Nov. 26 (UPI) — Two West Virginia National Guardsmen have been hospitalized in critical condition and a suspect is hospitalized after a targeted shooting near the White House on Wednesday afternoon.
The Guardsmen and the shooter were taken to nearby hospitals after the shooting occurred about two blocks northwest of the White House at 2:15 p.m. EST on Wednesday, WTTG reported.
West Virginia Gov. Patrick Morrisey earlier said the two Guardsmen were killed, but he later backtracked and affirmed they are in critical condition.
The FBI said it is investigating the attack as a possible act of terrorism.
Lakanwal is a lone gunman who ambushed the two National Guardsmen when he came from around a corner and started shooting, said Jeffrey Carroll, MPD executive assistant chief, who addressed media during a news conference.
The National Guard members were on “high-visibility patrol … when a suspect came around a corner, raised his arm with a firearm and discharged at the National Guard members,” Carroll said.
Other National Guardsmen were nearby and intervened.
Carroll said there was “some back and forth” between the suspect and National Guard members, who were able to subdue him until local police arrived moments later.
At a news conference afterward, FBI Director Kash Patel called the targeting shooting “an attack on a federal law enforcement officer” and said it will be treated as such at the federal level.
He said the FBI, Secret Service, other federal agencies and local police will work together to investigate the shooting, which he called a “matter of national security.”
Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser said local officials will “join with the FBI director in ensuring that the MPD investigates and the U.S. attorney prosecutes this case to the fullest extent of the law.”
There are no other suspects in the shooting, authorities said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said President Donald Trump was briefed on the matter, and White House staff are monitoring the situation.
The president afterward expressed his support for the two wounded Guardsmen.
“The animal that shot the two National Guardsmen, with both being critically wounded, and now in two separate hospitals, is also severely wounded,” Trump said in a Truth Social post.
He said the suspect “will pay a very steep price” for the shooting that so far lacks a known motive.
“God bless our great National Guard and all of our military and law enforcement,” the president said. “These are truly great people.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the president has ordered him to deploy 500 more National Guard members to the capital, The New York Times reported.
About 2,100 National Guard members already are deployed in the capital.
The shooting occurred at the intersection of 17th Street and H Street Northwest.
Southern California lawmakers are demanding answers from U.S. Homeland Security officials following the deaths of two Orange County residents and nearly two dozen others while in federal immigration custody.
In a letter Friday to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, U.S. Reps. Dave Min (D-Irvine) and Judy Chu (D-Pasadena) pointed to the deaths of 25 people so far this year while being held by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The number of in-custody deaths has reached an annual record since the agency began keeping track in 2018.
Two Mexican immigrants — who had long made their homes in Orange County and were sent to the Adelanto ICE Processing Center north of Hesperia — were among the deaths.
“These are not just numbers on a website, but real people — with families, jobs, and hopes and dreams — each of whom died in ICE custody,” the lawmakers wrote. “The following cases illustrate systemic patterns of delayed treatment, neglect, and failure to properly notify families.”
Ismael Ayala-Uribe, 39, died Sept. 22 about a month after being apprehended while working at the Fountain Valley Auto Wash, where he had worked for 15 years, according to a GoFundMe post by his family.
He had lived in Westminster since he was 4 years old, and had previously been protected from deportation under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, known as DACA. The Times previously reported that his application for continued protection was not renewed in 2016.
Ayala-Uribe’s relatives and members of Congress have alleged that he was denied proper medical care after being taken into ICE custody in August. Adelanto detention staff members were aware of his medical crisis, according to internal emails obtained by The Times. But Ayala-Uribe initially was taken back to his Adelanto dorm room, where he waited for another three days before being moved to Victor Valley Global Medical Center in Victorville.
ICE officials acknowledged that Ayala-Uribe died at the Victorville hospital while waiting for surgery for an abscess on his buttock. The suspected cause of the sore was not disclosed.
A second man — Gabriel Garcia-Aviles, 56, who lived near Costa Mesa — died Oct. 23, about a week after being detained.
ICE said Garcia-Aviles was arrested Oct. 14 in Santa Ana by the U.S. Border Patrol for an outstanding warrant, and eventually sent to the Adelanto center. ICE said in a previous statement that he was only at the Adelanto facility for a few hours before he was taken to the Victorville hospital for “suspected alcohol withdrawal symptoms.”
His condition rapidly worsened.
The deaths have focused attention on the treatment of detained immigrants as well as long-standing concerns about medical care inside Adelanto, one of the largest federal immigration detention centers in California. The situation raises broader concerns about whether immigration detention centers throughout the country are equipped to care for the deluge of people rounded up since President Trump prioritized mass deportations as part of his second-term agenda.
“These deaths raise serious questions about ICE’s ability to comply with basic detention standards, medical care protocols, and notification requirements, and underscore a pattern of gross negligence that demands immediate accountability,” Min and Chu wrote in the letter to Noem and Todd M. Lyons, the acting director of ICE.
