Small plane crashes in Boca Raton, Florida; all 3 on board killed
(BOCA RATON, Fla.) — All three people on board a small plane were killed when the aircraft crashed in Boca Raton, Florida, on Friday morning, according to local officials and the Federal Aviation Administration.
The “aircraft had apparently some mechanical issues and went down here on Military Trail,” Michael LaSalle, assistant fire chief for Boca Fire Rescue, said at a news conference. “Also, there was a car on the ground.”
One man in the car suffered non-life-threatening injuries, LaSalle said.
The Cessna 310R took off from Boca Raton Airport and was heading to Tallahassee International Airport, the FAA said. It was in the air for a little less than 20 minutes before it crashed, according to Flightradar24.
Dillon Smith was at his office when he saw the plane flying “extremely low” and appearing like it would hit the roof of a nearby building, he told West Palm Beach ABC affiliate WPBF.
“I saw the plane, basically, turn, come back, and I heard it and saw it go over our building,” Smith said.
He lost sight of the plane, but said it then “came back — it was looking like maybe it was going toward the [nearby Boca Raton] airport.”
“I just saw it drop below the trees” and “heard a boom,” Smith said. He said his office windows shook and he saw a “fireball.”
Video shows what appears to be the small plane’s wreckage on railroad tracks next to a road. The fire caused by the crash has been extinguished.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem/ Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Immigrant rights groups and immigration law experts are raising concerns after the Department of Homeland Security announced that it is creating an online database designed to keep track of migrants over the age of 14 who are living in the country illegally.
Migrants who are in the United States without authorization must register their information in a database that tracks them in an effort to “compel” self-deportation, the DHS said in a press release on Tuesday. However, the registry had not been set up as of Wednesday. A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services webpage instructed migrants who are required to register to create an online account with the agency.
Vowing to “use every available tool to compel illegal aliens to self-deport,” a DHS statement said people who fail to register and submit fingerprints could face fines and imprisonment.
“President [Donald] Trump and Secretary [of Homeland Security Kristi] Noem have a clear message for those in our country illegally: leave now. If you leave now, you may have the opportunity to return and enjoy our freedom and live the American dream,” a DHS spokesperson said in a statement on Tuesday. “The Trump administration will enforce all our immigration laws—we will not pick and choose which laws we will enforce. We must know who is in our country for the safety and security of our homeland and all Americans.”
The DHS said it’s invoking a decades-old section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that requires registration from migrants over the age of 14 who are in the United States, who have not been fingerprinted or registered, and who have been in the country for more than 30 days.
“Historically, we know that we have to sit up and pay attention anytime a government says it’s going to set up a registry on the basis of national origin or race or religion or any other immutable characteristic, because dramatic losses of civil liberties and civil rights are sure to follow and potentially worse,” said Heidi Altman, vice president of policy at the National Immigration Law Center.
Following the 9/11 attack, President George W. Bush’s administration set up a system known as the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, which required registration from certain noncitizens — mostly from Muslim-majority countries and North Korea.
“Like the registry system that Trump is envisioning here, it was set up under a guise of national security or public safety concerns that, in the end, only served to eviscerate civil rights for the communities that were targeted and to separate communities,” Altman said. “There were about 83,000 people who were forced to register through NSEERS and many thousands of them were put in deportation proceedings.”
Parents and legal guardians of undocumented immigrants who are under 14 years of age and have not previously registered would also have to sign up to the database.
Under the Trump administration’s registry, immigrants over the age of 18 would be issued proof that they’ve registered that they “must carry and keep in their possession at all times,” the USCIS website said.
That requirement is stoking fears that this would be a new “show me your papers” type of law, said Michelle Lapointe, legal director for the American Immigration Council.
“There are some real civil liberties issues here,” Lapointe told ABC News. “It will end up ensnaring people based on law enforcement’s perceptions of their race and assumptions that law enforcement makes about people’s immigration status based on that.”
“So, there’s real opportunity for abuse, because this is essentially setting up a system where people have to produce their papers — show their papers to law enforcement to prove their status,” she continued.
