department for more information.See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
LOS ANGELES —
Two people were injured, including a US marshal, during an immigration enforcement operation early Tuesday in Los Angeles, a law enforcement source tells CNN.
An Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent’s weapon discharged after an individual apparently rammed into a vehicle that was part of a team of ICE and US marshals engaged in immigration enforcement, the source said.
The suspect’s condition is not currently known. The law enforcement source previously told CNN the suspect was “gravely wounded.”
The US marshal who was injured in the incident is currently in stable condition, the US Marshals Central District of California confirmed in a statement.
DHS said the incident took place during a “targeted enforcement traffic stop.”
“ICE law enforcement officers, assisted by U.S. Marshals, pulled the illegal alien over in a standard law enforcement procedure. The illegal alien weaponized his vehicle and began ramming the law enforcement vehicle in an attempt to flee,” the agency said in a statement. “Fearing for the safety of the public and law enforcement, our officers followed their training and fired defensive shots. The illegal alien was shot in the elbow and one law enforcement officer was shot in the hand by a ricochet bullet. Both are in the hospital.”
Investigators believe gunfire erupted after an ICE officer confronted the suspect’s vehicle and smashed a window with their service weapon, the law enforcement source said. While attempting to grab the suspect, authorities believe the agent’s weapon discharged, striking both the suspect and a deputy US marshal.
CNN has reached out to the Los Angeles Police Department for more information.
Video footage that appears to show federal immigration agents using their vehicle to ram into the truck of an immigrant rights activist has sparked controversy and public outrage in the city of Oxnard, an agricultural town that has been the frequent target of immigration raids.
At the center of the controversy is a claim by federal agents that the activist was the aggressor, ramming into the agents’ vehicle.
The incident began shortly before 8 a.m. Thursday when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents notified the Oxnard Police Department that their vehicle had been rammed by a civilian’s vehicle near the intersection of 8th and A streets, according to Sgt. Martin Cook.
“We responded, and ICE agents detained an individual, and a crowd started to gather,” Cook said. “We were there to keep the peace and prevent any type of altercation with ICE or any other federal agency.”
Cook said that federal agencies took control of the investigation. He did not know if the person arrested by agents requested a police report and referred all questions to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees several agencies including ICE and Customs and Border Protection.
VC Defensa, an immigrant rights group that has been documenting immigration raids in the region, said on Instagram that one of its volunteers, whom the group identified as Leo Martinez, had been arrested.
The group also released video footage taken by eyewitnesses that they said showed that the allegation by federal agents against Martinez was false.
“ICE intentionally struck Leo’s truck and blocked his exit while Leo was exercising his right to observe ICE activity,” the group stated in one of its Instagram posts.
The video starts with a Jeep Cherokee with tinted windows tailing a dark gray truck before ramming into the passenger door on the driver’s side. The driver of the truck then pulls into a dirt lot, where the group says Martinez was arrested.
“This shameful escalation by ICE is nothing more than an attempt to intimidate those of conscience who are standing up against Trump’s assault on immigrants,” the group said on Instagram. “We will not be deterred, and we will continue to keep our communities safe.”
The incident is the latest controversy involving federal immigration agents that has not only sparked outrage among activists and residents but also raised questions about some of the claims agents previously have made.
Two months ago, federal immigration officers stopped Francisco Longoria in San Bernardino. During the encounter, Longoria, who was in his truck with his 18-year-old son and 23-year-old son-in-law, said he feared for their safety after masked officers shattered his car window, then he drove off and an officer fired several rounds at the truck.
Department of Homeland Security officials have said officers were injured during the encounter when Longoria tried to “run them down,” prompting one officer to “discharge his firearm in self-defense.”
In June, Arturo Hermosillo was accused of ramming his van against a federal agent’s vehicle when he was instructed by the agents to move his van back to make room for an ambulance for a woman who had been injured during an immigration sweep.
Hermosillo was reversing when he said a federal agent standing near the vehicle pushed in his side view mirror, blocking his view; Hermosillo subsequently bumped into a vehicle behind him. Shortly after, agents pulled him out of the van.
Assistant Secretary of Homeland Security Tricia McLaughlin told The Times in an email at the time that a person “rammed his vehicle into a law enforcement vehicle” during the June 19 operation
“CBP Agents were also assaulted during the operation and verbally harassed,” she said.
Videos of that day did not capture any assaults; they showed residents yelling at agents.
The incident in Oxnard mirrors a level of aggression by federal agents seen on the streets of Chicago.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment from The Times. In a statement to CNN, however, DHS said that claims that agency is using “harsher approaches” are “smearing” federal agents who “put their lives on the line every day to enforce the law.”
In downtown Los Angeles on Thursday, just outside of the Metropolitan Detention Center where a crowd had gathered with “Free Leo Now!” and “ICE out of L.A.” signs, they listened to Martinez as he thanked them for their support and their work.
“I knew I didn’ t do anything f— wrong; that’s why they released me with pending charges,” he told the crowd. “That’s what they do with pretty much a lot of our volunteers cause we didn’t do s— wrong.
“They smashed into me,” he continued as people clapped. “And then they tried to accuse me of assaulting them, what kind of bulls— is that?”
CHICAGO — Since the Trump administration announced its intention to accelerate and forcefully detain and deport thousands of immigrants here, the Chicago area is a split screen between everyday life and a city under siege.
