UPDATE: Oshkosh man charged with intentional homicide, motion to dismiss denied
Court records show that Rodney Franklin was in custody with two attorneys, and the defense sought to get the case dismissed. The state reportedly argued that the defense tried to use the complaint against Franklin for reasonable doubt, not probable cause.
The court sided with the state, denying the motion to dismiss, as a preliminary hearing was set for September 3 at 1:30 p.m.
UPDATE: Oshkosh man charged with intentional homicide, motion for case transfer denied
NEENAH, Wis. (WFRV) – A 53-year-old Oshkosh man facing a 1st-degree intentional homicide charge concerning a man's death in November was in court on Wednesday for a hearing on a motion to transfer the case.
Court records show that Rodney Franklin was in custody while in court with a pair of attorneys. The judge denied the motion to transfer his case.
Further proceedings are set for July 28 at 2:45 p.m.
UPDATE: Oshkosh man charged with intentional homicide, motion hearing for dismissal set
NEENAH, Wis. (WFRV) – The Oshkosh man charged with 1st-degree intentional homicide stemming from a man's death in November was in court on Monday for proceedings.
Court records show that 53-year-old Rodney Franklin was in custody and court by video for the hearing, and a motion to dismiss was filed to be scheduled in front of a circuit court.
A motion hearing was set for July 9 at 10:15 a.m. as the present bond continued.
Oshkosh man charged with first degree intentional homicide stemming from November death, $500k bond set
NEENAH, Wis. (WFRV) – An Oshkosh man was charged on Thursday with 1st-degree intentional homicide stemming from a man's death in November; his bond was set at $500,000.
The Neenah Police Department released an update in the case of on November 24, 2024, saying that 53-year-old Rodney Franklin was identified as a result of evidence from the State Crime Laboratory.
Four Mexican nationals indicted for conspiracy to distribute several kilograms of drugs in Green Bay
Franklin has been in custody since November 24, 2024, on a charge of theft from a corpse. He is still in custody, with his cash bond set at $500,000.
No additional details are available.
Local 5 will provide updates as needed.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Los Angeles Times
an hour ago
- Los Angeles Times
After 28 years, O.C. man self-deports to Tijuana in search of a better life
For Arturo, the decision to self-deport to Mexico came crashing one morning. He headed to work at a construction site when a drunk driver rear-ended his truck in December, shortly after Christmas. Living out of a motel, the accident left him feeling frustrated about his lot in life as an undocumented Mexican immigrant trying to make ends meet in Orange County. Arturo, 28, who asked TimesOC not to use his last name out of concern for mixed-status family members, considered leaving the United States not long after Donald Trump won the presidential election in November and promised to bring about the 'largest deportation' program in U.S. history. In March, he self-deported from Anaheim to Tijuana alongside his wife and child, both of whom are U.S. citizens, to avoid any chance of family separation amid Trump's immigration crackdown. Turning the Mexican migration narrative of past generations on its head, Arturo also hoped the very same country he left behind 28 years ago could offer something his life in O.C. did not: an escape from poverty. 'The American Dream is dead,' Arturo told TimesOC over Zoom from Tijuana. 'I'm in Mexico now and I'm excited to see if I can build my dreams here.' Before self-deporting, the U.S. was the only country he knew. His family took him across the border from Puebla, Mexico to Santa Ana without authorization as a newborn. Concerned about street gangs, the family moved to Garden Grove, where Arturo spent much of his formative years until a dispute with his mother put him out on the streets at 13, he said. He spent time in juvenile detention — including for a pair of assault with a deadly weapon misdemeanors — that made approval for a legal work permit under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy difficult to obtain. An immigration attorney advised him that a U visa was an option, if Arturo pressed charges against his mother for child abandonment, but that was something he was unwilling to do. Without any adjustment to his status, Arturo bounced around working odd jobs under the table or with fake Social Security numbers, paying into a system he didn't stand to benefit from in the future. Housing remained a struggle for the past three or so years with him and his wife alternately living out of a car, motels, rented rooms and a studio apartment. They last rented a room in Anaheim off Beach Boulevard near Stanton. 'My room, in particular, was just a gateway for mice,' Arturo said. Like other Californians struggling with the cost of living, the couple contemplated moving out of state before crossing the border. Arizona looked like an affordable option, but California's status as a 'sanctuary' state for undocumented immigrants kept them from leaving. That sense of security eroded with news about the infamous Terrorism Confinement Center, commonly called CECOT, in El Salvador, where migrants removed by the U.S. government were being detained without due process. Fearing what could come next, the family headed south to the San Ysidro crossing with $2,000 in tow to start life over in Tijuana. 