immigration

A former FBI intelligence analyst has alleged that President Trump ordered the FBI to launch unconstitutional investigations into immigration enforcement protesters from the Los Angeles area, according to a whistleblower report made public Tuesday by Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.).

She also contended that substantial FBI resources were diverted to such probes, and that she was retaliated against for questioning their legality.

The White House and the top federal prosecutor in Los Angeles both denied the allegations.

Jill Fields, a former supervisory intelligence analyst based in L.A., said in a letter addressed to Congress from her attorneys that she was told Trump had ordered FBI Director Kash Patel to launch the probes after seeing a social media video of protests against U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection operations in Alhambra in February 2025.

Fields said an initial assessment “determined that the protesters’ actions — video recording, use of a megaphone, and verbal objection — were constitutionally protected under the First Amendment and never crossed the line into impeding arrest or being a threat,” but that she and others were nonetheless directed to open investigations.

She said that a supervisor — whose name was redacted in the released report — said the investigation was moving forward because “the President wants this investigation.”

Separately, Fields alleged that she was informed that then-Acting Deputy Atty. Gen. Emil Bove — Trump’s former lawyer and now a federal appellate court judge — had instructed FBI leaders in Los Angeles to investigate “any anti-ICE and CBP protesters demonstrating at federal buildings in Los Angeles,” which surprised her because “investigations against protestors solely for First Amendment activity are explicitly illegal and contrary to FBI policy.”

She said she refused to participate and isn’t sure if the investigations were formally launched, but that she “observed that personnel and analytical resources were immediately diverted from ongoing criminal investigations to address the Alhambra matter.”

Fields said she was reassigned after taking her concerns beyond her direct chain of command, and ultimately resigned.

She alleges that the conduct “had significant consequences for constitutional rights, and the integrity and effective operation of the FBI,” and that her reassignment “created a chilling effect within the workforce” by signaling to other employees that “raising constitutional or legal concerns could carry professional consequences.”

Lauren Bis, a White House spokesperson, denied the allegations.

“The First Amendment does not protect violent rioting, obstructing law enforcement, and assaulting law enforcement. Assaulting and obstructing law enforcement is a crime,” she said in a statement. “This administration has been clear: anyone who assaults or obstructs law enforcement will be arrested and prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

The FBI and the Justice Department said in a joint statement that under Trump, “the Department of Justice will continue to vigorously uphold the First Amendment rights of all Americans,” but that “violence is not protected by the First Amendment” and that “politically motivated attacks will not deter us from doing our job.”

They said “conspiracies to impede federal law enforcement and assaults on federal officers are against the law.”

The Los Angeles region was a hotbed of protest amid an intense immigration crackdown by the Trump administration last year.

Federal prosecutors in Los Angeles have pursued a slew of criminal cases against protesters involved in those demonstrations, though many of the cases have been dismissed, reduced to misdemeanor charges or rejected by grand juries. Legal experts have said the failure rate raised concerns about the strength of the cases being brought by First Assistant U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli, whose leadership of the Los Angeles prosecutors office without Senate confirmation is being challenged in court, but high-ranking Justice Department officials have praised Essayli’s work.

Essayli called Fields’ claims false, including in response to a social media post Tuesday by Padilla recounting them.

“The FBI investigated those obstructing law enforcement and engaging in assault, such as punching and spitting (my office charged more than 100 individuals with such crimes),” Essayli wrote. “There is no First Amendment right to violently resist federal officers enforcing immigration laws passed by Congress.”

Padilla wrote a letter to Patel and Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche on Monday demanding answers to a slate of questions about Justice Department investigations of protesters, their origins and outcomes, and any involvement from the White House.

He wrote that Blanche and Patel have told Congress that “cases would be based only on the facts and the law, free from political interference,” but that the whistleblower report “depicts an FBI and DOJ willing to surveil individuals solely for First Amendment activity criticizing the Administration — at the behest of the White House and Trump loyalists, over the objection of senior staff, and in contravention of agency policy and the Constitution.”

The video from Alhambra that Fields said she was told prompted Trump to demand investigations, and which Padilla shared, was posted to TikTok by the League of United Latin American Citizens on Feb. 26, 2025. LULAC did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The video depicts protesters on megaphones calmly reminding others who appear to be the focus of nearby immigration enforcement about their legal rights and the fact that agents need a legitimate, court-issued warrant to enter their homes — and telling them not to open their doors if the agents don’t have one.

SACRAMENTO — Days after signing a package of bills to rebuff aspects of federal immigration enforcement in California, Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed two bills from Los Angeles lawmakers that targeted public employment for federal agents.

One of the bills, backed by Speaker Robert Rivas (D-Hollister), would have blocked agents and contractors who worked to enforce federal immigration laws from state and local jobs in California, including for law enforcement agencies. It was called the “Get the Feds Out” or “GTFO” Act.

Newsom said the bill goes “a step too far.”

“It is a mistake to discourage empathetic and qualified Americans from working in the federal government, or choosing to leave long-standing employment with the federal government because they find the current administration’s policies and tactics reprehensible,” the governor wrote in a veto letter to the Legislature made public on Wednesday.

The governor added that hiring for public employment already includes personal conduct evaluations. He emphasized the “horrific tactics” used by immigration agents during President Trump’s second term but said it is the responsibility of Congress to hold the administration and individual agents accountable.

Newsom signed a similar bill that prevents federal agents from becoming police in California if their federal badge was revoked for misconduct.

