MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. (AP) — A Liberian man in Minnesota is back in custody Friday, his lawyer said, a day after a judge ordered him released because federal agents broke down his door to arrest him without a judicial warrant.
The dramatic arrest of Garrison Gibson last weekend by armed immigration agents using a battering ram was captured on video. U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Bryan ruled the arrest unlawful, but Gibson was detained again when he appeared at an immigration office, attorney Marc Prokosch said.
“We were there for a check-in and the original officer said, ‘This looks good, I’ll be right back,’” Prokosch said. “And then there was a lot of chaos, and about five officers came out and then they said, ‘We’re going to be taking him back into custody.’ I was like, ‘Really, you want to do this again?’”
Gibson, 37, who fled the Liberian civil war as a child, had been ordered removed from the U.S., apparently because of a 2008 drug conviction that was later dismissed. He has remained in the country legally under what’s known as an order of supervision, with the requirement that he meet regularly with immigration authorities.
Meanwhile, tribal leaders and Native American rights organizations are advising anyone with a tribal ID to carry it with them when out in public in case they are approached by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.
Native Americans across the U.S. have reported being stopped or detained by ICE, and tribal leaders are asking members to report these contacts.
Ben Barnes, chief of the Shawnee Tribe in Oklahoma and chair of the United Indian Nations of Oklahoma, called the reports “deeply concerning”.
Organizers in Minneapolis have set up application booths in the city to assist people needing a tribal ID.
FBI Director Kash Patel said at least one person has been arrested for stealing property from an FBI vehicle in Minneapolis. The SUV was among government vehicles whose windows were broken Wednesday evening. Attorney General Pam Bondi said body armor and weapons were stolen.
President Donald Trump has threatened to invoke an 1807 law, the Insurrection Act, to send troops to suppress protests during immigration sweeps. Minnesota’s attorney general said he would sue if the president acts.
Associated Press reporters Ed White in Detroit and Graham Lee Brewer in Oklahoma City contributed.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — As Democrats across the country propose state law changes to restrict federal immigration officers after the shooting death of a protester in Minneapolis, Tennessee Republicans introduced a package of bills Thursday backed by the White House that would enlist the full force of the state to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Momentum in Democratic-led states for the measures, some of them proposed for years, is growing as legislatures return to work following the killing of Renee Good by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer. But Republicans are pushing back, blaming protesters for impeding the enforcement of immigration laws.
Democratic bills seek to limit ICE
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul wants New York to allow people to sue federal officers alleging violations of their constitutional rights. Another measure aims to keep immigration officers lacking judicial warrants out of schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
Oregon Democrats plan to introduce a bill to allow residents to sue federal officers for violating their Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.
New Jersey’s Democrat-led Legislature passed three bills Monday that immigrant rights groups have long pushed for, including a measure prohibiting state law enforcement officers from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has until his last day in office Tuesday to sign or veto them.
California lawmakers are proposing to ban local and state law enforcement from taking second jobs with the Department of Homeland Security and make it a violation of state law when ICE officers make “indiscriminate” arrests around court appearances. Other measures are pending.
“Where you have government actions with no accountability, that is not true democracy,” Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco said at a news conference.
Democrats also push bills in red states
Democrats in Georgia introduced four Senate bills designed to limit immigration enforcement — a package unlikely to become law because Georgia’s conservative upper chamber is led by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a close Trump ally. Democrats said it is still important to take a stand.
“Donald Trump has unleashed brutal aggression on our families and our communities across our country,” said state Sen. Sheikh Rahman, an immigrant from Bangladesh whose district in suburban Atlanta’s Gwinnett County is home to many immigrants.
Democrats in New Hampshire have proposed numerous measures seeking to limit federal immigration enforcement, but the state’s Republican majorities passed a new law taking effect this month that bans “sanctuary cities.”
Tennessee GOP works with White House on a response
The bills Tennessee Republicans are introducing appear to require government agencies to check the legal status of all residents before they can obtain public benefits; secure licenses for teaching, nursing and other professions; and get driver’s licenses or register their cars.
They also would include verifying K-12 students’ legal status, which appears to conflict with a U.S. Supreme Court precedent. And they propose criminalizing illegal entry as a misdemeanor, a measure similar to several other states’ requirements, some of which are blocked in court.
“We’re going to do what we can to make sure that if you’re here illegally, we will have the data, we’ll have the transparency, and we’re not spending taxpayer dollars on you unless you’re in jail,” House Speaker Cameron Sexton said at a news conference Thursday.
Trump administration sues to stop laws
The Trump administration has opposed any effort to blunt ICE, including suing local governments whose “sanctuary” policies limit police interactions with federal officers.
States have broad power to regulate within their borders unless the U.S. Constitution bars it, but many of these laws raise novel issues that courts will have to sort out, said Harrison Stark, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“There’s not a super clear, concrete legal answer to a lot of these questions,” he said. “It’s almost guaranteed there will be federal litigation over a lot of these policies.”
That is already happening.
California in September was the first to ban most law enforcement officers, including federal immigration officers, from covering their faces on duty. The Justice Department said its officers won’t comply and sued California, arguing that the laws threaten the safety of officers who are facing “unprecedented” harassment, doxing and violence.
The Justice Department also sued Illinois last month, challenging a law that bars federal civil arrests near courthouses, protects medical records and regulates how universities and day care centers manage information about immigration status. The Justice Department claims the law is unconstitutional and threatens federal officers’ safety.
Targeted states push back
Minnesota and Illinois, joined by their largest cities, sued the Trump administration this week. Minneapolis and Minnesota accuse the Republican administration of violating free speech rights by punishing a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants. Illinois and Chicago claim “Operation Midway Blitz” made residents afraid to leave their homes.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin accused Minnesota officials of ignoring public safety and called the Illinois lawsuit “baseless.”
Bauer reported from Madison, Wisconsin. Associated Press writers John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois; Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York; Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon; and Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed.
MINNEAPOLIS — President Donald Trump on Thursday threatened to invoke an 1807 law and deploy troops to quell persistent protests against the federal officers sent to enforce his administration’s massive immigration crackdown.
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By STEVE KARNOWSKI, ALANNA DURKIN RICHER, HALLIE GOLDEN and AAMER MADHANI – Associated Press
Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Kristi Noem announced Thursday via X that longtime U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) attorney Charles Wall will serve as the agency’s new deputy director as enforcement operations intensify nationwide.
“Effective immediately, Charles Wall will serve as the Deputy Director of @ICEGov,” wrote Noem. “For the last year, Mr. Wall served as ICE’s Principal Legal Advisor, playing a key role in helping us deliver historic results in arresting and removing the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens from American neighborhoods.”
Wall replaces Madison Sheahan, who stepped down earlier Thursday to pursue a congressional run in Ohio. Her departure left ICE leadership in transition at a moment when the agency has faced increasing resistance to enforcement efforts and heightened threats against officers in the field.
The move comes as the Trump administration intensifies immigration enforcement against murderers, rapists, gang members and suspected terrorists living illegally in the U.S., even as sanctuary jurisdictions and activist groups seek to block or disrupt ICE actions.
DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced Thursday that Charles Wall will serve as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deputy director.(Getty Images/Alex Brandon)
ICE officials said Wall brings more than a decade of experience inside the agency.
“Mr. Wall has served as an ICE attorney for 14 years and is a forward-leaning, strategic thinker who understands the importance of prioritizing the removal of murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists from our country,” Noem added.
Wall most recently served as ICE’s principal legal advisor, overseeing more than 3,500 attorneys and support staff who represent the DHS in removal proceedings and provide legal counsel to senior agency leadership.
He has served at ICE since 2012, previously holding senior counsel roles in New Orleans, according to DHS.
Madison Sheahan stepped down as ICE deputy director on Thursday.(Sean Gardner/Getty Images)
DHS has described the appointment as part of a broader effort to ensure ICE leadership is aligned with the Trump administration’s public safety priorities.
The leadership change comes as ICE operations have drawn national attention following protests in Minneapolis after the ICE-involved fatal shooting of 37-year-old Renee Good on Jan. 7.
Administration officials have repeatedly emphasized that ICE’s focus remains on what they describe as the “worst of the worst” criminal illegal aliens, warning that local resistance and political opposition increase risks for officers carrying out enforcement duties.
ICE has recently created a specific landing page where these ‘worst of the worst’ offenders can be viewed with names and nationalities attached.
DHS has described the appointment as part of a broader effort to ensure ICE leadership is aligned with the Trump administration’s public safety priorities.(Ron Jenkins/Getty Images)
MINNEAPOLIS — The federal agents arrived weeks ago. But since the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Good, their numbers have swelled — and people here say the weight of it all is inescapable.Agents are flooding the sidewalks of their neighborhoods, honks and whistles sound when they are near and, occasionally, the smell of chemical agents wafts by.
The scale, the sustained intensity and the aggression demonstrated by law enforcement deployed here appears to be greater than immigration enforcement operations that took place in other blue cities like Chicago, Los Angeles and Charlotte, North Carolina, all of which are larger than Minneapolis in land mass and population.
The officers are in unmarked cars idling on neighborhood streets. They are going door to door, residents said. They are seen inside of stores and in retail parking lots, including at the Target in Richfield, south of Minneapolis, the day after Good was killed.
