Department of Homeland Security warns of potential attacks amid Iran operation
A Department of Homeland Security seal on a podium at Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) headquarters, Mar. 13, 2024. (Luke Barr/ABC News)
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Homeland Security has warned of potential lone-wolf and cyberattacks amid the ongoing strikes in Iran, according to a law enforcement bulletin obtained by ABC News.
“Although a large-scale physical attack is unlikely, Iran and its proxies probably pose a persistent threat of targeted attacks in the Homeland, and will almost certainly escalate retaliatory actions—or calls to action—if reports of the Ayatollah’s death are confirmed,” according to the bulletin.
“In the short-term, we are most concerned that Iran-aligned hacktivists will conduct low-level cyber attacks against US networks, such as website defacements and distributed denial-of-service attacks,” officials said in the bulletin.
The alert was issued on Saturday, a day before a gunman opened fire in Austin, Texas, and authorities are investigating whether or not the suspect was inspired by the situation overseas.
Law enforcement sources told ABC News the suspect was wearing a sweatshirt with “Property of Allah” on it and underneath, a shirt with “Iran” and the Iranian flag on it.
Officials are also investigating whether the suspect had mental health issues.
The bulletin said physical attacks are rare for those inspired by Iran.
“Lone offenders in the Homeland have not historically been motivated by issues related to Iran, the IRGC, or Shia violent extremism; however, the existential threat to the Iranian regime and increased US or Israeli actions could prompt some US-based violent extremists or hate crime perpetrators to attack targets perceived to be Jewish, pro-Israel, or linked to the US government or military,” officials said in the bulletin.
Derek Mayer, the former assistant Special Agent in Charge of the Secret Service’s Chicago field office, said law enforcement is always on alert for a lone offender.
“I think law enforcement authorities are concerned about attacks happening every day. And obviously, yesterday with the bombings taking place in Iran, the attacks could come even at a higher rate, but it’s your schools, it’s your churches, it’s at your airports,” Mayer, now the chief security officer and vice president of executive protection at P4, said. “The current threat environment in the United States and across the world is, it’s very dangerous right now, but it’s also to say the last quarter of a century, since the September 11th attacks of 2001, the landscape across the United States and also across the world has been very dangerous.”
Police departments across the country have stepped up patrols in high-traffic and high-target areas.
“At times like this, they will be up in patrols and officers, more posts at government facilities, but there is a lot that goes on behind the scenes that the public doesn’t see, whether that be, you know, counter surveillance, whether it be extra intelligence monitoring,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — When the Supreme Court agreed to hear the Trump administration’s petitions seeking to resurrect Executive Order 14160 — the president’s sweeping attempt to gut the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship — it effectively placed one of the Constitution’s most settled commitments on the docket.
The administration frames the dispute as a long-overdue “correction” to an overly generous citizenship regime, but the legal reality is far clearer: the executive order is an impossible fit with the text, history, and precedent surrounding the Citizenship Clause.
The path to revising that clause is laid out plainly in the document itself — not through executive decree, but through the arduous process of amending the Constitution. Those seeking to restrict birthright citizenship are free to attempt that route. What they cannot do is act as though a presidential signature can silently rewrite the Fourteenth Amendment.
As far back as Justice Samuel Chase’s statement during a 1798 oral argument, it has been settled that “the President has nothing to do with the proposition, or adoption, of amendments to the Constitution.”
The constitutional text and its historical foundations The core constitutional question is straightforward: does the Fourteenth Amendment mandate birthright citizenship for all persons born on U.S. soil, regardless of their parents’ immigration status? Since ratification in 1868, the answer has been yes. The Citizenship Clause provides that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.” The text is simple, unconditional, and deliberately broad. For more than a century, the Supreme Court has interpreted it to mean exactly what it says: if you are born in the U.S. and subject to U.S. law, you are a citizen.
The principles underlying that guarantee emerged long before Reconstruction. The doctrine of “jus soli” — citizenship based on birthplace — was deeply rooted in English common law and adopted by the original U.S. states. But early America also struggled with exclusions, most notoriously the Dred Scott decision, which in 1857 held that Black Americans could never be citizens. The Fourteenth Amendment, ratified 11 years later, was drafted to repudiate that decision and to prevent the creation of a hereditary class of noncitizens within the United States.
Congress later affirmed this constitutional commitment, passing statutes in 1940 and again in 1952 that aligned fully with the Amendment’s broad guarantee. For 150 years, administrations of both parties have understood birthright citizenship as a constitutional mandate, not an executive policy choice.