While he expressed disappointment in the veto, Assemblymember Mark Gonzalez (D-Los Angeles), the author of Assembly Bill 1896, applauded Newsom for signing “a strong package of legislation that will protect Californians and stand up for our immigrant communities.”

“From the beginning, the GTFO Act was about a simple principle: We should never use public dollars to reward conduct that has caused fear, terror, and pain in our communities. I am proud to have stood alongside my brother, Speaker Rivas, in this fight and this fight is not over,” Gonzalez said in a statement to The Times.

A spokesperson for Rivas said while the proposal did not become law, “Californians know Trump’s immigration agenda is failing and doesn’t keep anyone safe. That’s why Assembly Democrats are leading the nation in holding ICE accountable. The Speaker thanks his colleagues for delivering real results this year.”

The outgoing governor also vetoed a proposal from Assemblymember Isaac Bryan (D-Culver City), Assembly Bill 1537, that would have prevented sworn law enforcement officers from taking secondary employment or contract jobs for immigration enforcement.

Newsom took issue with the prospect of prohibiting “secondary employment law enforcement officers choose to do in their free time.”

“State and local peace officers already must abide by specific standards and rules, including ones that apply to their personal conduct,” Newsom wrote in the veto letter. “Any officers who violate those standards are held accountable through investigations that may culminate in their peace officer status being suspended or revoked entirely.”

Bryan, through a spokesperson, declined to comment on the veto.

Earlier this week, Newsom signed 21 bills aimed at federal immigration enforcement, including bans on electric shock gloves and face coverings for law enforcement. Other laws impose a 25% tax on companies that operate private detention centers, along with additional oversight of the facilities.

“No tax will stop ICE from deporting criminal illegal aliens to make California safe again,” a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said in an email. “While California sanctuary politicians continue to release pedophiles, rapists, gang members, and murderers onto their streets, our brave law enforcement will continue to risk their lives to arrest these heinous criminals and make California safe again.”

WASHINGTON — The Department of Justice filed a complaint Wednesday against federal judges in Minnesota over their remarks to the media related to the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement surge.

The complaint escalates the department’s battle with the federal judiciary, which has halted administration priorities, dismissed high-profile prosecutions and accused government lawyers in some cases of failing to comply with court orders.

The department is demanding that the judges recuse themselves from all criminal or civil cases involving the Department of Homeland Security, Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche told reporters, because of what he described as “obvious bias they have shown” in recent remarks to the New York Times.

At issue is a September article in which seven federal judges in Minnesota — nominated by Democrats and Republican presidents — spoke on the record about their experience dealing with a flood of cases during last winter’s immigration crackdown that led to thousands of arrests.

The judge at the center of the story, Patrick Schiltz, accused the government in January of failing to comply with nearly 100 court orders. He said in a ruling that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a part of Homeland Security, “is not a law unto itself.”

Schiltz, who was nominated by Republican President George W. Bush and served as a law clerk for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, told the newspaper that what happened in Minnesota’s federal court last winter “created a grave threat to the rule of law.”

In a statement Wednesday, Schiltz said he was “acting well within the ethical rules that apply to federal judges in speaking to The New York Times.”

“Indeed, in February of this year, the Committee on Codes of Conduct issued an advisory opinion to emphasize that federal judges” may speak or write “on core judiciary matters such as advocacy for the rule of law and judicial independence,’” Schiltz said. “That is exactly what I did.”

The complaint was filed with the chief judge of the U.S. 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which oversees federal judges in Minnesota.

The Republican administration has railed against what it describes as “activist judges” who officials say are intent on thwarting Trump’s agenda. Yet some of the most critical and unfavorable court rulings have come from judges nominated by Trump and other Republican presidents.

Richer writes for the Associated Press.

Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a raft of bills designed to push back on the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement in California, including bans on electric shock gloves and a revamped ban on law enforcement face coverings after a previous law was blocked by a federal judge.

The more than 20 bills approved by the governor Tuesday were crafted to thwart tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, including the use of facial coverings and making arrests outside immigration hearings. Other bills are meant to boost state oversight of federal detention centers in the state.

“Trump has put his political interests above the health, safety and livelihood of American families. California is taking action to strengthen transparency, accountability, and oversight around immigration enforcement in our state,” Newsom said in a statement. “This is about stepping up where the federal government has failed our communities. We will continue protecting our people, upholding the rule of law, and making clear that if the federal government operates in California, we will hold them accountable.”

The governor signed legislation to ban the use of electric shock gloves by any law enforcement in the state, which was hastily written and passed after reports that the Department of Homeland Security planned to spend $20 million to outfit agents with the gloves.

One bill, dubbed the “No Kings Act,” makes it easier for residents to sue federal agents for alleged civil rights violations, such as racial profiling, unlawful searches or interfering with the right to free speech.

Its author, Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco) said the law already applies to state and local officials and that his bill, SB 747, closes a loophole that exempts federal officials.

Newsom signed another bill by Wiener that bans ICE agents and other law enforcement from wearing face coverings or masks while on duty. After a federal judge blocked his prior bill, which applied to federal agents but not state police, Wiener passed legislation that applies to both.

Many of the bills Newsom signed Tuesday aim to improve state oversight at immigration detention centers within the state and slowroll the development of new facilities.

Among them is AB 1801, which requires municipalities to wait at least 180 days and hold public hearings before approving any plans to build or convert facilities into immigration detention centers.

