Tag: us department of homeland security

Biden heads to the border for the first time as president | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden is heading to the US-Mexico border on Sunday on the heels of major policy announcements and following relentless calls from Republicans who believe the trip is overdue.

The trip to the border – the first for Biden since he took office – comes as the administration wrestles with a growing number of migrants, overwhelming federal and local resources. Republicans, some border-district Democrats in Congress and even Democratic mayors have criticized Biden for failing to address record levels of border crossings.

With his visit to El Paso, Texas, on Sunday, Biden is seizing on an issue that’s been a political liability for his administration, while calling on Congress to overhaul the US immigration system to meet current needs.

But the patchwork of policies put in place by the administration to manage the border so far has often put Biden at odds with his own allies who argue that the administration’s approach is too enforcement heavy.

“It’s enraging and sad to see a Democratic administration make it harder for vulnerable people to seek asylum all because they’re scared of angry MAGA voters on this issue,” a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus told CNN, responding to the latest policy announcements.

Previewing the trip, a White House official said the president will “meet with federal, state, and local officials and community leaders who have been critical partners in managing the new migration challenge impacting the entire Western Hemisphere with record numbers of people fleeing political oppression and gang violence in Venezuela, Nicaragua, Haiti, and Cuba.” The president is scheduled to spend about three hours on the ground.

Biden will evaluate border enforcement operations, touring the Bridge of the Americas Port of Entry alongside Customs and Border Protection officers, members of Congress and local officials and law enforcement.

The White House said it’s the busiest port in El Paso and received $600 million under bipartisan infrastructure law.

Biden will then visit the El Paso County Migrant Services Center to meet with local officials, faith leaders and non-governmental organizations “who have been critical to supporting migrants fleeing political oppression and economic collapse in their home countries.”

The official said the president will also spend time with local business leaders to hear about the economic impact of migration in the region and worker shortages.

Biden will be joined by Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas; Texas Reps. Veronica Escobar, Henry Cuellar and Vicente Gonzalez, all Democrats; El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser; El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego; and additional community and business leaders.

Mayorkas on Sunday defended Biden’s approach to addressing the migrant surge at the southern border, saying the administration was operating in a humane but necessary way.

“We are dealing with in a broken immigration system that Congress has failed to repair for decades, and there is unanimity with respect to that reality,” Mayorkas told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos on “This Week,” while attributing the surge to regional displacement impacting the entire Western Hemisphere.

“We want individuals who qualify for relief under our laws to come to the United States in a safe and orderly way. And that is why we are building lawful pathways so people do not have to place their lives and their life savings in the hands of ruthless smugglers,” he said.

Mass movement across the Western Hemisphere has posed an urgent challenge for Biden, who in his first few months in office faced a surge of unaccompanied migrant children at the border and later, the abrupt arrival of thousands of Haitian migrants.

Since 2021, there have been more than 2.4 million arrests along the US-Mexico border, according to US Customs and Border Protection data. That includes people who have attempted to cross more than once. Many have also been turned away under a Trump-era Covid restriction known as Title 42 that allows federal authorities to expel migrants quickly, citing the Covid-19 pandemic.

The arrival of thousands of migrants has strained border communities, including El Paso. The city has prided itself on being a welcoming place for migrants but has been overwhelmed in recent months with the sudden arrival of thousands of migrants, straining local resources and prompting pleas for federal assistance.

Anxiety about the scheduled end of Title 42 prompted thousands of migrants in recent weeks to turn themselves in to border authorities or to cross into the United States illegally in a very short period.

The policy was scheduled to lift last month, but a Supreme Court ruling kept the rule in place while legal challenges play out in court.

Federal data shared with CNN indicates that migrant encounters in El Paso have dropped drastically since December, when thousands crossed on a daily basis.

There have been less than 700 daily encounters on average over the last few days, compared to nearly 2,500 at its peak in December, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

DHS said it deployed 100 additional personnel to the El Paso region in December, and this week, the department will open another temporary facility to process migrants. Shelters in Juarez, Mexico, just across the border from El Paso, have also seen a decrease in migrants, DHS said.

Biden has said he wanted to wait until he knew an outcome in the Title 42 legal machinations before traveling to the border and accused Republicans calling for him to travel there of playing political games.

“They haven’t been serious about this at all,” he said.

El Paso has been at the center of the immigration debate dating back to the Trump administration, which piloted the controversial family separation policy in the region.

While Biden has condemned Trump-era immigration policies, his own administration has wrestled with striking a balance between enforcement and holding up its humanitarian promises.

In El Paso, Biden will be faced with the history of his predecessor and the challenges he faces as the administration tries to stem the flow of mass migration in the hemisphere.

He’ll also be visiting a state whose governor has been a fierce critic of the Biden administration’s immigration policies. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who already criticized the president’s upcoming visit on Twitter, has sent thousands of migrants on buses to Democratic-led cities and deployed the National Guard along the Texas-Mexico border, including in El Paso.

In recent months, the El Paso sector has surpassed the Rio Grande Valley sector in migrant arrests. RGV has historically been one of the busiest sectors for border crossings. The El Paso sector patrols 268 miles of international border.

Last November, border authorities encountered more than 53,000 migrants in the El Paso sector, according to the latest available data from US Customs and Border Protection.

Last year, El Paso – whose mayor, Leeser, is a Democrat – began sending migrant buses to New York City, following in the footsteps of Republican governors, to try to get people to their destination and decongest the city. That effort has since stopped.

Escobar, who represents El Paso, said in a tweet that she’s “excited” to welcome Biden to the city. While she didn’t place a big emphasis on Biden visiting the border, she made clear she welcomed it in recent weeks and urged the federal government to provide assistance to the city.

John Kirby, the National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications, said that the president is looking forward to seeing firsthand the situation on the border ahead of the North American Leaders’ Summit in Mexico City.

“The President is very much looking forward to seeing for himself first-hand what the border security situation looks like, particularly in El Paso. He’s very much also interested in getting to talk to Customs and Border Patrol agents on the ground who are actually involved in this mission to get their first-hand perspectives of it,” Kirby told reporters Friday.

Ahead of Biden’s border visit, the administration also announced plans to expand the policy and include Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans while it remains in place. Title 42 has so far largely applied to migrants from Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras and Venezuela.

The announcements Biden made Thursday reflect the administration’s effort to prepare for the end of Title 42, along with putting in place programs to manage the surge of migrants that have coincided with the anticipated end of the rule.

The administration will now accept up to 30,000 migrants per month from Nicaragua, Cuba, Haiti, and Venezuela under a humanitarian parole program geared toward those nationalities. Those who do not come to the US under that program may be expelled to Mexico under Title 42.

The announcement drew criticism from immigrant advocates and Democrats who argued the policies will put migrants who are seeking asylum in harm’s way.

“The expansion of Title 42 to include Cubans, Haitians, and Nicaraguans is a broken promise,” said Dylan Corbett, executive director of Hope Border Institute, in a statement. Hope Border Institute has been assisting migrants who have arrived in El Paso.

“Border communities will continue to work hard to pick up the broken pieces of our nation’s immigration system and show that our future lies not with expulsion and deportation, but with humanity and hope,” he added.

Members of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus grilled top Biden officials, including Mayorkas, over the newly announced border policies in a call Thursday, according to two sources in attendance.

Members felt blindsided by the new policies and frustrated with the lack of engagement prior to their rollout, the sources said.

“It was really heated,” one source said, adding that members were “livid” that the administration didn’t consult with them ahead of time. The call included officials with the Department of Homeland Security and the White House.

One of the sources of tension during the call was a new asylum regulation that could bar migrants who are seeking asylum in the United States from doing so if they passed through another country on their way to the US-Mexico border. The restrictions are reminiscent of limits rolled out during the Trump administration, though officials have rejected the comparison.

This story has been updated with additional information.

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January 8, 2023
CBP seizes $9.1 million worth of cocaine at the Pan American Dock in Puerto Rico | CNN

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US Customs and Border Protection officers seized 877 pounds of cocaine on board the San Juan-Santo Domingo Ferry at the Pan American Dock in Puerto Rico last month.

The drugs, which have an estimated value of $9.1 million, were spotted on December 26 during a routine cargo inspection. Officers removed a board covering the floor of a cargo platform to reveal 355 packages that tested positive for cocaine, the CBP said in a statement.

“Our experienced CBP officers remain vigilant, utilizing their training and available tools to stop dangerous drugs from entering the country,” Roberto Vaquero, director of field operation for Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, said in the statement.

Homeland Security Investigations took custody of the contraband for further investigation, according to the CBP.

CBP has seized 77,000 pounds of drugs in the first two months of fiscal year 2023, according to the CBP Data Portal.

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January 7, 2023
Tent processing center for migrants going up in El Paso, expected to increase capacity by 1,000 | CNN

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In response to the increased number of migrants crossing the border in El Paso, US Customs and Border Protection is erecting a soft-sided tent facility to increase migrant processing capacity by about 1,000, according to Landon Hutchens, US Customs and Border Protection spokesperson.

“The facility will be used by U.S. Border Patrol El Paso Sector to provide additional migrant processing capabilities, with a capacity to hold approximately 1,000 migrants while they are processed in accordance with U.S. immigration law,” Hutchens said in a statement.

The facility is expected to be operational sometime in January.

In preparation for the possible lifting of Title 42, the Department of Homeland Security announced that it would be adding 10 soft-sided facilities to boost its processing capacity. The facility going up in El Paso is one of those facilities.

“This is part of the agency’s response efforts regarding increased migrant encounters in the El Paso area, along with surging additional personnel and providing funding to local partners,” Hutchens added.

“The addition of temporary processing facilities such as this one increases CBP’s capacity to safely take noncitizens into custody and place them into immigration proceedings.”

Title 42 was put in place by the Center for Disease Control in the early days of the coronavirus pandemic in a public health bid to curb the spread of Covid-19, but advocates argue it’s been used to halt immigration at the US-Mexico border.

The controversial order was set to end December 21 but remains in limbo after the Supreme Court issued an order Wednesday allowing the policy to remain in effect while legal challenges play out – a process that could stretch out for at least several months.

The city of El Paso is straining to handle the daily influx of migrants crossing the border.

Two vacant schools in the city are being prepared to house migrants, Deputy City Manager Mario D’Agostino said Tuesday.

Shelters have been set up at hotels, and some church parishes have volunteered to house migrants, he said. About 1,000 beds have been set up in El Paso’s convention center, which housed more than 480 migrants overnight on Christmas Eve and about 420 on Christmas Day, city spokesperson Laura Cruz-Acosta confirmed to CNN.

