Woman who sought asylum in US believed to be deported hours before judge blocked her removal, lawyers say
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(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge temporarily blocked the deportation of eight asylum seekers on Thursday, but the move was too late for one woman who her lawyers believe has already been deported by the Trump administration.
Despite seeking asylum in the United States to escape a violent former partner, according to her legal team, the woman was sent back to Ecuador this week — just hours before a court blocked her deportation — where her lawyers fear she might be killed.
“Plaintiff N.S. fled Ecuador to escape horrific violence and kidnapping by her former partner—a police officer who called her anti-indigenous slurs while raping her, beating her, and holding his gun to her head—and fears that he will kill her if she is removed,” her lawyers wrote in a filing to the court, adding that the woman was held captive by her former partner.
Her rapid removal comes as immigrant advocates raise concerns that the Trump administration is hastily carrying out deportations of migrants while disregarding their asylum claims and in spite of active litigation to stop their removals.
According to court records, the woman entered the U.S. around Jan. 26 and asked for asylum after turning herself in to immigration officials. But as of Wednesday, court records show she had not received a “credible fear” interview, one of the first steps in determining eligibility for asylum.
Her lawyer Keren Zwick, a litigation director at National Immigrant Justice Center, said she has not made contact with the woman since Wednesday evening ahead of the court hearing and believes she is en route to or back in Ecuador where her life is in danger.
“I’m very worried about her wellbeing. She fled because she is facing domestic violence, and she fled a partner who threatened to kill her and held her captive and went looking for her when she tried to escape,” said Zwick “I feel sure that he will continue to do that and if he learns that she’s back in the country I think her life is in danger.”
During Thursday’s hearing, lawyers with the Department of Justice told the court that one of the asylum seekers may have already been in deportation proceedings, Zwick said.
Zwick said that the Department of Homeland Security has been unwilling to provide information about the state of her clients removal or intervene to stop the deportation.
“Their agency is not being helpful,” she said. “We haven’t been able to get clear information.”
DHS declined to comment or confirm if N.S. was deported to Ecuador.
A DOJ attorney representing the case did not respond to a request for comment.
As the Trump administration rapidly scales up deportation efforts, immigration advocates have criticized the administration for steamrolling removals with little regard for pending lawsuits or attempts to claim asylum.
In a separate case last week, the Trump administration deported three men to Venezuela just one day after a court order blocked their transfer to Guantanamo Bay. In other legal cases, the Trump administration has been accused of intentionally violating court orders.
“If we’re living in a world where the U.S. government thinks it’s okay to remove a person and asylum seekers … without giving them any opportunity to pursue protection, that’s just a complete subversion of our asylum,” Zwick said.
While today’s court order came too late to prevent what Zwick and her team say is a deportation, lawyers for asylum seekers will return to court next week to fight against their imminent removal to countries including Afghanistan, Ecuador, Brazil, and Egypt where their lawyers say they fear they’ll face persecution or violence.
The request to block the deportation of the eight asylum seekers is linked to an ongoing lawsuit the ACLU and other groups filed against the Trump administration earlier this month, challenging the president’s invocation of a section of the Immigration and Nationality Act that authorizes the president to “suspend the entry of all aliens” when their entry “would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.”
The eight asylum seekers who brought the case come from different home countries but each fear the same outcome if they are removed from the U.S.
According to court records, two plaintiffs fled Afghanistan due to fears that the Taliban might persecute them over their support for the United States. One plaintiff said they suffered kidnapping, rape and torture by the hands of a Ecuadorian cartel before fleeing to the United States. Another said they were jailed and tortured in Egypt due to their pro-democracy views.
“There is no legitimate governmental or public interest in the unlawful removal of the Individual Plaintiffs to countries where they face persecution or torture,” lawyers for the asylum seekers argued.
(LOS ANGELES) — The fires blazing through Los Angeles County are the latest unprecedented natural disaster likely amplified by our changing climate. In the weeks and months to come, climate attribution science will determine by just how much.
However, we do know that heavy rains, followed by drought and mixed with winds and low humidity created a perfect storm of conditions — just weeks after Hurricane Helene ripped through North Carolina’s Buncombe County, with fatal floods and landslides 400 miles from where the storm made landfall.
Experts say that extreme weather events worsened by climate change are knocking on the doors of people across the country, and local officials must proactively prepare their regions before their residents become the next victims of tragedy.
“One of the things that every local government, every city government, should be doing right now, and the cost is well worth it, is investing in very comprehensive climate risk assessments,” Albany Law School’s climate policy expert Cinnamon Carlarne told ABC News.
