Four migrants escape from New Jersey ICE detention center
Four migrants escaped a ICE detention center in New Jersey during a riot over conditions at the facility. All four men are on the run after they broke out of the Delaney Hall Detention Facility on Thursday, and federal authorities have offered up a $10,000 reward for information leading to their capture. The illegal immigrants were first identified by the New York Post as Franklin Norberto Bautista-Reyes and Joel Enrique Sandoval-Lopez, both of Honduras, and Joan Sebastian Castaneda-Lozada and Andres Pineda-Mogollon, both of Colombia.
Bautista-Reyes illegally entered the US in 2021 and was arrested in May on charges of aggravated assault, attempt to cause bodily injury, terroristic threats, and possession of a weapon for unlawful purposes. Sandoval-Lopez came to the US illegally in 2019 when he was still a minor. He was first arrested in October 2024 for unlawful possession of a handgun and then again in February 2025 for aggravated assault. Castaneda-Lozada arrived in the US in 2022 and was taken into custody by a local state police department on suspicion of burglary, theft, and conspiracy to commit burglary.
Pineda-Mogollon crossed the border in 2023 and overstayed a tourist visa. He was first arrested in April by New York City police for petit larceny. A month later, he was arrested in New Jersey for residential burglary, conspiracy residential burglary, and possession of burglary tools. The Department of Homeland Security contradicted reporting from multiple local outlets that claimed these men were able to slink away during revolt staged by 50 detainees. 'Contrary to current reporting, there has been no widespread unrest at the Delaney Hall Detention facility,' a DHS spokesperson said.
A report from NJ.com said that the detainees pushed down a wall of dormitory room inside the facility. They broke through a wall - described as 'drywall with a mesh interior - in a dorm unit that led to an exterior wall and into a parking lot, according to New Jersey Senator Andy Kim. The Democrat said he had been briefed by the detention center's administrators as well as ICE leadership, ABC7 reported.
At a Friday press conference, Kim said the incident was an example of 'the incompetence and the recklessness of all this.' He also revealed that the facility is undergoing a security review and the breach itself will be investigated. There will be 'major detainee movements out of this facility,' Kim added. That process appeared to begin late Friday afternoon, when protestors were seen holding onto the buses transporting migrants away from the center. Eventually, these people were ripped from the buses by ICE agents.
On Thursday night, the night of the jailbreak, dozens of protestors showed up to block any vehicles from entering or exiting the facility. They chanted slogans and criticized the alleged poor conditions inside the facility. Detainees reported there was a lack of food and that meals were being delivered hours behind schedule. One woman whose husband was detained inside the center told CBS New York that detainees hadn't been fed for about 20 hours, only to be given a small amount of food.
This, according to reports, caused a fight between them and the guards, which led to the detainees pushing down a weak wall inside the facility. 'We are now going to try to get full confirmation from ICE headquarters about what is the future of this facility and whether or not they're going to shut it down,' Kim said. Immigration groups also claimed there has been 'insufficient or frozen food, boiling water coming from pipes, and multiple cancelled visitation hours.' Delaney Hall is run by GEO Group, one of the nation's largest private prison contractors.
The facility, following a refurbishment, reopened in May after GEO Group inked a $60 million deal with the Trump administration, according to the Guardian . As part of that deal, the company is allowed to hold 1,000 people at a time at Delaney Hall. Delaney Hall's reopening was a subject of controversy for local politicians, who claimed it doesn't hold the correct work permits or a valid certificate of occupancy. GEO Group has denied this. LaMonica McIver, a New Jersey Democratic Representative, visited the center during its reopening last month and called for it to be shut down.
She was arrested for trespassing and was later charged with assaulting an officer by acting New Jersey US Attorney Alina Habba's office. Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, was with McIver and other elected officials. He too was arrested but was released the same day. Charges against him were dropped. In a statement Friday, Baraka slammed the federal government as irresponsible and reckless. 'This incident is yet another outrageous validation of the negative consequences of a federal government that believes it is above the prudence and practicality of working within legal parameters, and encourages reckless operations of its collaborators,' he said. Earlier, he said he was concerned about reports of guards within Delaney Hall 'withholding food' and their alleged 'poor treatment' of inmates.
