Justice Department releases additional documents from Epstein files
Jeffrey Epstein is seen in this image released by the Department of Justice in Washington, December 19, 2025 (U.S. Justice Department)
(NEW YORK) — The Justice Department on Monday released additional documents from its files on the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Following a congressional mandate to release all of its Epstein files by Friday, the Justice Department on Friday released thousands of documents — ranging from investigative material to photos taken by Epstein and his friends — but said it was unable to fully release all the files by the deadline due to the vetting process required to protect Epstein’s victims.
A group of alleged Epstein victims on Monday accused the Justice Department of missteps, including violations of the law, in releasing what they said was “a fraction of the files,” which were “riddled with abnormal and extreme redactions with no explanation” while “numerous victim identities were left unredacted, causing real and immediate harm.”
Epstein, the wealthy financier and convicted sex offender, died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019.
The Epstein Transparency Act, passed last month by Congress and signed by President Donald Trump following blowback the administration received from MAGA supporters seeking the release of the materials, contains exemptions to protect victims’ identities, as well as exemptions for records that “would jeopardize an active federal investigation or ongoing prosecution, provided that such withholding is narrowly tailored and temporary.”
Khelin Marcano, Stiven Prieto and their one-year-old daughter Amalia were released from immigration detention this month. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — As Khelin Marcano was preparing for her routine scheduled appointment with Immigration and Customs Enforcement in December, she debated packing a bag full of her 1-year-old daughter’s clothes. While she and her husband had been attending appointments without issue, she knew others were being detained at government buildings by immigration authorities.
“When they told us we were being detained, it felt like we already knew, all along,” Marcano told ABC News.
The family, including 1-year-old Amalia, was quickly sent from El Paso to Texas’ Dilley immigration detention center, where they were detained for 60 days — joining hundreds of other families that the government has held for durations that advocates say exceed the limits established by federal court rulings.
Those restrictions stem from the Flores Settlement, a 1997 legal agreement that a federal court has interpreted to mean that the government generally should not hold children in immigration custody for more than 20 days.
As of last month, there were about 1,400 people being held at Dilley, including children and parents, according to RAICES, a legal immigrant advocacy group. The facility was closed during the Biden administration and was re-opened last year as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown ramped up.
The 60 days that Marcano, her husband Stiven Prieto, and their daughter were held there is three times the general legal limit permitted by the settlement.
“The Trump administration is holding children and families in detention for prolonged periods of time, weeks, months,” Elora Mukherjee, the family’s lawyer, told ABC News. “Children and families at the Dilley facility don’t have access to sufficient clean drinking water, where they don’t have access to sufficient nutritious food, [and] don’t have access to adequate medical care.
‘Why does this happen to us?’ The family entered the U.S. using the Biden-era Customs and Border Protection app in 2024, according to court documents. They were processed and granted parole to live in the country while applying for asylum. The family was released last week after their 60-day detention and their first court date is scheduled for 2027, according to their attorney.
A spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said the family “was released into the country under the Biden administration,” and confirmed their detention.
“For years, the Flores consent decree has been a tool of the left to promote an open borders agenda,” the DHS spokesperson said. “It is long overdue for a single district in California to stop managing the Executive Branch’s immigration functions. The Trump administration is committed to restoring common sense to our immigration system.”
Early on during their detention, the family says 1-year-old Amalia developed a persistent fever. Marcano told ABC News that despite her repeated pleas for medication, the medical staff dismissed the symptoms.
“The doctor told me that fever was a good sign because it meant she was actively fighting a virus,” Marcano said in Spanish. “I got really upset … and told her that whatever the case was, a fever is not a good thing. If she didn’t know that fever could kill people, or that fever could cause convulsions, fever would never be good.”
In a habeas petition Marcano filed against the government, she and her attorney claimed the Dilley facility lacked basic hygiene and nutrition, and that they saw bugs in the food. They alleged that the tap water smelled so strongly of chlorine that the family spent their limited funds on bottled water for their daughter.
Marcano told ABC News that at one point during their detention, Amalia seemed to lose her strength and collapsed in her arms.
