25 Investigates: Family of fallen Mass. State Police recruit still waiting for answers
What exactly happened and why? Those questions still haunt the family of the Massachusetts State Police Academy recruit who died after a training exercise in September.
Now 25 Investigates with speaking with Enrique Delgado Garcia's stepfather about the ongoing investigation into his death and how it sparked changes at the academy.
'It's been more than 8 months now and we still don't really know what happened,' Jose Ramon Perez-Garcia said in an interview with Boston 25's Kerry Kavanaugh, translated from Spanish.
He says it's been a difficult wait for his family as the investigation into the death of his stepson continues.
Delgado Garcia was 25 years old when he died after a boxing training exercise at the state police academy last September.
Sources familiar with the investigation told 25 Investigates that he suffered broken bones, damaged or missing teeth, and a spinal injury.
Sources say he was in the ring with someone else when he stumbled onto the mat but stood back up the fight was allowed to continue. He then collapsed following a blow to the head.
Perez-Garcia said Delgado Garcia was someone who loved helping people. He loved being active and was frequently working out or running. He was at the academy with a long-term dream of becoming an attorney who could defend people's rights.
'A young man, just 25 years old, they shattered his dream,' Perez-Garcia said.
The Massachusetts Attorney General, Andrea Campbell, appointed an independent investigator to examine the circumstances around how he died.
On Wednesday, we learned the investigation is ongoing, and they could not provide further comment.
Just this month, the Massachusetts State Police announced major academy reforms, including dividing the upcoming class into two smaller cohorts, appointing new academy leadership, and completing hour-by-hour review of the training curriculum a review of recruits' academy experience. Boxing remains a suspended activity.
25 Investigates also wanted to learn more about the recruits' experiences and culture at the MSP academy. Last October, we asked to review the exit interviews of people who quit the academy. The state asked for more than $176,000 fee to review the public records request. Boston 25 News did not pay that fee. MSP later stated the records were exempt from public records law.
Kavanaugh asked Pérez-García if the changes at the academy are enough.
He told Kavanaugh that 'the academy needs to change many of the ways it trains a person to be a cadet who's going to serve humanity or who's going to serve their community.'
He added that the family does appreciate the steps taken so far.
Pérez García said, 'It's all a process and you have to wait, because sometimes things happen very quickly, maybe they don't have a positive result. Let's hope there continues to be change.'
Sadly, the family didn't realize the impact Delgado Garcia had on so many in the community until his funeral. They say people told family members they knew him from volunteering with kids or preparing meals, and helping people who speak Spanish navigate the district attorney's office in Worcester, where he worked.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
Download the FREE Boston 25 News app for breaking news alerts.
Follow Boston 25 News on Facebook and Twitter. | Watch Boston 25 News NOW
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Inside Donald Trump's Mass-Deportation Operation
Detainees board an ICE deportation flight on May 29 in Alexandria, La. Credit - Christopher Lee for TIME "Pay attention to the noise," says Belarmino Garcia, the warden of El Salvador's Terrorism Confinement Center. He ushers a group of foreign visitors inside CECOT's Module 8, a unit unlike others at the sprawling facility situated at the base of a volcano. This one holds 238 Venezuelan nationals who were shipped from the U.S. on March 15 to be held in one of the world's most infamous prisons at the behest of President Donald J. Trump. The cacophony is overwhelming. Inmates climb out of their bunks, lean on the bars, and plead and whistle for attention. Module 8 is different from a typical CECOT unit in several ways, Garcia explains. The detainees are allowed blankets and pillows. They eat fast food. They are rambunctious and defiant. As the warden leads the visitors out, the prisoners appear on the verge of mutiny, chanting 'Libertad! Libertad!' Next, Garcia takes the visitors into Module 7. It's silent inside. The prisoners are Salvadoran nationals, some of whom have been at CECOT for years. They wear white shirts, white shorts, and face masks, and sit upright, staring blankly through the bars. Their cells contain nothing but a pila—a tub they use as a toilet—and bare steel bunks. Inmates spend all day inside, emerging only for 30 minutes of calisthenics or Bible study, according to the warden. There are no TVs or radios. The prisoners can't make or accept phone calls. They can't receive visitors, or even letters. They have spoken to no one outside the prison since their arrival. Staff remind them what El Salvador's President, Nayib Bukele, has said publicly: No one who goes into CECOT will ever come out. 