Newsom signed a 25% tax on companies that operate immigration detention centers in the state. Most of the detention centers in California are run by the private prison companies GEO Group and CoreCivic, under contracts with the federal government. AB 1633 by Assemblymember Matt Haney (D-San Francisco) would raise an estimated $177 million, according to a fiscal analysis of the bill.

Another new law requires local agencies to disclose 911 calls made from immigration detention centers. It stems from a CalMatters investigation which found alleged sexual assaults at Otay Mesa, a detention center in San Diego, were being investigated by CoreCivic, the company that operates the facility, rather than local law enforcement.

“Our communities deserve safety, and no person in detention should have to resort to throwing notes over the walls of a detention facility to have their needs met and their voice heard,” Sen. Lena Gonzalez (D-Long Beach), chair of the Legislative Latino Caucus and the bill’s author, said in a statement after lawmakers passed her legislation.

Activists and Democratic lawmakers have raised alarms about the rising number of in-custody deaths and poor conditions inside ICE detention facilities. The federal government has reported 57 in-custody deaths during Trump’s second term, up from the 26 deaths reported during the previous four years.

During reviews of detention centers around the state last year, Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta’s office found substandard conditions including overcrowding, delays in medical care and poor quality food and drinking water. At one center, detainees were not given clothing warm enough to protect against extremely low temperatures in the facility, Justice Department staff reported.

Newsom signed legislation indefinitely extending the attorney general’s duty to review private detention centers, which had been set to expire next year.

The NFL confirmed Monday that it has asked the Department of Homeland Security to remove a video featuring hard-hitting highlights of Hall of Fame safety Brian Dawkins from a social media post in reference to a report about a caravan of immigrants approaching the U.S. border.

On Sunday afternoon, the verified X account of the DHS reposted another account’s report of the purported caravan, along with the comment, “Our time has come,” and a 39-second clip of the former Philadelphia Eagles and Denver Broncos star delivering one bruising hit after another.

“The league requested DHS take down the video,” NFL spokesperson Brian McCarthy told The Times in an email.

Dawkins told ESPN in a text that he had “very respectfully not given permission” for the DHS to use his video.

About two hours after the initial post went up, the DHS responded in the comment section with a still photo of Dawkins and the caption, “The Border Is Closed.” As of early Monday afternoon, both posts remained intact.

The Times reached out to the DHS by email and asked if it had initially sought the NFL’s permission to use the content, if it planned on taking down the content as the league requested and why it chose to use Dawkins’ imagery with the posts.

The department sent a statement in response that appears to refer to the nine-time Pro Bowl selection’s nickname “Weapon X.”

“DHS is playing lockdown defense at the border. We will use every Weapon at our disposal, from A to X, to keep Americans safe,” the department wrote.

“The United States Border Patrol is actively tracking a migrant caravan which departed San Pedro Sula, Honduras on September 20, 2026. USBP is closely engaged with its international partners to monitor their movement and any additional developments. USBP reminds migrants that under the leadership of President Trump and Homeland Secretary [Markwayne] Mullin, the border has remained closed and secured for the last 16 months.

“Migrants considering making the dangerous journey to our country should also be aware that the days of ‘catch and release’ are over, and [former President] Biden’s disastrous open border policy has been SEALED SHUT. Anyone attempting to illegally enter the United States will be apprehended, prosecuted, and removed from the country.”

WASHINGTON — Since the 2024 election, Democratic congressional candidates have reached a consensus about how to broadly discuss the border — make it secure — but they still lack a cohesive message about ICE.

Some advocate abolishing the agency, while others offer visions for how to rein it in and reform it.

Meanwhile, for Republicans, President Trump’s immigration policies have offered a win on one issue (the border) while creating another issue that many voters find troubling (violence during raids).

Some battleground Republicans are distancing themselves from Trump and have shifted from talking about mass deportations to emphasizing deporting criminals.

Most voters don’t care more about immigration than the cost of living. But it remains an important issue, and for both Republicans and Democrats, the balance in messaging about immigration is delicate, as about half of Americans see the administration’s tactics against immigrants as too aggressive.

As the Nov. 3 midterms approach, Democratic candidates in various states including Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey have said Immigration and Customs Enforcement should be abolished. In Michigan, progressive Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed has said as much — and taken aim at fellow party members.

“The idea that somehow we can’t say ‘abolish ICE’ because we’re so afraid of what they’re going to say, when we’ve seen ICE terrorize people in our streets,” he said before Michigan’s Senate primary in July. “To me, it is exactly the kind of cowardice that we don’t need from Democrats.”

The Democratic dilemma was crystallized last month when Democratic National Committee members approved dueling messages — one to abolish ICE, the other to reform it.

Among those in the reform camp is Randy Villegas, the political science professor running against Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford) in California’s Central Valley.

Rep. David Valadao (R-Hanford), presiding over a congressional subcommittee meeting in Washington on March 6, is seeking reelection in California’s 22nd District.

(Allison Robbert / Ap Photo/allison Robbert)

Villegas is in favor of a pathway to citizenship for longtime immigrants as well as a secure border. He’s called for ending the use of for-profit detention facilities and prosecuting ICE agents who engage in illegal conduct.

It’s a personal issue too. Villegas is the son of immigrants from Mexico, and, according to a 2021 NPR story, his brother is a DACA recipient, granted protection under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. He said the constituents of the mostly rural 22nd District deserve a representative who understands the effects of the broken immigration system; he recalls his mother being unable to visit her sister when she was dying of cancer.

