During immigration raid, DHS Secretary Noem says ICE bringing ‘consequences’
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem speaks with ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott during an ICE raid in Virginia on March 4, 2025. (ABC News)
(RICHMOND, VA) — Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement is bringing “consequences” during raids in Virginia on Tuesday.
“There is consequences,” said Noem, who was present during the pre-operation debrief. The raids were assisted by the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
ABC News Senior Political Correspondent Rachel Scott covered the raids at the scene. The second operation saw agents detain a man who officials said had been convicted of sexual battery. The man, they said, had been deported twice and re-entered the country illegally.
Two minors and an uncle were also present in the raided residence, officials said. Agents said the uncle is undocumented and told him to turn himself into immigration authorities in two days.
Asked what would happen to the two minors, Noem told ABC News, “We don’t know what other family members they have, that’s why he has two days to go locate them and make sure these kids are with someone in their family that they believe will keep them safe and set a better example for them.”
Pushed on the likelihood of the family being separated, Noem said there are “consequences,” adding, “And we are giving him time to leave these children with someone else.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Treasury Department was breached by a China-sponsored actor earlier this month, officials told Congress in a letter on Monday.
The “major” breach was achieved by gaining access to a third-party cybersecurity service Treasury used, called BeyondTrust, they said.
The actor then accessed Treasury workstations and “certain unclassified documents” on them, department officials said in a letter to the Senate Banking Committee.
The threat actor was able to “override the service’s security, remotely access certain Treasury DO user workstations, and access certain unclassified documents maintained by those users,” the letter said.
Treasury has ceased use of BeyondTrust since discovering the incident.
“The compromised BeyondTrust service has been taken offline and there is no evidence indicating the threat actor has continued access to Treasury systems or information,” according to a Treasury Department spokesperson.
The department has been working with the FBI and THE Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) as well as the intelligence community to “fully characterize the incident and determine its overall impact,” the official said.
More information will be available on the hack in a supplemental notice to Congress within 30 days, according to the Treasury Department.
Treasury is mandated by policy to notify Congress of such breaches.
China is one of America’s most pernicious cyberactors, experts and officials say. Last month, officials said a Chinese-backed group hacked into nine telecommunications companies and was able to gain access to certain high-profile individuals cellphones as a result of the hack.
It is unclear if this breach is related to those actions.
(WASHINGTON) — A former CIA analyst arrested in November and charged with leaking highly classified records showing Israeli plans to launch a retaliatory strike on Iran pleaded guilty Friday in a federal court in Virginia.
Asif Rahman, 34, pleaded guilty to two counts of transmission of national defense information, according to court records.
Rahman faces up to 10 years in prison for the first count and up to three years for the second count. His sentencing was set for May 15.
Rahman admitted to accessing and printing out two documents regarding Israel’s retaliatory strike plans on Oct. 17 and transporting them to his residence, where he later uploaded images of them and provided them to “multiple individuals he knew were not entitled to receive them,” according to the plea agreement.
He later took various steps to try and conceal his involvement in the leak, even as authorities were able to track him down remarkably quickly given he was the only individual found to have printed out the documents, according to logs reviewed by investigators.
Rahman was arrested in Cambodia and later brought to Guam, according to the charging documents.
Rahman, a U.S. citizen, worked as an employee for the CIA starting in 2016.
In the days after the disclosure, Rahman deleted “approximately 1.5 gigabytes” of data from his personal folder in the Top Secret system, including scores of highly classified materials he had downloaded over the years — largely relating to the Middle East, according to prosecutors.
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione has hired veteran former New York City prosecutor Karen Friedman Agnifilo to defend him against murder charges on Friday, according to a statement Friday night from her law firm Agnifilo Intrater LLP.
Friedman Agnifilo served as the second-in-command in the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from 2014 to 2021 under former DA Cyrus Vance. A biography on her law firm website says she played a lead role in prosecuting “high-profile violent crime cases,” including those involving mental health and cold case homicides.
“Karen Friedman Agnifilo has a three-decade background in criminal justice, litigation, and trials. Her practice focuses on criminal defense in state and federal courts, leveraging her extensive experience prosecuting serious violent crimes, including complex homicide cases, from accusation to investigation to arrest and trial,” her biography says.
“While serving in the Manhattan DA’s office, Ms. Friedman Agnifilo was also integral to creating the office’s Human Trafficking Unit, Hate Crimes Unit, Antiquities Trafficking Unit, Terrorism Unit, its Cybercrimes and Identity Theft Bureau, as well as working on the creation of Manhattan’s first Mental Health Court,” the biography continued.
Friedman Agnifilo is also a frequent television news guest and commentator and is a former legal analyst for CNN.
She is also the co-host of a weekly podcast on the Meidas Touch Network where she discusses emerging legal issues and litigation strategy that routinely has half a million listeners per episode, according to her biography. She is also the legal advisor for the television show Law and Order.
Meanwhile, law enforcement sources have told ABC News that writings seized from Luigi Mangione indicate he had been developing a fixation and increasing malice toward UnitedHealthcare and allegedly talking about harming its leader for months.
Some of the entries in the notebook seized from Mangione upon his arrest in Pennsylvania earlier this week had dates on them going back to mid-2024, the sources said.
That fixation would eventually evolve into an alleged plan to shoot that CEO, the sources said.
Some of the writings were diary-style, documenting how he felt, what he did that day, and also documented a desire to focus on his health and himself, and find his purpose, the sources said.
Then, as time went on — as Mangione allegedly fell out of contact with friends and family and grew increasingly isolated — some of his writings indicated a deterioration in his thinking and state of mind, illustrating a gradual build towards the alleged plan to kill UnitedHealthCare’s CEO at their “annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” sources said.
Mangione’s writings, obtained by ABC News, claimed that the U.S. has the most expensive health care system in the world, but ranks about No. 42 in life expectancy. He said UnitedHealthcare “has grown and grown, but as our life expectancy? No the reality is, these [indecipherable] have simply gotten too powerful, and they continue to abuse our country for immense profit.”
“I do apologize for any strife of traumas but it had to be done,” he allegedly wrote. “Frankly, these parasites simply had it coming.”
Neither Mangione nor his parents received insurance through UnitedHealthcare, according to UnitedHealth Group.
Mangione, 26, is currently in custody at a Pennsylvania state prison after a judge denied bail on Tuesday.
