Couple arrested for trying to board American Airlines flight without authorization: Police
Rob Atherton via Getty Images
(MIAMI) — A couple was arrested after allegedly attempting to board an American Airlines flight without authorization, leading to a physical altercation in which one individual allegedly threw coffee on an airline staff member, police said.
The incident occurred on Sunday at Miami International Airport as passengers were preparing to board American Airlines flight 2494 traveling from Miami to Cancún.
Rafael Seirafe-Novaes and Beatriz Rapoport-De-Campos-Maia “ignored the signs and verbal commands from the ticket agent” and allegedly pushed past the agent and others to enter the jet bridge, according to a police report from the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office.
According to the report, the couple “were denied boarding and became irate at which time they pushed the two victims,” and Rapoport-De-Campos-Maia allegedly “threw coffee on them.”
American Airlines said in a statement to ABC News: “Acts of violence are not tolerated by American Airlines and we are committed to working closely with law enforcement in their investigation.”
Rapoport-De-Campos-Maia and Seirafe-Novaes have each been charged with two counts of battery and one count each of trespassing on property after warning, police said. Seirafe-Novaes has also been charged with one count of resisting an officer without violence to his person, as he pulled his arms away from the arresting officer, per the police report.
The couple was taken into custody and transported to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami, according to the police report.
It was unclear if either has an attorney who can speak on their behalf.
(NEW YORK) — Despite the deadly storms over the weekend, one of the core government facilities tracking severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, is listed on the website of Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency as one with a planned office closure.
The Storm Prediction Center — one of several entities housed at the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma — issues severe weather forecasts across the nation and identifies threat zones where dangerous thunderstorms and tornadoes could move through days in advance.
A spokesperson with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration — the federal agency that studies and reports on the oceans, atmosphere and coasts as well as oversees the Storm Prediction Center as well as the National Weather Service — confirmed that the “building lease issue is in flux.”
With this latest storm, the Storm Prediction Center began alerting about a potential significant severe weather event across parts of the Midwest and South several days ahead of the first tornadoes. The center also tracks which parts of the country could face critical to extreme fire weather conditions — as Oklahoma, where the center is located, remains under alert for fire danger after being devastated by deadly blazes over the weekend.
At least 40 people were killed amid more than 970 severe storm reports across more than two dozen states over the weekend. A three-day tornado outbreak tore through at least nine states.
Republican Rep. Tom Cole claims that he intervened and that the center in Norman will not lose its lease.
“I am so proud to have advocated for them. As the Representative for Oklahoma’s Fourth District, I will always fight for Oklahomans and my constituents!” Cole wrote in a release last week.
But the building is still listed, along with hundreds of others, as a target of DOGE’s cuts.
The White House said that the General Services Administration is “reviewing all options to optimize our footprint and building utilization.”
“A component of our space consolidation plan will be the termination of many soft term leases. To the extent these terminations affect public facing facilities and/or existing tenants, we are working with our agency partners to secure suitable alternative space. In many cases this will allow us to increase space utilization and obtain improved terms,” a White House spokesperson said.
When the GSA briefly listed office leases it planned to terminate a few weeks ago, the NOAA locations sent shockwaves through the scientific community especially with tornado season (and hurricane season) coming up.
The Norman facility has, according to local outlets, been impacted by some staffing cuts.
Online the center boasts of some 500 scientists, engineers, meteorologists and climatologists from NOAA, the University of Oklahoma and state agencies. It specializes in storm prediction and advancing radar technology.
“We serve as a national resource for severe weather research and work collaboratively with the National Weather Service to ensure that their forecasters have the knowledge, capabilities, and technologies to remain world leaders in effectively communicating accurate, timely, and actionable forecasts and warnings of extreme weather to the public and commerce,” their mission statement reads.
ABC News has reached out to local Oklahoma lawmakers for comment, but hasn’t heard back by the time of publication.
Alfredo Pacheco, a Venezuelan migrant who earlier this year was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure, displays a photo of himself and his brother Jose Gregorio Gonzalez, March 26, 2025, in Cicero, Illinois. Gonzalez, also a migrant from Venezuela, was set to donate a kidney for his brother but was arrested and now detained by ICE. (Antonio Perez/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images)
(BROADVIEW, Ill.) — A man who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) earlier this month is expected to be released on Friday from a facility in Broadview, Illinois, after community advocates and officials appealed for his release so he can resume the kidney donation process in hopes of saving his brother’s life.
ICE records show that Jose Gregorio Gonzalez, a native of Venezuela who was detained on March 3 in Illinois, is being held in the Clay County Jail in Brazil, Indiana. But Peter Meinecke, an attorney representing Gonzalez, told ABC News on Wednesday that his client is expected to be released from ICE detention by Friday.
“I was in communication with the officer assigned to his case today. It sounds like they are going to release him under humanitarian parole, so that is still being coordinated,” Meinecke said. “The logistics of his release are not yet confirmed with ICE, but potentially as early as Friday, he could be released, and at which point he would be able to pursue the kidney donation. I don’t have any specifics regarding the duration of release.”
The duration and the conditions of Gonzalez’s expected release are unclear. ABC News reached out to ICE, but requests for comment were not returned.
Meinecke, an attorney with The Resurrection Project — a group advocating for Gonzalez’s release — told ABC News that Gonzalez’s brother, Jose Alfredo Pacheco, who suffers from kidney failure, reached out to the group earlier this month seeking support after Gonzalez was detained.