As many people shop, go to work, walk their dogs and stroll with their friends through parks, others are being chased down, tear-gassed, detained and assaulted by federal agents carrying out immigration sweeps.
The situation is similar to what occurred in Los Angeles in summer, as ICE swept through Southern California, grabbing people off the street and raiding car washes and Home Depots in predominantly Latino areas, while leaving large swaths of the region untouched.
Take Sunday, the day of the Chicago Marathon.
Some 50,000 runners hailing from more than 100 countries and 50 states, gathered downtown to dash, jog and slog over 26.3 miles of Lake Michigan shoreline and city streets.
The sun was bright, the temperatures hovered in the upper-60s, and leaves of maple, oak, aspen and ginkgo trees colored the city with splashes of yellow, orange and red.
Demonstrators march outside the Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Ill., on Oct. 10.
(Kayana Szymczak/For The Times)
It was one of those rare, glorious Midwestern fall days when everyone comes outside to soak in the sunlight, knowing the gloom and cold of winter is about to take hold.
At 12:30, Ludwig Marchel and Karen Vanherck of Belgium strolled west along East Monroe Street, through Millennium Park. They smiled and proudly wore medals around their necks commemorating their marathon achievement. They said they were not concerned about coming to Chicago, despite news stories depicting violent protests and raids, and the Trump administration’s description of the city as “war torn,” a “hellhole,” a “killing field” and “the most dangerous city in the world.”
“Honestly. I was mostly worried that the government shutdown was somehow going to affect my flight,” said Marchel. He said he hadn’t seen anything during his few days in town that would suggest the city was unsafe.
Another man, who declined to give his name, said he had come from Mexico City to complete the race. He said he wasn’t concerned, either.
“I have my passport, I have a visa, and I have money,” he said. “Why should I be concerned?”
Dozens of residents in the quiet, leafy neighborhood of Albany Park had gathered in the street to shout “traitor” and “Nazi” as federal immigration agents grabbed a man and attempted to detain others.
According to witness accounts, agents in at least three vehicles got out and started shoving people to the ground before throwing tear gas canisters into the street. Videos of the event show masked agents tackling a person in a red shirt, throwing a person in a skeleton costume to the ground, and violently hurling a bicycle out of the street as several plumes of smoke billow into the air. A woman can be heard screaming while neighbors yell at the agents.
Last week, a federal judge issued a temporary restraining order requiring agents to issue two warnings before using riot control weapons such as tear gas, chemical sprays, plastic bullets and flash grenades.
Deirdre Anglin, community member from Chicago, takes part in a demonstration near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Ill., on Oct. 10.
(Kayana Szymczak/For The Times)
Since Trump’s “Operation Midway Blitz” was initiated more than six weeks ago, roughly 1,000 people have been arrested or detained.
At the ICE detention facility, in Broadview — a suburb 12 miles west of downtown — there have been daily protests. While most have been peaceful, some have devolved into physical clashes between federal agents or police and protesters.
In September, federal agents shot pepper balls and tear gas at protesters peacefully gathering outside the facility. On Saturday, local law enforcement forced protesters away from the site with riot sticks and threats of tear gas. Several protesters were knocked to the ground and forcefully handcuffed. By the end of the evening, 15 people had been arrested.
Early Sunday afternoon, roughly two dozen protesters returned to the site. They played music, danced, socialized and heckled ICE vehicles as they entered and exited the fenced-off facility.
In a largely Latino Chicago neighborhood called Little Village, things appeared peaceful Sunday afternoon.
Known affectionately by its residents as the “Midwestern capital of Mexico,” the district of 85,000 is predominantly Latino. Michael Rodriguez, a Chicago city councilman and the neighborhood’s alderman, said 85% of the population is of Mexican descent.
On Sunday afternoon, traditional Mexican music was being broadcast to the street via loudspeakers from the OK Corral VIP, a western wear store.
Demonstrators protest near an Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility in Broadview, Ill., on Oct. 10.
(Kayana Szymczak/For The Times)
Along East 26th Street, where shops and buildings are painted with brightly colored murals depicting Mexican folklore, history and wildlife — such as a golden eagle and jaguar — a family sat at a table eating lunch, while two young women, in their early 20s, laughed and chattered as they strolled west toward Kedzie Avenue.
Rodriguez said that despite appearances, “people are afraid.”
He said he spoke with a teacher who complained that several of her elementary-school aged students have stopped coming to class. Their parents are too afraid to walk them or drive them to school, hearing stories of other parents who have been arrested or detained by ICE agents at other campuses in the city — in front of their terrified children.
Rodriguez’s wife, whom he described as a dark-skinned Latina with degrees from DePaul and Northwestern universities, won’t leave the house without her passport.
At a barber shop called Peluqueria 5 Star Fades Estrellas on 26th, a coiffeur named Juan Garcia sat in a chair near the store entrance. He had a towel draped over the back of his neck. He said his English was limited, but he knew enough to tell a visitor that business was bad.
“People aren’t coming in,” he said. “They are afraid.”
Victor Sanchez, the owner of a taco truck parked on Kedzie Road, about a half-mile south of town, said his clientele — mostly construction workers and landscapers — have largely disappeared.
“Business is down 60%,” he said to a customer. “I don’t know if they have been taken, or if they are too afraid to come out. All I know is they aren’t coming here anymore.”
Rodriguez said that ICE agents have arrested people who live in his neighborhood, but those arrests took place outside the borders of his district.
