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(WASHINGTON) — Doug Band, a former close adviser to President Bill Clinton, is on Capitol Hill Tuesday for a closed-door interview with the congressional committee probing the government’s investigation of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

Band, who began his tenure with Clinton as an intern in the mid-1990s, is expected to be questioned by the House Oversight Committee about the former president’s interactions and travels with Epstein in the years after Clinton left the Oval Office in 2001.

Often described as one of the architects of Clinton’s post-presidential endeavors, including the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative, Band can also expect to be pressed about his own communications with Epstein’s convicted co-conspirator, Ghislaine Maxwell, which were made public earlier this year by the Justice Department as part of the release of files mandated by the Epstein Files Transparency Act.

“We know that Mr. Band set up several meetings between Clinton and Epstein,” House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., told reporters on his way into the hearing room. “We know Mr. Band accompanied Mr. Clinton on several flights on Epstein’s jet. We know that Mr. Band also had a lot of communication with Ms. Maxwell, so that’ll be a topic of several questions.”

Emails between Band and Maxwell included talk of meetings with Epstein and numerous exchanges containing suggestive innuendo and cheeky nicknames for each other like “babycakes” and “booboo,” according to files released by the DOJ.

The bulk of the messages were exchanged between 2001-2004, before Epstein first faced criminal charges in Florida in 2006. 

Band, 54, has not been accused of any wrongdoing. An attorney expected to accompany Band to the interview did not reply to a message seeking comment in advance of Band’s appearance in Washington, D.C.

Earlier this year, Band told The New York Times that his messages with Maxwell occurred when he was in his 20s and unmarried — and he denied any romantic involvement with Maxwell, who is currently serving a 20-year sentence for sex-trafficking and other offenses.

“There was absolutely no physical relationship that occurred between us. Ever,” Band said in a statement to the Times, in which he referred to Maxwell as “a monster.”

The committee is also expected to query Band about his explosive claim — reported by Vanity Fair in 2020 — that the former president had visited Epstein’s private estate in the U.S. Virgin Islands in early 2003. The article, which centered on Band’s contentious split with the Clintons, did not detail how Band knew about the purported island trip or if he had any evidence to bolster his claim.  

Records created by Epstein’s pilots made public through civil litigation show Clinton — and an entourage that typically included Band — aboard Epstein’s plane on more than two dozen flight legs in 2002-03, but none of those flights went to the island, according to the pilot’s logs. Clinton, Epstein and Maxwell have all denied that the former president had ever been to Little St. James, as Epstein’s island was known.

“He never, absolutely never went. And I can be sure of that because there’s no way he would have gone,” Maxwell told then then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche in a recorded interview last summer.

“I’ve never been to that island,” Clinton said in his own interview with the Oversight Committee in February.

The former president has not been accused of any wrongdoing in connection to his association with Epstein. He has said he stopped interacting with Epstein before any criminal allegations surfaced and has denied knowledge of any of Epstein’s crimes.

Clinton told the committee that he and Band were once “close,” and that Band had been one of the people he tasked to “operationalize” plans to develop the Clinton Global Initiative in his early post-presidency years.

“He worked for me for years,” Clinton said. “[H]e arranged airplane flights and things like that and was doing work on the first Clinton Global Initiative in 2005. And I know that he knew both Epstein and Maxwell. I do not know to what extent he was in contact with them.”

In her interview with Blanche, Maxwell said she began spending time with Clinton after he left the White House in 2001, as he was forging his post-presidential path through the establishment of the Clinton Foundation and, later, the Clinton Global Initiative.

“I was part of the beginning process of the Clinton Global Initiative. And that was something that I helped with and that was me, and Epstein may have helped me help them,” she said, according to a transcript of the July 2025 interview.

“I started spending time with the former president and with Doug and his team,” Maxwell said. “I had no purpose, really, other than I had — obviously offered something. I don’t know, ideas.” 

Band’s appearance before the Oversight Committee is voluntary and will not be recorded. The committee has typically released transcripts of interviews after they are reviewed for accuracy and redacted to remove any potential references to alleged victims.

In recent weeks the committee has heard from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and two of Epstein’s former assistants, Sarah Kellen and Lesley Groff.

Later this summer, interviews are scheduled with former Obama White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, former Epstein attorney Alan Dershowitz, and Epstein’s former private banker at JPMorgan Chase, Jes Staley.

Comer has indicated that a report on the investigation’s findings will be issued by the end of the year.

