2 men face federal charges after woman, teen drown in alleged smuggling attempt
Department of Justice
(DALLAS, TEXAS) — A woman and a teenager drowned during an alleged smuggling attempt after the driver of their vehicle drove into a canal while fleeing authorities following major flooding in Texas, authorities said.
Now, two men face federal charges in connection with their deaths, the Department of Justice announced on Tuesday.
The DOJ said the incident occurred Friday morning in McAllen, which saw record rain bring severe flooding last week.
U.S. Border Patrol agents conducting surveillance spotted a white Ford F-150 that had “previously identified as being involved in alien smuggling,” according to the federal complaint. The agents surveilled the vehicle and saw a “body swap of suspected illegal aliens” with a black Ford Explorer, according to the complaint.
Agents followed the Ford Explorer and approached the vehicle after it stopped at a low spot in a flooded road, according to the complaint.
The driver of the Ford Explorer — identified by the DOJ as Jose Alexis Baeza-Combaluzier, a 26-year-old Mexican national — then fled and drove through the flooded area, according to the complaint.
The agents found the vehicle approximately half a mile away in a nearby canal, according to the complaint. The agents jumped into the canal and were able to rescue Baeza-Combaluzier and four migrants, including an undocumented Guatemalan and her 13-year-old son, according to the complaint.
Two other occupants of the vehicle drowned, the DOJ said. The rescued mother’s 14-year-old son was found in the recovered vehicle, and the body of another woman was recovered from the canal, according to the complaint.
Baeza-Combaluzier and the alleged driver of the white Ford F-150 — Vicente Garcia Jr., 18, of Roma, Texas — have been charged in the smuggling deaths, the Justice Department said.
Baeza-Combaluzier was denied bail during a court appearance on Monday and is scheduled to have a preliminary hearing on Wednesday, court records show. ABC News has reached out to his public defender for comment and has not gotten a response.
Garcia is expected to make his initial appearance on Wednesday. It is unclear if he has an attorney.
If convicted, they face up to life in prison or the possibility of a death sentence, prosecutors said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Justice, under new leadership following the inauguration of Donald Trump, has told legal service providers who receive federal funding to stop providing legal orientation and other work intended to support immigrants at immigration courts.
In a memo obtained by ABC News, the DOJ ordered all such legal providers on Wednesday to “stop work immediately” in those areas.
“This email is to send you notification to stop work immediately pursuant to the Executive Order on the following task orders,” the memo said. The programs listed in the memo include the Legal Orientation Program; the Immigration Court Helpdesk; the Family Group Legal Orientation Program; and the Counsel for Children Initiative.
Legal service providers are usually present at immigration courts across the country to help individuals navigate immigration court proceedings and handle legal paperwork.
“The suspension of these longstanding programs could leave hundreds of thousands of vulnerable immigrants — including children and families — without access to basic legal information and representation,” a spokesperson for Acacia Center for Justice told ABC News in a statement.
The directive from the DOJ comes a day after ABC News reported that four top officials within the Justice Department’s Executive Office for Immigration Review — the DOJ’s office that oversees immigration courts — were removed from their positions.
Experts and advocates told ABC News that, without a lawyer, migrants are left to navigate the different avenues of relief alone, filling out documents in a foreign language and arguing their case before a judge.
As ABC News previously reported, DOJ data from 2023 showed that only 56% of unaccompanied minors in immigration courts were represented by counsel, forcing thousands of unaccompanied young migrants to represent themselves before federal immigration judges.
One of the programs listed in the DOJ memo –The Counsel for Children Initiative — provides legal representation to children in immigration court proceedings.
The total immigration court backlog of children and adults has surged to a record high of 3.5 million cases.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. District Judge Amir Ali denied the Department of Justice’s request to push the midnight deadline by which the Trump administration needs to pay more than $1.9 billion in foreign aid.
The case is now in the hands of a panel of three appellate judges – each nominated to the bench by Democratic presidents – who will decide whether to issue an emergency stay of the deadline.
In his decision denying the request to stay his deadline, Judge Ali criticized the Trump administration for waiting until Tuesday to raise the argument that they lack the ability to restart the funding.