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December 28, 2022
Biden administration warns of potential influx of migrants immediately after Title 42 ends | CNN Politics

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The end of a Trump-era border policy next week will “likely increase migration flows immediately,” and migrants who are in encampments along Mexico’s northern border may attempt to cross into the United States, according to a Homeland Security intelligence memo reviewed by CNN.

Administration officials have been bracing for an influx of migrants when a public health authority, known as Title 42, ends next week. A federal judge last month blocked the use of the authority, which since the start of the coronavirus pandemic has allowed officials to turn away migrants encountered at the US-Mexico border.

The strain a surge of migrants will pose to already overwhelmed resources came into sharp focus this week in El Paso, Texas. The city is now grappling with over 2,000 migrants arriving daily, according to city officials.

The intelligence memo, from the Homeland Security Office of Intelligence and Analysis, underscores the concern within the administration over an increase in arrivals after Title 42 ends amid mass migration across the Western hemisphere and the role human smuggling organizations play in moving people. It’s been distributed within the administration and stakeholders.

“Human smuggling organizations will likely adjust their methods to successfully cross migrants into the United States and will employ social media and encrypted messages to fuel misinformation regarding US enforcement, judging from US government reporting,” the memo, dated December 12, reads.

The memo focuses on Venezuelan migrants who earlier this fall contributed to a rise in border encounters. Approximately 7 million Venezuelans have fled their country. In September, Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans accounted for almost half of encounters along the US southern border, according to the Department of Homeland Security.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas underscored the whole of government approach in a statement, noting that mass movement of people around the globe has posed a uniquely difficult challenge.

“Despite our efforts, our outdated immigration system is under strain; that is true at the federal level, as well as for state, local, NGO, and community partners. In the absence of congressional action to reform the immigration and asylum systems, a significant increase in migrant encounters will strain our system even further,” he said in a statement.

In October, the administration rolled out a humanitarian parole program geared toward Venezuelans to encourage them to apply for entry into the United States instead of crossing unlawfully. Officials have since attributed a drop in crossings of Venezuelan migrants to that program. Those who did not apply were returned to Mexico under Title 42.

The administration, meanwhile, is considering expanding the parole program to nationalities, including Haitians, Nicaraguans and Cubans, according to two Homeland Security officials, to try to stem the flow of migration from those countries.

But the calculus of migrants may change when Title 42 lifts, the memo says.

“With Title 42 ending, Venezuelan migrants who previously considered returning to Venezuela or remaining in third countries to apply for legal pathways to enter the United States will likely recalculate their decision and transit north to the US Southwest border,” the memo says, noting that transit countries like Costa Rica, Mexico and Panama are already under strain.

The memo states that while migrants continue to travel, numbers are “unlikely to rebound over the next month to early October numbers if migrants believe they will be returned to Mexico.”

CNN previously reported that DHS is preparing for multiple scenarios, including projections of between 9,000 to 14,000 migrants a day, more than double the current number of people crossing.

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December 14, 2022
White House Security Breaches Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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Here’s a selected list of White House intrusions and security breaches.

The White House grounds include 18 acres of land. That and the adjacent 52-acre Ellipse to the south belong to President’s Park, a national park.

The Secret Service is in charge of White House security.

According to the White House Historical Society, US President Thomas Jefferson was the first to put a fence around the White House. Over the years, the fence has been updated and fortified, with the wrought-iron fences of the 19th century having been replaced in the 1930s by a steel fence with tall bronze spears atop it. Most of the fence is currently about six feet six inches tall, and is undergoing an eight-phase replacement with an approximately 13 foot tall fence which began in July 2019.

Security became especially tighter during World War II. After a truck-bomb attack on the US Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983, low concrete walls were put up around the White House. Bollards – sturdy, vertical posts that can stop vehicles – were added a few years later.

“Security incidents occur frequently,” according to a 2015 House of Representatives report. Data from the Secret Service included in the report show that there were 104 security breaches or attempted breaches between April 2005 and April 15, 2015.

April 13, 1912 – On his second attempt to enter the White House to see President William Howard Taft, Michael Winter makes it several feet inside the front door before being noticed.

September 26, 1963 – Doyle Allen Hicks rams his pickup truck through the gates and drives up to within 25 feet of the North Portico main entrance. When stopped, he tells guards that he must see the president, because communists are taking over his state, North Carolina.

February 17, 1974 – Robert K. Preston, an Army private, steals a helicopter from Fort Meade, Maryland. He hovers over the Washington Monument and White House grounds before leading two state police helicopters on an aerial chase around Maryland and Washington, DC. After more than an hour, Preston heads back to the White House, according to a state police officer. Officers shoot at the helicopter, forcing Preston to land. He reportedly was upset about flunking out of flight school.

February 22, 1974 – Samuel Joseph Byck tries to hijack a Delta passenger jet at Baltimore-Washington International Airport, with the plan to crash it into the White House. He forces his way on to the plane, killing an airport policeman and the copilot. Byck is killed by police before takeoff.

December 25, 1974 – Marshall Fields crashes his automobile through the Northwest Gate and drives it close to the North Portico. He threatens to blow himself up with explosives he has strapped to his body, which later turn out to be flares. After four hours of negotiation, Fields surrenders to officials.

November 26, 1975 – Gerald Gainous Jr. makes his way over the fence, hides for two hours on the grounds undetected and is able to get within five feet of Susan Ford, President Gerald Ford’s daughter. Gainous jumps the fence three more times within the next year.

July 25, 1976 – Chester Plummer Jr. climbs over the White House fence carrying a metal pipe and starts running toward the White House. A guard chases him, yelling at him to stop. When he doesn’t, the guard shoots and kills him. Plummer’s motive is not discovered.

October 1978 – A barefoot man wearing a karate uniform and carrying a Bible with a knife hidden inside, scales the White House fence. He slashes two officers before White House guards are able to subdue him. The suspect, Anthony Henry, reportedly wanted to convince President Jimmy Carter to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from US currency.

January 20, 1985 – Robert Latta, a meter-reader from Denver, follows the Marine Band into the White House before President Ronald Reagan’s second inauguration ceremony. Latta wanders around the mansion for about 15 minutes before being arrested in the dining room.

September 12, 1994 – A man flying a stolen Cessna plane enters the prohibited airspace around the White House and crashes on the lawn just south of the Executive Mansion. The pilot, identified as Frank Eugene Corder, dies in the crash.

October 29, 1994 – Francisco Martin Duran, armed with a semiautomatic rifle, fires at least 29 rounds at the White House from the sidewalk on Pennsylvania Avenue. Duran is later convicted of attempting to kill President Bill Clinton.

May 23, 1995 – Leland W. Modjeski is shot by the Secret Service after climbing over a security fence and running toward the White House with a handgun that was later determined to be unloaded.

February 7, 2001 – Robert Pickett, an accountant who was fired from the IRS in the 1980s, fires shots outside the White House. Secret Service agents shoot him in the leg after a standoff lasting more than 10 minutes at the White House fence. President George W. Bush was not endangered, White House officials say later.

January 18, 2005 – Lowell Timmers, of Cedar Springs, Michigan, threatens to blow up his van in front on the White House, two days before Bush’s second inauguration, saying he has an explosive substance in the vehicle. The FBI, Secret Service and other authorities evacuate nearby buildings and shut down several blocks. Four hours pass before Timmers, who had demanded that his son-in-law be released from jail, surrenders.

April 9, 2006 – Brian Lee Patterson from New Mexico jumps the White House fence and makes it well inside the grounds before being stopped. It is the fourth time he has jumped the fence.

November 24, 2009 – A publicity-seeking Virginia couple, Michaele and Tareq Salahi, sneak into a White House dinner. The uninvited guests finesse their way through a security checkpoint staffed by uniformed Secret Service officers, according to congressional testimony by the agency’s director Mark Sullivan. Sullivan apologizes for the breach, saying agents violated protocol by allowing the Salahis to enter without verifying that they were on the guest list.

November 11, 2011 – A gunman fires an assault rifle at the White House, hitting the residential wing of the building at least seven times. Secret Service supervisors fail to recognize the danger, dismissing the gunfire as a gang-related shootout rather than an attack on the White House, according to the Washington Post. Four days later, a housekeeper and a White House usher spot bullet holes in the residence. Five days after the shooting, the gunman, Oscar Ramiro Ortega-Hernandez is arrested at a Pennsylvania hotel. In 2014, Ortega-Hernandez is sentenced to 25 years in federal prison.

October 3, 2013 – An unarmed woman is shot and killed by a Secret Service agent and a Capitol police officer after she drives toward a security checkpoint near the White House, hits a barricade and speeds away. The woman is a 34-year-old mother battling postpartum depression, according to her sister. Her one-year-old daughter, seated in the back of the car during the chase, is unharmed.

September 11, 2014 – A man wearing Pokemon gear and carrying a plush doll of the character Pikachu makes it over the White House fence and onto the north lawn, where he is apprehended. He is later identified as Jeffrey Grossman.

September 19, 2014 – After jumping the White House fence, 42-year-old Omar Gonzalez, of Copperas Cove, Texas, gets through the North Portico doors with a three-and-a-half-inch folding knife in his pants pocket, according to the Secret Service. In early accounts of the incident, the Secret Service claims the intruder didn’t get past the portico doors. Days later, the Washington Post reveals the man had actually made his way past the front entrance, through the main hall and into the East Room, where he was apprehended.

October 22, 2014 – Dominic Adesanya, 23, of Bel Air, Maryland, jumps the White House fence and barely makes it onto the lawn before he is subdued as he fights off two police dogs, according to the Secret Service. Adesanya, who suffers from mental health problems, had been arrested in a previous White House breach, his father later says.

January 26, 2015 – The Secret Service locks down the White House shortly after 3 a.m. after an officer spots a drone flying above the White House grounds before crashing on the southeast side of the complex. An employee of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a government entity with mapping and national security duties, later calls the Secret Service and admits that he was operating the drone for fun.

April 19, 2015 – Jerome R. Hunt, of Hayward, California, climbs the fence on the south side of the White House complex while carrying a suspicious package, later deemed harmless, and is cornered by security dogs.

November 26, 2015 – The Secret Service stops a man draped in an American flag after he jumps a White House fence during a Thanksgiving celebration at the executive mansion.

April 1, 2016 – A man tosses a backpack over the north fence and then jumps over, himself, and is immediately arrested. His name is not released to the public.

March 10, 2017 – A man carrying a backpack with mace and a letter for President Donald Trump makes it onto the grounds and roams for more than 15 minutes before he is discovered and arrested by a Secret Service officer near the south entrance. The suspect, identified in court records as Jonathan T. Tran, 26, of California, tells the agency’s officers that he was there to see the president.

March 21, 2017 – Marci Anderson Wahl of Everett, Washington, jumps a fence on the south side but gets stuck. Officers find her hanging by her shoelaces, which were “caught on top of the fence,” according to a police report. Wahl is arrested two more times within the next week, near the Treasury Building and in Lafayette Park.

