3 migrants beat the Trump administration in court. They got deported the next day
ABC News
The future looked bright for Luis Eduardo Perez Parra, Leonel Rivas Gonzalez and Abrahan Josue Barrios last week.
After being held in immigration custody for over a year and facing the possibility of transfer to Guantánamo Bay, the three men asked a federal court to intervene, warning they might have “disappeared into the legal black hole” of Guantánamo.
Last Sunday, a federal judge in New Mexico handed down a surprise ruling blocking the Trump administration from sending the men to Guantánamo — the first successful legal challenge to the policy since it was enacted last month.
But their victory was short-lived.
The very next day, the men were placed on the first deportation flight back to Venezuela in over a year, according to their lawyer Jessica Vosburgh.
“It’s hard to imagine that it didn’t have something to do with them filing a habeas piece and then stepping forward to challenge these threatened Guantanamo transfers,” Vosburgh told ABC News. “The court’s order only applied to transfers to Guantánamo, this is just a slap in the face to get deported the next day.”
While Vosburgh stopped short of calling the deportations retaliatory, she said she struggles to see what else could have led to the sudden deportation.
“With thousands of other post-order Venezuelans detained in the United States awaiting removal, it is hard to imagine that petitioners would have been prioritized for these first deportation flights if they had not filed this habeas action, and courageously challenged the executive branch’s reprehensible and legally unsupportable decision to begin shipping detained migrants to the notorious military prison at Guantánamo and holding them there incommunicado,” Vosburgh argued in a court filing voluntarily dismissing the case.
Vosburgh also called out the Trump administration for alleging that her clients — two of whom have no criminal records, and one who was accused of a non-violent offense — were members of the infamous Tren de Aragua gang, which could cause severe harm now that they are back in Venezuela where President Nicolás Maduro has linked the gang to his political opposition.
“Respondents’ reckless labeling of these two Petitioners as gang-affiliated is part of a disturbing pattern, beginning on the Trump campaign trail, of scapegoating and criminalizing migrants who come to this country seeking protection and a better life,” Vosburgh wrote. “It is also part of a trend, fueled by President Trump and his administration and supporters, of painting all Venezuelan migrant men as dangerous gang members deserving of being disappeared into the legal black hole of Guantánamo.”
Vosburgh noted that her clients have safely made it to their homes and been reunited with their families, but the scars of their year-long incarceration remain.
According to Vosburgh, each man endured “dismal conditions” that led them to suffer depression and suicidal ideation. One of the men was admitted into a psychiatric facility last month after he tried to hurt himself, according to the filing.
“Petitioners were needlessly separated for many months from their loved ones in the United States—including Mr. Rivas Gonzalez’s young daughter, who he has not been able to hold in his arms for half of her life. Their separation may now be permanent. It is deeply regrettable and an affront to justice that Petitioners had to suffer so much and for so long,” the filing said.
National Security Advisor Mike Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth/ Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is under scrutiny after The Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg said he was inadvertently added to a Signal group chat that included top national security officials, including Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, in which the officials discussed plans for a U.S. attack on Houthis in Yemen.
Goldberg revealed the mishap in a piece for the magazine on Monday and told ABC News that he was apparently added to the chat by National Security Adviser Mike Waltz.
Goldberg provided two screenshots in the magazine piece and did not provide details or quotes, only a description of the operational part of the Signal message chain.
Both the Trump administration and top officials involved have repeatedly denied that war plans or classified information were discussed, as Goldberg reported.
Below is a timeline spanning from the creation of the group chat to what has happened since.
March 11
In an interview with “ABC News Live” Monday evening, Goldberg told Linsey Davis he received a message request on the Signal app from White House national security adviser Mike Waltz, or someone “who’s purporting to be Mike Waltz” on March 11.
He said the invitation was “not an unusual thing in Washington.”
“I’m a journalist, I’ve met him in the past, so I accept it,” he told ABC News.
Goldberg said he accepted the request, with nothing occurring until several days later, when he was added to a “group of seemingly very high national security officials of the United States” including Vice President JD Vance, with Waltz apparently creating this chat.
“Mike Waltz puts this group together and says it’s a planning group for essentially upcoming action in Yemen,” Goldberg said.
Goldberg told ABC News he initially thought it was a hoax since it would be “completely absurd to me that the national security leadership of the United States would be meeting on a messaging app to discuss forthcoming military action, and that then they would also invite the editor of The Atlantic magazine to that conversation.”
March 14
Goldberg told ABC News a “long conversation” occurred between the group chat members on March 14, discussing “whether or not they should or shouldn’t take action in Yemen.”