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The Independent
2 hours ago
- The Independent
Padilla has ‘serious questions' for Noem after he was dragged from press conference: ‘How does she not know the senator from California?'
Sen. Alex Padilla of California said that he has serious questions for Kristi Noem after Secret Service and FBI agents forcibly pinned him to the ground and handcuffed him after he tried to ask the Homeland Security Secretary a question during a press conference in Los Angeles. Padilla spoke to Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union on Sunday and responded to some in the Democratic Party who have called for Noem's resignation. 'That's maybe not my focus right now,' Padilla said. 'But I do think there's some serious questions, how does the cabinet secretary not know the senator from California when she steps foot into Los Angeles? She came to the Senate at one point.' The incident happened when Noem came to Los Angeles after President Donald Trump had deployed the National Guard into California without the consent of Governor Gavin Newsom as well as U.S. Marines. The deployment came after protesters pushed back against raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which, at times, led to the destruction of property, such as setting WayMo self-driving vehicles on fire. Noem said at the press conference the Trump administration came to 'liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership.' Padilla, who has a Senate office in the same building, introduced himself and said 'I am Senator Alex Padilla, I have questions for the secretary' which directly contradicted what Homeland Security later said. Padilla had criticized the fact that the administration had used half a dozen violent criminals to rationalize the large-scale mass deportations and raids it has conducted. That led to agents pushing back against him, throwing him out of the press conference, pinning him down and handcuffing him. During his interview with CNN, Padilla said that Homeland Security's actions have consequences. 'How does Secretary of Homeland Security not know how to de-escalate the situation?' he said. 'It's because you can't, or because they don't want to, and it sets the tone. Donald Trump and Secretary Noem have set the tone for the Department of Homeland Security and the entire administration in terms of escalation and extreme enforcement actions.' Padilla was not arrested or charged with any crimes. But he did say later that the administration's action show just how easily they could treat other people without official government titles. The incident with Padilla is not the only time that the Trump administration has escalated situations with Democratic lawmakers. Last week, Rep. LaMonica McIver from New Jersey was indicted on federal charges, which said that she allegedly impeded and interfered with immigration officers outside of a detention center in her state. Padilla later appeared on CBS's Face the Nation where moderator Margaret Brennan asked him about polling, including from CBS, that showed that much of the public supports mass deportations, a key part of the Trump's 2024 campaign. 'It depends on how you ask the question,' Padilla said. 'If you ask the same people, do they think we should maintain due process in the United States of America? The answer is overwhelming yes. Do DREAMers deserve better than the limbo that they find themselves in? Overwhelmingly, on a bipartisan basis, yes.' Padilla said that border security mattered, as does creating a more orderly process for immigration. 'But we can't forget the millions of long-term residents people who have been here working, paying taxes raising families, buying homes contributing to the strength of our economy,' he said. 'They deserve better.'
Daily Mail
3 hours ago
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Kilmar Abrego Garcia's 'brazen threat' to wife uncovered as the 'Maryland migrant' faces smuggling trial that could land him behind bars for life
The Salvadoran man who has become the face of President Trump's mission to deport migrants, claimed he could kill his wife and get away with it, according to court records. Kilmar Abrego Garcia – who on Friday pled not guilty to two human smuggling charges in Tennessee that could land him in prison for life – made the threat during one of many alleged domestic violence incidents, the papers claim. His wife Jennifer Vasquez laid out the allegations in a 2020 handwritten statement to police. 