Missing USF students deemed ‘endangered’ by officials as search continues
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.) — Investigators have listed that two University of Southern Florida doctoral students who went missing last week are endangered as the search continues.
Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, 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 the upgrade to an endangered status, 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.
Dolores Huerta, the iconic civil rights leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, spoke to ABC News’ John Quiñones. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — Dolores Huerta, the iconic civil rights leader and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, said she decided to speak out to support other women who have come forward after a New York Times report revealed accusations of sexual assault against the late labor leader Cesar Chávez.
“And to think that somebody that we looked at as our hero and our leader — you know, it’s pretty horrible,” Huerta said in a network exclusive with John Quiñones.
According to the Times, the late farmworker organizer, who became a national civil rights icon, used his position of power to exploit some of the women and minors who worked and volunteered in his movement for his own sexual gratification.
Chavez died in 1993 at age 66.
On Wednesday, Huerta said in a statement that she was “manipulated and pressured into having sex” with Chávez. Huerta, 95, stated she had two separate sexual encounters with Chávez in the 1960s — one in which she said she was pressured to have sex with him and the other in which she said she was forced against her will.
“Your first name, Dolores, in English translates into pain or aching. Have you been suffering in silence, holding these secrets all these decades?” asked Quiñones.
“It was very hard, it was very hard to keep this. But, you know, I think I am building on the courage of these young women — that they had the courage to come out and say what happened to them. And God knows what they’ve suffered,” Huerta said. “It was time.”
According to the Times, one of the women who spoke out alleged she was 12 years old when Chávez first touched her inappropriately and 15 when he raped her in California. Another woman alleged she was summoned for sexual encounters with Chávez dozens of times over a four-year period, starting when she was 13 and he was 45.
Huerta said Chávez “had an evil side to him.”
“Cesar spoke about and practiced the nonviolent movement,” Huerta said. “Well, what could be more violent than that?”
Huerta says both encounters she had with Chávez led to pregnancies that she kept secret, later arranging for the children to be raised by other families.
“I thought that abortion was a sin,” Huerta told Quiñones. “I have since changed my mind on those issues because I now realize that women have to have a right to abortion. And by the way, abortion was also illegal at that time.”
She told ABC News one of the children was raised by her brother and the other was raised by a family friend. When asked about Chavez’s legacy amid the allegations, Huerta said she hopes that “his legacy would live on in the things that were accomplished.”
Huerta’s career as an activist began in 1955 when she joined the Community Service Organization, where she met Chavez. Together, they founded the National Farm Workers Association in 1962, which later became the UFW.
Huerta played a pivotal role in the Delano grape strike of 1965 and led the subsequent national boycott of table grapes, which successfully pressured growers to improve wages and working conditions.
In 2012, President Barack Obama awarded Huerta the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Huerta said she remains committed to her work, focusing on current threats to labor rights and the treatment of immigrants in detention centers.
“My intention is just to do the work, make lives better for women, make lives better for working people,” Huerta said. “We know that the job isn’t finished yet.”
“At my age, 96, as long as God gives me strength and the little energy that I have left, I want to just continue doing the work to make life better for women, for children, and of course, for farmworkers and workers in general,” she added.
“I know we have a long fight ahead of us, even in our country right now, because so many of the gains that have been won over the years are being taken away from us.”
In this screen grab from a video, law enforcement vehicles are shown at a homeless encampment in Los Angeles, where former NFL player Kevin Johnson was found dead, Jan. 23, 2026. (KABC)
(LOS ANGELES) — Investigators are working to determine whether four murders of homeless people in Los Angeles that occurred between October and January are connected, officials said.
The killings occurred in the same general location, the 1300 block of East 120th Street in the unincorporated area of Los Angeles, according to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau.
Among the killings was that of former NFL player Kevin Johnson, whom investigators said was found dead on Jan. 21 at a homeless encampment area, as reported by local ABC News station KABC. Johnson, 55, suffered from a blunt force trauma and stab wounds, they said. All four victims lived in homeless encampments, according to officials.
All four murders remain under active investigation.
The string of murders in the Compton Creek area began on Oct. 5, 2025, when a woman, identified as 52-year-old Michelle Steele, was shot in the head, sources close to the investigation told KABC. She died in the hospital on Nov. 12, 2025, they said.
Three weeks later, on Dec. 4, a homeless man identified as 52-year-old Octavio Arias was murdered in the same area, KABC reported. Arias died from head and neck trauma, according to L.A. County Medical Examiner records.
The fourth victim, following the murder of Johnson, was identified as Mauro Alfaro, also in his 50s. Alfaro was killed on Jan. 26, and the cause of death was blunt force trauma, sources told KABC.
Investigators are now looking into the possibility that all four murders were done by the same killer, KABC reported. A suspect has not been identified, sources inside the L.A. County Sheriff’s Homicide Bureau told KABC.
Detectives are still trying to determine motives in the killings and trying to figure out if the suspect is someone who is upset with homeless people being in that area, or if drugs or gangs may be involved, sources told KABC. There is no concrete evidence linking the cases together, according to sources.