Videos from residents are proliferating on social media of violent arrests, including a woman dragged from her car. Some videos provided to NBC News by activists show agents smashing car windows or spraying chemicals point blank into the faces of residents.
“It feels like an invasion,” said a woman who asked not to be named out of fear of retaliation. She was protesting at the Whipple federal detention facility at 7 a.m. on a frigid, 12-degree morning. The woman, a restaurant owner, said she closed her business temporarily because she was trying to protect her employees who were immigrants. “It feels very much like a Nazi Germany situation to me. It needs to stop, and people need to know what’s going on.”
Neighbors who live near the street where Renee Good was killed say the community has had no time to recover. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images)
The focus of Operation Metro Surge, as the Trump administration has branded this latest immigration effort, appears to have broadened beyond mass deportations and has included confrontations with anti-ICE protesters. The shooting of Good and the scope of the deployment has heightened the tense mood in a nation already bitterly divided over immigration issues and the Trump administration’s tactics. Interviews with neighbors, community leaders and organized protesters reveal a sense of being under invasion.
On Wednesday night, a man was shot in the leg after DHS said he attacked an agent with a snow shovel aor broom handle. “Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired defensive shots to defend his life,” the department said.
Mayor Jacob Frey said at a news conference after Wednesday’s shooting that the city was being put in an “impossible situation.”
Federal officers have smashed car windows and arrested people they said were obstructing enforcement operations. (Photo by Mostafa Bassim/Anadolu via Getty Images)
Immigration officers have been flooding neighborhoods, knocking on doors in pursuit of non-U.S. citizens. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“We are trying to find a way forward to keep people safe, to protect our neighbors, to protect order,” Frey said, while also warning protesters against “taking the bait.” He added that the city has 600 police officers compared to the 3,000 federal immigration agents present. Of that number, more than 2,000 are ICE officers and agents, hundreds are Border Patrol agents and others are from Justice Department agencies, federal law enforcement officials told NBC News.
A group of area residents visiting Good’s memorial site on Tuesday described masked immigration officers wearing camouflage going door to door, saying they were looking for non-U.S. citizens. They, and others interviewed, described it taking place around Lake Street, Uptown and the Powderhorn neighborhoods.
Those actions reflect what Vice President J.D. Vance said agents would be doing.
“I think we’re going to see those deportation numbers ramp up as we get more and more people online, working for ICE, going door-to-door and making sure that if you’re an illegal alien, you’ve got to get out of this country and if you want to come back, apply through the proper channels,” Vance said on Fox News last week. He had also suggested earlier that the ICE officer who shot Good would have “absolute immunity.”
Good’s killing has shaken a Midwestern city already carrying deep wounds from the murder of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020. In the days since Good’s fateful encounter with an armed ICE officer, there was no letup by law enforcement. In interviews, neighbors who live near the street where the 37-year-old mother and U.S. citizen was killed say the community has had no time to recover.
Federal officers regularly detain protesters outside the Whipple Federal Building. (Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU / AFP via Getty Images)
One resident who spoke with NBC News described their own arrest hours after Good was killed, providing video evidence of the encounter. They said they were monitoring an immigration operation when agents said their vehicle was in the way. They believed the agents had space to go around their car, which was seen in the video as being positioned horizontally on the street.
The video showed agents breaking the windows of the person’s car, before reaching in to pepper spray both the passenger and the driver. The person, who asked not to be named for fear of retaliation, said they were punched in the face after pulling down an agent’s mask who was dragging them out of the vehicle.
“I was just so angry. I said: ‘Show yourself, coward!’” they said.
The person said that after being thrown to the ground and arrested, they were taken to an ICE facility at the Whipple Building, which they described as bursting at the seams with more than 20 people crammed into each cell that, in this person’s experience, could reasonably feel too crowded with five people.
The Whipple Building, which holds an ICE facility, has been the site of daily protests. (Photo by Octavio JONES / AFP via Getty Images)
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to a request for comment about their account.
In the days that have followed, intensive arrest operations have continued close to the Good memorial site, with one taking place just a block and a half and another three blocks away. Confrontations between law enforcement and protesters are playing out almost in real time, with both sides revved up.
In one video, an officer reaches out of his passenger’s side window to shoot a stream of red chemicals point-blank into a woman’s face as she stands in front of his car while he tries to drive away.
Where federal officers are present, there are usually also protesters, activists and residents blowing whistles, honking their horns — and invariably filming.
Those videos are then quickly disseminated from Minneapolis across the internet, showing agents asking drivers at an electric vehicle station whether they are citizens or dragging a screaming woman out of her car.
As the videos inflame divisions online, the pushback has intensified on the ground.
Drive along a neighborhood street and one can hear the honking break out in traffic, warning that immigration agents are nearby. At busy intersections, like near Karmel Mall, where a diverse mix of residents walk and shop, community members can at times be seen posted up, warning whistles slung around their necks.
The Trump administration said it would target for arrest anyone interfering with immigration enforcement. (Photo by Stephen Maturen/Getty Images)
Mark, another resident of the Bryant Central neighborhood, the diverse area of the city where some of the operations are playing out, said he felt as if the swarms of fatigue-laden officers he was seeing across his city was punishment for not voting for the president.
He visited the site of Good’s memorial for four consecutive days, he said, for a simple reason.
“This is wrong,” Mark said. He asked that his last name not be used because of fear of retaliation. “I truly feel Minnesota is being targeted because of who we voted for.”
Mark, who is African American, was inside his car when he saw an ICE operation taking place nearby. He heard loud noises, he said, and tried turning around to return to his home and check on his family.
He described immigration officers surrounding his car and accusing him of trying to obstruct their operation. They took his phone, he said. Mark then explained to them he was simply trying to walk to his home. After keeping his phone for about 15 minutes, they returned it, he said.
“The City of Minneapolis again demands that ICE leave the city and state immediately,” the city posted on X Wednesday night. “We stand by our immigrant and refugee communities — know that you have our full support.”
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said Thursday that President Trump is weighing whether to invoke the Insurrection Act over protests in Minnesota. “If anything doesn’t change with Governor Walz, I don’t anticipate that the streets will get any safer or more peaceful.”
The American Civil Liberties Union is filing a new class action lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of three Minnesotans – two Somali men and one Latino man – “whose constitutional rights were violated by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), Customs and Border Protection (CBP), and other federal agents,” the ACLU of Minnesota announced Thursday morning.
The announcement comes just hours after President Trump threatened to use the Insurrection Act to send U.S. troops into Minnesota to “put an end” to protests. There are currently 3,000 federal agents in Minnesota amid Operation Metro Surge, in which officials with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security say has so far yielded 2,500 arrests since it began last month.
Federal government officials tell CBS News the migrant and two others allegedly attacked the officer with a snow shovel and a broom handle as the officer tried to make an arrest.
Within an hour before the shooting, Gov. Tim Walz gave a rare primetime address to Minnesotans where he urged Mr. Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “end this occupation.” He also called on Minnesotans to protest peacefully and record ICE activity to aid in future prosecutions.
In a rare primetime address Wednesday evening, Gov. Tim Walz gave a six-minute-long address to Minnesotans where he called on President Trump and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “end this occupation.”
“What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief,” Walz said. “News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities.”
On Tuesday, Homeland Security officials told CBS News there are now 800 U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents in the Minneapolis area. That’s in addition to 2,000 other ICE and federal agents already in the state in what officials call the “largest DHS operation in history.”
“Donald Trump intends for it to get worse. This week, he went online to promise that quote, ‘the day of retribution and reckoning is coming,’” Walz said in his addresss. “That’s a direct threat against the people of this state who dared to vote against him three times and who continue to stand up for freedom with courage and empathy and profound grace.”
The governor went on to urge Minnesotans to “protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully.” He also called on residents to “peacefully film ICE agents.”
“If you see these ICE agents in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record,” Walz said. “Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans, not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.”
Walz also expressed pride for his fellow Minnesotans, calling the state “an island of decency in a country being driven towards cruelty.”
Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz
WCCO
“We will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, of peace, and tonight I come before you simply to ask, don’t let anyone take that away from us,” he said.
Walz gives a constitutionally-required annual address before the Legislature, known as the “State of the State.” But other statewide addresses that the governor has planned happen infrequently.
His staff notes that he addressed residents during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, and in the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder.
Menendez said she would not issue that restraining order until after the federal government filed its response and the state made additional filings.
The hearing is part of a larger federal lawsuit by the state and cities attempting to get the federal government to halt all law enforcement operations in Minnesota.
What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief. News reports simply don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon our communities.
Two-thousand to 3,000 armed agents of the federal government have been deployed to Minnesota. Armed, masked, undertrained ICE agents are going door to door, ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live.
Let’s be very, very clear: this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.
Last week, that campaign claimed the life of Renee Nicole Good. We’ve all watched the video. We’ve all seen what happened, and yet instead of conducting an impartial investigation so we can hold accountable the officer responsible for Renee’s death, the Trump administration is devoting the full power of the federal government to finding an excuse to attack the victim and her family.
Just yesterday, six federal prosecutors, including the longtime career prosecutor leading the charge to investigate and eliminate fraud in our state’s programs, quit their jobs rather than go along with this assault on the United States Constitution.
But as bad as it’s been, Donald Trump intends for it to get worse. This week, he went online to promise that quote, the day of retribution and reckoning is coming.