'He kicked me… slapped me in the face. Threaten me. I also have a recorded (sic) that he told my ex-mother-in-law that even he kills me no one can do anything to him,' she claimed. Abrego Garcia, 29, is now back in the United States after being deported back to his native land, where he was held for a while in a notorious ultra hell-hole prison. Vasquez, also 29, led demands for him to be brought back. She has been his most vocal champion, defending his character at press conferences and sharing carefully curated videos on social media showing him as a doting husband and devoted father. But can reveal that court documents we have exclusively reviewed reveal a far darker story. Vasquez shockingly filed for protective orders against the so-called ' Maryland Migrant' not once, but twice, detailing his alleged violent behavior. The Maryland father-of-three – who was whisked up in the first mass deportations by ICE on March 12 and extradited to the CECOT mega prison in Tecoluca, El Salvador, despite a court order protecting him from removal – has never been arrested or convicted of a crime, despite several brushes with the law. But two court documents reveal a history of shocking domestic violence allegations against Abrego Garcia made by his wife. Her formal application for a protection order in 2020, just a year after they were married, claimed her husband kept her captive, hit her and bragged about being able to act with impunity. Vasquez, who has two children with former partner Edwin Ramos Trejo and one with Abrego Garcia, said in her 2020 protection order application that she dialed 911 following an argument over her car and cooking. She claimed her new husband then locked her two eldest children in a room and she could hear their sobbing but was powerless. Vasquez managed to call 911, but that apparently escalated the situation. In an often-disjoined narrative, she wrote: 'I told him to let me go downstairs, but he blocked the door.' Desperate, she looked out of a window and 'saw someone walking and called for help… when my husband heard he grabbed me back inside and slapped me. 'Police came. He acted violent with him and broke my phone in front of officer. This is not the first time. It been a couple of occasion he takes my phone, and I'm left without be able to call anyone. I have photos of all the bruises his left on my body. Jennifer, who advocated for her husband's 'upstanding' character on TikTok, filed two orders of protection against him where she went as far as accusing him of saying to her ex-mother-in-law that he would kill her with no consequences 'In my house is broken TVs, my son's tablet, my car windshield, phones… me and my kids are afraid now.' In her 2021 complaint, also to the District Court of Maryland for Prince George's County, Vasquez alleged in her one-page missive a violent situation when the couple were with their young baby, possibly in bed in the early hours. 'I told him I wasn't sleepy, he got angry, reached over, shut and threw my laptop on the floor and the baby started to cry because he was putting pressure on him. My reaction was to push him off us, and then he punched, scratched me on my left eye, leaving me bleeding. 'That same day at 2pm he came home… he got angry again started yelling to the point that he rip my shorts and shirt off and I ran to the bathroom. He ran behind me, grabbed me by my arm.' Later that day, according to the complaint: 'I order Uber to leave with my kids b/c scared of him... at this point I am afraid to be close to him.' In an apparent reference to other alleged attacks, she wrote: 'I have multiple photos/videos of how violent he can be and all the bruises he has left me.' Vasquez wrote in a separate section that asked for previous injuries: 'Nov 2020 hit me with his work boot. Aug 2020 hit me in the eye leaving me with purple eye'. The mother was granted protection orders on both occasions, ordering Abrego Garcia to leave the home 'immediately' and have no contact 'or attempt to harass' her, court records show. However, both petitions were eventually dismissed because Vasquez failed to follow through with the proceedings and apparently reconciled with her husband. The indictment of Abrego Garcia that charges him with transporting people who were in the United States illegally stems from a traffic stop in 2022 where a police officer suspected he was on a people-smuggling run In other court paperwork, exclusively obtained by Vasquez's ex Ramos Trejo alleged in 2018 that Abrego Garcia was a gang member. The dad was applying to Prince George's County Circuit Court for sole custody of his two children. He wrote by hand about Vasquez: 'She try to kill herself.' And he added in disjointed English but with a clear meaning: 'I'm afraid of my kids live are in danger because she is dating a gang member.' Abrego Garcia's brother Cesar refused to answer any questions about his brother when approached him at his $550,000 single-family home in Beltsville, Maryland. Specifically, we asked for an explanation about his new charges related to the 2022 incident that had a police officer suspecting that Abrego Garcia had links to a convicted human trafficker and was on a people-smuggling run. Driving an SUV, Abrego Garcia was pulled over in Tennessee by a state trooper and said he had been driving construction workers between jobs for the last three days, accofrding to a police report.. The journey started in Houston, Texas, with the final destination 1,400 miles away in Temple Hills, Maryland. According to the report, there was no luggage in the black Chevrolet Suburban, and all the men gave Abrego Garcia's home address as theirs as well. The now-incarcerated migrant was driving with an expired temporary license and told the state trooper the SUV belonged to his