'They have lost the will to fight or resist us,' Garcia says. The prospect of the U.S. sending migrants to a foreign prison notorious for alleged human-rights violations would have been unimaginable less than a year ago. But it is only one dramatic component of Trump's unprecedented deportation project. The President has revoked the temporary legal status of hundreds of thousands of people and expanded the power of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to round up and remove millions of others. He is authorizing ICE to direct a network of law-enforcement agencies, from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives to the DEA and U.S. Park Police, to assist the effort. He has pressed the Internal Revenue Service and the Postal Service to share information to identify targets. Homeland Security Operations has developed new software technology, called RAVEn, to consolidate data about migrants. Trump has used federal powers to coerce cities and counties to cooperate with the mission and threatened to withdraw federal funding if they don't. Working with sheriffs and local police departments, ICE has raided schools, parks, and restaurants across the U.S., detaining some 82,000 people in a few short months. The work is only beginning. On June 7, Trump ordered National Guard troops to Los Angeles to quell anti-ICE protests. The Department of Justice is weighing arresting and prosecuting public officials who impede their immigration agenda, according to Administration sources familiar with the matter. The White House is considering suspending habeas corpus, a protection against illegal government detention enshrined in the Constitution that grants every person the right to have a judge review their imprisonment. 'We're looking at every option,' Trump border czar Tom Homan tells TIME. In addition to sending Venezuelans to CECOT, Trump has deported asylum seekers to Panama and sent others to Guantánamo Bay in Cuba and South Sudan. Homan says the Administration is in talks with three more countries to accept U.S. deportees. It also plans to build and expand other detention centers in the U.S., he says, with the goal of doubling capacity to hold detainees awaiting deportation to 100,000. So far, the Administration has deported more than 139,000 migrants, which is behind pace to reach Trump's aggressive targets. Even so, the number in immigration detention has spiked 30%. Read More: Exclusive: Inside Trump's First 100 Days. This sweeping effort has few analogues in recent world history. Its ambition goes beyond anything attempted in the U.S. since the Eisenhower-era Operation Wetback in its aims to expel millions of people and change the makeup of the country. Removing that many undocumented immigrants, as Trump has promised, would eliminate a key source of labor. It would end a decades-long wave of migration that has made the country progressively more multiethnic. And it would change how the U.S. has treated those seeking refuge from violence and oppression since before the end of the Cold War. Trump officials say all this is overdue. The U.S. experienced a surge in migrants, including undocumented immigrants, under President Biden, who revoked some of Trump's first-term border policies. Trump officials say they intend to reverse a trend that has displaced American workers, depleted state and local governments of resources, and, they argue, undermined social cohesion. Already, Trump's deportation program is instilling fear in newcomers. 'I can't go back,' says Hilda Espinoza Telon, a refugee from Guatemalan gang violence, whose lawyer says she was recently fitted with an ankle monitor by ICE. 'Nearly my whole family has been murdered over there.' She has given her 14-year-old son instructions for what to do if she disappears from their Virginia home. A TIME investigation, based on interviews with more than 20 Trump Administration officials, exclusive access to detention facilities in the U.S. and abroad, and conversations with numerous migrants, immigration experts, and attorneys reveals how Trump is testing the moral and legal extremes to which the government is willing to go. Catholic bishops and Republican-appointed judges have joined those speaking out against his deportation project. District courts have issued injunctions. Constitutional scholars have alleged Trump's team is not only abusing presidential power but also breaking laws. 'The Administration is treating immigration not as a law-enforcement matter but is trying illegally to repurpose the tools of war and counterterrorism against migrants,' says Brian Finucane, a lawyer at the independent International Crisis Group and former State Department official. 