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(BIDDLEFORD, Maine) — Protesters are expected to gather Tuesday morning in Maine, a day after Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents were involved in the fatal shooting of a 26-year-old man.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said he was briefed on the deadly encounter by Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin, who confirmed that ICE agents conducting an operation in the area were involved in the shooting.

The man who was killed was identified as 26-year-old Joan Sebastian Guerrero, a spokesperson for King’s office told ABC News.

King said Guerrero was fatally shot after federal agents tried to stop the vehicle he was driving.

“He was in a vehicle — pulled out in the vehicle, and the term the secretary used was ‘weaponized’ the vehicle and was shot by an ICE agent,” King told reporters Monday morning.

King told ABC News that Guerrero was not the target of the operation and that ICE agents had been given a final order for another man they were targeting to be removed from the country.

King previously said that Mullin initially told him Guerrero was the intended target of the operation. 

“Body cameras were not on the agents. So we have no video evidence of what occurred in this case,” King said. “State and local officials, of course, are attending to it. The FBI will be leading the investigation because it was a federal operation.”

Two Maine immigration advocacy groups — Maine Immigrants’ Rights Coalition (MIRC) and the Presente! — issued a joint statement Monday, saying the individual who was killed was a Colombian man whom they claimed was authorized to work in the United States and had a Social Security number.

The groups called for a “prompt, independent, and transparent investigation.” They also called for a full accounting of every agency and officer involved as well as the preservation of all body-camera footage, surveillance footage, and communications between the federal officials involved.

“ICE must not be allowed to investigate itself or control the public narrative surrounding a death in which its personnel or operations were involved,” the groups said.

The Colombian Embassy in Washington, D.C., issued a statement Monday on social media, saying it “deeply regrets the death of a Colombian national in Biddeford, Maine, and is providing the necessary consular assistance to his family.”

The embassy said it has also requested “information and clarification from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) regarding the circumstances surrounding this lamentable death and will continue to follow the case closely as the investigation progresses.”

Witness Daniel Boucher told ABC News that he watched agents pull the shooting victim from his car and put him on the ground.

“I heard the young man say, ‘I tried to stop.’ I clearly heard him say that,” said Boucher, adding that he overheard one of the ICE agents allegedly say the driver tried to run him over.

“I could no longer see any movement, which meant he had expired,” an emotional Boucher said. “He was bloody, his face was bloody. It was awful.”

Hundreds of demonstrators gathered at Mechanics Park in Biddeford on Monday for an impromptu vigil and demanded justice for Guerrero. Another protest is being planned for Tuesday morning outside a federal immigration facility in Scarborough, Maine, according to organizers.

The Maine Attorney General’s Office also released a statement, confirming that the ICE operation on Monday morning was targeting a man related to a final order to remove him from the country.

The Attorney General’s Office alleged, “the suspect attempted to flee in the vehicle in the direction of the officer and was fatally shot.”

Maine Gov. Janet Mills said she was also briefed on the shooting and was informed that federal law enforcement was involved.

“I know situations like these are alarming and frightening,” Mills said in a statement. “The Maine State Police are at the scene supporting and working cooperatively with the Attorney General’s Office, Maine’s Office of Chief Medical Examiner, and Federal officials to determine the facts of what occurred this morning.”

The FBI said the agency “responded to assist on-scene immediately following this morning’s shooting incident in Biddeford, Maine. We have no additional comment at this time.”

An ICE spokesperson provided ABC News with the agency’s preliminary alleged version of the incident.

“On July 13, 2026, at approximately 7:00 AM ET, ICE was conducting targeted surveillance on the last known address of an illegal alien with a final order of removal,” the ICE spokesperson said. “An illegal alien departed the residence in a vehicle. ICE law enforcement attempted to conduct a vehicle stop. The vehicle attempted to flee the scene and fearing for public safety an officer discharged his weapon.”

The ICE spokesperson added, “The driver of the vehicle was struck, and emergency services were immediately contacted. He passed away from his injuries.”

The spokesperson did not confirm that the man who was shot was not the person targeted in the ICE operation.

A bystander video verified by ABC News showed what appeared to be federal immigration agents and uniformed law enforcement officers in the aftermath of the shooting performing first aid on an individual on the ground at an intersection.

A Ring camera video obtained by ABC News from a residence near the shooting scene captured the sound of what appeared to be at least five gunshots. Several bullet holes could be seen in the the front windshield of the victim’s car following the shooting.

