5-year-old Minneapolis boy Liam Conejo Ramos, father ordered released from federal jail
People protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement as they march toward the South Texas Family Residential Center on January 28, 2026 in Dilley, Texas. (Joel Angel Juarez/Getty Images)
(MINNEAPOLIS) — Five-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his father, asylum seekers who were arrested last week in Minnesota, were ordered to be released by a federal judge in Texas on Saturday.
U.S. District Judge Fred Biery ordered Conejo Ramos and his father released from the immigration detention center at Dilley “as soon as practicable” but no later than Feb. 3.
“Any possible or anticipated removal or transfer of Petitioners under this present detention is prohibited,” the judge wrote in his order.
Jeffrey Epstein is seen in this image released by the Department of Justice in Washington, December 19, 2025. (U.S. Justice Department)
(WASHINGTON) — Attorneys for hundreds of Jeffrey Epstein’s survivors told ABC News that names and identifying information of numerous victims appear unredacted in the latest disclosure of files on the late sex offender by the Department of Justice, including several women whose names have never before been publicly associated with the case.
Three million pages from the DOJ’s files on Epstein were being released to the public Friday, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press briefing this morning.
Several categories of pages were withheld from the release due to their sensitive nature, Blanche said. These items include personally identifying information of the victims, victims’ medical files, images depicting child pornography, information related to ongoing cases and any images depicting death or abuse.
“We are getting constant calls for victims because their names, despite them never coming forward, being completely unknown to the public, have all just been released for public consumption,” said Brad Edwards, an attorney for some of the victims, in a telephone interview with ABC News. “It’s literally 1000s of mistakes.”
ABC News has independently confirmed numerous instances of victims’ names appearing in documents included in the latest release.
Shortly after the new material appeared on Friday morning, Edwards said he and his law partner, Brittany Henderson, began receiving calls from clients.
“We contacted DOJ immediately, who has asked us to flag each of the documents where victim names appear unredacted and they will pull them down,” Edwards said. “it’s an impossible job. The easy job would be for the DOJ to type in all the victims’ names, hit redact like they promised to do, then release them. “
“They’re trying to fix it, but I said ‘the solution is take the thing down for now. There’s no other remedy to this. It just runs the risk of causing so much more harm unless they take it down first, then fix the problem and put it back up.'”
ABC News had reached out to the DOJ for comment.
The department has reviewed and redacted “several millions of pages” of materials related to the investigations of Epstein and his associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, and expects to publish “substantially all” of the records “in the near term,” according to a letter filed Tuesday by Jay Clayton, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York.
Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence prison.
Blanche said Friday’s release, which follows the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, will include 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to the Epstein case.
Blanche said in total there were 6 million documents, but due to the presence of child sexual abuse material and victim rights obligations, not all documents are being made public in the current release.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.
: Senator John Thune (R-SD) at the annual GRAMMYs on the Hill Advocacy Day on Capital Hill on April 19, 2018 in Washington, DC. Capitol Hill’s largest and most prestigious legislative event for music creators. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/WireImage for The Recording Academ
(WASHINGTON) — With critical food assistance benefits set to run out Saturday, Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Wednesday said he is talking with President Donald Trump about the shutdown as lawmakers appear sympathetic, but still entrenched.
The Department of Agriculture said earlier this week that Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, which serve roughly 42 million low-income Americans, will not be issued on Nov. 1 amid the ongoing government shutdown.
On Tuesday night as he traveled to South Korea, Trump signaled his administration may find a solution to help fund SNAP, saying “we’re going to get it done,” without offering any details on how.
At the same time, Trump blamed Democrats for putting Americans at risk of losing critical federal food assistance this weekend.
“The Democrats have caused the problem on food stamps … because all they have to do is sign, and, you know, they sign, I’ll meet with them,” Trump said.
Asked about Trump’s SNAP benefits comments, Thune told reporters on Wednesday that he spoke to Trump on Tuesday, but didn’t have insight into what his comments meant.
“I think that what he is saying consistently is ‘Open up the government and then we’ — and that’s the way to fund SNAP,” Thune said.
Republican Sen. Josh Hawley has a new bill that would fund SNAP during the shutdown. While several Republican senators support it, Thune has appeared lukewarm about bringing it to the floor.
Asked if Trump’s comments were an endorsement of bills like Hawley’s that would fund SNAP during the shutdown, Thune said he wasn’t sure if that’s what Trump was referring to.
