DOJ Requests Data On Criminal Illegal Aliens In California Jails
The request targets counties that have historically limited cooperation with federal immigration enforcement. The data collection effort represents the latest escalation in the administration's immigration crackdown.
'Removing criminal illegal aliens is this Administration's highest priority,' Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a July 17 filed statements supporting Huntington Beach's lawsuit against state sanctuary laws and challenged a Kentucky regulation offering in-state tuition to undocumented immigrants.
California has long resisted federal immigration enforcement efforts. State law limits local law enforcement cooperation with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, particularly regarding detention requests.
The DOJ announcement emphasized that while all undocumented immigrants violate federal law, those who commit additional crimes 'pose a heightened risk to our Nation's safety and security.' The statement described recent border crossings as an 'invasion of illegal aliens at an unprecedented scale.'
Solve the daily Crossword
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
CBS News
22 minutes ago
- CBS News
Videos show immigration operation near Los Angeles Home Depot following court order placing restrictions on raids
Videos show U.S. border patrol agents conducting an immigration operation near a Home Depot in the Westlake District Wednesday morning, following a court order placing restrictions on raids. Acting U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli shared a video from Fox News that showed a border patrol agent detaining individuals during the operation. Essayli commented on the video saying, "For those who thought immigration enforcement had stopped in Southern California, think again. The enforcement of federal law is not negotiable, and there are no sanctuaries from the reach of the federal government." Another video posted to the Citizen app appears to show several trucks pulling into the parking lot of the Home Depot and beginning to detain several individuals. Border patrol agents also appeared to be coming out of the back of a yellow Penske box truck. "Penske Truck Rental is aware of recent reports and videos regarding a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) operation in Los Angeles," the company said in a statement regarding the incident. "The company was not made aware that its trucks would be used in today's operation and did not authorize this. Penske will reach out to DHS and reinforce its policy to avoid improper use of its vehicles in the future." The company added that it strictly prohibits the transportation of people in "the "cargo area of its vehicles under any circumstances." CBS Los Angeles has reached out to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security for a comment on the incident and is waiting for a response. The office of Mayor Karen Bass also released a statement claiming that federal agents are now using rental trucks to conduct their raids. "The City is gathering information about these reported raids and considering all legal options," Bass' office said. "Tactics like this are un-American and we will never accept these terrorizing ploys as a new normal." It is unclear how many people were detained during the operation. This operation comes almost a week after an appeals court agreed with a lower court judge keeping restrictions on "roving" immigration raids in the Los Angeles area. The panel of judges at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit largely denied the Trump administration's request to suspend the lower court's ruling, which requires immigration officials to have reasonable suspicion that someone is in the U.S. illegally before detaining them. The initial court order from U.S. District Judge Maame Ewusi-Mensah Frimpong prohibited federal agents from basing arrests on people's occupation, race or ethnicity, the fact that they may have an accent or speak Spanish, or their presence in a location. "The Federal court of appeals made clear that it is unconstitutional in this country to racially profile people and snatch them from worksites," Bass' office said.
CBS News
22 minutes ago
- CBS News
Another Alligator Alcatraz? Florida plans on building a second immigration detention center
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis ' administration is apparently preparing to build a second immigration detention center, awarding at least one contract for what's labeled in state records as the "North Detention Facility." The site would add to the capacity at the state's first detention facility, built at an isolated airfield in the Florida Everglades and dubbed "Alligator Alcatraz." Already, state officials have inked more than $245 million in contracts for that facility, which officially opened July 1. Florida plans to build a second detention center at a Florida National Guard training center called Camp Blanding, about 27 miles (43 kilometers) southwest of downtown Jacksonville, though DeSantis has said the state is waiting for federal officials to ramp up deportations from the South Florida facility before building out the Camp Blanding site. "We look forward to the increased cadence," of deportations, DeSantis said last month, calling the state "ready, willing and able" to expand its operations. Civil rights advocates and environmental groups have filed lawsuits against the Everglades facility, where detainees allege they've been forced to go without adequate food and medical care, and been barred from meeting with their attorneys, held without any charges and unable to get a federal immigration court to hear their cases. President Donald Trump has touted the facility's harshness and remoteness as fit for the "worst of the worst," while Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has said the South Florida detention center can serve as a model for other state-run holding facilities for immigrants. The Florida Division of Emergency Management, the state agency that built the Everglades facility, has awarded a $39,000 contract for a portable emergency response weather station and two lightning sirens for what's been dubbed the "North Detention Facility," according to records in the state's public contract database. The equipment will help enable "real-time weather monitoring and safety alerting for staff." The contract comes as the state approaches the peak of hurricane season, and as heavy rains and extreme heat have pounded parts of Florida. Immigrant advocates and environmentalists have raised a host of concerns about the Everglades facility, a remote compound of heavy-duty tents and trailers that state workers and contractors assembled in a matter of days. Last week, FDEM released a heavily redacted draft emergency evacuation plan for what the document called the "South Florida Detention Facility." Entire sections related to detainee transportation, evacuation and relocation procedures were blacked out, under a Florida law that allows state agencies to make their emergency plans confidential. Despite multiple public records requests by The Associated Press, the department has not produced other evacuation plans, environmental impact studies or agency analyses for the facility. Questioned by reporters on July 25, FDEM executive director Kevin Guthrie defended the emergency response agency's plans for the makeshift facility, which he says is built to withstand a Category 2 hurricane, which packs winds of up to 110 mph. "I promise you that the hurricane guys have got the hurricane stuff covered," Guthrie said. ___ Kate Payne is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