The messages went back and forth with “a lot of resentment directed at European allies of the United States, which obviously enhanced the credibility of this chain,” Goldberg said.
He told ABC News at this point the members of the chat sounded like people he knew within the administration, but still was not sure whether or not it was a hoax.
March 15
Goldberg told ABC News he continued to track the incoming messages from the group chat, to see “who was trying to entrap me or trick me.” Then on March 15, he said it became “overwhelmingly clear” it was a legitimate group chat, he told ABC News.
At 11:44 a.m., he said he received a text in the chain from someone claiming to be Hegseth, or “somebody identified as Pete,” providing what Goldberg characterized as a war plan. The message included a “sequencing of events related to an upcoming attack on Yemen” and promised results by 1:45 p.m. Eastern time.
Goldberg told ABC News he was in his car and waiting with his phone to “see if this was a real thing.”
“Sure enough, around 1:50 [p.m.] Eastern time, I see that Yemen is under attack,” he said.
When the attacks seemed to be “going well,” Goldberg told ABC News that members of the chat began sending congratulatory messages along with fist, fire and American flag emojis.
“That was the day I realized this is possibly unbelievably the leaders of the United States discussing this on my messaging app,” Goldberg told ABC News. “My reaction was, I think I’ve discovered a massive security breach in the United States national security system.”
Goldberg told ABC News he removed himself from the group chat once the operation was completed.
“I watched this Yemen operation go from beginning to apparent end, and that was enough for me to learn that there’s something wrong in the system here that would allow this information to come so dangerously close to the open wild,” Goldberg said.
March 16
Waltz appeared on ABC’s “This Week” the day after the strikes on Yemen and said the U.S. airstrikes “took out” multiple leaders of the Iranian-backed Houthis, which he said differed from the Biden administration’s launches against the group.
“These were not kind of pinprick, back and forth — what ultimately proved to be feckless attacks,” Waltz said. “This was an overwhelming response that actually targeted Houthi leaders and took them out. And the difference here is, one, going after the Houthi leadership, and two, holding Iran responsible.”
March 24
Goldberg published a story in The Atlantic revealing the mishap, in a piece titled “The Trump Administration Accidentally Texted Me Its War Plans.”
Shortly after the story’s publication on Monday afternoon, White House National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes shared with ABC News the statement he provided to The Atlantic confirming the authenticity of the Signal group chat.
“At this time, the message thread that was reported appears to be authentic, and we are reviewing how an inadvertent number was added to the chain. The thread is a demonstration of the deep and thoughtful policy coordination between senior officials. The ongoing success of the Houthi operation demonstrates that there were no threats to our servicemembers or our national security,” Hughes said in a statement.
Speaking to reporters Monday, Hegseth denied he sent war plans in the chat.
“I’ve heard how it was characterized. Nobody was texting war plans, and that’s all I have to say about that,” Hegseth told reporters in Honolulu while on a layover on his trip to Asia.
Hegseth called Goldberg a “deceitful and highly discredited, so-called journalist who’s made a profession of peddling hoaxes time and time again.”
“This is the guy that pedals in garbage. This is what he does,” Hegseth said about Goldberg.
During an event at the White House on Monday, President Donald Trump was asked about Goldberg’s article. “I don’t know anything about it. I’m not a big fan of The Atlantic,” he said.
Top Democrats including House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries voiced outrage at the administration after this mishap.
“It is yet another unprecedented example that our nation is increasingly more dangerous because of the elevation of reckless and mediocre individuals, including the Secretary of Defense,” Jeffries said in a statement on Monday.
Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who faced scrutiny over her alleged use of a private email server while at the State Department, shared her reaction to the Signal group chat on X: “You have got to be kidding me.”
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer also criticized this apparent breach of military intelligence, urging Senate Republicans to work with Democrats in a “full investigation” to look into how this incident occurred.
“If you were up in arms over unsecure emails years ago, you should certainly be outraged by this amateurish behavior,” Schumer said on the Senate floor, referencing the scandal over Clinton’s emails.
March 25
On Tuesday morning, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Goldberg is “well-known for his sensationalist spin” and emphasized that “no ‘war plans’ were discussed.”
“As the National Security Council stated, the White House is looking into how Goldberg’s number was inadvertently added to the thread. Thanks to the strong and decisive leadership of President Trump, and everyone in the group, the Houthi strikes were successful and effective. Terrorists were killed and that’s what matters most to President Trump,” Leavitt shared on X.
Trump told NBC News he remains confident in Waltz even after the use of an unsecured group chat.
“Michael Waltz has learned a lesson, and he’s a good man,” Trump told NBC correspondent Garrett Haake.
