Newly sworn in Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem participates in an immigration enforcement operation in New York City, Jan. 28, 2025. (DHS)
(NEW YORK) — Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem joined an immigration enforcement operation in New York City on Tuesday.
Noem posted a brief video of an arrest to her social media account.
The secretary is witnessing both criminal and civil enforcement operations, according to sources familiar with the actions in New York.
The criminal case involves a member of a Venezuelan gang that took over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado, the sources said. One alleged gang member was arrested in the Bronx.
The New York division of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration said it was working with partners at the Justice Department and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to assist the Department of Homeland Security with enforcement efforts.
Noem’s appearance for the operations came just days after she was confirmed by the Senate.
Noem, the former governor of South Dakota, will be charged with overseeing Trump’s immigration crackdown along with “border czar” Tom Homan.
“The Trump Administration will once-again empower our brave men and women in law enforcement to do their jobs and remove criminal aliens and illegal gangs from our country,” she said in a statement after her confirmation. “We will fully equip our intelligence and law enforcement to detect and prevent terror threats and will deliver rapid assistance and disaster relief to Americans in crisis.”
(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans signaled they’re going full steam ahead on significant changes to Medicaid, despite pressure from Democrats and even some moderates in their party.
The suggested overhauls to the program, which provides health care for lower-income Americans and those with disabilities, are part of an effort to slash federal spending and hit the House GOP’s goal of cutting $2 trillion over a decade from the federal budget.
“I support any plan that helps Medicaid be sustainable. And the current trajectory of Medicaid is not,” said Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, who recently declared he’s running for governor of Florida — a state with millions of Medicaid recipients.
“Medicaid is supposed to be for people who are disabled, for children, for single parents with multiple kids. That’s what Medicaid is for. And if we continue down this line where it just becomes a bigger and bigger portfolio of beneficiaries, the federal government is not going to be able to afford the match,” Donalds added.
In a letter to Speaker Mike Johnson, moderate Republican members of the Congressional Hispanic Conference warned “slashing Medicaid would have serious consequences, particularly in rural and predominantly Hispanic communities.”
Asked what he would say to Republican colleagues who are worried cuts to Medicaid will have a serious impact on lower income Americans, Donalds replied, “I think some of that is, quite frankly, fear-based. We know the Democrats are already running ads about Medicaid and about how what we’re trying to do is damaging to people and it’s just simply not true.”
Some GOP members have floated adding new work requirements to the program and capping the amount of money states receive to run their Medicaid programs — a pitch that could drastically reduce the number of people on Medicaid and limit the funding available for beneficiaries.
“I don’t consider that a cut,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said about work requirements. “I don’t consider block-granting to the states a cut. The Democrats are using that but it’s just not right.”
The exact plan is still unclear. Approving the House budget blueprint Tuesday night was just the first step in a months-long budgeting process that could stretch into the summer.
“We’re very early in this process,” New York Rep. Nicole Malliotakis, a moderate who represents a Staten Island district with a significant number of Medicaid recipients, said.
“Maybe you should wait until we actually do the work and highlight what we’re going to do,” she said.
Republicans also believe they can achieve a significant amount of their spending cuts by targeting fraud in Medicaid and Medicare. But eliminating all fraud and waste would likely only chip away at Republicans’ goal.
Asked about that approach, Malliotakis said, “There’s about $50 billion a year in fraud, just within the Medicaid program.”
But whether Republicans can get to the kinds of numbers they’re talking about by just eliminating fraud, Malliotakis said, “Well, yes. Within the health care. You’re going to look at that, you’re going to look at the loopholes the states have put in place.
Meanwhile, Democrats are pouncing.
An internal Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee memo first obtained by ABC News shows Democrats aim to make Medicaid cuts “politically perilous for House Republicans” in the November 2026 midterm elections.
“Rather than delivering on their campaign promises to lower the high cost of living, [Republicans] are poised to pass an extreme budget scheme that would decimate affordable health care and take food off the tables of millions of American families,” the memo reads.
