enforcement

Nov. 29 (UPI) — Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials might be readying to deploy agents in New Orleans amid the enforcement of federal immigration laws.

At least 200 ICE agents are bound for New Orleans in December, but the deployment plans might change, ABC News, NBC News and Nola.com reported based on information allegedly provided by anonymous sources.

The deployment comes as ICE wraps up its deployment in Charlotte, N.C., where it made more than 250 arrests.

Customs and Border Protection Commander-at-Large Greg Bovino led the Charlotte action and is to lead the New Orleans deployment, according to ABC News.

The pending deployment has local officials and others in New Orleans and nearby preparing for it.

Many public school officials are messaging parents and others to reassure them that all students are safe while on respective school campuses, Nola.com reported.

New Orleans and adjacent Jefferson Parish have significant numbers of “immigrant communities” that likely would be among those impacted by ICE activities.

Many schools also are informing parents and students of their legal rights and advising them on how to communicate with federal agents as needed.

ICE agents generally avoid schools, but the Trump administration has provided federal law enforcement with guidance on how to operate on school campuses.

The guidance so far has not been needed, but many arrests and immigration law enforcement activities have occurred near schools.

Department of Homeland Security officials have said arrests only would be made on school campuses to protect the public.

Despite assurances from federal and local officials, many parents of students remain concerned, which spurred some schools to offer free rides for students while immigration law enforcement activities are underway.

Published on
24/11/2025 – 18:20 GMT+1

US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said that Washington can reduce duties on EU steel and aluminium but only if the Europeans agree to ease the implementation of digital rules following a meeting in Brussels on Monday.

Lutnick, who is a close ally of President Donald Trump and negotiated on his behalf a trade deal with the EU over the summer introducing 15% tariffs, said that European should reassess the way they implement their flagship policies on digital regulation if they want further tariff relief. Lutnick did not call to remove the rules but did say the way in which they are applied should be “more balanced” for American tech companies.

Brussels is desperately seeking to obtain a reduction of the 50% tariffs that the Trump administration imposed on European aluminium and steel in June under pressure from the industry.

The US does want the EU “to put these rules away, but find the balanced approach that works for us,” he told reporters in Brussels. “Then we will, together with them, handle the steel and aluminium issues.”

“The enforcement is quite aggressive at times”

Lutnick and US trade representative Jamieson Greer were in Brussels meeting with EU27 trade ministers and Commission boss Maroš Šefčovič for a working lunch.

The implementation of the trade deal signed over summer was at the center of the discussion, which was “open and direct,” according to an EU diplomat.

The EU and the US clinched a trade deal in July in which the US tripled tariffs on EU while Europeans agreed to cut tariffs for most US industrial goods at 0%. US tariffs on EU steel and aluminium remain stuck at a much higher rate of 50% despite the deal.

Lutnick and Greer also met EU Tech Commissioner Henna Virkkunen who stressed in a statement the importance of the Digital Market Act (DMA) and the Digital Services Act (DSA), the two landmark digital regulations applied in the EU. The comments suggest the Commission is not ready to water them further for the time being.

To counter the US offensive on its digital legislation, EU Trade Commissioner Šefčovič said that the EU is working hard to explain its legislation to the US and stressed that there no discriminatory practices applied to US companies. The rules, he argued, are the same for everyone operating in the EU single market regardless of their origin.

Still, the US insists that is not the case and American Big Tech is being punished.

“The enforcement is quite aggressive at times,” Greer said about EU tech rules, adding that the US government wants to make sure their companies do not see their global revenues “affected” by foreign rules. In his comments, Greer’s tone was severe.

Brussels recently launched investigations against Amazon and Microsoft under the DMA which prevents big platforms from abusing their dominance in the tech market. It also hit Google with a €2.95 billion over antitrust rules despite the threats from the US.

Nov. 15 (UPI) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents initiated enforcement of federal immigration laws in Charlotte, N.C., on Saturday.

Many businesses on Central Avenue in the eastern portion of Charlotte closed as federal agents began making arrests and detained people in local neighborhoods, the Charlotte Observer reported.

Local officials expressed their support for migrants in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County.

“We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives contributing to our larger community,” Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles and Mecklenburg County Commission Chairman Mark Jerrell and Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education Chairwoman Stephanie Sneed said in a joint statement.