“Kern County was ground zero for these ICE raids last year. What did Valadao do or say about it? Absolutely nothing. This is somebody who likes to pretend they’re a moderate on immigration. He voted to triple ICE’s budget,” Villegas said in an interview, noting that he organized a local workshop with immigration attorneys.

After the raids, led by Customs and Border Protection agents who were reported to have gone “rogue” weeks before President Biden left office, Valadao released a statement saying he had spoken to agency officials and urged them to target “criminals rather than those responsible for producing our nation’s food supply.”

Valadao, a dairy farmer and the son of immigrants from the Azores islands of Portugal, says on his campaign website that he supports a “reasonable and responsible” pathway to citizenship, a guest worker program that could stabilize the agricultural workforce and a focus on removing immigrants who have committed serious crimes.

Last year, he sponsored the Dignity Act, a bipartisan bill that would create a new temporary legal status for immigrants who meet certain requirements and pass a criminal background check.

Valadao declined an interview request but said in a statement that “our immigration system is broken after decades of inaction, and it’s critical that we restore law and order while recognizing the contributions of people who have lived and worked peacefully in our communities for years.”

In Texas, Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico frequently has said that the southern border should be treated “like our front porch,” with a welcome mat and a lock on the door.

Talarico says immigration enforcement is necessary but that resources should be refocused to target cartels, gang members and human traffickers. As for ICE, he said the government should “tear down this secret police force and replace it with an agency that is actually going to focus on public safety.”

Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, a Republican candidate for the U.S. Senate, has embraced President Trump’s crackdown on immigration.

(Tony Gutierrez / Ap Photo/tony Gutierrez)

Centrist Democratic strategists said Talarico’s messaging strikes the right tone for swing voters.

During the Biden administration, voters lost trust with Democrats on immigration and border security, said Sarah Pierce, a former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official who leads immigration work at the center-left think tank Third Way. That needs to stay top of mind for Democratic candidates, she said.

“Americans don’t trust that Democrats are even willing to enforce immigration laws, so obviously there’s a lot of pressure on the party to rectify that,” Pierce said. “At the same time, this is the most anti-immigrant administration we’ve had in history.”

Talarico’s opponent, Texas Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton, touts Trump’s hard-line immigration policies and has made border security a key part of his campaign.

Paxton also believes states should work with the federal government on immigration enforcement. This year, his office conducted raids in Houston and transferred 50 immigrants to ICE custody.

James Talarico, the Democratic Senate candidate in Texas, has called for reforming Immigration and Customs Enforcement but unlike some Democratic candidates, he has not called for abolishing the agency.

(Danielle Villasana / Getty Images)

Matt Terrill, a Republican strategist who was chief of staff for then-Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign, said Republican candidates need Trump to turn out the GOP base so they retain control of Congress.

Some Republican candidates are conveying a more nuanced message, but it might not matter to voters who already feel betrayed by Trump. That’s the assessment of Matthew Dallek, a political historian at George Washington University who studies Republican and Homeland Security politics.

“A lot of Republican candidates are struggling to figure out a message on what had been a great political strength that has turned into a major liability,” Dallek said. “Different Republicans are giving different answers to try to appeal to the Latino vote, maybe to independents, to voters who might typically vote Republican and support closed borders, but think that ICE has gone too far.”

Many Republican candidates aren’t avoiding immigration. A Third Way analysis of last month’s spending on immigration-related ads in competitive House and Senate races found that Republicans had spent more than $50 million — five times more than Democrats.

At issue, however, is the messaging. Earlier this year, White House officials and House Republican leaders reportedly told their members to avoid talking about “mass deportations” and talk up removing criminals.

Rep. Gabe Evans, who is running for reelection in Colorado, described the distinction as “gangbangers, not grandmas.”

At the Republican National Convention in 2024, Rep. Monica De La Cruz (R-Texas) denounced “open borders” before a crowd waving signs reading “mass deportation now!”

As the Trump administration’s enforcement campaign took shape, however, she signed a letter to House Speaker Mike Johnson calling on ICE to focus its resources on arresting immigrants with criminal records, and in March she intervened after local high school mariachi performers were detained.

This month, De La Cruz released a campaign ad, featuring the wife of a DACA recipient who was detained this year by ICE. The wife said that she had voted for Democrats before, “but Monica puts people over politics.”

A representative for De La Cruz did not respond to requests for comment.

Her opponent, Tejano musician Bobby Pulido, said he doesn’t like talking in absolute terms like abolishing ICE. But without the historic funding approved by Republicans this year, the agency would have been prevented from continuing what he sees as bad policy on humanitarian and economic levels.

But Pulido also says that the Biden administration waited too long to impose border restrictions.

“It feels like it went from ‘let ‘em all in’ to ‘kick ‘em all out,’” he said in an interview. “I don’t think that either one is good. We need immigrants, but everybody always says do it the legal way. We have to actually legislate pathways for that to happen.”

One Republican has directly broken with Trump in her bid for reelection. In a campaign ad released Sept. 17, Florida Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, standing in front of the White House, speaks directly to the president. “The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today,” she said.

Polling shows that many in that district, where Latinos make up three-quarters of registered voters and more than half were born outside the U.S., now think Trump’s immigration crackdown has gone too far. Polls also show Salazar is deadlocked with her opponent, Eliott Rodriguez, a fellow Cuban American and newscaster who fired back at her for voting in favor of Trump’s policies.

