ICE agent charged with 2 counts of felony assault in Minneapolis

(MINNEAPOLIS) — A federal judge heard arguments Monday on the state of Minnesota’s request for a temporary restraining order to halt the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement operation in the state.

The hearing came two days after the death of 37-year-old Alex Pretti in what was the second shooting of a U.S. citizen this month by federal immigration enforcement agents in Minneapolis.

An attorney representing the state said in Monday’s hearing that the enforcement action, dubbed “Operation Metro Surge,” is the nation’s single largest escalation of immigration enforcement, despite Minnesota not having the largest number of non-citizens with criminal convictions.

“Yet the federal government has sent an unprecedented force of thousands of masked agents armed with assault rifles to spread through our region in roving patrols that are racially profiling and inflicting violence on people,” argued state attorney Lindsey Middlecamp.

Brian Carter, another state attorney, argued that there’s a lack of precedent because “the conduct [from the federal government] is so outrageously unlawful we’ve never seen it before.”

“In the 250 years of this nation’s history, we have never seen a federal government attack states based on personal animosity,” Carter argued.

“Well, we’ve seen the federal government take very robust responses to states that aren’t yielding to federal authority,” U.S. District Judge Katherine Menendez interrupted.

“Absolutely, but that’s based on the rule of law,” Carter responded.

When Judge Menendez asked what exactly the state wants her to do, Carter said, “End Operation Metro Surge.”

“The whole Operation Metro Surge is an illegal means to an illegal end, so just ending the whole thing is the appropriate remedy there,” Carter said.

“You understand the federal government has a lot of power in this area, so I’m trying to figure out what principle you’re asking me to apply that will sort out legal federal law enforcement from this 10th Amendment argument,” Judge Menendez said.

An attorney representing the federal government called the state’s request to end Operation Metro Surge “staggering.”

“The effect of their requested relief would be essentially removing the officers whom the president has concluded should be there to enforce federal immigration law,” said attorney Brantley Mayers. “It’s pretty staggering.”

Mayers argued that the requested relief should be subject to “a heightened standard.”

“They’re challenging one law enforcement initiative,” replied Judge Menendez. “They’re not challenging the enforcement of immigration law writ large.”

Mayers said that if the judge issues an order to end Operation Metro Surge, it “would be very difficult to implement.”

“If it’s difficult to implement, does that mean I can do nothing?” Judge Menendez asked.

Mayers responded by saying such an order would create a “very difficult separation of powers problem.”

The judge also said she is “grappling” with the alleged illegalities identified by the state, pointing to other lawsuits filed in Minnesota.

“Isn’t the answer to the flood of illegality to fight each illegal act?” Judge Menendez asked, noting that the conduct of federal agents is already the subject of separate litigation.

Menendez also questioned how she should draw the line between legitimate federal pressure and illegal coercion.

“How do I decide when a law enforcement response crosses the line from a legitimate response to one that violates the 10th Amendment?” she asked.

Carter argued that there are “4,000 masked, armed federal agents engaged in systemic, pervasive, and illegal violent behavior” that is “so far out on the other side of the line.”

“We’ve got retaliation, we’ve got racial profiling, we’ve got warrantless entries into homes,” Carter said.

Middlecamp said that U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi’s letter to Gov. Tim Walz Saturday in which she sought information about the state’s voter rolls and records on Medicaid and Food and Nutrition Service programs as a condition for ICE agents pulling back on enforcement, “can only be described as a ransom note.”

“President Trump himself took to social media last night to reaffirm those very purposes. Their message is clear,” Middlecamp said. “Minnesota can either change its laws and policies or suffer an invasion of masked armed forces. This is precisely the type of coercion and commandeering that violates the 10th Amendment.”

Middlecamp argued there has been “excessive force and unsupported detentions and arrests of legal observers” and said that DHS agents have been collecting photos and license plates of observers so they can confront them.

“Even though they are not charged with a crime or reasonably suspected of a crime, there has been indiscriminate use of chemical irritants,” she said.