That’s a direct threat against the people of this state who dared to vote against him three times and who continue to stand up for freedom with courage and empathy and profound grace.
All across Minnesota people are stepping up to help their neighbors who are being unjustly and unlawfully targeted. They’re distributing care packages and walking kids to school and raising their voices in peaceful protest, even though doing so has made many of our fellow Minnesotans targets for violent retribution.
Folks, I know it’s scary, and I know it’s absurd that we all have to defend law and order, justice and humanity while also caring for our families and trying to do our jobs.
So tonight, let me say once again to Donald Trump and Kristi Noem: End this occupation. You’ve done enough.
Let me say four critical things to the people of Minnesota, four things I want you to hear as you watch the news and look out for your neighbors:
First, Donald Trump wants this chaos. He wants confusion, and yes, he wants more violence on our streets. We cannot give him what he wants.
We can, we must protest loudly, urgently, but also peacefully. Indeed, as hard as we will fight in the courts and at the ballot box, we cannot and will not let violence prevail.
You’re angry. I’m angry. Angry is not a strong enough word, but we must remain peaceful.
Second, you are not powerless, you are not helpless, and you are certainly not alone. All across Minnesota, people are learning about opportunities not just to resist, but to help people who are in danger.
Thousands upon thousands of our fellow Minnesotans are going to be relying on mutual aid in the days and weeks to come, and they need our support.
Tonight I wanna share another way you can help: witness. Help us establish a record of exactly what’s happening in our communities.
You have an absolute right to peacefully film ICE agents as they conduct these activities, so carry your phone with you at all times, and if you see these ICE agents in your neighborhood, take out that phone and hit record.
Help us create a database of the atrocities against Minnesotans, not just to establish a record for posterity, but to bank evidence for future prosecution.
The third thing I want to say to you tonight is we will not have to live like this forever. Accountability is coming at the voting booth and in court.
We will reclaim our communities from Donald Trump. We will reestablish a sense of safety for our neighbors, and we will bring an end to this moment of chaos, confusion and trauma.
We will find a way to move forward and we’ll do it together. And will not be alone. Every day we are working with business leaders, faith leaders, legal experts and elected officials from across this country. They’ve all seen what Donald Trump is trying to do to our state, and they know their states could be next.
And that brings me to the fourth thing I wanna say tonight Minnesota, how incredibly proud I am of the way that you’ve risen to meet this unbearable moment. But I’m not at all surprised because this, this is who we are.
Minnesotans believe in the rule of law, and Minnesotans believe in the dignity of all people. We’re a place where there’s room for everybody, no matter who you are or who you love or where you came from. A place where we feed our kids, we take care of our neighbors and we look out for those in the shadows of life.
We’re an island of decency in a country being driven towards cruelty. We will remain an island of decency, of justice, of community, of peace, and tonight I come before you simply to ask, don’t let anyone take that away from us.
Thank you. Protect each other, and may God bless the people of Minnesota.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Democrats across the country are proposing state law changes to rein in federal immigration officers and protect the public following the shooting death of a protester in Minneapolis and the wounding of two people in Portland, Oregon.
Democratic bills seek to limit ICE
Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul wants New York to allow people to sue federal officers alleging violations of their constitutional rights. Another measure aims to keep immigration agents lacking judicial warrants out of schools, hospitals and houses of worship.
Oregon Democrats plan to introduce a bill to allow residents to sue federal agents for violating their Fourth Amendment rights against unlawful search and seizure.
New Jersey’s Democrat-led Legislature passed three bills on Monday that immigrant rights groups have long pushed for, including a measure prohibiting state law enforcement officers from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy has until his last day in office Tuesday to sign or veto them.
California lawmakers are proposing to ban local and state law enforcement from taking second jobs with the Department of Homeland Security and make it a violation of state law when ICE officers make “indiscriminate” arrests around court appearances. Other measures are pending.
“Where you have government actions with no accountability, that is not true democracy,” Democratic state Sen. Scott Wiener of San Francisco said at a news conference.
Democrats also push bills in red states
Democrats in Georgia introduced four Senate bills designed to limit immigration enforcement — a package unlikely to become law because Georgia’s conservative upper chamber is led by Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, a close Trump ally. Democrats said it’s still important to take a stand.
“Donald Trump has unleashed brutal aggression on our families and our communities across our country,” said state Sen. Sheikh Rahman, an immigrant from Bangladesh whose district in suburban Atlanta’s Gwinnett County is home to many immigrants.
Democrats in New Hampshire have proposed numerous measures seeking to limit federal immigration enforcement, but the state’s Republican majorities passed a new law taking effect this month that bans “sanctuary cities.”
In Tennessee, instead of considering a Democratic measure that would limit civil immigration enforcement at schools and churches, Republican House Speaker Cameron Sexton said he was working with the White House on a separate package of immigration-related bills. He hasn’t said what they would do.
Trump administration sues to stop laws
States have broad power to regulate within their borders unless the U.S. Constitution bars it, but many of these laws raise novel issues that courts will have to sort out, said Harrison Stark, senior counsel with the State Democracy Research Initiative at the University of Wisconsin Law School.
“There’s not a super clear, concrete legal answer to a lot of these questions,” he said. “It’s almost guaranteed there will be federal litigation over a lot of these policies.”
That’s already happening.
California in September was the first to ban most law enforcement officers, including federal immigration agents, from covering their faces on duty. The Justice Department said its agents won’t comply and sued California, arguing that the laws threaten the safety of officers who are facing “unprecedented” harassment, doxing and violence.
The Justice Department also sued Illinois last month, challenging a law that bars federal civil arrests near courthouses, protects medical records and regulates how universities and day care centers manage information about immigration status. The Justice Department claims the law is unconstitutional and also threatens federal officers’ safety.
Targeted states push back
Minnesota and Illinois, joined by their largest cities, sued the Trump administration this week. Minneapolis and Minnesota accuse the Republican administration of violating free speech rights by punishing a progressive state that favors Democrats and welcomes immigrants. Illinois and Chicago claim “Operation Midway Blitz” made residents afraid to leave their homes.
Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin accused Minnesota officials of ignoring public safety and called the Illinois lawsuit “baseless.”
Associated Press writers John O’Connor in Springfield, Illinois; Sophie Austin in Sacramento, California; Mike Catalini in Trenton, New Jersey; Jonathan Mattise in Nashville, Tennessee; Anthony Izaguirre in Albany, New York; Claire Rush in Portland, Oregon; and Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A federal officer shot a person in the leg in Minneapolis after being attacked with a shovel and broom handle while trying to make an arrest Wednesday, federal officials said.
The shooting took place about 4.5 miles (7.2 kilometers) north of where an immigration agent fatally shot Renee Good on Jan. 7.
The Department of Homeland Security said in a statement on the social media platform X that federal law enforcement officers stopped a person from Venezuela who was in the U.S. illegally. The person drove away and crashed into a parked car before taking off on foot, DHS said.
After officers reached the person, two other people arrived from a nearby apartment and all three started attacking the officer, according to DHS.
“Fearing for his life and safety as he was being ambushed by three individuals, the officer fired a defensive shot to defend his life,” DHS said.
The two people who came out of the apartment are in custody, it said.
A large group of officers wearing gas masks fired tear gas into a crowd gathered at a north Minneapolis intersection near where Wednesday’s shooting took place.
Clashes in court and on streets
Earlier Wednesday, a judge gave the Trump administration time to respond to a request to suspend its immigration crackdown in Minnesota, while the Pentagon looked for military lawyers to join what has become a chaotic law enforcement effort in the state.
Plumes of tear gas, bursts of chemical irritants and the screech of protest whistles have become common on the streets of Minneapolis, especially since Good’s shooting.
Agents have yanked people from cars and homes and been confronted by angry bystanders who are demanding that officers pack up and leave.
“What we need most of all right now is a pause. The temperature needs to be lowered,” state Assistant Attorney General Brian Carter said during the first hearing in a lawsuit filed by Minnesota and the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.
Local leaders say the government is violating free speech and other constitutional rights with the surge of law enforcement. U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez promised to keep the case “on the front burner” and gave the U.S. Justice Department until Monday to file a response to a request for a restraining order.
The judge said these are “grave and important matters,” and that there are few legal precedents to apply to some of the key points in the case.
Justice Department attorney Andrew Warden suggested the approach set by Menendez was appropriate.
The judge is also handling a separate lawsuit challenging the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal officers when they encounter protesters and observers. A decision could be released this week.
During a televised speech Wednesday evening, Gov. Tim Walz described Minnesota as being in chaos, saying what’s happening in the state “defies belief.”
“Let’s be very, very clear, this long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement,” he said. “Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government.”
Walz added that “accountability” will be coming through the courts.
Military lawyers may join the surge
The Department of Homeland Security says it has made more than 2,000 arrests in the state since early December and is vowing to not back down. The Pentagon is preparing to send military lawyers to Minneapolis to assist.
CNN, citing an email circulating in the military, says Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth is asking the branches to identify 40 lawyers known as judge advocate general officers or JAGs, and 25 of them will serve as special assistant U.S. attorneys in Minneapolis.
Pentagon spokesperson Kingsley Wilson appeared to confirm the CNN report by posting it on X with a comment that the military “is proud to support” the Justice Department.
