The Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention center in Aurora, operated by private prison firm GEO Group, is pictured on Jan. 30, 2025. U.S. Rep. Jason Crow said he was denied entry to the facility while attempting an oversight visit. (Chase Woodruff/Colorado Newsline)
WASHINGTON — A dozen Democratic members of Congress filed a lawsuit Wednesday charging that the Trump administration is blocking lawmakers from conducting congressional oversight of federal immigration detention centers.
The suit in the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia argues that the Department of Homeland Security’s new policy to limit or block lawmakers from visiting immigrant detention facilities is unlawful. The members cite an appropriations law in effect since 2019 that grants a lawmaker the ability to conduct oversight of such centers without prior approval from the department or Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“This oversight informs potential legislation on the subject of immigration detention, ensures that administration officials are carrying out their responsibilities consistent with federal law, and ensures that funds appropriated to DHS and ICE are being used appropriately on the ground,” according to the suit.
DHS did not respond to States Newsroom’s request for comment.
As the Trump administration aims to carry out mass deportations, one of the few tools Democrats, who are in the minority in both chambers of Congress, have is oversight of immigration detention centers.
The lawmakers said that since June, they have tried to obtain information about conditions at DHS facilities “for the purpose of conducting real-time oversight of that facility” and each “of those attempted oversight visits has been blocked by” DHS.
“As part of its campaign of mass deportation, the Trump-Vance administration has stretched the U.S. immigration detention system far beyond its capacity,” the suit said.
The suit cites the deaths of 11 people while in immigration custody in the past five months and the unlawful detainment of U.S. citizens, often without access to legal counsel.
“More people are being held by the United States in immigration detention than ever before, with many facilities housing more individuals than they were built to contain,” according to the suit. “Reports of mistreatment have been widespread and have included disturbing details of overcrowding, food shortages, lack of adequate medical care, and unsanitary conditions.”
The suit is being led by the advocacy group Democracy Forward, which is representing the House lawmakers, most of whom are in leadership roles or top Democrats on committees, such as Bennie Thompson of Mississippi on Homeland Security, Jamie Raskin of Maryland on Judiciary and Robert Garcia of California on Oversight and Government Reform.
The other Democrats include Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Adriano Espaillat and Dan Goldman of New York; J. Luis Correa, Jimmy Gomez, Raul Ruiz and Norma Torres of California; Crow and Joe Neguse of Colorado; and Veronica Escobar of Texas.
As students across Ohio prepare to return to school this fall, a local company is stepping up efforts to ensure their safety on the way there.
S.T.A.R.T. (School Transportation Active-Threat Response Training), an Ohio-based organization, has launched a Back-to-School Active Threat Awareness Campaign to help protect the more than 800,000 students who ride school buses daily in the Buckeye State.
The program offers specialized training for school bus drivers and transportation personnel to help them identify early warning signs, manage high-risk situations and take swift protective action when necessary. The goal is to close critical safety gaps in student transportation.
S.T.A.R.T., was established in 2015 by a Jim Levine, a former school resource officer who saw a major gap in student safety. The organization is headquartered in Chagrin Falls, Ohio, and operates nationwide. It offers hands-on, scenario-based training developed by a team that includes current and former law enforcement officers, SWAT members, Secret Service agents, crisis response experts and mental health professionals.
The organization is a sponsor of both the Ohio Association for Pupil Transportation (OAPT) and the National Association for Pupil Transportation (NAPT), further underscoring its commitment to student safety on a state and national level.
Law enforcement agencies across Ohio are also being encouraged to take part in the initiative to help foster a coordinated, community-based approach to student safety.
“This training is invaluable. Our drivers, aides, and supervisors truly benefit from the skills and insights they gain,” said Dale L. Dickson, director of the Licking County Educational Service Center via a press release. “I hope to see the day when this training becomes a statewide, or even nationwide, requirement for all school transportation staff.”
Levine, who is also the president and CEO of S.T.A.R.T., emphasized that back-to-school season is only the beginning of the safety and security focus around student transportation.
“We’re encouraging schools to create a year-round mindset of preparedness,” Levine said. “Drivers should be ready to respond to threats at any time, in any location.”
After a recent government study found that Native people are more than twice as likely to deal with food shortages and lack of nutritional meals than all U.S. households combined, the U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) made six recommendations to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) aiming to improve food security. But a year later, the USDA, which agreed with the recommendations, has yet to act on them.
In July 2024, the GAO issued the recommendations in a report outlining opportunities the USDA could take to address challenges in federal nutrition programs. The report also asked Congress to consider “addressing in statute” the role of tribes in administering federal nutrition programs.
Barriers to food security vary from tribe to tribe, but commonalities exist, according to GAO director Kathryn Larin. In many cases the rural locations of tribal communities make access to a variety of nutritious foods difficult. “And the costs of the foods are higher than in more urban areas, partly due to transportation costs or other factors,” Larin told Buffalo’s Fire.
Those challenges have led to significant health disparities, including higher rates of diabetes and obesity among Indigenous people.
The way food is distributed and administered in tribal communities may be contributing to the problem.
After interviewing tribes and tribal organizations in seven states, as well as state and USDA officials, the GAO asked Congress to consider requiring states to consult with tribes when carrying out federal nutrition programs on reservations and in Native neighborhoods. Lawmakers have yet to address the matter.
Currently, tribes can administer several programs, including Food Distribution Programs on Indian Reservations (FDPIR), Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC), and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), if it’s determined that the state isn’t able to do so effectively.
In some cases, state programs or administrators are required to consult with tribes. “In other instances,” Larin said, “there’s no clear direction as to what the tribal role is. So we’ve asked that Congress address that explicitly.”
Some tribes told the GAO that their members were more likely to participate in programs the tribes administered, which tend to be located on reservations. Non-tribal programs are often off the reservation, which creates an additional burden of traveling.
“We know people are falling through the cracks,” said Mary Greene Trottier, a Spirit Lake member who serves as the director of its food distribution program and the National Association of Food Delivery Program on Indian Reservations.
Trottier says her people are struggling with diet, good nutrition and proper access to health services, and she estimates that 60-70% of schools on the Spirit Lake reservation have students in the free lunch program.
“We know the problems,” said Trottier, on the findings of the GAO study. “We know we can address the solutions.” She said tribal leaders and program directors are “boots on the ground” who just need to be heard and have their knowledge applied to improving food issues in tribal communities. “We know how to run our programs. We know what works, what doesn’t work.”
Letting tribes take the lead
Like Trottier, Marlon Skendandore is a proponent for having tribes administer more food programs. He sees it as a move toward food sovereignty.
Before being elected as an Oneida tribal councilor, Skendandore worked as a food pantry manager for the tribe for six years, helping members across Wisconsin get fed “without red tape.” One of the GAO recommendations — that the USDA work to avoid dual participation in both the Food Distribution Program and SNAP and help qualified applicants get enrolled in a timely fashion — addresses what he sees as a “weird caveat” in the current system.
“Say you were on SNAP low income (and) you start building yourself up,” said Skenandore, describing how some SNAP recipients get work or otherwise improve their earnings. “You’re no longer income eligible.” He added there’s then a waiting period of 30 days before someone leaving SNAP can apply for the Food Distribution program. “I don’t know what the sense of 30 days of waiting is because they’re being administered by two totally different departments.”
The GAO has recommended that Food and Nutrition Service administrators study how switching from one program to another affects food security and then share that information with Congress.
Skenandore says both nutritious-food access and affordability are issues affecting the Oneida. Besides his work with the food pantry, he launched the Tribal Elder Food Box Program during the COVID-19 pandemic to alleviate food insecurity among Wisconsin tribes.
“We’re now up to making 2,400 boxes every couple of weeks,” he said.
The Tribal Elder Food Box Program helps feed Native elders across Wisconsin. The initiative is a collaboration between Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin and the Great Lakes Intertribal Food Coalition. (Courtesy of Feeding America Eastern Wisconsin)
Skenandore said that earlier this year funding cuts to the USDA’s Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement program made the Tribal Elder Food Box Program’s future look bleak. But the program has since secured $3 million in state funding, which will allow it to continue for another two years.
The GAO also recommended that the USDA include national data on Native food security in an annual report and discontinue visual observation as a way to determine race and ethnicity for the Food Distribution Program on reservations. Finally, the GAO wants the agriculture secretary to identify and rectify gaps in outreach to tribal communities and make administering these programs more flexible in ways that support food security.
The USDA told Buffalo’s Fire in an email that it’s “working diligently” to address the GAO’s recommendations. But when asked about the timeline for implementing them, the press office did not provide one.
In a separate email, the USDA said the department and Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins are “committed to working with states, tribes, territories, and local government partners” to improve and modernize their programs, while “upholding our responsibility to program participants and American taxpayers.”
“The bottom line is that we feel strongly that the recommendations we made are key to addressing the issue of food insecurity in tribal communities,” the GAO’s Larin said, adding, “That’s why we’re committed to following up with the agency and hopefully encouraging them to implement the recommendations.”
