1 dead in Redding as dangerous rain, flooding threaten parts of Northern California
Cities across Northern California on Sunday saw roadways inundated with flooding, leaving vehicles stranded. (Placer County Sheriff’s Office)
(LOS ANGELES) — Heavy rain and dangerous flooding left one person dead in Redding, California, the mayor announced on Sunday.
It comes as flood watches are in effect for more than 30 million across California due to the threat of heavy rain and flash flooding in the coming days.
Redding Mayor Mike Littau said in a post on Facebook that local police and fire crews have been out doing water rescues while Public Works and Redding Electric Utility have been working to clear roads and restore power to customers.
Cities across Northern California on Sunday saw roadways inundated with flooding, leaving vehicles stranded.
The deadly flooding is due to repeat atmospheric rivers that continue to swamp the West Coast.
A Flood Watch was announced for much of Northern California, including Redding and Sacramento, on Saturday, with some areas expected to get 4 to 6+ inches.
On Christmas Eve Wednesday, another coastal storm will set its sights on the West Coast, but this time Southern California will bear the brunt.
There is growing concern for potentially significant flash flooding, mudslides and debris flows impacting portions of SoCal, as heavy rain sweeps across the region. The greatest concern will be across wildfire burn scars.
The sign of Department of Homeland Security is seen outside its headquarters on February 13, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Telesforo Cerero-Palacios isa home renovator in Minnesota who says he has no reported criminal history, so he was shocked to learn the Department of Homeland Security listed him as one of the “worst of the worst” detained immigrants in the U.S. who have serious offenses.
“What happened here? Why does their system say this about you?” Cerero-Palacios, 53, recalled after a relative saw him on the list.
The DHS website features thousands who the agency claims are the “worst” individuals, including a photo of Cerero-Palacios with his alleged crime, “dangerous drugs.”
However, a DHS government document showed that Cerero-Palacio has no criminal history. The document, reviewed by ABC News, is known as a “Record of Deportable/Inadmissible Alien,” which is created by the agency when individuals are detained.
Cerero-Palacios said he has never been accused of any drug-related offense and an ABC News review of criminal records in Minnesota found several traffic and parking tickets and one small claim case, but did not turn up any drug-related charges.
In an interview conducted in Spanish, Cerero-Palacios told ABC News that agents entered his home on April 7, 2025, looking to detain a relative, but that’s when he was asked about his immigration status. He said he told officials he was undocumented and was subsequently detained.
The DHS document appears to corroborate his account, stating that deportation officers working with the Drug Enforcement Agency were conducting fugitive operations at his address when they interviewed him about his immigration status.
“During the interview, CERERO freely admitted that he did not have any documents that would allow him to reside in the United States legally,” the document said.
It also states that in 1998, Cerero-Palacios was arrested for giving a police officer a false name, but the case was dismissed in 2000.
The document makes no mention that he’s ever been accused of any drug-related charges.
“CERERO claims and appears to be in good health and takes no medication. CERERO does not use narcotics,” the document says.
Despite an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesperson citing his 1998 arrest in a statement shared with ABC News, DHS appears to have issued him a non-immigrant visa three times, until 2015, the document showed.
“This illegal alien was previously arrested for giving a false name to a peace officer. The FBI number connected to this drug charge is linked to multiple aliases, including Telesforo Cerero-Palacios. We will give you more information on this case shortly,” the ICE spokesperson told ABC News.
It’s unclear what drug charge the spokesperson was referring to. Days after ABC News began asking questions about its inclusion of Cerero-Palacios on its “worst of the worst” database, DHS appears to have removed Cerero-Palacios from the list.
DHS did not respond when asked if he was erroneously placed on the list and has not followed up with any additional information, despite repeated attempts by ABC News to obtain one.
Cerero-Palacios spent 16 days in immigration detention last year and was released after posting a bond, Cerero-Palacios’ attorney, Gloria Contreras Edin said.
“What is interesting is we come to find that he’s on ‘worst of the worst’ so it’s like, why is he on there,” Contreras Edintold ABC News. “They would have never released him if he had been a drug dealer. They would have never let him out on a bond and then I wonder how many other people are they doing that to.”
Cerero-Palacios told ABC News that his inclusion on the website prompted him to stay at home except to go to work.
“I was afraid to leave the home thinking that they might detain me again,” Cerero-Palacios said.