The letter was signed by 43 other lawmakers, including Reps. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach), J. Luis Correa (D-Santa Ana), John Garamendi (D-Walnut Grove) and Maxine Waters (D-Los Angeles).
An ICE representative did not immediately respond to an email Saturday seeking comment.
The lawmakers stressed the need to treat the immigrants with humanity.
The lawmakers said Garcia-Aviles had lived in the U.S. for three decades. His family did not learn of his dire medical condition until “he was on his deathbed.” Family members drove to the hospital to find him “unconscious, intubated, and . . . [with] dried blood on his forehead” as well as “a cut on his tongue … broken teeth and bruising on his body.”
“We never got the chance to speak to him anymore and [the family] never was called to let us know why he had been transferred to the hospital,” his daugher wrote on a GoFundMe page, seeking help to pay for his funeral costs. “His absence has left a hole in our hearts.”
WASHINGTON — No one seems to know what happened to Vicente Ventura Aguilar.
A witness told his brother and attorneys that the 44-year-old Mexican immigrant, who doesn’t have lawful immigration status, was taken into custody by immigration authorities on Oct. 7 in SouthLos Angeles and suffered a medical emergency.
But it’s been more than six weeks since then, and Ventura Aguilar’s family still hasn’t heard from him.
The Department of Homeland Security said 73 people from Mexico were arrested in the Los Angeles area between Oct. 7 and 8.
“None of them were Ventura Aguilar,” said Tricia McLaughlin, the assistant Homeland Security public affairs secretary.
“For the record, illegal aliens in detention have access to phones to contact family members and attorneys,” she added.
McLaughlin did not answer questions about what the agency did to determine whether Ventura Aguilar had ever been in its custody, such as checking for anyone with the same date of birth, variations of his name, or identifying detainees who received medical attention near the California border around Oct. 8.
Lindsay Toczylowski, co-founder of the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing Ventura Aguilar’s family, said DHS never responded to her inquiries about him.
The family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar, 44, says he has been missing since Oct. 7 when a friend saw him arrested by federal immigration agents in Los Angeles. Homeland Security officials say he was never in their custody.
(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)
“There’s only one agency that has answers,” she said. “Their refusal to provide this family with answers, their refusal to provide his attorneys with answers, says something about the lack of care and the cruelty of the moment right now for DHS.”
His family and lawyers checked with local hospitals and the Mexican consulate without success. They enlisted help from the office of Rep. Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Los Angeles), whose staff called the Los Angeles and San Diego county medical examiner’s offices. Neither had someone matching his name or description.
The Los Angeles Police Department also told Kamlager-Dove’s office that he isn’t in their system. His brother, Felipe Aguilar, said the family filed a missing person’s report with LAPD on Nov. 7.
“We’re sad and worried,” Felipe Aguilar said. “He’s my brother and we miss him here at home. He’s a very good person. We only hope to God that he’s alive.”
Felipe Aguilar said his brother, who has lived in the U.S. for around 17 years, left home around 8:15 a.m. on Oct. 7 to catch the bus for an interview for a sanitation job when he ran into friends on the corner near a local liquor store. He had his phone but had left his wallet at home.
One of those friends told Felipe Aguilar and his lawyers that he and Ventura Aguilar were detained by immigration agents and then held at B-18, a temporary holding facility at the federal building in downtown Los Angeles.
The friend was deported the next day to Tijuana. He spoke to the family in a phone call from Mexico.
According to Felipe Aguilar and Toczylowski, the friend said Ventura Aguilar began to shake, went unconscious and fell to the ground while shackled on Oct. 8 at a facility near the border. The impact caused his face to bleed.
The friend said that facility staff called for an ambulance and moved the other detainees to a different room. Toczylowski said that was the last time anyone saw Ventura Aguilar.
She said the rapid timeline between when Ventura Aguilar was arrested to when he disappeared is emblematic of what she views as a broad lack of due process for people in government custody under the Trump administration and shows that “we don’t know who’s being deported from the United States.”
Felipe Aguilar said he called his brother’s cell phone after hearing about the arrests but it went straight to voicemail.
Felipe Aguilar said that while his brother is generally healthy, he saw a cardiologist a couple years ago about chest pain. He was on prescribed medication and his condition had improved.
His family and lawyers said Ventura Aguilar might have given immigration agents a fake name when he was arrested. Some detained people offer up a wrong name or alias, and that would explain why he never showed up in Homeland Security records. Toczylowski said federal agents sometimes misspell the name of the person they are booking into custody.
Vicente Ventura Aguilar, who has been missing since Oct. 7, had lived in the United States for 17 years, his family said.
(Family of Vicente Ventura Aguilar)
But she said the agency should make a significant attempt to search for him, such as by using biometric data or his photo.