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs and the House Subcommittee on Indian and Insular Affairs did not respond to requests for comment.
Self-education
In the meantime, both Trottier and Skenandore say there’s much to teach their respective communities about proper nutrition and health. This means adapting more traditional foods into their diet and scaling back fast food and ultra-processed items that either lack nutritional value or add to health problems. And with some traditional staples like wild rice and berries getting expensive, focusing on community gardens is seen as a way to help offset some of the issues.
“We have little kids that we’re really trying to instill with gardening and nutrition knowledge so they make better choices,” said Trottier. “We might not be able to change the older generation, but we’ve got a start with the younger generation. There’s always new hope to be found.”
Federal agents block people protesting an Immigration and Customs Enforcement raid at a nearby licensed cannabis farm in Ventura County, California, on July 10, 2025. (Photo by Mario Tama/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — A group of U.S. House Democrats on Tuesday blasted President Donald Trump’s administration for what they called “cruelty” and “lawlessness” in carrying out mass deportations of migrants without legal status.
At a forum at the U.S. Capitol, Democrats who sit on the House Homeland Security Committee and others rebuked the administration’s sweeping immigration crackdown and its impact on communities, bringing in prominent voices from immigration and legal advocacy groups and a U.S. Marine veteran who said his father was beaten by federal immigration officers.
Rep. Delia Ramirez, an Illinois Democrat, slammed the Department of Homeland Security, calling the agency “unaccountable.”
“They continue to break the law and bypass congressional authority to conceal the ways in which they are abusing (the) power of DHS to violate our rights, undermine due process and tear our communities apart,” she said.
“Under the Trump administration, DHS is an out-of-control, abusive terror force that disregards law, rejects accountability and tramples on the very foundations of our Constitution,” Ramirez added.
Rep. Troy Carter, a Louisiana Democrat and committee member, said “like many Americans, I’m deeply troubled by the cruel and profoundly un-American mass deportation agenda being undertaken by Donald Trump and his allies.”
“These harsh policies are not about public safety or border security — we have seen children torn from their parents, a flagrant disregard for basic due process protections and individuals targeted for exercising their First Amendment rights,” he said.
“Congress must uphold the rights of all people in the United States. We need immigration policy rooted in dignity, fairness and due process, not cruelty and authoritarianism.”
NPR reported Monday that DHS is preparing to use military bases in New Jersey and Indiana to detain immigrants who unlawfully entered the United States.
“What is happening right now is just plain wrong,” Rep. Seth Magaziner, a Rhode Island Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said. “We’re all for immigration enforcement and smart border security, but the targeting of innocent people who are just trying to work hard and make a living, the targeting of the elderly, of the sick, of U.S. citizens, of students by an anonymous army of masked men is not who we are as a country.”
‘Violently attacked and detained’
Alejandro Barranco, a Marine veteran, said his father, an immigrant who does not have legal status, was “violently attacked and detained by federal immigration agents” in Orange County, California.
Barranco said his father, a landscaper, was working in June when masked men approached and quickly surrounded him and did not identify themselves or present any warrant.
He said his father was terrified and ran.
“They chased him through the parking lot and into a crowded street,” Barranco said. “They pointed guns at him, pepper-sprayed him. They tackled him to the ground and kicked him. They restrained and handcuffed him. They dragged him into an unmarked vehicle and pushed him into the back seat. As many have already seen, while several agents were holding him down, another beat him repeatedly in the neck and head area, over and over and over again.”
Barranco depicted the brutal conditions his father endured while in federal custody and said it’s been a nightmare for his family since his father was detained.
Barranco said that while his father was eventually released on bond, “the trauma that day and the brokenness of this system remains in our hearts, and we are still under a cloud.”
Jesse Franzblau, associate director of policy at the National Immigrant Justice Center, said ICE agents wearing masks with no identifying information is not proper, but “quite dangerous” and “puts everyone further at risk.”
“I mean, we’ve seen people impersonating ICE, wearing masks and saying that they’re ICE and then carrying out abuses against other people,” Franzblau said, adding that “it puts communities at more risk when you have masked agents, federal agents that should be identifying themselves, going into communities and carrying out sweeping operations like this.”
DHS response
In a statement shared with States Newsroom on Wednesday, Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the department, said: “How many Americans have to die because of illegal immigration for Democrats to give a damn about actual American citizens?”
“Democrat politicians should stop defending criminal illegal aliens and exploiting law enforcement for their 15 minutes of fame and start working with President Trump and (Homeland Security) Secretary (Kristi) Noem to keep Americans safe.”
In a Tuesday press release, the department defended ICE, saying the agency has targeted the “worst of the worst” during immigration arrests.
To mark six months since Trump took office on Sunday, the department touted a long list of its actions, including on immigration enforcement and border security.
The agency described the list as “victories” in Trump’s and Noem’s “mission to secure the homeland and Make America Safe Again,” including record low numbers of illegal border crossings.
Poll workers process ballots in Janesville, Wis., in November. A 2025 survey of local election officials found concern about federal cuts to election security. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
Local election officials across the country fear the loss of federal support for election security, according to a new survey.
Sixty percent of local election officials expressed some level of concern, a survey by the Brennan Center for Justice found. The center, a left-leaning pro-democracy institute, surveyed 858 officials between mid-April and mid-May.
The concern comes as President Donald Trump has curtailed federal election security work. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, or CISA, in March halted its election security work. A month earlier, the Department of Government Efficiency task force also fired 130 cybersecurity workers at the agency.
And Trump in April ordered an investigation into Christopher Krebs, a former agency director who had vouched for the security of the 2020 election, which Trump falsely claims was stolen.
Federal cuts mean election officials are going to need more financial support from state and local governments, said Lawrence Norden, vice president of Brennan’s Elections and Government Program. The federal government has the advantage of being able to see the “big picture” and more easily share information with election officials across the country, he said.
“That is going to be difficult for states to replicate,” Norden said. “It doesn’t mean it’s impossible, but they have to start rethinking how they’re sharing information about what they’re seeing with each other.”
Cybersecurity has long been a concern of states — and not just in elections. Only 22 of 48 states that participated in a voluntary 2023 cybersecurity review conducted by federal agencies met or exceeded recommended security levels.
In the Brennan survey, 36% of local election officials said they were very concerned about federal cuts to election security services, while 24% said they were somewhat concerned and 21% said they were a little concerned. Nineteen percent said they were not concerned at all.
Sixty-one percent of local election officials expressed some level of concern over cuts to the federal cybersecurity agency specifically, with 32% saying they were very concerned. The survey had a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.
Stateline reporter Jonathan Shorman can be reached at jshorman@stateline.org.
Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Stateline maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Scott S. Greenberger for questions: info@stateline.org.
A “no trespassing” sign outside of Northwest ICE Processing Center, also known as Northwest Detention Center. (Photo by Grace Deng/Washington State Standard)
WASHINGTON — Immigration advocacy groups sued the Trump administration Wednesday for dismissing cases in immigration courts in order to place immigrants in expedited removal for swift deportations without judicial review.
As the White House aims to achieve its goals of deporting 1 million immigrants without permanent legal status by the end of the year and a 3,000 arrests-per-day quota for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, immigrants showing up to court appearances have been arrested or detained.
President Donald Trump’s administration has moved to reshape immigration court, which is overseen by the Department of Justice, through mass firings of judges hired during President Joe Biden’s term and pressuring judges to clear the nearly 4 million case backlog.
The suit was brought in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia by immigration legal and advocacy groups the National Immigrant Justice Center, Democracy Forward, Refugee and Immigrant Center for Legal Education and Services and the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of the San Francisco Bay Area.
The suit is a proposed class action representing 12 immigrants who filed asylum claims or other types of relief and had their cases dismissed and placed in expedited removal, subjecting them to a fast-track deportation.
The individual plaintiffs, who all have pseudonyms in the court documents, had their asylum cases dismissed and were arrested and placed in detention centers far from their homes.
One plaintiff, E.C., fled Cuba after he was arrested and raped after he opposed that country’s government. He came to the U.S. in 2022 and applied for asylum and appeared for an immigration hearing in Miami.
At his hearing, DHS attorneys moved to dismiss his case “without notice and without articulating any reasoning whatsoever” and when he tried to leave the court, ICE arrested and detained him, according to the suit.
E.C. is currently detained in Tacoma, Washington, “thousands of miles from his family, including his U.S. citizen wife,” according to the suit.
New policies
The groups argue new policies from the Department of Homeland Security and Department of Justice are unlawful.
Those policies include the approval of civil arrests in immigration court, instructing ICE prosecutors to dismiss cases without following proper procedure, instructing ICE agents to put immigrants who have been in the country for more than two years in expedited removal and pursuing expedited removal when removal cases are ongoing.
“(DHS) has now adopted the policy that it will arrest a noncitizen and place them in expedited removal even if the immigration judge does not immediately grant dismissal or if the noncitizen reserves appeal of the dismissal—either of which means that the full removal proceedings are not over,” according to the suit. “In plain terms, DHS is disregarding both immigration judges who permit noncitizens an opportunity to oppose dismissal and the pendency of an appeal of the dismissal decision.”
