citizen

July 15 (UPI) — U.S. President Donald Trump said Wednesday evening that Iran has freed a U.S. citizen detained in the country since 2024 as a “gesture of goodwill.”

In a social media post, Trump said Iran wrongfully detained the woman in December 2024.

“She is now safely outside of Iran, and in good condition,” Trump wrote. He did not identify the woman but said the United States appreciated the gesture.

Lawyer Jared Genser said in a social media post that the woman is Dena Karari, a client of his trapped in Iran on “bogus charges.” Genser said Karari is safe and traveling back to the United States. He said her freedom wouldn’t have happened without “extraordinary and relentless efforts” by Trump.

Genser said in a further statement that Karari is a U.S.-Iranian citizen who ran a nonprofit called the Children of Mehr Foundation, ABC News reported. The foundation’s Instagram page says that it works to empower children “through education, creativity and opportunity.”

Genser said she visiting her family when she was detained and interrogated by Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence and Security, suffering “enormous physical and psychological hardship.”

On Wednesday night, the United States military struck Iranian targets for the fifth straight day, with Iran hitting several U.S. military targets Tuesday in Jordan, Bahrain and Kuwait.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservative justices say they decide cases based on the words and original history of the Constitution — and not on their personal or political views.

Following the lead set by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, they say they see history and “originalism” as a guiding principle to prevent judges from changing the Constitution to adjust to new and changing times.

This text-and-history approach is said to contrast with an evolving or “living Constitution” favored by progressives and liberal activists.

But this year saw a flip of sorts on birthright citizenship.

The foremost conservatives agreed with President Trump that the surge of illegal immigration called for reconsidering the promise of citizenship at birth set out in the 14th Amendment of 1868.

“The number of illegal immigrants in this country exploded” in recent years, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in dissent. The rule of citizenship at birth provides “a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally,” he added.

“The Constitution is an enduring document,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, but its rules and meaning must adjust to “modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers.”

In a concurring opinion, he said that “significant illegal immigration into the United States is a new circumstance that was largely unknown as of 1868.”

There were no federal immigration laws in the mid-19th century, but it was an era when a surge of Irish immigrants had settled on the East Coast and large numbers of Chinese immigrants came to California.

Under the law, their children were deemed to be citizens at birth.

Among the conservative originalists, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett signed the majority opinion that was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and joined by the three liberals.

The opening words of the 14th Amendment of 1868 say: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the rule of citizenship at birth in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents.

In an executive order, Trump proposed to end birthright citizenship for the newborns whose parents were in the country illegally or temporarily.

Writing for the court, the chief justice said the words of the 14th Amendment were clear and were clearly understood at the time. He dismissed the “dramatically revisionist view” that has been cited recently.

Kavanaugh voted with the majority to block Trump’s order from taking effect. He did so because Congress had adopted birthright citizenship in a 1952 law.

“Consistent with the 14th Amendment, Congress could … enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship,” he wrote.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito wrote long dissents arguing that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not or would not have favored birthright citizenship.

They pointed to recent scholarship by law professors that raised questions about the accepted understanding of the 14th Amendment and the citizenship rule.

Thomas said citizenship of the child should turn on whether the parents were “domiciled” in this country. Black people who were enslaved were undoubtedly domiciled here, but the same is not true of temporary visitors.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch agreed in part with Thomas and questioned whether the newborns of temporary visitors should be deemed as citizens at birth.

Many court commentators were surprised by the close 5-4 divide on the constitutional issue.

“Given how clear the language was, I expected it to be 7 to 2,” said Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor. “I really gasped when I saw it was 5-4. This is not settled. We’re not done with this debate.”

Sarah Isgur, a podcaster and SCOTUSblog analyst, said that “originalism is getting more and more muddled. Either the history matters or it doesn’t.”

However, she agreed with Kavanaugh’s approach of leaving it to Congress to reconsider the issue.

Not all originalists are conservative.

Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, a constitutional historian, argued that the history of birthright citizenship is clear and not subject to revisionist thinking. He said the Reconstruction Congress adopted this principle of citizenship at birth and stated their intent in clear words in the 14th Amendment.

“When a baby is born on American soil and an American flag flies above, that baby is a birthright citizen, as the Reconstruction Republicans across the land understood,” he wrote in February. This rule “has virtually nothing to do with the baby’s parents.”

Last week, he was mostly cheered by the court’s ruling.

“It’s a triumph, but it should have been 9-0,” Amar said on a review of the court term sponsored by SCOTUSblog. “Shame on the dissenters. They didn’t even the address the statute” and its wording.

But the majority led by Roberts “clearly affirmed the plain meaning of the constitutional text and its history. And that’s a win,” he said.

History has a recurring role at the Supreme Court.

Isgur noted the court will hear arguments in the fall on whether the 2nd Amendment of 1791 gives gun owners a right to have “assault weapons” like AR-15 rifles.

She said the court will decide then between history and changed circumstances.

At issue is whether these modern rapid-fire rifles fit within the history of the gun rights protected by the 2nd Amendment or instead represent a new and dangerous threat to public safety that was unknown in 1791.

Scalia’s opinion upholding gun rights in 2008 is often cited as a model of originalism, but it too emerged from a court divided 5-4.

The 2nd Amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bears Arms, shall not be infringed.”

For decades, the Supreme Court had all but ignored the 2nd Amendment, viewing it as a somewhat outdated provision involving militias, akin to the 3rd Amendment. It forbids having soldiers “quartered in any house … in time of peace.”

Four liberal dissenters in 2008 said the court should stand by that understanding of history.

Justice John Paul Stevens said the 2nd Amendment was added to the Constitution to protect state militias from federal interference. Moreover, the reference to “bear arms” suggests it was about militias, he said.

But Scalia’s opinion stands as the landmark precedent, and he said the dissenters had the history all wrong.

The right to have guns for self-defense arose in England and came to the American colonies. “By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects,” he wrote.

The 2nd Amendment did not establish a new right, he said. Rather, it “codified a pre-existing right [of] having and using arms for self-preservation and [defense],” he wrote.

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history,” Scalia wrote, “that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

WASHINGTON  — Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. led a fractured Supreme Court this year that both expanded a president’s power to run the government and dealt major defeats to President Trump.

In Trump’s second year back in the White House, Roberts and the court punctured his claim to have power with no limits.

The justices struck down his worldwide tariffs, ruling these import taxes are a matter for Congress, not the president.

They also threw out his executive order that would end the principle of birthright citizenship. The Constitution wrote this promise into law, Roberts said, and the president may not change it.

The court also ruled in December that the president did not have the power to put National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago.

The three decisions came over fierce dissents from conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. and with Neil M. Gorsuch in two of them.

The three liberal justices dissented angrily when the court ruled the administration may end Temporary Protected Status for Haitians and Syrians.

They did the same when the court ruled the president may replace the top appointees of semi-independent agencies.

But they joined Roberts in a 5-4 ruling that affirmed the independence of the Federal Reserve and blocked Trump’s move to fire Fed Governor Lisa Cook.

Trump has won on most immigration fronts because Roberts and the conservatives believe Congress put the enforcement power in the hands of the administration. They point to the law authorizing temporary protection which says there shall be “no judicial review” of the decision to end the protection.

Roberts is a solid conservative who also tries to keep the court on a middle course. It’s an approach that rarely wins plaudits from the right and almost never from the left.

This year the chief justice prevailed with different coalitions.

This week, the court ruled by a 5-4 vote against the Republican National Committee and upheld state laws that allow for counting late-arriving mail ballots. Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with Roberts and Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Barrett also joined the chief justice in the rulings on tariffs and birthright citizenship.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. speaks to the Georgetown Law School graduating class in 2025.