These risk assessments look at the potential harms facing a community, their exposure level and vulnerability to disaster — properly setting regions up to plan for and minimize the destruction a disaster can cause.
If lawmakers don’t take action, the toll — both in human life as well as economic damages — will only compound, according to Thomas Culhane, a professor of global sustainability at the University of South Florida.
“I’m frustrated that my now cousin’s home may be lost, and her family was in jeopardy, and my family is in jeopardy because there hasn’t been enough good dialogue about all the incredible solutions that we’ve had for thousands of years, for hundreds of years, for decades, some brand new,” Culhane told ABC News. “We’re not getting together and discussing and then implementing so people can see with their own eyes.”
Los Angeles County is no stranger to extreme weather events. But according to California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection, seven of the 10 largest wildfires in California history have occurred since 2017.
A recent assessment of LA County’s risk and vulnerability found that it was likely that wildfire conditions such as drought, high winds and extreme heat would compound.
The report found that areas between “urbanized land and undeveloped wildland vegetation” often sit within high or very high fire hazard severity zone. Notably, these hazard zones include the regions where the Palisades and Eaton Fires are burning.
It said that 19% of residents live in “Very High Fire Severity Zones” and developers continue to build in these areas despite concerns. The report noted that builders of new housing or infrastructure in such areas must follow requirements that “limit the impacts of wildfire on these properties,” including fire-resistant roofing, improved attic ventilation, tempered glass for exterior windows and maintaining 100 feet of “defensible space” between their structure and nearby landscaping or wildlands.
According to an October 2024 draft Climate Vulnerability Assessment from the office of LA City Planning, officials and researchers took the risk assessment back to communities to garner feedback about the best ways to implement mitigation strategies and create resilient infrastructure that stands strong in the face of climate disasters.
The draft assessment highlighted potential solutions to prevent against wildfire damage.
This included enforcing zoning restrictions to prevent new development in regions with high wildfire risk; requiring building codes in high hazard areas to include the use of fire resistant materials; ensuring reliable water sources and road access for emergency vehicles; and the installation of backup power in strategic locations to maintain essential services during outages.
Additionally, the draft also noted plans to “strengthen power lines, utility poles, and communication networks in wildfire-prone areas to withstand fire impacts” and “create and maintain fire defensible space around structures and infrastructure.”
The draft also encourages the use of indigenous fire risk reduction practices, such as intentional burns. It also suggests that community members can take part by clearing potential wildfire fuel such as dry underbrush, as well as restoring native habitat and plants.
The LA County Office of Sustainability and the LA City Planning office has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment about the climate assessments.
“When you look into indigenous practices or local practices, you see people dealt with these extremes by developing systems and then we ignored them,” Culhane said. “We set up systems that were bound to fail.”
He continued, “If you took seriously the catastrophic potential … put the money in because then we don’t have to pay later. The recovery costs are huge.”
This doesn’t take into account the cost of human life — at least 24 people have been recorded to have died thus far, according to officials.
If cities around the country can uncover and address targeted and individualized potential climate resilience techniques, they can save lives, according to Cinnamon Carlarne.
“We’re committed to a certain level of warming going forward, simply because greenhouse gasses are accumulating in the atmosphere, and we are not reducing our greenhouse gas emissions,” Carlarne said.
However, she argues, it’s vital to continue to do the work to ensure the climate does not worsen further and cause more damage.
“So you are starting to see, because the frequency and intensity of disasters is mounting, and the human and economic cost disasters are mounting, that more and more city and local governments are actually starting to engage in planning, to assess infrastructure and to create ways where they can learn from one another,” Carlarne said. “But we have more and more cities and local governments that are actually recognizing this is one of real, serious challenges for their government systems.”
Jerry Jackson/The Baltimore Sun/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — This year was full of first-of-its-kind stories that got Americans talking.
While this year saw Donald Trump’s historic conviction and election to a non-consecutive second term, here’s a look back at some of the most talked about stories of 2024 outside of politics, from Diddy’s arrest to the Menendez brothers’ fight for freedom.
Alaska door plug incident
Minutes after Alaska Airlines flight 1282 took off from Portland International Airport on Jan. 5, a door plug blew out, sparking chaos on the plane.
The flight was nearly full with the exception of a few seats; the two seats next to the missing door plug happened to be empty.
The Boeing 737 Max 9 safely made an emergency landing. No one was seriously injured.
An NTSB preliminary report found that, before the flight, four bolts designed to prevent the door plug from falling off the plane were missing.