Speaking in Spanish, Pacheco addressed a crowd of supporters during a press conference on Monday and called for his brother’s release.
“My health is at serious risk—I have 100% kidney failure and depend on dialysis three times a week,” he said, according to a translation provided by The Resurrection Project.
“It’s extremely difficult—sometimes, I can barely get out of bed. I have three children, nine-year-old twins and a 17-year-old back home, and I want to live to see them grow up. My brother used to take me to my appointments, but now I’m alone. My brother is a good man, not a criminal in Venezuela or here—he came only with the hope of donating his kidney to me. I thought I was alone, but seeing the support of this community has moved me deeply.”
Meinecke said that he had been in touch with Gonzalez’s ICE officer over the past few weeks and submitted a request for release on temporary humanitarian parole on March 25.
“He needs to show that his release is either in the public interest or is necessary for like, urgent humanitarian factors. And in his case, we argue both,” Meinecke said. “You know, obviously, the medical conditions kind of speak to both. They’re both urgent humanitarian factors by now, but organ donation is in the public interest as well.”
Meinecke explained that Pacheco was admitted into the U.S. from Venezuela in 2023 and was permitted to apply for asylum, so he has a work permit while his asylum application is pending. His wife and three children remain in Venezuela. But soon after he arrived in the U.S., he suffered from stomach pain and was diagnosed with “end-stage kidney failure,” Meinecke said.
“He went to the hospital with severe abdominal pain, which is when he was diagnosed with end-stage kidney failure,” Tovia Siegel, director of organizing and leadership at the Resurrection Project, told ABC News on Wednesday. “At the time, he was told he had 2 percent functioning of his kidneys and would need dialysis consistently, multiple times a week to survive, and really, his best chance to live a full, healthy life would be a kidney transplant.”
Since his diagnosis in 2023, Pacheco’s condition has deteriorated, Siegel said.
“[Alfredo] currently receives [dialysis] three times a week, from 4 am to 8 am, and his brother Jose came here to help care for him, and with the intention of being able to donate his kidney and save Alfredo’s life,” Siegel said. “And so for the last year, Jose has essentially been a full-time caretaker for Alfredo, helping with cooking, cleaning, etc, and with the intent to donate his kidney.”
But unlike Pacheco, when Gonzalez arrived to the U.S. from Venezuela “primarily to assist” his brother, he failed to pass the credible fear screening, which did not allow him to apply for asylum like Pacheco had done, according to Meinecke, so he was detained by ICE for several months and then he was granted temporary supervised release but still faced a pending removal order. During his time on supervised release, Gonzalez routinely checked in with his ICE officer, provided his address and wore an ankle monitor, Meinecke said.
Siegel said that Gonzalez was detained while the brothers were leaving their home to go to Pacheco’s kidney dialysis appointment.
“It was shocking and devastating,” she said. “They had been living life together, and an incredibly difficult life where one of the brothers was undergoing incredible medical distress and suffering.”
“They were taking care of one another and surviving for a year together,” she added. “And during that time, clearly, you know, caring deeply for one another, loving each other as family members do. Jose [Gregorio] had no contact with police, the criminal legal system, and then one morning, with, you know, completely unexpected, ICE came to their home.”
Gonzalez’s expected release comes after ICE denied on Monday a stay of removal request submitted by his attorneys and then the case was elevated to an ICE Chicago Field Supervisor, according to The Resurrection Project.
“This is literally a matter of life and death,” said Erendira Rendón, vice president of Immigrant Justice at The Resurrection Project. “ICE has the discretionary authority to release Mr. Gonzalez on humanitarian grounds. Every day he remains detained is another day his brother’s life hangs in the balance.”
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch/Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — New York City saw fewer shootings in the first three months of the year than in any previous quarter since the NYPD began keeping statistics, the police commissioner announced Thursday.
“Crime and violence reductions are historic,” NYPD Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said during a press briefing.
Shootings dropped 23% citywide in the first quarter, she said.
“This is lives saved,” Tisch said.
The first quarter of the year also saw the second-fewest murders of any quarter in recorded history in the city, Tisch said.
All crimes except rape went down in the first quarter of 2025, the commissioner said. Rape increased by 21% in the first quarter, Tisch said, while noting the increase was due in part to changes to the law last year that “rightfully redefined and broadened what constitutes rape in New York state.”
There was a slight uptick in grand larceny auto in March, due to a rash of car thefts specifically targeting Hondas, Tisch said. Nearly a third of all cars stolen in the city are Hondas because the thieves are able to easily clone Honda key fobs, police said.
“We continue to urge Honda, for their customers’ sake, to fix this vulnerability now,” Tisch said.
Subway crime dropped to levels not seen since before the pandemic, when transit crime spiked. Major crime in the subways decreased more than 18% in the first three months of the year, Tisch said.
The commissioner credited enforcement of rules like taking up more than one seat.
“They will correct the condition,” Tisch said. “This is about restoring safety and order.”
The latest statistics come as the Trump administration has claimed crime in the subway system is “rampant.”
In response to the state’s request for more federal funds for the transit system last month, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said the administration would “hold NYC leaders accountable for not keeping commuters safe.”
Duffy has also threatened to pull federal funding from the city’s transit system if it doesn’t address crime.
“The trend of violent crime, homelessness, and other threats to public safety on one of our nation’s most prominent metro systems is unacceptable. After years of soft-on-crime policies, our Department is stepping in to restore order,” Duffy said in a statement on March 18 — two months after Gov. Kathy Hochul had already announced a plan to increase of police officers in the transit system.