The Pentagon did not immediately respond to emails from The Associated Press seeking more details.
It’s the latest step by the Trump administration to dispatch military and civilian attorneys to areas where federal immigration operations are taking place. The Pentagon last week sent 20 lawyers to Memphis, U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said.
Mark Nevitt, an associate professor at Emory University School of Law and a former Navy JAG, said there’s concern that the assignments are taking lawyers away from the military justice system.
“There are not many JAGs but there are over one million members of the military, and they all need legal support,” he said.
An official says the agent who killed Good was injured
Jonathan Ross, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer who killed Good, suffered internal bleeding to his torso during the encounter, a Homeland Security official told The Associated Press.
The official spoke to AP on condition of anonymity in order to discuss Ross’ medical condition. The official did not provide details about the severity of the injuries, and the agency did not respond to questions about the extent of the bleeding, exactly how he suffered the injury, when it was diagnosed or his medical treatment.
There are many causes of internal bleeding, and they vary in severity from bruising to significant blood loss. Video from the scene showed Ross and other officers walking without obvious difficulty after Good was shot and her Honda Pilot crashed into other vehicles.
She was killed after three ICE officers surrounded her SUV on a snowy street a few blocks from her home.
Bystander video shows one officer ordering Good to open the door and grabbing the handle. As the vehicle begins to move forward, Ross, standing in front, raises his weapon and fires at least three shots at close range. He steps back as the SUV advances and turns.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said Ross was struck by the vehicle and that Good was using her SUV as a weapon — a self-defense claim that has been deeply criticized by Minnesota officials.
Chris Madel, an attorney for Ross, declined to comment on any injuries.
‘An agent of peace’
Good’s family, meanwhile, has hired a law firm, Romanucci & Blandin, that represented George Floyd’s family in a $27 million settlement with Minneapolis. Floyd, who was Black, died after a white police officer pinned his neck to the ground in the street in May 2020.
The firm said Good was following orders to move her car when she was shot. It said it would conduct its own investigation and publicly share what it learns.
“They do not want her used as a political pawn,” the firm said, referring to Good and her family, “but rather as an agent of peace for all.”
Students march against ICE
Waving signs reading “Love Melts ICE” and “DE-ICE MN,” hundreds of teenagers left school in St. Paul and marched in freezing temperatures to the state Capitol for a protest and rally.
The University of Minnesota, meanwhile, informed its 50,000-plus students that there could be online options for some classes when the new term starts next week. President Rebecca Cunningham noted that “violence and protests have come to our doorstep.” The campus sits next to the main Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis.
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Associated Press reporters Julie Watson in San Diego, California; Rebecca Santana in Washington, D.C.; Ed White in Detroit; Giovanna Dell’Orto in Minneapolis; Graham Lee Brewer in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; and Hallie Golden in Seattle contributed.
The Trump administration announced this week a tightening of immigration policies on two fronts: by pausing immigrant visas from 75 countries and by threatening to cut federal funding for sanctuary states and cities that do not fully comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“They do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens,” Trump said.
It marks the president’s third attempt to penalize sanctuary cities by withholding federal funds, after similar efforts were blocked by the courts in the past. Trump argues that local governments are refusing to work with immigration officials, adding that “it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come, so we’re not making any payment to anybody that supports sanctuary cities.”
In Massachusetts, several cities, including Boston and Cambridge, have pushed back against federal immigration requests, placing the state squarely in the administration’s crosshairs.
Boston City Councilor Enrique Pepén said local leaders are preparing for potential fallout.
“We are prepared for anything at this point,” Pepén said. “We are preparing, budget-wise, protection-wise, just keep an eye on everything.”
Gov. Maura Healey said she is willing to cooperate with federal authorities, but she criticized the administration’s approach.
“If you want to put away bad guys, if you want to come into communities, work with governors, work with AGs, work with local law enforcement, to do that, you’ve always had support,” Healey said. “But that’s not what’s going on.”
Legal experts say the administration may once again face constitutional hurdles.
“Not the president, but the Congress that is in charge of collecting money, which is through taxation, and also spending money,” said Constitutional law attorney Joseph Malouf.
He added that without Supreme Court intervention, the president is likely to lose any legal challenge.
At the same time, the State Department announced it will pause immigrant visa applications for people from 75 countries, including Brazil, Cape Verde, Colombia and Haiti. The policy applies to those seeking to live permanently in the United States and does not affect short-term visas for tourists, students, or temporary workers.
Advocates say the new rules significantly raise the bar for would-be immigrants. Marie Pereira, founder of the Haiti Immigration Project, said the justification for stricter screening has shifted.
“First, it was national security,” Pereira said. “Now, it’s becoming a public charge.”
Under the new directive, immigration officials will expand screenings to ensure visas are not issued to applicants who may require food, medical, or housing assistance.
Pereira acknowledged the complexity of the issue.
“People do come here with pre-existing conditions looking for the excellent health care provided in America, and they do create a drain, sometimes, on the system,” she said.
There are also concerns about another potential surge in immigration enforcement in the region. The Department of Homeland Security said it will continue its presence, but declined to discuss future operations.
The cuts to sanctuary cities and states are set to take effect on Feb. 1, while the pause on immigrant visas begins Jan. 21 and will remain in place indefinitely.
Research showed a disproportionately high share of foreign-born workers active in the construction trades nationally in 2024. While immigrants made up one in five workers nationally, they composed one in three workers in the construction trades sector.
The highest percentage of foreign-born trade workers occurred in the seven metros that issued at least 150,000 building permits between 2019–2023. In these locations, immigrants composed 54% of the trades workforce.
In Dallas–Fort Worth–Arlington, which led the nation in homebuilding permits at 350,000, 61% of the workers in the trades had immigrated to the country.
Metros with slower housing growth still had disproportionately high shares of immigrants active in the trades. On average, metros that issued 75,000–149,999 permits had a 40% share of foreign-born trade workers, while those with fewer than 75,000 permits had a 22% share.
When categorized by specialty, foreign-born tradespeople most commonly worked as construction laborers or carpenters in 2024. They composed three-fifths of all plasterers and drywall installers in 2024 and half of all roofers, painters and carpet, tile and floor installers.
With foreign-born workers playing such an outsized role in housing production and homebuilding, negative immigration trends could signal danger for the market, according to experts.
“There is a disproportionately high share of foreign-born workers in the construction trades nationally and that share is even higher in these communities,” said Harvard Senior Research Analyst Riordan Frost. “The recent slowdown in immigration will limit foreign-born labor for the trades, however, potentially worsening chronic labor shortages and constraining the ability to build and remodel housing.”
WASHINGTON — Reps. Doris Matsui and Mike Thompson want to impeach Homeland Secretary Kristin Noem. So do dozens of other Democrats.
They said Wednesday they’re backing an impeachment resolution in the House led by Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill. It appears highly unlikely it will go anywhere in the Republican-run chamber.
The Democrats’ anger has been building all year, as immigration enforcement agents have used what critics say are strong-arm tactics to find undocumented immigrants. Impeachment backers are particularly outraged by the fatal shooting of Renee Nicole Gold by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials in Minneapolis during an anti-ICE protest January 7.
“Secretary Noem, you have violated your oath of office and there will be consequences,” Kelly told a Capitol news conference Wednesday.
Many Republicans and Trump administration officials have said ICE personnel were acting in self-defense in Minneapolis.
“Our ICE officers are enforcing federal law as the Congress wrote it. The Democrats here don’t like that law, they object to its enforcement, and they are actively encouraging citizens to obstruct its enforcement,” said Rep. Tom McClintock, R-Elk Grove, chairman of the House immigration subcommittee.
Nonetheless, Matsui, Thompson and an estimated 70 other House members want to try to oust Noem.
“She’s spearheading a lawless and incompetent campaign of cruelty in our cities, blatantly violating the Constitution and allowing the senseless killing of our neighbors,” Matsui, D-Sacramento, posted on the social media platform X.com.
“She has been a complete and destructive failure as DHS secretary. Our nation demands that our justice system is carried out transparently and in accordance with the Constitution,” she said in a separate post.
Added Thompson, D-St. Helena, “Like so many Americans, I am sickened by ICE’s killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis. Enough is enough.
“It’s clear that Secretary Noem isn’t just a poor leader — she’s violating the law,” he said.
The Department of Homeland Security pushed back hard.
“How silly during a serious time. As ICE officers are facing a 1,300% increase in assaults against them, Rep. Kelly is more focused on showmanship and fundraising clicks than actually cleaning up her crime-ridden Chicago district,” the department said in a statement to The Sacramento Bee.
Could Noem be impeached?
The impeachment drive appears to have little momentum. Even if the House impeached Noem, which would take a majority vote, the Senate would need a two-thirds majority to remove her from office. The House has a 218 to 213 Republican majority, and 53 of the Senate’s 100 members are Republican.
Party leaders have indicated they’d rather keep the focus on affordability.
“We haven’t had a caucus-wide conversation on that issue,” said House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-New York, when asked earlier this week about Noem’s actions.
“Clearly, we’re going to have to explore what accountability looks like as it relates to an out-of-control administration that continues to break the law, violate norms and jam reckless, right-wing extremism down the throats of the American people,” he said.
