NASA Starliner astronauts begin 17-hour journey to splashdown off Florida coast after delays
Manuel Mazzanti/NurPhoto via Getty Images
(CAPE CANAVERAL, FL) — The two NASA astronauts whose return to Earth was delayed for months are on their way home.
Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore left the International Space Station on a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft early on Tuesday and began an about 17-hour journey toward a splashdown off the Florida coast.
NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were also onboard the craft as it undocked at about 1:05 a.m. ET.
Williams and Wilmore had in June 2024 performed the first astronaut-crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. What was expected to be a weeklong trip to the ISS instead turned into a nine-month stay. The Boeing Starliner that was expected to carry them home after about 10 days experienced issues, leaving the pair at the station for months.
Their return spacecraft early on Tuesday maneuvered in space, moving above and behind the station, before firing a series of departure burns that sent it back toward Earth.
NASA said it expected the return trip to end at about 5:57 p.m., when the Dragon is scheduled to splash down off the Florida coast.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Matthew Glasser and Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.
(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.
(WASHINGTON) — Organizations that provide legal aid to migrant children have filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services after the agency cut funding to the program that provides legal representation to tens of thousands of unaccompanied minors.
According to the lawsuit filed on Thursday, some of the groups that received federal grants have had to stop taking on new clients and “face the real threat of not being able to continue their ongoing representations.”
Last week, groups that have collectively received over $200 million in federal grants were told that the contract was partially terminated, ending the funding for legal representation and for the recruitment of attorneys to represent migrant children.
Currently, 26,000 migrant children receive legal representation through the funding.
The groups, which filed the lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, are asking a federal judge to issue an injunction and block HHS from ceasing funding for legal representation for unaccompanied children.
“As a consequence of Defendants ordering Plaintiffs to stop providing direct legal services, many unaccompanied children will never speak to a lawyer, will never apply for immigration relief for which they are eligible, will remain in tenuous status for longer, and will not understand what is happening as they are rushed through adversarial removal proceedings,” the groups said in the filing.
ABC News has reached out to HHS for comment.
The groups added that the cuts in the funding will cause immigration judges to spend more time on cases for unaccompanied children who appear in court without a lawyer “at a time when the immigration court backlog is already at an all-time high.”
“Defendants’ actions will also cause chaos throughout the immigration legal system and are particularly harmful because they come at a time when the government is reinstating expedited docketing for removal cases for unaccompanied children,” the groups said.
In a statement, Sam Hsieh, an attorney for the Amica Center, one of the groups that represent migrant children, called the decision to terminate the programs “the most brazen attack on immigrant children since family separation.”
“The Trump Administration’s decision to terminate these national legal service programs poses a significant threat to the rights of already vulnerable unaccompanied immigrant children,” Hsieh said. “Many of these children are eligible for immigration relief but are unable to meaningfully seek it without an attorney.”
(WASHINGTON) — A judge on Tuesday will consider whether to temporarily block the Trump administration from carrying out mass layoffs across the federal government, in one of several lawsuits challenging Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency’s large-scale effort to slash the federal workforce.
The lawsuit, filed last week by a coalition of five federal workers’ unions, alleges that the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to fire massive numbers of federal employees across multiple agencies — including its recent deferred resignation offer to more than 2 million federal employees — violates Congress’ power to establish a federal workforce, as well as federal procedures that dictate how the workforce should be reduced.
“The Executive Branch acting as the ‘woodchipper for bureaucracy’ conflicts with Congress’s role as the creator, funder, and mission setter for the executive branch agencies,” the lawsuit said.
The unions, which represent hundreds of thousands of employees across dozens of federal agencies and departments, are seeking a temporary restraining order against the Trump administration, claiming that the mass reduction of the federal work force will lead to a “critical” loss of revenues for unions as well as their influence at the bargaining table.
The National Treasury Employees Union, the unions claimed, stands to lose “as much as half of its dues revenue and around half of the workers that it represents.”
Lawyers with the Department of Justice have pushed back against the allegations, arguing that an order blocking the changes would “interfere with the President’s ability to manage, shape, and streamline the federal workforce to more closely reflect policy preferences and the needs of the American public.”
“[T]he President is charged with directing the Executive Branch workforce, and he has determined that the politically accountable heads of his agencies should take steps to streamline and modernize the workforce through measures including voluntary deferred resignations, removal of certain probationary employees, and RIFs [reductions in force],” the Justice Department wrote in a court filing.
The government also claimed that President Donald Trump’s executive action ordering the reductions is “consistent with applicable law,” and dismissed the unions’ concerns over their potential loss of revenues and bargaining power as “speculative.”
Since Trump returned to the White House, Musk, named by Trump as the head of DOGE, has been spearheading efforts to reduce the size of government, slash thousands of federal contracts, cut programs deemed to be wasteful, and root out fraud.
After ending its deferred resignation offer last week amid court battles challenging the program, the Trump administration has begun layoffs by targeting mostly probationary employees — recent hires who joined the federal workforce within the last one to two years, depending on the agency, and have fewer protections.
This initial round of layoffs could impact more than 200,000 workers hired by the federal government within the last two years, according to data from the Office of Personnel Management.