boss, Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes, the report said. So concerned was the trooper that he suspected Abrego Garcia was involved in human trafficking and arrested the nine men. However, due to guidance from the Biden administration's FBI, Abrego Garcia was released with a warning for driving without a valid license. Now, court and DHS intelligence documents seen by Just The News reportedly show that Abrego Garcia's 'boss' was a fellow Salvadoran illegal migrant and convicted human smuggler. On December 2, 2019, a DHS special agent stopped a suspicious white Dodge Caravan minivan with New Mexico plates on Interstate I-10 in Gautier, Mississippi. Inside the agent found nine migrant men. In the passenger seat was Jose Ramon Hernandez Reyes – the man Abrego Garcia reportedly named as his 'boss.' In August 2020, Hernandez Reyes pleaded guilty to four counts of 'aiding and abetting the illegal transportation of an alien within the United States' and was sentenced to 18 months in federal prison. Abrego Garcia's own journey into the United States meant crossing illegally at age 16, following gang threats in his home city San Salvador. He joined Cesar in Maryland before meeting dentist office employee Vasquez in 2016 and working as an HVAC installer. While Democratic Senator Chris van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to meet Abrego Garcia as part of a campaign to 'bring him home', further alleged revelations of gang ties have emerged. Trump administration border czar Tom Homan has called Abrego Garcia, 'an MS-13 gang member, public safety threat, [and] terrorist'. In 2019, he was arrested while standing around with three known MS-13 gang members outside a Home Depot in Hyattsville, Maryland, according to police records. Vasquez said her husband was merely looking for work. One of the MS-13 members was known as 'Bimbo' and had previous arrests for assault, burglary and concealing a dangerous weapon according to the document, called a 'Gang Field Interview Sheet'. At the time, Abrego Garcia was wearing a Chicago Bulls hat which the police said was 'indicative of Hispanic gang culture' and showed he was a member in 'good standing' with MS-13. The clothing allegedly represented 'see no evil, hear no evil', a gang motto. According to the document, a detective spoke with a 'past and proven reliable source' who advised that Abrego Garcia was an 'active member of MS-13' with a clique known as the Westerns and had the rank of 'Chequeo' and the moniker 'Chele'. In April 2019, a month later, a federal judge in Baltimore denied Abrego Garcia a bond and said that she found the claims about him being a gang member persuasive. Judge Elizabeth Kessler wrote: 'The fact that a 'past, proven, and reliable source of information' verified the respondent's gang membership, rank, and gang name is sufficient to support that the respondent is a gang member, and the Respondent has failed to present evidence to rebut that assertion'. However, in October of that year, a different judge freed him and allowed him to stay in the US indefinitely. While Baltimore federal judge David Jones did not dismiss the allegation that he was an MS-13 member, he said that he was persuaded that Abrego Garcia would be persecuted if he returned to El Salvador.
The Guardian
6 hours ago
- The Guardian
The rise of Stephen Miller, the architect of Trump's hardline immigration policy
With Los Angeles convulsed by confrontation between pro-migrant protesters and military units dispatched by Donald Trump, no figure apart from the president has loomed larger than Stephen Miller. As the man in the Oval Office, it is Trump who has absorbed the accusations of authoritarianism for usurping the powers of California's government after deploying 4,000 national guard troops and 700 active marines on to the streets of a city that is home to more undocumented immigrants than any other in the US. Behind the scenes, however, this has been the apogee of Miller's power – and an episode that illuminated his power in a White House where his influence far outstrips his misleadingly modest title of deputy chief of staff. Miller, 39, may have been the true catalyst for the volatile scenes that played out over several days in the city of his birth. As the long-term architect of Trump's years-long effort to reinvent US immigration policy, he has pressed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to intensify efforts to arrest migrants as deportation figures fell far short of pre-election promises. At a meeting at Ice's Washington headquarters last month, Miller ordered them to skip the usual practice of compiling lists of suspected illegal migrants and instead target Home Depot, where day laborers gather for short-term hire, and 7-Eleven stores, to carry out mass arrests, the Wall Street Journal reported. Ice would aim for a minimum of 3,000 arrests a day, he told Fox News – a figure exceeding previous estimates, based on assumptions that those with criminal records would be prioritised. It also seemed to raise the risk of mistakes and wrongful arrests. Accordingly, Ice has drastically stepped up its arrest rate – and broadened the profile