(Manuel Balce Ceneta / Associated Press)

This week, the court also limited the power of police to use cellphone data to look for crime suspects. This too came on a 5-4 vote when Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh joined Roberts and the three liberals.

Harvard law professor Richard Lazarus, who has been a friend of Roberts’ since their time in law school, said the chief justice “is clearly working very hard” to put together majorities.

“It is not easy to formally preside over a court in which five of its members (Justices Thomas, Alito and Gorsuch on the right and Justices Sotomayor and Jackson on the left) deride the kind of efforts at moderation that is the chief’s preferred signature and harshly condemn him when he strays from their own views.”

Washington attorney Roman Martinez, a former clerk for Roberts, said the court is “clearly right of center” but the decision on tariffs was the most important of the year.

“It is a huge deal for the court to say ‘no’ to the president on his major policy initiative,” he said.

Stanford law professor Michael McConnell agreed. “It’s hard to claim the court is in Trump’s pocket when he lost the major cases,” he said.

Trump responded to the tariff defeat by calling the justices in the majority a “disgrace to our nation” and “disloyal to the Constitution.”

They “sicken me,” he said of Justices Barrett and Gorsuch, his two appointees who joined Roberts in the 6-3 majority.

Trump went to the court in April to hear his top attorney defend his executive order on birthright citizenship. He left after an hour of mostly skeptical questions.

On the term’s last day, Roberts issued a clear and eloquent 26-page opinion setting out America’s history of according citizenship to children who were born in this country, without regard to their parents.

This view came from England “and crossed the Atlantic with the colonists — and was adopted with little fanfare after the Revolution,” he wrote. “Nothing is better settled,” Justice Joseph Story wrote in 1830.

But it was unsettled by the fight over slavery.

“In the odious decision of Dred Scott v. Sandford, this Court imposed the Southern States’ beliefs onto the Nation” and decreed Blacks could not become citizens, Roberts wrote.

Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass were among the many who condemned the court’s decision, he said.

“It took more than a decade — and the addition of names such as Antietam, Gettysburg, and Chancellorsville to our national canon — but Douglass’s vision of ‘our common humanity’ would be fulfilled,” he wrote.

The Reconstruction Congress wrote this rule into the 14th Amendment and said “All persons born” here are citizens by birth.

The principle of birthright citizenship had been upheld by the Supreme Court in 1898, the chief justice wrote, and it had gone unchallenged until Trump returned to the White House last year.

But Thomas filed a 91-page dissent arguing that immigrants must be “domiciled” here before their children may become citizens.

Alito filed a separate 39-page opinion branding the Roberts opinion a “serious mistake.”

On that note, the court adjourned for its summer recess.

July 2 (UPI) — A Ukrainian national has been charged in Germany in connection with the 2022 bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines bringing natural gas 760 miles via the Baltic Sea from northwestern Russia to Lubmin in northeastern Germany.

Authorities allege the suspect, named only as Serhii K, led and coordinated an operation with seven others to sabotage the $17 billion gas projects on Sept. 26, 2022, according to reports in German media Wednesday. He is also charged with attacking and destroying civilian energy infrastructure and causing an explosion.

Prosecutors said he is the same individual who was detained by Italian authorities in August and extradited to Germany in November.

He denies all wrongdoing.

German prosecutors further allege he was a serving Ukrainian officer and that he and the others, who were also members of the Ukraine military, were “acting on behalf of state bodies in Ukraine” to deprive Moscow of energy revenues from the pipelines to fund its war against Ukraine.

The finger has variously been pointed at Ukraine, along with Britain and the United States, and even Russian itself, but the Federal Public Prosecutor General’s claim the attack was ordered by Kyiv was highly significant because Germany is one of Ukraine’s staunchest allies, providing military aid and political support.

Kyiv , which has always denied involvement, did not immediately respond to the accusation.

Three of the four pipelines were ruptured east of the Danish island of Bornholm in the attack. Nord Stream 1 was shut down at the time due to technical problems.