Lapointe said that the DHS is also threatening jail time for failing to register, even though being in the country without authorization isn’t always punishable by imprisonment.
“An alien’s failure to register is a crime that could result in a fine, imprisonment, or both,” Tuesday’s press release said.
In many cases, being in the country without authorization is a civil offense and would typically be punishable by removal instead of incarceration.
As the Trump administration continues to ramp up its deportation efforts, Greg Chen, senior director of Government Relations for American Immigration Lawyers Association, said that few people may choose to register.
“I don’t think many people are going to come forward and register, because they’re going to be too afraid that if they register, they’re simply going to be deported rapidly, given the aggressive mass deportation plan that administration is setting up,” Chen said.
(WASHINGTON) — Environmental lawyers would argue that part of the American dream is the right to live in a clean environment – a freedom from worry that the air you breathe, the food you eat and the water you drink are without pollutants and toxins that could make you sick.
But several of the environmental freedoms Americans experience today – clean air, clean water and clean rain among them – could soon be in jeopardy from the Environmental Protection Agency’s deregulation plans, several experts told ABC News.
On March 12, the EPA announced sweeping moves in its effort to walk back environmental protections and eliminate a host of climate change regulations, changes described by the agency as the “biggest deregulatory action in U.S. history.”
EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin announced earlier this month that the agency will undertake 31 actions, including rolling back emission regulations on coal, oil and gas production. The announcement also said the EPA will reevaluate government findings that determined that greenhouse gas emissions heat the planet and are a threat to public health. In addition, the EPA plans to eliminate its scientific research office and may have plans to fire more than 1,000 employees, The New York Times reported last week.
“Alongside President Trump, we are living up to our promises to unleash American energy, lower costs for Americans, revitalize the American auto industry, and work hand-in-hand with our state partners to advance our shared mission,” Zeldin said in the EPA announcement.
The EPA, with its mission to protect human health and the environment, is fundamentally a public health organization, Patrick Simms, vice president for healthy communities at Earthjustice, the nation’s largest public interest environmental law firm, told ABC News.
Revoking these regulations would hamper the EPA’s ability to keep Americans from getting sick from the exposure to environmental pollutants, experts said.
“Any policy changes that may occur under this Administration will continue to protect human health and the environment,” and EPA spokesperson said in response to an ABC News request for comment. ”They will be guided by science and the law, as well as input from the public. They will also be guided by many of the Executive Orders issued by the President and EPA Administrator Zeldin’s Powering the Great American Comeback Initiative.”
Impacts some experts fear most from EPA deregulation
Environmental impacts such as toxic air, poisoned water and acid rain that killed forests and caused crop failures were all occurring prior to EPA regulations, the experts said.
Bedrock environmental laws such as the Clean Water Act, the Safe Drinking Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act were all established after the EPA was created in 1970 under Republican President Richard Nixon.
Some of the regulations Zeldin has proposed eliminating could negatively affect the safety of drinking water and the amount of pollutants that are released into the atmosphere, Simms said.
Additionally, the rollbacks having to do with air pollutants means those toxins will be deposited back into the soil, Murray McBride, a soil and crop scientist and retired Cornell University professor, told ABC News. Coal ash, for example, contains heavy metals, which are absorbed especially by crops like leafy greens, McBride said.
Loosening wastewater rules will pollute soil and negatively impact crops even more, McBride said.
Should the EPA cease monitoring environmental pollutants, it would be especially dangerous for people with underlying health conditions, such as asthma or heart illness, Paul Anastas, director of the Center for Green Chemistry and Green Engineering at Yale University and former assistant administrator for the EPA, told ABC News.
“People don’t know what they’re breathing when data is not being collected,” Anastas said. “You don’t know whether or not your water is contaminated.”
Deregulation would greatly reduce the country’s momentum in transitioning away from fossil fuels as well, Michael Gerrard, a professor of environmental law at Columbia Law School, told ABC News.
“This moves us even further behind, and it inevitably will mean that the extreme weather events we’ve experienced, the floods and the heat waves and the wildfires and so forth, will get worse,” he said.