The Trump administration has expanded the use of expedited removal, meaning that any immigrant without legal status who’s been in the U.S. for less than two years can be swiftly deported without appearing before an immigration judge.
“DHS and DOJ have implemented their new campaign of courthouse arrests through coordinated policies designed to strip noncitizens of their rights … exposing them to immediate arrest and expedited removal,” according to the suit.
The impact has been “severe,” according to the suit.
“Noncitizens, including most of the Individual Plaintiffs here, have been abruptly ripped from their families, lives, homes, and jobs for appearing in immigration court, a step required to enable them to proceed with their applications for permission to remain in this country,” according to the suit.
Detained immigrants’ stories
The suit details the plaintiffs’ circumstances.
One known as M.K., appeared in immigration court for her asylum hearing after she came to the U.S. in 2024 from Liberia, fleeing an abusive marriage and after she endured female genital mutilation.
DHS attorneys dismissed “her case without notice and, upon information and belief, without articulating any change in circumstances,” according to the suit.
“M.K. speaks a rare language, and because the interpretation was poor, she did not understand what was happening at the hearing,” according to the suit. “M.K. was arrested by ICE at the courthouse and detained; she was so distressed by what happened that she required hospitalization.”
She is currently detained in Minnesota.
Another asylum seeker, L.H., came to the U.S. in 2022 from Venezuela, fleeing from persecution because of her sexual orientation, according to the suit. At her first immigration hearing in May, DHS moved to dismiss her case and has received an expedited removal notice.
ICE officers arrested L.H. after she had her hearing and she is currently detained in Ohio.
Congresswoman Gwen Moore speaks during the protest against President Donald Trump and Elon Musk on April 5, 2025. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore joined U.S. Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Washington) in issuing a letter calling on the heads of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to reinstate directives protecting crime victims who are seeking T or U visas from immigration enforcement.
Moore and Jayapal called for the Trump Administration to reinstate ICE Directive 11005.3, which offered protections for immigrant crime victims, and for people currently in ICE custody who have applied for a T or U visa to be released within 60 days of the letter.
“Congress created victim-based immigration benefits to encourage noncitizen victims to seek assistance and report crimes committed against them despite their undocumented status,” Moore and Jayapal wrote.
The Biden-era directive posited that, rather than hindering law enforcement, “when victims have access to humanitarian protections, regardless of their immigration status, and can feel safe in coming forward, it strengthens the ability of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies, including ICE, to detect, investigate, and prosecute crimes.”
In their letter, Moore and Jayapal highlighted the directive’s ties to the Violence Against Women Act, stressing that, “T and U visas were designed to strengthen the relationship and build trust between victims of crime and law enforcement.” Prosecutors often rely on T and U visa holders for “critical eyewitness testimony” the letter states. “These visa programs make everyone in our communities safer. Without them, undocumented victims and witnesses might be too scared to come forward to report crimes to the detriment of all.”
Under ICE Directive 1105.3, the agency was instructed to “exercise prosecutorial discretion to facilitate access to justice and victim-based immigration benefits by noncitizen crime victims.” Agents were directed to “refrain from taking civil immigration enforcement action against known beneficiaries of victim-based immigration benefits and those known to have a pending application for such benefits.” ICE officers were also directed to “look for indicia or evidence that suggests a noncitizen is a victim of a crime, such as being the beneficiary of an order of protection or being the recipient of an eligibility letter from the Office of Trafficking in Persons.”
The Trump administration’s broad crackdown on immigrants who lack permanent legal status has targeted crime victims who hold or are applying for T or U visas. In June Ramone Morales Reyes, a Milwaukee man who had lived in the United States for decades and was actively cooperating in a U-Visa investigation, was arrested and detained by ICE. After arresting Morales Reyes, DHS Sec. Noem issued a press release claiming that Morales Reyes had penned a letter threatening to assassinate President Donald Trump. The letter, however, had been written in perfect English with only a few misspellings. Morales Reyes’ family, as well as immigration advocates and attorneys, said that it was impossible for him to have written the letter as he could not speak English and was not proficient in reading or writing in Spanish. When ICE arrested Morales Reyes, local law enforcement were already investigating the possibility that someone was attempting to frame him.
In early June, Morales Reyes was released from ICE detention on bond, and a man who’d been arrested for attempting to rob him months earlier admitted to forging the letter to trigger a deportation, and prevent Morales Reyes from testifying against him. Moore and U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan sought to visit Morales Reyes while he was in custody, and called on Noem to retract her statement accusing him of threatening Trump.
Rather than retracting the accusations, however, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin issued a statement after Morales Reyes was released on bond calling him a “criminal illegal alien” and claiming that, while he is no longer under investigation for threats against Trump, “he is in the country illegally” and has committed previous crimes. The statement asserted that “DHS will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country.”
ICE also worked to deport Yessenia Ruano, a Milwaukee teacher’s aid. Ruano had been a victim of human trafficking, and was applying for a T-Visa. In mid-June, Ruano opted to return to El Salvador with her two daughters, who were born in the United States.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem delivers remarks to staff at the Department of Homeland Security headquarters on Jan. 28, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Manuel Balce Ceneta-Pool/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem ended temporary protections Monday for nationals from Nicaragua and Honduras, opening up roughly 76,000 people to deportations by early September.
The move is the latest effort by President Donald Trump’s administration to wind down legal statuses, such as Temporary Protected Status, amid an immigration crackdown and pledge to carry out mass deportations.
So far, the Trump administration has moved to end legal statuses, including work authorizations and deportation protections, for more than half a million immigrants.
TPS has been used since the 1990s and is granted to nationals from countries deemed too dangerous to return to due to violence, natural disasters or other unstable conditions.
Roughly 72,000 Hondurans and 4,000 Nicaraguans had temporary protections since 1999 following Hurricane Mitch, a Category 5 storm that destroyed parts of Central America and killed more than 10,000 people.
“Temporary Protected Status was never meant to last a quarter of a century,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement.
Noem determined that conditions in Nicaragua and Honduras had improved and TPS for the two countries is no longer needed, DHS said.
“It is clear that the Government of Honduras has taken all of the necessary steps to overcome the impacts of Hurricane Mitch, almost 27 years ago,” Noem said Monday. “Honduran citizens can safely return home, and DHS is here to help facilitate their voluntary return.”
Noem has also ended TPS for nationals of Afghanistan, Cameroon, Haiti, Nepal and Venezuela.
“We all have responsibility when it comes to toning down the political rhetoric we use each day,” Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said. (Photo by Baylor Spears/Wisconsin Examiner)
The Wisconsin Legislature held its first floor sessions after the assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband and the near-fatal shootings of another state lawmaker and his wife. Leaders said that political violence is unacceptable and expressed willingness to discuss increasing security at the Capitol and for Wisconsin public officials.
Police have identified 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter as the suspected gunman in the assassination of Minnesota Democratic–Farmer–Labor House leader Melissa Hortman and her husband over the weekend. He is also the suspect in the shooting of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife. Boelter was apprehended Monday and faces federal and state murder charges.
Wisconsin lawmakers had requested increased security in the Wisconsin State Capitol following the shootings and ahead of Wednesday’s floor sessions.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) told reporters that they made the right decision in requesting the increased security and said his caucus would be open to talking about new security proposals but it isn’t clear those are the right actions to take.
“Whenever an incident like this happens the most important thing that we can do is to take a breath and look at what’s going to be the actual best potential solution as opposed to a knee-jerk reaction,” Vos said.
Vos added that the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) believes the Minnesota case may be one of the first political assassinations of a state lawmaker in the nation’s history and also noted that the “scariest” thing is that the shootings happened at the lawmakers’ homes.
“The idea of trying to make the Capitol into a fortress, I don’t know if that necessarily would even have ever done anything in this situation to help the awful situation that happened in Minnesota,” Vos said. “We’re going to talk about it as a caucus. I think we made the right decision to increase security here.”
Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu (R-Oostburg) echoed Democrats at another presser, where lawmakers didn’t take questions.
“Political violence is never the answer. We need to solve our differences through legislation,” LeMahieu said.
Assembly Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) and Senate Minority Leader Dianne Hesselbein (D-Middleton) spoke about the attacks at a joint press conference ahead of Wednesday’s floor sessions. Boelter had a list of dozens of people including elected officials and abortion providers in his vehicle, according to police. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11 Democratic lawmakers were found on that list.
Neubauer thanked law enforcement and her colleagues in leadership for coming together in a joint statement over the weekend to say that “no one should ever fear for their lives because of their service to their communities.” She said she and Hortman “shared a strong commitment to service and our communities” and that her heart is broken for Hortman’s family.
“I would also like to ask everyone to remember that these threats, even after the suspect has been apprehended, have had real impacts on the mental health of everyone affected, and we ask that you please respect the duress members and their families have been put through and extend understanding to them,” Neubauer said.
Hesselbein said that differences should be settled with debate, not political violence.