Nord Stream 2, a subsidiary of the Russian state-run energy giant Gazprom, was completed in September 2021 after being plagued problems including legal wrangles and U.S. sanctions targeting companies party to the project.

However, it never opened because Germany cancelled its certification process shortly before Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 as it moved to wean itself from its reliance on Russian gas.

The project, which would have doubled Nord Stream’s gas capacity to 110 billion cubic meters annually — said by the company to be sufficient to supply to 26 million homes in Europe and critical to efforts to guarantee the European Union’s “security of supply of natural gas.”

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld the Constitution’s promise that all those born here are citizens of the United States, regardless of the status of their parents.

In a 6-3 decision, the justices rejected President Trump’s plan to revise the Constitution by executive order and to end citizenship at birth for newborns whose parents were here illegally or temporarily.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts spoke for the court to reject Trump’s proposed limits on birthright citizenship.

“Citizenship, then and now, was the right to have rights — to freely participate in our political community,” he said. “The Framers of the 14th Amendment extended that promise to ‘every free-born person in this land.’ We keep that promise today.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Amy Coney Barrett and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined in full. Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh concurred in the outcome based on the federal law that incorporates birthright citizenship.

But the outcome was closer than most had predicted.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito and Neil M. Gorsuch dissented in agreement with Trump.

The decision is the second major defeat for Trump from a conservative court that usually supports broad presidential power.

In February, the court struck down Trump’s sweeping worldwide tariffs, his signature economic policy. Roberts said Congress, not the president, has the power to raise revenue and impose taxes, including duties on imports.

In April, Trump came to the court to hear the arguments over birthright citizenship. He sat in the gallery while the justices posed steadily skeptical questions to his solicitor general.

He left after an hour having heard enough to know he was likely to lose.

It was the rare Supreme Court case which was decided based simply on the words of the Constitution.

The justices, both conservative and liberal, say they look to what the Constitution says and how its words were originally understood.

The 14th Amendment adopted in 1868 says: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States and of the State where they reside.”

The amendment overturned the infamous Dred Scott decision of 1857, which declared that Black persons could not become U.S. citizens.

In its place, the Reconstruction Congress adopted the broad view of citizenship based on the place of birth, not parentage, that had been part of English law for centuries.

In the 19th Century, it was understood that the only exceptions to this rule of birthright citizenship were for the children of foreign diplomats, foreign troops on American soil or, for a time, Native Americans who lived on tribal reservations.

In 1924, Congress extended full citizenship to all Native Americans who were born in this country.

The Supreme Court had also confirmed the broad understanding of birthright citizenship in 1898. The justices upheld the U.S. citizenship of Wong Kim Ark who born in San Francisco to Chinese parents who later returned to China.

“The 14th Amendment affirms the ancient and fundamental rule of citizenship by birth within the territory,” the court said then. “In clear words and in manifest intent, [it] includes the children born, within the territory of the United States, of all other persons, of whatever race or color.”

Congress added birthright citizenship to the immigration laws in 1952.

But in his first day back in the White House, Trump signed an executive order to revise the citizenship laws.

“The privilege of United States citizenship is a priceless and profound gift,” he wrote, and in the future, it will not extend to newborns whose parents are in this country unlawfully or temporarily, such as on tourist, student or work visa, he said.

His proposal was quickly blocked by judges as unconstitutional, and it never went into effect.

In his appeal, Trump’s attorney argued that judges have been “misreading” the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction.”
He said this refers to “political allegiance.”

By that standard, the children of temporary visitors and unlawful immigrants are not citizens because they and their parents “not completely subject to the United States’ political jurisdiction,” according to the administration.

Trump could have proposed legislation on tariffs and birthright citizenship and urged the Republican-led Congress to adopt new laws. Instead, he chose to try to change the law and revise the Constitution by executive order.