U.S. environmental issues prior to the EPA
In the late 1960s, there was an “explosion” of public concern about environmental conditions in the country said A. James Barnes, a professor of law and environment and public affairs at Indiana University and former EPA general counsel and deputy administrator.
The year 1970 was monumental for progress in environmental protection, Barnes said. The first Earth Day occurred in April 1970, and when the EPA was established in December of that year, Barnes served as chief of staff to William Ruckelshaus, the first EPA administrator.
“In 1970, when most of the current environmental laws were initially adopted, we lived in a very different and much more hazardous and toxic country,” Simms said.
Smoke pollution and disposal of waste and sewage were at the top of the list of concerns, Barnes said. A significant portion of untreated municipal sewage was still being dumped into rivers and lakes. Hazardous waste was being dumped into landfills along with household garbage and was often incinerated, which in turn sent the toxic materials into the atmosphere. Some rivers were so polluted that they caught fire, as did Ohio’s Cuyahoga River in 1969, Barnes noted.
Lake Erie was considered to be “dying” because it was choking on an uncontrolled growth of algae due to the pollution, according to Barnes, who grew up in industrialized Michigan and recalled fishing in Lake Erie, where he caught carp that had “huge sores” on them.
“You wouldn’t want anything to do with possibly eating it,” Barnes said.
All major U.S. cities had unhealthy levels of carbon monoxide from motor vehicle emissions, before the EPA required that cars manufactured after 1975 be equipped with a catalytic converter to remove pollutants from automotive emissions, said Gerrard.
A chronic smog of air pollutants that hung over Los Angeles was viewed as a “national joke” at the time, Barnes said, while in places that had steel mills, like Pittsburgh and Birmingham, it was not unusual to see blackened skies from the heavy amounts of pollution in the air.
“Your eyes burned,” Barnes said. “Your lungs were aggravated by the quality of the air.”
Additionally, exposure to lead and mercury contaminants in the environment was causing brain damage in some people, according to Anastas.
Coal was the dominant source of electricity production, the burning of which reduced air quality due to high levels of sulfur dioxide and particulates emitted during production and use, Gerard said.
Atmospheric ozone pollution and acid rain would often damage crops, McBride said.
“In general, the air quality and water quality in 1970 were much, much worse than they are today,” Gerrard said.
History serves as a reminder of what could again happen if actions are not taken to protect health and the environment, experts warned.
“If we don’t understand our history, we’re doomed to repeat it,” Simms said.
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser, Kelly Livingston and MaryAlice Parks contributed to this report.
(BOSTON) — A Tufts University PhD student on a visa was arrested by immigration authorities outside of Boston on Tuesday night, according to the school and the student’s lawyer.
The student, Rumeysa Ozturk, is a Turkish national, according to her lawyer, Mahsa Khanbabai.
“Rumeysa Ozturk is a Turkish national who was maintaining valid F-1 status as a PhD student at Tufts University,” Khanbabai said in a statement. “Rumeysa was heading to meet with friends to break her Ramadan fast on the evening of March 25th when she was detained near her home in Somerville, MA by DHS agents. We are unaware of her whereabouts and have not been able to contact her.”
“No charges have been filed against Rumeysa to date that we are aware of. I filed a habeas petition requesting that she not be moved out of the District of MA which was granted by Judge [Indira] Talwani last night,” according to her lawyer.
ABC News has reached out to Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Ozturk is listed in the ICE database as “in custody.”
In an email to students on Tuesday, the school said it was informed that her visa status was “terminated,” and is seeking to find out more information.
“The university had no pre-knowledge of this incident and did not share any information with federal authorities prior to the event, and the location where this took place is not affiliated with Tufts University,” the school wrote.
“From what we have been told subsequently, the student’s visa status has been terminated, and we seek to confirm whether that information is true. The university has no additional information at this time about the cause or circumstances of the student’s apprehension and is attempting to learn more about the incident,” it continued, in part.
“Following university protocol, the Office of University Counsel will assist in connecting the student to external legal resources should the individual request our assistance,” it added.
