Houston church employee charged with posing as ICE agent to allegedly extort money from woman
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement logo as seen on ICE vehicle Sept. 19. 2025. (Photo by Jacek Boczarski/Anadolu via Getty Images)
(HOUSTON, Texas) — An employee of a church in the Houston, Texas, area is charged with impersonating a public servant for allegedly pretending to be an ICE agent and threatening to deport a woman unless she paid him $500, according to court documents.
Donald Doolittle, 58, has served as the safety director of the Gateway Community Church of Webster, about 25 miles southeast of Houston, for 10 years, according to an affidavit filed with the Harris County District Court.
According to ABC Houston station KTRK, the alleged victim, identified in court documents as Rita Dumont Mayans, is a massage therapist.
According to a video of a Saturday court hearing obtained by ABC News, after receiving a massage last Thursday, Doolittle got into a disagreement with Mayans over his method of payment.
“And at that point, she said he pulled out an ID card labelled ‘ICE,’ stating he was an ICE agent who needs to see her ID,” a magistrate said during the hearing.
Mayans showed Doolittle her temporary visa, according to the magistrate, after which Doolittle allegedly demanded money from Mayans.
“He demanded she Zelle him $500 or he would take her away and she would never see her family or children again,” according to the magistrate.
Mayans sent Doolittle the money, after which he texted her that she would not hear from any other ICE agents, according to the magistrate.
Police learned of Doolittle’s alleged actions when Mayans encountered officers at a luncheon the following day, according to KTRK.
Doolittle’s bond is set at $10,000, according to court documents.
Neither Doolittle, his attorneys nor Gateway Community Church of Webster immediately responded to an ABC News request for comment.
(GRAND BLANC, Mich.) — Body camera footage released Friday shows the chaotic moment when local police confronted the man accused of driving his truck into a Michigan chapel before firing on hundreds of worshipers and burning the church to the ground.
The video, released at a Friday press conference, shows two officers running toward the suspect in the parking lot of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Grand Blanc, telling him to drop his weapon, yelling “shoot him” and “get back” before firing at least eight shots.
The suspect’s body can be seen on the ground at the end of the short video.
The press conference comes almost a week after Thomas Jacob Sanford, 40, allegedly killed four people and injured eight others during his rampage before being shot dead by the two local officials who responded to the scene.
While officials did not take questions at the press conference, they did reveal a new timeline for the police response.
The first call to Genesee County 911 came from someone who got shot in the stomach at 10:25 a.m., with that patched to officers 16 seconds later, police said during the press conference. A Michigan Conservation officer arrived just short of 2 minutes later and then the Grambling Township officer arrived one minute later, which is when the body camera footage picked up.
The names of the officers, who have been placed on desk duty, are not being released and the investigation is being conducted by the Michigan State Police.
“We will never forget this incident, but I promise you we will not let this define Grand Blanc. We will strive, and we will be better together,” Grand Blanc Township Police Chief William Renye said. “Our condolences go out to everyone in this nation who has been affected by this particular incident.”
“We’re not going to allow this incident to define our community, but our response it is what we we’re going to be defined by,” Grand Blanc Township Supervisor Scott Bennett, said at the press conference Friday.
Investigators said that Sanford is from Burton, Michigan, which is about 8 miles north of Grand Blanc, and he is Marine veteran who served in the Iraq War.
People who knew Sanford told ABC News that he held contempt for the religion from his experiences dating a Mormon woman in Utah a few years prior to the shooting and said he had even considered converting to the religion himself.
Attorney General Letitia James sits in the courtroom during the civil fraud trial of U.S. President Donald Trump at New York Supreme Court on January 11, 2024 in New York City. Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump is expected to fire the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after investigators were unable to find incriminating evidence of mortgage fraud against New York Attorney General Letitia James, according to sources.
Federal prosecutors in Virginia had uncovered no clear evidence to prove that James had knowingly committed mortgage fraud when she purchased a home in the state in 2023, ABC News first reported earlier this week, but Trump officials pushed U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert to nevertheless bring criminal charges against her, according to sources.
Administration officials have told Siebert of Trump’s intention to fire him, sources familiar with the matter said. Siebert’s last day on the job is expected to be Friday.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, called the expected firing a “brazen attack on the rule of law.”
“Firing people until he finds someone who will bend the law to carry out his revenge has been the President’s pattern — and it’s illegal,” Lowell said Friday in a statement to ABC News. “Punishing this prosecutor, a Trump appointee, for doing his job sends a clear and chilling message that anyone who dares uphold the law over politics will face the same fate.”
