FBI Director Kash Patel joins Team USA hockey in locker room celebration after gold medal win
US Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel looks on prior to the Men’s Gold Medal match between Canada and the United States on day 16 of the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic games at Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena on February 22, 2026 in Milan, Italy. (Elsa/Getty Images)
(MILAN) — FBI Director Kash Patel joined in on Team USA hockey’s locker room celebrations in Italy shortly after the team won the gold medal.
The team beat Canada 2-1 at the Winter Olympics in Milan Cortina on Sunday, marking the first such victory for the U.S. since the so-called “Miracle on Ice” game in Lake Placid, New York, in 1980.
Patel, a hockey fan, was said to have had meetings in Italy prior to attending the game. Ben Williamson, an FBI spokesperson, said on social media that Patel’s trip had been previously scheduled. He added that “any other personal expenses would be reimbursed.”
Patel on Sunday evening posted on social media a statement, which he said was for “the very concerned media.”
“[Y]es, I love America and was extremely humbled when my friends, the newly minted Gold Medal winners on Team USA, invited me into the locker room to celebrate this historic moment with the boys — Greatest country on earth and greatest sport on earth,” he said in the post.
A video obtained by ABC News showed Patel wearing a USA shirt in the locker room, where he’s seen singing along with members of the team. After he takes a swig, shakes his bottle and pounds the table, a member of the team places a gold medal around his neck.
“Unity, Sacrifice, Attitude – what it takes to be the best in the world. These men live and breathe it,” Patel wrote on social media, where he posted photos of himself celebrating with the team in the locker room.
Patel added, ” Now Team USA are gold medal champions, legends standing on the shoulders of giants. Thank you for representing the greatest country on earth, in the greatest game ever created.”
He included several emojis — a fist bump, American flag and a hockey stick — then said, “congrats boys.”
Steven Cheung, the White House’s communications director, appeared on Monday to publicly defend Patel and the video, telling MS Now reporter Carol Leonnig on X, “don’t be mad because America won.”
Cheung was responding to Leonnig, who posted a video of Patel on social media and said the FBI had said it was “strictly a business trip.” Cheung said Patel was also meeting with security teams in Italy.
-ABC News’ Fritz Farrow contributed to this report.
Ice agents look on as travelers stand in long lines at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport, March 23, 2026 in Atlanta. (Megan Varner/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began fanning out at more than a dozen airports across the nation on Monday to assume some of the duties of Transportation Security Administration officers affected by a federal government funding crisis.
“What I see ICE agents doing is helping TSA plug the holes of security,” White House Border Czar Tom Homan told ABC News on Monday.
President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the ICE agents assigned to airports will also continue to enforce immigration laws.
“They really are a high-level group of people and they love it because they’re able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That’s very fertile territory,” Trump said during a gaggle with reporters on the tarmac in Palm Beach, Florida. “But that’s not why they’re there. They’re really there to help.”
Homan said that if ICE agents see “illegal activity,” they will take action because they are federal law enforcement officers.
Asked whether the ICE agents will be carrying out immigration enforcement at airports, Homan said, “We’re not going to ignore illegal conduct in the airport whether it’s human trafficking, whether it’s alien smuggling with somebody that’s wanted, whether it’s … someone that they believe they have reasonable suspicion to talk to because they feel there’s a criminal activity in front of them.”
“Of course, anybody would need probable cause to make any arrests, but yeah, their law enforcement officers and they’re not going to ignore the law while we’re there,” Homan said.
“I’m leaving it up to the TSA Administrator, who’s an expert airport operations,” Homan added. “Where can we plug the holes? Where can we increase security, especially in this heightened security environment, because what’s going on the world? Where can we help you to move those lines and American people quicker to inspections while the same time maintaining security at the airport?”
As ICE agents began showing up at airports on Monday, Trump earlier posted a message on social media asking them to refrain from wearing masks while helping with airport security.
“I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports,” Trump said in his post, adding that he is a “BIG proponent” of ICE agents wearing masks when they “search for, and are forced to deal with, hardened criminals.”
Asked by reporters on Monday on Air Force One why he wants ICE agents to remove their masks at airports, Trump replied, “Because the people coming into the airport, typically speaking, aren’t murderers, killers, drug dealers, etc. There may be a few of them. But there aren’t many.”
Immigration officials wearing masks has been a key issue for critics in Trump’s nationwide mass deportation program.
Trump added that typical travelers at airports are “people that want to come into the country, and that want to leave the country, going to maybe their home countries, so I didn’t think it was an appropriate look for an airport.”
ICE agents were spotted by ABC News at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport early Monday.
The agents appeared to be helping with crowd control at the airport amid long lines of travelers trying to get through security. At one point, lines stretched outside the Atlanta airport’s terminals.
DHS funding battle continues
Democrats have blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to push for policy reforms to ICE, whose aggressive tactics in enforcing immigration laws have prompted protests and lawsuits across the country.
The DHS reforms that Democratic lawmakers have proposed include requiring ICE agents not to wear face masks, be equipped with body cameras and have warrants signed by a judge before entering homes and businesses.
Republicans have, so far, rejected those proposals.
ICE and TSA are both under the umbrella of DHS. But while ICE has remained funded through appropriations from Trump’s tax and spending bill passed last summer, key DHS agencies like TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard are left unfunded.