Contreras Edin shared a letter with ABC News from the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension that said a background search using her client’s fingerprints, name, and date of birth “indicates that no record was found.”
The letter says the search does not preclude any information being available at the county or city level.
“I have to believe in my heart that it was an error or a mistake, but it’s such a significant error and such a significant mistake that it worries me that they may be doing this to other people,” Contreras Edin said.
DHS launched the “worst of the worst” website in December, promising to allow users to “search through some of the hundreds of thousands of criminal illegal aliens who have been arrested across all 50 states,” the agency said in a press release.
Since then, the database has grown to include more than 30,000 people. DHS has used the information on the website to justify its expansion of immigration enforcement operations such as “Operation Metro Surge” in Minnesota, where two U.S. citizens were fatally shot by federal agents during immigration operations.
Meanwhile, Cerero-Palacios is still in immigration proceedings and has a hearing about his case in April. He says the government’s claims about him have affected him profoundly.
“Imagine how many others have seen my photo? My reputation is ruined, they’ll say ‘Oh, I thought he was a hard worker, but he’s involved with drugs,'” he said.
(MINNEAPOLIS) — The Justice Department said they are investigating am incident in which anti-ICE protesters disrupted a service on Sunday at a Minneapolis church where one of the pastors is an ICE official.
Video posted online by Black Lives Matter Minnesota shows protesters entering Cities Church in Minneapolis, where they said one of the pastors, David Easterwood, is the acting field director of the St. Paul ICE field office.
Easterwood was not at the church at the time of the protest, according to Black Lives Matter Minnesota. Jonathan Parnell is the church’s pastor and can be seen talking to the protestors in the video.
“Someone who claims to worship God, teaching people in this church about God, is out there overseeing ICE agents. Think about what we’ve experienced,” a protestor tells the congregation inside the church in the Black Lives Matter Minnesota video.
“I just spoke to the Pastor in Minnesota whose church was targeted,” Attorney General Pam Bondi posted on X Sunday. “Attacks against law enforcement and the intimidation of Christians are being met with the full force of federal law.”
“If state leaders refuse to act responsibly to prevent lawlessness, this Department of Justice will remain mobilized to prosecute federal crimes and ensure that the rule of law prevails,” Bondi’s post continued.
Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division Harmeet Dhillon likewise said they are investigating the incident.
“This heinous act that occurred in Minnesota yesterday is receiving the highest level of attention from @TheJusticeDept,” Dhillon posted on X. “@AGPamBondi & I are working around the clock, because no right in our Constitution is more sacred than the freedom to assemble & pray to God.”
Dhillon also said that they were investigating the church protest as “potential violations of the federal FACE Act.” The Freedom to Access Clinic Entrances Act of 1994 makes it a federal crime to intimidate or interfere with any person “seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship,” or attempting to obtain or provide reproductive health services. The legislation was prompted by violent crimes that were being committed against abortion providers and those seeking their services.
“At approximately 10:40 a.m. on Sun. Jan. 18, Saint Paul Police officers responded to Cities Church on the 1500 block of Summit Ave. following multiple calls reporting approximately 30 to 40 protesters who interrupted church services,” the St. Paul Police Department told ABC News in a statement.
“By the time officers arrived on scene, the group had moved outside the church and began to walk down the alley. Saint Paul Police continued to monitor the protest,” the statement concluded.
A St. Paul Police spokesperson later said in a statement that they are “actively investigating this incident as a disorderly conduct investigation” and had no additional public information at the time due to the investigation being open.
The Cities Church website lists Easterwood as one of their pastors. Easterwood also appeared with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem during an Oct. 24 news conference in Minneapolis, where Noem identified him as an ICE acting field office director in the region who is with Enforcement and Removal Operations.
Easterwood also is one of several parties, including Noem, named in a class action lawsuit filed last week by the ACLU alleging “unlawful policies and practices” by ICE in Minnesota, including racial profiling and arrests without warrants or probable cause.
ICE blamed the disruption on Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, saying on social media that they “are responsible for whipping these mobs into a frenzy and then allowing them to run rampant.”
“The Governor has repeatedly and unequivocally urged protesters to do so peacefully,” a spokesperson for Walz told ABC News in response to a request for comment. “While people have a right to speak out, he in no way supports interrupting a place of worship.”
Frey had not publicly addressed the church protest as of early Monday afternoon. He did post a quote from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on X, to mark Monday’s federal holiday commemorating the late civil rights leader.