'It's a turducken of illegality.' Trump Administration officials say they are complying with all laws they deem constitutional. Whether they are correct will ultimately be decided by the Supreme Court, which has halted some of Trump's actions while the Justices consider the merits. But moves to slow or reverse his agenda have only hardened the President's resolve. 'We have to do it,' Trump told TIME in late April, arguing he had been elected on a promise to crack down on illegal immigration. 'People have been let into our country that are very dangerous.' As the Administration escalates its efforts, critics are asking how we got here. Others wonder what took so long. But all Americans have a stake in understanding how Trump is trying to transform the country by deporting millions of its inhabitants—and what it will mean for their communities. When Cristian David Marin Leiva stepped inside the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in New Orleans on April 14, he thought his appointment would take only a few minutes. The agency had summoned Cristian, a boyish teenager with bright eyes and a patchy goatee, for a regular 'check-in.' He had reported for check-ins twice previously without incident—most recently in February—since he crossed the Texas border illegally in April 2021. Cristian moved to the U.S. to escape violence in Honduras, he says, settling with his father and stepmother in Slidell, La. 'Where I lived was full of gangs,' he says. 'They would make the minors join the gang or be killed.' Shortly after he crossed the border, he hired a lawyer, who asked a judge to designate Cristian a Special Immigrant–Juvenile. He had been abandoned by his mother in Honduras, his attorney says, and needed to live with his father in the U.S. The judge approved the petition and granted Cristian four years of 'deferred action from removal,' providing a reprieve from deportation at least until 2027. Now a high school junior, Cristian, 18, walked into the ICE office near the French Quarter around 7 a.m., planning to make it to school in time for his first-period biology class. He approached an officer and handed him the letter requesting a check-in. The agent glanced at the paper, furrowed his brow, and then looked back at Cristian. He pulled out a pair of handcuffs. 'Follow me,' he said. Cristian was led into a small holding cell with dozens of detainees and stripped of his possessions. 'They just called me over and put these on me and kept me here,' he told TIME, shackled at his wrists and ankles. Agents told him he could make a phone call after he was transferred to a processing center in Central Louisiana. There he could choose either to voluntarily board a flight to Honduras or face a judge. Nobody informed Cristian's family what was happening. Rubin Marin, Cristian's father, was oblivious when TIME reached him by phone later that afternoon. He thought his son was in school. Summoning migrants for unexpected detention is one in a range of tactics the Trump Administration has adopted. The message sent is clear: Migrants who entered the country illegally are not only unwelcome but also at risk of sudden removal or imprisonment wherever they are and whether they've followed the law since arriving or not. 'It's just getting them the hell out of here,' Homan says. Read More: Read the Full Transcript of Trump's '100 Days' Interview With TIME. To understand how the deportation dragnet works, TIME joined ICE officers on a pair of morning raids in the New Orleans area. Inside a truck, ICE officers reviewed files on their targets, including biometric data, arrest and conviction records, work histories, and frequent whereabouts. 'We surveil them for a period of time to identify patterns of behavior,' says Mellissa Harper, director of the New Orleans field office. 'Once we know that they are at a certain location at a certain period of time regularly, we plan out an enforcement operation.' The raids TIME witnessed didn't lead to arrests. In one case, the person had left the state overnight. In another, they simply weren't home. But the target list has multiplied. When he took office, Trump revoked the temporary protected status of hundreds of thousands of migrants and rescinded memos that limited ICE arrests during raids. Before that, 'if we conduct a targeted enforcement operation for one guy and we show up to his house and there are four other -illegals there, we could only arrest the one guy,' explains Scott Ladwig, Harper's deputy. 'Now we grab them all.' Local police have lined up in support, transferring migrants they arrest on other alleged crimes or even traffic violations. After the fruitless predawn raids on April 14, the ICE officers returned to the New Orleans field office to find 12 migrants transported from the Kenner, La., police department. The detainees walked in a single-file line, wearing handcuffs and leg restraints. When they reached the offices, ICE agents interviewed them using a Spanish translation app on their government phones. One of the detainees, Fernando Milla, 28, had been arrested on suspicion of drunk driving. The officer who ran his license, Milla says, saw he had overstayed a student visa. After two nights in the county jail, police transferred Milla, a Honduran national, to ICE custody. Sitting inside a holding cell, Milla was resigned to his fate. 