The attorney argued that Operation Metro Surge is having “clear impacts on the sovereign interest to create and protect public safety, public health, and public education.”

Sara Lathrop, an attorney for the city of Minneapolis, said the weekend’s shooting “demonstrated in a terrifying way that the current situation is absolutely untenable.”

“The relief we need needs to be ordered now to take down the temperature,” Lathrop said.

In response, Judge Menendez said that “not all crises have a fix from a district court injunction.”

Carter, the state attorney, wrapped up arguments by saying the state came to the court to “protect its sovereignty.”

“The state of Minnesota comes here today to protect its sovereignty, to stop the harm to its sovereign rights under the Constitution that sets states up as independent sovereigns,” Carter said. “If we can’t come to the court and vindicate those rights, where else does a state go?”

Judge Menendez did not issue an order immediately following the hearing.

“I do not intend in any way for the depth of my analysis or whatever time I take to write to be seen as a belief that this is unimportant,” she said. “It’s because it’s extremely important that I’m doing everything I can to get it right,” the judge said.

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(NEW YORK) — A rare asteroid will soon be visible to the naked eye in a rare celestial event, according to astronomers.

Asteroid 99942 Apophis – named after the Egyptian deity of chaos, darkness and fire – is expected to safely pass close to Earth on April 13, 2029, according to NASA.

The asteroid will pass within roughly 20,000 miles of Earth – nearly 12 times closer than the moon’s average distance from Earth, and closer than many satellites in geosynchronous orbit – making it one one of the closest approaches ever recorded for an object if its size and a “very rare event,” according to NASA.

The approach will be visible to observers on the ground in the Eastern Hemisphere, weather permitting, according to NASA. It will be close enough that sky-watchers won’t need a telescope or binoculars to see it, astronomers say.

When Apophis was first discovered in 2004, it was labeled a potentially hazardous asteroid because of the possibility that it could impact Earth in 2029, 2036 or 2068, according to NASA.

After closely tracking the asteroid and its orbit using optical telescopes and ground-based radar, astronomers are now confident that there is no risk of Apophis impacting Earth for at least 100 years.

The Earth’s gravitational pull could change the asteroid’s orbit around the sun as it passes in 2029, making the orbit slightly larger or the orbital period slightly longer, but the risk of impact with Earth will remain the same, NASA says. Its close passage will also afford astronomers around the world the opportunity to learn more about the asteroid.

Apophis is the Greek name for the Egyptian god known as Apep. The name was proposed by the astronomers who discovered the asteroid: Roy Tucker, David Tholen and Fabrizio Bernardi of the Kitt Peak National Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

The asteroid is a relic of the early solar system from about 4.6 billion years ago, made of leftover raw material that was never part of a planet or moon, according to NASA. Though its exact size and shape is unknown, it has a mean diameter of about 1,115 feet and a long axis of at least 1,480 feet.

Apophis’ surface is weathered due to eons of exposure to space weather, including solar wind and cosmic rays, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Observatories around the world and in space will observe the asteroid’s historic approach to Earth in order to better understand its physical properties.

NASA has redirected a spacecraft to rendezvous with Apophis shortly after its close approach in 2029, while the European Space Agency is sending a spacecraft to study it.

When the April 2029 flyby occurs, Apophis will become a member of the “Apollo” group, the family of asteroids that cross Earth’s orbit but that themselves have orbits around the sun that are wider than the Earth’s, according to the ESA.

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(CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas) — Nearly four years after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers in a Texas elementary school, a jury is set to decide whether a police officer should be held criminally responsible in connection with one of the worst school shootings in American history.

Jury selection begins Monday in the trial of former Uvalde school police officer Adrian Gonzales, charged with allegedly placing more than two dozen children in “imminent danger” by failing to respond to the crisis as it unfolded.

Prosecutors allege that Gonzales, one of the first of nearly 400 officers to respond to the rampage, failed to engage the shooter despite knowing his location, having time to respond and being trained to handle active shooters. It ultimately took 77 minutes for law enforcement to mount a counter-assault that would kill the gunman.

