New York woman pleads guilty to mailing drug-soaked documents to prisons
J. David Ake/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — An Albany woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday to mailing drug-soaked documents to inmates in correctional facilities in New York, according to federal prosecutors.
Authorities said Maya McIntosh, 33, sold the illicit documents on social media — and disguised them as legal paperwork when she sent them.
McIntosh, 33, pleaded guilty to “conspiracies to manufacture, distribute and possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and controlled substance analogue, distribution and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and controlled substance analogue, and unlawful possession and use of a means of identification,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York said in a press release on Tuesday.
Officials said McIntosh ordered chemicals used to create MDMB-4en-PINACA, a synthetic cannabinoid, in liquid form and then “sprayed and soaked the liquid onto copy paper and business envelopes,” the attorney’s office said.
The documents were placed in U.S. Priority Mail Express envelopes and addressed to inmates at various correctional facilities in New York, prosecutors said.
McIntosh disguised the envelopes as legal mail by “stamping the names of actual attorneys in the return address portion of the envelopes” without the lawyers’ knowledge or permission, according to prosecutors.
This method allowed for the drug-soaked documents to appear as if they were sent by lawyers and “contained legitimate legal paperwork instead of a controlled substance,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.
Officials said McIntosh used social media to sell the sheets and envelopes, with customers paying her to mail the documents to inmates at correctional facilities, the prosecutors said.
McIntosh is believed to have sent the drug-soaked papers between January 2023 through July 2024, prosecutors said.
McIntosh faces up to 20 years of imprisonment in each count, a maximum fine of $1 million on the drug counts, a fine of $250,000 on the remaining counts and a term of supervised release of at least three years and up to life, the U.S. attorney’s office said.
The United States Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations are continuing to investigate the case.
(SEATTLE) — President Donald Trump’s executive order challenging birthright citizenship will face its first legal test in a Seattle courtroom Thursday.
A federal judge will hear a request made by four Democratic-led states to issue a temporary restraining order against the executive order signed by Trump that purports to limit birthright citizenship to people who have at least one parent who is a United States citizen or permanent resident.
Trump’s executive order reinterpreting the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship — long promised by Trump on the campaign trail — is expected to spark a lengthy legal challenge that could define the president’s sweeping immigration agenda.
Democratic attorneys general from 22 states and two cities have sued Trump over the executive order, and the president faces at least five separate lawsuits over the policy.
In addition to the hearing in Seattle, a federal judge in Maryland is holding a hearing by telephone on Thursday in a challenge brought by two nonprofit groups and five pregnant undocumented women.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour — who was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 — scheduled Thursday’s in-person hearing in the case brought by the attorneys general of Arizona, Oregon, Washington and Illinois. In a federal complaint filed on Tuesday, the four attorneys general argued that Trump’s policy would unlawfully strip at least 150,000 newborn children each year of citizenship entitled to them by federal law and the 14th Amendment.
“The Plaintiff States will also suffer irreparable harm because thousands of children will be born within their borders but denied full participation and opportunity in American society,” the lawsuit says. “Absent a temporary restraining order, children born in the Plaintiff States will soon be rendered undocumented, subject to removal or detention, and many stateless.”
The lawsuit argues that enforcement of Trump’s executive order would cause irreparable harm to the children born from undocumented parents by preventing them from enjoying their right to “full participation and opportunity in American society.”
“They will lose their right to vote, serve on juries, and run for certain offices,” the complaint says. “And they will be placed into lifelong positions of instability and insecurity as part of a new underclass in the United States.”
Lawyers for the Department of Justice, now under new leadership, opposed the request for a temporary restraining order in a court filing Wednesday.
Taking effect next month, Trump’s executive order seeks to reinterpret the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of birthright citizenship by arguing a child born in the United States to an undocumented mother cannot receive citizenship unless his or her father is a citizen or green card holder.