'I had a free week before I left,' Arturo said. 'I grew up by Little Saigon. I love my pho. I went to Pho 79 in Garden Grove. There's a pho restaurant down the street in Tijuana, but I'm scared to try it.' He couldn't get his truck across the border and left it in a paid parking lot for a relative to retrieve. The family crossed over by foot. Arturo and his family carried a backpack, duffle bag and a diaper bag while storing everything else they owned in a stateside storage unit. 'You know you can't come back,' a Mexican border official warned. Arturo acknowledged the warning, crossed into Mexico and checked into a hotel. Self-deportation is not a new concept, but it is something undocumented immigrants are grappling with more during the Trump administration. In 2008, U.S. Immigrant and Customs Enforcement piloted 'Operation Scheduled Departure' and ran ads in Spanish encouraging undocumented immigrants without criminal records who had otherwise ignored deportation orders to report to an ICE field office for voluntary removal. Santa Ana was one of five cities targeted under the pilot program. But only two immigrants living in the city self-deported before the pilot ended weeks later. Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney made self-deportation a plank of his immigration policies but faced ridicule for the stance during his failed 2012 campaign. President Trump's visible immigration raids, coupled with pulling back on protected areas like churches and schools as possible avenues of enforcement, has ratcheted up the pressure for immigrants to self-deport like never before. On May 5, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched a self-deportation incentive that offers $1,000 in travel assistance. More recently, the Trump administration has urged DACA recipients to self-deport despite the deferral on deportation the program offers. Leo Chavez, a UC Irvine professor emeritus of anthropology and author of 'The Latino Threat: How Alarmist Rhetoric Misrepresents Immigrants, Citizens, and the Nation,' researched the impact of xenophobic messaging and statistically found elevated stress levels in immigrants. 'The policies and rhetoric are so severe now that some people are saying they've had enough,' he said of the current self-deportation trend. 'Some people would like to escape the onslaught of this rhetoric on their lives. There is a certain amount of liberation from not being blamed for everything.' Chavez also noted that young Mexicans considering self-deportation would encounter a different country than the one their parents left behind. 'Young people are able to find jobs,' he said. 'The Mexican economy is doing relatively well. That migrant push out of Mexico to the U.S. has gone down in the last two or three decades.' But this costs the community — in the form of family separation — and has many undocumented immigrants in the U.S. still taking a hunkered down approach, Chavez added. Arturo has described the experience of being Mexican in Mexico as a 'peace' he has not felt before. The appearance of masked and armed federal immigration agents arresting undocumented immigrants this summer throughout Southern California sent a chill through local immigrant economies with some workers either staying home in fear or risking arrest while laboring at car washes or selling food on the street. Arturo felt like he 'dodged a bullet' by self-deporting as he watched the news unfold from the safety of the 3-bedroom apartment he now rents in Tijuana. He does admit to feeling a bit of survivor's guilt. But Arturo has been more preoccupied with getting established in Tijuana. For the first few months, his life somewhat resembled the one he left behind. He was able to get a tax identification number but needed to wait for three months before the Mexican government issued him a voter identification card, which allows him to vote in elections and is a valid form of identification accepted by employers. Arturo used his passport in the meantime to secure odd jobs, from security to landscaping. But as a self-described 'no sabo' kid, his lack of proficiency in Spanish cost him one job. Nearly six months into self-deportation, Arturo, as of late July, was working at a call center. He pays the equivalent of $500 a month for his family's Tijuana apartment. At his wife's insistence, he chronicles his self-deportation journey on social media, from a tour of his apartment to answering a slew of questions from a growing base of intrigued followers. Arturo doesn't claim to romanticize self-deportation and notes that everyone's situation is different. He didn't have family in Mexico depending on remittances like other immigrant workers in the U.S. The decision to leave came down to his own family and their future. 'I've shown that you can come here to make a life,' Arturo said. 'If it's a viable option for others, I would tell them to come to Mexico, too.'