Em Akerley, who lives near the shooting scene, told ABC affiliate station WMTW that she was inside her home having her morning coffee when she heard the gunshots.

“I thought it was a backfire, and then I kept hearing them,” Akerley said. “I thought it was a drive-by shooting.”

She said she looked out her window and saw a small white car being corralled by two men, who appeared to be trying to stop the vehicle from losing control in the intersection.

“All of a sudden, all of these plainclothes vested men started running down the street, abandoning their cars,” Akerley said.

Editor’s note: This story was updated to add Sen. King’s comments saying the deceased, later identified as Joan Sebastian Guerrero, was not the intended target of the operation.

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(WASHINGTON) — Army Sgt. Hedar Leonel Turcios Juarez woke up to a gut-wrenching call at 3:40 a.m. Tuesday: Cristy Maryori Villafranca Trejo, his wife and the mother to their 6-year-old daughter, was aboard a plane about to be deported to Honduras.

Turcios told ABC News that he scrambled to stop it. He stayed on the phone with an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officer, sending documentation showing that his wife’s immigration case was still pending. After the officer confirmed the paperwork, Villafranca was pulled from the flight and returned to Camp East Montana, the detention center at Fort Bliss, Texas, where she remains.

It was the latest turn in an ordeal that began July 11, when masked ICE officers detained Villafranca outside a Walmart as the couple’s young daughter watched. Villafranca left Honduras in 2016 due to violent crime in the country, her husband said.

“My wife is everything to me, to my family, for my daughter, and it’s just sad that we are still being treated like criminals, just because we weren’t born in this country,” said Turcios, who became a U.S. citizen in 2024 after joining the military.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE, did not reply to an ABC News request for comment about Villafranca’s case.

Turcios’ family is hardly alone. President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign has swept up more than 50 parents and spouses of service members during his second term, with at least six deported, according to an investigation by the Associated Press.

Danitza James, CEO of Repatriate Our Patriots, which works with Families United to help active-duty service members and veterans reunite their families, said that, beyond providing legal representation, the organization’s only other strategy has been to call Congress to request help.

She said she is currently working with eight active-duty service members and one veteran whose family members have been detained as of Aug. 20. ABC News spoke with two of the families that she is working to unite.

The cases complicate one of the administration’s central arguments for its aggressive expansion of immigration enforcement. Trump has repeatedly said ICE is targeting the “worst of the worst,” and has described immigrants who entered the U.S. illegally as “animals” and “dangerous criminals” that should not be in the country.

An ABC News review of state and federal records did not find criminal records for any of the military spouses named in this story in the states where they live.

“She’s been a very supportive wife since the first day that I decided to join the military. I was deployed for nine months. She took care of my family,” Turcios said of his spouse. “She’s not a threat to anybody. We’re just trying to keep our family together.”

The Trump administration’s detention of undocumented spouses and parents of active-duty service members comes as the U.S. is at war with Iran, leaving troops without the support of their families and shifting their focus away from their military careers, advocacy groups say. Some have been forced to take leave from duty to care for their children in their spouses’ absence, according to advocacy groups and families ABC News interviewed.

“There are so many military families of active-duty service members that are living in the shadows of this immigration machine, that is putting them in fear of seeking resources and asking for help, while their service member is actively serving our country, and sacrificing for our nation,” said James of Repatriate Our Patriots.

Military service has long been a pathway to citizenship

For decades, military families have occupied a protected corner of the immigration system, according to the National Military Family Association. Under policies embraced by Republican and Democratic administrations, the undocumented parents and spouses of service members have generally been shielded from deportation.

Military recruiters have also long promoted military service as a pathway to citizenship, including through programs which can allow undocumented relatives of troops to remain in the country while applying for a green card and work authorization.

The bargain extends to troops themselves. Green card holders can join the U.S. military and troops can apply for naturalization after a year of honorable service, an incentive that stretches back to the Civil War. During World War I, Congress went further, streamlining the citizenship process for troops whose enlistment could effectively mean automatic citizenship.

“Having a family member in the military is not a free pass to violate our nation’s laws,” a DHS spokesperson said in response to the recent arrest by ICE of the father of an active-duty sailor for alleged immigration violations. “Military service by an immediate relative does not automatically grant parole, lawful status, or immunity from immigration enforcement.”

Racial and ethnic minorities are making up a growing share of the military. In the Army, the Pentagon’s largest service by far, Hispanic recruits grew from about 19% of new enlistees in 2020 to nearly 27% last year, according to internal service data reviewed by ABC News.