Johnson played for the Philadelphia Eagles and Oakland Raiders from 1995 to 1997, according to KABC.
Fraudsters are posing as ICE officers, immigration lawyers and federal judges. (Evelin Flores)
(NEW YORK) — Twenty-year-old Edith from Guatemala has remained in her home with her 1-year-old baby Justin for weeks after selling her only means of transportation.
“Being stuck at home, locked up inside, is very, very difficult for us,” she told ABC News.
Edith, a U.S. citizen who was raised in Guatemala and requested she only be referred to by her first name out of concern over her privacy, sold her car and spent her life savings to pay someone who she thought was an attorney to help her husband Dimas, who was arrested and placed in immigration custody in March.
After Dimas, the undocumented breadwinner of the family, was quickly sent to a detention center in Georgia, Edith sought an immigration lawyer on social media, where a stranger recommended a supposed Florida-based attorney.
“I was scheduled for a video call, and the woman who said she was a lawyer said that to get someone out of immigration detention, a habeas corpus needed to be filed,” Edith told ABC News.
Edith retained the woman and began communicating with her frequently. She completed documents the woman sent her, and began sending the woman payments. She even received documents that appeared to be from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the federal agency that oversees immigration services.
“She began asking for money, $500, $600, $1,750, $4,000 for the bond, petition, copies [of forms],” Edith said.
But last month, when the woman was scheduled to participate in a video call for Dimas’ initial hearing before an immigration judge, she never appeared on the call. Edith’s husband later told her that the judge said that the attorney wasn’t registered in the court system.
“He said, ‘They’re scamming you,'” Edith said. “I said, ‘But why? Why me?’ I started to feel really bad and I didn’t know what to do.”
After confronting the woman she had hired, Edith realized she had been scammed out of more than $10,000 — her life savings. And with all her money gone, she was unable to pay for a legitimate lawyer to represent her husband, who last month was ordered deported by an immigration judge.
‘A billion-dollar industry’ Edith is one of many victims across the country that law enforcement and immigration lawyers say are being targeted by bad actors seizing on the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda.
Some scammers, according to officials, are using artificial intelligence to hold fake immigration court proceedings with scammers wearing judicial robes and law enforcement uniforms, using fake documents that appear to be from federal agencies.
“In my experience, this is a billion-dollar industry,” said Jorge Rivera, an immigration lawyer in Florida.
Rivera told ABC News that scammers, including the woman who Edith hired, have used his credentials and his law firm’s information to target immigrants.
“[Victims] have shown up to our office and they say, ‘What happened to my case?'” he said.
ABC News found cases of sophisticated immigration scams across the country, including in New York, where five defendants pleaded not guilty to charges accusing them of holding “sham immigration proceedings” including asylum interviews and court appearances.
According to the complaint, one victim ended up missing their real immigration hearing and was deported.
“In doing so, the defendants demonstrated a complete and utter disregard for the potentially life-altering consequences that their actions inflicted on their victims — vulnerable individuals who not only lost significant funds, but also missed their actual immigration court appearances,” prosecutors said.
And last month, four people in Orlando, Florida, were charged with setting up a fake immigration law firm and extorting millions from victims. They have not yet entered formal pleas.
‘It’s heartbreaking’ Rivera said immigration scams have gotten “exponentially worse” during the second Trump administration, because more pathways for immigration relief “have closed.”
“There’s been pauses, there’s more denials, undoubtedly, it’s more difficult to be able to resolve your immigration status,” he said. “So this is a perfect storm for the criminals.”
Rivera said that if those seeking help are “talking to a legitimate attorney and they’re talking to a fraudster, and the fraudster is giving them hope and giving them possibilities, they’re going to go with the person that’s giving them the hope.”
Rivera said he has been working with law enforcement across the country to send them information on alleged scammers, and has been reaching out to social media companies to take down fake profiles.
In a statement to ABC News, the Department of Homeland Security said scammers are also “pretending to be ICE and USCIS to trick people into giving them money or personal information.”
The DHS said that officials will never call out of the blue, demand money, or accept payments using gift cards or crypto currency.
Scammers are also targeting immigrant advocacy groups like Catholic Charities, Kevin Brennan, Catholic Charities’ vice president, told ABC News.
“It’s really been over the past year or so that we started hearing reports of people claiming to be Catholic Charities and other organizations that provide legal services to immigrants and refugees and using social media to fraudulently offer services, express urgency, ask for money,” Brennan told ABC News.
“It’s heartbreaking to see people who are in need and looking for help and being taken advantage of in such a terrible way by these fraudsters and criminals,” he said.
In Edith’s case, the possibility of getting legitimate legal help to try to get her husband released before he’s deported is slipping away. After an immigration judge ordered her husband deported on April 28, he is currently in ICE custody awaiting removal to Guatemala.
Edith said she will likely go to Guatemala to remain with her husband.
“It’s very ugly, and I don’t wish it on anyone else — to a person who is alone and without support,” she said. “This is not easy.”