NBC News
6 hours ago
- NBC News
Immigrants who are crime victims and waiting for visas now face deportation
Domingo Mendoza Méndez's eyes fill with tears as he says he hasn't seen his family since July 10, when he went to an appointment with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and was detained. 'I'm in the process for a U visa and they detained me, but I don't know why they're detaining me. I'm following all their rules,' Mendoza Méndez, a 45-year-old Mexican immigrant, said in a video call with Noticias Telemundo from the Freeborn County Correctional Facility in Minnesota. In 2013, Mendoza Méndez, who had crossed the border 13 years earlier, was the victim of a violent robbery in Minnesota, which was recorded and investigated by police. The type of assault he suffered is included in the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) list of crimes that qualify for a U visa, a measure designed for victims of criminal acts in the U.S. who agree to help authorities investigate the crime. However, as part of the Trump administration's mass deportation campaign, some immigrants who've applied and are in the process of waiting for a U visa have been detained. 'I feel sad. I'm trying to gather my strength, but there are so many things happening here. Many of us are having our rights violated,' said the married father of three children, adding that he's been in the process of obtaining a visa since 2021. Magdalena Metelska, the immigration attorney handling Mendoza Méndez's case, said that other administrations didn't take coercive measures against victims applying for U visas, but that has changed with the second Trump administration. Now, if someone has a visa pending and even been given a work permit notification, like Mendoza Méndez, "it doesn't really matter because these people are also being arrested and detained,' she said. In April, Jose Madrid-Leiva, a Guatemalan immigrant who was waiting for a U visa, was detained in Kansas City. That same month, Guatemalan immigrant Gerber Mazariegos Dávila, who was applying for a U visa, was detained by ICE agents in Atlanta. In June, Esvin Juárez and Rosmeri Miranda-López, a Guatemalan couple with four children whose U visa application had been approved were deported to their homeland. A benefit and a law enforcement tool — with a big backlog The U visa was created by Congress in 2000 through the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) and is reserved for victims of certain crimes who 'have suffered physical or mental harm' and who cooperate with law enforcement or government officials 'in the investigation or prosecution of criminal activity,' according to USCIS. 'The U visa is a humanitarian benefit, but it's also a law enforcement tool," explained Hannah Shapiro, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society, which provides legal help to low-income families and individuals. "It requires the individual to cooperate in an investigation or prosecution related to the visa-qualifying offenses, which can be recent or have occurred several years ago.' She added the visa was designed to make communities safer by incentivizing undocumented survivors of domestic abuse and other crimes to contact police and cooperate in investigations, thus helping make abusers accountable. The U visa's benefits include the ability to live and work in the U.S. and a chance to apply for a green card in the future. However, as with other visas for victims of abuse and crime, such as the Special Immigrant Juvenile program, the U.S. government only grants 10,000 U visas per year, which has created a considerable backlog for applicants. There are more than 300,000 people waiting, in addition to qualifying family members, Shapiro explained, and the process can take up to 15 or 20 years. According to USCIS numbers, the government received 266,293 primary U visa applications from fiscal year 2017 through the second quarter of fiscal year 2025. 'This means that if all U visa applications were halted today, it would take more than 20 years to resolve the pending cases. Since fiscal year 2009, USCIS has seen a 2013% increase in pending cases,' USCIS said in a statement sent to Noticias Telemundo. Since June 2021, USCIS has been granting 'good faith determinations' — official documents that validate the legitimacy of the U visa application and protects applicants from deportation while giving them work authorization. Recent changes, fewer protections Immigration experts and attorneys say the Trump administration is now asserting that 'good faith determinations' do not protect people from deportation, leading to detentions of U visa applicants. 'I always carried in my wallet the letter of good faith that ICE had approved for me, which states that I have the right to be in the United States without fear of deportation. But the agents told me they were no longer respecting that. And they took me away,' said Mendoza Méndez. Matthew J. Tragesser, chief of USCIS' Office of Public Affairs, said in a statement to Noticias Telemundo that 'a good faith determination on a pending application for U nonimmigrant status does not protect a foreign national from immigration enforcement.' Tragesser also stated that 'the U visa program is being exploited by foreign scammers and criminals, their corrupt lawyers, and law enforcement officers,' though he did not provide specific figures or cases. Last month, USCIS announced that five Louisiana men, i ncluding four active and retired law enforcement officers, had been charged with bribery, conspiracy to commit visa fraud and mail fraud following a federal investigation that uncovered a pattern of inconsistencies in U visa applications. According to the agency, the defendants filed false police reports so that foreign nationals who were supposedly victims of the thefts could apply for U visas. A shift away from victims' protections Although the fundamental structure of the U visa program remains intact (since it was created by Congress, it can't be unilaterally eliminated), several experts and applicants say its practical implementation has become significantly harder. 