‘No more Nottoway’: Historic Louisiana plantation house destroyed in massive fire
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(WHITE CASTLE, La.) — A devastating fire destroyed the Louisiana’s historic Nottoway Resort, the largest antebellum mansion in the South, officials confirmed Friday.
“The fire has been contained now, but there’s no more Nottoway. The house is completely destroyed,” Iberville Sheriff’s Department Capt. Monty Migliacio told ABC News on Friday.
Emergency calls came in around 2:10 p.m. Thursday, reporting the fire, Migliacio told ABC News. The Iberville Sheriff’s Department arrived first, followed quickly by firefighters who fought the blaze at the White Castle mansion for hours.
“It was the biggest fire I’ve seen in my entire 20-year career,” Migliacio said.
Ten fire departments from surrounding areas worked together to contain the blaze and protect nearby buildings, according to officials.
Louisiana Fire Marshalls are investigating the cause of the blaze, authorities said.
Officials confirmed that no one was injured. It is unknown if anyone was touring the mansion at the time of the fire, they said.
Iberville Parish President Chris Daigle highlighted the mansion’s historical significance of the loss in a statement posted on Facebook.
“Nottoway was not only the largest remaining antebellum mansion in the South but also a symbol of both the grandeur and the deep complexities of our region’s past,” Daigle said.
He noted that it was built in 1859 and had been open to visitors since the ’80s.
“The loss of Nottoway is not just a loss for Iberville Parish but for the entire state of Louisiana,” he said.
(CLEARWATER, FL) — One person was killed and 12 people were injured when a boat struck the Clearwater Ferry in Clearwater, Florida, on Sunday evening.
All of the injured individuals were people on the ferry, according to the Clearwater Police Department. BayCare Health System said it received a total of nine patients on Sunday night at three of their hospitals, and said Monday all but one have been treated and released.
There were 45 people aboard the 40-foot ferry, including two crew members, when it was struck from behind by a 37-foot privately owned boat, police said.
The boat that struck the ferry fled the scene and traveled to Belleair Boat Ramp, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said on Monday. Authorities said it was later found by a responding agency.
The incident took place near the Memorial Causeway Bridge in Clearwater. Coast Guard Sector St. Petersburg was notified at approximately 8:40 p.m., the Seventh Coast Guard District wrote on X. During a press conference on Monday, officials said there was “definitely a point where these boats were fully entangled.”
After the crash, the ferry came to rest on a sand bar just south of the bridge. First responders and emergency personnel were then able to remove “all patients and passengers” from the ferry, police said.
“We were just enjoying the ride, and then all of a sudden we hear the first mate yelling, ‘Hey, hey, hey,'” one passenger told Tampa ABC affiliate WFTS.
“And then we looked back behind us and this big yacht just came through the boat,” said the passenger, who was riding the ferry with his two kids and his wife, who is 31 weeks pregnant.
The Coast Guard said there were six people on board the recreational boat, which left the scene.
The captain of the recreational boat was cooperative with authorities and submitted to a Breathalyzer test, but no alcohol was found, officials said on Monday.
No one has been taken in custody and authorities are working with the states attorney’s office to determine if the incident should be categorized as a hit-and-run, officials said.
Officials said they will soon release the names of the victims, along with the name of the captain of the recreational boat.
“We’d like to offer our deepest condolences to the loves ones of the deceased,” Coast Guard Cmdr. Fredrick Pugh, chief of response, Sector St. Petersburg, said in a statement on Monday. “Coast Guard investigative officers and FWC are working to determine the cause of the collision and verify the details leading up to the incident.”
Clearwater Ferry said it is “heartbroken for the person who lost their life” and are cooperating with the investigation.
“We deeply appreciate the dedication of the first responders and others who rushed to help Sunday night,” Clearwater Ferry said in a statement on Monday.
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission will be taking the lead on the crash investigation, police said.
(TENNESSEE) Mistakenly deported Salvadoran native Kilmar Abrego Garcia has been brought back to the United States where he will face criminal charges for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the U.S.
More than two months after the Trump administration admitted it mistakenly deported Abrego Garcia from Maryland to his native El Salvador, a federal grand jury has indicted him for allegedly transporting undocumented migrants within the United States.
A two-count indictment, which was filed under seal in federal court in Tennessee last month and unsealed Friday, alleges Abrego Garcia, 29, participated in a yearslong conspiracy to haul undocumented migrants from Texas to the interior of the country.