“I think they know this is a well-organized and aware neighborhood,” he said. “I think they’ve cased it and decided to grab people on the outskirts.”
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer wears a patch on their sleeve. (Photo courtesy of Customs and Border Protection)
A former San Diego County-based U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of on-duty sex crimes was acquitted this week of sexual battery and false imprisonment charges related to two women.
Juan Angel Prishker, who spent nearly two decades with U.S. Customs and Border Protection before resigning, was found not guilty of the charges by a San Diego jury on Thursday.
Prosecutors alleged he groped a detained migrant woman, then one year later prevented another woman from leaving his presence after showing her pictures of his genitals.
Prishker previously faced misdemeanor charges of distributing obscene matter for allegedly showing the pictures of his genitals to the woman, as well as a separate incident of showing the pictures to a group of internet personalities filming a video near the border. A judge dismissed those charges earlier this year, ruling that the pictures in question did not rise to the legal definition of obscene matter because they did not depict sexual activity.
Prishker’s defense attorney, Kerry Armstrong, said in a statement after the trial that his client “maintained his innocence from day one, and both of us greatly respect the jury’s verdict.”
The defense attorney’s statement continued, “This case should have never been filed by the District Attorney’s Office, but thank goodness the jury did the right thing.”
Prosecutors said the first alleged victim, identified only as Jane Doe 1 in court, was detained while attempting to cross into the United States in December of 2022.
She testified that immigration officers handed her off to Prishker, who told her to put her hands on his vehicle.
She complied and Prishker searched her and in the process, reached underneath her bra and groped her breasts, she testified.
The second alleged victim, Karen Parker, a retired social worker who volunteers with migrants, testified that while assisting migrants in the Jacumba area, she sought help from Border Patrol personnel for a woman who required medical attention and located Prishker, who she’d met on prior occasions.
While speaking with him, she said Prishker told her he wanted to show her something and showed her two pictures on his cell phone of his penis, according to Parker.
She testified that as she tried to leave, he moved around her and momentarily blocked her from leaving.
Armstrong told jurors to take note that neither woman told others of the allegations against Prishker for some time after the incidents allegedly happened.
He also told jurors that Parker had reasons to embellish her testimony because she filed a $6 million federal lawsuit against Prishker and the federal government.
“That’s as much motive to lie as I can ever imagine,” Armstrong said.
Deputy District Attorney Vincent Chen argued the victims’ accounts were credible and argued that if the women sought to fabricate allegations against Prishker, they would have accused him of much more offensive conduct.
He also described Armstrong’s arguments as painting Parker as “a greedy opportunist” and Jane Doe 1 as someone who lied to benefit her immigration status in some way. Chen said there was no evidence that Jane Doe 1 received any such benefit or promises and credited her with testifying in open court during what he described as “hard times for migrants.”
The prosecutor said Prishker “preyed on two vulnerable individuals” and said jurors should note that Prishker was facing allegations from two different women for incidents that occurred a year apart from one another.
“Is this a coincidence? No, it’s a pattern. It’s a pattern of misconduct that cannot be ignored,” Chen said.
The acting U.S. attorney in Sacramento has said she was fired after telling the Border Patrol chief in charge of immigration raids in California that his agents were not allowed to arrest people without probable cause in the Central Valley.
Michele Beckwith, a career prosecutor who was made the acting U.S. attorney in the Eastern District of California earlier this year, told the New York Times that she was let go after she warned Gregory Bovino, chief of the Border Patrol’s El Centro Sector, that a court injunction blocked him from carrying out indiscriminate immigration raids in Sacramento.
Beckwith did not respond to a request for comment from the L.A. Times, but told the New York Times that “we have to stand up and insist the laws be followed.”
The U.S. attorney’s office in Sacramento declined to comment. The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment Friday evening.
Bovino presided over a series of raids in Los Angeles starting in June in which agents spent weeks pursuing Latino-looking workers outside of Home Depots, car washes, bus stops and other areas. The agents often wore masks and used unmarked vehicles.
But such indiscriminate tactics were not allowed in California’s Eastern District after the American Civil Liberties Union and United Farm Workers filed suit against the Border Patrol earlier in the year and won an injunction.
The suit followed a January operation in Kern County called “Operation Return to Sender,” in which agents swarmed a Home Depot and Latino market, among other areas frequented by laborers. In April, a federal district court judge ruled that the Border Patrol likely violated the Constitution’s protections against unreasonable search and seizure.
As Beckwith described it to New York Times reporters, she received a phone call from Bovino on July 14 in which he said he was bringing agents to Sacramento.
She said she told him that the injunction filed after the Kern County raid meant he could not stop people indiscriminately in the Eastern District. The next day, she wrote him an email in which, as quoted in the New York Times, she stressed the need for “compliance with court orders and the Constitution.”
Shortly thereafter her work cell phone and her work computer stopped working. A bit before 5 p.m. she received an email informing her that her employment was being terminated effective immediately.
It was the end of a 15-year career in in the Department of Justice in which she had served as the office’s Criminal Division Chief and First Assistant and prosecuted members of the Aryan Brotherhood, suspected terrorists, and fentanyl traffickers.
In an interview with Fox News that day, Bovino said the raids were targeted and based on intelligence. “Everything we do is targeted,” he said. “We did have prior intelligence that there were targets that we were interested in and around that Home Depot, as well as other targeted enforcement packages in and around the Sacramento area.”