Before the Supreme Court, Trump’s attorney pointed to the surge of illegal immigration in recent decades.

“We’re in a new world now,” he said, one that calls for new restrictions on citizenship.

“It’s a new world. It’s the same Constitution,” responded Roberts.

Mike Trout said Friday he is unlikely to participate in the All-Star home run derby in Philadelphia because of his strained right hamstring.

Trout expects to return from the injury in plenty of time to play in the July 14 All-Star Game, but it likely will prevent the Angels center fielder from joining the home run-hitting contest the night before.

“They asked me when we were in Sacramento [last weekend], but I probably won’t do it,” Trout said before the Angels’ game against the Athletics. “It would have been cool to do it, but the injury kind of threw things off.”

Trout, a three-time American League MVP and 11-time All-Star, has turned down numerous invitations to participate in the derby because he felt the high volume of maximum-effort swings the event requires would throw him off at the plate.

He always maintained that he would take part in the derby at least once before he retires, and this seemed to be the year to do it, with All-Star Game festivities in Citizens Bank Park about 45 miles north of his hometown of Millville, N.J.

Trout, who’s among American League leaders with 17 homers, fueled more speculation that he would participate in the derby last weekend when he told USA Today that he was “considering” it.

But Trout, placed on the 10-day injured list on June 18, had a change of heart over the last week.

“When it came out that the All-Star Game was in Philly, I thought it definitely would have been cool to do,” said Trout, who ranks second behind New York Yankees slugger Aaron Judge in All-Star voting for AL outfielders. “Then I hurt my leg, so I’m leaning toward not doing it.”

DES MOINES, Iowa — The former superintendent of Iowa’s largest school district who was arrested last year in the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown was sentenced Friday to two years in prison.

Ian Roberts is likely to be deported to his native Guyana in South America once he serves the sentence. He pleaded guilty in January to falsely claiming to be a U.S. citizen and illegally possessing firearms, which together carry a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. His lawyers had proposed that he be put on probation “to facilitate his removal from the United States,” but prosecutors had argued that his likely deportation should not be a factor.

Prosecutors alleged Roberts knowingly lacked employment authorization for nearly all of his two-decade career in urban education and submitted a counterfeit Social Security card when he was hired as superintendent of the Des Moines public school district, which serves 30,000 students.

Roberts’ stunning case bookended the school year. His September arrest occurred as President Trump’s administration was sending increased numbers of federal immigration officers into American cities to round up immigrants.

Des Moines Public Schools said last month that it revised its conflict-of-interest policy after an audit found Roberts awarded district business to a consulting firm he worked for, affirming findings first reported by the Associated Press in the weeks after federal immigration officers detained him.

Roberts was in his school-issued vehicle when officers stopped him on Sept. 26 in a targeted U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement operation. He allegedly fled before he was located with the help of state troopers. Authorities said a loaded handgun was wrapped in a towel under the seat and $3,000 in cash was in the car. Three other weapons were recovered during a search of his home.

In a court filing, attorneys for Roberts said he has dedicated his life in the U.S. to public service and has not been a threat to public safety. After Roberts married a U.S. citizen, his attorneys said, he was denied lawful permanent residency because he failed to disclose that he had been arrested. He said he did not think he needed to because the charges against him were dropped.

“While Dr. Roberts tried to adjust his status three more times, this initial mistake by Dr. Roberts sealed his fate,” his attorneys wrote. “In the background of his career for the next 24 years, this denial of his adjustment of status haunted Dr. Roberts like a ghost, eventually derailing his life and career.”

Dozens of people submitted letters on Roberts’ behalf to dispute how he has been portrayed and provide details of his positive impact. His lawyers wrote that he likely faces deportation to Guyana, where he will “be left without his career, without his wife, without his children, in a country where he has not lived for thirty years.”

In recommending a three-year sentence, prosecutors described a yearslong and deliberate misrepresentation of his legal status. Prosecutors said a reduced sentence is not appropriate just because Roberts is likely to be deported.