“’Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.’ Dr. King said it best. On MLK Day, I’m thinking about his call to stand up for justice, love others, and speak out when power goes too far. As the federal gov moves the opposite way, we’ll keep standing with our neighbors,” Frey posted.
Pam Bondi, US attorney general, center, during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Thursday, March 26, 2026. (Will Oliver/EPA/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced Thursday that Pam Bondi was being ousted as his attorney general in a post on his social media platform, saying she’ll move to a role working in the private sector.
“We love Pam, and she will be transitioning to a much needed and important new job in the private sector, to be announced at a date in the near future,” Trump said in the post.
Trump’s deputy attorney general and former personal attorney Todd Blanche will serve as acting Attorney General, the president said.
“And our Deputy Attorney General, and a very talented and respected Legal Mind, Todd Blanche, will step in to serve as Acting Attorney General,” Trump wrote.
Trump had raised potentially removing Bondi as attorney general in recent discussions with senior administration officials, sources told ABC News on Wednesday, amid months of mounting frustration that the Justice Department isn’t doing enough to target his political opponents for prosecution.
Blanche previously served as Trump’s defense attorney in the cases brought against him by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg and former special counsel Jack Smith.
He has served as the nation’s No. 2 law enforcement official since being confirmed by the Senate in March of last year, and previously served in the Justice Department as an assistant U.S. attorney in the Southern District of New York.
Like Bondi, he has been vocal about his personal loyalties to President Trump and just last week appeared at the Conservative Political Action Conference, where he cheered the purge of prosecutors who previously worked on investigations into Trump and defended the DOJ from criticism by the MAGA base.
“So when people say, ‘Why aren’t you doing more?’ I welcome that criticism,” Blanche said. “Keep on putting pressure on us. Do you think it makes me upset when you go on X and say, ‘Come on, Blanche, why aren’t we doing more?’ You don’t know me. That’s what motivates me.”
The shakeup comes as Democrats and voting rights groups have expressed alarm that the White House may seek to use the DOJ and FBI to intervene in the midterm elections in November.
The president’s announcement brings an end to a rocky tenure for Bondi as the nation’s top law enforcement official, during which she aggressively sought to reshape the Justice Department as an enforcer of Trump’s agenda — repeatedly breaking with institutional norms implemented after the Watergate era that had encouraged independence from the political demands of the White House.
From her first days in office, Bondi emphasized her personal loyalty to Trump and echoed his longstanding grievances with the DOJ and FBI that the president and his allies have long accused of being “weaponized” against him.
During Trump’s first term in office he faced resistance from top officials at the DOJ and FBI against using the vast powers of their agencies to punish the president’s perceived enemies, but Bondi publicly embraced Trump’s demands to launch prosecutions against specific targets — to mixed effect.
The department’s attempts to prosecute former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James fell apart after a federal judge ruled that the Trump-appointed prosecutor who indicted them was appointed unlawfully. Attempts to revive the case against James were twice rejected by a grand jury, sources previously told ABC News.
A separate effort by the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C., Jeanine Pirro, to indict six Democratic lawmakers who posted a video urging military service members to refuse to follow unlawful orders was also rejected by a grand jury — despite Trump’s accusation the group was guilty of “treason.”
Pirro and the department are separately appealing an order from the chief judge in Washington, D.C., that has put on hold their attempt to launch a criminal investigation into Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, another frequent target of Trump’s ire.
In recent months, Trump has repeatedly vented frustration to aides regarding both the pace and the effectiveness of the Justice Department’s ability to target his foes — concerns he had also conveyed directly to Bondi — according to sources familiar with the matter.
Trump and other senior White House officials have also criticized Bondi’s handling of the DOJ’s files from its investigations into deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, which has consumed months of media attention and led to widespread backlash from some of Trump’s most devoted supporters.
Bondi’s appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee in February, in which she repeatedly yelled at lawmakers and sidestepped questions about the DOJ’s handling of the Epstein files and other sensitive matters, was also a subject of some criticism at the White House, sources say. Trump posted afterward on social media that Bondi was “fantastic” at the hearing.
Weeks later, a bipartisan group of lawmakers on the House Oversight committee voted to subpoena Bondi with a demand that she sit for a deposition on the Epstein files in mid-April.
ABC News’ Isabella Murray contributed to this report.