“I grabbed her and I dressed her and I took her back to the clinic, and I began to argue with the doctors, asking who would be responsible for my daughter if something happened to her,” Marcano said.
Marcano said it was only then that staff at Dilley transported her and Amalia by ambulance to a regional hospital, and later to a larger hospital in San Antonio. The 1-year-old was diagnosed with COVID-19 and a respiratory virus. according to the family and their habeas petition.
According to Marcano’s complaint, hospital staff provided her with a nebulizer and Albuterol to treat Amalia’s respiratory distress — but when they returned to the Dilley facility, the staff immediately confiscated both the nebulizer and the medication.
“They took her treatment away,” Marcano said. “Why does this happen to us if we have done everything right? I was begging the officers to please help me get out of there, and no one listened to me.”
The family was released together shortly after they filed a habeas petition. Marcano told ABC News that, while inside the facility, she met families with pregnant women and saw children as young as 2 months old.
Long-term effects Several immigrant advocates and attorneys told ABC News that the Trump administration is keeping children and families who are seeking asylum and other forms of legal relief in prolonged detention.
In Minneapolis, where 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos was detained along with his father on their way home from school last month, local school officials told ABC News that immigration authorities had detained four other students from the district. One of them, 11-year-old Elizabeth Zuna Caisaguano, was detained along with her mother for more than one month, according to the family’s attorney, Bobby Painter.
“They were pulled over by ICE and pulled out of their car, thrown on an airplane and sent to Dilley, all in the span of maybe 24 hours,” the attorney said.
Some families have been held for months, attorneys told ABC News.
“The effects of detention are long-term on children,” Mukherjee, Marcano’s attorney, told ABC News. “Children who are with their parents and who are safe with their parents should never be detained when it’s not in a child’s best interest.”
The DHS, in a statement, said “being in detention is a choice.”
“We encourage all parents to take control of their departure with the CBP Home App,” the spokesperson said. “The United States is offering illegal aliens $2,600 and a free flight to self-deport now.”
Since being released, Marcano said her daughter hardly cries at night anymore like she did when they were at the detention center.
“We’re feeling very good and thank god for his blessings,” she told ABC News. “We’re still a little on edge about what we were planning to do given everything ahead. So we’re left here thinking about what is going to happen to us and that gives us a bit of fear.”
“Are they going to leave us alone?” Marcano said. “That’s what we hope, but we don’t know.”
The booking photo for Antonio Moore. Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office
(PALM BEACH GARDENS, Fla.) — A 65-year-old woman was fatally stabbed at a Barnes & Noble store in Florida, authorities said.
A suspect is in custody, according to police.
The incident occurred shortly before 8 p.m. on Monday at a Barnes & Noble in Palm Beach Gardens, according to police.
Officers responding to the stabbing found the victim — identified by police as Rita Loncharich — inside the store and “immediately rendered aid,” the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department said.
She was transported to a local hospital, where she died from her injuries, police said.
The suspect allegedly ran out of the store following the stabbing, according to police.
Witnesses provided a description and investigators located the suspect — identified by police as 40-year-old Antonio Moore — a short time later, authorities said.
Moore was booked Tuesday morning on a charge of first-degree premeditated murder and is being held without bond, online jail records show.
“This investigation is active and ongoing,” the Palm Beach Gardens Police Department said in a press release on Tuesday. “Investigators are still trying to determine a motive for this attack.”
ABC News has reached out to Barnes & Noble for comment.
Christine Banfield is seen in an undated photo. Obtained by ABC News
(FAIRFAX, Va.) — Brazilian au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães, who went along with former IRS agent Brendan Banfield in a northern Virginia double murder plot, was sentenced to to 10 years in prison with two years of probation.
On Friday morning, Fairfax County Judge Penney Azcarate decided to give the 25-year-old the maximum sentence, which was up to 10 years on a manslaughter charge for which she pleaded guilty in 2024.
“Your actions were deliberate, self-serving, and demonstrated a profound disregard for human life,” Azcarate said in delivering her ruling. “So, let’s get straight: You do not deserve anything other than incarceration and a life of reflection on what you have done to the victim and this family.”