While most countries confer a child’s citizenship based on their parents, the United States and more than two dozen countries, including Canada and Mexico, follow the principle of jus soli or “right of the soil.”
Following the Civil War, the United States codified jus soli through the passage of the 14th Amendment, repudiating the Supreme Court’s finding in Dred Scott v. Sanford that African Americans were ineligible for citizenship.
“President Trump and the federal government now seek to impose a modern version of Dred Scott. But nothing in the Constitution grants the President, federal agencies, or anyone else authority to impose conditions on the grant of citizenship to individuals born in the United States,” the states’ lawsuit argued.
The Supreme Court further enshrined birthright citizenship in 1898 when it found that the San Francisco-born son of Chinese immigrants was an American citizen despite the Chinese Exclusion Act restricting immigration from China and prohibiting Chinese Americans from becoming naturalized citizens.
By seeking to end birthright citizenship, Trump’s executive order centers on the same phrase within the 14th Amendment — “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” — that the Supreme Court considered in 1898. Trump’s executive order argues that text of the 14th Amendment excludes children born of parents who are not “subject to the jurisdiction” of the United States, such as people who are unlawfully in the U.S.
While legal scholars have expressed skepticism about the legality of Trump’s executive order, the lawsuit could set the stage for a lengthy legal battle that ends up before the Supreme Court.
(WASHINGTON) — On a call with reporters on Inauguration Day morning, incoming White House officials previewed a series of executive orders and other actions they said the incoming Trump administration plans to take to address immigration and U.S. border issues.
“We will protect the American people against invasion,” one of the incoming officials said during the call. “This is about national security. This is about public safety. And this is about the victims of some of the most violent, abusive criminals we’ve seen enter our country in our lifetime. And it ends today.”
Many of the proposed executive orders revealed on Monday’s call require help from international partners like Mexico and would almost certainly spark legal battles.
Although one of the incoming officials said that the call would “preview a series of actions to be taken today,” it was not clear from the call, during which officials took very few questions from reporters, that everything about which they spoke would actually happen Monday.
Here’s a look at some of the promised executive actions:
Declaring a national emergency at the southern border
The incoming administration will be declaring a national emergency at the southern border. This will allow DoD to deploy armed forces to the region and free up resources to build a wall and other barriers there, as he promised to do during his first administration.
“What this action does is it deploys armed forces, erects physical barriers by directing DOD and DHS secretaries to finish the wall along the border, and allows for counter-UAS capabilities near the southern border in addition,” an incoming White House official said.
It’s not totally clear what the official meant by “counter-UAS capabilities,” but it is important to note that since at least the Obama administration, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has used drones and other UAS (unmanned aircraft systems) to help conduct surveillance of the southwest border.
The secretary of defense will be directed to deploy armed troops as well as the National Guard to the border, according to the call. In response to a follow-up question, an incoming White House official was unable to say how many troops will be deployed, responding that the decision “is going to be up to the secretary of defense.”
Clarifying the military’s role in ‘protecting the territorial integrity of the United States’
This executive order aims to allow the military to “prioritize our borders and territorial integrity,” an incoming White House official said during the call. The official further said that the order will direct the military to plan operations to maintain territorial integrity by “repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.”
Reinstating ‘remain in Mexico,’ ending ‘catch and release,’ and building the wall
In addition to creating federal and state partnerships to help enforce immigration policies and deportation priorities, this executive order would also aim to end the practice of “catch and release,” and mandates building a wall along the southern U.S. border.
Though often used pejoratively, “catch and release” describes the practice of releasing undocumented immigrants after they’ve been processed at the U.S. border and while they await immigration hearings in court. The term originated during the George W. Bush administration and describes a practice that has been implemented during every administration since, including Donald Trump’s first administration.
Because it’s logistically impossible to safely detain migrants indefinitely, U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and other authorities release some migrants into the community to wait out their legal proceedings.