Ever since the shooting tore apart Uvalde on May 24, 2022, families of the victims have been seeking accountability and answers. Many have argued their children might have been saved had police confronted the gunman more quickly.

The trial, being staged 200 miles from Uvalde in Corpus Christi, marks an exceedingly rare instance of prosecutors seeking to convict a member of law enforcement for a response to a school shooting.

Prosecutors in June 2024 charged both Gonzales and Uvalde schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — the on-site commander on the day of the shooting — with multiple counts of endangerment and abandonment of a child.

Gonzales and Arredondo are the only officers charged. Both have pleaded not guilty.

Investigations have determined that Salvador Ramos, 18, acted alone in carrying out the massacre. He was killed on-site at Robb Elementary School.

Gonzales was charged with 29 felony counts, one for each of the 19 fourth-graders who died in the shooting and 10 students who survived in classroom 112.

According to the indictment, he “failed to engage, distract or delay the shooter” after hearing the gunshots and learning about the shooter’s location.

Arredondo was charged with 10 felony counts for allegedly endangering the 10 survivors by delaying the law enforcement response and not following active shooter protocols.

Arredondo and Gonzales were charged at the same time, but Gonzales will be facing trial first and alone.

Arredondo’s case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school.

Each count carries a maximum of two years in prison, though judges and juries in Texas have broad discretion in imposing sentences, according to Sandra Guerra Thompson, a criminal law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

“There’s a lot of different ways that this could go,” she said. “All the children who were so horrifically killed that would seem to motivate a longer sentence for anyone who is found to have some fault.”

Ahead of trial, prosecutors issued at least 75 subpoenas to potential witnesses, including police officers, teachers, and families of victims, according to court filings.

More than 20 members of the elite Texas Rangers, 16 members of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District, and multiple physicians from nearby hospitals have received subpoenas, according to court filings.

In the attempt to make their case against Gonzales, prosecutors turned to a child endangerment law more commonly used to prosecute negligent parents or caretakers responsible for things like leaving a child in a hot car or without supervision at a beach. The law has rarely been used against police officers, experts noted, because of the difficulty in proving they had a legal obligation to the children.

“The critical issue here is whether the individual has a duty to act,” said Thompson, the law professor in Houston.

According to Houston-based defense attorney Nicole DeBorde Hochglaube, prosecutors will need to establish that Gonzales had a legal duty — not just a moral obligation — to intervene and that he failed to follow his training for active shooter scenarios.

“The jury is going to have the nasty task of looking through some horrible things to determine if he had the duty to act,” she said, referencing evidence such as body camera footage and frantic 911 calls from the shooting.

Legal experts who spoke with ABC News noted that Gonzales’ role as a responding officer — not the commander or case agent at the scene — could make it tough to convince the jury the man’s conduct amounted to a crime.

If prosecutors can secure a conviction, it would mark the first time that a police officer has been held accountable for how they carried out their duties at a mass shooting to which they responded.

Prosecutors rarely attempt to charge police officers who have responded to mass shootings, according to Phil Stinson, a professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, who maintains a database of police officers who have been arrested. Of the 25,000 arrests since 2005 included in the database, Stinson identified only two prosecutions similar to those against Gonzales and Arredondo.

Defense attorneys for Gonzales have argued he is being unfairly scapegoated for a crime he didn’t commit and that he did all he could to save and rescue children who were in imminent danger.

“Those precious souls were stolen by a monster that day, but that monster was not Adrian [Gonazales],” defense attorney Nico LaHood told ABC affiliate KSAT in San Antonio. “He was there, he was present. He was going into danger. And so the narrative of the government is something we’re going to contest highly, and that’s going to be the point of contention before this jury.”

Court filings shed little light on the case Gonzales’ lawyers will mount, though attorneys have signaled plans to use drone footage from Robb Elementary to assist them.

“The factual circumstances of this case intricately entail the timing and spatial proximity of the actors and events unfolding at Robb Elementary school on the day of the murders,” attorneys wrote in a court filing.

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