“In addition to inflicting physical harm, political violence is meant to silence opposition. It is meant to discourage participation in our democracy by residents, by people thinking of running, by public officials. No one should fear for their lives because of their service to the community or because of their involvement in public life,” Hesselbein said.
“I feel safe in our Capitol building. I think we’re going to continue to have conversations to make sure that everyone else feels safe as well,” Hesselbein said.
Neubauer said Democrats are open to longer term conversations about security measures in the Capitol.
Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) has suggested that Wisconsin should install metal detectors in the Capitol and should ban members of the public from carrying guns inside the building.
State lawmakers have passed bipartisan lawsin the past to help protect judges. While debating a bill — SB 169 — that would make a minor change to one of those laws enacted last year that provides privacy protections for judicial officers when there is a written request, there was some discussion about extending additional privacy protections for public officials.
Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said the bill speaks to keeping judges safe in their homes and said she hoped her colleagues would consider joining her in working on a proposal to extend privacy protections to anyone who serves the public in a public-facing role.
“There are many people who serve the public in an important capacity, judges are certainly one, but legislators as well, constitutional officers… who are now in this world of high risk,” Roys said.
Vos earlier told reporters that the jobs of judges and state lawmakers are a little different, which could influence conversations about additional privacy protections for public officials in various roles.
“State legislators are just so much more accessible, which, frankly, is like our superpower. We are the most accessible and the most responsive to the public because we are constantly at events, we are meeting with people, we are doing town halls. We are doing all the interactions that you want in a healthy democracy,” Vos said.
During the Assembly Floor Session, Vos spoke about knowing Hortman, saying he met her through his work with the National Conference of State Legislatures and called Hortman “funny and engaging and incredibly smart.”
Hortman was elected to the Minnesota State Legislature in 2004. “Over the next two decades,” Vos said, “she became a formidable force in state politics on her intelligence and her effectiveness.”
“We all have responsibility when it comes to toning down the political rhetoric we use each day,” Vos said. “All political parties suffer political intimidation, name calling and the risk of physical violence, and we owe it to those who elect us to be role models for civil discourse.”
The Senate and Assembly both held moments of silence for the Hortmans.
Vos and Hesselbein both read portions of the statement put out by the Hortmans’ children, Sophie and Colin Hortman: “Hope and resilience are the enemy of fear. Our parents lived their lives with immense dedication to their fellow humans. This tragedy must become a moment for us to come together. Hold your loved ones a little closer. Love your neighbors. Treat each other with kindness and respect. The best way to honor our parents’ memory is to do something, whether big or small, to make our community just a little better for someone else.”
Wisconsin State Capitol (Wisconsin Examiner photo)
Wisconsin lawmakers have requested additional security ahead of this week’s floor session in light of the attacks over the weekend on Minnesota state lawmakers, including the assassination of Democratic–Farmer–Labor House leader Melissa Hortman and her husband and the shooting of Sen. John Hoffman and his wife.
The police have identified 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter as the suspected gunman. Boelter had a list in his car of dozens of people including elected officials and abortion providers, according to police. Boelter was apprehended Monday and faces federal and state murder charges.
All three of Wisconsin’s federal Democratic lawmakers and 11 state lawmakers were identified as being named in documents left behind by Boelter.
According to Politico, U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin spokesperson Eli Rosen said Monday she was notified by law enforcement she was included on the alleged shooter’s list of names and “is grateful for law enforcement’s swift action to keep the community safe.”
Rosen also said Baldwin “remains focused on the things that matter most here: honoring the legacy and life of Rep. Melissa Hortman and her husband, Mark, praying for the other victims who are fighting for their lives, and condemning this abhorrent, senseless political violence.”
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore wrote on social media that she was aware her name was on one of the documents recovered from the vehicle of the suspect in Minnesota.
“I thank law enforcement for their swift notification and subsequent response,” Moore said. “My prayers are with all those impacted by these horrific acts.”
U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan has said he is “appreciative that law enforcement apprehended the suspect” in the shooting and he had heard that his name was in the Minnesota shooting suspect’s notebooks.
“I will not back down in the face of terror, however, we as elected officials must do better to lower the temperature,” Pocan said. “That said, my schedule remains unchanged.”
According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 11 Wisconsin state lawmakers were named in lists left behind by Boelter.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has requested additional security for the Assembly floor session this week, according to Vos’ communications director Luke Wolff. Vos’ office declined to provide additional details about the new security plan Tuesday afternoon.
The Wisconsin State Senate Sergeant at Arms Timothy La Sage announced Monday a series of enhanced security protocols at the State Capitol being taken in coordination with Capitol police, including “increased situational awareness practices, strengthened access control points, and updated emergency response protocols.” Specific security details are not being disclosed publicly, according to the statement.
The steps are meant to provide a secure and responsive environment and maintain public accessibility and civic engagement.
“The safety of those who serve, work, and visit the Capitol is my top priority,” La Sage said. “We remain vigilant and prepared. These enhancements are part of our ongoing commitment to security and public service.”
The week prior to the Minnesota attacks, Wisconsin Democrats on the budget committee spoke about increasing political violence across the country and, specifically, the targeting of judges and justices as they defended a budget request to add specific security for the state Supreme Court. State lawmakers have passed bipartisan laws in the past to help protect judges. Republicans on the committee, however, rejected this proposal, saying that the Capitol police is doing a good job and there isn’t a need for separate security.
At a press conference following the budget committee’s Tuesday meeting, Sen. Kelda Roys (D-Madison) said she thinks increasing security at the Capitol is part of a “broader conversation that state legislatures are having all around the country.”
“I’m hopeful that we’re going to have some of that in Wisconsin,” Roys said. “Obviously, our thoughts are with all of our colleagues in Minnesota.”
Sen. Chris Kapenga (R-Delafield) told WISN-12 reporter Matt Smith that he wants increased security around the Capitol, including metal detectors and a ban on members of the public (but not lawmakers) carrying guns into the building.
“I have not been through another Capitol that has not had metal detectors,” Kapenga said. “We need to have a higher level of security just because of, unfortunately, ingenuity with how you can hurt people.”
Security at the state Capitol was a point of concern previously in 2023 after a man entered the building twice with a gun in search of Gov. Tony Evers. At the time, Evers said about increasing security that he was “sure they are looking at that” but that it was “not something we talk about [or] something police talk about.”
U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat, speaks on the Senate floor on June 17, 2025, about how he was forcibly removed from a press conference with the secretary of Homeland Security. (Screenshot from Senate webcast)
WASHINGTON — U.S. Sen. Alex Padilla, a California Democrat who was forcibly removed from a press conference with the secretary of Homeland Security, said Tuesday that his home state is the testing ground for President Donald Trump’s push to deploy the military within the United States.
Trump is using immigrants in the country without legal status as scapegoats to send in troops, said Padilla, who in a speech on the Senate floor choked up as he related how he was wrestled to the ground by law enforcement officials. “I refuse to let immigrants be political pawns on his path toward fascism,” Padilla said.
It’s the first floor speech the senior senator from California has given since the highly publicized incident in Los Angeles last week. The Secret Service handcuffed Padilla after he tried to question Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who was defending to reporters Trump’s decision to send 4,000 National Guard members and 700 Marines to LA.
Trump sent in the troops following multi-day protests over Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids and against California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s wishes. An appeals court Tuesday is hearing arguments on a suit by California contending that the president unlawfully took control of the state National Guard.
“He wants the spectacle,” Padilla said of the president. “To justify his undemocratic crackdown and his authoritarian power grab.”
The LA protests were sparked after ICE targeted Home Depots, places where undocumented day laborers typically search for work, for immigration raids.
Arrests, confrontations
The Padilla incident, widely captured on video, was a stark escalation of the tensions between Democratic lawmakers and the administration over Trump’s drive to enact mass deportations.
A Democratic House member from New Jersey is facing federal charges on allegations that she shoved immigration officials while protesting the opening of an immigrant detention center in Newark. And on Tuesday, in New York City, ICE officers arrested city comptroller and mayoral candidate Brad Lander while he was escorting an immigrant to their hearing in immigration court, according to The Associated Press.
In a statement to States Newsroom, DHS Assistant Secretary of Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said Lander “was arrested for assaulting law enforcement and impeding a federal officer.”
“No one is above the law, and if you lay a hand on a law enforcement officer, you will face consequences,” McLaughlin said.
The president late Sunday directed ICE to conduct immigration raids in New York, LA and Chicago, the nation’s three most populous cities, all led by elected Democrats in heavily Democratic states.
“We will follow the President’s direction and continue to work to get the worst of the worst criminal illegal aliens off of America’s streets,” McLaughlin said.
‘They opened the door for me’
Padilla in his Senate remarks gave an account of the events that led to him being handcuffed and detained last week.
On June 12, he had a meeting scheduled with General Gregory M. Guillot, commander of the U.S. Northern Command, to discuss the military presence in LA.
Padilla, the top Democrat on a Judiciary panel that oversees DHS and immigration policy, said his meeting with the general was delayed because of a press briefing across the hall with Noem.