He also said that his operations would not slow down. “There is no sanctuary anywhere,” he said. “We’re here to stay. We’re not going anywhere. We’re going to affect this mission and secure the homeland.”
Beckwith is one of a number of top prosecutors who have quit or been fired as the Trump administration pushes the Department of Justice to aggressively carry out his policies, including investigating people who have been the president’s political targets.
In March, a federal prosecutor in Los Angeles was fired after lawyers for a fast-food executive he was prosecuting pushed officials in Washington to drop all charges against him, according to multiple sources.
In July, Maurene Comey, a federal prosecutor in Manhattan and the daughter of former FBI director James Comey, was fired by the Trump administration, according to the New York Times.
And just last week, a U. S. attorney in Virginia was pushed out after he had determined there was insufficient evidence to prosecute James B. Comey. A new prosecutor this week won a grand jury indictment against Comey on one count of making a false statement and one count of obstruction of a congressional proceeding.
Three women opposed to President Trump’s intense immigration raids in Los Angeles were indicted Friday on charges of illegally “doxing” a U.S. Customs and Immigration agent, authorities said.
Ashleigh Brown, Cynthia Raygoza and Sandra Carmona Samane face charges of disclosing the personal information of a federal agent and conspiracy, according to an indictment unsealed late Friday.
Brown, who is from Colorado and goes by the nickname “AK,” has been described as one of the founders of “ice_out_ofla” an Instagram page with more than 28,000 followers that plays a role in organizing demonstrations against immigration enforcement, according to the social media page and an email reviewed by The Times.
According to the indictment, the three women followed an ICE agent from the federal building on 300 North Los Angeles Street in downtown L.A. to the agent’s residence in Baldwin Park.
They live-streamed the entire event, according to the indictment. Once they arrived at the agent’s home, prosecutors allege the women got out and shouted “la migra lives here,” and “ICE lives on your street and you should know,” according to the indictment.
“Our brave federal agents put their lives on the line every day to keep our nation safe,” Acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said in a statement. “The conduct of these defendants are deeply offensive to law enforcement officers and their families. If you threaten, dox, or harm in any manner one of our agents or employees, you will face prosecution and prison time.”
An attorney for Samane, 25, of Los Angeles, said she intends to plead not guilty at an arraignment next month and declined further comment.
The Federal Public Defender’s Office, which is representing Brown, 38, of Aurora, Colo., did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Court records did not list an attorney for Raygoza, 37, of Riverside.
Footage published to the ice_out_ofla Instagram page seemed to capture Brown’s arrest earlier this week. The video shows a man in green fatigues and body armor saying he has a warrant for her arrest, while reaching through what appears to be the shattered driver’s side window of her car. Brown asks what the warrant is for while the man can be seen holding a collapsible baton. Then the video cuts out.
Posts on the Instagram page describe Brown as a “political prisoner.”
A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles did not immediately respond to questions about whether the women specifically shouted out the agent’s address online or what the defendants specifically did to “incite the commission of a crime of violence against a federal agent,” as the indictment alleges.
Federal law enforcement leaders have repeatedly expressed concern about the “doxing” of agents with ICE and U.S. Customs and Border Patrol as residents of Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities continue to protest the Trump administration’s sprawling deportation efforts.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem threatened to prosecute people for publishing agents’ personal information last month in response to fliers in Portland that called for people to collect intel on ICE.
But the indictment returned Friday appeared to be the first prosecution related to such tactics.
Critics of the Trump administration’s operations have expressed outrage over ICE and CBP agents wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves in public while hunting undocumented immigrants throughout Southern California.
Last week, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed into law a bill that forbids federal law enforcement from wearing masks while operating in California. The supremacy clause of the U.S. Constitution dictates that federal law takes precedence over state law, leading some legal experts to question whether state officials can actually enforce the legislation.
The Secret Service stopped a massive telecom threat near the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Tuesday, just as world leaders gathered for meetings.Agents described the threat as one of the most sweeping communications threats ever found on U.S. soil, involving a hidden network capable of knocking out cell service across the city. Investigators discovered more than 300 SIM servers containing over 100,000 SIM cards within 35 miles of the U.N. headquarters. These servers had the potential to send out millions of fake calls and messages, which could cripple cell towers, jam 911 calls, and flood networks with chaos. An agent compared the potential impact to the blackouts following 9/11 and the Boston Marathon, noting that this system could trigger such a shutdown on demand.Experts warn that the threat extends beyond phones, as banking, emergency services, and even the power grid rely on telecom networks. Matt Pearl from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said, “A lot of this traffic goes over telecom networks, and in some cases, specifically, wireless networks. And so just literally everything in modern life could be hampered or taken down by this.”The investigation is ongoing, with the Secret Service indicating that the operation was highly organized, costing millions, and early signs suggest foreign actors may be involved. Experts say building such a system is not particularly difficult, with the main challenge being financial rather than technical expertise. They are also hard to detect, raising concerns that similar networks could exist in other cities.
WASHINGTON —
The Secret Service stopped a massive telecom threat near the United Nations headquarters in New York City on Tuesday, just as world leaders gathered for meetings.
Agents described the threat as one of the most sweeping communications threats ever found on U.S. soil, involving a hidden network capable of knocking out cell service across the city. Investigators discovered more than 300 SIM servers containing over 100,000 SIM cards within 35 miles of the U.N. headquarters.
These servers had the potential to send out millions of fake calls and messages, which could cripple cell towers, jam 911 calls, and flood networks with chaos. An agent compared the potential impact to the blackouts following 9/11 and the Boston Marathon, noting that this system could trigger such a shutdown on demand.