'I'm not going to hire a lawyer or anything,' he tells TIME. 'I'm going back.' As the migrants in Milla's group were being questioned by the ICE agents processing their paperwork, Cristian emerged from the holding cell. He spent 16 minutes answering questions from an officer. Then he was left waiting again, hoping he ends up back with his father and not on a flight to Honduras. The detention of migrants like Cristian is the first link in Trump's new deportation chain. It's the product of years of planning. Trump left office in January 2021 determined to make immigration a centerpiece of his political comeback. Top aides found refuge at friendly think tanks to plot the next steps. Homan, who was acting ICE director in Trump's first term, took residency at the America First Policy Institute and the Heritage Foundation, where he contributed to the latter organization's manifesto for a second term, titled Project 2025. Russell Vought, the Office of Management and Budget director, founded the Center for Renewing America, where he studied Trump's rally speeches and devised plans to turn promises into policy. Longtime adviser Stephen Miller, an architect of Trump's first-term immigration crackdown that included separating families, founded America First Legal to sue the Biden Administration, and explored legal mechanisms for Trump's deportation goals. Together they sketched the contours of a new, even more aggressive immigration agenda. It would concentrate power in the Oval Office and use federal powers to pressure state and local jurisdictions, withholding funds for sanctuary cities and forcing agencies with access to sensitive data to assist in the deportation effort. Vought and others suggested pulling federal funding from state and local police departments that refused to cooperate. Miller proposed declaring a national emergency to invoke extraordinary powers to round up and remove migrants. Homan wanted to restructure ICE, reassigning employees with desk jobs to conduct field operations and ramping up the agency's capacity to identify and arrest people. They looked for ways to move fast, and studied the law to devise the methods and legal defenses for their most boundary-pushing measures, according to several current Administration officials. Working with Miller at America First Legal was Gene Hamilton, the principal author of Trump's controversial family-separation policy, according to a January 2021 Justice Department inspector general report. All four men now work out of the White House. 'The President and the entire Administration are certainly open to all legal and constitutional remedies to ensure we can continue with the promise of deporting illegal criminals,' White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said. Just how 'legal and constitutional' the White House actions are is a matter of dispute. Normally, Executive Orders are vetted by experts at the Office of Legal Counsel at the Justice Department, in order to ensure the President is following the law. Trump has reportedly curtailed that front-end review, leaving government lawyers to defend controversial claims of powers granted to the President only in extreme circumstances, like wartime. Asked to illustrate how this approach to following the law differs from the norm, one litigator who left the Justice Department in February tells TIME, 'Draw a horse and put a cart in front of it.' Read More: Donald Trump, TIME's 2024 Person of the Year. Even those willing to advocate for the broadest presidential powers in pursuit of deportations have found themselves out of a job. Erez Reuveni, a veteran federal litigator who had defended in court Trump's 2017 ban on travelers from Muslim-majority countries, was fired after Reuveni told a court the Administration had mistakenly sent a Salvadoran man named Kilmar Abrego Garcia to CECOT because of a clerical error. The Department also placed on leave Reuveni's supervisor, August Flentje, who had defended Trump's family-separation policy in court in 2018. Traditionally, Justice Department lawyers have been required to keep their distance from the White House to avoid the appearance of politicization. Attorney General Pam Bondi, by contrast, has emphasized 'zealous' advocacy of Trump's agenda. 