The alleged conspiracy spanned nearly a decade and involved the domestic transport of thousands of noncitizens from Mexico and Central America, including some children, in exchange for thousands of dollars, according to the indictment.
Abrego-Garcia is alleged to have participated in more than 100 such trips, according to the indictment. Among those allegedly transported were members of the Salvadoran gang MS-13, sources familiar with the investigation said.
Abrego-Garcia is the only member of the alleged conspiracy charged in the indictment.
His return to the U.S. comes after the Trump administration repeatedly said that they were unable to bring him back despite his mistaken deportation.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, at a Friday afternoon press conference, thanked Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele for “agreeing to return Abrego Garcia to the United States.”
“Our government presented El Salvador with an arrest warrant and they agreed to return him to our country,” Bondi said.
Bondi said that if Abrego Garcia is convicted of the charges, upon the completion of his sentence he will be deported back to his home country of El Salvador.
“The grand jury found that over the past nine years, Abrego Garcia has played a significant role in an alien smuggling ring,” Bondi said. “They found this was his full time job, not a contractor. He was a smuggler of humans and children and women. He made over 100 trips, the grand jury found, smuggling people throughout our country.”
The decision to pursue the indictment against Abrego Garcia led to the abrupt departure of Ben Schrader, a high-ranking federal prosecutor in Tennessee, sources briefed on Schrader’s decision told ABC News. Schrader’s resignation was prompted by concerns that the case was being pursued for political reasons, the sources said.
Schrader, who spent 15 years in the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Nashville and was most recently the chief of the criminal division, did not respond to messages from ABC News seeking comment.
In a statement to ABC News, Abrego Garcia’s attorney said that he’s going to keep fighting to ensure Abrego Garcia receives a fair trial.
“From the beginning, this case has made one thing painfully clear: The government had the power to bring him back at any time. Instead, they chose to play games with the court and with a man’s life,” said attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg. “We’re not just fighting for Kilmar — we’re fighting to ensure due process rights are protected for everyone. Because tomorrow, this could be any one of us — if we let power go unchecked, if we ignore our Constitution.”
In a detention memo filed Friday afternoon in court in Tennessee, federal prosecutors moved to have Abrego Garcia held in pretrial custody “because he poses a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight, and no condition or combination of conditions would ensure the safety of the community or his appearance in court.”
Federal prosecutors, in a detention memo filed this afternoon in court in Tennessee, have moved for pre-trial detention of Abrego Garcia, writing that “…the United States will request that the defendant be held in pretrial custody because he poses a danger to the community and a serious risk of flight, and no condition or combination of conditions would ensure the safety of the community or his appearance in court.”
“If convicted at trial, the defendant faces a maximum punishment of 10 years’ imprisonment for ‘each alien’ he transported,” the memo said, “Accordingly, the sentencing exposure for the defendant — given the number of undocumented aliens involved — goes well beyond the remainder of the defendant’s life.”
Abrego Garcia, a Salvadoran native who had been living with his wife and children in Maryland, was deported in March to El Salvador’s CECOT mega-prison — despite a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country due to fear of persecution — after the Trump administration claimed he was a member of the criminal gang MS-13. His wife and attorneys deny that he is an MS-13 member.
The Justice Department’s move to criminally prosecute Abrego Garcia represents the most aggressive step yet in the administration’s efforts to gather potentially incriminating information about Abrego Garcia’s background, following a federal judge’s order requiring the government to facilitate his return to the U.S. to be afforded due process in deportation proceedings.
The Trump administration has acknowledged in court filings that Abrego Garcia’s removal to El Salvador in March was in error, because it violated a U.S. immigration court order in 2019 that shielded Abrego Garcia from deportation to his native country, according to immigration court records. An immigration judge had determined that Abrego Garcia would likely face persecution there by local gangs that had allegedly terrorized him and his family.
The administration argued, however, that Abrego Garcia should not be returned to the U.S. because he is a member of the transnational Salvadoran gang MS-13, a claim his family and attorneys have denied. In recent weeks, Trump administration officials have been publicizing Abrego Garcia’s interactions with police over the years, despite a lack of corresponding criminal charges.
In March, Abrego Garcia’s family filed a lawsuit over his deportation. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland ultimately ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return to the U.S. The U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that ruling on April 10.