Experts warn that the threat extends beyond phones, as banking, emergency services, and even the power grid rely on telecom networks.
Matt Pearl from the Center for Strategic and International Studies said, “A lot of this traffic goes over telecom networks, and in some cases, specifically, wireless networks. And so just literally everything in modern life could be hampered or taken down by this.”
The investigation is ongoing, with the Secret Service indicating that the operation was highly organized, costing millions, and early signs suggest foreign actors may be involved.
Experts say building such a system is not particularly difficult, with the main challenge being financial rather than technical expertise. They are also hard to detect, raising concerns that similar networks could exist in other cities.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed legislation that aims to make California the first state to ban most law enforcement from covering their faces while carrying out operations.Senate Bill 627, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, was in response to federal immigration raids where officers have been seen wearing masks. It would prohibit neck gaiters, ski masks and other facial coverings for local and federal officers, including immigration enforcement agents, while they conduct official business. It makes exceptions for undercover agents, medical masks such as N95 respirators or tactical gear.(Earlier coverage in the video above.)Republican lawmakers and law enforcement agencies were opposed to the bill, arguing it would make officers’ and agents’ job more dangerous. Immigration officials have cited the fear of agents and their families being doxed. It’s unclear if California will be able to enforce the measure. Newsom also signed several other bills that his office argued would counter “secret police tactics” by the president and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. The package of legislation would require that families be notified when immigration agents come on school campuses and require a judicial warrant or court order before giving student information or classroom access to ICE.The new legislation would also require a warrant or court order before allowing agents access to emergency rooms and other nonpublic areas of a hospital. It would clarify that immigration information collected by a health care provider is medical information. “Public safety depends on trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve — but Trump and Miller have shattered that trust and spread fear across America,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is putting an end to it and making sure schools and hospitals remain what they should be: places of care, not chaos.”See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel–The Associated Press contributed to this story.
Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday signed legislation that aims to make California the first state to ban most law enforcement from covering their faces while carrying out operations.
Senate Bill 627, authored by Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, was in response to federal immigration raids where officers have been seen wearing masks. It would prohibit neck gaiters, ski masks and other facial coverings for local and federal officers, including immigration enforcement agents, while they conduct official business. It makes exceptions for undercover agents, medical masks such as N95 respirators or tactical gear.
(Earlier coverage in the video above.)
Republican lawmakers and law enforcement agencies were opposed to the bill, arguing it would make officers’ and agents’ job more dangerous. Immigration officials have cited the fear of agents and their families being doxed.
It’s unclear if California will be able to enforce the measure.
Newsom also signed several other bills that his office argued would counter “secret police tactics” by the president and Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller.
The package of legislation would require that families be notified when immigration agents come on school campuses and require a judicial warrant or court order before giving student information or classroom access to ICE.
The new legislation would also require a warrant or court order before allowing agents access to emergency rooms and other nonpublic areas of a hospital. It would clarify that immigration information collected by a health care provider is medical information.
“Public safety depends on trust between law enforcement and the communities they serve — but Trump and Miller have shattered that trust and spread fear across America,” Newsom said in a statement. “California is putting an end to it and making sure schools and hospitals remain what they should be: places of care, not chaos.”
The lights never dimmed and Angel Minguela Palacios couldn’t sleep. He pulled what felt like a large sheet of aluminum foil over his head, but couldn’t adjust to lying on a concrete floor and using his tennis shoes as a pillow.
He could smell unwashed bodies in the cramped room he shared with 40 detainees. He listened as men, many of them arrested at car washes or outside Home Depots, cried in the night for their loved ones.
Minguela, 48, lay in the chilly downtown Los Angeles ICE facility known as B 18 and thought about his partner of eight years and their three children. In his 10 years in the United States, he had built a secure life he had only dreamed of in Mexico, ensconced in their humble one-bedroom rented home, framed photos of the family at Christmas, his “#1 Dad” figurine. Now it was all falling apart.
The morning of Aug. 14, Minguela had been on his last delivery of the day, dropping off strawberries to a tearoom in Little Tokyo. He didn’t know that Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference there to inveigh against President Trump’s efforts to maintain control of the U.S. House of Representatives through redistricting in Texas. U.S. Border Patrol agents were massing nearby, creating a show of force outside the event.
As they moved in, one agent narrowed in on Minguela’s delivery van. Soon, he was in handcuffs, arrested for overstaying a tourist visa. As his lawyer put it, Minguela became “political, collateral damage.”
Over the six days he spent in B 18, a temporary immigration processing center, Minguela watched as several detainees chose to self-deport rather than remain in detention.
A building marking is painted on a wall at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility known as “B 18.”
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
”No aguanto aqui,” the men would say. “I can’t take it here.”
The harsh conditions, Minguela said, felt intentional. He knew he needed to stay for his family. But he wondered if he’d make it.
::
Minguela fled Mexico in 2015, driven in part by violence he faced there.
In his time servicing ATMs in Ciudad Juárez, he said he was kidnapped twice and at one point stabbed by people intent on stealing the cash. After his employers cut staff, he lost his job, helping drive his decision to leave.
Minguela came to Texas on a tourist visa and left the same day to L.A. drawn by the job opportunities and its many Spanish speakers. He had little money, rented a room as he searched for employment and soon found a job at the downtown produce market.