'Any attorney who fails to abide by this direction will face consequences,' Bondi said the day after Reuveni's court appearance. Eight hours after his arrest, Cristian was sent to the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Jena, La., about four hours from New Orleans, on the edge of a forest of loblolly and longleaf pines. The facility, which holds nearly 1,200 inmates, is run by the private corrections company GEO Group, a Trump donor for which Homan worked as a paid consultant. Most days, the prison is quiet, though on occasion hundreds of protesters show up to demand the release of its most famous inmate, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student whom the Trump Administration arrested without a warrant in March for his role in the campus' pro-Palestinian protests, and has accused, without supplying evidence, of 'activities aligned to Hamas.' When TIME visited the Jena facility on May 29, nine landscapers in lime green shirts sat in the intake room on long benches, waiting their turn to be formally admitted. Their shirts read Twin Shores Landscape & Construction Services. Two days earlier, they had been starting a project on the Mirabeau Water Garden construction site in New Orleans, part of a $30 million federally funded drainage project to reduce flooding in the area. At 7 a.m., ICE officers surrounded the site, blocking the exits to the park, as a government helicopter hovered overhead. Donald Tercero, 36, was among those arrested. Tercero, who is Nicaraguan, had worked on farms and as a teacher before arriving in the U.S. in 2022. He presented himself to the Border Patrol at McAllen, Texas, seeking humanitarian parole under a program the Biden Administration had started that year. He's not planning to fight his deportation. 'I want to go back,' Tercero says. Manuel Carillo, a 29-year-old from Guatemala, was also among the construction crew arrested in the New Orleans ICE raid. 'Not everyone wants to do the work we are doing,' he says. 'Unfortunately, Donald Trump doesn't want us to stay.' Jimmy Bingham, the warden at Jena, says fewer detained migrants are resisting deportation these days. 'They don't feel like it's worth their time to fight,' Bingham says. Upon admission, inmates are given colored uniforms—red and yellow garb for the most serious felonies, green and orange for lesser offenses, blue for those with no conviction. They are separated according to these classifications and housed in dorms that hold 80 people apiece, with showers, phones, televisions, and a gaming system. They get two hours for recreation in the morning and another two hours in the afternoon, says the prison administrator. When TIME enters one of the dorms, a group of inmates rushes over, asking to tell their stories. Some had been there a few days, others a few weeks, and some even a few months as they waited to have their cases heard. The lucky ones are granted bond and can return home until a judge is ready to determine their fate. Read More: Trump's 2024 Person of the Year Interview Transcript. Jena is one of around 200 ICE detention facilities across the U.S., but agency officials like to send prisoners there for a few reasons. It's cheaper to detain migrants in Louisiana than in other parts of the country, and the state has a conservative federal Circuit Court that's more likely than some others to rule in the government's favor when it seeks a removal. Jena is also located near the Alexandria Staging Facility, a small airport managed by GEO. On average, the Alexandria facility flies six planes a day to other countries, says Ragan Lewis, an ICE officer who runs the airport. Some days see as many as 12 outgoing flights. As a plane loaded up with prisoners, Lewis waved his hand toward a stretch of grass next to the airfield. If there were money to expand the holding cells, he says, he could fit 2,000 people there. Lewis hopes the broad legislative package moving through Congress will allocate funding to expand the Jena facility to house more migrants, who could then be flown out of the country on planes from Alexandria. Just after dawn on May 29, the swish of chains dragging on asphalt was loud enough to be heard over idling engines. Roughly 70 men shuffled across the tarmac toward a chartered jet that would take them to Nicaragua. Before boarding, guards patted each down, looking for hidden weapons, unlocking and relocking their restraints, and directing them to make the awkward ascent up the stairs to the plane. One of the men, wearing a black hoodie, shook the chains around his wrists at a guard and said, 'Como perros! Como perros!' (Like dogs.) Once the detainees were on board, agents brought in a van with dozens of women, also manacled, to board next. Then came the only migrants without chains: family units. A woman with her teenage son got on first, followed by a woman with her young daughter. By the time the flight lifted off, there were 118 passengers on board. Whether Cristian will end up on one of these planes isn't yet clear. In May he was let out of Jena on a $4,000 bond. He is due back in immigration court in New Orleans on Sept. 2 to find out whether he will be sent back to Honduras or can remain in the U.S. with his father. The deportation chain in Louisiana exemplifies a nationwide operation that is redefining American immigration policy, legally and morally. The fallout is reaching far beyond those who entered the country without permission. Law-enforcement officials have snatched foreign students off the street for engaging in speech the Administration doesn't like. Trump has revoked student visas and put foreign students into deportation proceedings without warning. 