Transgender, nonbinary people sue Trump administration over passport policy

(WASHINGTON) — According to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the Naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is “a perfect place” where the Trump administration could hold up to 30,000 migrants while they await being deported from the United States to their home countries.

On Wednesday, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum directing the Defense Department and the Department of Homeland Security to prepare the base to hold what he had earlier said might be 30,000 migrants described as “high-priority criminal aliens unlawfully present in the United States.”

Hegseth, who at one time served as a junior Army officer at the detention facility at Guantanamo that housed enemy combatants from the war on terror, explained that deported migrants would not be housed at that location.

“That’s one part of Guantanamo Bay. The other part of Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a naval station where it has long been, for decades, a mission of that naval station to provide for migrants and refugees and resettlement,” Hegseth said in a live interview on Fox News’ “The Will Cain Show”

Over the last week, U.S. military aircraft have been been used to carry out deportation flights, taking deported migrants back to their home countries. The military flights are in addition to the chartered flights that Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has undertaken for years. However, the pace of those flights can be slow as the U.S. has to secure commitments from countries that they will agree to take back their citizens.

“We want somewhere else to hold them safely in the interim,” Hegseth said. “Guantanamo Bay, Will, is a perfect place.”

Hegseth described how the base could be used to house deportees on their way to their home countries or a third country “and it’s taking a little time to move with that process and with the paperwork.”

He said that as that process drags on, it is “better they be held at a safe location like Guantanamo Bay, which is meant and built for migrants. Meant and built to sustain that away from the American people as they are processed properly, to where they came from.”

“This is a temporary transit which is already the mission of Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, where we can plus up thousands and tens of thousands, if necessary, to humanely move illegals out of our country where they do not belong, back to the countries where they came from in proper process,” he added.

Hegseth described the grounds of the Navy base’s golf course as a place that could possibly house as many as 6,000 migrants.

“So this is a plan in movement, but not in movement because we’re behind, but because we’re ramping up for the possibility to expand mass deportations, because President Trump is dead serious about getting illegal criminals out of our country,” Hegseth said. “And the DOD is not only willing to, he’s proud to partner with DHS to defend the sovereignty of our southern border and advance that mission.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The House will vote at 1 p.m. Tuesday on the Laken Riley Act as its first piece of legislation of the 119th Congress.

Reintroduced by Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican, the legislation pins Laken Riley’s death on the Biden administration’s open-border policies and grants power to attorneys general to sue the federal government if they can show their states are being harmed over failure to implement national immigration policies. The measure also allows states to sue the Department of Homeland Security for harm caused to citizens allegedly due to illegal immigration.

“If you polled the populace and the voters, they would tell you that that was the top of the list, and we have a lot to do there to fix it. It’s an absolute disaster because of what has happened over the last four years, and the Laken Riley Act is a big part of that,” House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday.

The bill was named after Riley, a nursing student who was murdered by illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra while jogging on campus at the University of Georgia. Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison for the murder.

“The only thing President Biden did after Laken’s tragic death was apologize for calling her murderer an illegal,” Johnson added. “That’s outrageous. We all know the real victim here was young Laken. There are real consequences to policy decisions. This one was deadly.”

The House previously passed the bill in March by a vote of 251-170, with 37 Democrats voting in favor. The bill is expected to pass again with bipartisan support.

“When we brought this bill forward last Congress, shockingly, amazingly to me, 170 House Democrats voted against that legislation,” Johnson said. “But as Democrats struggle with their identity now as a party post-election, we’ll find out if they’re still clinging into that open border policy and that mantra despite the American people roundly rejecting all that in November. We’ll see. This will be a telling vote.”

Senate Majority Leader John Thune teed up a procedural vote on the Laken Riley Act in the Senate, which could occur as soon as this week. It will be one of the first legislative actions taken by the new Senate.

The bill will need 60 votes to advance through the upper chamber. Even with the Republicans’ new 53-vote majority, it could prove difficult to court the necessary Democratic support to advance it.

So far, only one Democrat, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, is reportedly co-sponsoring the bill, which is being led in the chamber by Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Ted Budd, R-N.C. It is unclear whether there will be requisite Democratic support to clear the Senate.

The Senate, under Democratic leadership last session, never considered the act as a standalone bill. But it previously considered the Laken Riley Act when Senate Republicans forced a vote on it as an amendment to a sweeping government funding package in March. The amendment was considered as a government shutdown loomed, and changes to the bill would have likely forced a government shutdown.

No Democrats voted for it at the time, though it later earned the support of Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who lost reelection to Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy.

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(WASHINGTON) — Banking customers could save up to $5 billion per year on overdraft fees under a new rule finalized Thursday by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Rohit Chopra, the director of the government watchdog in charge of protecting the public’s finances, told ABC News the final rule would cap overdraft fees at $5 for many customers.

That would mark a significant savings from the typical $35 fee that millions of customers pay when they withdraw more money from their checking accounts than they have available. The CFPB estimated the new rule could save the typical household $225 per year.

“Big banks love overdraft. It is easy profit for them, but it is punishing for so many Americans, especially those who live paycheck to paycheck,” Chopra told ABC News in an exclusive interview.

The CFPB announced the proposal in January as part of a broader effort by the administration of President Joe Biden to crack down on so-called junk fees. The new rule will take effect Oct. 1, 2025 — but legal challenges could delay that timeline. And Republicans in Congress could also pursue avenues to roll back the rules under a Trump administration.

GOP leaders, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, have frequently criticized the Biden administration for overreach and “runaway regulation.”

The Consumer Bankers Association, an industry group representing the nation’s biggest banks, echoed that concern, calling the CFPB rule “just the latest in a myriad of unnecessary and costly regulations by this Administration that seems guided by political polling, rather than by sound policy created by what should be independent agencies,” in a statement to ABC News in January.

But some big banks, including Bank of America, Citi and Capital One, already voluntarily lowered or eliminated overdraft fees — giving heft to the rule, regardless of its final implementation.

“I think some big banks admit that this has gone way too far and gone on way too long. And many of them are even finding that offering low or free overdraft products and services actually helps them gain customers who are looking to be treated fairly,” Chopra said.

The CFPB said consumers still paid a total of nearly $6 billion in overdraft fees last year.

Under the final rule announced Thursday, banks and credit unions will have three different options. They can limit all overdraft fees at $5, which is the amount the CFPB estimated will allow institutions to break even when they offer courtesy overdraft programs.

Banks can also choose to set their fees at “an amount that covers their costs and losses.”

Or if banks choose to make money from overdraft fees, they will be forced to disclose terms of the loan to customers clearly — in the same way customers may agree to high interest rates associated with credit card loans.

“If your bank is charging you big overdraft fees or reordering your payments to enrich themselves, you need to break up with your bank. There are so many local banks, credit unions and others that are offering a better deal, and you should take your business elsewhere,” Chopra said.

The CFPB rule would apply to banks with more than $10 billion in deposits.

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