A Boeing executive told ABC News this summer that the fuselage came to Boeing damaged from the supplier, and to fix the fuselage, the door plug needed to come off. Before they could get the plug back on, the plane needed to be moved; the overnight team put the door plug back on to seal the plane from the outdoor elements, but didn’t install the bolts because it wasn’t their job, the executive said. The first team never filled out the paperwork when they removed the door, so the next team didn’t know to put the bolts back on, the executive said.
The incident sparked intense scrutiny for Boeing that led to changes in the company, including a new CEO, the government mandating that Boeing slow down production, and increased oversight of the company’s safety and quality management systems.
Francis Scott Key Bridge collapse
On March 26, a container ship struck the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, collapsing the bridge and killing six construction workers who were filling potholes on the span. Two workers survived.
The crash affected entry into the Port of Baltimore for weeks, with the debris blocking entry for other ships. Crews worked to remove about 50,000 tons of steel, concrete and asphalt from the channel and from the container ship, the Department of Justice said.
The collapse is considered “one of the worst transportation disasters in recent memory,” Principal Deputy Associate Attorney General Benjamin Mizer said.
In October, the operators of the vessel that destroyed the bridge agreed to pay nearly $102 million for costs stemming from the federal response.
According to the cost estimates provided by the Maryland government, the bridge’s reconstruction will cost between $1.7 billion and $1.9 billion, Shailen Bhatt, administrator for the Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, said in May.
School shooter’s parents convicted
Jennifer and James Crumbley, the parents of Michigan high school shooter Ethan Crumbley, were sentenced to 10 to 15 years in prison in April after each was found guilty of four counts of involuntary manslaughter in separate trials.
The trials were a rare case of parents facing criminal charges over their role in a shooting carried out by their child.
Ethan Crumbley, who was 15 years old at the time of the 2021 shooting, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing four students at Oxford High School.
Prosecutors said Jennifer and James Crumbley ignored several warning signs in the days leading up to the shooting. The parents also bought their son the gun used in the shooting and failed to secure the weapon and limit their son’s access to it, prosecutors argued.
Alec Baldwin’s ‘Rust’ case dismissed, armorer convicted
A judge dismissed Alec Baldwin’s “Rust” case in July, on day three of his involuntary manslaughter trial for the fatal on-set shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
The defense said in its argument for dismissal that live ammunition that came into the hands of local law enforcement related to the investigation was “concealed” from them.
The judge agreed to dismiss, saying the state’s discovery violation regarding the late disclosure of a supplemental report on the ammunition evidence “injected needless delay into the proceedings,” approached “bad faith” and was “highly prejudicial to the defendant.”
Meanwhile, “Rust” armorer Hannah Gutierrez was found guilty of involuntary manslaughter in March. She was found not guilty of tampering with evidence.
Prosecutors said Gutierrez repeatedly failed to maintain proper firearm safety, arguing her negligence led to Hutchins’ death.
Gutierrez was sentenced in April to 18 months in prison.
5 charged in Matthew Perry’s ketamine death
Five people were charged in August 2024 in connection with last year’s ketamine death of “Friends” star Matthew Perry.
Erik Fleming, who admitted in court documents that he distributed the ketamine that killed Perry, and the actor’s live-in assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who admitted in court documents to administering the ketamine on the day Perry died, pleaded guilty.
Iwamasa and Fleming face up to 15 years and 25 years, respectively.
Two doctors are among those charged: Dr. Mark Chavez admitted to selling ketamine to Dr. Salvador Plasencia, a licensed medical doctor he has known for at least 20 years, with the understanding it would be sold to Perry, who was struggling with a ketamine addiction, according to prosecutors.
Chavez has pleaded guilty and faces up to 10 years in prison.
Two defendants pleaded not guilty: Plasencia and Jasveen Sangha, a woman allegedly known as “The Ketamine Queen,” who is accused of selling Perry the batch of ketamine that killed him, the Department of Justice said.
Sangha and Plasencia face charges including conspiracy to distribute ketamine and are set to go on trial in March 2025. If convicted of all charges, Sangha would face a mandatory minimum of 10 years and a maximum of life in prison. Plasencia would face up to 10 years for each ketamine-related count and up to 20 years for each records falsification count, according to prosecutors.
Georgia high school shooting
A 14-year-old student, Colt Gray, is accused of opening fire at Apalachee High School in Georgia on Sept. 4, killing two students and two teachers and injuring several others.
The suspect’s father, Colin Gray, is also facing charges for allegedly knowingly allowing his son to possess the weapon used in the shooting, according to the GBI.
Investigators believe the teen received the AR-style gun used in the shooting as a Christmas present from his father, according to sources.