“This is not something that Defendants have previously raised in this Court, whether at the hearing or any time before filing their notice of appeal and seeking a stay pending appeal. That is so even though Plaintiffs’ motion to enforce explicitly proposed compliance on this time frame,” Ali wrote.
Ali ordered the Trump administration on Tuesday to dole out delayed payments that could total nearly $2 billion, according to a USAID official, to multiple nonprofit groups, determining the Trump administration violated the terms of a temporary restraining order issued two weeks ago regarding freezing foreign aid.
A top official with the United States Agency for International Development claims that complying with Tuesday’s court order would require paying foreign aid groups nearly $2 billion, arguing the payments “cannot be accomplished” in the timeframe set by the court.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice asked Ali in a late-night filing on Tuesday to issue a stay of his order that requires the Trump administration to pay by Wednesday at 11:59 p.m. any outstanding debts to foreign aid groups for work completed prior to Feb. 13. The Trump administration initially tried to freeze the payments via an executive order before Judge Ali ordered the payments to resume two weeks ago.
DOJ lawyers argued that fulfilling the payments is not only technically impossible but would also prevent the Trump administration from ensuring the payments are “legitimate.”
“The order apparently requires the Government to expend taxpayer dollars without regard to any processes for ensuring that the expenses are legitimate—even though Executive Branch leadership harbors concerns about the possibility of waste and fraud and is in the process of developing revised payment processing systems to address those concerns,” DOJ attorney Indraneel Sur wrote in a late-night filing.
According to Peter Marocco, the deputy administrator of USAID and director of foreign assistance at the State Department, complying with the court order would require dispersing $1.5 billion between 2,000 payment requests at USAID and an additional $400 million in payments at the State Department.
Judge Amir Ali, a Biden-era appointee, excoriated Trump administration attorneys during a lengthy hearing on Tuesday over its failure to pay the groups for work they conducted prior to President Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order, which froze all foreign aid for 90 days. Ali also signed an order to enforce a temporary restraining order he signed on Feb. 13, ruling the groups must be paid by 11:59 p.m. Wednesday.
“Plaintiffs submitted evidence that defendants have not lifted the suspension or freeze of funds as the [temporary restraining order] required. Defendants have not rebutted that evidence, and when asked today, defendants were not able to provide any specific examples of unfreezing funds pursuant to the Court’s TRO,” Judge Ali said after a two-hour hearing today.
Lawyers with the Department of Justice acknowledged that the Trump administration ignored the temporary restraining order, which prohibited them from freezing foreign aid funds since the order was issued. Instead, they argued that they should not be required to pay back the money because of “sovereign immunity.”
During an extended exchange with Ali, a DOJ lawyer struggled to answer basic questions about the Trump administration’s compliance with the temporary restraining order, which prevented the administration from freezing funds.
“I’m not sure why I can’t get a straight answer from you on this. Are you aware of an unfreezing of the disbursement of funds for those contracts and agreements that were frozen before February 13?” Ali asked. “Are you aware of steps taken to actually release those funds?”
“I’m not in a position to answer that,” DOJ attorney Indraneel Sur said.
“We’re 12 days in and you’re here representing the government…and you can’t answer me whether any funds that you’ve kind of acknowledged or covered by the court’s order have been unfrozen?” Judge Ali responded.
“All I can do, really, is say that the preparations are underway for the joint status report on compliance,” Sur said.
At one portion of the lengthy court hearing, Sur attempted to offer a legal justification for the Trump administration’s noncompliance, prompting a stern response from the judge about his order, the terms of which he said were “clear as day.”
“The purpose of this hearing is to understand and to hear arguments on the motion to enforce TRO. It is not an opportunity to re-litigate the TRO,” Ali said.
The DOJ filed a notice of appeal Tuesday.
A lawyer representing the nonprofits who brought the case argued that the lack of a response from the Trump administration amounts to defiance of the court order.
“What the court’s colloquy with the government has revealed is that the government has done nothing to make the flow of payments happen,” he said. “As far as we are aware, there’s been zero directives from the agency with respect to the unfreezing of funds.”
(WASHINGTON) — America’s national parks and other federal lands are in danger of falling into disrepair following the firings of thousands of federal employees by the current administration, experts said.