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December 10, 2022
Inside the White House’s months of prep-work for a GOP investigative onslaught | CNN Politics

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More than four months before voters handed Republicans control of the House of Representatives, top White House and Department of Homeland Security officials huddled in the Roosevelt Room to prepare for that very scenario.  

The department and its secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, had emerged as top targets of Republican ire over the Biden administration’s border security policies – ire that is certain to fuel aggressive congressional investigations with Republicans projected to narrowly reclaim the House majority and the subpoena power that comes with it.  

Sitting around the large conference table in the Roosevelt Room, White House lawyers probed senior DHS officials about their preparations for the wide-ranging Republican oversight they had begun to anticipate, including Republicans’ stated plans to impeach Mayorkas, two sources familiar with the meeting said.  

Convened by Richard Sauber, a veteran white-collar attorney hired in May to oversee the administration’s response to congressional oversight, the meeting was one of several the White House has held since the summer with lawyers from across the administration – including the Defense Department, State Department and Justice Department.

The point, people familiar with the effort said, has been to ensure agencies are ready for the coming investigative onslaught  and to coordinate an administration-wide approach. 

While President Joe Biden and Democrats campaigned to preserve their congressional majorities, a small team of attorneys, communications strategists and legislative specialists have spent the past few months holed up in Washington preparing for the alternative, two administration officials said.  

The preparations, largely run out of the Eisenhower Executive Office Building near the White House, are among the earliest and most comprehensive by any administration ahead of a midterm election and highlight how far-reaching and aggressive Republican investigations are expected to be.

Along with Sauber, this spring the White House hired veteran Democratic communications aide Ian Sams as spokesman for the White House counsel’s office. Top Biden adviser Anita Dunn returned to the White House in the spring, in part to oversee the administration’s preparations for a GOP-controlled Congress.

The Justice Department is also bracing for investigations, bringing in well-known government transparency attorney Austin Evers to help respond to legislative oversight. Evers is the founder of the group American Oversight and served as its executive director until this year, and previously handled the oversight response at the State Department.

 The White House is preparing to hire additional lawyers and other staff to beef up its oversight response team in the next two months, before the new Congress convenes in January, administration officials said. The hires will bolster Sauber’s current team of about 10 lawyers, a source familiar with the matter said.

In piecing together GOP targets and strategy, the team has paid close attention to Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and James Comer of Kentucky, the two Republicans who are likely to lead much of the investigations under a GOP-controlled House and have spent months telegraphing their intentions in TV interviews and oversight letters.   

Their opening salvo came Thursday, when Comer and Jordan hosted a joint news conference to preview the various investigations into President Joe Biden’s family.  

“In the 118th Congress, this committee will evaluate the status of Joe Biden’s relationship with his family’s foreign partners and whether he is a president who is compromised or swayed by foreign dollars and influence” said Comer, the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee. “I want to be clear: This is an investigation of Joe Biden, and that’s where the committee will focus in this next Congress.”

Comer, flanked by Jordan and other Republicans on the Oversight Committee, said Republicans have made connections between the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and the president whom they believe requires further investigation. 

The White House accused Comer of pursuing “long-debunked conspiracy theories.”

Even though the Republican majority is poised to be much thinner than expected – with a likely margin of just a couple seats – all indications are that House Republicans are poised to push ahead with a wide-ranging set of investigations into all corners of the Biden administration, including the messy US withdrawal from Afghanistan, Covid-19 vaccine mandates and the Justice Department’s handling of the various investigations related to Donald Trump. 

Republicans are also intent on investigating the president’s family, particularly his son, Hunter Biden. 

With little chance of passing much legislation in a deadlocked Congress, investigations are shaping up to be the focal point of how a House Republican majority wields its power.  

“You’re gonna have a bunch of chairmen who are totally on their own, doing whatever the hell they want without regard for what the national political implications are,” said Brendan Buck, a former top adviser to House Speaker Paul Ryan, who said he believes GOP leader Kevin McCarthy will have “very little leash” to rein in those investigative pursuits.  

House Republicans have already sent over 500 letters to the administration requesting that they preserve documents, key committees have hired new legal counsels to help with investigations, and leadership has hosted classes for staffers on how to best use the oversight tools at their disposal.

Meanwhile, McCarthy’s office has been working with likely committee chairs over the last several months to delegate who is going to be investigating what, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

“It’s like a clearing house,” the source said. 

But the GOP’s push for aggressive investigations could run into resistance from the moderate wing of the GOP, who want to use their newfound majority to address key legislative priorities – not just pummel Hunter Biden and Dr. Anthony Fauci. While McCarthy has vowed to conduct rigorous oversight, he will have to strike a delicate balance between the demands of the competing factions in his party.

White House officials believe Republicans are bound to overstep and that their investigative overreach will backfire with the American public. In the meantime, they are prepared to push back forcefully, believing that many proposed investigations are based on conspiracy theories and politically motivated charges.

“President Biden is not going to let these political attacks distract him from focusing on Americans’ priorities, and we hope congressional Republicans will join us in tackling them instead of wasting time and resources on political revenge,” Sams, the spokesman for the White House counsel’s office, said in a statement to CNN. 

The House’s expected razor-thin majority is likely to make it more difficult to take steps like impeaching members of Biden’s Cabinet – or even the president himself. But that doesn’t mean, sources told CNN, they’re not going to try, particularly when it comes to the border and Mayorkas.  

On Tuesday, the House Homeland Security Committee provided a preview of what is to come. Over the course of a marathon four-hour hearing, Republican lawmakers grilled Mayorkas over the influx of migrants at the southern border, the number of people who evade Border Patrol capture, and encounters with people on the border who are on the terror watch list. 

Throughout, Mayorkas stood his ground, maintaining that the border is “secure” and batting down criticism that it’s “open” as Republicans have claimed. 

At one point, Republican Rep. Clay Higgins of Louisiana foreshadowed more testimony next year, telling Mayorkas: “We look forward to seeing you in January.”  

Mayorkas, officials said, remains undeterred by the threats of impeachment and intends to stay at the helm of the department, a point he reiterated Tuesday. Still, one person close to Mayorkas told CNN that the DHS chief is “nervous” about impending GOP investigations and the potential of being continually hauled before Congress by hostile Republican committee chairs. 

“Don’t let the bastards win,” one US official familiar with Mayorkas’ thinking said when asked to sum up the DHS chief’s attitude toward potential GOP investigations on border issues and impeachment.   

“We will respond to legitimate inquiries,” the official said. “We’re not going to feed into what might wind up as kabuki theater.”  

DHS already responds to hundreds of congressional inquiries per month, according to a Homeland Security official, who added the department has been preparing for months for any potential increase in congressional activity. The department is also ready to “aggressively respond to attempts to mischaracterize the strong record” of the DHS work force, as well as “politically motivated attempts to attack the secretary,” the official said.

DHS officials considered hiring outside legal counsel to prepare for the potential onslaught of Republican scrutiny but ultimately chose not to, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.   Ricki Seidman, a senior counselor to Mayorkas and former senior Justice Department official, has been involved in DHS’s preparation for the GOP oversight, the source added.

 Another Homeland Security official said that the Border Patrol along with Customs and Border Protection “are going to take the most heat.” 

The most politically charged investigations next year are poised to be those into the president’s son Hunter Biden.  

Top Republicans have largely been more than happy for Comer to take on the leading role of investigating Hunter Biden, multiple sources said.  Jordan does not plan to be intimately involved in the Hunter Biden probe but will provide public support for Comer, including appearing with him at the upcoming press conference.  

“We’re going to lay out what we have thus far on Hunter Biden, and the crimes we believe he has committed,” Comer told CNN earlier this month just before the election. “And then we’re going to be very clear and say what we are investigating, and who we’re gonna ask to meet with us for transcribed interviews.”

Hunter Biden has denied wrongdoing in his business activities.

Behind the scenes though, Jordan and other soon-to-be powerful Republican lawmakers – including likely chairman of House Intelligence Rep. Mike Turner of Ohio – have sought to distance their committees from the Hunter Biden investigation in favor of other investigative pursuits they deem to be “more serious,” the sources said. 

The handling of Republican investigations related to Hunter Biden will fall to Hunter Biden’s own attorneys, while Bob Bauer, the president’s personal attorney, will handle related matters related to Joe Biden’s personal capacity that do not touch on his official duties. Bauer, who is married to Dunn, and White House attorneys have already met to divvy up workflow over potential lines of inquiries to ensure there are clear lanes of responsibility between investigations that touch on Joe Biden’s official role as president and vice president and his personal life. 

Another key point of interest is likely to be the administration’s handling of the August 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, which led to the death of 13 Marines and nearly 200 Afghans when a bomb exploded at the Kabul airport.  

At the State Department, a small group of officials has already begun planning for the coming investigations into Afghanistan, officials said. While that group will work with Sauber’s team at the White House, State Department officials expect to take the lead in handling GOP inquiries into Afghanistan.     

The department has not hired new people to work on these efforts, but certain officials who are already at the department expect to spend a lot more of their time responding to the congressional inquiries, officials said.  

The Republican investigation into the withdrawal is likely to be led by Texas Rep. Michael McCaul, the top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs committee. McCaul and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have historically had a good relationship, which State Department officials are hoping will be an important factor.

Administration officials said they plan to take McCaul’s inquiry seriously because they expect he will demonstrate a seriousness of purpose, instead of making bombastic demands like some other Republicans. And House Republican aides said they plan to explore the administration’s willingness to work with them before issuing subpoenas.

“If they’ll meet us in the middle by giving us some documents instead of all documents, or agreeing to turn over certain individuals but not all of the individuals for interviews, then that’s a start,” said one of the GOP aides familiar with the plans. “But if they just want to be completely obstructive and say no to every single request, then you’ll see subpoenas fairly soon.”

The department concluded its own review of the withdrawal in March, but the findings of that report have not been shared publicly, officials said. While it was expected to be put out earlier this year, State Department officials said the White House is making that determination, and they are unsure of where that decision stands. House Republicans want to see that report.

At the Pentagon, officials are bracing for the possibility of public grilling at televised hearings on everything from Afghanistan to views about “wokeness” in the force and the discharging of troops who refused to take the Covid-19 vaccine. 

“We know it’s coming,” one administration official said. 

 Both Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, whose term expires at the end of September 2023, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who appears determined to stay until the end of the Biden administration, have faced sharp criticism from congressional Republicans and know the coming months may be a rough political ride, officials said.    

Milley has been a particular target for Republicans for his well-known efforts to keep the final weeks of the Trump presidency from careening into a national security crisis. 

