25 hospitalized after ‘significant’ turbulence on Delta flight
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(MINNEAPOLIS) — Twenty-five people aboard a Delta Air Lines flight, headed from Salt Lake City to Amsterdam, were hospitalized after the flight encountered “significant” turbulence Wednesday, the airline said.
Delta Air Lines Flight 56, with 275 passengers and 13 crew members on board, diverted to Minneapolis-St. Paul and landed safely shortly before 8 p.m. local time. The flight was operating on an Airbus A33-900.
The Minneapolis-St. Paul Fire Department and paramedics responded to the gate to provide initial medical attention, the Metropolitan Airports Commission said.
Leeann Nash, who was on the flight with her husband, told Minneapolis ABC affiliate KSTP that dinner service had just started on the flight when the turbulence came out of nowhere.
“There was actually no warning. It was a very abrupt, hard hit,” Nash said. “If you didn’t have your seat belt on — everyone that didn’t — they hit the ceiling, and then they fell to the ground, and the carts also hit the ceiling and fell to the ground, and people were injured, and it happened several times, so it was really scary.”
The airline said 25 of those on board were taken to the hospital “for evaluation and care.”
“There were glass bottles flying around. And you know, those carts are very heavy, so we were fortunate that we had seat belts on at the time, but we still saw cellphones flying around quite a bit,” Nash added. “But I will hand it to the flight attendants, they were incredibly calm, very well trained and very responsive.”
The Federal Aviation Administration said it is investigating.
(VENTURA COUNTY, Calif.) — Authorities in Southern California announced Tuesday the arrest of 14 people accused of running what they called the largest organized retail theft operation targeting Home Depot in the company’s history, with nine facing felony charges.
The suspects are allegedly linked to 600 thefts at 71 different Home Depots, with losses exceeding $10 million across multiple Southern California counties, officials said.
“They basically had been able to pull off over 600 different thefts from Home Depots in the surrounding counties,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said. “They must have thought life was grand. They’ve been making millions of dollars, didn’t look like anyone was going to stop them.”
Police say David Ahl, who a ran a storefront called ARIA Wholesale in Tarzana, was at the center of the operation. Ahl faces 48 felony counts including conspiracy, organized retail theft, grand theft, receiving stolen property, and money laundering, authorities said.
He remains in custody at Ventura County jail with bail set at $500,000 and faces up to 32 years in prison if convicted. Attorney information for Ahl was not immediately available.
Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said Ahl’s “boosters” would systematically steal expensive electrical components like breakers, dimmers, and switches, sometimes hitting every Home Depot in Ventura County in a single day. The stolen goods were then allegedly delivered to Ahl’s business or home in trash bags or Home Depot boxes.
The investigation also led to the arrest of Ahl’s brother-in-law, who allegedly sold stolen merchandise through eBay. Ahl’s ex-wife and her boyfriend were accused of running a “nearly identical” fencing operation.
During searches, investigators seized an estimated $3.7 million in Home Depot property and $800,000 in what they described as “dirty money” from alleged money laundering operations.
Surveillance footage shown by officials captured suspects in action, including one who allegedly climbed around security measures when Home Depot placed high-value items behind cages and on higher shelves.
“This wasn’t shoplifting. It was a criminal enterprise that allegedly stole millions of dollars, and it was finally stopped here in Ventura County,” Erik Nasarenko, the county’s district attorney, said in a press conference Tuesday.
Home Depot Regional Asset Protection Manager Darlene Hermosillo emphasized that organized retail crime affects more than just profits.
“It’s about protecting the well-being and safety of our customers, our associates and the communities in which we serve,” she said in a press conference Tuesday.
The investigation was funded through a state grant program targeting organized retail theft. All defendants remain in custody with bail set between $250,000 and $500,000.
WASHINGTON — As federal authorities continue to crack down on the spread of fentanyl across the country, the Drug Enforcement Administration is warning about a surge in the use of methamphetamine, with DEA officials expressing particular concern over meth-laced pills being sold as drugs like Adderall to college-age adults.
“What we’ve seen here recently, that frightens me,” acting DEA administrator Robert Murphy told ABC News’ Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas in an exclusive interview.
Murphy said the DEA expects its seizures of methamphetamine to nearly double this year compared to last year.
The DEA has so far seized about 70,000 pounds of the drug this year, already nearly matching the numbers reached in all of 2024, Murphy said.
“Methamphetamine is by far the most coveted drug,” Murphy said. “This is what people want.”
The DEA has become so concerned about the continuing boom of methamphetamine use that it’s planning to hold a press conference on Tuesday to draw attention to it.
“In the first six months of this year, we’ve already seen more than … what we seized last year,” Murphy told ABC News. “And we project … we’re going to double what we seized last year.”
Murphy said that one of the most disturbing things about methamphetamine is that “Mexican cartels control 100% of it.”
“They control production, the smuggling, the distribution in the United States, and obviously the actual collection of monies and getting the money back into Mexico,” he said.
And cartels are growingly increasingly creative in how they try to smuggle meth across the U.S.-Mexico border — from hiding packages of meth pills among green onions to disguising meth shipments as loads of celery.
In one location during the week of July 4, the DEA discovered hundreds of boxes of cucumbers that had been lined with several hundred pounds of meth, worth nearly $4 million.
And in May, with assistance from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, federal authorities arrested six people who were allegedly bringing liquid meth into the United States and driving it to Kansas by hiding it in the septic tank of a charter bus.