'Shortly after Trump returned to power, they repealed a memorandum that considered victim status a discretionary factor that, except in extenuating or more serious circumstances, should not be a priority for removal. This is even true if their case was pending and had not been approved,' Shapiro said. The attorney refers to Memorandum 11005.4, which changed the agency's approach to immigration enforcement related to U visa applicants. Among other things, this new directive eliminates proactive victim identification, so ICE officers are no longer required to look for clues or evidence suggesting a foreign national is a victim of a crime when making enforcement decisions. 'With the new Department of Homeland Security rules, these cases are being reopened. So people who were helping the police, who had suffered some type of crime, or were victims of a very serious crime are now in deportation proceedings,' immigration attorney Benjamín Osorio said. One such case is that of Fredy Hernández Cedillos, a Salvadoran immigrant who has lived in the U.S. since 2009. He was injured during a violent robbery in Virginia in 2010 and has been waiting for a U visa since 2020. "My lawyer received a letter from DHS saying they're going to reopen our case, even though we've already gone to court. So our fear is that we can't return to our country because gangs are after us. And we don't know if we'll have to leave our children,' said Cedillos. U.S. law allows migrants applying for this visa to continue the visa process in the countries to which they were deported. However, lawyers like Osorio warn of the difficulties involved in this process. 'Yes, they can continue their procedures. But the problem is that if the waiting list is more than 10 years long, people have to spend that time in the country to which they were deported, and they are often in danger there. Furthermore, if they have American children, they will suffer without their parents, because deportation affects the entire family,' Osorio said. 'Harmed by these delays' The prosecution of these cases made headlines in January, when a Michigan court ruled that a group of crime survivors applying for U visas could move forward with a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security for unjustifiable delays in receiving initial good faith determinations, which, among other things, has prevented them from accessing work permits. "We have several clients who have waited nearly six years without any updates or news, not even an initial acknowledgment of the legitimacy of their case. The court ruled that our clients have been harmed by these delays,' Meredith Luneack, the plaintiffs' attorney, said in a statement. This case is still being reviewed by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan. The Trump administration has demanded a drastic increase in the immigrant detentions and deportations, with a daily quota of 3,000 arrests. Shapiro, along with other experts, says this pressure has resulted in hundreds of people being detained while attending their immigration court appearances. "You want to do things right and work in this country, but what I see is that the government wants to remove as many people as possible. The fear is going to court and, once we're there, they won't let us out,' Cedillos said. Mendoza Méndez remains detained as he battles in court to stay in the U.S. With a broken voice, he said he hasn't lost hope of returning to his family in Minnesota. "I still have faith and I know we'll be able to get through all of this,' he said.
Yahoo
6 hours ago
- Yahoo
Students have been called to the office — and even arrested — for AI surveillance false alarms
Education Digital Surveillance Lesley Mathis knows what her daughter said was wrong. But she never expected the 13-year-old girl would get arrested for it. The teenage girl made an offensive joke while chatting online with her classmates, triggering the school's surveillance software. Before the morning was even over, the Tennessee eighth grader was under arrest. She was interrogated, strip-searched and spent the night in a jail cell, her mother says. Earlier in the day, her friends had teased the teen about her tanned complexion and called her 'Mexican,' even though she's not. When a friend asked what she was planning for Thursday, she wrote: 'on Thursday we kill all the Mexico's.' Mathis said the comments were 'wrong' and 'stupid,' but context showed they were not a threat. 'It made me feel like, is this the America we live in?' Mathis said of her daughter's arrest. 'And it was this stupid, stupid technology that is just going through picking up random words and not looking at context.' Surveillance systems in American schools increasingly monitor everything students write on school accounts and devices. Thousands of school districts across the country use software like Gaggle and Lightspeed Alert to track kids' online activities, looking for signs they might hurt themselves or others. With the help of artificial intelligence, technology can dip into online conversations and immediately notify both school officials and law enforcement. Educators say the technology has saved lives. But critics warn it can criminalize children for careless words. "It has routinized law enforcement access and presence in students' lives, including in their home,' said Elizabeth Laird, a director at the Center for Democracy and Technology. Schools ratchet up vigilance for threats In a country weary of school shootings, several states have taken a harder line on threats to schools. Among them is Tennessee, which passed a 2023 zero-tolerance law requiring any threat of mass violence against a school to be reported immediately to law enforcement. The 13-year-old girl arrested in August 2023 had been texting with friends on a chat function tied to her school email at Fairview Middle School, which uses Gaggle to monitor students' accounts. (The Associated Press is withholding the girl's name to protect her privacy. The school district did not respond to a request for comment.) Taken to jail, the teen was interrogated and strip-searched, and her parents weren't allowed to talk to her until the next day, according to a lawsuit they filed against the school system. She didn't know why her parents weren't there. 