“Our region has thrived and grown because our strength lies in our diversity and our collective commitment to each other and to this community,” they said.

“Let us all — no matter our political allegiance — stand together for all hard-working and law-abiding families.”

The local officials said the arrival of the CBP agents unnecessarily created “fear and uncertainty in our community.”

Federal agents have most recently been deployed to Chicago, where Immigration and Customs Enforcement spent the past month enforcing immigration law amid opposition from protesters and others.

The Charlotte Observer reported a man saying the federal agents smashed a window on his vehicle, and another said agents aimed a rifle and threatened to shoot him after he followed them.

CBP agents also allegedly broke the window of another man’s vehicle and took his keys after stopping him twice in 10 minutes, but the man did not say if he was following the agents as they went about their work.

Local officials earlier said the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department does not participate in immigration enforcement and asked community members to stay peaceful amid the immigration enforcement action, according to NBC News.

North Carolina is not a sanctuary state, and state law prevents local governments from declaring themselves to be sanctuaries for those who have illegally entered or otherwise remained in the United States.

The federal immigration enforcement effort in Charlotte prompted Asheville, N.C., Mayor Esther Manheimer to suggest the city could be next, WLOS reported.

CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Federal officials confirmed that a surge of immigration enforcement in North Carolina’s largest city had begun as agents were seen making arrests in multiple locations Saturday.

“We are surging DHS law enforcement to Charlotte to ensure Americans are safe and public safety threats are removed,” Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement.

Local officials including Charlotte Mayor Vi Lyles criticized such actions, saying in a statement they “are causing unnecessary fear and uncertainty.”

“We want people in Charlotte and Mecklenburg County to know we stand with all residents who simply want to go about their lives,” said the statement, which was also signed by County Commissioner Mark Jerrell and Stephanie Sneed of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg education board.

The federal government hadn’t previously announced the push until Mecklenburg County Sheriff Garry McFadden confirmed this week that two federal officials had told him that Customs and Border Protection agents would be arriving soon.

Paola Garcia, a spokesperson with Camino, a bilingual nonprofit serving families in Charlotte, said she and her colleagues have observed an increase in Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents pulling people over since Friday.

“Basically what we’re seeing is that there have been lots of people being pulled over,” Garcia said. “I even saw a few people being pulled over on the way to work yesterday, and then just from community members seeing an increase in ICE and Border Patrol agents in the city of Charlotte.”

Willy Aceituno, a Honduran-born U.S. citizen, was on his way to work when he saw Border Patrol agents chasing people.

“I saw a lot of Latinos running. I wondered why they were running. The thing is, there were a lot of Border Patrol agents chasing them,” he said.

Aceituno, a 46-year-old Charlotte resident, said he himself was stopped — twice — by Border Patrol agents. On the second encounter, he said, they forced him out of his vehicle after breaking the car window and threw him to the ground.

“I told them, ’I’m an American citizen,’ ” he told the Associated Press. “They wanted to know where I was born, or they didn’t believe I was an American citizen.”

After being forcibly taken into a Border Patrol vehicle, Aceituno said, he was allowed to go free after showing documents that proved his citizenship. He said he had to walk back some distance to his car. He later filed a police report over the broken glass.

In east Charlotte, two workers were hanging Christmas lights in Rheba Hamilton’s front yard Saturday morning when two Customs and Border Patrol agents walked up. One agent tried to speak to the workers in Spanish, she said. They didn’t respond, and the agents left in a gray minivan without making arrests.

“This is real disconcerting, but the main thing is we’ve got two human beings in my yard trying to make a living. They’ve broken no laws, and that’s what concerns me,” Hamilton, who recorded the encounter on her cellphone, told the Associated Press.

“It’s an abuse of all of our laws. It is unlike anything I have ever imagined I would see in my lifetime,” the 73-year-old said.

Amid reports that Charlotte could be the next city facing an immigration crackdown, she had suggested the work be postponed, but the contractor decided to go ahead.

“Half an hour later he’s in our yard, he’s working, and Border Patrol rolls up,” she said. “They’re here because they were looking for easy pickings. There was nobody here with TV cameras, nobody here protesting, there’s just two guys working in a yard and an old white lady with white hair sitting on her porch drinking her coffee.”