Rep. McClintock’s view
Republicans have generally supported the ICE action. “What I saw was an ICE vehicle attempting to leave an area that was in a near-riot condition, a civilian vehicle then suddenly moved in front of it to block its departure,” McClintock said. He described what he saw in a lengthy X post.
He watched as “an ICE officer approached that vehicle and issue a lawful order to the driver to get out of the car. Instead of complying with that order, the driver backed up, pointed the car in the direction of another officer, and then shifted into drive…”
Kelly said her effort has been long in the making. At a Wednesday news conference, she said the department has acted improperly as it searches for undocumented immigrants.
“Secretary Kristi Noem is an incompetent leader, a disgrace to our democracy, and I am impeaching her for obstruction of justice, violation of public trust, and self-dealing,” Kelly said.
She has proposed three articles of impeachment:
—Obstruction of Congress: The measure says Noem “willfully obstructed Congressional oversight and withheld Congressionally appropriated funds in violation of her constitutional oath and federal law.”
—Violation of public trust: Noem “compromised public safety, violated due process of American citizens, and directed unconstitutional actions.”
—Self-dealing: Noem “abused her office for personal benefit and steered federal dollars to associates. “
As Immigration and Customs Enforcement was racing to add 10,000 new officers to its force, an artificial intelligence error in how their applications were processed sent many new recruits into field offices without proper training, according to two law enforcement officials familiar with the error.
The AI tool used by ICE was tasked with looking for potential applicants with law enforcement experience to be placed into the agency’s “LEO program” — short for law enforcement officer — for new recruits who are already law enforcement officers. It requires four weeks of online training.
Applicants without law enforcement backgrounds are required to take an eight-week in-person course at ICE’s academy at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Georgia, which includes courses in immigration law and handling a gun, as well as physical fitness tests.
“They were using AI to scan résumés and found out a bunch of the people who were LEOs weren’t LEOs,” one of the officials said.
The officials said the AI tool sent people with the word “officer” on their résumés to the shorter four-week online training — for example, a “compliance officer” or people who said they aspired to be ICE officers.
The majority of the new applicants were flagged as law enforcement officers, the officials said, but many had no experience in any local police or federal law enforcement force.
Both law enforcement officials noted that ICE’s field offices provide more training beyond what is provided at the academy or in the online course before officers are sent out onto the street and that the officers singled out by the AI tool most likely received that training. The officials weren’t authorized to speak publicly and spoke to NBC News on condition of anonymity.
The Department of Homeland Security didn’t respond to a request for comment. The AI mistake was identified in mid-fall — over a month into the recruitment surge — and ICE immediately began taking steps to remedy the situation, including manual reviews of résumés of new hires, the officials said.
“They now have to bring them back to FLETC,” said one of the officials, referring to the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center.
The AI tool was initially the mechanism used to categorize résumés, the officials said. The officials weren’t sure how many officers were improperly trained. It’s also not clear how many may have been sent out to begin immigration arrests.
As the immigration agency surges agents into American cities, their enforcement tactics are increasingly questioned by local law enforcement, community groups and lawmakers following the shooting death of Renee Nicole Good in Minneapolis by ICE officer Jonathan Ross.
The error highlights the challenge of training such a large number of new recruits as ICE continues to ramp up operations to boost deportation numbers amid pressure from the White House. ICE has also placed some new recruits into a training program before they completed the agency’s vetting process, NBC News has reported.
In Minneapolis alone, more than 2,000 ICE officers have been sent to the area to boost arrests, and they have apprehended over 2,400 people since Nov. 29, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said. Minnesota has sued to try to remove DHS.
ICE had a mandate to hire 10,000 new officers by the end of 2025 and offered new recruits $50,000 signing bonuses using the money Congress allocated under the One Big Beautiful Bill. One of the officials said that although ICE met the goal on paper, bringing back people who were misidentified for more training means it didn’t successfully add 10,000 ICE officers on the street in 2025.
At a small toy shop on Grand Avenue in St. Paul, Minnesota, customers aren’t just buying board games and plushies. They’re grabbing handfuls of tiny plastic whistles and walking out without paying a cent.
Mischief Toys has become one of the most visible hubs in a growing Twin Cities effort to hand out free 3D printed whistles that activists say can alert neighbors when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents are nearby.
“We’ve been giving away thousands of 3D printed whistles,” said co-owner Abigail Adelsheim-Marshall. “We started doing it after Thanksgiving when ICE really started cracking down in Chicago and the whistle strategy first started showing signs of success and we were kind of giving away a trickle. Then ever since ICE has been hitting the Twin Cities and Minnesota really hard, we’ve been giving away upwards of a thousand a week.”
The whistles are small, often brightly colored and come in all kinds of shapes. Some are double-barreled. Some are barely bigger than a paper clip. Others are printed with a phone number that connects callers to volunteers tracking enforcement activity.
“One of our employees owns a 3D printer and she used to make all of them for us. She’s still making many, but she is at capacity, so we are now crowdsourcing them from around the Twin Cities,” Adelsheim-Marshall said. “So many 3D printers are donating, which is why we have a million different designs on the whistles right now.”
Adelsheim-Marshall said the store is currently limiting people to 20 whistles per person so they can stretch their supply as far as possible. She would like to be able to equip community organizations with larger batches or reach a day when they’re no longer needed.
“Hopefully someday we won’t need them anymore, which would be great,” she said.
For now, demand is outpacing supply. At the other end of the effort is Kaleb Lutterman, a self-described “maker” who has turned his hobby into a kind of production line in his Minneapolis home.
“For a little over a month now, I’ve been 3D printing emergency whistles,” he said. “So these are really small loud whistles specifically to help with you know alerting locals to ICE presence. You probably heard them in any sort of coverage videos of what’s happening here in the cities, people blowing them. So that’s really what it is just to just something to say, you know, ‘Hey there’s some activity over here.’ You know, let the neighbors come out of their houses and see what’s going on.”
Lutterman prints on a Bambu Labs P1S and says he can fit 100 whistles on a single plate. Each run takes about seven and a half hours. He estimates he can make roughly 800 whistles for around $15 worth of filament, depending on what he buys and in what quantity.
“It’s hard to keep up with demand,” he said. “There’s a group of us in the cities. We’re all kind of in a group chat together, and anytime we find somebody that’s printing more themselves, we try to add them to this group chat.”
That informal network is how Mischief Toys gets restocked.
“They reached out to me and said I need 1,000 and this is after I just went through 800 of them this last weekend,” Lutterman said. “So I said, you know, I don’t have 1,000, but I have 300 and then I reached out to the group, and they were all able to pitch in about 100 each or so, so we got Mischief restocked.”
Lutterman says he isn’t accepting money for the whistles at this point.
“This is something I can pocket and do for the community with my own money,” he said, adding that it could change if requests for large orders keep coming in.
Organizers and volunteers say the whistles are meant to be an attention grabber and a way to quickly draw witnesses and cameras when enforcement activity happens in neighborhoods.
“I think people are feeling helpless and this is something you can do,” Adelsheim-Marshall said. “It helps alert neighbors and get a crowd going, which helps document the illegal activity that ICE is doing and gives anyone who’s in danger from ICE a chance to hide or shelter in place. So, it is, I wish we could be doing more, but it is the best strategy that we have found so far.”
Critics of the tactic, including federal officials, argue the whistles won’t stop ICE from making arrests and say the agency is targeting people they describe as threats.
Lutterman recently saw that criticism firsthand in a social media post he says came from the Department of Homeland Security.
“It says your whistles won’t stop or hinder ICE from arresting criminal, illegal alien sex abusers, murderers, gang members and more off the Minneapolis street,” he read aloud.
Lutterman says he doesn’t see himself as someone trying to interfere with law enforcement.
“I feel like they want me to be intimidated, but you know a whistle is not going to do anything to them, just like they can’t do much to me,” he said. “It’s not going to stop me from supporting my community. They’re not from here, I am, so they can be as mad as they want about it.”
He says his concern is about how immigration enforcement is playing out on the ground.
“Even if you’re someone that thinks that there should be immigration enforcement, I can agree to tha,t but what they’re doing here is harmful to the community,” Lutterman said. “If they’re supposed to be making this city safe, I don’t feel safe. My neighbors don’t feel safe. So if a whistle can help with that, that’s the least I can do.”
Back at Mischief Toys, the whistles sit in small bins near the counter, free for anyone who walks in and asks. Adelsheim-Marshall says they’re not interested in how loud the debate gets online, just in getting a simple tool into people’s hands.
“Whether or not you think it is legitimate for ICE to track people down and deport them, what they are doing now is blatantly illegal,” she said, describing her view of current enforcement tactics. “Immigrants, documented or otherwise, are people and we should treat them like people.”
For the people printing and passing them out, a piece of plastic that costs pennies has become a way to feel a little less helpless and a little more connected when the sound of a whistle cuts through a Twin Cities street.
As the backlog has grown for many employment-basedU.S. visas, applications have skyrocketed for the so-called “Einstein visa” reserved for people who can show extraordinary ability in their fields.
But as interest has spiked in the high-achiever visa, called the EB-1A, so has a market for credential-boosting services that in some cases may constitute fraud, a CBS News investigation found.
