Pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil expected in court after ICE arrest
Timothy A. Clary /AFP via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Mahmoud Khalil — the pro-Palestinian activist who was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on the campus of Columbia University, despite possessing a green card — is scheduled to appear in court Wednesday.
Khalil is currently being held in Louisiana after being arrested in New York earlier this week. His legal team is asking for Khalil to order the government to return him to New York while his legal fight plays out.
The court will hear the habeas corpus petition filed by Khalil’s legal team on Wednesday at 11:30 a.m.
President Donald Trump’s administration has alleged that Khalil — who was a leader of the pro-Palestinian encampment protests on Columbia’s campus — was a supporter of Hamas. Authorities have not charged Khalil with a crime and the administration has not provided any evidence showing Khalil’s alleged support for the militant group.
Baher Azmy, one of the lawyers representing Khalil, called his client’s alleged alignment with Hamas “false and preposterous.”
Attorney Amy E. Greer said Khalil’s detention in Louisiana is a “blatantly improper but familiar tactic designed to frustrate the New York federal court’s jurisdiction.”
Khalil’s arrest has prompted protests calling for his release. Fourteen members of Congress have also signed a letter demanding his release.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
ABC News’ Armando Garcia, James Hill, Laura Romero and Ely Brown contributed to this report.
(NEWTON COUNTY, Ind.) — A 41-year-old mother of three was found alive in her wrecked car in Indiana after being trapped for six days, authorities said.
A man was operating equipment for a drainage and excavation company on Tuesday when he spotted a car off a roadway, out of view from passing traffic, the Newton County Sheriff’s Office said.
He called his supervisor, Jeremy Vanderwall, who’s an assistant chief at a local volunteer fire department, and the two checked the car and found Brieonna Cassell inside, the sheriff’s office said.
“She was she was very conscious, very alert, very aware of how severe her injuries were,” Vanderwall told ABC News.
“She said, ‘I didn’t think anybody was gonna find me. I thought I was gonna die in this ditch,'” Vanderwall recalled.
Cassell was flown to a hospital in Chicago, which is about 75 miles north of Newton County.
Cassell had been trapped since Thursday night when she fell asleep at the wheel and veered off the road into a deep ditch under a bridge, according to her father, Delmar Caldwell.
She suffered serious injuries to her legs and wrist, and her phone was dead under the passenger seat, Caldwell told ABC News.
Cassell could hear cars going by and she screamed, but no one could see or hear her, Caldwell said.
“I’m sure that was demoralizing,” Vanderwall said.
“She was stuck in the car and could not get out. But she was able to reach the water from the car,” Caldwell said. “The only way she was able to survive was using her hoodie and dipping it into the water in a ditch and sucking the water, or bringing the the water into her mouth from the ditch.”
“To have the wherewithal to use her shirt to get water, knowing that she had to have water to survive … just survival skills, man,” Vanderwall added.
On Tuesday morning, “she had given up hope of being found,” Caldwell said. “And then, by the grace of God and the prayers and everything, she was found.”
“Everybody that helped to find her and the volunteers and everything … it was a wonderful miracle,” Caldwell said.
Cassell is now in “good spirits” and “eating a lot,” he said.
Newton County Sheriff Shannon Cothran called Cassell’s survival “an incredible testament to her will to live.”
The sheriff also commended Johnny Martinez, the passerby who found Cassell’s car.
Vanderwall said Martinez could spot the car because he was driving a tall tractor.
“I myself had traveled that road at least three to four times since she crashed and did not see her,” Vanderwall noted.
Caldwell said his daughter’s missing person report was well-known in the area, so Martinez knew who Cassell was when he found her.
“In my book, Mr. Martinez is a hero, and we can never thank him enough for his keen eye and quick action,” the sheriff said in a statement.
Vanderwall added, “If he hadn’t seen her and hadn’t pushed for me to go back and check on her, she could have laid there for who knows how much longer, and the outcome might not be the same.”
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge on Friday will consider blocking the Department of Government Efficiency from accessing records from the Department of Labor after a lawsuit alleged that Elon Musk’s cost-cutting team sought to illegally access highly sensitive data, including medical information, from the federal government.