of those targeted. The results have been plain to see. As demonstrators took to the streets, Miller promptly raised the stakes by accusing them of an 'insurrection'. Amid the hullabaloo and expressions of outrage, Miller may allowed himself a quiet smile of satisfaction over sticking it to the city of his birth – in many ways emblematic of the progressive cultural trends despised by Trump's 'make America great again' (Maga) followers but a place where his own hardline anti-immigrant views had long provoked derision. The son of affluent Jewish parents, Miller's evolution into a race-baiting provocateur took shape in the upscale suburb of Santa Monica, where he gained notoriety as an incendiary agitator at the eponymous local high school. Video footage purportedly from the period and circulated on social media shows a bearded Miller stridently voicing his disdainful view of school janitorial staff 'Am I the only one who is sick and tired of being told to pick up my trash when we have plenty of janitors who are paid to do this,' he shouts into a microphone. The gross statement seems to have been representative of a broader canvas of toxic ideas, with racism at its core. In Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump, and the White Nationalist Agenda, to date the only biography published on Miller, author Jean Guerrero recounts one episode from the future political operative's adolescence, when he suddenly ditched a close friend, Jason Islas, on the grounds of his ethnicity. 'The conversation was remarkably calm,' Islas, a Mexican American, is quoted saying. 'He expressed hatred for me in a calm, cool, matter-of-fact way.' An article he wrote as a 16-year-old for a local website expresses contempt for fellow students of Hispanic origin. 'When I entered Santa Monica High School in ninth grade, I noticed a number of students lacked basic English skills,' Miller wrote on the Surfsantamonica site. 'There are usually very few, if any, Hispanic students in my honors classes, despite the large number of Hispanic students that attend our school.' The school, he added, was one where 'Osama bin Laden would feel very welcome' – a view reflecting the then recentness of the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaida and also Miller's increasing focus on Muslims. Miller's indulgence in far-right ideas continued during his college years at Duke University in North Carolina, where he associated with white nationalist thinkers and groups. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, he worked with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which it defined as a 'an anti-Muslim hate group', and also with Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader who popularized the term 'alt-right' to describe groups that defined themselves through a white racial identity. After graduating, Miller moved to Washington to work in Congress, serving first as a press secretary to Michele Bachmann, then a Republican representative for Minnesota, before moving to work for Jeff Sessions, at the time a rightwing Alabama senator who later became Trump's first attorney general. It was in the latter role that his reputation as an avatar of extreme anti-immigrant agitprop became established. In 2013, helped by Miller, Sessions torpedoed a bipartisan piece of legislation that was intended to pave the way for immigration for undocumented migrants. To help sink the bill, Miller used Breitbart News, a rightwing website then headed by Steve Bannon. It would prove to be a fateful connection. The Breitbert connection also shone further light on Miller's views on race and immigration, as revealed in emails he sent to editors and reporters. They showed a preoccupation with the 1924 Immigration Act, signed by President Calvin Coolidge, which severely restricted immigration to the US from certain parts of the world on what observers say were racial and eugenics grounds. Hitler subsequently praised the legislation as a model for Germany in Mein Kampf. After Trump launched his presidential campaign in 2015 - creating scandalizing headlines by demonizing Mexican immigrants as 'drug dealers, criminals and rapists', Miller took a leave of absence from Sessions' Senate office to work for him. On the recommendation of Bannon, by then Trump's campaign chief, he was installed as a speech writer, chiefly because of his focus on immigration, which had become the candidate's own signature issue. It enabled Miller to showcase his ability to channel Trump's inner self. The pair have politically inseparable ever since. Miller wrote Trump's dystopian 'American carnage' speech for his first inauguration in January 2017. As a senior policy adviser in the first Trump administration, it was Miller who was behind some of its most notorious policy initiatives. These included the so-called 'Muslim ban' on travellers from seven majority-Muslim countries and the practice of separating migrant children from their parents at the southern border. His growing notoriety as an anti-immigration extremist drew criticism from his own relatives. In 2018, his maternal uncle, David Glosser, branded him a 'hypocrite' for ignoring the memory of his ancestors, who fled antisemitic pogroms in tsarist Russia. 