Padilla said he has tried to speak with DHS because for weeks LA has “seen a disturbing pattern of increasingly extreme and cruel immigration enforcement operations targeting non-violent people at places of worship, at schools, in courthouses.”
So Padilla said he asked to attend the press conference, and a National Guard member and an FBI agent escorted him inside.
“They opened the door for me,” he said.
As he listened, he said a comment from Noem compelled him to ask a question.
“We are not going away,” Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, told the press. “We are staying here to liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership that this governor and that this mayor have placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into the city.”
Padilla said her remarks struck him as “an un-American mission statement.”
“That cannot be the mission of federal law enforcement and the United States military,” he said. “Are we truly prepared to live in a country where the president can deploy the armed forces to decide which duly elected governors and mayors should be allowed to lead their constituents?”
Padilla said before he could finish his question, he was physically removed and the National Guard member and FBI agent who escorted him in the room “stood by silently, knowing full well who I was.”
As he recounted being handcuffed, Padilla paused, getting emotional.
“I was forced to the ground, first on my knees, and then flat on my chest,” he said.
Padilla said a flurry of questions went through his head as he was marched down a hallway, and as he kept asking why he was being detained: Where are they taking me? What will a city, already on the edge from being militarized, think when they see their U.S. senator being handcuffed just for trying to ask a question? What will my wife think? What will our boys think?
“I also remember asking myself, if this aggressive escalation is the result of someone speaking up about the abuse and overreach of the Trump administration, was it really worth it?” Padilla asked. “If a United States senator becomes too afraid to speak up, how can we expect any other American to do the same?”
Padilla-Noem meeting
In a statement, DHS, said that the Secret Service did not know Padilla was a U.S. senator, although video of the incident shows that Padilla stated that he was a member of the Senate.
“I’m Sen. Alex Padilla and I have questions for the secretary,” he said as four federal law enforcement officers grabbed him and shoved him to the ground.
Noem met with Padilla after he was handcuffed, his office told States Newsroom.
“He raised concerns with the deployment of military forces and the needless escalation over the last week, among other issues,” according to his office. “And he voiced his frustration with the continued lack of response from this administration. It was a civil, brief meeting, but the Secretary did not provide any meaningful answers. The Senator was simply trying to do his job and seek answers for the people he represents in California.”
U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson has suggested that the Senate take action against Padilla, such as a censure. Johnson criticized the senator’s actions and accused him of charging at Noem, which Padilla is not seen doing in the multiple videos of the incident.
“I’m not in that chamber, but I do think that it merits immediate attention by other colleagues over there,” the Louisiana Republican said. “I think that behavior, at a minimum, rises to the level of censure. I think there needs to be a message sent by the body as a whole.”
Senate Democrats have coalesced their support around Padilla. During a Tuesday press conference, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer praised Padilla for his speech on the Senate floor.
“It was basically a strong plea for America to regain the gyroscope of democracy, which has led us forward for so many years and now we’re losing it,” the New York Democrat said. “It’s a wake-up call to all Americans.”
The U.S. Capitol. (Photo by Jennifer Shutt/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — U.S. senators emerged from a briefing with federal law enforcement officials Tuesday saying they’ll likely boost funding on safety and security for members and their families in an upcoming government funding bill.
The hour-long briefing by U.S. Capitol Police and the Senate sergeant-at-arms followed the weekend assassination of a Minnesota state lawmaker and her husband as well as the attempted murder of a state senator and his wife.
The gunman had a list of Democratic elected officials, including members of Congress, and their home addresses, which renewed long-standing security concerns among lawmakers.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., spoke about the shootings during a floor speech shortly after the meeting, pressing for an end to political violence.
“I’m profoundly grateful to local law enforcement that the alleged shooter is in custody and I look forward to seeing him prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law,” Thune said. “There is no place for this kind of violence in our country. None.”
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said that California Democrat Adam Schiff and Pennsylvania Republican Dave McCormick suggested during the closed-door meeting that Congress bolster funding for member safety.
“The Capitol Police and the sergeant at arms gave a very detailed discussion of how they can protect members here, back in our states, at our homes, in our offices,” Schumer said. “The violence, threats against elected officials, including people in the Senate, has dramatically increased, and that means we need more protection. We need more money.”
The USCP and other law enforcement agencies, Schumer said, are taking some immediate steps to bolster security, though he said “there are other things that will take a little while with more resources.”
Schumer also called on political leaders to be more cautious about how they discuss policy differences.
“The rhetoric that’s encouraging violence is coming from too many powerful people in this country,” Schumer said. “And we need firm, strong denouncement of all violence and violent rhetoric — that should be from the president and from all of the elected officials.”
Minnesota Democratic Sen. Tina Smith called the meeting “very productive,” but didn’t want to elaborate.
“I’m not going to comment any more,” Smith told reporters. “I think it’s important for members’ safety that we don’t talk a lot about what is being done to keep us safe in order to keep us safe.”
Support for funding increase
Senate Appropriations ranking member Patty Murray, D-Wash., said she expects the panel will increase funding for USCP in the bill that covers the upcoming fiscal year.
“I believe we need to do that,” Murray said.
Delaware Democratic Sen. Chris Coons said the current situation is “incredibly concerning, gravely concerning.”
“And I appreciate the prompt and thorough bipartisan response,” Coons said.
Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville, who is running for governor in Alabama, said USCP will increase its security measures for members of Congress.
“They’re going to try to do as much as they can, that’s about it,” he said after the briefing. “You know, security at home and here.”
Asked whether there’s a legislative solution or anything lawmakers can do, Oklahoma GOP Sen. James Lankford told reporters “there’s a cultural solution.”
Sen. Martin Heinrich did not go into details about the meeting but said “everybody is having a very robust discussion about the sort of heightened security, dangerous environment we’re all operating in right now and what to do about that, both tactically to meet some of that threat, but also how to reduce the volatility of the environment that we’re in every day.”
The New Mexico Democrat is the ranking member on the Senate Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee, which funds USCP and the sergeant at arms.
Asked about boosting USCP funding, Heinrich said this is “an obvious place that lawmakers will look,” but added that senators should be strategic about funding.
“We also just need to be smart and targeted about this,” he said. “There are a lot of things that can be done that don’t require a lot of funding that would reduce the scale of the target that is on the backs of anybody in public office these days.”
U.S. Capitol Police officers stand guard outside of the U.S. Capitol on June 16, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Senate will gather behind closed doors Tuesday to hear from federal law enforcement officials about protection for lawmakers and the safety of their families, just days after a gunman said to be posing as a police officer targeted state lawmakers in Minnesota.
The briefing from U.S. Capitol Police and the Senate Sergeant at Arms follows years of increased funding for both entities as threats and attempted assassinations against members of Congress have become part of the job.
Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, of New York, said Monday on the floor that the suspected shooter had a list of more than 70 public officials he wanted to target, including several members of the Senate.
“My highest priority right now is working with the Senate leadership on both sides, the Senate Sergeant at Arms and Capitol Police, to ensure everyone’s safety,” Schumer said. “This weekend I asked Capitol Police and the Sergeant at Arms to increase security for members, including Sen. (Alex) Padilla and the Minnesota senators.”
California Sen. Padilla moved to the forefront of the public debate about immigration and deportations last week when he was forcibly removed from a press conference after trying to ask Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a question while she was still speaking.
Schumer said the briefing would be an opportunity for USCP and the SAA to “convey what they’re doing for members to keep them safe.”
He urged senators to “come together” to oppose political violence in all forms, before criticizing Utah Republican Sen. Mike Lee for social media posts. Lee made twoposts that drew condemnation.
“I was deeply disappointed and sickened to see a member of this chamber use the tragedy in Minnesota to take cheap political shots at the other side on social media and risk escalating a perilous moment,” Schumer said. “What the senior senator from Utah posted after the shooting was reckless and beneath the dignity of his office.
“For a senator to fan the flames of division with falsities while the killer was still on the loose is deeply irresponsible. He should take down his post immediately and apologize to the families of the victims.”
On another social media account, Lee wrote, “These hateful attacks have no place in Utah, Minnesota, or anywhere in America.”
Suspect faces state and federal charges
Minnesota Democratic Sen. Amy Klobuchar said Sunday during an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that the attack on the two state lawmakers and their spouses was clearly motivated by politics.
Klobuchar said she has received additional security and that she was concerned about the possibility of more attacks against lawmakers.
“I have had threats before, as several of our colleagues have had,” Klobuchar said. “And I think one of the things is, we don’t talk about this stuff much because you don’t want to see copycats that copy exactly what they’ve done.”
The U.S. House won’t receive a security briefing this week since its members are out of session on a district work period, typically a time when lawmakers are back in their communities for town halls and other public events, though the shooting has led some members to change their schedules.
Michigan Democratic Rep. Hillary Scholten announced Monday she would postpone her town hall in Muskegon, writing in a statement she didn’t want to “divert additional law enforcement resources away from protecting the broader public at this time.”