Five federal unions alleged that DOGE employees are breaking the law by seeking to access sensitive records from the Department of Labor, including the “most private, sensitive employee and medical information on virtually every worker in America,” according to the suit
“Department of Labor employees have been told to unquestionably give DOGE operatives access to any system or information they request, or else face termination,” the lawsuit said, alleging that DOGE’s pattern of conduct has been “replete with violations of law.”
Musk’s private companies, including SpaceX and Tesla, have been investigated and fined by parts of the Department of Labor, and at least one of his companies is being actively investigated. Musk has denied all wrongdoing.
On Wednesday, in response to a lawsuit by several federal employee unions, lawyers with the Justice Department agreed to a temporary restraining order that would largely prohibit DOGE from accessing Treasury Department data.
As DOGE has, according to the suit, “zeroed in on and sought unprecedented access to sensitive information” from other federal agencies, including the Treasury Department and Department of Education, the lawsuit raised red flags about Musk’s intrusion into the Department of Labor because of the sensitivity of their records related to the administration of the Federal Employees’ Compensation Act.
According to the lawsuit, Labor Department records include injury reports for thousands of employees, medical records, claim forms, and personal information gathered during the administration of FECA claims.
The department also has records of at least 86,000 workers compensation claims from 2024 alone that could be breached by DOGE, the suit said.
“The threats to the Department of Labor that give rise to this action and application for emergency relief represent yet another iteration of what is fast becoming a pattern for DOGE: exceeding its narrow mission and exercising authority it does not (and cannot) possess by exerting control over agencies through personal attacks and threats of unlawful reprisals, and harming people and the stability of our nation in the process,” the lawsuit said.
In a court filing Thursday, Justice Department attorneys representing DOGE argued that the federal unions who brought the case failed to show how they would be harmed by the sharing of data between DOGE and the Labor Department, acknowledging that multiple DOGE representatives have already been sent to work for the department.
“Plaintiffs cannot establish standing, much less irreparable harm, to challenge the sharing of unstated categories of information from unidentified records systems to unknown individuals working in the Executive Branch,” their filing said.
The lawsuit further alleged that Musk — described as an “an unappointed, unelected, and temporarily serving official” — has sought to “run roughshod” over the Labor Department at the same time it has active investigations pending into his private companies.
The Occupational Safety and Health Administration — which falls under the Labor Department — previously investigated and fined Musk’s SpaceX and Tesla for multiple safety incidents, including one in connection with a SpaceX employee’s death. OSHA also has multiple open investigations into Musk’s Boring Company.
“Mr. Musk would ordinarily be unable to access nonpublic information regarding those investigations,” the lawsuit said. “In light of the blanket instruction to provide DOGE employees with ‘anything they want,’ Mr. Musk or his associates will be able to access that information simply by asking DOL employees for it.”
The plaintiffs are asking a federal judge to issue a temporary restraining order that would prohibit the Department of Labor from sharing any records with DOGE.
(NEW ORLEANS) — Authorities investigating the suspect in the truck attack that killed 14 and injured dozens in New Orleans on New Year’s Day are probing when, where and how his alleged “radicalization” occurred, a local official said on Friday.
Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran and U.S.-born citizen from Texas, posted several videos online hours before the Bourbon Street attack “proclaiming his support for ISIS” and mentioning he joined ISIS before this summer, according to the FBI.
On Friday, Jabbar’s half-brother told ABC News the suspect traveled to Egypt in 2023 for around a month, telling his family he was going “because it was cheap and beautiful.”
Jabbar’s foreign travel is a part of the ongoing investigation, law enforcement officials told ABC News.
Investigators are working to determine what he did during his travel in Egypt, why he went and who he interacted with while there, multiple sources said. Critical to the probe is whether he had been radicalized prior to the travel or if the travel marked the start of his radicalization.
“This next most important phase of the investigation is to find out how that radicalization happened and if it happened on that trip,” Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams told ABC News.
Jabbar was shot dead in the midst of Wednesday’s attack in New Orleans, after driving a pickup truck onto a sidewalk and around a parked police car serving as a barricade to plow into pedestrians over a three-block stretch on Bourbon Street, police said.
Jabbar then exited the damaged vehicle armed with an assault rifle and opened fire on police officers, law enforcement said. Officers returned fire, killing him.
Officials said the first 24 hours after the ramming attack were occupied by a feverish effort to determine whether there were additional suspects on the loose or if Jabbar worked with accomplices.
