Army soldier in Colorado arrested for allegedly distributing cocaine: FBI
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(DENVER) — A U.S. Army soldier stationed in Colorado was arrested on federal drug charges, authorities said Thursday.
Staff Sgt. Juan Gabriel Orona-Rodriguez, a soldier at Fort Carson, was arrested Wednesday evening, the FBI in Denver said.
He faces federal charges related to the distribution of cocaine, the FBI said.
The soldier was taken into custody with the assistance of the Drug Enforcement Administration’s Rocky Mountain Field Division, the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division and Fort Carson officials, the FBI said.
“We will continue to cooperate with all agencies involved,” a Fort Carson official said in a statement on Thursday.
The DEA Rocky Mountain Field Division said it is conducting a joint investigation with the FBI and Army Criminal Investigation Division.
No additional information on the case has been released.
Fort Carson is located south of Colorado Springs.
It is unclear if the arrest is related to a federal raid of an underground nightclub in Colorado Springs over the weekend.
The DEA said it detained more than 200 people — including members of the military — at an unlicensed nightclub in Colorado Springs early Sunday.
Among them, 114 illegal migrants were taken into custody, with most from Central and South America, officials said.
A Fort Carson spokesperson confirmed on Tuesday that 17 service members, including 16 assigned to Fort Carson, were identified at the scene during the nightclub raid and were allowed to leave on their own.
ABC News’ Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
(SAN DIEGO) — There have been multiple fatalities after a small plane crashed in a neighborhood of San Diego on Thursday morning, spewing jet fuel and starting a large fire that damaged at least 15 homes and multiple cars, fire officials said.
None of the residents in any houses were taken to the hospital and it appears all the fatalities are from the plane itself, San Diego Assistant Fire Chief of Emergency Operations Dan Eddy said at a press conference on Thursday. Officials do not yet know how many people were aboard the plane.
Multiple homes have been destroyed and there is one car fire that “will not go out no matter what we put on it,” according to Eddy, who said earlier the crash site looked “like a movie scene.”
Responders are currently searching for victims and parts of the plane as the response continues.
Residents were being evacuated to a nearby school and will be going home to home to find out if there is anybody inside, Eddy said.
“I was half-asleep and I saw a flash at the window and heard a bang,” said Jennifer Hoffman, who lives a couple blocks from the crash. “I thought it was lightning to be honest, I even checked the weather to see if it was raining out. And then I heard like bunches of pops and I was like, ‘That can’t be lightning.’ I went downstairs, I checked outside and I saw the neighborhood behind us was bright red. It was awful.”
The plane directly hit multiple homes and cars, setting them ablaze, before running down the street, Eddy said.
The small private jet crashed seconds before landing at about 3:45 am. local time, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
The plane was flying from Wichita, Kansas, to San Diego’s Montgomery Gibbs Executive Airport when it crashed. It was roughly 500 feet in the air at its last radar check-in, according to the FAA.
“A Cessna 550 crashed near Montgomery-Gibbs Executive Airport in California, around 3:45 a.m.local time on Thursday, May 22. The number of people on board is unknown at this time,” the FAA said in a statement.
There was no mayday call before this crash. The last communication was the pilot announcing on the radio that he was 3 miles out and landing. The tower was closed at the time and this is standard procedure.
Residents have been instructed to avoid the area near near Sculpin Street and Santo Road as crews work.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney and Ayesha Ali contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(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.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement conducted raids targeting businesses in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, sources confirmed to ABC News.
A coalition of activists had warned delivery drivers and restaurants of the planned enforcement one day prior.
“I have heard those reports, I’ve been getting them all morning. I am disturbed by them,” Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser told reporters on Tuesday. “It appears that ICE is at restaurants or even in neighborhoods, and it doesn’t look like they’re targeting criminals. It is disrupting.”
She also emphasized that the Metropolitan Police Department was not involved.
Multiple sources told ABC News that federal law enforcement officials visited dozens of restaurants, carry-out spots and bars across several neighborhoods in Washington, including U Street, 14th Street, Chinatown, Dupont Circle and Mount Vernon Triangle. The visits spanned a wide range of establishments, from fast-casual spots to fine-dining restaurants and luxury cocktail bars, reflecting the breadth of the operation.
At many restaurants, agents distributed information and pamphlets requesting to see I-9 forms to verify the identities and employment authorizations for all employees dating back to one year ago. Some restaurants were told that federal officials would return in three days.Following Tuesday’s visits, some restaurant owners chose to close preemptively.
George Escobar, chief of programs and services at CASA, an organization geared toward improving the quality of life for the working class, told ABC News on Tuesday that the organization regularly receives tips about planned raids — but that this one was different.
“This one, to be honest, alarmed us a little bit because it was really specific,” Escobar said.
The organization has run a 24-hour tip hot line since the first Trump administration.
“We’re experienced. We don’t get alarmed by, like, you know, any old threat because, you know, they’re frequent, right? And they come in all different types of forms,” he said.
“We received notice about a specific kind of operation on how they were going to be conducted: what the pretense of maybe entering some of these small businesses were going to be, the fact that they were looking specifically at food businesses and possibly delivery workers,” he explained.
ABC News reached out to the Department of Homeland Security and ICE for comment but did not receive a response.
“If ICE wants to snatch up every single immigrant working in food service and delivery, then the entire industry will collapse,” Amy Fischer, a core organizer with Migrant Solidarity Mutual Aid Network, which supports migrants arriving in the capital, said in a statement.
The Restaurant Association Metropolitan Washington, which represents the more than 60,000 restaurant workers in the area, said in a statement shared with ABC News that it is “deeply concerned” by the reports of ICE raids and drop-ins across Washington, D.C.
RAMW said it urges “policymakers on a local and federal level to consider the real-world impact on local businesses and communities.”
“Immigrants make up a significant portion of our workforce at all levels. From dishwashers to executive chefs to restaurant owners, immigrants are irreplaceable contributors to our most celebrated restaurants and beloved neighborhood establishments,” it added. “The immigrant workforce has been essential to sustaining and growing our local restaurant industry and has been a major contributor to our local economy.
“At a time when our economy is already fragile, losing even one staff member at a single establishment has a profound impact on the operations of a restaurant and its ability to serve patrons,” RAMW added. “Disrupting restaurant staffing across the industry can create a damaging ripple effect felt immediately throughout the entire local economy.”
