More rain on the way after flash flooding slams Pacific Northwest
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A series of storm systems fueled by an atmospheric river brought flash flooding to the Pacific Northwest this weekend — and more rain is on the way.
The new system will bring more heavy rain, snow, gusty winds and the threat of avalanches to the Northwest and northern Rockies on Monday and Tuesday.
Damaging winds reaching 60 to 80 mph are possible from the Washington and Oregon coast all the way inland to Montana.
The Spokane area in eastern Washington was inundated with 3 to 6 inches of rain this weekend, washing out roads. Now, the additional heavy rain could cause flooding in western Washington and Oregon on Monday.
In the northern Rockies, a flood watch has been issued for Montana and Idaho due to the snow melt and rain.
In the highest elevations of the northern Rockies, an avalanche warning has been issued after the rain and snow caused the snowpack to become unstable.
These storms are also bringing huge waves up to 34 feet to the West Coast.
(GUANTANAMO BAY) — One of the Venezuelan migrants who is believed to be among the latest group sent to El Salvador on Sunday night was in Guantanamo Bay and had a final order of removal, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Maiker Espinoza Escalona was the lead plaintiff in one of the Guantanamo cases brought by the ACLU against the Department of Homeland Security filed last month. His partner is currently detained in a detention center in Texas and his two-year-old daughter is in HHS custody, according to the ACLU.
“The government opposed our request for TRO on the ground that he was not in imminent danger of being sent from the U.S. to Guantanamo, but told the Court they would alert it within 2 business days if he or other Plaintiffs were transferred to Guantanamo,” Lee Gelernt, an attorney for the ACLU told ABC News. “The government has apparently chosen to use a loophole and transfer him on a Friday night, thereby avoiding notice to the Court at this point. He has apparently now been transferred to the notorious Salvadoran prison.”
Gelernt said he has serious concerns about the government’s “sudden allegations” against Escalona. “He and others being sent to the Salvadoran prison must be given due process to test the government’s assertions,” Gelernt added.
A White House official tells ABC News that the 17 alleged gang members who were deported to El Salvador last night were not deported under the Alien Enemies Act but under different authorities, including under Title 8 authorities.
It’s not clear whether the individuals including Escalona who were deported would have been protected by the Temporary Restraining Order issued by a federal judge on Friday that blocked the deportation of migrants to countries other than their own without giving them a chance to argue their removal in immigration court.
In a sworn declaration filed in early March before he was allegedly sent to Guantanamo, Escalona said he had been in immigration detention since May 22, 2024, in El Paso, Texas. He entered the country on May 14 and requested asylum, according to his declaration.
“I believe that I am at risk of being transferred because I have a final order of deportation and am from Venezuela,” Escalona said in the sworn declaration. “I also believe that I am going to be transferred to Guantanamo because of my tattoos, even though they have nothing to do with gangs. I have twenty tattoos.”
Escalona went on to list his tattoos he has that include a cross, a crown, the ghost icon for the social media app Snapchat, his niece’s name and the word “Faith” in Spanish.
“I do not want to be transferred to or detained at Guantanamo,” Escalona said in the declaration files in early March. I am afraid of what will happen to me when I get there. “I want access to an attorney to help me get out of detention and figure out what options I have in my immigration case.”
According to Escalona’s sworn declaration and the ACLU, his partner is currently detained in El Paso and his two-year-old daughter is under the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement.
“If I am transferred to Guantanamo, I will be separated from my family,” Escalona said.
(NEW YORK) — Two major winter storms are bearing down on the U.S. this week and are expected to bring some of the highest snow totals of the season for cities including Chicago and Washington, D.C.
The first storm, which spans from Colorado to Delaware, will hit Tuesday morning through Wednesday morning.
By 7 a.m. ET Tuesday, heavy rain is expected from Dallas to Nashville, Tennessee, while snow will be falling from Louisville, Kentucky, to Richmond, Virginia.
The snow will arrive in D.C. by noon on Tuesday and may last for over 12 hours. Some light snow may make it as far north as Philadelphia.
Four to 6 inches of snow is possible for the D.C. and Baltimore region.
Meanwhile, the heavy rain in the South may cause flash flooding.
By the time that first storm leaves the East Coast, the second storm will have already started in the Midwest.
At 7 a.m. ET Wednesday, widespread snow is expected from Colorado to Iowa to Missouri, while heavy rain will be falling from Houston to Louisiana.
In Chicago, the snow will begin around 9 a.m. Wednesday and may last for over 12 hours. Five to 9 inches of snow is possible in the Windy City.
Then, in the East, a mix of rain and freezing rain expected in D.C. and Philadelphia beginning after 5 p.m. Wednesday and continuing overnight.
In New York City and Boston, the snow is forecast to start Wednesday night and then change to rain overnight.
Both storms combined will result in hefty snow totals in the Midwest and the Mid-Atlantic, and potentially flooding rain for a wide swath of the South.
American teacher Stephen Hubbard was taken prisoner by Russian forces in Ukraine. Image via ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — The last time Stephen J. Hubbard was seen in public, he was being led handcuffed into a Moscow courtroom.
The 73-year-old American has spent roughly three years in Russian captivity. In early 2022, he was swept up by the Kremlin’s troops as they occupied parts of Ukraine following Russia’s full-scale invasion. He is believed to be the only American Russia has taken from Ukraine and put on trial.