He met the woman he calls his esposa, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, at the second job he worked in the Piñata District. They are not married but Minguela helped raise her two children and later their son, who is autistic. The children — 15, 12 and 6 — all call him Dad.
With Minguela there, his esposa said she never felt alone. He helped with the laundry and cleaning. He played Roblox with his middle son and helped his 15-year-old daughter with her homework, especially math.
“He would always make sure that we would stay on track,” his daughter said. “He would always want the best for us.”
Photos captured the life they had built in L.A. The family in San Pedro for a boat ride. Celebrating Father’s Day and birthdays with cake and balloons. At a Day of the Dead celebration on Olvera Street downtown.
Angel Minguela Palacios with his partner of eight years and their 6-year-old son.
(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)
When immigration raids began in June, their lives suddenly narrowed. Minguela rarely went out, leaving the house only for work and errands. His daughter would warn him if she heard rumors of immigration officers near her high school, so he wouldn’t risk picking her up.
Minguela planned ahead, made copies of his keys and left money for his family in case he was grabbed by immigration agents. But he never expected it would happen to him.
On Aug. 14, his alarm went off at 1:15 a.m., as it did almost every day. He drank the coffee his wife had brought him as he headed to the produce market, where he’d worked for the same company for eight years.
Minguela helped take orders of strawberries, raspberries and blueberries, before heading out to make deliveries around 8 a.m. He had around half a dozen places to hit before he would call it a day.
His partner called to warn him that she’d seen on social media that ICE officers were near one of his delivery spots. He had just been there and luckily missed them, he said.
He was relieved that the Little Tokyo tearoom was his last stop. It didn’t open until 11 a.m. He arrived 10 minutes after. He found a parking spot out front and began unloading the boxes of strawberries and one box of apples.
Minguela was adjusting wooden pallets in the van when he heard a knock. He turned to see a Border Patrol agent, who began asking him about his legal status. Rather than answer, Minguela said he pulled a red “know your rights” card out of his wallet and handed it to the agent.
Angel Minguela Palacios took this image of a federal agent looking at his identification outside of the Japanese American National Museum on Aug. 14.
(Angel Rodrigo Minguela Palacios)
The agent told him it was “of no use” and handed it back. As he held his wallet, Minguela said the agent demanded his license. After running his information, Minguela said, the agent placed him in handcuffs.
::
Inside B 18, the lights never turned off. No matter the hour, officers would call detainees out of the room for interviews, making it difficult to get uninterrupted sleep, Minguela recounted. The temperature was so cold, family members dropped off sweaters and jackets for loved ones.
The detainees were given thin, shiny emergency blankets to sleep with. He described them as “aluminum sheets.” As the days passed, he said, even those ran out for new detainees. The bathrooms were open-air, providing no privacy. Detainees went days without showering.
The conditions, he said, felt intentional. A form of “pressure to get people to sign to leave.”
Department of Homeland Security officials have previously told The Times that “any claim that there are subprime conditions at ICE detention centers are false.”
When Minguela closed his eyes, he saw the faces of his family. He wondered how his esposa would keep them afloat all alone. He wanted to believe this was just a nightmare from which he would soon awaken.
He replayed the morning events over and over in his head. What if he had gotten to Little Tokyo five minutes earlier? Five minutes later?
“Those days were the hardest,” Minguela said. “My first day there on the floor, I cried. It doesn’t matter that you’re men, it doesn’t matter your age. There, men cried.”
The men talked among themselves, most worrying about their wives and children. They shared where they’d been taken from. Minguela estimated that around 80% of people he was held with had been detained at car washes and Home Depot. Others had been arrested while leaving court hearings.
Minguela said he’d only been asked once, on his second day, if he wanted to self-deport. He said no. But he watched as several others gave up and signed to leave. Minguela hoped he’d be sent to Adelanto, a nearby detention center. He’d heard it might be harder to get bond in Texas or Arizona.
On the sixth day, around 4 a.m., Minguela and more than 20 others had been pulled out of the room and shackled. He only learned he was going to Arizona after overhearing a conversation between two guards.
It felt, Minguela said, “like the world came crashing down on me.”
The 25 detainees were loaded onto a white bus and spent around 10 hours on the road, before arriving at a detention center near Casa Grande. When Minguela saw it for the first time, in the desert where the temperature was hitting 110 degrees, he felt afraid. It looked like a prison.
“Ay caray, adonde nos trajeron,” he thought. Wow, where did they bring us?
::
There were around 50 people in Minguela’s wing. His cell mate, an African immigrant, had been fighting his asylum case for five months, hoping to get to his family in Seattle.
For the first time since his youth, Minguela had time to read books, including Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s “No One Writes to the Colonel.” He read the Bible, taking comfort in Psalm 91, a prayer of trust and protection. He took online courses on CPR, computer skills and how to process his emotions.
But all the distractions, he said, didn’t change the fact that detainees were imprisoned.
“Lo que mata es el encierro,” Minguela said. “What kills you is the confinement.”
Angel Minguela Palacios spent more than a month in immigration detention.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
Almost everyone there, Minguela said, had arrived with the intention of fighting their case. There were detainees who had been there for a year fighting to get asylum, others for eight months. Some had been arrested despite having work permits. Others had been scammed out of thousands of dollars by immigration lawyers who never showed up for their court hearings. Many decided to self-deport.
If he wasn’t granted bond, Minguela told his partner he feared he might do that in a moment of desperation.