“Nothing matters more to me than the safety and well-being of the people I serve,” Scholten wrote. “After being made aware that my name was on a list connected to the recent tragic shooting in Minnesota, my office has made the difficult decision to postpone our planned town hall in Muskegon.”
Scholten added she hoped to “reschedule this event as soon as possible.”
Ohio Democratic Rep. Greg Landsman released a statement on Monday, announcing that USCP bolstered his security after his name was found among the suspected Minnesota shooter’s possessions.
“On Sunday morning, Capitol Police contacted my office to inform me that the FBI had found my name among the evidence collected during the search for a suspect in Minnesota — who is accused of murdering and seriously injuring lawmakers,” Landsman wrote. “Since the suspect was still at large at that time, we worked very closely with the Cincinnati Police Department to arrange for increased security for my family and me.”
Texas Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar wrote in a statement posted to social media that she was among the people the suspected Minnesota shooter had on his list.
“This was only a day after protestors were shot in Utah, an extremist drove a car into protests in Virginia, credible threats were made against state lawmakers in Austin and a man pointed a gun at protestors here in El Paso,” Escobar wrote.
House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and New York Democratic Rep. Joseph D. Morelle, ranking member on the Committee on House Administration, wrote to Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., on Monday, urging him to take action to ensure members’ safety.
“While we differ in many areas related to policy and our vision for America’s future, Member safety must be an area of common ground. Representatives from both sides of the aisle have endured assassination attempts that changed their lives and careers forever,” the two wrote. “Too many other patriotic public servants have left Congress because they no longer felt safe carrying out their duty as elected officials. We must act to protect each other and preserve this great American institution.”
Threats on the rise over the years
Members of Congress and their families are no strangers to threats, which have steadily risen for years, attacks and shootings.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was attacked in their family home in San Francisco in October 2022 by a man wielding a hammer, who was searching for Pelosi, a California Democrat.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La, was shot and severely wounded in 2017 when a gunman opened fire at GOP lawmakers practicing for the annual Congressional Baseball Game. Several others were injured during the shooting.
Arizona Democratic Rep. Gabby Giffords survived being shot in the head during a constituent meeting in a grocery store parking lot in 2011 when a gunman opened fire, killing six people and injuring a dozen others.
Even President Donald Trump, who has extensive Secret Service protection, was shot in the ear last July while campaigning in Pennsylvania. The gunman in that incident killed local fireman Corey Comperatore and injured two others.
The union representing U.S. Capitol Police warned more than a year ago that the federal law enforcement agency was struggling to keep up amid an increasingly hostile political environment and staffing shortages.
“We’ve never seen a threat environment like this,” union Chairman Gus Papathanasiou wrote in a statement. “Given the profound divisions in this country and this year’s elections, people ask me if I’m concerned and I tell them I am worried — very worried.”
Klobuchar, who was chair of the Senate Rules and Administration Committee at the time of the hearing, said USCP referred 458 threat cases for prosecution during 2021, with 40 of those leading to a court case. That was out of 9,625 total threats.
Just 22 of the 7,501 threats lobbed at members during 2022 led to prosecution, a USCP spokesperson confirmed to States Newsroom at the time.
Threats against lawmakers have continued to increase ever since.
USCP investigated 8,008 “concerning statements and direct threats against the Members of Congress, including their families and staff” in 2023 and 9,474 in 2024, according to data from USCP.
Christine Neumann-Ortiz (left) stands with Anna Morales, daughter of Ramon Morales Reyes'. (Photo courtesy of Voces de la Frontera)
Ramón Morales Reyes, a 54-year-old Mexican-born man living in Milwaukee who was framed for writing a letter threatening President Donald Trump, has been granted a $7,500 bond by an immigration judge. The news came early Tuesday morning, as immigrant rights advocates from Voces de la Frontera held a press conference to call on the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to clear Morales Reyes’ name, and issue a retraction of a press release denouncing him for threatening the president’s life.
Morales Reyes’ daughter Anna joined Voces executive director Christine Neumann-Ortiz on the press call and became emotional at the news of her father’s release. “I’m so very grateful, thank you so much,” said Anna, who spoke during the virtual press conference but did not appear on camera. Since DHS Secretary Kristi Noem issued a press statement describing Morales Reyes as an “illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump,” his family has received online harassment and death threats.
The Wisconsin Examiner’s Criminal Justice Reporting Project shines a light on incarceration, law enforcement and criminal justice issues with support from the Public Welfare Foundation.
“I’ve always been my dad’s little girl who grew up with a hardworking dad that always was making sure his family has food on the table, having a roof over our heads,” said Anna Morales. “He loved to take us to the park every weekend and go for walks as a family.” She recalled cookouts with her dad, who worked as a dishwasher in Milwaukee for the last nine years. Morales lamented that her father is now facing the threat of deportation based on false accusations. “He is not a criminal. He is a hardworking man, a provider, and most importantly a father who holds family together,” she said. “Without my dad, me and my siblings wouldn’t be where we are today — his sacrifice and his drive to give us a better life.”
“If he were taken from us, it wouldn’t just be a financial loss, it would be an emotional one that we honestly don’t know how to recover from,” she added. “My siblings and I rely on him not just for the roof over our heads or food on the table, but for his presence, his advice, and the way he keeps our family united.”
“My dad is not a threat to anyone. He is a good man who got caught up in a terrible situation.”
Despite the decision to release Morales Reyes, after the real author of the letter threatening Trump confessed that he had tried to frame Morales Reyes to prevent him from testifying against him in a criminal trial, the Department of Homeland Security has not removed a press release from its website accusing Morales Reyes of being the author of the letter.
Ramón Morales Reyes during his virtual bond hearing. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
In a statement, DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin responded to Morales Reyes’ release on bond, saying, “while this criminal illegal alien is no longer under investigation for threats against the President, he is in the country illegally with previous arrests for felony hit and run, criminal damage to property, and disorderly conduct with domestic abuse. The Trump administration is committed to restoring the rule of law and fulfilling the President’s mandate to deport illegal aliens. DHS will continue to fight for the arrest, detention, and removal of illegal aliens who have no right to be in this country.” In 1996, Morales Reyes was arrested for a hit and run and property damage, but was not charged. In another 1996 incident he was ticketed for disorderly conduct and criminal damage after a dispute with his wife in which no one was injured, NPR reported.
“It’s a disgrace that we have a government that is promoting false information of a very serious nature against a man who is a victim of a crime, and has been falsely accused,” Neumann-Ortiz told Wisconsin Examiner.
Morales Reyes’ family does not feel safe, Neumann-Ortiz said. “This just shows that this administration is not interested in safety. They’re interested in this propaganda campaign to demonize immigrants, and to do with them whatever they will, to accuse them of anything and put them in jail and throw away the key.”
Protesters gather to support Judge Hannah Dugan in Milwaukee. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Just before the bond hearing, attorney Cane Oulahan, who represented Morales Reyes during immigration proceedings, said that he was hoping for a “just result, which would be for Ramón to get out on a fair bond and rejoin his family, so they can start to heal from all the trauma they’ve been through.” Oulahan thanked Anna Morales for her bravery in coming forward with a statement Tuesday morning. The attorney said that factors which the judge would consider, including danger to the community and flight risk, were low for Morales Reyes. “I think it’s clear that Ramón is not a dangerous person at all,” said Oulahan. “It’s been over 30 years since he’s had any minor incidents, he’s a responsible husband and father, hard worker, someone who contributes to our community.”
Oulahan said that Morales Reyes had no reason to be considered a flight risk. “He’s got every interest in staying here,” said Oulahan. “I mean, he’s been here almost 40 years. He has family here, this is his home, and he’s actively cooperating in a U-Visa investigation still, and so he has every reason to show up for his hearings.” A U-Visa is a form of immigration relief intended to encourage crime victims to cooperate with law enforcement investigations and court proceedings, while also providing a path to permanent residency.
Neumann-Ortiz said in a statement that the bond decision was “a meaningful victory not only for Ramón and his family but for our entire community.” The decision she added, “reflects the courage and strength of community organizing, solidarity, and collective action. We thank all who stood with Ramón, and we urge continued support as the process ahead remains long and challenging. We also continue to demand that the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fully clear Ramón’s name and correct the false allegations against him.”
Morales Reyes was the victim of an attempted armed robbery in September 2023. The man accused of the attempted robbery, Demetric Scott, told investigators that he penned a letter claiming to be Morales Reyes and threatening to use a large caliber rifle to assassinate Trump. Scott believed that the letter would result in Morales Reyes’ deportation, and prevent him from testifying against Scott in court.
Protesters gather outside the Milwaukee FBI office holding pro-immigration signs. (Photo by Isiah Holmes/Wisconsin Examiner)
Morales Reyes was born in a rural part of Mexico where he received very little formal education. He cannot speak English, and cannot read or write proficiently. The letter penned by Scott and later elevated by Noem’s press release was neatly written in fluent English. CNN reported that after he was arrested by immigration agents, Morales Reyes was questioned by detectives from the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD), who had already suspected that someone was setting him up to be deported.
