Migrants found on plane; 3 people held
MCALLEN, Texas -- Three people have been arrested and accused of trying to transport smuggled migrants into the interior of the United States by air, bypassing Border Patrol checkpoints, according to court records.
Court documents show that James Martinez, Luis Armando Lopez-Alvarado and Desiree Love Rodarte were charged with human smuggling and human smuggling conspiracy after their arrest Sunday at a Texas airport. They are being held without bail.
An arrest affidavit shows U.S. Homeland Security Investigations agents had the Mid-Valley Airport in the lower Rio Grande Valley city of Weslaco under surveillance Sunday when they saw Martinez and Lopez-Alvarado drop off six people who boarded a chartered Beechcraft airplane with Rodarte.
Agents boarded the plane and performed an immigration check that determined the six were in the country illegally, and they arrested Martinez, Lopez and Rodarte.
Martinez and Lopez declined to give agents any statement, but Rodarte told them that she had arranged to transport to the U.S. interior people who had crossed the border illegally.
Three of the six migrants were held as material witnesses until their testimony could be recorded. In the affidavit, the Salvadoran nationals said they had been picked up -- two from a stash house and one from a hotel -- and driven to the airport to be flown deeper into the United States.
Rioter gets 7 years, apologizes to officer
DES MOINES, Iowa -- A judge sentenced a Capitol rioter to seven years in prison Tuesday, calling the Iowa man a "one-man wrecking ball" who helped in a sustained assault on a police officer.
Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentenced Kyle Young in U.S. District Court in Washington to one of the longest prison terms handed down over the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, noting he had admitted to helping assault an officer She gave him credit for the 17 months he's been held since his arrest.
"You were a one-man wrecking ball that day," Berman Jackson told Young, 38.
Young cried as he apologized to former D.C. Metropolitan Police officer Michael Fanone and said he wished he could take back his actions of that day.
"I hope some day you forgive me," he said.
Fanone told the court of the near-death experience he endured at the hands of the rioters in which he was beaten and repeatedly shocked with a stun gun. He said the attack ended his career as an officer, and he told the judge that Young should get 10 years in prison.
"What I hope you do with that time is, I hope you suffer," Fanone told Young.
Secret Service phones seized in probe
The Secret Service has reportedly seized 24 phones from agents in a contentious investigation by the Department of Homeland Security inspector general into the storming of the U.S. Capitol.
The two dozen agents' phones, which are not believed to include messages from the Jan. 6, 2021, riot, were handed over to Inspector General Joseph Cuffari in July shortly after he opened a probe into missing text messages from the day of the attack, NBC News reported Tuesday.
It's not clear what information if any Cuffari has gleaned from the agents' phones, which are government property.
The revelation about the seizures does little to clear up questions about Cuffari's probe and his oversight of the Secret Service in the months since the attack.
He revealed over the summer that text messages from Secret Service agents involved in the response to the Jan. 6 attack were mostly scrubbed in what the agency has described as a tech upgrade coinciding with the incoming administration of President Joe Biden.
Cuffari's office apparently knew about the lost messages for more than a year before notifying the congressional committee investigating the attack, a delay that infuriated lawmakers.
Biden keeps refugee limit at 125,000
SAN DIEGO -- President Joe Biden on Tuesday kept the nation's cap on refugee admissions at 125,000 for fiscal 2023, despite pressure from advocates to raise it after falling far short of that target this year.
Advocates have been pushing the administration to do more to restore the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The more than four-decade-old program suffered deep cuts under the Trump administration, which slashed admissions to a record low of 15,000.
After taking office, Biden quadrupled the number of refugee admissions permitted for the remaining months of fiscal 2021. He then set the target at 125,000 for the 2022 budget year, which ends Sept. 30. But so far fewer than 20,000 refugees have been admitted.
That number excludes the roughly 180,000 Ukrainians and Afghans who came to the United States via a legal process called humanitarian parole that got them into the country more quickly but allows for stays of only two years.
Refugees are provided a path to permanent residency. Their admissions are determined by the president, and federal funding for resettlement agencies is based on the number of people they resettle in a given year.
Former D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone, center, shakes hands with a Capitol Police officer as Capitol Police Sgt. Aquilino Gonell, left, stands by outside the federal courthouse, after Kyle Young, who assaulted Fanone during the Jan. 6 riots, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after a trial in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022. ( AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Former D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Michael Fanone leaves the federal courthouse after Kyle Young, who assaulted Fanone during the Jan. 6 riots, was sentenced to more than seven years in prison after a trial in Washington, Tuesday, Sept. 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)
Workers install hangar-sized tents Wednesday in the parking lot of Orchard Beach in the Bronx borough of New York. The city is erecting tents as temporary shelter for thousands of international migrants who have been bused into the Big Apple as part of a campaign by Republican governors to disrupt federal border policies. (AP/Julia Nikhinson)