“To me, that’s another symptom of the chaos of the immigration enforcement system as it’s happening right now,” she said of the issues with accurately identifying detainees. “And it’s what happens when you are indiscriminately, racially profiling people and picking them up off the street and holding them in conditions that are substandard, and then deporting people without due process. Mistakes get made. Right now, what we want to know is what mistakes were made here, and where is Vicente now?”
Surveillance footage from a nearby business reviewed by MS NOW shows Ventura Aguilar on the sidewalk five minutes before masked agents begin making arrests in South Los Angeles. The footage doesn’t show him being arrested, but two witnesses told the outlet that they saw agents handcuff Ventura Aguilar and place him in a van.
In a letter sent to DHS leaders Friday, Kamlager-Dove asked what steps DHS has taken to determine whether anyone matching Ventura Aguilar’s identifiers was detained last month and whether the agency has documented any medical events or hospital transports involving people taken into custody around Oct. 7-8.
“Given the length of time since Mr. Ventura Aguilar’s disappearance and the credible concern that he may have been misidentified, injured, or otherwise unaccounted for during the enforcement action, I urgently request that DHS and ICE conduct an immediate and comprehensive review” by Nov. 29, Kamlager-Dove wrote in her letter.
Kamlager-Dove said her most common immigration requests from constituents are for help with visas and passports.
“Never in all the years did I expect to get a call about someone who has completely disappeared off the face of the earth, and also never did I think that I would find myself not just calling ICE and Border Patrol but checking hospitals, checking with LAPD and checking morgues to find a constituent,” she said. “It’s horrifying and it’s completely dystopian.”
She said families across Los Angeles deserve answers and need to know whether something similar could happen to them.
Since the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) was re-established in 1991, Poland’s capital market experienced significant growth: market capitalization expanded from PLN 161 million to more than PLN 2.2 trillion. Alongside this development, custodians and local depository banks emerged as critical partners for global custodians, foreign investment banks, pension funds, and insurance companies.
Today, custodians do more than clearing and settling transactions. They are long-term partners expected to deliver high-quality services, anticipate client needs, and co-create tailored solutions. Rising regulatory requirements and higher operating costs are reshaping the industry, and shrinking margins, limited diversification, and lack of economies of scale forced many banks in CEE, including Poland, to exit custody in the past decade. For custodians, this creates an urgent need for reliable partners with long-term vision.
IT Investments – A Springboard or a Cost Burden
Sustaining custody services requires continuous investment in dedicated systems while leveraging the bank’s broader IT initiatives. To remain competitive, custodians must align investments with the bank’s overall strategy to maximize value. Sorbnet, Poland’s Real-Time Gross Settlement (RGTS) cash system, upgraded to ISO20022 standards, improving the cash leg of Poland’s settlement cycle, and tools, such as OCR, digitalized process flow for documentation, advanced connectivity solutions for data, and machine learning for inquiries, enhance and streamline processes. Such initiatives can significantly improve overall efficiency and service quality and demonstrate how leveraging bank-wide projects can strengthen custody services without duplicating costs.
National Champions
Global clients often must decide whether to choose an international custodian offering regional coverage or a strong domestic bank acting as a national champion. While global players benefit from broad networks, their local presence is often limited. Local champions, like Bank Pekao, rely on their balance sheet, liquidity, and deep domestic economy commitment.
Robert Smuga, Managing Director, Head of Financial Institutions and Custody | Bank Pekao
They finance top players across many industries and support strategic projects. Post-trade services to domestic financial institutions with insurers and fund managers provide critical mass for investments and resource allocation.
Successful offerings to domestic pension and mutual funds rely on accommodating bespoke requirements. Efficient and top quality international standard services for assets in foreign markets require a local champion to select optimal sub-custody services abroad, and growing those assets may be factored into mutually beneficial partnerships.
Combining active sub-custody network management on numerous markets, meeting requirements of domestic and foreign clients, and sustaining bespoke solutions as a differentiator are best practices that require smart solutions and agility to keep efficiency, but create tremendous opportunity. They can be used across client bases, shaping the offering from market intelligence and lobbying power, through connectivity, to stringent SLAs on service.
The unique positioning and value proposition of local champions make them reliable partners for long-term growth and viable alternatives to local affiliates of global players.
Bank Pekao’s Value Proposition
Bank Pekao’s history as a custodian dates to the re-establishment of the WSE in 1991. We have grown alongside Poland’s capital market and its expertise and dedication have been instrumental to its development. We succeeded in making the significant leap required to catch up with mature global markets.
Today, Bank Pekao, is Poland’s second largest universal bank and a leader in custody. The bank serves global custodians and international broker-dealers, including clearing for WSE’s remote members. It expanded as a local depository bank, supporting pension and investment funds and ongoing IT developments range from maintaining cyber-security resilience to fostering data-driven or DLT-based services for clients.
The bank’s diversified business model, experienced custody team, and balance sheet unmatched in strength and liquidity are competitive advantages no other Polish custodian can claim.
Bank Pekao is grateful for the trust of long-standing clients and is fully dedicated to supporting them for many years to come.