Both Milley and Austin have pushed back forcefully on GOP accusations that the military is “woke,” a topic that’s likely to become a focal point for some Republicans in the coming months.

“This is going to be a Congress under Republican control like no other,” said Rafi Prober, a congressional investigations specialist with the law firm Akin Gump who previously worked in the Obama administration.    

Aaron Cutler, the head of the Washington government investigations group at law firm Hogan Lovells and a former Republican congressional leadership staffer, said the partisan investigations serve to “feed the base red meat.”

But Cutler said he has heard from conservatives that the tepid result for Republicans in the midterm elections may translate to less “silliness in politics,” he said. “The American people are pushing back, and saying we want government to work.”   

That is exactly the calculation the White House and congressional Democrats are making. A senior House Democratic source said that aggressive attacks on Biden’s son could backfire, adding that congressional Democrats were gearing up to defend the president by calling out “lies and hypocrisy.”

Still, with the GOP investigations in mind, a team of White House lawyers has in recent weeks and months advised senior White House staff on how “not to be seen as influencing politically sensitive missions at (departments and agencies),” a source familiar with the matter told CNN.  

Asked at his press conference last week about the prospect of GOP investigations, including into his son, Biden said: “I think the American people will look at all of that for what it is. It’s just almost comedy. … Look, I can’t control what they’re going to do.”

This story has been updated with comments from Rep. Comer on Thursday.

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November 17, 2022
Shootout off the coast of Puerto Rico leaves one CBP agent dead and 2 others injured, agency says | CNN

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One US Customs and Border Protection agent is dead and two others injured after a shootout with suspected drug smugglers off the coast of Puerto Rico, according to agency spokesperson Jeffrey Quiñones.

“An agent that was transported directly to a hospital in Mayagüez, we were told just a few minutes ago, they have confirmed he has passed away. We cannot provide any other details on the agent until family is notified,” Quiñones said.

The three agents were patrolling off the coast of Puerto Rico Thursday morning when they encountered a suspected smuggling vessel, according to agency. The situation escalated when the agents received gunfire, and in the shootout, one agent was killed and two others were injured, the agency said.

One suspected smuggler died and another was arrested, the agency said. The nationalities of the suspects were not provided by authorities at this time.

The identities of the agents have not been made public.

The two surviving agents are being treated in Puerto Rico for multiple gunshot wounds, according to Dr. Israel Ayala, medical director of Puerto Rico’s Medical Services Administration.

“One of them was immediately admitted to the stabilization unit and is being treated by emergency physicians and trauma surgeons,” Ayala told CNN in a statement. “Meanwhile, the other agent is in an area that we call minor surgery and is also being evaluated and treated by the emergency room and trauma services.”

Ayala also said that the hospitalized agents are receiving the attention they require and their progress will be observed for the next 24 hours.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas told lawmakers he was briefed on the situation Thursday morning and offered prayers for the agents and their families.

“We pray for the family of the officer who lost his life and we pray for the swift recovery of those who have been injured,” Mayorkas said during a Senate panel on worldwide threats.

The FBI and Homeland Security Investigations are looking into the incident.

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November 17, 2022
Federal judge blocks Title 42 rule that allowed expulsion of migrants at US-Mexico border, restoring access for some asylum seekers | CNN Politics

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A federal judge on Tuesday blocked Title 42 – a controversial rule that’s allowed US authorities to expel more than 1 million migrants who crossed the US-Mexico border.

Tuesday’s court order leaves the Biden administration without one of the key tools it had deployed to address the thousands of migrants arriving at the border on a daily basis and could restore access to asylum for arriving migrants.

In turn, the Biden administration requested a stay on the ruling for five weeks, according to a court filing.

While the rule was drafted by the Trump administration during the Covid-19 pandemic, the Biden administration has relied heavily on it to manage the increase of migrants at the border.

District Judge Emmet Sullivan in Washington, DC, found the Title 42 order to be “arbitrary and capricious in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.”

Prior to Title 42, all migrants arrested at the border were processed under immigration law. Thousands of migrants sent back to Mexico have been waiting along the border in shelters. Officials have previously raised concerns about what the end of Title 42 may portend, given limited resources and a high number of people trying to enter the country.

Sullivan’s ruling also comes on the heels of the resignation of US Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Chris Magnus, who had been asked to resign by Mayorkas last week. CBP Deputy Commissioner Troy Miller is now serving as the acting commissioner.

CNN has reached out to the White House, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security for comment.

Sullivan faulted the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which issued the public health order, for “its decision to ignore the harm that could be caused” by issuing the policy. He said the CDC also failed to consider alternative approaches, such as letting migrants self-quarantine in homes of US-based friends, family, or shelters. The agency, he said, should have reexamined its approach when vaccines and tests became widely available.

“With regard to whether defendants could have ‘ramped up vaccinations, outdoor processing, and all other available public health measures,’… the court finds the CDC failed to articulate a satisfactory explanation for why such measures were not feasible,” Sullivan wrote.

The judge also concluded that the policy did not rationally serve its purpose, given that Covid-19 was already widespread throughout the United States when the policy was rolled out.

“Title 42 was never about public health, and this ruling finally ends the charade of using Title 42 to bar desperate asylum seekers from even getting a hearing,” American Civil Liberties Union attorney Lee Gelernt, who argued the case, said in a statement.

The injunction request came from the ACLU, along with other immigrant advocacy groups, involves all demographics, including single adults and families. Unaccompanied children were already exempt from the order.

The ACLU does not oppose the Biden administration’s request for a stay of Tuesday’s ruling through December 21, the administration noted in their filing.

The public health authority was invoked at the onset of the coronavirus pandemic and has been criticized by immigrant advocates, attorneys and health experts who argue it has no health basis and puts migrants in harm’s way.

Sullivan had previously blocked the Biden administration from expelling migrant families with children apprehended at the US-Mexico border.

Earlier this year, in anticipation of lifting Title 42 and under pressure from lawmakers, the Department of Homeland Security released a 20-page plan to manage a potential increase of migrants at the border. A separate federal judge struck down the administration’s intent to end Title 42 at the time.

The CDC said at the time it’s no longer necessary given current public health conditions and the increased availability of vaccines and treatments for Covid-19.

But in May, a federal judge in Louisiana blocked the Biden administration from ending Title 42.

Since that court order, the administration has continued to use Title 42 and most recently, expanding it to include Venezuelan migrants who have arrived at the US southern border in large numbers.

In October, there were more than 204,000 arrests along the US southern border and over 78,400 expulsions under Title 42, according to CBP data.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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November 15, 2022
US federal agents fired pepper ball projectiles at Venezuelan protesters near El Paso after border patrol agent was injured, officials say | CNN

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Federal agents shot pepper balls at Venezuelan migrants who were protesting along the Rio Grande River International Boundary near downtown El Paso, Texas, on Monday after an agent was injured, according to US Customs and Border Protection.

The agency issued a statement on the incident after an El Paso Times report included a 15-second video clip showing what appeared to be Border Patrol agents on the banks of the Rio Grande using projectiles to push a crowd – some of whom were holding a Venezuelan flag – back into Mexico.

The incident took place around 12:20 p.m. local time (1:20 p.m. ET) when CBP said “a group of Venezuelan nationals attempted to illegally enter the United States while protesting” along the river.

“One of the protesters assaulted an agent with a flag pole. A second subject threw a rock causing injury to an agent at which time agents responded by initiating crowd control measures,” the CBP statement read, adding that the crowd control measures included “the authorized less-lethal force pepperball launching system.”

“The crowd then dispersed and returned to Mexico. Customs and Border Protection’s Office of Professional responsibility will review the incident,” the statement read.

The actions near the border come amid increasing tension at the US-Mexico border following the Biden administration’s new deal with Mexican authorities that subjects Venezuelans to the Trump-era public health authority known as Title 42, which allows officials to expel migrants into Mexico after they’re apprehended at the border.

Officials say the number of Venezuelans attempting to cross the border has spiked dramatically, nearly quadrupling in the past year. This is due, in part, to poor economic conditions, food shortages and limited access to health care in Venezuela. More than 7 million Venezuelans are now living as refugees or migrants outside their country, matching Ukraine in the number of displaced people and surpassing Syria, according to the United Nations.

In the US, some Venezuelan migrants were separated from family member despite having already lived in the US and began protesting along the border.

Nonprofits working in the El Paso area tell CNN that hundreds of Venezuelan nationals have been camping on the Mexican banks of the Rio Grande and staying in shelters in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico – which is across the border from El Paso.

The American Civil Liberties Union issued a statement condemning the use of projectiles on migrants, calling the incident “highly alarming.”

“This is the latest in a long line of abuses carried out by CBP,” the ACLU tweeted. “Our government’s failed attempts at preventing people from seeking protection in the US lead to death and suffering. The Biden administration must restore a humane process for seeking asylum.”

The Texas Civil Rights Project also issued a statement stating the organization is “appalled and disgusted” by the footage.

“People with the incredible courage to seek a better life deserve to be met with dignity,” the group tweeted. “@CBP and @DHSgov should be advancing humanitarian solutions that meet people with dignity and respect, rather than bullets directed at their backs.”

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October 31, 2022
Trump’s company charged Secret Service ‘exorbitant’ hotel rates to protect the first family, House committee report says | CNN Politics

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The Trump Organization charged the Secret Service “exorbitant rates” – upwards of $1.4 million over four years – to protect the former President and his family at properties they owned, according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee on Monday.

The committee found that the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service “excessive nightly rates on dozens of trips” as high as $1,185 per night despite claims by the former President’s company that federal employees traveling with him would stay at those properties “for free” or “at cost.”

“The exorbitant rates charged to the Secret Service and agents’ frequent stays at Trump-owned properties raise significant concerns about the former President’s self-dealing and may have resulted in a taxpayer-funded windfall for former President Trump’s struggling businesses,” the panel’s chairwoman, New York Democratic Rep. Carolyn Maloney, wrote in a letter to the service’s director on Monday.

When he was president, Trump traveled frequently to properties his company ran as businesses, including Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida, and the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. While he was there, some agents and officers stayed in rooms at those properties, though others rented rooms at nearby hotels.

Charging his protective detail for lodging at his own properties was a controversial practice when Trump was in office and has continued in his post-presidency.

Maloney also notes that her committee has been seeking a full accounting of the Secret Service’s expenditures at Trump-owned properties for more than two years but still has not received complete information on nightly rates or the total amount the agency spent, which “appears to exceed $1.4 million of taxpayer money.”

The committee is still seeking records from the Secret Service, noting the panel is looking at potential legislation to prevent “presidential self-dealing and profiteering, as well as to curb conflicts of interest by ensuring that future presidents are prevented from exercising undue influence on Secret Service spending.”