Wong Kim Ark and the settled rule of jus soli The Trump administration’s legal theory hinges on the claim that the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” excludes the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants and temporary visa holders. But that argument has been rejected for more than a century. In 1898, the Supreme Court in United States v. Wong Kim Ark held that the Fourteenth Amendment codified the long-standing common-law rule of jus soli. The only exceptions recognized at the time, and today, involve individuals genuinely outside U.S. legal authority, such as foreign diplomats and children born on foreign warships.
Immigration status has never been among those exceptions. That is because undocumented immigrants, like all other noncitizens living in the United States, are fully subject to U.S. law. They pay taxes, work, attend school, and remain subject to arrest, prosecution and removal. The government’s ability to enforce immigration law against them is itself proof that they are “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States.
As professor Gerald Neuman, an immigration and nationality law expert at Harvard Law, has observed, the administration’s interpretation of birthright citizenship is not merely mistaken but “either a crazy theory or a dishonest interpretation of the Constitution.” The executive order ignores every relevant interpretive source — text, precedent and longstanding practice — and replaces them with a theory the Supreme Court foreclosed over a century ago.
The executive order’s constitutional and structural defects Executive Order 14160 not only contradicts well-settled Fourteenth Amendment doctrine, it also appears to violate basic separation of powers principles. Citizenship rules are fixed in the Constitution and may be altered only through the amendment process. No president may redefine constitutional citizenship by unilateral directive. Yet that is precisely what Executive Order 14160 attempts to do, by conditioning birthright citizenship on the immigration status of a child’s parents.
While the administration claims the order would apply only prospectively, the constitutional problem is the same: the president lacks authority to alter constitutional meaning, even for future cases. The Fourteenth Amendment was designed to settle the rules of national membership beyond the reach of ordinary politics. Allowing the president to unilaterally revise those rules would collapse the distinction between constitutional law and executive preference.
Federal courts recognized these defects immediately. Within days of the order’s issuance, a district court temporarily blocked its implementation. The Supreme Court’s review thus raises not only the question of who qualifies as a citizen, but also whether constitutional guarantees can be rewritten by a single stroke of the executive’s pen.
James Sample is an ABC News legal contributor and a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University. The views expressed in this story do not necessarily reflect those of ABC News or The Walt Disney Company.
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles police are searching for two gunmen after a 22-year-old woman — reportedly a Latin singer — was killed in an ambush-style shooting.
Around 1:25 a.m. Saturday, two men approached a parked car in the Northridge neighborhood and fired multiple rounds at several people sitting inside, according to the Los Angeles Police Department.
Maria De La Rosa was taken to a hospital where she died from gunshot wounds, police said.
The 22-year-old was, according to multiple reports, a Latin singer growing in popularity with about 40,000 Instagram followers.
Two others in the car with her were injured, according to police.
A motive isn’t known and no arrests have been made, police said.
Esa engineer Michaela Benthaus, photographed in the anteroom of the Munich office of the German Press Agency dpa. (Felix Hörhager/picture alliance via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Blue Origin made history Saturday, sending for the first time a person who uses a wheelchair past the Kármán line, an internationally recognized boundary of space that’s 62 miles above Earth.
Michaela “Michi” Benthaus, who suffered a spinal cord injury after a mountain biking accident in 2018, and her five teammates, who nicknamed themselves the “Out of the Blue” crew, spent several minutes in microgravity before safely returning to Earth with the assistance of parachutes and a retro thrust system. The entire mission lasted about 10 minutes.
During the webcast, Blue Origin said that the launch tower, equipped with an elevator, and the crew capsule did not require any modifications for Benthaus, as they were originally designed to accommodate individuals with disabilities and reduced mobility.
Blue Origin also partners with AstroAccess, “a project dedicated to promoting disability inclusion in human space exploration by paving the way for disabled astronauts,” that is sponsored by the nonprofit SciAccess, Inc.
Benthaus, an aerospace and mechatronics engineer at the European Space Agency, told ABC News this week she was eager to participate, especially because she feels as if she has waited “very long for it.”
“I am excited to show the world that also wheelchair users can go on a suborbital flight, and I’m really happy that Blue Origin is supporting this,” Benthaus told ABC News on Wednesday.
In a Blue Origin profile video of Benthaus shown prior to the launch, she said, “I think there’s was not like this one moment when I realized my dream of going to space was not over.”
“I really, really figured out how inaccessible our world still is and how sometimes socially excluding a wheelchair can be even though now one is actively excluding you,” she added.
In a statement, Blue Origin said the “crew exemplifies the breadth and diversity of people who can now experience spaceflight, from engineers and scientists to entrepreneurs, teachers, and investors from all over the world. Each brings their unique perspective and passion for exploration. Michi’s flight is particularly meaningful, demonstrating that space is for everyone, and we are proud to help her achieve this dream.”