Since the beginning of the republic, there has been a dynamic tension between constantly expanding diversity driven by immigration and the relentless homogenizing force of common American culture. And there’s nothing like a long drive on an interstate highway to remind a person of that reality.

On Monday, I traveled 600 miles on I-5 cutting through the center of California, from Redding to Los Angeles. The force of homogenization was apparent at every major exit and interchange. I was hungry, but I was hoping to find something beyond McDonald’s, Burger King, Subway, Wendy’s, Arby’s or Taco Bell. That was not an easy task.

As anyone who has driven an interstate anywhere in this great nation knows, the America one sees from the freeway lanes is the same from coast to coast. The fast-food restaurant choices are the same. The slower food choices are the same – Olive Garden, Denny’s, Pizza Hut and their equivalents. The stores are the same – Target, Best Buy, Starbucks, Wal-Mart.

There is comfort in this level of reliability. A traveler can always find a familiar vendor to buy the thing that did not make it into the suitcase or a hamburger that tastes exactly like the one at the last stop. Still, it can be dispiriting, as well. I remember driving down a highway in rural Indiana marveling that not a single shop or restaurant was unique to that place. It was franchised, homogenized America at its most appalling.

The happy surprise was to discover that, within a minute or two of turning off that Indiana highway, I was rolling through pristine farmland where Amish families riding in horse-drawn buggies sustained a unique culture. And that is still true in most places. I drive to Montana a couple of times a year, and I know once I exit the freeway and bypass the fast-food emporiums, I will find a little cafe filled with ranchers and farmers lunching on homemade soup and sandwiches and talking about the weather, their cows and the upcoming potluck at the VFW hall.

On Monday’s run down I-5, though, I was in a rush and had no time to find the unique places in the countryside that I know must be there. I had to seek diversity from another source: the radio.

Just out of Redding, Christian preachers hung out at the high end of the dial while country music stations predominated in the stronger frequencies. Those stations played song after song extolling the virtues of small towns, back-country roads and girls in tank tops and tight jeans eager to park down by the river and get frisky on the tailgate of a pickup truck.

Approaching Sacramento, the country songs faded and a political talk show took over. The host was part of the legion of small-time Rush Limbaughs across the country. This particular pundit was going off on guns and immigration, sometimes making sense, other times spouting hunches that veered seriously from verifiable facts.

I also began finding more unusual stations broadcasting from the Bay Area. On one, a man with a very earnest voice described how the Earth is actually a prison where all the psychotics from other planets are sent by the overlords of intergalactic civilization. That’s news you don’t hear just anywhere. Another station was nonstop hip-hop. Like the country music, there were reliable themes: wearing gold chains and gold watches, having sex, partying in the crib, having sex, hanging with the homies, having sex, voluptuous female bodies and having sex.

The college stations kicked in at various points. Some offered BBC reports from Jamaica, Mali, the Netherlands, Brazil and other locales most Americans cannot find on a map. Others played music by undiscovered alternative musicians who should probably stay undiscovered. The bad music was, at least, distinctive. On the pop stations, homogenization was really in evidence. Interchangeable divas – was that Beyonce or Mariah Carey? – sang interchangeable songs with bland “I want you, baby, I need you, baby” lyrics.

Strangely, on the Christian music station in the Central Valley, the music was essentially the same as on the secular stations, the main difference being that Jesus was substituted for the usual love interest in the songs. Somehow, making Christ sound like a really neat boyfriend seems vaguely sacrilegious.

The closer I drew to L.A. the more the Spanish-language stations took over. I suppose this is a clear example of diversity. On the other hand, most of the music sounded as formulaic as the pop and country tunes. (Does every Mexican song contain the word corazon?). One hombre stood out, however. Like them all, he was singing with a mariachi band blaring in the traditional three-beats-to-a-measure rhythm, but his voice sounded as if he had just rolled out of bed on the third day of a tequila binge. That was distinctive.

As night fell, I entered the swirl of L.A. traffic. National Public Radio was reporting that immigration reform is suddenly a popular item in Congress. That sounded good to me. We need the different sounds, tastes, talents and ideas that are brought to our shores from all over the world to be integrated, co-opted and fused onto old forms to create something distinctively American. After all, our national motto is E pluribus unum – one from many.

So, sure, secure the borders, but let’s not lock the doors. And please, let’s build some sushi bars at a few exits on the interstate.

Sydney: Australia will reduce migration by curbing “visa hopping”, tightening rules on students and working holiday makers as well as cracking down on overstayers, its interior minister said Thursday, as the far-right surges in the polls.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told the National Press Club in Canberra that immigration was “fundamentally a strength” for Australia, but accepted that housing pressures required changes.

He denied his ruling Labor party was tightening visa rules in response to the rise of One Nation, which has become one of the country’s most popular parties this year with pledges to drastically slash migration. Business groups warned such cuts would cause economic damage.

“We need immigration to soften enough that housing has a chance to catch up,” he said, while stressing the housing shortage was not caused by migrants.

Net overseas migration – the net gain or loss to the population through movement to and from Australia – reached a peak of 538,000 in 2022 after a surge in arrivals when borders re-opened after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Numbers fell to 292,100 in the year to March, data on Thursday showed.

Burke said this was 47 percent below the post-Covid peak — and that policy changes would help to reach a target of 225,000 for next year.

Australians want to know the government was “taking control” of migration but also “being decent about it”, he said.

Students are the largest group of arrivals, with 753,000 international students in Australia, most from China and India, data shows.