The decision to fire Siebert could throw into crisis one of the most prominent U.S. attorney’s offices, which handles a bulk of the country’s espionage and terrorism cases, and heighten concerns about Trump’s alleged use of the DOJ to target his political adversaries.
Trump nominated Siebert for the position in May. Sources familiar with the matter said that the administration now plans to install a U.S. attorney who would more aggressively investigate James.
The move to fire Siebert because he refused to charge one of Trump’s political rivals would mark an escalation in what the president’s critics have called a retribution campaign, with ongoing investigations also targeting Sen. Adam Schiff and Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook.
Trump has repeatedly accused James — who successfully brought a civil fraud case against him last year and leads multiple lawsuits challenging his administration’s policies — of targeting him for political reasons, calling her “biased and corrupt.”
James is “a horror show who ran on the basis that she was going to get Trump before she even knew anything about me,” Trump said during his civil fraud trial in 2023. “This has to do with election interference, plain and simple. We have a corrupt attorney general in this state.”
Following a three-month trial, a New York judge concluded that Trump and his family had committed a decade of business fraud by overstating the value of their properties to get favorable loan terms, fining Trump and his sons nearly half a billion dollars. An appeals court subsequently tossed the financial penalty but upheld the finding that Trump committed fraud.
Trump administration officials have argued that James committed mortgage fraud because one of the documents related to her 2023 home purchase, they say, falsely indicated the property would be her primary residence. The investigation began after Bill Pulte, the director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, sent the DOJ a criminal referral about James in April.
“I believe this is riddled with mortgage fraud, and frankly, I think that’s why she knew so much about the law in terms of how to go after President Trump,” Pulte told Fox News last month. “She was the fraudster, not President Trump.”
However, investigators have so far determined that the document — a limited power of attorney form used by James’ niece to sign documents on her behalf when James closed on the home — was never considered by the loan officers who approved the mortgage, sources said.
A former police officer with Washington, D.C.’s Metropolitan Police Department, Siebert graduated from law school in 2009 and has worked as an assistant United States attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia since 2010. In addition to serving as a line prosecutor, Siebert headed the office’s organized drug crime task force and supervised the office’s Richmond division from 2019 to 2024.
Siebert began serving as the interim U.S. attorney on Jan. 21 after the late Jessica Aber, who ran the office from 2021-25, resigned following President Trump’s inauguration. Both of Virginia’s Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine, recommended Siebert to Trump in April, and Trump nominated him for the position in May.
“Mr. Siebert has dedicated his career to protecting public safety, from his work with the Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Department to his handling of violent crimes and firearms trafficking as a line Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Eastern District of Virginia. With his experience and dedication to service, Mr. Siebert is equipped to handle the challenges and important obligations associated with this position,” Warner and Kaine said in a statement in May, pledging to support his nomination.
One of the most high-profile federal prosecutors’ offices in the country, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia serves over six million people with a staff of 300 prosecutors. Among the nation’s fastest-moving trial courts, the Eastern District of Virginia often handles significant terrorism and intelligence-related cases because of its proximity to Washington and the multiple government offices in its jurisdiction.
After his 120-day term as interim U.S. attorney expired in May, the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia unanimously agreed to extend Siebert’s tenure in the position.
Benjamin Hager/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(LAS VEGAS) — The Nevada Supreme Court has ruled that the criminal case against six so-called “fake electors” who were charged for their alleged role in efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election can proceed in Las Vegas.
The decision, released on Thursday, reversed a lower court’s dismissal of the case after a judge ruled last year that the case was filed in the wrong venue.
Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford brought the charges two years ago against some of the top officials from the Nevada Republican Party, who were accused of falsely portraying themselves as Nevada’s presidential electors.
The charges included offering a false instrument for filing, offering a forged instrument, and offering a false instrument titled “Certificate of the Votes of the 2020 Electors from Nevada” to the president of the Senate and other officials.
The case was filed in Clark County, which is home to Las Vegas.
In response to Thursday’s decision, Ford said that the defendants “cannot evade accountability in Nevada for their unlawful actions.”
“As attorney general, it is my duty to hold those who sought to undermine the results of our state’s free and fair election responsible,” Ford said in a statement.
Last week, President Donald Trump issued a sweeping pardon to dozens of key figures who were allegedly involved in the plan to arrange an alternate slate of 2020 electors, including the defendants charged in Nevada.
The pardons are largely symbolic as no one on the list was facing federal charges, and Trump does not have the ability to pardon state charges.