Local organizations sought to prepare for the push, trying to inform immigrants of their rights and considering peaceful protests. JD Mazuera Arias, who won election to the Charlotte City Council in September, was one of about a dozen people standing watch Saturday outside a Latin American bakery in his district in east Charlotte.

A nearby bakery was closed amid word of the possible immigration crackdown, he said. The government action was hurting people’s livelihoods and the city’s economy, he said.

“This is Customs and Border Patrol. We are not a border city, nor are we a border state. So why are they here?” he asked. “This is a gross violation of constitutional rights for not only immigrants, but for U.S. citizens.”

The Trump administration has defended its federal enforcement operations in Los Angeles, Chicago and other cities as necessary for fighting crime and enforcing immigration laws.

North Carolina Gov. Josh Stein, a Democrat in a state with a Republican-majority Legislature, said Friday that the “vast majority” of those detained in these operations have no criminal convictions, and some are American citizens.

He urged people to record any “inappropriate behavior” they see and notify local law enforcement.

The Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department had emphasized ahead of time that it isn’t involved in federal immigration enforcement.

Verduzco writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Maryclaire Dale in Chicago and Brian Witte in Annapolis, Md., contributed to this report.

TOPEKA, Kan. — A rural Kansas county has agreed to pay a little more than $3 million and apologize over a law enforcement raid on a small-town weekly newspaper in August 2023 that sparked an outcry over press freedom.

Marion County was among multiple defendants in five federal lawsuits filed by the Marion County Record’s parent company, the paper’s publisher, newspaper employees, a former Marion City Council member whose home also was raided, and the estate of the publisher’s 98-year-old mother, the paper’s co-owner, who died the day after the raid. An attorney for the newspaper, Bernie Rhodes, released a copy of the five-page signed agreement Tuesday.

Eric Meyer, the paper’s editor and publisher, told the Associated Press he is hoping the size of the payment is large enough to discourage similar actions against news organizations in the future. Legal claims against the city and city officials have not been settled, and Meyer said he believes they will face a larger judgment though he doesn’t expect those claims to be resolved for some time.

“The goal isn’t to get the money. The money is symbolic,” Meyer said. “The press has basically been under assault.”

The raid triggered a national debate about press freedom focused on Marion, a town of about 1,900 people set among rolling prairie hills about 150 miles southwest of Kansas City, Mo. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother, Joan, lived with him and died of a heart attack that he blamed on the stress of the raid.

Three days after the raid, the local prosecutor said there wasn’t enough evidence to justify it. Experts said Marion’s police chief at the time, Gideon Cody, was on legally shaky ground when he ordered the raid, and a former top federal prosecutor for Kansas suggested that it might have been a criminal violation of civil rights, saying: “I’d probably have the FBI starting to look.”

Two special prosecutors who reviewed the raid and its aftermath said nearly a year later that the Record had committed no crimes before Cody led the raid, that the warrants signed by a judge contained inaccurate information from an “inadequate investigation” and the searches were not legally justified. Cody resigned as police chief in October 2023.

Cody is scheduled to go to trial in February in Marion County on a felony charge of interfering with a judicial process, accused by the two special prosecutors of persuading a potential witness to withhold information from authorities when they later investigated his conduct. He had pleaded not guilty and did not respond to a text message Tuesday seeking comment about the county’s agreement.

Attorneys for the city and the county and the county administrator did not immediately respond to messages seeking comment.

Sheriff Jeff Soyez issued an apology that mentioned the Meyers by name, along with former council member Ruth Herbel and her husband.

“The Sheriff’s Office wishes to express its sincere regrets to Eric and Joan Meyer and Ruth and Ronald Herbel for its participation in the drafting and execution of the Marion County Police Department’s search warrants on their homes and the Marion County Record,” the sheriff’s statement said.

The Marion County Commission approved the agreement Monday after discussing it in private for 15 minutes.

A search warrant tied the raid — which was led by Marion’s police chief — to a dispute between the newspaper and a local restaurant owner who had accused the Marion County Record of invading her privacy and illegally accessing information about her and her driving record.

Meyer has said that he believed the newspaper’s aggressive coverage of local politics and issues played a role and that his newsroom had been examining the police chief’s work history.

Hanna and Hollingsworth write for the Associated Press.