'I have watched with dismay and increasing horror as my nephew, an educated man who is well aware of his heritage, has become the architect of immigration policies that repudiate the very foundation of our family's life in this country,' Glosser, a retired neuropsychologist, wrote in Politico. Miller cared little for such sentimentality. After Trump's defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election, Miller stuck with the former president – even while his political future initially looked doomed in the aftermath of the 6 January 2021 attack by his supporters on the US Capitol. Consequently, he grew ever more powerful in Trump's inner circle. He may have earned extra kudos by declining to exploit their relationship to win lucrative consulting contracts, instead setting up a non-profit, the America First Legal foundation. Meanwhile, he immersed himself in studying how to overcome the hurdles that stymied Trump's agenda during his first presidency. The outcome has been apparent in the blizzard of executive orders druing the restored president's first months back in the White House. Miller purposely sought to 'flood the zone' in a manner that would overwhelm the capacity of the courts – or the media – to respond. No order was more quintessentially Miller's than that issued on the day of Trump's second inauguration on 20 January, which attempted to cancel birthright citizenship for children born to undocumented immigrants. The order was challenged in the courts and is now with the supreme court after the administration challenged the ability of lower courts to issue nationwide injunctions supporting a right that is guaranteed in the US constitution. Miller's anti-immigrant zeal has at times exceeded even that of Trump. According to the New York Times, the president told a campaign meeting last year that if it was up to Miller, there would only be 100 million people living in the US – and all of them would look like Miller. The bond between the two men has grown to such an extent that Miller has been dubbed 'the president's id' in some circles. 'He has been for a while. It's just now he has the leverage and power to fully effectuate it,' an unnamed former Trump adviser told NBC. Others have called him 'the most consequential' White House official since Dick Cheney, who exercised vast influence as vice-president under George W Bush. Critics cast Miller as the root of all evil in Trump's White House. 'Stephen Miller is responsible for all the bad things happening in the United States,' NBC quoted Ben Ray Luján, a Democratic senator for New Mexico, as saying. Miller's exalted place at Trump's side was illustrated during the recent Signalgate episode – as revealed by the Atlantic, whose editor, Jeffrey Goldberg, was inadvertently invited into a government chat group to discuss airstrikes on Houthi militants in Yemen, whose missile attacks on Israel threatened Suez canal shipping routes. When JD Vance questioned the strikes – asking whether Trump 'is aware how inconsistent this is with his message on Europe' – Miller unambiguously slapped the vice-president down. 'As I heard it, the president was clear: green light,' Miller said, according to the transcript. The clearest testimony to Miller's status has come from Trump himself. Asked by Kristen Welker, the moderator of NBC's Meet the Press, about speculation that Miller might become national security adviser, a usually influential White House post currently filled, albeit temporarily, by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, after the previous incumbent, Mike Waltz, was fired. 'Stephen is much higher on the totem pole than that,' Trump replied. The result is that Miller's presence is detectable in all policy areas, including at the state department, where he succeeded in having his ally, Christopher Landau, installed as Rubio's deputy. The goal is to control the flow of foreigners entering the United States, insiders have told the Guardian. At the state department, Landau has become an important liaison to officials in the consular affairs section, which has been put under the leadership of a conservative coterie of diplomats and reoriented toward policing migration. Officials from the state department have joined FBI agents on recent Ice raids aimed at tracking down unregistered migrants. Tara Setmayer, a former Republican communications director on Capitol Hill, laments that Miller's rising star means he can 'use the powers of the federal government to unleash his fascist worldview'. '[That view] has now been transformed into the main political policy and aim of Donald Trump's presidency,' said Setmayer, who now heads the Seneca Project, a women-led political action committee. 'The demagoguery of immigration has long been at the centre of Donald Trump's political rise, and Stephen Miller's desire to make America whiter and less diverse, married with the power of the presidency without guardrails, is incredibly dangerous and should concern every American who believes in the rule of law.' Andrew Roth and David Smith contributed reporting