Approximately 60,000 TSA officers have gone over a month with partial pay and last week began getting no paychecks as the stalemate over DHS funding continues.
Some TSA officers have begun calling out sick or quitting as they missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began on Feb. 14. DHS said that more than 400 TSA officers have quit so far.
Confusion over duties of ICE agents
On Sunday, Homan said the deployment of ICE would largely free up TSA agents for specialized tasks, like passenger and bag screening.
Homan, however, said ICE agents are not trained to do specialized work like screening passengers and running X-ray machines.
“But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant role, such as guarding an exit, so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”
Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Homan said that “ICE can check identification before people enter the screening area.”
But in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemed to contradict Homan.
Asked by Jon Karl, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, whether the ICE agents have any practical experience in manning airport security lines, Duffy said, “They run those same type of security machines at the Southern border, right? Packages come through or people come through. They run similar assets.”
Duffy added that ICE agents could also manage the flow of travelers through airport security and help TSA with administrative tasks.
“It depends on who shows up. Every single day will dictate how long these lines are,” Duffy said. “And you don’t know as travelers are trying to figure out, do I have to come an hour-and-a-half early? Do I have to come four hours early? They don’t know until the day of or the afternoon of their flight.”
Homan attempted to clarify what duties ICE agents would have at the airports during an interview on Monday with ABC News. Homan said that Duffy might have been referring to machines used for luggage and other packages that ICE agents already run at airports.
Homan told ABC News that ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) “have a footprint of all the airports, because that’s where we open investigations on currency smuggling and human trafficking.”
“So ICE is involved with baggage investigations on that. So there is a sort of screening,” Homan said.
Police officials inspect the crime scene following an exchange of gunfire by the U.S. Secret Service and a gunman on the National Mall on May 4, 2026, in Washington, DC. Police say a gunman shot at a Secret Service agent and wounded a bystander before being shot by police. (Photo by Andrew Leyden/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Secret Service officers exchanged gunfire with an armed man near the White House property in Washington, D.C., on Monday, authorities said.
The suspect and a juvenile bystander were struck during the exchange of gunfire, according to the U.S. Secret Service.
The suspect has been identified as 45-year-old Michael Marx, according to multiple law enforcement sources. He has a Texas driver’s license and no obvious connection to Washington, and authorities are working to learn why he was in the city, sources said Tuesday.
Authorities are executing search warrants on his phone, digital media and other locations to try and determine if he posed any threat to specific individuals or entities, including President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, sources said.
The shooting occurred around 3:30 p.m. Monday near the National Mall, outside the perimeter of the White House complex, according to U.S. Secret Service Deputy Director Matt Quinn.
A plainclothes Secret Service officer observed a “suspicious individual that appeared to have a firearm,” Quinn said during a press briefing.
Uniformed Secret Service police briefly followed the suspect and, upon making contact, he fled on foot and fired in the direction of the officers, Quinn said.
The officers returned fire, striking the suspect, Quinn said. The suspect was transported to a hospital, according to Quinn.
Marx was struck multiple times and remains hospitalized in serious but stable condition, sources said.
At least one bystander, a male juvenile, is believed to have been shot by the suspect and sustained non-life-threatening injuries, according to Quinn. The victim is also being treated at a hospital, he said.
“Everything I’ve seen leads me to believe, and the investigators believe, he was struck by the suspect,” Quinn said.
Marx has not yet been charged.
The shooting comes over a week after an alleged assassination attempt on Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner.
“Whether or not it was directed to the president or not, I don’t know, but we will find out,” Quinn said.
Not long before the shooting occurred, Vance’s motorcade passed through the area, Quinn said. The suspect did not approach the motorcade, according to Quinn.
The use-of-force investigation will be conducted by the Metropolitan Police Department, Quinn said.
The incident prompted a brief evacuation of the White House North Lawn.
ABC News’ Pierre Thomas, Luke Barr and Jack Date contributed to this report.
In these photos released by the University of South Florida Police Department, Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy are shown. (University of South Florida Police Department)
(TAMPA, Fla.) — A person who investigators said was linked to the disappearance of two University of Southern Florida doctoral students was taken into custody Friday, police said.
The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said they responded to a “barricaded subject connected” to the probe into the whereabouts of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, who went missing on April 16.
“The situation has been resolved. One individual is in custody,” the sheriff’s office said in a Facebook post Friday afternoon, without giving more details.
Limon and Britsy, both 27, were last seen at separate locations in the Tampa area on April 16, according to the USF Police Department.
Officials received new information to warrant upgrading their status from missing to endangered, which indicates they are at risk of physical injury or death, the Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office said Thursday.
The sheriff did not provide any more details about the investigation or search efforts.
Limon and Bristy are friends, and a mutual acquaintance reported them missing, campus police said.
Limon, who is pursuing a degree in geography, environmental science and policy, was last seen at his Tampa residence at approximately 9 a.m. on April 16, according to police.
Bristy, who is studying chemical engineering, was last seen at the USF Tampa campus at the Natural & Environmental Sciences Building at approximately 10 a.m. that day, police said.
Both students have been entered into state and national missing persons’ databases.
Anyone with information on their whereabouts is urged to call the University of South Florida Police Department at 813-974-2628.
-ABC News’ Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