'A visa is a gift,' Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters on March 28. 'No one is entitled to a visa.' Trump is targeting younger children too. His attorneys have argued in federal court that he should be allowed to ignore the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship for those born in the U.S. and terminate the rights of children born to parents who were in the country illegally. The President has cut federal funding to social-service nonprofits that offer legal representation to people facing deportation to ensure their cases are fairly decided. 'The very idea of deporting a child without a lawyer should be unthinkable in America,' says Jojo Annobil, the CEO of the Immigrant Justice Corps. Perhaps no other issue has crystallized criticism of Trump's immigration agenda like the deportation of Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador. Like many of Trump's policies, it came about through a series of conversations, rather than a conventional legal process. On the campaign stump, Trump occasionally castigated Bukele, the Salvadoran President, for sending MS-13 gang members to the U.S. Trump ally and former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, one of Bukele's biggest American fans, told Trump that this wasn't true. Bukele was the most popular leader in Latin America, he told Trump, and attacking him wasn't going to help win over the Hispanic voters Trump was courting. When Gaetz visited El Salvador for Bukele's second inauguration last summer, he and Bukele discussed the idea of the Salvadorans holding some of the migrants whom Trump planned to deport if he won. When Gaetz returned, he tells TIME, he brought the idea to Trump and his team. Shortly after taking office, Trump directed Rubio to cut a deal with Bukele, two senior White House officials say. Rubio came back with an offer in hand, according to U.S. officials: $20,000 per prisoner for a year. There were wrinkles in the deal. Bukele wanted the Trump Administration to send a handful of Salvadoran MS-13 members held in U.S. prisons, including some who the Treasury Department alleged in December 2021 had engaged in secret negotiations with officials of Bukele's government. At the same time, the deportations would require claims of extraordinary presidential powers. Miller and the White House Counsel's office planned to invoke the Alien Enemies Act, a 1798 law that grants the President wartime authority during an invasion or 'predatory incursion.' The plan was so closely held that only a few senior members of the Administration knew it was happening, one of them tells TIME. On March 15, the Trump Administration sent 238 Venezuelan nationals to El Salvador, alleging they were gang members or terrorists. Some had recently been arrested. Many of them had not been convicted in U.S. court. The Administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act for the fourth time in U.S. history, and the first since World War II. The declaration was made at 3:53 p.m. The flights for El Salvador were scheduled for 5:26, 5:44, and 7:36 p.m. Prompted by an emergency motion from the American Civil Liberties Union and Democracy Forward, U.S. Judge James Boasberg ordered a virtual hearing on the matter for late that afternoon. Boasberg heard arguments, then ordered the government to halt the removals. 'Whether turning around a plane or not embarking anyone on the plane, or those people covered by this on the plane, I leave to you,' Boasberg told the DOJ. 'But this is something that you need to make sure is complied with immediately.' Yet two planeloads of migrants had already left ahead of schedule. A third one was still on the tarmac at a Texas airfield, but took off anyway. The Trump Administration has not confirmed the names of the Venezuelans on those flights. Nor has it shown evidence that all of the men belonged to the criminal gang Tren de Aragua. A review by the Cato Institute found that more than 50 of the Venezuelans sent to El Salvador had followed legal steps to enter the country. A CBS News investigation found that most of the Venezuelans had no criminal record in the U.S. or abroad. One of the men on the planes was Abrego Garcia, who the Justice Department would later admit had been mistakenly deported. Another was Franco Caraballo Tiapa, who worked as a barber in Venezuela. In 2023, Tiapa and his wife Johanny trekked across the Darién Gap, sleeping in the open and surviving on scraps of discarded food, until they presented themselves at the U.S. border and asked for asylum. The two lived together in Sherman, Texas, where they made money cutting hair. On Feb. 3, Tiapa visited an ICE office in Dallas for a regular check-in. This time he was arrested, according to Johanny. The Administration says his tattoos show he's a member of the Tren de Aragua gang. One is of his daughter's name. Others depict a lion; a rose; and a razor blade on the side of his neck—a symbol of his work as a barber, according to his wife. She says he has no criminal record in the U.S. or Venezuela. 