Abrego Garcia was initially sent to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison but was believed to have later been transferred to a different facility in the country.
The criminal investigation that led to the charges was launched in April as federal authorities began scrutinizing the circumstances of a 2022 traffic stop of Abrego Garcia by the Tennessee Highway Patrol, according to the sources. Abrego Garcia was pulled over for speeding in a vehicle with eight passengers and told police they had been working construction in Missouri.
According to body camera footage of the 2022 traffic stop, the Tennessee troopers — after questioning Abrego Garcia — discussed among themselves their suspicions that Abrego Garcia might be transporting people for money because nine people were traveling without luggage, but Abrego Garcia was not ticketed or charged.
The officers ultimately allowed Abrego Garcia to drive on with just a warning about an expired driver’s license, according to a report about the stop released last month by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
Asked what circumstances have changed since Abrego Garcia was not taken in custody during that traffic stop in Tennessee, Bondi replied, “What has changed is Donald Trump is now president of the United States, and our borders are again secure, and thanks to the bright light that has been shined on Abrego Garcia — this investigation continued with actually amazing police work, and we were able to track this case and stop this international smuggling ring from continuing.”
Asked by ABC News’ Pierre Thomas asked whether this should be seen as resolving the separate civil case in Maryland in which a federal judge ordered the government to facilitate Abrego Garcia’s return, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said, “There’s a big difference between what the state of play was before the indictment and after the indictment. And so the reason why he is back and was returned was because an arrest warrant which was presented to the government and in El Salvador. So there’s, there’s a big difference there as far as whether it makes the ongoing litigation in Maryland moot. I would think so, but we don’t know about this. He just landed today.”
As ABC News first reported last month, the Justice Department had been quietly investigating the Tenessee traffic stop. As part of the probe, federal agents in late April visited a federal prison in Talladega, Alabama to question Jose Ramon Hernandez-Reyes, a convicted felon who was the registered owner of the vehicle Abrego Garcia was driving when stopped on Interstate 40 east of Nashville, sources previously told ABC News. Hernandez-Reyes was not present at the traffic stop.
Hernandez-Reyes, 38, is currently serving a 30-month sentence for illegally re-entering the U.S. after a prior felony conviction for illegal transportation of aliens.
After being granted limited immunity, Hernandez-Reyes allegedly told investigators that he previously operated a “taxi service” based in Baltimore. He claimed to have met Abrego Garcia around 2015 and claimed to have hired him on multiple occasions to transport undocumented migrants from Texas to various locations in the United States, sources told ABC News.
When details of the Tennessee traffic stop were first publicized, Abrego Garcia’s wife said her husband sometimes transported groups of fellow construction workers between job sites.
“Unfortunately, Kilmar is currently imprisoned without contact with the outside world, which means he cannot respond to the claims,” Jennifer Vasquez Sura said in mid-April.
Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who flew to El Salvador and met with Abrego Garcia shortly after his deportation, said Friday that the Trump administration had “relented” regarding his return.
“After months of ignoring our Constitution, it seems the Trump Admin has relented to our demands for compliance with court orders and due process for Kilmar Abrego Garcia,” Van Hollen posted on X. “This has never been about the man — it’s about his constitutional rights & the rights of all.”
Abrego Garcia entered the U.S. illegally as a teenager in 2012, according to court records. He had been living in Maryland for the past 13 years, and married Vasquez Sura, a U.S. citizen, in 2019. The couple has one child together.
ABC News’ Laura Romero contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — The Columbia University student who was detained in Vermont by Immigration and Customs Enforcement told ABC News that he was about to sign a document saying he was willing to take the Pledge of Allegiance, one of the final steps in the process to become a U.S. citizen, when masked agents suddenly arrested him.
In an interview nearly a week after a federal judge ordered him released from detention while his case proceeds, Mohsen Mahdawi recounted his arrest and detainment, saying that he feared his citizenship interview was a “trap” and that he’s concerned that democracy in the U.S. is under attack.
“It was a moment of like, should I be happy or should I be cautious when I received the notice?” Mahdawi told ABC News about receiving the notice for his citizenship interview. “And I sense that this might be a trap. And for sure, indeed, it was an alarm bell where I directly reached out to my legal team in order to navigate, you know, the pros and cons and this risk that I think that I may lose my freedom.”