“I think the message that he and the rest of the White House, including JD yesterday, have delivered pretty clearly is ‘Open up the government and that’s the way to fund SNAP and everything else.’ If he’s got something else he’s thinking about, I’ll certainly be open to listening to that,” Thune said.
On Wednesday morning, House Speaker Mike Johnson warned that the impacts of the government shutdown this week — including a possible food crisis as well as missed paychecks for federal workers and air traffic controllers — are “getting really tough for the American people,” placing the onus squarely on Democrats.
“The Democrats are coming near now to a cliff that they will not be able to turn back from,” Johnson said at a news conference in the Capitol. “You’ve got families and children that rely upon SNAP benefits that are going to go hungry here at the end of the week.”
As Democrats continue their fight over health care subsidies as the Nov. 1 open enrollment date approaches, Trump said Tuesday night that he would work with Democrats — as long as they vote to fund the government.
“I’d say, open up the government and we’ll work it out,” Trump told reporters.
Democrats are working to balance their health care demands and find solutions for SNAP, with Democratic Sen. Ben Ray Luján expected to attempt to get the Senate to unanimously pass legislation that would direct the USDA to release available contingency funds to ensure benefits under SNAP and the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program continue during the shutdown.
Luján’s bill is co-sponsored by every Democrat in the Senate, but does not have any Republican co-sponsors. Because it’s being put on the floor by Democrats, the only way the bill could pass is if every senator supports it — meaning it will likely fail as a result.
“Right now, we’re staring down the barrel at two crises at once. A health care crisis and a hunger crisis,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a press conference Wednesday afternoon.
“We don’t want to pit health care and food. Thank you. We think you can have both,” he later shouted.
Schumer has continued to call on Republicans to “sit-down and negotiate with us” to reopen the government and address the health care crisis.
Thune told reporters Wednesday morning that discussions over a path out of the shutdown have “ticked up significantly” and that he’s “hopeful” that something fruitful will soon emerge.
“It’s ticked up significantly,” Thune said of talks among rank-and-file members. “And hopefully that’ll be a precursor of things to come. But yeah, there’s a lot of higher-level conversation.”
Thune stressed that conversations are going on among rank-and-file members and not among leadership.
“There are a lot of rank-and-file members that continue to, I think, want to pursue solutions and to be able to address the issues they care about, which is including health care, which as I just said right there we are willing to do, but it is obviously contingent upon them opening up the government.”
ABC News’ Megan Mistry, Isabella Murray and Lalee Ibssa contributed to this report.
Esa engineer Michaela Benthaus, photographed in the anteroom of the Munich office of the German Press Agency dpa. (Felix Hörhager/picture alliance via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Blue Origin made history Saturday, sending for the first time a person who uses a wheelchair past the Kármán line, an internationally recognized boundary of space that’s 62 miles above Earth.
Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, who suffered a spinal cord injury after a mountain biking accident in 2018, and her five teammates, who nicknamed themselves the “Out of the Blue” crew, spent several minutes in microgravity before safely returning to Earth with the assistance of parachutes and a retro thrust system. The entire mission lasted about 10 minutes.
During the webcast, Blue Origin said that the launch tower, equipped with an elevator, and the crew capsule did not require any modifications for Benthaus, as they were originally designed to accommodate individuals with disabilities and reduced mobility.
Blue Origin also partners with AstroAccess, “a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts,” that is sponsored by the nonprofit SciAccess, Inc.
Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, told ABC News this week she was eager to participate, especially because she feels as if she has waited “very long for it.”
“I am excited to show the world that also wheelchair users can go on a suborbital flight, and I’m really happy that Blue Origin is supporting this,” Benthaus told ABC News on Wednesday.
In a Blue Origin profile video of Benthaus shown prior to the launch, she said, “I think there’s was not like this one moment when I realized my dream of going to space was not over.”
“I really, really figured out how inaccessible our world still is and how sometimes socially excluding a wheelchair can be even though now one is actively excluding you,” she added.
In a statement, Blue Origin said the “crew exemplifies the breadth and diversity of people who can now experience spaceflight, from engineers and scientists to entrepreneurs, teachers, and investors from all over the world. Each brings their unique perspective and passion for exploration. Michi’s flight is particularly meaningful, demonstrating that space is for everyone, and we are proud to help her achieve this dream.”