In a statement, Eric Trump said that “any services rendered to the United States Secret Service or other government agencies” at Trump-owned hotels “were at their request and were either provided at cost, heavily discounted or for free.”

The committee said the Trump Organization charged the Secret Service more than the government rate at least 40 times from January 2017 to September 2021.

One of those times was in March 2017 when the Trump Organization charged a nightly rate of $1,160 to stay at the Trump hotel in Washington, DC, to protect Eric Trump, who was promoting a golf tournament at the Trump National Golf Club. According to the General Services Administration’s website, the per diem rate was $242 in March 2017 in Washington, DC.

In a statement, Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said the agency has received the letter from the committee but didn’t discuss the specific details.

“Safeguarding our protectees is part of the agency’s zero fail mission and our absolute highest priority. Protective details must always be within arm’s reach of a protective 24 hours a day and that requires us to travel to where they travel,” Guglielmi said.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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October 17, 2022
January 6 committee member says panel will ask former Secret Service agent to testify again | CNN Politics

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Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the House select committee investigating the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol, told CNN on Sunday the panel will ask former Secret Service Assistant Director Tony Ornato to testify again.

“We’re in a position in the very near future to call the witnesses from the Secret Service back in for a few additional questions,” the California Democrat told CNN’s Pamela Brown on “CNN Newsroom,” explaining that the panel had wanted to “get through all the documentary evidence … over a million documents,” which they’ve now done.

The House select committee has made clear it believes Ornato was a central figure who could provide valuable information about former President Donald Trump’s movements and intentions leading up to and on January 6.

Not only did Ornato once run Trump’s detail, but he also made the unprecedented move of joining White House staff as the deputy chief of staff in December 2019 on a temporary assignment and eventually returned to the Secret Service to run its training program.

To this point, Ornato has met with the panel on two occasions – in January and March – as part of its investigation.

It’s not clear whether Ornato will end up testifying related to the claims from Cassidy Hutchinson, an aide to former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson specifically testified that Ornato had told her about Trump lashing out in anger and lunging at a member of his protective detail as he demanded to be taken to the Capitol on January 6.

Asked Sunday who else from the Secret Service would be called back to testify, Lofgren also mentioned the head of Trump’s Secret Service detail, Robert Engel, “and a few others,” but did not specify whom.

“We want to make sure that we’re getting the straight story. Some of the testimony received doesn’t seem to align with some of the documents, so we have a need to understand that better from them,” she said.

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October 16, 2022
January 6 panel asks Secret Service for information about contacts between agents and Oath Keeper members | CNN Politics

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Investigators with the House select committee probing the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol have asked the United States Secret Service for information about contacts between its agents and members of the far-right Oath Keepers group.

The inquiry comes after it was revealed during court testimony that members of the group, including leader Stewart Rhodes, claimed to be in contact with Secret Service agents prior to rallies for former President Donald Trump after the 2020 election. Members of the Oath Keepers are currently on trial for charges relating to the Capitol attack, including seditious conspiracy.

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed to CNN that the January 6 panel had reached out to the agency and “a verbal briefing was provided to the staff.”

NBC News first reported the inquiry.

Guglielmi told CNN the Secret Service would provide records of contact between the Oath Keepers and Secret Service agents.

Members of the Oath Keepers occasionally reached out to the Secret Service prior to January 6, 2021, with questions about permissible items for rallies, an official with the agency told CNN earlier this week. Further, when agents learned the group planned to attend events, agents reached out and met with members.

While it’s not uncommon for law enforcement agents to maintain contacts with groups that are of investigative interest, the relationship with the Oath Keepers has come under increased scrutiny during the trial.

John Zimmerman, a former North Carolina leader of the Oath Keepers, testified earlier this month that to prepare for the rally, Rhodes said he was in contact with a member of the Secret Service who offered advice on what weapons were allowed near the rally. Rhodes also repeatedly represented he was in touch with an agent, said Zimmerman, who noted that he had not heard the entire conversation.

CNN has asked the Secret Service for dates of contacts and names of Oath Keepers contacted, as well as whether the contacts were documented at the time.

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October 15, 2022
Secret Service reached out to Oath Keepers ahead of January 6 riot | CNN Politics

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Secret Service agents were in contact with members of the Oath Keepers prior to January 6 an official with the agency tells CNN, as part of standard intelligence and response duties.

The official said members of the Oath Keepers occasionally reached out to the Secret Service with questions about permissible items for rallies. Further, when agents learned the group planned to attend events, agents reached out and met with members. The official noted that is common when groups plan to demonstrate.

The Washington Post first reported the agency’s outreach to the Oath Keepers ahead of January 6, 2021.

“We are aware that individuals from the Oath Keepers have contacted us in the past to make inquiries,” Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi told CNN last week.

It’s not uncommon for law enforcement agents to maintain contacts with groups that are of investigative interest. The Oath Keepers and other extremist groups that traveled to Washington for rallies after the 2020 election had numerous contacts with local and federal law enforcement agencies, testimony gathered in congressional and federal investigations has shown.

The relationship between the Oath Keepers has come under increased scrutiny after testimony last week revealed the leader of the Oath Keepers, Stewart Rhodes, purported to be in touch with agents.

John Zimmerman, a former North Carolina leader of the Oath Keepers, testified that he believed Rhodes was in touch with a Secret Service agent in the lead-up to the 2020 presidential election.

Zimmerman, who has not been charged with a crime, said members of the Oath Keepers – who are currently on trial for charges relating to the January 6 US Capitol attack, including seditious conspiracy – gathered in September in Fayetteville, North Carolina, for a campaign rally for former President Donald Trump

Members of the Oath Keepers were recruiting at the rally and working as personal security details, he said.

To prepare for the rally, Zimmerman testified, Rhodes said he was in contact with a member of the Secret Service who advised the leader on what weapons were allowed near the rally. Zimmerman said he did not hear the entire conversation, but that Rhodes repeatedly represented he was in touch with an agent.

Rhodes allegedly told other members of the Oath Keepers in a group chat that if Trump called upon them as a militia, he believed the US Secret Service would be “happy” to have their help, according to evidence presented in court Thursday.

The text was presented during the seditious conspiracy trial of Rhodes and four other defendants. All five have pleaded not guilty.

“If he calls us up as a militia I think the secret service would be happy to have us out there,” Rhodes wrote, according to prosecutors. Rhodes went on to say this conclusion was based upon numerous positive contacts between Oath Keepers and the Secret Service before several Trump rallies before January 6.

This story has been updated with additional details.

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October 13, 2022
Mandela Barnes has signaled support for removing police funding and abolishing ICE — despite ad claiming otherwise | CNN Politics

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Wisconsin Democratic Senate nominee Mandela Barnes has previously signaled his support for removing police funding and abolishing ICE, according to a review by CNN’s KFile, despite claiming otherwise in a recent ad in which he speaks directly to the camera to defend his record on those issues.

“Look, we knew the other side would make up lies about me to scare you. Now they’re claiming I want to defund the police and abolish ICE. That’s a lie,” says Barnes to the camera in a recent 30-second television ad called “Truth.”

But a CNN KFile review of Barnes’ social media activity and public comments he made in interview appearances reveal a different and more nuanced picture in which Barnes often signaled his support for such positions.

In multiple posts from 2018 uncovered by CNN, Barnes liked tweets that criticized the immigration agency and called to abolish them. He told a group that supported abolishing the institution in 2019 that the “wrong ICE” was melting and attended one of their “Abolish ICE” local rallies.

This week, Barnes pushed back on attacks on his record on criminal justice and crime, saying he wouldn’t be “lectured on crime” by Republicans, citing the January 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol in which more than 100 police officers reported injuries.

Barnes, the lieutenant governor of Wisconsin, fielded another attack Friday night from incumbent Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, with whom he is locked in a tight race. The outcome could determine control of the US Senate next year.

“He has a record of wanting to defund the police,” Johnson said of Barnes during a debate. “And I know he doesn’t necessarily say that word, but he has a long history of being supported by people that are leading the effort to defund, who uses code words like (Missouri Democratic Rep.) Cori Bush said, talking about reallocate over bloated police budgets.”

Barnes shot back that Johnson didn’t have any concern for the “140 officers that were injured in the January 6 insurrection.” Johnson in turn said that he “immediately and forcefully and have repeatedly condemned (the Capitol riot) and condemned it strongly.”

Though Barnes has never outright embraced the “defund the police” slogan, he has on numerous occasions said he supports redirecting or decreasing police funding – even before the slogan gained popularity in 2020 following the murder of George Floyd by police.

In one 2020 interview reviewed by CNN, Barnes told a local Wisconsin public radio show that funding should go to social workers and a “crisis intervener or a violence interrupter,” instead of police.

Maddy McDaniel, spokesperson for the Barnes campaign, said he does not support defunding the police or abolishing ICE.

“As independent fact-checkers have verified, Lt. Governor Mandela Barnes does not support abolishing ICE or defunding the police.”

In previously unreported activity on social media reviewed by CNN’s KFile, Barnes repeatedly liked tweets about abolishing ICE.

He liked one September 2018 tweet that used the “#AbolishICE” hashtag and compared the agency to “modern day slave catchers.” His Twitter account also liked other tweets calling for abolishing ICE twice in July 2018 and twice in June.

“Imagine a world without ICE,” read one of the tweets liked by Barnes.

Barnes also once solicited an “Abolish ICE” T-shirt on Twitter in 2018 writing, “I need that,” when offered the Democratic Socialists of America-branded shirt. A photo of Barnes holding a similar shirt later circulated on social media. Barnes told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, which first reported on the shirt, he was not part of the abolish ICE movement saying “no one slogan can capture all the work we have to do.”

While speaking to the Wisconsin-based immigration group Voces de la Frontera Action in 2019, Barnes alluded to calls to get rid of the immigration enforcement agency.

“We’re bringing science back. We’re bringing science back for the next generation. We’re bringing science back because the wrong ICE is melting,” Barnes said.

In June of 2018 at a different event from the group, Barnes attended what was labeled a protest to “top the Indefinite Imprisonment of Families & Abolish ICE,” according to photos on his Facebook page.

“Great turnout at Voces de la Frontera’s event to #protest President Trump’s #immigration policies at the Milwaukee Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) office! However, there is more to do to ensure that immigrants’ rights – human rights – are protected. Let your voices be heard!” Barnes wrote on Facebook about the event, which featured the executive director of the organization calling for the abolishment of the agency.

While he has never outright embraced the “defund the police” slogan, Barnes has long called for reforming or changing policing, especially in communities of color and reducing their budgets.

Speaking in 2015 on a panel entitled “Civil Rights in the Age of Extremism,” Barnes called police officers who don’t live in communities in which they police an “occupying force.” He also advocated reducing police budgets even before the “defund the police” slogan became popular on the far-left in the summer of 2020.