WIRED
an hour ago
- WIRED
Tornado Cash Developer Roman Storm Guilty on One Count in Federal Crypto Case
Aug 6, 2025 2:27 PM A federal jury found crypto developer Roman Storm guilty of operating an unlicensed crypto business, but cleared him of sanctions violations and deadlocked on a money laundering charge. The facade of the Department of Justice building is seen in Washington, D.C. Photograph:Roman Storm, one of the developers of crypto anonymizing tool Tornado Cash, has been found guilty of conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business by a jury in a court in New York. He faces a maximum sentence of five years in federal prison. In 2023, the US Department of Justice charged Storm with three violations: conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to violate sanctions, and conspiracy to operate an unlicensed money transmitting business. On Wednesday, at the end of a four-week trial and a deliberation period spanning five days, the jury returned a partial verdict: It found Storm guilty of operating an unlicensed money transmitting business, and not guilty of sanctions evasion. It failed to reach a unanimous verdict on the money laundering count, which carries a far greater penalty of up to 20 years in prison. 'We are grateful the jury did not convict Roman for violating sanctions or laundering money. There are serious legal issues with the sole remaining count involving unlicensed money transmission,' says Brian Klein, partner at law firm Waymaker, one of Storm's representatives at trial. 'We will not stop fighting for Roman and expect him to be fully vindicated.' Storm intends to file for the single conviction to be dismissed in a post-trial motion, his counsel tells WIRED. Tornado Cash was developed in 2019 by Storm and two others, Alexey Pertsev and Roman Semenov. The idea was to conceal the ownership of crypto coins, by pooling funds belonging to various different parties, then dishing them into brand-new wallets, thereby interrupting the public trail of transactions recorded on a blockchain. Services like Tornado Cash are marketed as essential to improving the level of privacy available to crypto owners. Privacy has long been a preoccupation among crypto ideologues, but the issue is especially pertinent at present, after a string of violent kidnappings targeting people known to possess large amounts of crypto. 'Privacy is a very pragmatic thing for basic safety,' Vitalik Buterin, co-creator of the Ethereum crypto network, told WIRED before the start of the trial. 'If someone knows who has the coins, someone knows who to target.' But the US government saw Tornado Cash differently—as a tailor-made vehicle for money laundering. When it brought charges in 2023, the DOJ argued that Storm had built and profited from a tool that allowed criminals to launder at least $1 billion in crypto, among them hackers with ties to North Korea. 'Claiming to offer the Tornado Cash service as a 'privacy service,' the defendants in fact knew that it was a haven for criminals to engage in large-scale money laundering and sanctions evasion,' the indictment alleged. At trial, prosecutors presented evidence that they claimed proved that Tornado Cash was designed for money laundering from the outset. Their witnesses included a scam victim whose stolen funds were said to have passed through Tornado Cash—though this account was contested online by prominent members of the crypto industry—and a convicted fraudster who used the service to launder ill-gotten gains. 'Washy, washy,' the fraudster supposedly wrote to his girlfriend, in a message about Tornado Cash. When the government closed its case last week, prosecutors dismissed the topic of privacy as a convenient distraction. 'The real money wasn't in so-called 'privacy' for normal people,' Benjamin Gianforti, one of the prosecutors, is quoted as saying. 'It was in hiding dirty money for criminals.' Storm and the other developers even took to wearing a Tornado Cash-branded t-shirt emblazoned with an image of a washing machine, prosecutors noted. Storm's attorneys, meanwhile, sought to argue that although their client had developed the technology exploited by bad actors, he had not engaged in any criminality himself, nor handled any dirty money. 'You'll never hear any evidence that Roman or the [other] co-founders participated in any hacks,' said Keri Curtis Axel, partner at law firm Waymaker and counsel to Storm, in her opening remarks. Storm was powerless to prevent the abuses of Tornado Cash, the defence reportedly argued, because he and the other developers had relinquished the ability to modify or disable the underlying code, in the spirit of decentralization. The defence called to the stand a number of witnesses that spoke to the potential legitimate uses for Tornado Cash. But Storm did not testify, which would have opened him up to cross-examination by the prosecution. Ultimately, despite finding Storm guilty of the lesser money transmitting violation, the jury proved receptive to the defense's line of reasoning. 'The jury split the proverbial baby,' says Mark Bini, partner at law firm Reed Smith's crypto practice and former federal prosecutor. 'While they likely credited the defense's compelling arguments that there are legitimate privacy uses for mixers and that Storm was not directly involved in any of the crimes in which Tornado Cash was used, they felt uncomfortable with the steps that Tornado Cash took or didn't take to prevent illicit uses.' Storm now awaits sentencing, which usually takes place a few months after a conviction. Meanwhile, the DOJ must decide whether to retry the money laundering count on which the jury could not agree. 'The government could choose to retry Storm on the hung count, but based on the notes that were coming back from the jury, I expect that they will go to sentencing based upon the conviction they secured,' says Bini. 'While they are likely to argue for a stiff sentence, the jury's verdict appears to take a lot of the sting out of the government's case.'
