Person with what appears to be a gun arrested outside US Capitol: Police

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — A Chicago man accused of gunning down his ex-wife and her husband in their home has waived extradition and will be transferred from Illinois to Ohio to face charges.

Michael McKee is charged with premeditated aggravated murder for allegedly shooting and killing his ex-wife, Monique Tepe, and her husband, dentist Spencer Tepe, at their Columbus home on Dec. 30, according to police.

McKee, 39, wore a yellow jumpsuit as he made a brief first court appearance on Monday in Rockford, Illinois, where he was arrested on Saturday.

McKee did not enter a plea but assistant public defender Carie Poirier told the judge he intended to plead not guilty. A status hearing on his transfer to Ohio is scheduled for Jan. 19.

Police announced McKee’s arrest on Saturday after he was linked to a car seen on surveillance footage in the neighborhood, according to court documents.

McKee and Monique Tepe were married in 2015 and divorced in 2017, according to divorce records obtained by ABC Columbus affiliate WSYX. They did not have any children together, according to the records.

Spencer and Monique Tepe married in December 2020, according to their obituary.

They are survived by their two young children who were found safe inside the house after the Dec. 30 killings.

McKee’s arrest came one day before the scheduled celebration of life service for the couple.

“Today’s arrest represents an important step toward justice for Monique and Spencer,” the family said in a statement on Saturday. “Nothing can undo the devastating loss of two lives taken far too soon, but we are grateful to the City of Columbus Police Department, its investigators, and assisting law enforcement community. … As the case proceeds, we trust the justice system to hold the person responsible fully accountable.”

“Monique and Spencer remain at the center of our hearts, and we carry forward their love as we surround and protect the two children they leave behind,” the family said. “We will continue to honor their lives and the light they brought into this world.”

ABC News’ Matt Foster, Victoria Arancio and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents began fanning out at more than a dozen airports across the nation on Monday to assume some of the duties of Transportation Security Administration officers affected by a federal government funding crisis.

“What I see ICE agents doing is helping TSA plug the holes of security,” White House Border Czar Tom Homan told ABC News on Monday.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the ICE agents assigned to airports will also continue to enforce immigration laws.

“They really are a high-level group of people and they love it because they’re able to now arrest illegals as they come into the country. That’s very fertile territory,” Trump said during a gaggle with reporters on the tarmac in Palm Beach, Florida. “But that’s not why they’re there. They’re really there to help.”

Homan said that if ICE agents see “illegal activity,” they will take action because they are federal law enforcement officers.

Asked whether the ICE agents will be carrying out immigration enforcement at airports, Homan said, “We’re not going to ignore illegal conduct in the airport whether it’s human trafficking, whether it’s alien smuggling with somebody that’s wanted, whether it’s … someone that they believe they have reasonable suspicion to talk to because they feel there’s a criminal activity in front of them.”

“Of course, anybody would need probable cause to make any arrests, but yeah, their law enforcement officers and they’re not going to ignore the law while we’re there,” Homan said.

“I’m leaving it up to the TSA Administrator, who’s an expert airport operations,” Homan added. “Where can we plug the holes? Where can we increase security, especially in this heightened security environment, because what’s going on the world? Where can we help you to move those lines and American people quicker to inspections while the same time maintaining security at the airport?”

As ICE agents began showing up at airports on Monday, Trump earlier posted a message on social media asking them to refrain from wearing masks while helping with airport security.

“I would greatly appreciate, however, NO MASKS, when helping our Country out of the Democrat caused MESS at the airports,” Trump said in his post, adding that he is a “BIG proponent” of ICE agents wearing masks when they “search for, and are forced to deal with, hardened criminals.”

Asked by reporters on Monday on Air Force One why he wants ICE agents to remove their masks at airports, Trump replied, “Because the people coming into the airport, typically speaking, aren’t murderers, killers, drug dealers, etc. There may be a few of them. But there aren’t many.”

Immigration officials wearing masks has been a key issue for critics in Trump’s nationwide mass deportation program.

Trump added that typical travelers at airports are “people that want to come into the country, and that want to leave the country, going to maybe their home countries, so I didn’t think it was an appropriate look for an airport.”

ICE agents were spotted by ABC News at the Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport early Monday.

The agents appeared to be helping with crowd control at the airport amid long lines of travelers trying to get through security. At one point, lines stretched outside the Atlanta airport’s terminals.

DHS funding battle continues

Democrats have blocked funding for the Department of Homeland Security in an effort to push for policy reforms to ICE, whose aggressive tactics in enforcing immigration laws have prompted protests and lawsuits across the country.

The DHS reforms that Democratic lawmakers have proposed include requiring ICE agents not to wear face masks, be equipped with body cameras and have warrants signed by a judge before entering homes and businesses.

Republicans have, so far, rejected those proposals.