Minguela lay in his darkened cell, reflecting on moments when he had arrived home, tired from work and traffic, and scolded his children about minor messes. About times he’d argued with his wife and given her the silent treatment. He made promises to God to be an even better husband and father. He asked that God help his lawyer on his case and to give him a fair judge.
Minguela had his bond hearing Sept 9. He was aided by the fact that he had entered the country lawfully, providing the judge the ability to either grant or deny him bond.
Alex Galvez, Minguela’s lawyer, told the judge about his client’s children. He pointed out that Minguela didn’t have a criminal record and was gainfully employed, the primary breadwinner for his family. Galvez submitted 16 letters of recommendation for his client.
Angel Minguela Palacios beams at his 6-year-old son.
(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)
When the government lawyer referred to Minguela as a flight risk, Galvez said, the judge appeared skeptical, pointing out that he’d been paying tens of thousands of dollars in taxes for the last 10 years.
The judge granted a $1,500 bond. Minguela’s employers at the produce company paid it. When Minguela was pulled out of his cell on the night of Sept. 17, the other detainees applauded.
“Bravo,” they shouted. “Echale ganas.” Give it your all.
::
A crowd of people waited to greet Minguela as soon as he stepped off a Greyhound bus at Union Station in downtown L.A. on Thursday night. His partner and their three children all wore black shirts that read “Welcome Home.”
Minguela’s employer, Martha Franco, her son, Carlos Franco, and her nephew held “Welcome Back” balloons and flowers.
“He’s coming,” the children cried, when the bus groaned to a halt at 9:35 p.m. When Minguela spotted the waiting crowd, he beamed. His youngest son jumped up and down with anticipation as he stepped off the bus.
“Estas contento,” Minguela asked the boy. “Are you happy?”
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He held his esposa tight, kissing her on the cheeks, the forehead and the lips.
Minguela knows his release is just a step in the journey. His lawyer plans to file for cancellation of his removal and hopes to secure him a work permit. Minguela said he wants other immigrants to know that “there’s hope and not to despair.”
“Have faith,” Minguela said.
When Minguela arrived home after 10 p.m., he clasped his face in surprise as he was greeted by more than a hundred red, gold and black balloons. Signs strung up around the living room read “God loves you” and “Welcome home we missed you so much.”
His partner had decorated and bought everything to make ceviche and albondigas to celebrate his return. But she hadn’t had time that day to cook. Instead, she bought him one of his favorites in his adopted home.
WASHINGTON — Fifty years ago, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that U.S. Border Patrol agents violated the Constitution when they stopped a car on a freeway near San Clemente because its occupants appeared to be “of Mexican ancestry.”
The 4th Amendment protects Americans from unreasonable searches, the justices said then, and a motorist’s “Mexican appearance” does not justify stopping them to ask about their immigration status.
But the court sounded a decidedly different note on Monday when it ruled for the Trump administration and cleared the way for stopping and questioning Latinos who may be here illegally. By a 6-3 vote, the justices set aside a Los Angeles judge’s temporary restraining order that barred agents from stopping people based in part on their race or apparent ethnicity.
“Apparent ethnicity alone cannot furnish reasonable suspicion,” said Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh. “However, it can be a relevant factor when considered along with other salient factors.”
Critics of the ruling said it had opened the door for authorizing racial and ethnic bias.
UCLA law professor Ahilan Arulanantham called it “shocking and appalling. I don’t know of any recent decision like this that authorized racial discrimination.”
Arulanantham noted that Kavanaugh’s writings speak for the justice alone, and that the full court did not explain its ruling on a case that came through its emergency docket.
By contrast, he and others pointed out that the court under Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. prohibited the use of race or ethnicity as a factor in college admissions.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote for a 6-3 majority in 2023. That decision struck down the affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
“Today, the Supreme Court took a step in a badly wrong direction,” Ilya Somin, a George Mason University law professor, wrote on the Volokh Conspiracy blog. “It makes no sense to conclude that racial and ethnic discrimination is generally unconstitutional, yet also that its use is ‘reasonable’ under the 4th Amendment.”
Reports had already emerged before the decision of ICE agents confronting U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents before they have been able to prove their status, compelling many to begin carrying documentation around at all times.
In New York on Monday, one man outside a federal court was pushed by ICE agents before being able to show them his identification. He was let go.
Asked by The Times to respond to increasing concern among U.S. citizens they could be swept up in expanded ICE raids as a result of the ruling, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Tuesday that individuals should not be worried.
She added that immigration agents conduct targeted operations with the use of law enforcement intelligence.
“The Supreme Court upheld the Trump administration’s right to stop individuals in Los Angeles to briefly question them regarding their legal status, because the law allows this, and this has been the practice of the federal government for decades,” Leavitt said. “The Immigration and Nationality Act states that immigration officers can briefly stop an individual to question them about their immigration status, if the officer has reasonable suspicion that the individual is illegally present in the United States. And reasonable suspicion is not just based on race — it’s based on a totality of the circumstances.”
On X, the House Homeland Security Committee Democrats responded to Leavitt’s comments, writing: “ICE has jailed U.S. citizens. The Trump Admin is defending racial profiling. Nobody is safe when ‘looking Hispanic’ is treated as probable cause.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor in her dissent pointed out that nearly half of the residents of Greater Los Angeles are Latino and can speak Spanish.
“Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed because of their looks, their accents, and the fact that they make a living by doing manual labor,” she wrote. “Today, the Court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.”