They said they do not know what documents Roberts presented to show eligibility for work dating back to 2008, years before he was approved for temporary status in 2018, but he “deliberately obtained employment without work authorization at school after school, within state after state.”

Fingerhut writes for the Associated Press.

Mexico’s consulate in Los Angeles helps thousands of citizens each week, assisting them with registering births, obtaining passports and, increasingly since President Trump’s second term began, accessing legal help for loved ones who have fallen afoul of his administration’s immigration policies.

Although it serves the country’s biggest Mexican community, all 53 Mexican consulates in the U.S. provide services that make Mexican people’s lives easier — just like the nine U.S. consulates in Mexico improve the lives of Americans south of the border.

The U.S. State Department has launched a review that might lead to the closure of an unknown number of Mexican consulates. Although it hasn’t said why, the review is happening against the backdrop of the immigration crackdown, some thorny bilateral issues and far-right theories that the consulates have been interfering in U.S. politics and encouraging Mexicans to migrate northward.

Azucena Aviles, a 33-year-old mother who drove more than an hour to the L.A. consulate this month to renew her Mexican passport and get one for her daughter, said consular services are invaluable — especially in California, which is home to nearly 13 million people of Mexican descent, including an estimated 1.7 million who are in the U.S. illegally.

“It wouldn’t be fair if they messed with the Mexican people, especially with our support systems, which come from the Mexican consulate and which, in some way, help or protect our fellow Mexicans,” she said.

Trump has been exerting growing pressure on Mexico, with questions looming over issues including human rights, national sovereignty and regional diplomacy.

His administration has given only the broadest of explanations for launching its review.

“Department of State is constantly reviewing all aspects of American foreign relations to ensure they are in line with the President’s America First foreign policy agenda and advance American interests,” Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of State for global public affairs, wrote in an email.

Among the possible reasons for the review is that it could somehow fit into the Trump administration’s immigration efforts to deport people in the U.S. illegally. The largest contingent of such people — an estimated 4.3 million, according to the Pew Research Center — are Mexican.

Relations between the two countries could also play a role, with Trump increasing pressure on Mexico in the run-up to free trade negotiations important to both nations’ economies, taking a more aggressive approach toward the U.S.’ southern neighbor and even threatening to take military action against Mexican cartels.

Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has avoided head-on conflicts with Trump and instead relied on diplomacy, including sending top officials to Washington and seeking to maintain a strong relationship with the Trump administration by cracking down on Mexican cartels. Sheinbaum and her predecessor have also been key allies in slowing migration to the U.S. and speeding up the deportation of other Latin American migrants.

But Sheinbaum has taken a firmer stance in regards to the deaths of Mexicans in U.S. immigration detention centers, calling them unacceptable and saying the conditions in such lockups were “incompatible with human rights standards and the protection of life.” She instructed Mexican consulates to visit detention centers daily to help ensure detained citizens are being held in safe conditions.

Relations rapidly deteriorated in recent weeks after the U.S. indicted several Mexican officials on drug trafficking charges, and two CIA officers died following an anti-narcotics operation in northern Mexico — American involvement that Sheinbaum said her government had not authorized. That drug raid raised uncomfortable questions in Mexico about the extent of U.S. involvement in domestic security operations.

Years of tit-for-tat tariffs between the two countries have also added strain.

A review of foreign consulates is “usually a sign that a bilateral relationship is in a very, very rocky moment,” said Arturo Sarukhan, a former Mexican ambassador to the U.S. In Mexico’s case, it comes at “the worst moment of the U.S.-Mexico relations” in decades, given all the current points of contention, he said.

Further straining relations is a theory being amplified by Peter Schweizer, a writer with a following among Trump loyalist who has claimed that Mexican consulates interfere in U.S. politics and encourage migration to the U.S. Experts say that although a few Mexican consulate officials may have sought to influence politics back home, there is no evidence of them interfering in U.S. elections.