Russia has convicted Hubbard as a mercenary fighting for Ukraine. But his family, the U.S. government and Ukrainian officials say the reality is that the elderly American was an innocent teacher.
“We didn’t even know if he was dead or alive until July,” Hubbard’s sister, Patricia Hubbard Fox, told ABC News. “It’s dire. His health is dire. It’s been reported he’s passing blood. They need to bring him home.”
Hubbard is one of a string of Americans seized by Russia on dubious charges in recent years, as the Kremlin has seized hostages to use as political bargaining chips, among them WNBA star Brittney Griner and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich. The State Department has designated Hubbard as “wrongfully detained” meaning the U.S. government can negotiate for his release.
In September, Russian state media reported Hubbard pleaded guilty to the mercenary charges. His sister said the allegations were absurd and that he had been forced into the guilty plea after years of torture and mistreatment.
“It’s just a lie,” Patricia said. “Steve was 70 years old, there’s no way he was a mercenary. Steve was an English teacher. It’s an excuse to kidnap Americans. Steve is nothing but a pawn for Russia.”
The State Department called on Russia to release Hubbard.
“He never should have been taken captive,” the State Department said in a statement. “The United States will continue to work for the release of Mr. Hubbard and all other Americans unjustly detained in Russia.”
Born in Big Rapids, Michigan, Hubbard briefly joined the Air Force after high school but left after three years. In the 1980s, he moved to Japan with his second wife, where he spent the next 25 years working as an English teacher, according to his sister. After the couple divorced, he and his son from that marriage moved to Cyprus, where he met a Ukrainian woman.
In 2014, he and the woman moved to Ukraine, settling in Izyum, a small, sleepy city in the country’s east. Hubbard, who doesn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian, continued to teach English online to support himself, his sister said.
Hubbard was in Izyum when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022. Russian troops quickly overran the city and conducted one of the most brutal occupations of the war over the seven months that followed.
After Ukrainian forces liberated Izyum in September 2022, they discovered evidence of Russian atrocities — including hundreds of mass graves in a nearby forest. Soldiers had dumped bodies, with many showing signs of torture.
Hubbard was among the hundreds of civilians detained in Izyum and the surrounding villages during the Russian occupation. Ukrainian police investigating war crimes said they have been able to establish that a group of Russian soldiers seized Hubbard from his home in April 2022.
He was brought to a torture chamber in the nearby village of Balaklia, where many of those detained passed through, prosecutors in the Kharkiv region told ABC News.
A month later, Russian television aired a report featuring Hubbard from a prison in occupied Ukraine. Another video published by Mash, a channel with links to Russia’s security services, shows a zip-tied Hubbard being beaten in the back of a Russian APC.
Ukrainian prisoners of war have said they crossed paths with Hubbard at different times during his imprisonment. Ihor Shyshko told ABC News he shared a cell with Hubbard for about a month in 2023 at a prison in Pakino, around 150 miles from Moscow.
“The day began and ended with tortures,” Shyshko said.
In addition to subjecting them to electric shocks for interrogations, guards would force prisoners to stand in uncomfortable positions and then hit them in the genitals or knock them to the ground, according to Shyshko.
The prisons were freezing, Shyshko said, and prisoners were kept on a starvation diet, fed mostly water with a few spoons of buckwheat in it. Many Ukrainian prisoners of war return from captivity looking skeletal and suffering serious health problems.
Shyshko was released in a prisoner exchange between Russia and Ukraine last year. Photos show him gaunt and wasted after his release, with bruises and rashes from scabies on his legs. He still wears hearing aids on both ears because of damage from beatings, he said.
The conditions were even harder for an elderly man like Hubbard, whom inmates believed was subjected to harsher treatment because he was American, Shyshko said. He recalled other inmates having to carry Hubbard to a medical center because he was unable to walk properly.
“He had very damaged knees, there was practically no skin, everything was rotten,” he said. “He is an old man. And he could not understand why this was happening to him.”
Patricia said she learned which prison her brother had been in after the wife of a Ukrainian soldier tracked her down. After Shyshko’s release, he also made contact with U.S. government representatives in an effort to help Hubbard.
Ukrainian police and prosecutors have opened a war crimes case over Hubbard’s abduction. After months interviewing witnesses and checking with government organizations, they said they had no evidence he had any involvement with Ukraine’s military or any fighting. Ukrainian officials and soldiers also noted Hubbard’s health and age likely meant he would not have been chosen to fight.
“He had nothing to do with the Ukrainian Armed Forces. He did not participate in the territorial defense. He is simply a civilian teacher,” Oleksandr Kobyliev, who heads the war crimes department of the Kharkiv regional police, told ABC News.
Patricia hopes her brother can be released in a prisoner exchange similar to those that have freed other U.S. citizens.
Last July, Russia released Americans, including Gershkovich, in the largest exchange since the end of the Cold War after reaching an agreement with the Biden administration. In February, American teacher Marc Fogel was freed in exchange for a Russian cyber criminal, in a swap agreed with the Trump administration.
Patricia said she is selling her house in order to buy another place with room for Hubbard to stay and recover when he is eventually freed. She pleaded for President Donald Trump to help save her brother.
“You went and got another schoolteacher, go get my brother,” she said. “Before it’s too late.”