Naturalizations through military service have also more than tripled over roughly the same period, rising from about 4,500 in 2020 to 16,000 in 2024, according to Department of Homeland Security data. The Philippines, Mexico, Jamaica and Nigeria were among the leading countries of origin for troops who became U.S. citizens through their service.

Turcios left Honduras in 2014, also to escape violence in the country, he said. After attending high school in the U.S. he joined the military and became a U.S. citizen in 2024 after a nine-month deployment to the Middle East. Then he began pursuing citizenship for his wife, hoping his service would help expedite her naturalization process, he said.

Instead, Villafranca, undocumented spouses and parents of many other active-duty military personnel have been forced into detention, according to lawyers, advocacy groups and military families. 

Villafranca relayed allegedly inhumane conditions in Camp East Montana, according to her husband. The facility is the country’s largest detention center, which sits on land formerly used for Japanese-American internment camps during World War II.

Turcios said his wife had to wear the same clothes for about four days. Access to clean clothing remained an issue until he reached out to Rep. Veronica Escobar, D- Texas, who sent an inquiry to ICE regarding Villafranca’s lack of clean clothing. Turcios said that after a few weeks, they finally fixed the issue.

Detained at green card interview

Army Staff Sgt. Alexis Jaramillo has served in the military for 11 years and is currently stationed at Fort Polk, Louisiana. His wife, Maisa Lopes Eliaser, came to the U.S. from São Paulo, Brazil, in 2019 on a tourist visa, which she had overstayed while Jaramillo was helping her pursue citizenship.

She was taken into custody in front of Jaramillo, who was dressed in uniform, and their five-year-old son during an appointment to be interviewed to get her green card.

Lopes Eliaser spent two days in Pickens County Jail in Georgia before being transferred to the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center, where she slept in a large room with approximately 80 people for about six weeks, her husband said.

On July 13, Lopes Eliaser said ICE officers put her on a bus to the Alexandria International Airport in Louisiana. She was then flown to Bogotá, Colombia, where the plane stopped before its final destination, Brazil. During the layover, Lopes Eliaser called her husband using someone else’s phone, he said.

Jaramillo said he had been communicating with Sen. Mark Kelly, a Navy veteran, about his wife’s case before she was taken to the airport. When Lopes Eliaser disappeared from the detainee-tracking app that Jaramillo was checking, he contacted Kelly again to ask for help bringing her home.

“Maisa’s case is an example of this administration’s focus on targeting the loved ones of those who’ve stepped up to serve our country. It’s wrong and makes no sense at all,” Kelly wrote in a statement to ABC News.

Kelly’s office told ABC News that his casework team established communications with the ICE field office and kept Jaramillo updated.

DHS did not respond to a request for comment on Eliaser’s case at the time.

What members of Congress are doing

Jaramillo credits Kelly for contacting ICE and getting Lopes Eliaser eventually returned to the U.S. When she landed in Brazil, she was flown back to the Alexandria International Airport without ever stepping off the airplane. Jaramillo and Lopes Eliaser were reunited and are currently together at their home in Louisiana.

“That was a nightmare. That was a really, really nightmare,” Jaramillo said. “I’m never going to explain best how difficult it was and still is.”

While Jaramillo and Lopes Eliaser are now united, they are still dealing with the aftermath of her detention and deportation. Jaramillo had to take leave to care for his son and fight to get his wife back. Now that his wife is back home, he said he will return to service on Monday.

Since Lopes Eliaser was first detained, Jaramillo said he has incurred more than $7,000 in legal fees and costs associated with submitting paperwork, approximately equal to over a month’s pay.

Jaramillo said his wife is still experiencing health issues from the conditions of detention, which he said were crowded and where she also lacked access to clean clothing. Jarmillo said he took her to see a doctor Thursday.

James said that many of the other cases of active-duty military service members’ families being detained have involved members of Congress making calls to reunite families.

Kelly has publicly been involved with two other cases of military families targeted by the Trump administration for deportation.

In a letter sent Aug. 9 to DHS, the Defense Department and the Department of Veterans Affairs, congressional Democrats wrote that they will investigate whether the Pentagon and DHS are coordinating to deport military service members and their families.

“The best way to bring change to this is to the legislative or policy, because this should not be a phone call. This should not be a one-case change,” James said. “This is clearly impacting more than 50 military spouses and cases across the board, and there needs to be a change that is codified.”

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