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard and CIA Director John Ratcliffe were grilled by Democratic Sen. Mark Warner on Tuesday regarding the mishap. Both officials said while testifying before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence there was no classified information on the chain.
Ratcliffe said he believed the “national security adviser intended this to be as it should have been, a mechanism for coordinating between senior level officials, but not a substitute for using high side or classified communications for anything that would be classified.”
Speaker Mike Johnson continued to downplay the mishap but admitted the breach was a “serious” mistake on Tuesday.
“Look, they have acknowledged that there is an error, and they are correcting it. And I would’ve asked the same thing of the Biden administration,” Johnson said during a news conference Tuesday morning.
During a White House meeting with ambassadors on Tuesday afternoon, Trump said this incident is “just something that can happen” and that there was “no classified information” in the group chat.
He added that Signal is “not a perfect technology.”
“Sometimes somebody can get onto those things,” Trump said. “That’s one of the prices you pay when you’re not sitting in the Situation Room with no phones on, which is always the best, frankly.”
Waltz said the White House’s tech and legal teams are looking into the mishap.
“No one in your national security team would ever put anyone in danger,” Waltz said.
He also claimed to have never met Goldberg.
“We are looking into him, reviewing how the heck he got into this room,” Waltz said.
A spokesperson for The Atlantic released a statement on Tuesday night following the comments from Trump and his aides.
“Attempts to disparage and discredit The Atlantic, our editor and our reporting follow an obvious playbook by elected officials and other in power who are hostile to journalists and the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” the magazine said.
The statement went on to say that “any responsible national security expert would consider the information contained in this Signal chat to be of the greatest sensitivity, and would agree that this information should never be shared on non-government messaging apps.”
March 26
Schumer and other top Senate Democrats on national security committees wrote a letter to Trump seeking more information about the mishap, requesting a “complete and unredacted” transcript of the Signal group chat for the appropriate committees to review in a secure setting.
“We write to you with extreme alarm about the astonishingly poor judgment shown by your Cabinet and national security advisors,” the Senators wrote, according to a copy of the letter obtained by ABC News. “You have long advocated for accountability and transparency in the government, particularly as it relates to the handling of classified information, national security and the safety of American servicemembers. As such, it is imperative that you address this breach with the seriousness and diligence that it demands.”
The Atlantic on Wednesday published a new article detailing purported information about recent American strikes in Yemen it says was accidentally shared in the Signal group chat.
Shortly after the article was published, Leavitt said in a post on X “these were NOT ‘war plans.'”
“This entire story was another hoax written by a Trump-hater who is well-known for his sensationalist spin,” Leavitt said.
ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Anne Flaherty, Luis Martinez, Isabella Murray, Allison Pecorin, Lauren Peller, Michelle Stoddart, Selina Wang and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
President Donald Trump stands with Secretary of Education Linda McMahon /Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump announced Friday that two key functions of the agency he is seeking to dismantle, the Department of Education, will be moved to new departments: The Small Business Administration will take on student loans, and the Department of Health and Human Services will take on special needs and nutrition efforts.
“I do want to say that I’ve decided that the SBA, the Small Business Administration, headed by Kelly Loeffler, [who] is a terrific person, will handle all of the student loan portfolio,” he said.
“We have a portfolio that’s very large, lots of loans, tens of thousands of loans — pretty complicated deal. And that’s coming out of the Department of Education immediately,” Trump said, adding that he believes it will be “serviced much better” than it has been.
Student loans are currently overseen by the Federal Student Aid Office within the Department of Education, and it handles not tens of thousands of dollars in loans but $1.6 trillion in loans for 43 million people.
However, the SBA, which already handles billions of dollars in loans each year, has faced cuts since Trump took office, saying it would reduce its staff by 43% amid agencywide reorganization.
The SBA said it would “eliminate approximately 2,700 active positions out of a total active workforce of nearly 6,500 through voluntary resignations, the expiration of COVID-era and other term appointments, and a limited number of reductions in force.”
The Federal Student Aid Office employs over 1,000 employees, but it is unclear whether these employees would move under the SBA or how the agency would handle an influx in loans to manage.
Trump noted that Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s HHS will handle “special needs and all of the nutrition programs and everything else,” conceding that it’s “rather complex.”
“Those two elements will be taken out of the Department of Education, and then all we have to do is get the students to get guidance from the people that love them and cherish them,” Trump said.
The president maintained that the core functions would remain intact.
“Pell Grants, Title 1, funding resources for children with disabilities and special needs will be preserved, fully preserved,” Trump said Thursday before signing the bill. “They’re going to be preserved in full and redistributed to various other agencies and departments that will take very good care of them.”