Which policies the “defund the police” slogan stands for are actively debated, with some arguing it means abolishing police departments all together, while others have embraced shifting police funding to other social services in the community. Barnes reiterated support for the latter in a 2012 survey for the organization Vote Smart where he indicated he supported slightly decreasing budgets for law enforcement and corrections.

In early June 2020, Barnes said “defunding” police wasn’t as “aggressive” as it was portrayed, citing budget cuts to other social services.

“Defunding isn’t necessarily as aggressive as a lot of folks paint it,” Barnes said. “You know, school budgets get cut almost every year.”

When asked directly if he supported defunding the police, Barnes told Wisconsin public radio in late June 2020 that he thought funding for police was a “mismatch” compared to other services in the city.

“You can look at the City of Milwaukee, for example, where 45% of the departmental allocations that goes to police while libraries are like two or three percent, neighborhood services, two or three percent,” Barnes said. “I think that you can look at that a, a priorities mismatch.”

Barnes, comparing police budgets to money spent on prisons and the military, said the money could be better spent on social workers or violence interrupters.

“We’re working to reduce our prison population, we’re very intentional about making that happen and it takes that intentionality,” he said. “It’s easy to look at the police department and say, ‘Well, yeah, we are spending a lot of money. How do we get smarter about this?’”

“It becomes the conversation about needs,” he continued. “This isn’t about attacking the police. If anything, it’s about making their jobs easier by implementing programs … where we have services where they wouldn’t have to respond to things that aren’t crime, where they don’t have to respond to, you know, instances that would be better suited for a social worker or some sort of crisis intervener or a violence interrupter that would help, you know, uh, promote peace and communities in the first place.”

“I think that’s where our funding should go,” Barnes reiterated. “What’s going on right now isn’t necessarily working, you know, police brutality is one thing – but in general, uh, the idea of promoting safer communities, I don’t, I don’t think that we’re doing a good job at that.”

This story has been updated with additional developments Friday.

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October 8, 2022
Anna Sorokin, the real-life ‘Inventing Anna,’ is out of jail | CNN

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Anna Sorokin, the fake heiress Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” is based on, was released from ICE detention on Friday.

Juda Engelmayer, a spokesman for Sorokin, confirmed her release in an email to CNN Friday night.

“She will remain under the supervision of ICE, but will be able to fight her deportation free from physical custody,” said John Sandweg, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement who’s on Sorokin’s legal team.

Immigration Judge Charles Conroy cleared the way for Sorokin’s release earlier this week, setting her bond at $10,000 and requiring her to follow certain conditions. Among them: staying off social media and remaining at the same residential address 24 hours a day while her case proceeds.

The judge’s ruling also said ICE may use an ankle monitor to keep tabs on Sorokin.

A spokesman for ICE said Sorokin was being released Friday after the judge’s ruling.

She’d been in ICE detention for 17 months, according to her attorney – mostly at the Orange County Correctional Facility in upstate New York, about 60 miles from New York City.

“We are grateful that the Court agreed that her continued detention is unnecessary,” Sandweg said in a statement Friday.

Sorokin was found guilty of stealing more than $200,000 from banks and friends while scamming her way into New York society, the Manhattan District Attorney said after her 2019 conviction.

Her case drew widespread attention after a 2018 New York magazine article.

That article became the basis of Shonda Rhimes’ “Inventing Anna,” a dramatization that released on Netflix in February and quickly became one of the streamer’s most popular shows. Actress Julia Garner, best known for her Emmy-winning role as Ruth on “Ozark,” played Sorokin.

The show ends with Sorokin’s conviction. But in real life, the drama has continued.

Sorokin was released from jail in February 2021 after serving nearly four years on theft and larceny charges. But it wasn’t long before she ended up back behind bars.

ICE took custody of Sorokin on March 25, 2021. In November, the Board of Immigration Appeals granted an emergency stay in her case, according to ICE. She’s been fighting her deportation – and also joined a group of plaintiffs suing the agency earlier this year, alleging they’d requested and been denied Covid booster shots while in custody. They dropped their lawsuit in March after receiving the shots, according to court records.

While she’s been detained, frequent posts have been made on Sorokin’s social media accounts. Recently they’ve highlighted Sorokin’s artwork, which was featured in a New York show in May.

Earlier this year an attorney representing Sorokin told NBC News that he feared her deportation when he couldn’t reach her, but word later emerged that she was still in ICE custody.

Soon afterward, Sorokin spoke out from behind bars, telling the “Call Her Daddy” podcast that she never claimed to be a German heiress.

“I was from Germany, which was true, but nobody ever asked me about my job,” Sorokin said. “Nobody asks who are your parents and how much money do they make. It’s just outrageous.”

She told host Alex Cooper that she never “told any senseless lies.”

But she admitted – sort of – to lying about her status and background.

“I guess I did,” she said. “I mean, I cannot tell an exact instance, but I’m sure.”

Sorokin also said she was surprised by the public’s fascination with her story.

“It was just really a surprise to me that people would be, like, so interested in the way I went about the things, because it just made so much sense to me,” she said.

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October 8, 2022
Black residents in 2 Florida neighborhoods raise questions about hurricane relief efforts and say they’ve been left out | CNN

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Latronia Latson said she feels like she has been neglected in the recovery efforts from Hurricane Ian.

Latson, who lives in the Dunbar neighborhood in Fort Myers, Florida, said she can’t get to a relief center to get bottled water and other necessities being distributed because she doesn’t have transportation; the bus system is not running in her neighborhood. Her stove and microwave also mysteriously stopped working after the hurricane, despite power being restored.

Latson said the more affluent, predominately White communities seem to be getting prioritized in the storm recovery.

“They need to make it convenient for those that don’t have transportation,” said Latson, who is disabled. “We just don’t get the same service (as people in other parts of town).”

Latson is among the residents and community leaders in Florida who say the poor, majority Black neighborhoods of Dunbar and River Park in Naples are forgotten as rescue and relief teams descend on the areas hit by Hurricane Ian last week.

The residents say they were among the last to get their power restored and shelters and relief centers are being set up too far away for people who don’t have access to vehicles.

Officials in Fort Myers did not immediately provide a response to these concerns when contacted by CNN.

The city of Naples released a statement on Thursday outlining its efforts to assist the River Park community since the storm. The statement said officials opened a comfort center at the River Park Community Center on Sept. 29 that provided access to phone charging, air conditioning, water, ice and restrooms. Additionally the city said staff members visited River Park to speak with residents, developed a plan for debris removal, transported residents to shelters and partnered with local groups to serve and deliver hot meals, water and clothing to the community.

Yet Black residents’ complaints and questions about the warnings and response lay bare the racial disparities in natural disaster recovery each time a major storm affects part of the country. Several studies found that the Federal Emergency Management Agency provides less aid to people of color facing disaster relief compared to White people. Poor communities and communities of color are also often built in locations that are more physically vulnerable to extreme weather events and have less investment in their infrastructure, experts say.

Vice President Kamala Harris acknowledged the inequity when she spoke last week at the National Committee Women’s Leadership Forum.

“It is our lowest-income communities and our communities of color that are most impacted by these extreme conditions and impacted by issues that are not of their own making,” Harris said. “And so we have to address this in a way that is about giving resources based on equity.”

Deanne Criswell, FEMA administrator, agreed that there are barriers to receiving federal resources. Criswell said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” earlier this week that her office is working to create more equitable access to FEMA’s disaster relief programs.

“One of our focus areas since I’ve been in office is to make sure that we’re removing those barriers,” Criswell said. “So these people that need our help the most are going to be able to access the help that we offer.”

Black activists and residents in Florida are pleading for more help from officials.

Vincent Keeys, president of the Collier County NAACP, said residents in River Park were already more vulnerable because it is a coastal community. The city of Naples, Keeys said, has worked to gentrify the area in recent years but has not built a sea wall that could provide more protection during hurricanes.

Some residents complained that they never even received a notification to evacuate their homes ahead of the storm, Keeys said.

The timing of evacuation orders has been a point of contention for Florida officials since the storm. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said officials in Lee County, where Dunbar sits, acted appropriately when they issued their first mandatory evacuations less than 24 hours before Hurricane Ian made landfall on the state, and a day after several neighboring counties issued their orders. Lee County officials have faced mounting questions about why the first mandatory evacuations weren’t ordered until a day before Ian’s landfall – despite an emergency plan that suggests evacuations should have happened earlier.

The city of Naples said in its statement Thursday that it issued mandatory evacuation notices to residents via email, the CodeRed system, social media and a press release sent to media outlets.

In River Park, many homes suffered 4 to 6 feet of flooding, downed trees and structural damage. Keeys said there are no shelters in close proximity to the neighborhood, leaving residents with nowhere to go if their homes are uninhabitable.

“Please, you cannot put our people in a flood prone situation and expect them to survive,” Keeys said. “At least, if humanly possible, help us improve, plan and make things better for human beings.”

Sharda Williams, of River Park, said she never received an evacuation order but people in nearby communities were told to leave. “No one came to our neighborhood and told us to get out,” Williams said. “Not one person.”

Now Williams said all she can do is “sit and wait until the help comes through.”

“You try and do what you can and that’s why, you know, we’re all pitching together and trying to help each other with what we can,” she said.

Curtis Williams (no relation to Sharda), another River Park resident, was also frustrated he didn’t get an evacuation order.

“Not one city employee, police or whatever, came through the neighborhood before the flood water and said there was a mandatory evacuation, not one,” he said. “They could have easily rode down here with a bullhorn, before the storm, and say ‘you people need to vacate.’ They didn’t do that.”

However, Naples said in its statement that the city’s first responders were trapped and its fire station was flooded. As a result, the North Collier Fire Rescue (NCFR) team responded to the River Park community with the high water vehicle. NCFR drove three vehicle loads of residents to high ground, which was at the Coastland Center Mall. Numerous people in the area were trapped and the city said its goal was to get everyone to safety and high ground.

More than 100 miles away in Dunbar, one pastor said while the Black community hasn’t received much support from officials, residents are leaning on each other to get through the recovery.

“We are trying to give some moral support, you know, with our neighbors and friends,” said Pastor Nicles Emile of Galilee Baptist Church. “We are working on helping our neighbors as much as we can and I can say that whatever we have and share with them.”

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October 7, 2022
The real-life ‘Inventing Anna’ could be released from jail soon. She’s still fighting deportation | CNN

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A judge has ruled that Anna Sorokin, the fake heiress Netflix’s “Inventing Anna” is based on, can be released from jail on bond while she fights deportation – if certain conditions are met.

According to court records, Immigration Judge Charles Conroy found this week that Sorokin can be released on $10,000 bond from Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody. But he also ruled that she must remain confined 24 hours a day at a residential address and refrain from accessing any social media platform either directly or through a surrogate while her case continues.