The father and son have both pleaded not guilty.
Hurricanes Helene and Milton
On Sept. 26, Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida as a powerful Category 4 storm.
As Helene moved north, it wreaked havoc in Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee.
Helene destroyed homes and roads, stranded residents without phone service and water, and claimed the lives of nearly 250 people throughout the Southeast.
Helene is now the deadliest storm in North Carolina’s history. Western North Carolina, including the city of Asheville, was especially hard hit.
Weeks later, on Oct. 9, Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm, bringing tornadoes, powerful winds and flooding rains. Hurricane Milton killed at least 23 people in Florida.
Diddy arrested
Music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested in New York City in September and charged with sex trafficking by force, transportation to engage in prostitution and racketeering conspiracy.
Prosecutors allege he ran an “enterprise that he engaged in sex trafficking, forced labor or, kidnapping, arson and other crimes.”
Combs is accused of using violence, threats and coercion to force women to engage in sex acts with male prostitutes, sometimes lasting days and often recorded. Combs allegedly called the activity “freak offs.”
Federal prosecutors said Combs “abused, threatened, and coerced women and others around him to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct.”
Combs has pleaded not guilty. His trial is set for May 2025.
The music mogul is also facing numerous civil lawsuits with claims mirroring the criminal allegations.
Menendez brothers’ fight for freedom
The notorious Menendez brothers case came back into the spotlight this year when Netflix released a scripted series and a documentary, both of which added momentum to Erik and Lyle Menendez’s push to be released from prison.
The brothers — who were convicted in the 1990s for the 1989 murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez — have three possible paths to freedom.
One path is through resentencing. The Los Angeles County district attorney announced in October that he was recommending the brothers’ sentence of life without the possibility of parole be removed, and they should instead be sentenced for murder, which would be a sentence of 50 years to life. Because both brothers were under 26 at the time of the crimes, with the new sentence, they would be eligible for parole immediately.
The DA’s office said its resentencing recommendations take into account factors including the defendants’ ages, psychological trauma or physical abuse that contributed to carrying out the crime and their rehabilitation in prison.
The second path is their habeas corpus petition, which was filed last year for a review of new evidence not presented at trial: a letter Erik Menendez wrote before the murders detailing his allegations that his father sexually abused him; and a new victim who has come forward alleging he was also sexually assaulted by Jose Menendez.
The third path is the brothers’ request for clemency, which they’ve submitted to California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
The brothers’ next court hearing is in January 2025.
Delphi trial
In November, Delphi, Indiana, resident Richard Allen was found guilty in the murders of two teenage girls, Abby Williams and Libby German, who were killed on a local hiking trail in 2017.
The mysterious case captivated the nation for years. As police searched for answers, they released a clip of the unknown suspect’s voice — a recording of him saying “down the hill” — which was recovered from Libby’s phone. Police also released a grainy image of the suspect on the trail found on Libby’s phone.
Allen was arrested in 2022. He admitted to police he was on the trail that day, but he denied any involvement in the crime.
A major focus of Allen’s trial was his multiple confessions in jail to corrections officers, a psychologist and his wife. The defense argued Allen was in a psychotic state when he made the numerous confessions.
Allen was sentenced on Dec. 20 to 130 years in prison.
UnitedHealthcare CEO killing
UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson was gunned down outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel on Dec. 4 while he was on his way to an investors conference.
Thompson’s murder ignited online anger at the health insurance industry and some people online celebrated the suspect.
The slaying also sparked a massive manhunt for the masked gunman, with the NYPD releasing images of the suspect found via surveillance cameras.
On Dec. 9, suspect Luigi Mangione was apprehended after he was spotted at a McDonald’s in Altoona, Pennsylvania.
The ghost gun allegedly in his possession when he was arrested was matched to three shell casings recovered at the scene of the murder, the NYPD said. Fingerprints recovered from a water bottle and a Kind bar near the crime scene were also been matched to Mangione, police said.
Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, allegedly had a spiral notebook detailing plans about how to eventually kill the CEO, according to law enforcement officials.
One passage allegedly said, “What do you do? You whack the CEO at the annual parasitic bean-counter convention,” the officials said.
Mangione is in custody in New York City where he’s facing state and federal charges. The federal charges make him eligible for the death penalty.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso, Clara McMichael and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
Authorities are investigating a Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump Las Vegas hotel in Nevada, Jan. 1, 2025. Obtained by ABC News.
(LAS VEGAS) — The suspected driver of the Tesla Cybertruck that exploded Wednesday outside the Trump International Las Vegas Hotel has been identified as active duty Army soldier Matthew Livelsberger, according to an official briefed on the probe.