Some visa hopefuls, especially in science and technology fields, have turned to a marketplace of services to pad their resumes with false or low-quality records of achievement. Research brokers or consultants ghostwrite research papers, boost article citations, or confer vanity awards to customers willing to pay up to hundreds or thousands of dollars.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, which processes the applications, is aware that a growing number of EB-1A applicants have been applying with purchased or fraudulent credentials, two former USCIS officials familiar with the agency’s fraud investigations told CBS News.
“If you have money, then you have a way to buy your evidence and fabricate those things,” said the official, who left the agency last year and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal operations at USCIS.
Those who are caught misrepresenting themselves or using fraudulent credentials on a visa application may simply have their application denied, but could also be prevented from successfully reapplying for a visa by being deemed inadmissible to the U.S. USCIS could also revoke an existing visa from someone if they find they lied on their application.
“USCIS is committed to rooting out fraud by thoroughly screening and vetting all aliens seeking immigration benefits,” agency spokesman Matthew Tragesser wrote in a statement to CBS News. “Anyone submitting fake evidence or misrepresenting themselves will be found out and face the consequences.”
But those who sell the credentials, middlemen who often operate anonymously on social media or through companies marketed as consulting groups, profit regardless.
Academic research brokers
The number of EB-1A petitions has tripled over the past four years, according to quarterly data from USCIS. Nearly 7,500 applied from April to June 2025, the most recent available data shows, up from about 2,500 in the last three months of 2021.
Meanwhile, the approval rate for EB-1A petitions has been dropping since 2021, with about 67% approved from April to June 2025. Data from immigration analytics platform Lawfully indicates it dropped to closer to 50% in recent months.
Applicants must demonstrate they meet at least three of 10 criteria to be considered for an EB-1A visa, such as winning awards, authoring scholarly articles, or being a member of a professional association.
CBS News identified dozens of posts and advertisements on Telegram, Facebook and in WhatsApp groups marketing scholarly papers that customers can pay to have their names on. Several posts specifically targeted visa applicants.
WhatsApp and Facebook owner Meta confirmed some of the posts violated their policies around fake documents, frauds and scams, in which they ban content that “enables users to get visa approvals without fulfilling normal requirements.” Meta removed the ads that CBS News sent to a company spokesperson as examples.
Two social media advertisements for ghostwriting services targeting visa applicants
Three individuals who posted advertisements told CBS News that clients didn’t need to contribute to the papers to be listed as authors.
One individual running a visa “profile enhancement” Facebook page told software engineer Abhishek Bakare in May that for $500, he could list him as the fourth author on a computer science research paper, according to a recording of a phone call between the two that Bakare shared with CBS News.
Bakare, who developed an artificial intelligence tool to spot low-quality research, had feigned interest in making a purchase to gather information on the fraud, he told CBS News.
“Already I was working on this [paper] from the past four to five months,” the seller told Bakare on the phone. “I’m adding you literally at the very last stage.”
He later added that at the time, he had 55 clients, all of them Indian nationals and most aiming for EB-1A or similar employment-based visas.
“There are people, those who have paid, they have basically purchased a paper,” the seller admitted, “which is not sort of ethical for EB-1.”
A paper with the same title as the one he offered Bakare was accepted by an international conference co-sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a widely-respected organization within the electrical engineering industry.
When CBS News contacted the seller, he denied that he offered to sell the authorship position to Bakare, and instead claimed the $500 was for a conference fee. If Bakare had moved forward with working with him, he said, he would have had to create the conference presentation to get his name on the paper.
“My process is the same for everyone: without actively working on a paper, it isn’t practically possible for me to add anyone,” he wrote in a WhatsApp message. “I have not done this in the past, I am not doing it now, and I will not do so in the future.”
Some papers are published not just to confer authorship to a paying customer, but simply to cite an existing paper to make it appear more credible. One of the research brokers CBS News spoke with, based in Nigeria, charges $500 for a citation.
“I will boost citations by writing 100% human written articles and publishing them to a journal but I will include your article references in the reference section,” he wrote in a WhatsApp message to CBS News.
He told CBS News he has a team of 10 people who work on the writing and publication process. All of his clients are trying to get U.S. visas, he said.
Low-quality scientific research produced for resume padding isn’t an activity exclusive to visa applicants, according to researchers at Northwestern University and The University of Sydney. They found in a recent study that low-quality or plagiarized papers are increasingly published not only in predatory, pay-to-publish platforms, but reputable journals as well.
They discovered that a small group of bad actors were hired as editors at reputable journals, allowing them to “accept for publication pretty much anything,” said Luis Amarol, one of the study’s authors.
“It’s almost like a spy movie, right? You send a spy to infiltrate a place and that spy inside is actually betraying the organization,” he said.
In some cases, individuals will submit a paper to a journal, and once they secure acceptance, request to add authors during the editing process, said Reese Richardson, another author on the study. This allows research brokers to sell authorship slots in papers that are all but guaranteed to be published.
“Profile building” services
The EB-1A criteria extend beyond papers and citations. That has led to the rise of “profile building” services that promise to help customers enhance their resumes, CBS News found.
Arizona-based Next League Program‘s website says that clients will become eligible candidates for EB-1A visas in “a matter of a few months,” and previously promised that participants will become authors of at least one book, over 100 articles and become a founder of an institution with a patent to their name. Its owner, Ranjeet Mudholkar, says that 56 individuals who completed the Next League Program received EB-1A visas.
Two former participants shared receipts showing they paid about $10,000 to enroll. Company lawyers said in court documents that it earned $1 million in revenue in 2024.
“In my mind it was like, I will get a helping hand to accomplish those things with little time from my end,” said one former participant, referring to the website’s promises. He added that he believed the program’s director had connections with journals and award companies that would help him achieve the credentials.
He and another participant who spoke with CBS News requested their names be withheld because they signed a non-disparagement agreement.
In return for their payments, they received dozens of hours of pre-recorded videos with advice on how to hone their areas of expertise and prepare their applications. Neither said they thought the guidance was adequate to build the resume the program’s website advertised, and neither received the one-on-one coaching they said they were promised, which required making their way through the prerecorded content first.
They soon came to believe that some Next League participants were buying their credentials, they told CBS News.
At least seven successful EB-1A applicants who completed the program received the same vanity award, called the Globee Business Award, a review by CBS News found. Immigration attorneys told CBS News that although the award’s website claims it has a “rigorous and comprehensive judging process,” it is easily obtained by those who pay a fee.
At least two of those individuals had published scholarly articles in an India-based journal whose website promises to publish peer-reviewed papers within four hours of submission after publication fees were received. One of them told CBS News their review took a few days, and that she chose it because it had lower submission fees.
Richardson, the academic fraud researcher, reviewed the journal and described it as “predatory,” identifying several alleged red flags to CBS News. A genuine peer review process takes months, often longer than a year, and there is no guarantee after an article is submitted to a legitimate journal that it will be sent out for peer review or that it will be published, he said. The journal’s editors did not respond to a CBS News request for comment.
When asked about purchased credentials, Mudholkar wrote in a statement to CBS News that the company “does not sell, require, or mandate any specific awards, journals, or publications, nor does it submit evidence without legal review and advisement,” and that “participants retain agency over where they publish.”
A few of the Next League Program participants also set up a professional organization, the American Association of Information Technology Professionals. Mudholkar agreed to be the chairman, so they would have a U.S. citizen on paper as its leader, he told CBS News. Being a member of a professional organization or society meets one of the EB-1A criteria.
In an interview with CBS News, Mudholkar disputed the idea that Next League Program’s sole purpose is to help visa hopefuls meet these criteria.
“You really need to be an expert in your field,” he said. “We are looking for people who have changed lives.”
He described the program as a “transformation coaching program” that follows a process he patented, and said that he encourages applicants to view the visa as a “milestone” in becoming the best version of themselves.
Mudholkar also repeatedly emphasized that the company’s status as an alternative business structure in Arizona lends it a layer of regulatory overview other companies don’t have. The structure allows non-lawyers to run a company that provides legal services, and requires getting a license from the state Supreme Court.
In interviews, two former participants Mudholkar referred to CBS News praised the program and credited it with helping them get an EB-1A visa. But multiple others wrote on social media or in complaints to the Arizona attorney general’s office that they felt they were scammed.
“As with any selective, high-intensity program, experiences vary. Public praise and criticism both exist,” Mudholkar wrote to CBS News.
Profile building services can blur the line of what’s considered fraudulent.
“Having an attorney or career coach help you apply to legitimate opportunities that can raise an applicants’ profile is not wrong,” Locke said. “That line between what’s appropriate like profile building, what’s fair-game versus what’s shady, it can be difficult to spot.”
A yearslong backlog meets a USCIS crackdown
Federal law sets annual limits for each visa category. In FY 2025, the cap was 140,000 employment-based visas, including EB-1A, with no more than 7% going to nationals of one single country, regardless of its population.
That can create huge backlogs, particularly for applicants from India and China, where demand for U.S. employment-based visas is high. Many of the services and advertisements CBS News reviewed appeared to target Indian nationals, who have to wait years to receive certain visas.
The EB-1 visa, of which EB-1A is a subcategory, is less backlogged than the EB-2 visa, which is reserved for those with “exceptional ability,” but does not require the same level of acclaim as the EB-1A.
That’s helped make EB-1A — and the marketplace of services around it — more popular.
“They’ve been put in a situation just that’s super untenable, which increases desperation, which increases risk taking.” Locke said.