'She told me afterwards, 'I thought you hated me.' That kind of haunts you,' said Mathis, the girl's mother. A court ordered eight weeks of house arrest, a psychological evaluation and 20 days at an alternative school for the girl. Gaggle's CEO, Jeff Patterson, said in an interview that the school system did not use Gaggle the way it is intended. The purpose is to find early warning signs and intervene before problems escalate to law enforcement, he said. 'I wish that was treated as a teachable moment, not a law enforcement moment,' said Patterson. Private student chats face unexpected scrutiny Students who think they are chatting privately among friends often do not realize they are under constant surveillance, said Shahar Pasch, an education lawyer in Florida. One teenage girl she represented made a joke about school shootings on a private Snapchat story. Snapchat's automated detection software picked up the comment, the company alerted the FBI, and the girl was arrested on school grounds within hours. Alexa Manganiotis, 16, said she was startled by how quickly monitoring software works. West Palm Beach's Dreyfoos School of the Arts, which she attends, last year piloted Lightspeed Alert, a surveillance program. Interviewing a teacher for her school newspaper, Alexa discovered two students once typed something threatening about that teacher on a school computer, then deleted it. Lightspeed picked it up, and 'they were taken away like five minutes later,' Alexa said. Teenagers face steeper consequences than adults for what they write online, Alexa said. 'If an adult makes a super racist joke that's threatening on their computer, they can delete it, and they wouldn't be arrested," she said. Amy Bennett, chief of staff for Lightspeed Systems, said that the software helps understaffed schools 'be proactive rather than punitive' by identifying early warning signs of bullying, self-harm, violence or abuse. The technology can also involve law enforcement in responses to mental health crises. In Florida's Polk County Schools, a district of more than 100,000 students, the school safety program received nearly 500 Gaggle alerts over four years, officers said in public Board of Education meetings. This led to 72 involuntary hospitalization cases under the Baker Act, a state law that allows authorities to require mental health evaluations for people against their will if they pose a risk to themselves or others. 'A really high number of children who experience involuntary examination remember it as a really traumatic and damaging experience — not something that helps them with their mental health care,' said Sam Boyd, an attorney with the Southern Poverty Law Center. The Polk and West Palm Beach school districts did not provide comments. An analysis shows a high rate of false alarms Information that could allow schools to assess the software's effectiveness, such as the rate of false alerts, is closely held by technology companies and unavailable publicly unless schools track the data themselves. Gaggle alerted more than 1,200 incidents to the Lawrence, Kansas, school district in a recent 10-month period. But almost two-thirds of those alerts were deemed by school officials to be nonissues — including over 200 false alarms from student homework, according to an Associated Press analysis of data received via a public records request. Students in one photography class were called to the principal's office over concerns Gaggle had detected nudity. The photos had been automatically deleted from the students' Google Drives, but students who had backups of the flagged images on their own devices showed it was a false alarm. District officials said they later adjusted the software's settings to reduce false alerts. Natasha Torkzaban, who graduated in 2024, said she was flagged for editing a friend's college essay because it had the words 'mental health.' 'I think ideally we wouldn't stick a new and shiny solution of AI on a deep-rooted issue of teenage mental health and the suicide rates in America, but that's where we're at right now,' Torkzaban said. She was among a group of student journalists and artists at Lawrence High School who filed a lawsuit against the school system last week, alleging Gaggle subjected them to unconstitutional surveillance. School officials have said they take concerns about Gaggle seriously, but also say the technology has detected dozens of imminent threats of suicide or violence. 'Sometimes you have to look at the trade for the greater good,' said Board of Education member Anne Costello in a July 2024 board meeting. Two years after their ordeal, Mathis said her daughter is doing better, although she's still 'terrified' of running into one of the school officers who arrested her. One bright spot, she said, was the compassion of the teachers at her daughter's alternative school. They took time every day to let the kids share their feelings and frustrations, without judgment. 'It's like we just want kids to be these little soldiers, and they're not,' said Mathis. 'They're just humans.' ___ This reporting reviewed school board meetings posted on YouTube, courtesy of DistrictView, a dataset created by researchers Tyler Simko, Mirya Holman and Rebecca Johnson. ___ The Associated Press' education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP's standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at