'They were only looking at his tattoos,' Johanny says. Outside of CECOT's Module 7, Garcia, the warden, brings out a Styrofoam container with a hamburger, French fries, ketchup packs, and Milano cookies. This is a typical meal for the Venezuelan inmates, he says. Their diet was devised by Bukele, who instructed they be fed fast food to gain weight, as a way of trolling critics who argue CECOT's conditions are inhumane, according to Salvadoran sources. 'It's a cat-and-mouse game,' says one person close to Bukele. The maneuver is similar to the photo op Bukele staged when Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen traveled to El Salvador to meet with Abrego Garcia. The pair were photographed sitting poolside with what Van Hollen said were 'fake' margaritas. (Abrego Garcia was returned to the U.S. in early June.) After the tour of the prison, Garcia allows TIME to interview one inmate in a holding area near the unit's entrance. The man says his name is Hector Hernandez. He appears to be the nightmare that Trump has conjured time and again on the campaign trail. He says he is an MS-13 member, and has tattoos all over his body, from his face and neck to his forearms. The prisoner claims that before he was deported in 2019 and apprehended by Salvadoran authorities, he murdered 50 people in Northern Virginia—more than three times the number of reported murders in Prince William or Fairfax counties for that year. TIME was unable to verify the details provided by the prisoner, including his name, his alleged crimes, or how he came to be there. Inside CECOT, the extreme terminus for Trump's deportation program, the truth, like everything else, is under the control of the authorities. What is clear, however, are the draconian conditions to which the Salvadoran inmates at CECOT are subjected. They are under constant surveillance. The lights never go off. They share cells with rival gang members. Prisoners who get out of line face up to 14 days in pitch-black solitary confinement, says Garcia. For the past 2½ years, the man who identifies himself as Hector Hernandez says, he's had no communication with the outside world. He hasn't spoken to family. He hasn't seen or read a news report. He doesn't know who the President of the United States is. —With reporting by Harry Booth, Leslie Dickstein, and Tharin Pillay Contact us at letters@
Yahoo
26 minutes ago
- Yahoo
BREAKING: Federal immigration raids hitting Omaha
Customers are perplexed to find a South Omaha store along the main South 24th Street business district closed at mid-morning Tuesday. (Cindy Gonzalez/Nebraska Examiner) OMAHA — Multiple immigration enforcement operations unfolding throughout Omaha on Tuesday have all local elected Latino leaders out visiting various work sites, some South Omaha businesses shutting their doors for the time being and area residents checking in with each other in a frenzy. Latino leaders tracking the situation, posting about it on social media and speaking with workers said they had heard of up to a half-dozen worksites where federal immigration agents had visited. A man trying to get some goods at a South 24th Street store said he worked at Omaha's Nebraska Beef plant, which he said let him and other employees go home at mid-morning. Roger Garcia, chairman of the Douglas County board, announced during a county board meeting Tuesday that he had to leave because his community was 'being terrorized.' 'I have to depart,' he said. 'As we speak, there's word of at least two raids happening at this moment, so I have to go. I have to try and help.' He was among leaders posting in English and Spanish on social media to keep the community informed. Among the potentially targeted businesses Tuesday were Glenn Valley Foods, LALA's and JBS, processing and production plants in the eastern part of the city. Garcia said a company spokesperson told him there was no raid at JBS. State Sens. Dunixi Guereca and Margo Juarez of South Omaha gathered mid-morning with a half dozen other community representatives on South 24th Street. Guereca pointed at the quiet business corridor, the heart of Nebraska's largest Latino business district, and said: 'This is fear.' U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement had no immediate comment on the moves. Local law enforcement agencies said they were not participating in the federal raids, but that they are providing agents and the public with traffic enforcement around targeted locations, as needed. Guereca said he was disappointed in the way federal agents carried out the operation, which he said created unnecessary fear for families, customers and merchants. 'Businesses closed their doors. Not only are folks not going to work, they're not consuming,' he said. Yesenia Peck, who heads the Nebraska Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, also came to the 24th Street district to check on businesses. As she approached one store, a customer was attempting to open the door, but it was locked. She said she knew of at least one foreign consulate office based in Omaha, the Guatemalan Consulate, that was sending a representative to an affected worksite. 