The FBI, with the assistance of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, are searching his Colorado Springs home on Thursday morning, officials said.
Livelsberger had already been identified as the person who rented the vehicle via the Turo app, though officials previously said they had still been working through forensics to determine the identity of the person behind the wheel at the time of the incident. The fire and explosion made the identification process difficult because of the physical injuries sustained by the driver, the official said.
Livelsberger served in the Army and was on approved leave at the time of his death, a U.S. Army spokesperson said Thursday.
The incident is not believed to have any direct connection to the New Year’s Day truck attack in New Orleans that killed 15 people and injured dozens more, according to the official briefed on the probe. The military is looking into whether the two drivers may have overlapped at Fort Liberty or in Afghanistan, though no evidence suggests the two ever were assigned together or knew each other, according to the official.
“At this point, there is no definitive link between the attack here in New Orleans and the one in Las Vegas,” the FBI’s Christopher Raia said Thursday morning at a press conference on the New Orleans attack.
Livelsberger was a supporter of President-elect Donald Trump, the official briefed on the probe told ABC News. His wife, who investigators spoke to in Colorado Springs, said he had been out of the house since around Christmas after a dispute over allegations of infidelity, the official said.
His wife told officials she did not believe Livelsberger would want to hurt anyone, the official told ABC News.
Two firearms — one handgun and one rifle — were found badly burned inside the vehicle. Livelsberger is believed to have told the person he rented the truck from that he was going camping at the Grand Canyon, the official told ABC News.
Investigators are still looking to determine how the items in the truck was detonated, but with the contents of the vehicle so badly burned, it may be a slow process, according to the official.
The vehicle was picked up by license plate readers traveling from Colorado to Las Vegas on Wednesday morning.
The investigation into the incident spans at least four states, and law enforcement officials are probing it as a possible act of terror.
The motive behind the incident remains under investigation, even as investigators tell ABC News that they believe it was “intentional.”
The driver of the Cybertruck pulled into the valet area of the hotel and the vehicle exploded, according to an official. The driver was the only fatality from the incident. Seven bystanders had minor injuries, authorities said.
Sheriff Kevin McMahill of the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department told reporters the truck was in front of the hotel for 15 to 20 seconds before it exploded.
The sheriff said Tesla CEO Elon Musk helped the investigation by having the truck unlocked after it auto-locked in the blast and by giving investigators video of the suspect at charging stations along its route from Colorado to Las Vegas.
McMahill said investigators were looking into any possible connections to the deadly attack in New Orleans earlier Wednesday but had not yet discovered any. The truck used in the New Orleans attack was also rented via the Turo app, sources said.
Video played at the Las Vegas news conference showed a load of fireworks-style mortars, gasoline cans and camping fuel canisters in the back of the truck.
McMahill said police believe the explosion was an “isolated incident” and that “there is no further threat to the community.” He also said police do not believe anyone was helping the Las Vegas suspect.
“We believe everything is safe now,” McMahill said.
The property is the subject of frequent threats and heightened security given its connection to Trump.
Musk, a close ally of Trump, said on Wednesday afternoon that the “whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now.”
“Will post more information as soon as we learn anything,” Musk wrote on X, which he also owns. “We’ve never seen anything like this.”
Musk later posted on X: “We have now confirmed that the explosion was caused by very large fireworks and/or a bomb carried in the bed of the rented Cybertruck and is unrelated to the vehicle itself.” It’s not known if Musk’s claim has been independently verified.
An official briefed on the investigation told ABC News “this was not a lithium battery” blast, as some have speculated online. There have been instances in the past of battery compartments in Tesla vehicles spontaneously catching fire.
Trump’s son Eric Trump, the executive vice president of the Trump Organization, posted on social media about the incident.
“Earlier today, a reported electric vehicle fire occurred in the porte cochère of Trump Las Vegas,” he wrote. “The safety and well-being of our guests and staff remain our top priority. We extend our heartfelt gratitude to the Las Vegas Fire Department and local law enforcement for their swift response and professionalism.”
The hotel also issued a statement on X suggesting the car involved was electric.
“Earlier today a reported electric vehicle fire occurred in the porte cochère of Trump Las Vegas,” the hotel wrote. “The safety & well-being of our guests and staff remain our top priority. We extend our gratitude to the Las Vegas Fire Department and local law enforcement for their swift response.”
President Joe Biden has been briefed on the fire and explosion near the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas and has directed his team to offer any federal assistance needed, the White House said.