“This ruling does not mean that Anna will get a free pass. She will continue to face deportation proceedings and her release will be closely monitored by ICE and the State of New York,” attorney John Sandweg, a former acting director of ICE who’s one of Sorokin’s attorneys, said in a statement Thursday. “As the Court found, however, the evidence clearly demonstrated that any risks can be more than adequately mitigated by appropriate supervision.”

The judge’s ruling also says ICE may use an ankle monitor to keep tabs on Sorokin once she’s released.

As of Thursday afternoon, the 31-year-old Sorokin remained in ICE custody, a spokesman for the agency said.

She’s been in ICE custody for 17 months, according to her attorney – mostly at the Orange County Correctional Facility in upstate New York.

Sorokin was found guilty of stealing more than $200,000 from banks and friends while scamming her way into New York society, the Manhattan District Attorney said after her 2019 conviction.

Her case drew widespread attention after a 2018 New York magazine article.

That article became the basis of Shonda Rhimes’ “Inventing Anna,” a dramatization that released on Netflix in February and quickly became one of the streamer’s most popular shows. Actress Julia Garner, best known for her Emmy-winning role as Ruth on “Ozark,” played Sorokin.

The show ends with Sorokin’s conviction. But in real life, the drama has continued.

Sorokin was released from jail in February 2021 after serving nearly four years on theft and larceny charges. But it wasn’t long before she ended up back behind bars.

ICE took custody of Sorokin on March 25, 2021. In November, the Board of Immigration Appeals granted an emergency stay in her case, according to ICE. She’s been fighting her deportation – and also joined a group of plaintiffs suing the agency earlier this year, alleging they’d requested and been denied Covid booster shots while in custody. They dropped their lawsuit in March after receiving the shots, according to court records.

While she’s been detained, frequent posts have been made on Sorokin’s social media accounts. Recently they’ve featured Sorokin’s artwork, which was featured in a New York show in May.

Earlier this year an attorney representing Sorokin told NBC News that he feared her deportation when he couldn’t reach her, but word later emerged that she was still in ICE custody.

Soon afterward, Sorokin spoke out from behind bars, telling the “Call Her Daddy” podcast that she never claimed to be a German heiress.

“I was from Germany, which was true, but nobody ever asked me about my job,” Sorokin said. “Nobody asks who are your parents and how much money do they make. It’s just outrageous.”

She told host Alex Cooper that she never “told any senseless lies.”

But she admitted – sort of – to lying about her status and background.

“I guess I did,” she said. “I mean, I cannot tell an exact instance, but I’m sure.”

Sorokin also said she was surprised by the public’s fascination with her story.

“It was just really a surprise to me that people would be, like, so interested in the way I went about the things, because it just made so much sense to me,” she said.

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October 6, 2022
Biden in Puerto Rico: ‘We’re going to make sure you get every single dollar promised’ | CNN Politics

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President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, and Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator Deanne Criswell are visiting Ponce, Puerto Rico, on Monday – weeks after Hurricane Fiona ravaged the US territory.

In Puerto Rico, Biden received a briefing on the storm and met with individuals who have been impacted. He also announced $60 million in funding from the bipartisan infrastructure law to shore up levees and flood walls, and to create a new flood warning system to help residents better prepare for future storms.

“We have to ensure that when the next hurricane strikes, Puerto Rico is ready,” Biden said during his remarks at the Port of Ponce.

Biden hailed the people of Puerto Rico for their resilience and promised that as long as he’s president, the federal government is not leaving until “every single thing we can do is done.”

Hurricane Fiona, Biden said, has been an “all too familiar nightmare” for Puerto Ricans who survived Hurricane Maria in 2017.

“Through these disasters so many people have been displaced from their homes, lost their jobs and savings or suffered injuries – often unseen but many times seen – but somehow, the people of Puerto Rico keep getting back up with resilience and determination,” he remarked.

“You deserve every bit of help your country can give you. That’s what I’m determined to do and that’s what I promise you,” the President continued. “After Maria, Congress approved billions of dollars to Puerto Rico, much of it not having gotten here initially. We’re going to make sure you get every single dollar promised.”

The Ponce region experienced significant storm damage and power had been restored for 86% of residents there as of Sunday evening.

Biden also participated in a pull-aside meeting with families and community leaders impacted by the storm.

Biden’s trip to Puerto Rico comes five years to the day that then-President Donald Trump visited Puerto Rico in the wake of Hurricane Maria, where he was snapped tossing paper towels into a crowd gathered at a chapel where emergency supplies were being distributed. Trump repeatedly praised the federal response to the storm, but in the wake of a series of deadly hurricanes in 2017, FEMA issued a report saying it was underprepared and could have better anticipated the severity of the damage.

Throughout his travels on Monday, Biden expressed how his administration was aiming to do better than previous federal response efforts on the island.

On Monday morning, Biden suggested that the island has not been well taken care of following previous storms, telling reporters: “I’m heading to Puerto Rico because they haven’t been taken very good care of. We’ve been trying like hell to catch up from the last hurricane. I want to see the state of affairs today and make sure we push everything we can.”

During his speech at the Port of Ponce, the President also told Puerto Ricans, “You have had to bear so much and more than need be and you haven’t gotten the help in a timely way.”

And Criswell, who accompanied Biden on the trip, acknowledged the challenges the federal government has faced in gaining the trust of Puerto Ricans after the Trump administration’s response to Hurricane Maria in 2017. She said aboard Air Force One en route to Puerto Rico that “there may have been some issues in the previous administration” and that the people of Puerto Rico “finally feel like this administration cares for them.”

Biden approved a major disaster declaration for Puerto Rico on September 21, a White House fact sheet said, and over 1,000 federal response workers were on the ground providing support with over 450 members of the Puerto Rico National Guard activated.

The Biden administration also approved a Jones Act waiver last week, opening up the potential for additional diesel to be shipped to Puerto Rico, following intense pressure on the White House. The Jones Act requires all goods ferried between US ports to be carried on ships built, owned and operated by Americans, but the Department of Homeland Security may grant a waiver when those vessels are not available to meet national defense requirements.

Biden has “been in regular contact” with Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi, the White House has said.

The President will also travel to Florida this Wednesday, where he will survey damage from Hurricane Ian.

This story and headline have been updated with additional updates.

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October 4, 2022
Death toll soars to 76 in Florida after Hurricane Ian demolished entire communities | CNN

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Newly homeless Floridians are struggling to restart their lives while rescuers scramble to find any remaining signs of life among the wreckage of Hurricane Ian.

In some cases, emergency workers are juggling both unimaginable tasks.

“Some of the guys on Pine Island, they lost everything, but they’re doing what they can,” said emergency physician Dr. Ben Abo, who was preparing to join first responders on a rescue mission Sunday near decimated Sanibel Island and Pine Island.

“It brings tears to my eye to see how hard they’re working.”

But because Hurricane Ian washed out Sanibel Island’s lone road to mainland Florida, “we’re helicoptering in and doing our grid search,” Abo said.

More than 1,100 people have been rescued from inundated parts of southwest and central Florida since Ian crashed into the state last week, Gov. Ron DeSantis’ office said. More than 800 were rescued in Lee County alone, Sheriff Carmine Marceno said Sunday.

But as the search for survivors continues, rescuers are also finding more bodies. Officials say Ian killed at least 76 people in Florida and four more in North Carolina.

Those lucky enough to survive face an arduous road to recovery. More than 689,000 homes, businesses and other customers in Florida still did not have power as of Sunday evening, according to PowerOutage.us. Many are without clean tap water, with well over 100 boil-water advisories in places around the state, according to Florida Health Department data.

Hurricane Ian could be the most expensive storm in Florida’s history, devastating communities from the state’s western coast to inland cities like Orlando.

While Florida has more flood insurance policies than any other state, only about 13% of homes there have flood insurance, and only 18% who live in the counties that had mandatory or voluntary evacuation orders in place ahead of Ian, according to an analysis by actuarial firm Milliman.

On Sunday, the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency said Americans don’t have to live in a flood zone to benefit from flood insurance.

“I think anybody who lives near water should certainly purchase flood insurance because it’s your No. 1 tool to help protect your family and your home after the storm,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said.

“If you live near water or where it rains, it can certainly flood, and we have seen that (with) multiple storms this year.”

She said FEMA is in the process of updating its flood zone maps. “While in certain areas we require flood insurance, everybody has the ability to purchase flood insurance,” Criswell said

“It is certainly in your best defense to help protect your property in the aftermath of any of these storms.”

But the most severe lashing took place in southwestern coastal cities like Fort Myers and Naples, where some neighborhoods were annihilated.

“We’re flying and we’re operating in areas that are unrecognizable,” US Coast Guard Rear Adm. Brendan McPherson said.

“There’s no street signs. They don’t look like they used to look like. Buildings that were once benchmarks in the community are no longer there.”

Many of the Ian-related deaths have been reported in southwestern Florida’s Lee County, which includes Fort Myers and Sanibel Island, where at least 42 people died.

Local officials are facing criticism about whether mandatory evacuations in Lee County should have been issued sooner.

Officials there did not order evacuations until less than 24 hours before the storm made landfall, and a day after several neighboring counties issued their orders.

DeSantis defended the timing of Lee County’s orders, saying they were given as soon as the storm’s projected path shifted south, putting the area in Ian’s crosshairs.

“As soon as we saw the model shift northeast, we did exactly what we could to encourage people to” evacuate, Lee County Commissioner Kevin Ruane said Sunday.

“I’m just disappointed that so many people didn’t go to shelters, because they’re open.”

Ruane called the reporting about a possible delay in issuing a mandatory evacuation “inaccurate.” He said the county did what it was supposed to do, without providing any evidence that the reporting was inaccurate.

“I think the most important thing that most people need to understand is we opened up 15 shelters. During Irma there were 60,000 people in our shelters. There’s 4,000 people in the shelters right now,” Ruane said Sunday.

“Unfortunately, people did get complacent … As far as I’m concerned, the shelters were open, they had the ability, they had all day Tuesday, they had a good part of Wednesday as the storm was coming down – they had the ability to (go to a shelter).”

The US Coast Guard made plans to evacuate people from Lee County’s Pine Island on Sunday, according to the Lee County Sheriff’s Office.

In addition to the 42 deaths in Lee County, Hurricane Ian also contributed to the deaths of 12 people in Charlotte County, eight in Collier County, five in Volusia County, three in Sarasota County, two in Manatee County, and one each in Polk, Lake, Hendry and Hillsborough counties, officials said.

President Joe Biden continued to pledge federal support for Florida, saying Hurricane Ian is “likely to rank among the worst … in the nation’s history.”