The president did not offer any details about how exactly those portfolios would be transferred to other agencies, saying only that it would happen “immediately.”
At least one component of the plan — moving the student loan system to another department — is likely to face significant legal pushback.
The central legal issue is likely to focus on the Higher Education Act of 1965, which stipulates that the Federal Student Aid Office should be under the purview of the secretary of education.
“Congress has charged the secretary of education with administering the federal student aid program by issuing student loans and grants to support students’ attainment of higher education,” said Andrew Cook, press secretary for the American Federation of Teachers. “The department’s office of Federal Student Aid is statutorily mandated to do so and has the unique expertise to manage the complex student aid program.”
AFT President Randi Weingarten was more blunt: “See you in court,” she said in a statement after Trump signed the executive order on Thursday.
(WASHINGTON) — After senior U.S. military officials told Congress they do not know yet how much the surge of active-duty military forces to the southern border with Mexico and the buildup of infrastructure to house thousands of migrants at Guantanamo might end up costing, two Democratic senators on Friday requested more details from the Pentagon.
Following a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on Thursday with the commanders of U.S. Northern Command and U.S. Southern Command, Sens. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii and Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., sent a letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth requesting specific details by Feb. 27 regarding the costs, impact on readiness and impact on morale that would result from the new missions along the border and at Guantanamo.
“We are concerned about the Department of Defense’s (DoD) immigration-related operations at the southern border and at Naval Station Guantanamo Bay — including the implications of these operations for the military’s budget, readiness, and morale,” the senators said in the lengthy letter requesting specific details from the Pentagon.
“DoD’s support for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been expensive for American taxpayers, with some DoD expenses costing over three times more than when DHS performs the same function, while also posing “an unacceptable risk” to units’ readiness,” they wrote.
“In all, the Trump administration is militarizing the country’s immigration enforcement system in an apparent attempt to signal toughness,” they added. ” But this political stunt will come at a high cost; it risks diverting DoD’s resources away from its vital mission in ways that compromise our national security.”
At Thursday’s hearing, Gen. Gregory Guillot, the commander of NORTHCOM, and Adm. Alvin Holsey, the commander of SOUTHCOM, were asked about the potential impact on training and readiness for the forces sent to the border and what the financial costs were for the surge as well as the construction of migrant housing at the naval base at Guantanamo, Cuba.
Guillot told the committee that the number of active-duty forces now on the Southern border with Mexico had risen to 5,000 and said he expected the number to continue to rise.
Included in the 5,000 are the additional troops deployed to join the 2,500 federalized National Guardsmen and reservists who had been serving as part of a border mission established by the Trump administration in 2018.
Meanwhile, the most recent deployment to the border took place this week as 500 Army soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division from Fort Drum, New York, arrived at Fort Huachuca, Arizona, to establish a coordinating headquarters for the border mission. An additional 1,000 troops from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, are awaiting orders to deploy to the border in support of that unit, according to a U.S. official.
Asked about potential costs for the operation on the border, Guillot explained that his command has “not appropriated funds for the Southwest border, and we’ve never had reprogramming or pass through funding. This is all done through the Department Comptroller and the services.”
The NORTHCOM commander also told the committee that he did not believe that the cycling of troops to the southern border would impact any scheduled training exercises being held by his command though he noted there might be a reduction in the one day of weekly training provided to deployed forces conducting jobs outside of their normal specialized roles.
“I think that specifically in the helicopters and in our intel specialties that are conducting missions on the southern border, those are exactly in line with their trained specialty,” said Guillot. “However, there are, I certainly recognize there are areas where they are cross-trained and they are not getting immediate benefit to their primary specialty in about half of those roles.”
At the naval base at Guantanamo, 500 Marines have been deployed to erect tents and facilities that could potentially house as many as 30,000 migrants while they await processing to be returned to their home countries.
Adm. Holsey described the new construction at Guantanamo as a “phased” approach currently targeting housing for up to 2,500 migrants and said the potential expansion to 30,000 migrants would depend on the Department of Homeland Security’s flow of migrants to the base.
“We’re going to build it up and as we understand how large we’ll get, we’ll have a better focus on the price,” said Holey when asked how much those operations could end up costing.
He added that the Department of Homeland Security is providing security for the detained migrants and noted that any current military costs in expanding facilities at the base are coming from the military services’ existing budgets.
According to Holsey, there are currently 93 deported migrants currently housed at Guantanamo, with 63 of them being housed at the main prison facility that used to house hundreds of enemy combatants seized during the War on Terror. The remainder are all being housed in the newly expanded housing that falls under the base’s Migrant Operations Center.