Mahdawi said that, as he was completing his interview, “at that moment, [I had] very strong feelings of, ‘Oh my god, things are working out. And then they came into the office … and you can imagine the feeling between, I am being excited to receive the citizenship, and then feeling of betraying disappointment.”
A Department of Homeland Security official pushed back on concerns that the interview may have been a trap staged to detain Mahdawi.
“The Department does not ‘stage’ interviews or any other type of adjudication,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “If an alien is seeking a benefit, they will almost assuredly be interviewed. If the alien is subject to detention, that alien will almost assuredly be detained. One has no bearing on the other.”
“Illegal aliens do not have a right to roam freely in our country, nor do they have a right to elude federal authorities,” McLaughlin said.
Mahdawi, who co-founded a university organization called the Palestinian Student Union with detained Columbia student Mahmoud Khalil, was born in a refugee camp in the West Bank before moving in 2014 to the U.S. where he has been a legal resident for 10 years.
His lawyers believe that, like Khalil, he is being targeted by the Trump administration under Immigration and Nationality Act section 237(a)(4)(C)(i), which asserts that the secretary of state can deem a person deportable if they have reasonable ground to believe that the person’s presence or activities in the U.S. could have adverse foreign policy consequences.
In response to the government’s allegations against him, Mahdawi and his lawyers have firmly refuted allegations that he ever threatened Israelis or those of the Jewish faith. He told ABC News he has been advocating for peace and protesting against the war in Gaza.
“So for them to accuse me of this is not going to work, because I am a person who actually has condemned antisemitism,” Mahdawi said. “And I believe that the fight against antisemitism and the fight to free Palestine go hand in hand, because, as Martin Luther King said, injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
After his arrest at a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services office in Vermont, where he was undergoing his citizenship interview, Mahdawi said he was quickly put in handcuffs, but was not given a reason for why he was being detained.
“The first thing they’ve done is they isolated me from my lawyer, separated me from my lawyer,” Mahdawi said of his arrest. “They did not show us any paperwork they had on them. I told them, ‘I am a peaceful man and I will collaborate.'”
Mahdawi claims ICE officials were planning to send him to Louisiana where Khalil is detained, but missed the flight by a few minutes. His lawyers, who crafted several habeas petitions in anticipation that he could be detained, filed an emergency request for a temporary restraining order, which a federal judge granted.
“They were preparing to send me to Louisiana,” Mahdawi said. “They had my flight tickets really printed, and two agents came to take me … to ship me on a commercial flight from Burlington Airport to New York and from New York to Louisiana.”
At his bail hearing last week, the Department of Justice argued against Mahdawi’s release, saying that during a 2015 FBI investigation, a gun shop owner alleged that Mahdawi had claimed to have built machine guns in the West Bank to kill Jews, proving that he was a threat. According to a police report obtained by ABC News from Windsor Police in Vermont, a “concerned citizen” alleged that Mahdawi “seemed to have knowledge about gun design and function.”
But that investigation was closed and Mahdawi was never charged with any crime, a point that Judge Geoffrey Crawford highlighted when he ordered Mahdawi’s release last week.
During the hearing, the federal judge said that while the allegations were “shocking,” he noted that because the FBI at the time decided to close the case, he understood that to mean that the FBI came to the conclusion that the allegations made by the gun shop owner and the other individual were unfounded claims.
Judge Crawford noted during last week’s hearing that Mahdawi had received letters of support from over 90 community members, including from members of the Jewish community, adding that “people who have in a consistent pattern described him as peaceful.”
The judge also said Mahdawi had “made substantial claims that his detention was in retaliation for his protected speech.”
Mahdawi told ABC News that his Buddhist faith has kept him grounded as his immigration and federal cases continue to play out in court and the threat of deportation still lingers.
He said he believes “everybody should be alert and alarmed” that the Trump administration targeted him for his advocacy.
“We are at a very critical time,” Mahdawi said. “What is happening in America is going to affect the rest of the world. The attack on democracy that guarantees many rights for people, democracy that has established international order and human rights, is a very dangerous phenomenon.”
During the interview, Mahdawi said he first experienced true freedom when he moved to the United States — a feeling he claims to still have despite his legal battle.
“They can put me in prison, but my spirit is free, and the free spirit is a spirit that does not give up on the idea of justice,” he said. “The free spirit is a spirit that empathizes with everyone, including its oppressor, so I do feel free.”