In response to the State Department review, Sheinbaum said the idea that Mexican consulates are “playing politics in the United States is completely false.” She said the job of consulates anywhere is to “always protect” citizens.

Sarukhan too said that although consulates defend the rights of Mexican citizens, there is no evidence that they are interfering in U.S. elections.

Whatever the reasons for the consulate review, it has stoked worries.

During a weekly public forum at the L.A. consulate, a woman who didn’t give her name and whose husband had been in U.S. immigration detention asked for help finding him a lawyer, highlighting one crucial service consulates provide for their citizens.

An older man said he had heard about the review and asked about possible closures.

Carlos González Gutiérrez, Mexico’s top diplomat in Los Angeles, responded that, as Sheinbaum said, there would be “no reason whatsoever” for the U.S. to close a Mexican consulate.

Indeed, consulates would have significant, devastating effects for Mexican immigrants,” especially in isolated areas, said Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst for the Migration Policy Institute.

Every day, consular officials go to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement holding center in downtown Los Angeles to identify and interview as many detained Mexican nationals as they can.

González Gutiérrez, 62, begins every weekly public forum by noting how many detained Mexicans consular officials have interviewed since the immigration crackdown began in Los Angeles last June.

At that May 11 meeting, the figure stood at 1,940. Nearly half had deep roots in the U.S., he said. About 46% have been deported, 35% have children born in the U.S., 69% entered the country through a port of entry, 6% overstayed a visa and 2.5% requested asylum. Most were men, and many worked in construction, agriculture, gardening and the service industry.

He also disputed the claim that Mexican consulates are interfering in U.S. politics.

“We are guests of this country’s government, just as U.S. consuls are guests of the Mexican government. In that sense, we are neither activists nor spies,” said González Gutiérrez. “We carry out our work openly, within a pluralistic and democratic society.”

Pineda and Janetsky write for the Associated Press. Janetsky reported from Mexico City.

Prosecutors say the man, identified only as ‘Sergej K’, has been in ‘continuous contact’ with Russian intelligence.

German authorities have arrested a Kazakh man in Berlin on suspicion of spying for Russia, according to the German Federal Prosecutor’s Office.

Identified only as Sergej K, the man had been “in continuous contact from Germany with a Russian intelligence service” since at least May last year, the office said in a statement on Wednesday, a day after the arrest.

Prosecutors said Sergej K provided his Russian handler with details about German military aid for Ukraine, including companies involved in developing drones and robotic systems. He also allegedly sent photos of NATO military convoys and public buildings in Berlin.

Other activities included offering to find other espionage agents in Germany, prosecutors added, but they did not make clear whether he had done so.

There was no immediate reaction from Kazakhstan or Russia.

Previous cases

The case is the latest in a string of Moscow-linked espionage and disinformation plots German authorities claim to have discovered since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Two German-Russian dual nationals were arrested in 2024 on suspicion of plotting sabotage attacks on United States military sites in Germany to undermine Western military support for Ukraine.

German police have also arrested various alleged “disposable” agents, known to carry out sabotage and espionage without any formal training for Russia in exchange for small payments.

Earlier this month, Berlin summoned the Russian ambassador to condemn what it called “direct threats” against “targets in Germany”.

Berlin’s Federal Foreign Office said at the time that the threats were intended to undermine Germany’s support for Ukraine. “Our response is clear: we will not be intimidated. Such threats and all forms of espionage in Germany are completely unacceptable,” the Foreign Office said.

Germany has also accused “state-sponsored” Russian hackers of carrying out an “intolerable” 2023 cyberattack on members of the Social Democratic Party, a charge that Russia’s embassy in Germany “categorically rejected”.

Meanwhile, Russia has essentially banned Germany’s international broadcaster Deutsche Welle on the grounds that it produces “hostile anti-Russian propaganda”.

Moscow has repeatedly denied any involvement in Germany-based espionage schemes.