Federal agencies that were already strapped for resources, such as the National Parks Service and U.S. Forestry Service, will now be struggling to find workers to perform critical functions for visitors and maintenance, said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association.
More than 1,000 NPS employees were terminated by the Trump administration, Brengel said, while more than 2,000 U.S. Forest Service employees have been fired, according to Fire & Safety Journal Americas.
Some of the eliminated positions include search-and-rescue staff and campsite supervisors, Brengel told ABC News.
With park visitation expected to increase in the next year, fewer employees could translate to longer lines to get into parks, changes in park hours and more trash pileups at some locations.
The National Parks Service did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
‘Most beloved federal employees’
When tourists arrive at national parks, the expectation is that a ranger will be there to greet and educate them, Brengel said.
Surveys from the Pew Research Center find that National Parks employees have a 76% approval rating — the highest among federal employees. NPS workers are dedicated to their jobs and care deeply about the parks they service, Brengel said.
“National park rangers are among the most beloved federal employees,” Brengel said. “These are folks that everyone loves to see when they go to our national parks.”
The NPS has been “stretched thin” since 2010, with a 20% reduction in park service staff in the last 15 years, Brengel said.
“This means that people have to do collateral duties,” Brengel said. For example, a person sitting at the front desk of a visitor center may also be responsible for maintaining restrooms.
The lack of staffing is not new; it was also a problem in the 1980s and 1990s, according to Andrea Lankford, a former law enforcement and search and rescue park ranger for Cape Hatteras, Zion National Park, Yosemite National Park and the Grand Canyon.
Visitation to the parks continues to increase
More than 325 million people visited national parks in 2023, and visitation in 2025 will likely exceed that number, Brengel said. The NPS also contributed a record $55.6 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023 and supported 415,000 jobs that year, according to the NPS.
“We fully expect visitors to flood into national parks this spring and summer, and for parks to just generally be understaffed and not be able to handle that influx,” she said.
Last week, the Trump administration reversed a hiring freeze for seasonal National Parks Service employees, allowing the system to fill crucial roles to help maintain and operate popular parks ahead of the summer season, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.
NPS will now be permitted to hire a total of 7,700 workers, according to the memo. But the one-month delay in hiring seasonal workers, on top of the firing of probationary park rangers, could impact tourists this summer at some of the country’s most popular national parks, said Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers.
“It’s pretty safe to say that in many parks, at least for the start of the season, visitors are going to probably see some sort of impact and a decline in their experience,” he said.
Tourists could experience long lines to get into the parks, changes in hours at visitor centers, trash pileups and restrooms that are not cleaned as frequently, Wade said.
In addition, there could be delays for road, trail and building maintenance, Brengel said, noting that people who fill potholes and repair leaky roofs were among those terminated.
Impact of firings on Forest Service
Understaffing has also been a concern for the U.S. Forest Service, said Owen Wickenheiser, a former wilderness and climbing ranger at the Okanagan Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state.
“We were already short-staffed as a land management agency, with the number of trails expected to maintain,” Wickenheiser, who was recently fired, told ABC News. “We have one of the busiest districts in all of Washington state.”
Wickenheiser said the lack of rangers means “people will just trash the place.”
“No one is going to be actively searching out all the trash that we pick up — that’s going to make it into the lake,” Wickenheiser said. “Trees that fall down every year across the trail will likely go uncut and people will be hiking over trees all the time.”
Jaelle Downs, who was fired recently from the Forest Service as a wilderness ranger at the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, said she doesn’t know “what the summer is going to look like.”
“Even with volunteers, I don’t see how things aren’t going to be very covered in trash, very covered in human waste, it’s concerning,” she told ABC News.
Downs said she worries how the mass firings will affect future rangers.
“The excited, on-the-ground workers who were preparing to carry on the work of the agency have just been demoralized and pushed out. I just wonder where the next generation is going to come from,” she said.
Hiring freeze exemptions exist for critical health and safety positions, and more than 1,000 U.S. Forest Service firefighter positions were recently approved with more currently under review, according to a USDA spokesperson.
“Protecting the people and communities we serve, as well as the infrastructure, businesses, and resources they depend on to grow and thrive, remains a top priority for the USDA and the Forest Service,” the spokesperson said. “We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.”