(WASHINGTON) — “Border czar” Tom Homan said President Donald Trump won’t hesitate to use the U.S. military if Mexican cartels target American troops on the southern border.
“I think the cartels would be foolish to take on the military, but we know they’ve taken on the Mexican military before, but now we have the United States military,” he told ABC News Live on Thursday.
“Do I expect violence to escalate? Absolutely, because the cartels are making record amounts of money,” Homan said, going on to say that they continue to secure the border, “We’re taking money out of their pocket.”
Homan said the troops “need to protect themselves” and that he would send a warning to the cartels if any U.S. soldiers are harmed: “The wrath of President Trump’s going to come down.”
“He has the ability to wipe them off the face of the Earth,” he said.
On his first day in office, Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border, allowing the Department of Defense to deploy armed forces to the region.
He also signed an executive order to designate drug cartels and other criminal organizations as foreign terrorist organizations or specifically designated global terrorists.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement has also been conducting raids across the nation to round up undocumented migrants for deportation as part of the Trump administration’s hard-line immigration policies.
The administration has said the first priority in these raids is to target violent criminals.
About three-quarters — 76% — of the 14,000 migrants who have been arrested so far are criminals, Homan told ABC News Live on Thursday.
“Where do the collaterals come? The collateral arrests happen when we’re looking for the bad guy and we find others with them,” he said.
Homan said he doesn’t have a daily quota on arrests of undocumented migrants, saying, “I want to arrest as many as we can arrest.”
“If you’re in the country illegally, you’re not off the table, but you’re not going to be a priority,” he said.
Asked how the administration contends with deporting families back to dangerous countries, Homan responded, “What country is dangerous?”
Many migrants entering the U.S. come from countries such as Haiti and Venezuela, which have the strictest “do not travel” warnings from the State Department due to violence.
“People need to understand what is asylum. Asylum is, you’re escaping fear and persecution from your home government because of race, religion, political affiliation and participation in a specific social group,” he said.
Homan argued there are many “fraudulent” asylum claims that have overwhelmed the system and legitimate asylum-seekers are “sitting in the back seat.”
“What you don’t do to claim asylum is enter the country illegally,” he said. “You go to a port of entry.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump has granted clemency to a pair of Hunter Biden’s former business partners, both of whom accused former President Joe Biden’s son of improperly leveraging his father’s political power to broker overseas business relationships.
Last Tuesday, Trump issued a full pardon to Devon Archer, who was sentenced to more than a year in prison for defrauding a Native American tribal entity in 2022.
Later in the week, Trump commuted the 189-month sentence of Jason Galanis for his role in multiple fraudulent schemes.
Archer and Galanis charted a similar path to their presidential pardons: Both men brokered business ties with Hunter Biden, were later found guilty of unrelated fraud schemes, pleaded with the Biden administration for executive clemency, and, when rebuffed, publicly accused Hunter Biden of improperly trading on his family name to secure overseas business deals.
Galanis went a step further than Archer by retaining a high-powered Washington lawyer with close ties to the Trump political machine: Mark Paoletta, whom Trump recently tapped for general counsel at the White House Office of Management and Budget.
Paoletta did not respond to a request for comment regarding Galanis’ commutation.
Last year, Galanis testified before the House Oversight Committee about the Biden family’s business arrangements from a jail cell in Alabama. He asserted that Joe Biden was more engaged in Hunter Biden’s business dealings than the former president publicly let on, and that “the entire value add of Hunter Biden to our business was his family name and his access to his father, Vice President Joe Biden.”
Joe Biden has forcefully denied any wrongdoing and Republicans were unable to find evidence that he used his political perch to support his son’s businesses. A House impeachment inquiry concluded last August without any articles of impeachment drawn up.
Matthew Schwartz, an attorney for Archer, told ABC News that “the American jury system is an amazing thing, but as the trial judge held in finding serious questions about Devon Archer’s innocence, sometimes juries get it wrong.”
Schwartz said that Trump’s “pardon corrects a serious injustice, and finally allows an innocent man to be free of the threat of misguided prosecution. Mr. Archer is deeply appreciative of the President.”