A new “20/20” episode about the case, “The Au Pair, The Affair and Murder” is scheduled to air Friday, Feb. 20, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
Magalhães and Banfield were separately arrested over their roles in the Feb. 24, 2023, murders of Joseph Ryan and Banfield’s wife, Christine Banfield, which were committed inside the Banfield home.
Early in the investigation, detectives discovered evidence suggesting that Banfield and Magalhães were having an affair — and that they had plotted to kill his 37-year-old wife.
Part of that plot, according to prosecutors and Magalhães’ testimony, involved covertly creating a profile for, and thus masquerading as, Christine on a social media site for sexual fetishes.
Ryan, 39, took the bait in what prosecutors called the “catfishing” scheme. Ryan communicated back and forth with the profile account that was allegedly posing as Christine, as they together crafted a rape fantasy scenario using a knife, chains and rope.
“I have caused pain that cannot be measured. I pray for forgiveness from the Benson family, and from the Joseph Ryan family,” Magalhães said during Friday’s sentencing hearing.
“There is nothing I could possibly do to make it up to you, for your loss. There are so many regrets, this is my biggest. It’s a tragedy I have been carrying with me, and I know I can never take back the devastation of what I have done,” she added.
Saying she lost herself in the relationship with Banfield, she has changed in jail over the past three years.
At the time, Magalhães and Banfield told police they came home to find Ryan — a stranger to them — stabbing Christine Banfield to death. Banfield and Magalhães each fired a shot, killing Ryan, they said both in their 911 call and to responding officers at the scene.
In October 2023, Magalhães was charged with the second-degree murder of Ryan, as she had admitted to firing the second, fatal shot.
One year later, Magalhães took a plea deal with prosecutors, turning on Banfield in exchange for a lesser charge of manslaughter. Prosecutors also promised to recommend to the judge upon sentencing that Magalhães only get time served.
With that agreement, Magalhães sat for nearly four hours of interviews with prosecutors, largely confirming the theory detectives had developed about their scheme.
Magalhães also took the stand in the trial against Banfield in January, as he maintained his innocence. During his three-week-long trial, Banfield even took the stand, testifying in his own defense.
After two days — nearly nine hours total — of deliberations in the trial, the jury reached a verdict on Feb. 2. The jury found Banfield guilty on all four counts, which included two counts of aggravated murder, one count of child endangerment, and possession of a firearm in commission of a felony.
Family and friends of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan filled the courtroom Friday morning for Magalhães’ sentencing.
Joining remotely online from Florida, Ryan’s mother, Deirdre Fisher, delivered her victim impact statement. She said her son was born two days before Christmas, making it a special holiday for them. Since Ryan’s murder, she has not been able to take down her Christmas tree, which sits behind the urn holding her son’s ashes.
“I say good morning to him each day when I turn on the tree’s lights, and I tell him I love him each night when I turn off the lights,” Fisher told the court.
Fisher said she has missed so many milestones now, including the chance to be a grandmother. There have been many times, Fisher said, when she’s reached for the phone to call her son, only to remember that he can’t and won’t answer.
Ryan’s aunt, Sangeeta Ryan, delivered her impact statement from the courtroom, pausing periodically between sobs.
“He was fun-loving and loved from the beginning. He was inquisitive, curious, smart, charming, and so dang talkative,” she said.
Ryan’s aunt described her nephew’s love for animals and the environment, noting that he often rescued and adopted dogs.
Sangeeta Ryan, added that he also was a dedicated member of their family, especially in taking care of his grandmother, who, she said, sold her home in wake of Ryan’s murder to “dodge memories, grief, and reporters.”
Acknowledging that Magalhães did eventually come forward with the truth, Sangeeta Ryan said that this still was not an act of heroism on Magalhães’ part.
“This could have been a very different ending where Juliana saved two lives,” she said could have been the case if Magalhães had not gone along with Banfield’s plot.
As Magalhães was charged only in Ryan’s murder, Judge Azcarate ruled that prosecutors could not include victim impact statements that Christine Banfield’s family members had prepared.
The death penalty was abolished in Virginia in 2021, meaning that, following his conviction, Banfield is facing life in prison without parole.