Under the new rules, family members seeking to join students in Australia will face new curbs and it will become harder for students to move between courses to extend their stay, Burke said.

A backlog of applications from the UK for working holiday visas would continue to be processed slowly after a record 80,000 applications — a matter that is under discussion with the UK government, he said.

Working holiday makers in rural areas will enter a ballot to stay for a second or third year, with just 5,000 visas available for the latter.

Family members seeking to visit Australians will have “no further stay” conditions attached to their temporary visas.

Migrants with construction and housing skills will be prioritised for visas, he said.

Australia would return to a policy of a decade earlier in which visa overstayers were given two weeks to leave the country or face detention and deportation, he said.

An additional 100 compliance officers and 250 more beds in immigration detention centres would show there are consequences to overstaying a visa, he said.

But he stressed “this is not the sort of operation that some people have seen on TV happening in other countries” — a nod to hardline immigration policies in the United States.

A third of Australia’s resident population of 27.6 million was born overseas, the latest census data shows.

The sprawling snack-food factory in upstate New York appeared to be closed when a small army of immigration officers arrived after 9 a.m. Following a brief discussion of whether to force their way inside, a manager opened the front door.

Over the next several hours, body cameras were running as federal authorities from several agencies made 57 arrests, debated which files to seize and when to release employees who were U.S. citizens. They also searched for anyone in hiding.

The footage from September 2025 shows the raid at the Nutrition Bar Confectioners plant in Cato, N.Y., town of 2,500 people east of Syracuse, and offers a rare glimpse inside a workplace immigration sweep. The Associated Press analyzed the video, which was part of a lawsuit filed Thursday that accuses authorities of overstepping their search warrants.

The officers ordered a manager to announce their presence over loudspeakers while they entered the building and caught employees on the production line, in the warehouse and a few in the bathroom. Officers covered all exits while others swept the interior, including homing in on locked doors.

Male officers encountered a locked bathroom and began shouting instructions in broken Spanish at female employees through the door, demanding that they come out. After about 10 seconds, officers broke through the door.

One woman was outside of a stall and another in the stall. A male officer peered through a locked stall door, and his body cam video revealed a woman sitting on the toilet.

“Miss, pull up your pants. Come out of the bathroom,” he told her.

“You have to wait. I can’t come out like this, naked!” she replied.

Investigators interviewed the general manager and said they were looking into hiring practices and potential fraudulent documents. Inside and outside the building, officers checked every office, storage room and hallway for anyone who was hiding.

Employees were lined up and separated into groups of U.S. citizens and potential noncitizens. Officers asked for their immigration status, requested documents and posed questions about their entry into the U.S. Some employees were pregnant.

Some were parents and expressed concern for their children at home. Others said they would not answer questions without first speaking to their attorneys, and officers told them they would be arrested.

One employee refused to answer questions. “Will you let me talk to my attorney?” she asked the officer. He raised his voice and continued asking about her immigration status.

U.S. citizens were asked for personal information, including their phone numbers and addresses before they were allowed to leave.

A Border Patrol agent who spoke to another official wearing a camera used disparaging language about children from other countries when recounting his experience working at a South Texas immigrant detention center. He said President Biden’s administration allowed millions of people to enter the United States from countries where children are treated “differently” than they are by American parents.

“In other countries, kids are more of a commodity or it’s more of like, I’m going to put it in those terms. It’s more like an animal, right? It’s not prized the way that we do it,” he said.

“There’s countries like Brazil and other places where they’re literal street rats at a very young age who commit crimes, and then they come here. I don’t know if you have kids, but they’ll eat our kids for breakfast.”

The Homeland Security Department said Friday that it executed a criminal search warrant at the plant as part of an investigation that is still open. Its statement did not address the contents of the video or the merits of the lawsuit.

Not all officers wore body cameras, but those who did often indicated to other officers that they were recording before they initiated a conversation.

ICE’s Homeland Security Investigations unit is responsible for workplace raids, which have been relatively few and low-key compared with ICE’s removal unit, which arrests people in the street, at homes and in public and also manages detention centers. The Trump administration’s largest workplace raid was last year at a Hyundai electric vehicle plant in Georgia. It resulted in nearly 500 arrests and fueled diplomatic tension with South Korea.

The lawsuit against Homeland Security claims federal officers exceeded the authority of their warrants and violated workers’ constitutional rights against unlawful search and seizure.

“There were no arrest warrants,” said Perry Grossman, a supervising attorney at the New York Civil Liberties Union, which filed the lawsuit with the Worker Justice Center of New York.

“There was no suspicion that individual workers had committed crimes. And they seized easily 100 people for nonconsensual questioning. They arrested 57. Out of those 57 people, criminal charges were brought against only five. And the most serious charge was unlawful reentry.”

Grossman said one employee got her charges dismissed after contending in a lawsuit that her 4th Amendment rights were violated. He said he was not aware of any charges or indictments against the employers.

Officers detained about 60 people and deported some employees, including two plaintiffs who are part of Thursday’s lawsuit. One plaintiff has since been allowed to reenter the country. Attorneys for the second deported plaintiff are seeking his return.

Law enforcement agencies have come under criticism for not using body cameras and for refusing to release footage when they do. ICE, in particular, has been scrutinized after a $75-billion infusion from Congress and an expanding street presence that has led to three fatal shootings this year.

ICE’s own rules on releasing video are unclear. Its policy calls for expedited release of footage after a serious injury or death in custody when doing so is determined to be in the “ best interests of the agency.”