Authorities became suspicious after realizing that the bus rarely had any passengers.
“They’re only limited by their imagination,” Murphy said of the smugglers. “And they have a very broad imagination.”
Murphy called it “a cat and mouse game.”
He said cartels now have a “huge focus” on pills, which he said have less of a stigma than injectable drugs.
As a result, Murphy said, turning meth into pill form makes it more marketable, and therefore more easily sold as something it’s not, such as fake Adderall or fake MDMA — the active ingredient in ecstasy.
“[It’s] all of the drugs that that are wanted by our college-age kids, and younger,” he said. “They’re actually getting meth, and they don’t know this.”
According to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdose deaths in the United States sharply decreased by almost 27% last year.
But while fentanyl and other opioid-related overdoses dropped the most — by more than a third — overdoses related to meth and other psychostimulants dropped the least — by nearly 22%.
“You’re buying a pill off the street nowadays, you’re taking your life in your own hands,” Murphy warned, saying that that “almost everything” the DEA is now seizing turns out to be “fake.”
“And as an investigator, our men and women have a hard time distinguishing between what’s real and what’s not,” Murphy said. “So there’s no way the average user is going to be able to do that.”
(DALLAS) — The immigration cases of some of the Venezuelan migrants who were deported to El Salvador under the Alien Enemies Act in March have been dismissed, their attorneys said, raising concern from advocates and lawyers who say the move is a violation of due process.
For more than two months, John Dutton, a Houston-based immigration attorney, fought to keep one of his client’s immigration case open. Henrry Albornoz Quintero, who was detained in Dallas in January after showing up to a routine check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, was deported to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador in March.
After Quintero was deported, Dutton continued to show up to his client’s immigration hearings where he says the government attorneys declined to answer questions about his client and pushed for dismissal. Quintero’s case was dismissed “due to a lack of jurisdiction,” Dutton said.
“There’s just nothing [the judge] could do,” Dutton said. “Henrry is not here because the president shipped him out of the country. What’s an immigration judge going to do to stop that?”
Dutton previously told ABC News that Quintero’s wife, who entered the U.S. with him last year, had a baby in April.
Michelle Brane, the executive director of the immigration support group Together and Free, told ABC News that her team has tracked at least 15 immigration cases of migrants who were sent to CECOT that were recently dismissed. Some of the cases include active pending asylum applications.
Brane said she believes immigration courts should “administratively close” the cases, which would allow them to be reopened “if and when” the person is brought back.
“Dismissing as opposed to administratively closing is sort of making an assumption that these people will never come back,” Brane said. “And I think that’s premature and certainly based on the court decisions, so far, they should be brought back to receive some kind of due process.”
If the Venezuelan migrants were to be brought back, there is no process for reopening their immigration cases, Brane said.
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Mark Prada, an attorney representing a 24-year-old Venezuelan, said he was able to have his client’s case administratively closed.
“I was able to cut the head off the snake before it could poke out of its hole,” he told ABC News.
Isabel Carlota Roby, an attorney for the Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights organization, told ABC News that at least seven of the 10 men her group represents had some form of legal protection in the U.S., including Temporary Protected Status or pending asylum applications before being deported to CECOT in El Salvador.
Roby said her group represents them internationally — filing habeus petitions in El Salvador and other types of advocacy — but does not represent them in U.S. immigration court. However, she said many of them have had their cases dismissed recently. She told ABC News that most of the migrants her group represents do not have immigration attorneys.
“They basically represented themselves in court and presented their own asylum cases,” Carlota Roby said. “Most of them simply were deported and their cases were just left behind and that was it.”
“They were denied due process, they are disappeared, and they are now in this legal limbo where they remain in a prison with no legal protections, excluded from the protection of the law, and they don’t know if they’ll ever have a chance at a fair trial,” she added.
The Trump administration invoked the Alien Enemies Act — an 18th century wartime authority used to remove noncitizens with little-to-no due process — to deport more than 200 alleged migrant gang members to CECOT by arguing that the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua is a “hybrid criminal state” that is invading the United States.
An official with the ICE acknowledged that “many” of the men deported on March 15 lack criminal records in the United States — but said that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.” Many of their families have also denied gang involvement.
The government is temporarily barred from removing migrants under the proclamation after the Supreme Court extended its injunction last month and remanded the case to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to resolve the question of how much time should be afforded for detainees to contest their removals.
Some attorneys told ABC News they are appealing the dismissals.
The lawyer for Jose Franco Caraballo Tiapa, a 26-year-old Venezuelan migrant who was seeking asylum in the U.S., and was detained after showing up to his routine check-in with ICE, filed an appeal after his client’s case was dismissed.
“The dismissal results in what can be construed as a violation of due process, as he was not given the opportunity to be heard on his asylum claim,” said Martin Rosenow.
Lindsay Toczylowski, the attorney who represents Andry Hernandez Romero, a gay makeup artist who was sent to CECOT in El Salvador, said in a statement that her client was denied due process.
“DHS is doing everything it can to erase the fact that Andry came to the United States seeking asylum and he was denied due process as required by our Constitution,” Toczylowski said. “The idea that the government can disappear you because of your tattoos, and never even give you a day in court, should send a chill down the spine of every American.”
In the statement posted by Immigrant Defenders Law Center, the group said the dismissal of Hernandez’s dismissal is “not the end.” The group said it will file an appeal and continue its advocacy to bring the 32-year-old back to the U.S.