Scott claimed that he carried out the plan to get Morales Reyes deported on his own, without any assistance. He has now been charged with identity theft and felony witness intimidation. Because Scott admitted to forging the letter, Oulahan said that he didn’t expect the letter to be relevant to the judge during Morales Reyes’ bond hearing.
A staff member for U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore (D-Milwaukee) read a letter from Moore during the virtual press conference. Morales Reyes lives in Moore’s district and Moore visited him in the Dodge County Jail. Moore has issued a letter requesting DHS to retract the accusations against Morales Reyes and remove Noem’s statement claiming that he threatened to assassinate Trump from the DHS website.
U.S. Reps. Mark Pocan and Gwen Moore toured Wisconsin's only the ICE detention facility and demanded answers about the people being targeted for deportation in the state | Official photos
U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore contacted the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Friday to ask the agency to remove a statement from the top of its website describing Milwaukee resident Ramón Morales Reyes as “this illegal alien who threatened to assassinate President Trump.”
The bizarre accusation that Morales Reyes wrote a letter threatening to kill the president has been disproven, and the man who tried to frame him has confessed to forging the letter.
Yet, on Friday, when Moore visited the ICE detention center in Dodge County, Morales Reyes was still there. And the lurid accusation against him is still prominently featured at the top of the Homeland Security website. In the featured statement, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem thanks the ICE officers who arrested Morales Reyes, promotes the idea that he is a dangerous criminal who poses a grave threat, and promises, “He will remain in ICE custody at Dodge County Jail in Juneau, Wisconsin, pending his removal proceedings.”
Moore held a Zoom press conference after her visit. She described Morales Reyes as a humble, religious man who, incredibly, bears no ill will toward Demetric Scott, the man who has been charged with stabbing and robbing him and who then tried to get him deported so he couldn’t testify as a victim in Scott’s upcoming trial.
It’s very important that the U.S. government stop spreading misinformation about Morales Reyes and afford him due process, Moore said, not just because of the outrageous injustice of his particular case, but because of what it means more broadly. Morales Reyes is an applicant for a U visa— a type of nonimmigrant status set aside for crime victims who have suffered mental or physical abuse and are cooperating with law enforcement or the government in the investigation and prosecution of crimes.
Scott, the man charged with stabbing Morales Reyes and who has admitted forging the letter that led to his arrest, was trying to short-circuit that cooperation ahead of his trial for a violent armed robbery.
If the government deports Morales Reyes, “it will embolden criminals,” Moore said. It’s critical that the U.S. government protect immigrants who are victims of crimes, like Morales Reyes, because if we don’t, we are abetting the criminals. “That’s the message that we’ll be sending if we deport these individuals,” Moore said. “If you’re some pimp out there, some trafficker, some drug pusher, and you want to find someone to abuse, all you’ve got to do is find an immigrant.”
Coincidentally, on the same Friday afternoon Moore visited Morales Reyes and began her campaign to get the government to stop spreading misinformation about him, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that Trump administration officials were finally bringing back Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the man they wrongly deported to El Salvador. But, Bondi said, the government is charging Abrego Garcia with a slew of serious crimes including being “a smuggler of humans and women and children.”
We don’t know yet if the federal case against Abrego Garcia will include another ham-fisted attempt to pass off obviously doctored photos of his hands with photoshopped “MS-13”gang tattoos. But the administration that continues to push the discredited claim that Morales Reyes penned a letter threatening to assassinate the president inspires zero trust.
What a relief, in this awful political climate, to see Moore sticking up for immigrants who are being targeted and terrorized, demanding answers from ICE and doing her best to uphold the rule of law. Moore has also been championing Yessenia Ruano, the beloved Milwaukee teacher’s aid who has a pending application for a T visa as a victim of human trafficking, and has been ordered to self-deport back to El Salvador, where she was victimized. Going back would place her in serious danger and leave her young daughters without a mother.
“She’s an exceptional asset to the school district where she works, not a threat at all to the community,” Moore said.
A week before her visit with Morales Reyes, Moore was joined by her fellow Wisconsin Democrat, U.S. Rep Mark Pocan, on an unannounced inspection visit to the Dodge County jail, Wisconsin’s only ICE detention facility. Moore went back again Friday because she was initially refused an interview with Morales Reyes.
“We have congressional prerogative to do an unannounced visit” to see what’s going on in ICE detention, Pocan said. “In fact,” he added, “I think [it’s] a requirement, really, morally, to do an unannounced visit to these facilities.”
When they got to the jail, Pocan and Moore had to explain their oversight prerogative. They presented a letter from the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, and waited an hour to get inside. They expressed appreciation for the sheriff, who let them come in and tour the facility, though they weren’t permitted to talk to any detainees.
When they tried to contact ICE it was another story. There were no ICE agents present — they only show up to bring in detainees every three weeks, the sheriff told them. When they tried to call the Milwaukee ICE field office, the phone was disconnected. They left messages at the Chicago office that were not returned. Of the roughly 100 immigrant detainees at Dodge, who come from all over the country, they couldn’t find out how many have been arrested in Wisconsin.
“This is the problem, right?” said Pocan. “ICE treats us all like we don’t deserve to get information, even though we have oversight authority.”
Part of what bothered Pocan, he said, is “the arrogance that we’ve seen from ICE so far this year.”
“ICE is acting like they are somehow above the law,” he said, “above lawmakers.”
It has become abundantly clear that the Trump administration’s rhetoric about targeting dangerous criminals for deportation is utter bunk.
Neither Morales Reyes nor Yessenia Ruano nor Abrego Garcia poses a threat to community safety. The real threat is coming from masked ICE agents terrorizing immigrants and local communities.
We desperately need leaders who will stand up to these terror tactics. That takes guts, as the arrest of Milwaukee Judge Hannah Dugan showed, as did the Homeland Security agents barging into a congressional office and roughly handcuffing a staffer they accused of letting protesters hide there.
I’m grateful for the courage of Moore and Pocan.
As they said, if we don’t stand up for the people the Trump administration is targeting now, we will be next.
Rennie Glasgow, who has served 15 years at the Social Security Administration, is seeing something new on the job: dead people.
They’re not really dead, of course. In four instances over the past few weeks, he told KFF Health News, his Schenectady, New York, office has seen people come in for whom “there is no information on the record, just that they are dead.” So employees have to “resurrect” them — affirm that they’re living, so they can receive their benefits.
Revivals were “sporadic” before, and there’s been an uptick in such cases across upstate New York, said Glasgow. He is also an official with the American Federation of Government Employees, the union that represented 42,000 Social Security employees just before the start of President Donald Trump’s second term.
Martin O’Malley, who led the Social Security Administration toward the end of the Joe Biden administration, said in an interview that he had heard similar stories during a recent town hall in Racine, Wisconsin. “In that room of 200 people, two people raised their hands and said they each had a friend who was wrongly marked as deceased when they’re very much alive,” he said.
It’s more than just an inconvenience because other institutions rely on Social Security numbers to do business, Glasgow said. Being declared dead “impacts their bank account. This impacts their insurance. This impacts their ability to work. This impacts their ability to get anything done in society.”
“They are terminating people’s financial lives,” O’Malley said.
Though it’s just one of the things advocates and lawyers worry about, these erroneous deaths come after a pair of initiatives from new leadership at the SSA to alter or update its databases of the living and the dead.
Holders of millions of Social Security numbers have been marked as deceased. Separately, according to The Washington Post and The New York Times, thousands of numbers belonging to immigrants have been purged, cutting them off from banks and commerce, in an effort to encourage these people to “self-deport.”
‘They are terminating people’s financial lives.’
Martin O’Malley, who led the Social Security Administration toward the end of the Joe Biden administration
Glasgow said SSA employees received an agency email in April about the purge, instructing them how to resurrect beneficiaries wrongly marked dead. “Why don’t you just do due diligence to make sure what you’re doing in the first place is correct?” he said.
The incorrectly marked deaths are just a piece of the Trump administration’s crash program purporting to root out fraud, modernize technology and secure the program’s future.
But KFF Health News’ interviews with more than a dozen beneficiaries, advocates, lawyers, current and former employees, and lawmakers suggest the overhaul is making the agency worse at its primary job: sending checks to seniors, orphans, widows, and those with disabilities.
Philadelphian Lisa Seda, who has cancer, has been struggling for weeks to sort out her 24-year-old niece’s difficulties with Social Security’s disability insurance program. There are two problems: first, trying to change her niece’s address; second, trying to figure out why the program is deducting roughly $400 a month for Medicare premiums, when her disability lawyer — whose firm has a policy against speaking on the record — believes they could be zero.
Since March, sometimes Social Security has direct-deposited payments to her niece’s bank account and other times mailed checks to her old address. Attempting to sort that out has been a morass of long phone calls on hold and in-person trips seeking an appointment.
Before 2025, getting the agency to process changes was usually straightforward, her lawyer said. Not anymore.