ICE and TSA are both under the umbrella of DHS. But while ICE has remained funded through appropriations from Trump’s tax and spending bill passed last summer, key DHS agencies like TSA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Coast Guard are left unfunded.

Approximately 60,000 TSA officers have gone over a month with partial pay and last week began getting no paychecks as the stalemate over DHS funding continues.

Some TSA officers have begun calling out sick or quitting as they missed their first paycheck since the shutdown began on Feb. 14. DHS said that more than 400 TSA officers have quit so far.

Confusion over duties of ICE agents

On Sunday, Homan said the deployment of ICE would largely free up TSA agents for specialized tasks, like passenger and bag screening.

Homan, however, said ICE agents are not trained to do specialized work like screening passengers and running X-ray machines.

“But there are roles we can play to release TSA officers from the non-significant role, such as guarding an exit, so they can get back to the scanning machines and move people quicker,” Homan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

Speaking on Fox News Sunday, Homan said that “ICE can check identification before people enter the screening area.”

But in an interview Sunday on ABC’s “This Week,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy seemed to contradict Homan.

Asked by Jon Karl, ABC News’ chief Washington correspondent, whether the ICE agents have any practical experience in manning airport security lines, Duffy said, “They run those same type of security machines at the Southern border, right? Packages come through or people come through. They run similar assets.”

Duffy added that ICE agents could also manage the flow of travelers through airport security and help TSA with administrative tasks.

“It depends on who shows up. Every single day will dictate how long these lines are,” Duffy said. “And you don’t know as travelers are trying to figure out, do I have to come an hour-and-a-half early? Do I have to come four hours early? They don’t know until the day of or the afternoon of their flight.”

Homan attempted to clarify what duties ICE agents would have at the airports during an interview on Monday with ABC News. Homan said that Duffy might have been referring to machines used for luggage and other packages that ICE agents already run at airports.

Homan told ABC News that ICE and Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) “have a footprint of all the airports, because that’s where we open investigations on currency smuggling and human trafficking.”

“So ICE is involved with baggage investigations on that. So there is a sort of screening,” Homan said.

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(WASHINGTON) — Cole Allen, the suspect in the White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner shooting, appears to have been a highly intelligent person, albeit shy, and was at one point a devoted Christian, according to conversations with individuals from his past.

The California native was tackled by law enforcement after the gunfire Saturday night inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.

Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence.

Allen’s former pastor, Rev. Movses Janbazian, struggled to square the man described by federal officials as an aspiring killer with the hard-working student who attended sermons each week at Pasadena United Reformed Church in South Pasadena. 

“Nice, gentle, smart young man,” Janbazian told ABC News. “It’s obviously very surprising to hear his name appear in the news in this way.”

Janbazian said Allen joined the United Reformed Church congregation during his time at Caltech, where he studied mechanical engineering. Allen would frequently bring coursework to church — evidence, he said, of what a “competitive program” he was enrolled in. Allen graduated from Caltech in 2017 and he received a master’s degree from California State University, Dominguez Hills in 2025.

Paul Thompson, a neighbor of the Allen family, described Allen as “not very sociable,” but maintained that he “had no idea that he was capable of that kind of violence.” 

“I’ve seen him a hundred times coming and going … but I’ve never had a conversation with him,” Thompson said. 

Allen’s father, on the other hand, was “kind of like the neighborhood mayor — knows everybody by first name,” Thompson said.

“Everybody likes him. He’s a very sociable guy,” Thompson said of Allen’s father.

“This is going to be very, very difficult … on his family,” Thompson added. 

Allen was most recently working as a tutor and students said he demonstrated a knack for competently teaching a wide range of subjects. A group of high school students who were tutored by Allen shared a statement describing him as “generally very intelligent” and “normal and friendly.”

Joel Devereux, the father-in-law of Allen’s brother, described Allen to ABC News as “very quiet, polite, smart” in their limited interactions, but said he seemed “distant from his family” and “doesn’t normally hang around them.” 

Allen — who officials say traveled by train from California to D.C. — allegedly left a note which said that administration officials were his targets, “not including [FBI Director Kash] Mr. Patel,” and were “prioritized from highest-ranking to lowest,” according to the criminal complaint against him.

Allen allegedly wrote that Secret Service agents were targets “only if necessary, and to be incapacitated non-lethally if possible,” the complaint said.

The note said hotel security, Capitol police and the National Guard were “not targets if at all possible (aka unless they shoot at me),” and hotel employees and guests were “not targets at all,” the complaint said.

The note said he would “go through most everyone here to get to the targets if it were absolutely necessary,” adding, ‘I really hope it doesn’t come to that,” according to the complaint.

Allen appeared in court on Monday and did not enter a plea. He’s set to return to court for a detention hearing on Thursday.

ABC News’ Susan Zalkind contributed to this report.

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