The vast majority of EB-1A applicants are not fraudulent, said Melissa Warburton, an immigration attorney who left USCIS last year. Investigations into EB-1A fraud, which Warburton said predate the current administration, are coinciding with a broader crackdown on fraud in visa applications.
“We are going to be here with our agents investigating large scale fraud patterns,” said USCIS director Joseph Edlow in an October interview with CBS News’s Camilo Montoya-Galvez.
In its recent hiring push for immigration service officers, USCIS created the new title of “homeland defenders.” Its informational webpage includes a video of Edlow saying the agency is “declaring war on fraud.”
USCIS announced in early December it was launching a new vetting center focused on “more thorough supplemental review of immigration applications and petitions.”
It is not clear how much of this effort will be directed toward EB-1A petitions, which make up less than 1% of the total applications USCIS processes each year.
“USCIS is strengthening the integrity of all immigrant worker programs with increased screening and vetting in support of President Trump’s promise to protect American jobs and workers,” Tragesser, the agency spokesperson, wrote to CBS News. “Anti-fraud measures apply to EB-1A as they do to all immigration benefit categories.”
This month, the agency will propose a new regulation that will, among other changes, “update provisions governing extraordinary ability,” “modernize outdated provisions” and “clarify evidentiary requirements” for the visa.
USCIS may now be going back and reevaluating some EB-1A applications it already approved to check for fraud, immigration attorneys and the former USCIS employees said. The agency can revoke a visa, and even initiate a denaturalization process, if it can prove willful misrepresentation or fraud.
“We don’t know to what extent people have done this,” said immigration attorney Evan Law, “but if they did commit fraud, it will come back to them eventually, in my view.”
Gov. Ron DeSantis told Floridians that under his leadership the state’s economy soared as he cracked down on illegal immigration and protected election integrity.
“We have delivered big results, and we have set the standard for the rest of the country to follow,” DeSantis said Jan. 13.
It marked the two-term governor’s final State of the State address kicking off Florida’s legislative session. Lawmakers are expected to consider bills on property tax exemptions, lowering the age to buy a gun, prescription drug costs and redistricting. DeSantis has called a special redistricting session to begin on April 20 and has floated calling another to address overhauling the state’s property tax system.
DeSantis, who dropped out of the 2024 Republican presidential primary, did not address his political future. He is term limited and can’t seek reelection.
We fact-checked a few of the governor’s statements and a response from the Florida House Democratic leader about Floridians’ cost-of-living concerns.
“Florida represents about 6.5% percent of the U.S. population. Yet, since 2020 our economy has accounted for more than 14% of all new jobs produced throughout America.”
This is close to accurate.
Since January 2020, Florida has added 971,400 jobs, which is almost 13% of the nearly 7.5 million jobs added in the U.S. during that period. (The governor’s office confirmed this was their starting point.)
The calculation varies depending on the start date. Starting the count in January 2021 — another read of “since 2020” — shows a gain of 1.4 million jobs in Florida and almost 17 million nationally. For that time frame, Florida’s share is about 8.3%. (The job gains are larger starting in January 2021 because the coronavirus pandemic dramatically reduced employment starting in March 2020.)
Florida is the only state that requires state and local cooperation with federal immigration enforcement efforts, and “is responsible for the apprehension of nearly 20,000 illegal aliens. … Our people are safer because of these efforts.”
The statements about federal cooperation and numbers are accurate, with additional information needed on public safety.
Florida has been one of the top enforcers of the Trump administration’s mass deportation efforts, trailing only Texas for arrests.
Through “Operation Tidal Wave” — the joint operation between Florida’s state and local agencies and Immigration and Customs Enforcement — more than 10,400 immigrants in the country illegally were arrested in 2025, according to state data. DeSantis said an additional 9,600 arrests were made through an agreement that allows state and local law enforcement to enforce certain federal immigration laws, bringing the total to around 20,000 arrests.
The Miami Herald corroborated that figure using data compiled by the University of California-based Deportation Data Project. The newspaper said 20,000 is an undercount because the data goes through mid-October and does not include U.S. Customs and Border Protection arrests.
The Herald found that more than 4,800 of the 20,000 people detained in Florida had only immigration violations, and no criminal charges or convictions. A quarter of those arrested had criminal convictions, and the rest had pending criminal charges that include nonviolent crimes such as driving without a valid license.
Florida has signed the most agreements with ICE to enforce federal immigration laws than any other state — 325 as of Sept. 30, a 577% increase since Trump’s inauguration.
“Florida now has the highest average minimum teacher salary in the southeast region, all told, we have provided a record of almost $6 billion towards this effort to better compensate our teachers.”
This is accurate but needs context.
DeSantis signed legislation in 2020 mandating a $47,500 minimum starting salary for public school teachers to boost recruitment, putting Florida in the lead for the metric in the southeast.
Because funding was primarily directed to the minimum starting pay, veteran Florida teachers have seen little growth, giving the state the lowest overall average teacher pay in the region, around $54,000. Georgia’s overall average, by comparison, is more than $10,000 higher, despite its lower starting pay.
Since 2020, DeSantis has also allotted nearly $6 billion in funds for teacher salaries. This includes a $1.56 billion increase in his proposed 2026-27 budget, almost 15% more than last year’s budget and the state’s highest-ever teacher salary increase.
The Florida Education Association, the state teacher’s union, says despite recent pay increases, Florida is consistently at the bottom for U.S. teacher pay.
The organization refers to the National Education’s Association’s 2025 report, which ranked Florida second-to-last in the nation for average teacher pay for the second consecutive year, saying the pay increases have failed to keep pace with inflation.
DeSantis’ Florida Department of Education has rejected the NEA’s ranking, saying the organization doesn’t consider factors such as cost of living and Florida’s lack of state income tax.
“When a member of a group of thieves was interviewed on CNN, and they asked, ‘Why do you steal in New York, even though you like spending the money in Florida?’ The response was very simple, from the thief: ‘Because in Florida they put you in jail.’”
When DeSantis said something similar in 2024, law enforcement experts cautioned that it was anecdotal.
During a Feb. 2, 2024, segment, CNN law enforcement analyst John Miller recalled a conversation — similar to the account DeSantis shared — he’d had with detectives tracking a New York crew suspected of stealing from pedestrians and retail outlets who said they stole in New York and spent the proceeds in Florida. CNN didn’t interview a thief on air; Miller referenced conversations he’d had with unnamed detectives, who he said in turn had talked to an unnamed thief.
Experts said it’s unclear how common the pattern Miller described actually is, and if it exists, whether it’s driven by prosecutorial practices in two different states.
Florida House Democratic Leader Fentrice Driskell: “Cost of living is the No. 1 issue facing Floridians. We all hear it from our communities back home.”
This is a correct read of Floridians’ sentiments, according to a November 2025 Florida Atlantic University poll.
The latest poll available from the university called Florida’s high cost of living a “pressure point” for the state as 90% of residents said they were at least somewhat concerned about inflation and 80% were concerned with housing affordability.
The poll also found that nearly 50% of Floridians surveyed say they have considered moving out of the state because of the cost of living.
One thousand American adults over the age of 18 responded to the survey between Sept. 30 and Oct. 10, 2025, with a margin of error of 3 percentage points.
President Donald Trump said Tuesday that starting Feb. 1 he will deny federal funding to any states that are home to local governments resisting his administration’s immigration policies, expanding on previous threats to cut off resources to the so-called sanctuary cities themselves.
Such an action could have far-reaching impacts across the U.S., potentially even in places that aren’t particularly friendly to noncitizens.
Two previous efforts by Trump to cut off some funding for sanctuary jurisdictions were shut down by courts.
Trump unveiled the concept this time late in a speech Tuesday at the Detroit Economic Club, without offering specifics.
A sanctuary city is a city that limits its cooperation with federal immigration enforcement agents in order to prevent undocumented immigrants from deportation.
“Starting Feb. 1, we’re not making any payments to sanctuary cities or states having sanctuary cities, because they do everything possible to protect criminals at the expense of American citizens and it breeds fraud and crime and all of the other problems that come,” he said. “So we’re not making any payment to anybody that supports sanctuary cities.”
Back in Washington, Trump was asked by reporters what kind of funding would be affected on Feb 1: “You’ll see,” he said. “It’ll be significant.”
There is no strict definition for sanctuary policies or sanctuary cities, but the terms generally describe limited cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Courts have rejected the idea before
In an executive orders last year, the president directed federal officials to withhold money from sanctuary jurisdictions that seek to shield people in the country illegally from deportation.
A California-based federal judge struck it down despite government lawyers saying it was too early to stop the plan when no action had been taken and no specific conditions had been laid out.
In Trump’s first term in office, in 2017, courts struck down his effort to cut funding to the cities.
Some of the details are tricky
The Justice Department last year published a list of three dozen states, cities and counties that it considers to be sanctuary jurisdictions.
The list is overwhelmingly made up of places where the governments are controlled by Democrats, including the states of California, Connecticut and New York, cities such as Boston and New York and counties including Baltimore County, Maryland, and Cook County, Illinois.
That list replaced an earlier, longer one that was met with pushback from officials who said it wasn’t clear why their jurisdictions were on it.