The President and first lady Jill Biden are set to travel to Puerto Rico Monday to survey damage from Hurricane Fiona, then head to Florida on Wednesday.

After Hurricane Ian finished its devastating crawl over Florida, residents tried to venture back to their damaged or destroyed homes and sifted through debris.

Residents from Sanibel and Captiva islands were cut off from mainland Florida after parts of a causeway were destroyed by the storm, leaving boats and helicopters as their only exit options.

Civilian volunteers rushed to help residents on Sanibel, where some homes were obliterated.

Andy Boyle was on Sanibel Island when the hurricane hit. He said he lost his home and two cars, but feels lucky to be alive.

“A lot of people have very expensive, well-built homes on Sanibel, and they felt with their multi-million dollar homes built like fortresses, they would be fine,” he said.

Boyle was riding out the storm at home when the dining room roof collapsed. “That’s when we started to get concerned,” he said.

He described waving down National Guard aircraft the next day outside his house, and seeing the scenes of devastation around the island.

“When you go to the east end of the island, there’s just a lot of destruction. The houses surrounding the lighthouse are all gone. When you go to the west end of the island, the old restaurants up there, they’re all gone. The street going to Captiva is now a beach,” Boyle said.

In Naples, Hank DeWolf’s 4,000-pound boat dock was carried through a condo complex and is now in his neighbor’s yard. And the water brought someone’s car into his own backyard. He doesn’t know who it belongs to or how to remove it.

Another neighbor, Joanne Fisher, told CNN she’s coping with some shock in the storm’s aftermath, but she is in clean-up and salvage mode. Her oven is filled with mud, and water still spills out of the kitchen cabinets.

“I’m almost ready to cry right now talking to you,” Fisher said. “But it’s okay because we’re alive and we’re here. And that is the most important thing.”

Residents were also evacuated from the Hidden River area of Sarasota County after a compromised levee threatened to flood homes, the sheriff’s office said Saturday.

Further complicating recovery is the lack of electricity and spotty communication in impacted areas.

It could take up to a week from Sunday before power is restored in storm-damaged counties, said Eric Silagy, president and CEO of Florida Power & Light Company.

And some customers may not be back on the grid for “weeks or months” because some buildings with structural damage will need safety inspections.

In Cape Coral, just southwest of Fort Myers, 98% of the city’s power structure was “obliterated” and will need complete reconstruction, Fire Department Chief & Emergency Management Director Ryan Lamb told CNN’s Jim Acosta.

Around 65% of all power outages in Florida from the storm had been restored as of early Sunday, according to PowerOutage.us.

Florida is also working with Elon Musk and Starlink satellite to help restore communication in the state, according to DeSantis.

“They’re positioning those Starlink satellites to provide good coverage in Southwest Florida and other affected areas,” DeSantis said.

Emergency responders in Lee County will be among those receiving Starlink devices.

In Charlotte County, residents are “facing a tragedy” without homes, electricity or water supplies, sheriff’s office spokesperson Claudette Smith said.

“We need everything. We need all hands on deck,” Smith told CNN Friday. “The people who have come to our assistance have been tremendously helpful, but we do need everything.”

Hear why this expert believes Hurricane Ian damage could have been prevented

Hurricane Ian may have caused as much as $47 billion in insured losses in Florida, according to an estimate from property analytics firm CoreLogic. That could make it the most expensive storm in the state’s history.

After pummeling Florida, Ian made its second landfall in the US near Georgetown, South Carolina, Friday afternoon as a Category 1 hurricane.

In North Carolina, the four storm-related deaths include a man who drowned when his truck went into a flooded swamp; two people who died in separate crashes; and a man who died of carbon monoxide poisoning after running a generator in a closed garage, according to Gov. Roy Cooper’s office.

No deaths have been reported in South Carolina, Gov. Henry McMaster said Saturday.

The storm has flooded homes and submerged vehicles along South Carolina’s shoreline. Two piers – one in Pawleys Island and another in North Myrtle Beach – partially collapsed as high winds pushed water even higher.

Edgar Stephens, who manages the Cherry Grove Pier in North Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, stood yards away as a 100-foot section from the pier’s middle crashed into the ocean.

Stephens said the Cherry Grove Pier is a staple for community members and tourists alike.

“We’re a destination,” he said, “not just a fishing pier.”

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October 2, 2022
After a devastating hurricane, here’s how to get help, stay safe and protect your sanity in the weeks ahead | CNN

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Hurricane victims returning to damaged houses face a torrent of challenges – if they’re lucky enough to have a home standing at all.

Flooding. Mold damage. Insurance headaches. Deadly hidden hazards.

The onslaught of mental anguish and post-hurricane dangers can seem overwhelming. Here’s how victims can stay safe, get help and take the first steps toward recovery:

Just because the hurricane is over doesn’t mean it’s safe to drive.

Residents should “return home only when local officials say it is safe to do so,” the Federal Emergency Management Agency says.

If you see a flooded road, officials stress a life-saving but often ignored mantra: “Turn around, don’t drown.”

Every year, more deaths occur due to flooding than from any other thunderstorm-related hazard, the National Weather Service says.

“Don’t drive in flooded areas – cars or other vehicles won’t protect you from floodwaters,” the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says. “They can be swept away or may stall in moving water.”

If it’s too dangerous to go home, search for open shelters in your area on the American Red Cross or Salvation Army websites.

You can also download the FEMA Mobile App to find open shelters, text SHELTER (or REFUGIO in Spanish), and your zip code to 4FEMA (or 43362).

When it’s safe to go home, try to arrive during daytime hours so you don’t need any lights, the CDC says. You might not have power in the area.

Once you get there, “Walk carefully around the outside of your home to check for loose power lines, gas leaks, and structural damage,” the National Weather Service says.

If your home is flooded, “wait to re-enter your home until professionals tell you it is safe, with no structural, electrical or other hazards,” the CDC says.

If the home is damaged, “leave immediately if you hear shifting or unusual noises,” the CDC says. “Strange noises could mean the building (is) about to fall.”

If you must use lighting, carry a battery-powered flashlight – not candles or gas-powered lanterns.

“Turn on your flashlight before entering a vacated building,” the National Weather Service says. “The battery could produce a spark that could ignite leaking gas, if present.”

Flooded homes require additional precautions to prevent electrocution.

“If you have standing water in your home and can turn off the main power from a dry location, then go ahead and turn off the power,” the CDC says.

“If you must enter standing water to access the main power switch, then call an electrician to turn it off. NEVER turn power on or off yourself or use an electric tool or appliance while standing in water.”

In general, “Do not wade in flood water, which can contain dangerous pathogens that cause illnesses, debris, chemicals, waste and wildlife,” the FEMA website Ready.gov says. “Underground or downed power lines can also electrically charge the water.”

If it’s safe to go inside, don’t start cleaning right away.

First, “contact your insurance company and take pictures of the home and your belongings,” the CDC says.

Those seeking federal assistance can call 1-800-621-FEMA (1-800-621-3362 or TTY 1-800-462-7585) or apply at DisasterAssistance.gov.

Residents who have flood insurance from FEMA’s National Flood Insurance Program can start their claim at FloodSmart.gov.

“If your home has been flooded and has been closed up for several days, assume your home has mold,” the CDC says.

“You need to completely dry everything, clean up the mold, and make sure you don’t still have a moisture problem.”

The CDC has a list of ways to eliminate and prevent mold growth, with or without electricity.

Mold can be cleaned by using a mixture of 1 cup of bleach with 1 gallon of water. Don’t use the bleach solution in an enclosed space – make sure doors or windows are open, the CDC says.

But anyone with a lung condition such as asthma or who is immunocompromised “should not enter buildings with indoor water leaks or mold growth that can be seen or smelled, even if they do not have an allergy to mold,” the FEMA website Ready.gov says.

“Children should not take part in disaster cleanup work.”

Any remaining floodwater can contain sewage and other hazards that can be difficult to see.

“Floodwater can contain dangerous bacteria from overflowing sewage and agricultural and industrial waste,” the CDC says.

“While skin contact with floodwater doesn’t pose a serious health risk by itself, eating or drinking anything contaminated with floodwater can cause diseases.”

With widespread power outages expected, it’s critical to not overexert yourself when there’s no air conditioning.

“If exertion in the heat makes your heart pound and leaves you gasping for breath, STOP all activity,” the CDC warns. “Get into a cool area or into the shade, and rest, especially if you become lightheaded, confused, weak, or faint.”

With intense heat, it’s also important to drink plenty of fluids “regardless of how active you are,” the CDC says. “Don’t wait until you’re thirsty to drink.”

Generators can be immensely helpful for storm victims without power. They can also be deadly when used incorrectly.

“Carbon monoxide poisoning is one of the leading causes of death after storms in areas dealing with power outages,” the National Weather Service says.

“Never use a portable generator inside your home or garage,” even if the doors and windows are open.

“Only use generators outside, more than 20 feet away from your home, doors, and windows,” the NWS says.

Be extra cautious when using gas-powered appliances, as they can also lead to carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s also a good idea to have a battery-powered carbon monoxide detector, as carbon monoxide is invisible and odorless.

Keep the refrigerator and freezer doors closed as much as possible until the power comes back. If it’s been less than four hours, food is still safe to eat. Otherwise, the food can be spoiled and cause serious illness.

“When in doubt, throw it out,” the CDC says.

Throw away any food that may have come into contact with floodwater or stormwater, perishable food that may have not been refrigerated properly and anything that does not look, smells or feels like it should.

If your area is under a boil water advisory, take that guidance seriously. If it’s not possible to boil water, use bottled water.

But never use contaminated water – either suspected or confirmed – to wash dishes, brush your teeth, wash and prepare food, wash your hands, make ice or make baby formula.

Ideally, residents have ways to charge cell phones without the use of electricity – for example, with an external battery pack or battery-powered charger.

Those who don’t might have to get creative – such as using your car and a car adapter to charge your phone.

“Stress, anxiety, and other depression-like symptoms are common reactions after a disaster,” the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration says.

When logistical nightmares collide with overwhelming emotions, don’t try to tough it out alone. That can actually impede your recovery, the CDC says.

“Taking care of your emotional health during an emergency will help you think clearly and react to the urgent needs to protect yourself and your family,” the CDC says.

“Coping with these feelings and getting help when you need it will help you, your family, and your community recover from a disaster.”

Storm victims can contact SAMHSA’s Disaster Distress Helpline by calling or texting 1-800-985-5990.

The helpline “is a 24/7, 365-day-a-year, national hotline dedicated to providing immediate crisis counseling for people who are experiencing emotional distress related to any natural or human-caused disaster,” SAMHSA’s website says.

“Our staff members provide counseling and support before, during, and after disasters and refer people to local disaster-related resources for follow-up care and support.”

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September 29, 2022