Since Thursday, investigators have been focused on piecing together his path to radicalization and the events that led up to his decision to attack Bourbon Street.
Two U.S. officials told ABC on Friday that, though it’s still very early in the investigation, there is evidence at this time that Jabbar had been in contact with a direct ISIS representative.
The officials noted that, two days after the attack, there has been no claim of responsibility by ISIS.
However, investigators are still working through his three phones and two laptops and examining his travel history.
In another update Friday, authorities revealed Jabbar set a small fire in the hallway of the property in New Orleans he rented on Mandeville Street before the attack using “strategically placed accelerants throughout the house in his effort to destroy it and other evidence of his crime,” according to the joint update from FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
However, after Jabbar left the residence, the fire burned itself out before spreading to other rooms. When the New Orleans Fire Department arrived, the fire was smoldering, and investigators were able to recover evidence, including pre-cursors for bomb making material and a privately made device suspected of being a silencer for a rifle.”
Regarding the explosive devices, the FBI said it believes that during the Bourbon Street attack, Jabbar intended to use a transmitter that was later found in the truck to denote the devices.
The transmitter, along with two firearms connected to Jabbar, was being transported to the FBI Laboratory for additional testing, authorities said.
Before the deadly ramming, surveillance footage showed Jabbar placing two improvised explosive devices in coolers in the Bourbon Street area, investigators said. He had a remote detonator in the truck to set off the two devices, but both were rendered safe, officials said.
Inside one of the coolers, investigators found a device consisting of a steel pipe, nails and a relatively rare explosive chemical, a senior law enforcement official told ABC News on Friday. The remote detonation capability apparently failed to work, the official said.
NBC News was the first to report on the rare chemical.
A search of Jabbar’s home in Houston also turned up bomb-making materials, sources confirmed to ABC News on Thursday. The items found were also referred to as “precursor chemicals” by agents in the field, sources said.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning the nation’s 18,000 law-enforcement agencies about potential copycats, ABC News learned.
The bulletin was sent out of an abundance of caution to sensitize law enforcement around the country to be on the lookout for any activity pointing to the use of vehicles as a method to inflict mass casualties, sources told ABC News.
“We advise federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government and law enforcement officials and private sector security partners to remain vigilant of potential copycat or retaliatory attacks inspired by this attack and other recent, lethal vehicle-ramming incidents across the globe,” the bulletin said.
The bulletin notes that ISIS has been promoting the use of vehicles as a terrorism weapon since around 2014.
ISIS has ramped up calls for its supporters to launch low-tech, mass casualty ramming attacks in recent months, sources told ABC News, especially since the most recent Israel-Hamas conflict began in October 2023.
The bulletin stated that Jabbar was inspired by ISIS but that there remains no evidence of any co-conspirators. A senior law-enforcement official told ABC News that there is so far no sign of ISIS claiming responsibility for the New Orleans attack.
“Law enforcement should be aware that in many cases attackers have conducted vehicle-ramming attacks with secondary weapons and may continue the attack with edged weapons, firearms, or IEDs after the vehicle has stopped,” the bulletin said. The tactic could be “attractive” for foreign terrorist organizations and other actors due to its low complexity threshold, the warning said.
An intelligence bulletin from the New York Police Department obtained by ABC News indicated that ISIS supporters did celebrate the attack online. Violent extremists, the bulletin said, “continue to view densely populated walkways, parades, mass gatherings and other outdoor events along streets, especially during holidays, as vulnerable targets of opportunity.”
“This enduring threat underscores the criticality of pre-staged blocker cars and the deployment of other effectively configured countermeasures including heavy block, barriers and bollards,” it added.
Law enforcement cleared and reopened Bourbon Street on Thursday as the investigation continued. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said authorities had the “confidence” to reopen the area to the public ahead of the Sugar Bowl on Thursday afternoon, which was initially scheduled for Wednesday but postponed in the wake of the attack.
“I want to reassure the public that the city of New Orleans is not only ready for game day today, but we’re ready to continue to host large-scale events in our city,” she said. “Our hearts and prayers continue to go out to the victims’ families,” Cantrell added.
President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will head to New Orleans on Monday to meet with the families and community members, the White House said. Biden said Friday that he has spoken with victims’ families.
There is no apparent direct connection between the New Orleans attack and Wednesday’s Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, which is also being investigated as a possible act of terror, the FBI said Thursday.