At issue in the case was the meaning of “reasonable suspicion.”
For decades, the court has said police and federal agents may stop and question someone if they see something specific that suggests they may be violating the law.
But the two sides disagreed over whether agents may stop people because they appear to be Latinos and work as day laborers, at car washes or other low-wage jobs.
President Trump’s lawyers as well as Kavanaugh said agents may make stops based on the “totality of the circumstances” and that may include where people work as well as their ethnicity. They also pointed to the data that suggests about 10% of the people in the Los Angeles area are illegally in the United States.
Tom Homan, the White House border advisor, said that the legal standard of reasonable suspicion “has a group of factors you must take into consideration,” adding, “racial profiling is not happening at all.”
It is a “false narrative being pushed,” Homan told MSNBC in an interview, praising the Supreme Court decision. “We don’t arrest somebody or detain somebody without reasonable suspicion.”
Times staff writer Andrea Castillo, in Washington, contributed to this report.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Monday for the Trump administration and agreed U.S. immigration agents may stop and detain anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally based on little more than working at a car wash, speaking Spanish or having brown skin.
In a 6-3 vote, the justices granted an emergency appeal and lifted a Los Angeles judge’s order that barred “roving patrols” from snatching people off Southern California streets based on how they look, what language they speak, what work they do or where they happen to be.
In a concurring opinion, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh said federal law says “immigration officers ‘may briefly detain’ an individual ‘for questioning’ if they have ‘a reasonable suspicion, based on specific articulable facts, that the person being questioned … is an alien illegally in the United States’.”
“Immigration stops based on reasonable suspicion of illegal presence have been an important component of U.S. immigration enforcement for decades, across several presidential administrations,” he said.
The three liberal justices dissented.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor called the decision “yet another grave misuse of our emergency docket. We should not have to live in a country where the Government can seize anyone who looks Latino, speaks Spanish, and appears to work a low wage job. Rather than stand idly by while our constitutional freedoms are lost, I dissent.”
“The Government … has all but declared that all Latinos, U.S. citizens or not, who work low wage jobs are fair game to be seized at any time, taken away from work, and held until they provide proof of their legal status to the agents’ satisfaction,” Sotomayor wrote.
Sotomayor also disagreed with Kavanaugh’s assertions.
“Immigration agents are not conducting ‘brief stops for questioning,’ as the concurrence would like to believe. They are seizing people using firearms, physical violence, and warehouse detentions,” she wrote. “Nor are undocumented immigrants the only ones harmed by the Government’s conduct. United States citizens are also being seized, taken from their jobs, and prevented from working to support themselves and their families.”
The decision is a significant victory for President Trump, clearing the way for his oft-promised “largest Mass Deportation Operation” in American history.
Beginning in early June, Trump’s appointees targeted Los Angeles with aggressive street sweeps that ensnared longtime residents, legal immigrants and even U.S. citizens.
A coalition of civil rights groups and local attorneys challenged the cases of three immigrants and two U.S. citizens caught up in the chaotic arrests, claiming they’d been grabbed without reasonable suspicion — a violation of the 4th Amendment’s ban on unreasonable searches and seizures.
On July 11, U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong issued a temporary restraining order barring stops based solely on race or ethnicity, language, location or employment, either alone or in combination.
The case remains in its early phases, with hearings set for a preliminary injunction this month. But the Department of Justice argued even a brief limit on mass arrests constituted a “irreparable injury” to the government.
A few days later, Trump’s lawyers asked the Supreme Court to set aside Frimpong’s order. They said agents should be allowed to act on the assumption that Spanish-speaking Latinos who work as day laborers, at car washes or in landscaping and agriculture are likely to lack legal status.
“Reasonable suspicion is a low bar — well below probable cause,” Solicitor Gen. D. John Sauer wrote in his appeal. Agents can consider “the totality of the circumstances” when making stops, he said, including that “illegal presence is widespread in the Central District [of California], where 1 in every 10 people is an illegal alien.”
Both sides said the region’s diverse demographics support their view of the law. In an application to join the suit, Los Angeles and 20 other Southern California municipalities argued that “half the population of the Central District” now meet the government’s criteria for reasonable suspicion.
Roughly 10 million Latinos live in the seven counties covered by the order, and almost as many speak a language other than English at home.
Sauer also questioned whether the plaintiffs who sued had standing because they were not likely to be arrested again.
That argument was the subject of sharp and extended questioning in the 9th Circuit, where a three-judge panel ultimately rejected it.
“Agents have conducted many stops in the Los Angeles area within a matter of weeks, not years, some repeatedly in the same location,” the panel wrote in its July 28 opinion denying the stay.
One plaintiff was stopped twice in the span of 10 days, evidence of a “real and immediate threat,” that he or any of the others could be stopped again, the 9th Circuit said.
Days after that decision, heavily armed Border Patrol agents sprang from the back of a Penske moving truck, snatching workers from the parking lot of a Westlake Home Depot in apparent defiance of the courts.
Immigrants rights advocates had urged the justices not to intervene.
“The raids have followed an unconstitutional pattern that officials have vowed to continue,” they said. Ruling for Trump would authorize “an extraordinarily expansive dragnet, placing millions of law-abiding people at imminent risk of detention by federal agents.”
The judge’s order had applied in an area that included Los Angeles and Orange counties as well as Riverside, San Bernardino, Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.
Savage reported from Washington, Sharp from Los Angeles.