The Trump administration has repeatedly promised to equip ICE field agents with body cameras, as required by Congress. Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said last week that the agency was “on track” to do so by the end of September.

Gonzalez and Vancleave write for the Associated Press.

The reporter may have misheard the comment, or maybe the person being quoted actually said it, or something odd happened in the editing process.

Whatever: This is what appeared in the Feb. 20, 1985 edition of the Oakland Tribune, quoting a UC Berkeley professor about a protest against immigration sweeps in the Bay Area.

“This probably won’t stop the Iron Ass [federal government] from making raids in the Eastbay.”

“Iron Ass” is how someone might hear the acronym INS, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the forerunner to ICE.

And now, 40 years on, it fits right into the kind of angry, derisory language many Americans use for the present-day hammer-handed operations of federal immigration officers, around the country, especially here in California.

California has always been — and that’s a couple of centuries of “always” — at the fulcrum of the immigration-deportation seesaw in the U.S., with national policies yo-yoing between kicking workers out and inviting them in. Consider the foreign-born who joined the Gold Rush, the Chinese railroad workers, and still and always the Latino population along the long, wide international border.

That underlies the name of a new exhibition at the California Museum in Sacramento, “Help Wanted/Leave Now!” about the “revolving door” of programs and practices that have alternately enticed and expelled workers, legal and undocumented.

The U.S. border with Mexico represents a political borderline but it cannot sever many decades of complicated history and culture. And it’s left us with endless paradoxes and contradictions of who belongs where, with the U.S. government shifting to and fro on deciding and enforcing that, depending on the American economy, and American politics.

Sean Manwaring is curator of the exhibit. “We have historically recruited foreign workers who set down roots, become members of the community, and then, when there’s an economic downturn or it becomes politically expedient, it’s kind of a revolving door.”

The endless argument is that undocumented immigrants, who work for less because of their needs and their vulnerability, take jobs that Americans will, or that Americans won’t do. Something else Americans won’t do: pay higher prices for food, 90 years ago or now.

Last year, the Kansas City Federal Reserve bank, one of 12 regional Feds, noted on its website, “Historically, the supply of U.S.-born farm workers has not been sufficient to meet demand for farm jobs at the going wage rate, contributing to a largely foreign-born workforce.” Even the H-2A legal process for hiring seasonal foreign workers “would likely be more expensive than employing undocumented workers.”

A 1924 immigration law that created the Border Patrol also revealingly put it under the control of the federal labor department. Cheaper Mexican workers had been welcomed during World War I, and were still coming north more casually back then, even as a U.S. labor group was beginning to agitate for organizing American migrant farmworkers.

But when the 1929 market crash and the Depression knifed the American economy, the blame for unemployment in the southwest and California in particular fell on these Mexicans, and the government’s “Mexican Repatriation” program sent hundreds of thousands back to Mexico, some voluntarily, some not, and some numbers of them American citizens.

Once, border migration patterns resembled a loop: thousands of laborers, mostly men, commuted here once or twice a year from Mexico to jobs in the fields, then on to other jobs once harvests were over. Then they’d take their earnings home to Mexico as breadwinners and comparatively rich men, and stay until the next year’s season.

But as U.S. policies over decades squeezed the border shut on this back-and-forth commuting, some workers chose to stay on the side of the border where they could find work, and a number brought their families north to settle, legally or otherwise.

Oct. 15, 1963: Mexican workers in the bracero program work in pepper fields in the Firebaugh area in Fresno County. This image is from the Los Angeles Times Archive at UCLA.

(Bill Murphy / Los Angeles Times)

And then that pendulum swung again. In 1942, Americans by the millions left their peacetime jobs for the war and wartime industries, and the “Bracero” program — from “brazo,” the Spanish word for “arm” — filled in the gaps in the domestic workforce with contracts for employers of Mexican workers, usually in agriculture or on railroads.

Under the program, the U.S. screened Mexicans for aptitude for the work, and for attitude. Manwaring shared with me the notes of Henry P. Anderson, a historian and farm labor organizer, who took a guided tour of a Calexico bracero processing center in 1958:

“Those deemed expendable were described one at a time: this one is too tall, he is too ‘cocky,’ that one a ‘loafer,’ another ‘lazy and irresponsible,’ he’s a ‘smart aleck,’ this one a ‘ladykiller’ and not ‘peon’ enough. On the other hand the ‘right man,’ according to the guide, was ‘built right. He’s a farm worker, you can tell that … he hasn’t got any big ideas. He’s got the right attitude. He’s humble, not fresh and cocky. He’s an Indian type, probably from Jalisco or Guanajuato.’”

Feb. 1, 1954: Unpublished photo from the Mexicali border crossing during the bracero program. Not known if these men are entering or leaving United States.

(Frank Q. Brown / Los Angeles Times)

Through the bracero program’s 22-year span, as many as 4 million workers came in and presumably went home — though not always; a generation of families came here, or were born here, and stayed. About 15 years after it ended, a former Texas labor commissioner and ranking Labor Department official overseeing the program went public. He characterized wages for braceros as unconscionably low, the food substandard and the housing prison-like. “It was not altruistic at all. The bracero program was definitely created by the farmer who needed to make a dollar.”

And then America’s policy yo-yoed again: in 1953, even as the bracero program was still operating, the federal government launched “Operation Wetback,” to rid the country of undocumented immigrants.

With its heavy-handed “sweeps” of labor camps and factories, American citizens were indiscriminately caught up in the operations, just as ICE is doing now.