Remain in Mexico is a policy implemented during the first Trump administration that required some asylum seekers to wait in Mexico, rather than in the U.S., as their petitions were processed in U.S. courts. This action would require Mexico’s cooperation, which incoming White House officials did not address during Monday’s call.
Trump also promised during his first presidential campaign to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, and signed an executive order to that end days after assuming office. Few new sections of barrier along the border were erected during his administration, though many sections of damaged or outdated barriers were repaired or replaced.
Designating cartels as foreign terrorist organizations
The incoming administration will sign an executive order to designate drug cartels and other criminal organizations, including the U.S.-El Salvadoran-based MS-13 and Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua, as foreign terrorist organizations or specifically designated global terrorists (SDGT).
An incoming White House official said Monday that the order will direct authorities to specifically remove members of Tren de Agua from the United States. And, citing the Alien Enemies Act enacted more than two centuries ago, the official said Tren de Agua has become an “irregular armed force of Venezuela’s government conducting a predatory incursion and invasion into the United States.”
‘End[ing] asylum … to illegals’ The incoming White House official said the Trump administration is going to “end asylum and close the border to illegals via proclamation.” Essentially, this means undocumented migrants caught between ports of entry will not be able to claim asylum, which in turn will “create an immediate removal process without possibility of asylum,” the incoming official said.
Like other executive orders announced Monday, this one would possibly face legal hurdles for several reasons. Current laws allow asylum seekers the ability to attempt to request asylum or protection once they enter the country, regardless of if they crossed between ports of entry. This has been the basis for several legal battles against some of the more recent asylum restrictions that the Biden administration implemented in June 2024.
Suspending refugee resettlement
The incoming official said during Monday’s call that the incoming Trump administration also plans to suspend refugee resettlements for at least four months.
Ending birthright citizenship
An incoming officials on Monday’s call said “We are then going to end birthright citizenship. This action gives effect to the phrase ‘and subject to the jurisdiction thereof’ in the 14th Amendment to clarify that … the federal government will not recognize automatic birthright citizenship for children of illegal aliens born in the United States.”
It was unclear from Monday’s call whether ending birthright citizenship will be part of the day’s announcements or will come later. Trump made the same promise during his first term in office.
Enhanced vetting
The incoming official said Monday that the new administration is also going to “enhance vetting and screening of illegal aliens” and direct agencies to provide recommendations to the president for suspending entry for migrants from “countries of particular concern.”
Creating ‘homeland security task forces’
To help target gang members, criminals and other undocumented migrants, the new administration is planning to establish “federal homeland security task forces” so federal, state and local law enforcement can cooperate further in removing them.
Restoring the death penalty when a law enforcement officer is murdered According to the incoming official, the new administration plans to “restore the death penalty in public safety” by directing the attorney general to seek capital punishment when an undocumented immigrant murders a law enforcement officer or commits other capital crimes. The new administration will also encourage state attorneys general and district attorneys to also pursue the death penalty in such cases, according to the incoming official.
The Warren County Sheriff’s Office have been identified as the remains of missing person Dana Leigh Mustian in North Carolina. (Warren County Sheriff’s Office)
(VANCE COUNTY, NC) — The remains of a North Carolina woman who had been missing for over a year have been found by a dive team, officials said.
A dive team discovered human remains in Vance County on Thursday, according to the Warren County Sheriff’s Office. Vance County is northeast of Raleigh and Durham, and borders Virginia on its north.
The remains were identified by the medical examiner’s office as those of Dana Leigh Mustian, 33.
Mustian was last seen at her home on Nov. 30, 2023, according to the Warren County Sheriff’s Office.
She was reported missing by her father on Dec. 4, 2023, according to the sheriff’s office.
The investigation into her disappearance and death will continue, the sheriff’s office said.
“We would like to thank Sheriff Curtis Brame and the Vance County Sheriff’s Office for their assistance,” the sheriff’s office added.