The need is dire. If the agency halts the niece’s disability payments, “then she will be homeless,” Seda recalled telling an agency employee. “I don’t know if I’m going to survive this cancer or not, but there is nobody else to help her.”
Some of the problems are technological. According to whistleblower information provided to Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, the agency’s efforts to process certain data have been failing more frequently. When that happens, “it can delay or even stop payments to Social Security recipients,” the committee recently told the agency’s inspector general.
While tech experts and former Social Security officials warn about the potential for a complete system crash, day-to-day decay can be an insidious and serious problem, said Kathleen Romig, formerly of the Social Security Administration and its advisory board and currently the director of Social Security and disability policy at the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Beneficiaries could struggle to get appointments or the money they’re owed, she said.
For its more than 70 million beneficiaries nationwide, Social Security is crucial. More than a third of recipients said they wouldn’t be able to afford necessities if the checks stopped coming, according to National Academy of Social Insurance survey results published in January.
Advocates and lawyers say lately Social Security is failing to deliver, to a degree that’s nearly unprecedented in their experience.
Carolyn Villers, executive director of the Massachusetts Senior Action Council, said two of her members’ March payments were several days late. “For one member that meant not being able to pay rent on time,” she said. “The delayed payment is not something I’ve heard in the last 20 years.”
When KFF Health News presented the agency with questions, Social Security officials passed them off to the White House. White House spokesperson Elizabeth Huston referred to Trump’s “resounding mandate” to make government more efficient.
“He has promised to protect social security, and every recipient will continue to receive their benefits,” Huston said in an email. She did not provide specific, on-the-record responses to questions.
Complaints about missed payments are mushrooming. The Arizona attorney general’s office had received approximately 40 complaints related to delayed or disrupted payments by early April, spokesperson Richie Taylor told KFF Health News.
A Connecticut agency assisting people on Medicare said complaints related to Social Security — which often helps administer payments and enroll patients in the government insurance program primarily for those over age 65 — had nearly doubled in March compared with last year.
Lawyers representing beneficiaries say that, while the historically underfunded agency has always had its share of errors and inefficiencies, it’s getting worse as experienced employees have been let go.
“We’re seeing more mistakes being made,” said James Ratchford, a lawyer in West Virginia with 17 years’ experience representing Social Security beneficiaries. “We’re seeing more things get dropped.”
What gets dropped, sometimes, are records of basic transactions. Kim Beavers of Independence, Missouri, tried to complete a periodic ritual in February: filling out a disability update form saying she remains unable to work. But her scheduled payments in March and April didn’t show.
She got an in-person appointment to untangle the problem — only to be told there was no record of her submission, despite her showing printouts of the relevant documents to the agency representative. Beavers has a new appointment scheduled for May, she said.
Social Security employees frequently cite missing records to explain their inability to solve problems when they meet with lawyers and beneficiaries. A disability lawyer whose firm’s policy does not allow them to be named had a particularly puzzling case: One client, a longtime Social Security disability recipient, had her benefits reassessed. After winning on appeal, the lawyer went back to the agency to have the payments restored — the recipient had been going without since February. But there was nothing there.
“To be told they’ve never been paid benefits before is just chaos, right? Unconditional chaos,” the lawyer said.
Researchers and lawyers say they have a suspicion about what’s behind the problems at Social Security: the Elon Musk-led effort to revamp the agency.
Some 7,000 SSA employees have reportedly been let go; O’Malley has estimated that 3,000 more would leave the agency. “As the workloads go up, the demoralization becomes deeper, and people burn out and leave,” he predicted in an April hearing held by House Democrats. “It’s going to mean that if you go to a field office, you’re going to see a heck of a lot more empty, closed windows.”
The departures have hit the agency’s regional payment centers hard. These centers help process and adjudicate some cases. It’s the type of behind-the-scenes work in which “the problems surface first,” Romig said. But if the staff doesn’t have enough time, “those things languish.”
Languishing can mean, in some cases, getting dropped by important programs like Medicare. Social Security often automatically deducts premiums, or otherwise administers payments, for the health program.
Lately, Melanie Lambert, a senior advocate at the Center for Medicare Advocacy, has seen an increasing number of cases in which the agency determines beneficiaries owe money to Medicare. The cash is sent to the payment centers, she said. And the checks “just sit there.”
Beneficiaries lose Medicare, and “those terminations also tend to happen sooner than they should, based on Social Security’s own rules,” putting people into a bureaucratic maze, Lambert said.
Employees’ technology is more often on the fritz. “There’s issues every single day with our system. Every day, at a certain time, our system would go down automatically,” said Glasgow, of Social Security’s Schenectady office. Those problems began in mid-March, he said.
The new problems leave Glasgow suspecting the worst. “It’s more work for less bodies, which will eventually hype up the inefficiency of our job and make us, make the agency, look as though it’s underperforming, and then a closer step to the privatization of the agency,” he said.
Jodie Fleischer of Cox Media Group contributed to this report.
KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — an independent source of health policy research, polling and journalism.Learn more about KFF.
This article first appeared on KFF Health News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
When Neenah resident Tom Frantz got a pair of identical emails last Friday, saying they were from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, he just shrugged it off at first, believing it was spam.
But then, he said, he read the email more closely and was “really bothered” by the content.
The email said Frantz — a 68-year-old retired college administrator and teacher and American citizen born in western Pennsylvania — was in the United States on humanitarian parole and his parole was being terminated.
“If you do not depart the United States immediately you will be subject to potential law enforcement actions that will result in your removal from the United States,” the email stated.
“Do not attempt to remain in the United States — the federal government will find you,” it added. “Please depart the United States immediately.”
Frantz has never been on or applied for humanitarian parole. He’s lived in the Fox Valley since moving in 1981 for a job at what is now the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh at Fox Cities.
Because of the threatening nature of the email and the lack of information about what to do if you were a U.S. citizen who received the notification, Frantz said he decided to do some research. He discovered that an immigration attorney in Massachusetts received a similar letter from immigration officials.
“I thought, ‘Boy, if an immigration attorney is alarmed about this, then I should be, too, and I should pay attention to what is being said here,’” Frantz said.
He said he was worried about the possibility of immigration officials showing up at his home, arresting him and ultimately deporting him. As a retiree, he said he was also worried about a reference in the letter to losing benefits because he spent years paying into Social Security and Medicare.
“I was not naive enough to believe that the government never makes a mistake,” he said. “But my fear was that it could compound. And if it compounded, then what were the consequences for me?”
Neenah resident Tom Frantz stands outside of his Fox Valley home on Thursday, April 17, 2025. Frantz received a notice from the federal government on April 11 telling him to leave the country or face removal. (Joe Schulz / WPR)
Frantz spent much of that Friday debating what to do about the letter. He ultimately decided his best bet would be to reach out to one of his representatives in Congress. On Monday morning, he said he left a voicemail with U.S. Sen. Tammy Baldwin’s office and received a phone call less than an hour later.
“After I contacted Sen. Baldwin’s office, they were working (on) it right away,” Frantz said. “I felt like I had an advocate, somebody who really understood my situation and knew the inner workings of government to try to address it.”
Baldwin’s office got in contact with the Department of Homeland Security and discovered the email was incorrectly sent to Frantz.
The notice that Frantz received went out to email addresses in the Customs and Border Patrol Home App, according to Baldwin’s office. The emails typically belonged to a person applying for parole or asylum, immigration lawyers, non-governmental organizations and financial supporters of applicants.
Frantz said he did not use the app or fit the description of those categories. He still isn’t quite sure why he received the email. Baldwin’s office says it has been in contact with federal immigration officials to ensure the issue was resolved.
While he says the Department of Homeland Security didn’t apologize to him directly, he says the department did apologize through Baldwin’s office. Frantz said the department reached out with a number of questions, and he got the sense “they were trying to figure out what went wrong.”
If Baldwin’s office hadn’t worked with him, Frantz said he planned to reach out to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson’s office and the office of Rep. Glenn Grothman.
“Had none of them responded … I probably would start carrying around different forms of identification, birth certificate and other stuff, to prove citizenship,” Frantz said.
The Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment regarding Frantz’s situation and why he received the notification.
In a statement, Baldwin criticized the Trump administration’s handling of the situation, which could have resulted in the wrongful detention or deportation of a Wisconsin resident.
“This is completely illegal — President Trump is trying to deport an American-born, law-abiding citizen and has provided absolutely no justification,” Baldwin said in a statement. “The President cannot kick Americans out of the country just because he wants — no one is above the law, including the President.”
In reflecting on the situation, Frantz said he’s lucky because he knew how to find help. He said he expects that more U.S. citizens likely received similar emails by mistake.
“If I’m getting this, and that attorney in Massachusetts also got it, there’s probably a lot of other people who got this,” he said. “We don’t know how many people are on the distribution list.”
“I think it’s important that people stay vigilant and that they take emails seriously. Don’t click on the links, but investigate them,” Frantz added. “If it looks legitimate, I would definitely treat it as legitimate, and I would seek assistance from officials.”
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