'Everybody is scared right now. Businesses are closing,' she said. 'This is not life…' Peck said one merchant asked her, 'How are we going to pay the bills? Pay rent?' Martha Barrera, who owns a salon on 24th Street, said her workers have continued to accept customers, but she said people are in panic mode about what is happening outside the doors. She said she is happy that community leaders have offered information on rights and how to respond if federal agents were to come to her business or any others. She and others on the business corridor said their stores rely on Latino families and are worried about future commerce. Peck said she understands there are laws and people must abide by those. 'But this is not the way it should be done,' she said. 'Not cruelly.' 'What is happening right now is unbelievable. I've seen this kind of thing in other countries,' she said, including her homeland of Peru. 'It's just not the right way.' Saul Lopez, of LULAC National, was headed with other community members to pass out information about worker rights at workplaces and said a concern was for parents who might be separated from children. 'We're very worried right now about what's going on with the families.' A leader of an Omaha nonprofit that works with youths said Tuesday that the organization has been working to identify families whose working parent may have been detained and separated from their children. So far, the organization's leader said at least two kids in their care who are from two different families have a parent caught up in the operations. The organization was busy getting a hold of emergency contacts for the kids. Also Tuesday, immigration advocates and community leaders had turned a South Omaha organization into a sort of information headquarters to better understand and coordinate legal, outreach and response activities. This is a developing story. It was last updated at 2:25 p.m. on Tuesday, June 10. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Dad of missing boy, 2, may have told tot's mom he threw son off NYC bridge : sources
The father of the 2-year-old boy who vanished during a custodial visit last month may have told the tot's mom at knifepoint that he threw their son into the Bronx River, law enforcement sources said Tuesday. Arius Williams, 20, the dad of little Montrell Williams – who has been missing since May 10 – allegedly pulled a knife on the boy's mother when they ran into each other on the street Sunday, the sources said. During the confrontation, the armed dad allegedly claimed he threw the couple's son off the Bruckner Bridge, according to the sources. 4 Arius Williams, 20, the father of little Montrell Williams, disturbingly claimed he threw his toddler son into the Bronx River, sources said. NYPD Surveillance footage from that night – showing Arius throwing a black bag into the river – could back up that claim, the sources said. The NYPD dispatched dive teams to comb the area Monday night but found nothing, and were continuing to search Tuesday, according to the sources. Arius was ordered held without bail on a warrant for custodial interference Monday, after refusing to tell a family court judge his son's whereabouts, cops and sources said. 4 Williams made the sickening claim about a month after his 2-year-old son's disappearance, sources said. Desheania Andrews Charges are pending against the dad in connection to the knifepoint incident, the sources said. The disturbing ordeal unfolded on May 10 when Montrell – who was dropped off by his mom a day earlier for a custody visit – was at his dad's Hunts Point Avenue house for a Mother's Day celebration, the sources said. At some point during that gathering, Arius – who has split custody of Montrell and visitation rights – took the boy, according to the sources. 4 NYPD divers are searching the waterway for any signs of the missing tot. Desheania Andrews Over the next few days, the boy's concerned mom called the cops, who appeared to have told her they couldn't intervene if her son is on a regularly scheduled visit, the sources said. A judge issued a warrant for the elusive dad after the mom appeared in family court on May 28, saying she had no idea of her young son or ex's whereabouts, according to the sources. And now, the NYPD's Internal Affairs Bureau is probing the department's investigative work surrounding Montrell's case – namely whether the boy's disappearance should have been investigated as a custodial interference case rather than simply a missing person search. 4 The boy was attending a Mother's Day gathering with his dad — who has split custody of him — before he vanished, sources said. Google Maps Anyone with information on his disappearance is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the CrimeStoppers website at or on X @NYPDTips.