The administration has been threatening funding in specific places
The federal government has moved to halt funding for a variety of programs in recent weeks and is already facing legal challenges.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has warned states that have refused to provide data on recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program money that they’ll be docked administrative funds. A court fight over the request for information was already under way before the threat came. Money hasn’t been stopped yet.
The U.S. Department of Health and Social Services said last week that it was halting money from five Democratic-led states for daycare subsidies and other aid to low-income families with children over unspecified suspicions about fraud. A court put that on hold
The administration has tried to use additional financial pressure against Minnesota, a state where it has also sent a wave of federal officers in an immigration crackdown. The Agriculture Department has said it’s freezing funding in the state — but without laying out many details.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services also told Minnesota last week that it intends to withhold $515 million every three months from 14 Medicaid programs that were deemed “high risk” after rejecting a corrective action plan it demanded because of fraud allegations. The amount is equivalent to one-fourth of the federal money for those programs. State officials said Tuesday that they’re appealing.
The FBI said in a court document made public Monday that it had found no surveillance or other video of a Border Patrol agent shooting and wounding two people in a pickup truck during an immigration enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, last week.
Agents told investigators that one of their colleagues opened fire Thursday after the driver put the truck in reverse and repeatedly slammed into an unoccupied car the agents had rented, smashing its headlights and knocking off its front bumper. The agents said they feared for their own safety and that of the public, the document said.
The FBI has interviewed four of the six agents on the scene, the document said. It did not identify the agent who fired the shots.
The shooting, which came one day after a federal agent shot and killed a driver in Minneapolis, prompted protests over federal agents’ aggressive tactics during immigration enforcement operations. The Department of Homeland Security has said the two people in the truck entered the U.S. illegally and were affiliated with the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.
None of the six agents was recording body camera footage, and investigators have uncovered no surveillance or other video footage of the shooting, FBI Special Agent Daniel Jeffreys wrote in an affidavit supporting aggravated assault and property damage charges against the driver, Luis David Nino-Moncada.
The truck drove away after the shooting, which occurred in the parking lot of a medical office building. Nino-Moncada called 911 after arriving at an apartment complex several minutes away. He was placed in FBI custody after being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and abdomen.
During an initial appearance Monday afternoon in federal court in Portland, he wore a white sweatshirt and sweatpants and appeared to hold out his left arm gingerly at an angle.
An interpreter translated the judge’s comments for Nino-Moncada. The judge ordered that he remain in detention and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Wednesday.
The agent’s affidavit said that after being read his rights, Nino-Moncada “admitted to intentionally ramming the Border Patrol vehicle in an attempt to flee, and he stated that he knew they were immigration enforcement vehicles.”
In a statement on Monday, the Justice Department described the damage to the border patrol vehicle as “significant,” posting images that show serious damage to the front bumper and both headlights.
Image released by the DOJ shows the damage to the border patrol vehicle.
Justice Department
His passenger, Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, was hospitalized after being shot in the chest and on Monday was being held at a private immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to an online detainee locator system maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. She faces a charge of illegal entry into the U.S., which federal prosecutors in Texas filed last week. The federal public defender’s office for the Western District of Texas did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson and Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek have condemned the shooting and demanded a halt to federal immigration operations.
“ICE agents and their Homeland Security leadership must be fully investigated and held responsible for the violence inflicted on the American people — in Minnesota, in Portland, and across the nation,” Wilson said in a statement on Friday.
Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras are Venezuelan nationals and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security said. It identified Nino-Moncada as an associate of Tren de Aragua and Zambrano-Contreras as involved in a prostitution ring run by the gang. The Trump administration last year designated Tren de Aragua as a foreign terrorist organization.
“Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a news release announcing charges against Nino-Moncada. “This man — an illegal alien with ties to a foreign terrorist organization — should NEVER have been in our country to begin with, and we will ensure he NEVER walks free in America again.”
Oregon Federal Public Defender Fidel Cassino-DuCloux, whose office represents Nino-Moncada, said in a statement last week that the shooting and the accusations against Nino-Moncada “follow a well-worn playbook that the government has developed to justify the dangerous and unprofessional conduct of its agents.”
Portland Police Chief Bob Day confirmed last week that the pair had “some nexus” to the gang. Day said the two came to the attention of police during an investigation of a July shooting believed to have been carried out by gang members, but they were not identified as suspects.
Zambrano-Contreras was previously arrested for prostitution, Day said, and Nino-Moncada was present when a search warrant was served in that case.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The FBI said in a court document made public Monday that it had found no surveillance or other video of a Border Patrol agent shooting and wounding two people in a pickup truck during an immigration enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, last week.
Agents told investigators that one of their colleagues opened fire Thursday after the driver put the truck in reverse and repeatedly slammed into an unoccupied car the agents had rented, smashing its headlights and knocking off its front bumper. The agents said they feared for their own safety and that of the public, the document said.
The FBI has interviewed four of the six agents on the scene, the document said. It did not identify the agent who fired the shots.
None of the six agents was recording body camera footage, and investigators have uncovered no surveillance or other video footage of the shooting, FBI Special Agent Daniel Jeffreys wrote in an affidavit supporting aggravated assault and property damage charges against the driver, Luis David Nino-Moncada.
The truck drove away after the shooting, which occurred in the parking lot of a medical office building. Nino-Moncada called 911 after arriving at an apartment complex several minutes away. He was placed in FBI custody after being treated for a gunshot wound to the arm and abdomen.
During an initial appearance Monday afternoon in federal court in Portland, he wore a white sweatshirt and sweatpants and appeared to hold out his left arm gingerly at an angle. An interpreter translated the judge’s comments for him. The judge ordered that he remain in detention and scheduled a preliminary hearing for Wednesday.
The agent’s affidavit said that after being read his rights, Nino-Moncada “admitted to intentionally ramming the Border Patrol vehicle in an attempt to flee, and he stated that he knew they were immigration enforcement vehicles.”
His passenger, Yorlenys Betzabeth Zambrano-Contreras, was hospitalized after being shot in the chest and on Monday was being held at a private immigration detention facility in Tacoma, Washington, according to an online detainee locator system maintained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Nino-Moncada and Zambrano-Contreras are Venezuela nationals and entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and 2023, respectively, the Department of Homeland Security said. It identified Nino-Moncada as an associate of Tren de Aragua and Zambrano-Contreras as involved in a prostitution ring run by the gang.
“Anyone who crosses the red line of assaulting law enforcement will be met with the full force of this Justice Department,” Attorney General Pam Bondi said Monday in a news release announcing charges against Nino-Moncada. “This man — an illegal alien with ties to a foreign terrorist organization — should NEVER have been in our country to begin with, and we will ensure he NEVER walks free in America again.”
Oregon Federal Public Defender Fidel Cassino-DuCloux, whose office represents Nino-Moncada, did not immediately return messages from The Associated Press seeking comment. He told The Oregonian/OregonLive that the federal shooting of and the subsequent accusations against Nino-Moncada and his passenger follow “a well-worn playbook that the government has developed to justify the dangerous and unprofessional conduct of its agents.”
Portland Police Chief Bob Day confirmed last week that the pair had “some nexus” to the gang. Day said the two came to the attention of police during an investigation of a July shooting believed to have been carried out by gang members, but they were not identified as suspects.
Zambrano-Contreras was previously arrested for prostitution, Day said, and Nino-Moncada was present when a search warrant was served in that case.
Johnson reported from Seattle.
Copyright 2026 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
The state of Minnesota, along with the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, are suing Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and other federal officials in an effort to stop the surge of federal law enforcement officials coming into the state.
State officials said the lawsuit, filed on Monday, is asking the federal court to “end the unprecedented surge of DHS agents into the state and declare it unconstitutional and unlawful.”
The lawsuit, according to officials, also asks the court for a temporary restraining order, citing the immediate harm the state and cities are facing.
“We allege that the surge, reckless impact on our schools, on our local law enforcement, is a violation of the 10th Amendment and the sovereign laws and powers of the Constitution,” Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison said while discussing the lawsuit on Monday afternoon.
The Trump administration initiated a massive deployment of approximately 2,000 federal agents to the Twin Cities amid a widening fraud scandal on Jan. 5. The influx involves agents from ICE and Homeland Security Investigations overseeing a 30-day operation. Agents from DHS are expected to probe alleged cases of fraud.
Homeland Security Investigations on Dec. 29 conducted a “massive investigation on child care and other rampant fraud” in the Twin Cities, according to Noem. Two DHS officials told CBS News that federal agents were expected to inspect over 30 sites. Many of their targets were day care centers referenced in a viral video posted by conservative YouTuber Nick Shirley.
CBS News conducted its own analysis of nearly 12 day care centers mentioned by Shirley: all but two have active licenses, according to state records, and all active locations were visited by state regulators within the last six months.
Homeland Security’s Operation Metro Surge, which has targeted Somali immigrants in Minnesota, started at the beginning of December. The operation has led to more than 2,000 arrests, according to DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin. Federal agents have also been detaining severalprotesters and observers.
Illinois on Monday filed a lawsuit against DHS over what state officials called “unlawful and dangerous tactics” used by Customs and Border Protection and ICE agents in the state.
The court document, which also names other federal officials, alleges federal agents arrested people without warrants or probable cause and “implemented an illegal policy of deploying Border Patrol” to Chicago and other parts of Illinois.