Consider the breezy tone of a 1931 story in the Los Angeles Evening Citizen News, reporting on 1,200 Mexicans deported from L.A. County in a day, with the casual note that “virtually none of them” was “an undesirable alien — many are American citizens.”

“L.A. was really ground zero for these raids during Operation Wetback and the Mexican deportation,” said Manwaring. Those 1,200 deportees were among at least 50,000 deported from LA County in five months of 1931 — as much as a third of the county’s Mexican and Mexican American population.

Emilia Castaneda was no more than 10 years old when her Boyle Heights family was deported in the 1930s. In an archival videotaped interview made when she was in her late 70s or 80s, and now part of the exhibition, she remembered being teased by the girls in the parochial school she ended up attending in Mexico. “You’re not one of us,” they mocked her. “Go home.”

Just like today, as agriculture and other food chain businesses were hard-hit by Trump’s aggressive deportations, some industries and regions in earlier “sweeps” also asked for carve-outs and exemptions.

“I wouldn’t say there was a backlash but it really impacted agricultural networks across California and Arizona,” said Manwaring. “We came across specific requests from county officials like in Yuma, Arizona, asking for exceptions because they needed these workers, they didn’t have enough help.”

What’s called the Texas Proviso was a wink-and-nudge agribusiness-friendly federal loophole crafted in the early 1950s that for more than 30 years made it a crime to harbor or transport undocumented immigrants — but not a crime to hire them. (Federal law criminalized that in 1986.)

From the Los Angeles Times, June 18, 1954 front page headline: 500 Nabbed by L.A. Wetback Raiders.

(Los Angeles Times)

The 1950s enforcement drive also put the word “wetback” into casual use. Official statements and news stories used it to mean anyone here without documentation. It was derived from the people who waded across Texas’ Rio Grande into the U.S., but it was sometimes used interchangeably with any Latino workers. Sometimes it just got clipped to “wets.”

In 1961, as astronaut Alan Shepard sat aboard his Redstone rocket waiting to become the first American launched in space, hours of delays forced him to urinate in his space suit. “Well,” he remarked nonchalantly, “I’m a wetback now.”

Not much has changed. Court records released this July confirmed that ICE agents had been referring to immigrants during raids with such slurs as “wet” and “tonk,” the last term reportedly derived from the sound an agent’s utility flashlight makes when hitting a migrant’s head.

A 1956 crime drama called “Wetbacks” was a B picture about a human smuggling ring victimizing the undocumented. The Los Angeles Examiner’s movie reviewer called it a “tedious, amateurishly made picture [that] supposedly deals with how illegal Mexican immigrants are smuggled into this country.”

One of the paradoxes of these periodic anti-undocumented worker campaigns is how they divided Latino communities: the “I did it the right way” people who managed to get visas, the people whose forebears may have come illegally but are now themselves established, and the paperless people who have just arrived, or who have lived here for years under the radar.

Cesar Chavez with Richard Ybarra during the 1973 Coachella Grape Strike.

(Richard Ybarra)

César Chávez lived that paradox. The co-founder of the United Farm Workers — along with Dolores Huerta, an advisor on this exhibition — was a U.S. citizen. In the 1960s and into the 1970s, he wanted immigration officials to keep out undocumented workers, believing they’d be exploited as strikebreakers for growers and erode his union’s bargaining power. By the 1980s, though, he was endorsing immigration reform and protections, especially in the face of President Reagan’s recession-era 1982 “Operation Jobs” sweeps.

A Los Angeles Times survey that same year found that within three months of those raids, 80% of the booted-out workers were back on the job. Many of the Americans hired to replace them soon quit. They didn’t like the wages or the working conditions.

The employment manager of B.P. John furniture maker, in Santa Ana, told The Times, 75 of the American-born workers soon quit on him. “They told me they found another job, that the work was too hard, that there wasn’t enough pay.”

In June 1954, The Times covered the Border Patrol’s plans for L.A. Herman Landon, the local immigration chief, described a “stockade” being built in Elysian Park to “imprison illegal Mexicans flushed out” of factories, hotels, and “skid row saloons” at the rate of a thousand or two per day.

Farmers had once requested immigrant workers from smugglers by the truckload, and counted by “the head,” like livestock. When the feds moved in, workers were deported south of the border, sometimes far south, by bus, by ship, by plane. The feds briefly charged each worker $10 each for the cost of being deported.

The caption of a June 1952 photo in the McAllen, Texas, Evening Monitor that showed men boarding a deportation plane read, “It’s a quick bite to eat then off into the wild blue yonder for these wetbacks.” The newspaper offered a $5 prize in a contest to name the airborne deportations. Not all readers were cheering. One acidly suggested calling it “Truman’s Gestapo Airlift.”

The human numbers for any of these programs, coming in or kicking out, are hardly ever confirmed, but over all this time we are talking about the movement of millions — and the deaths, still uncounted.

Trump said he always planned to model his deportations on the Eisenhower-era operation.

“We’re rounding them up in a very humane way, a very nice way,” Trump told “60 Minutes.”

In July 1954, under Eisenhower, 88 workers died of sunstroke in the desert below Calexico, where they’d been deported.

A poster size photo in San Pedro of Alex Pretti, a registered nurse who was fatally shot by ICE agents in Minneapolis.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

In the first 17 months of the second Trump administration, at least 52 people died in ICE custody. ICE agents have shot and killed at least six more people, some in their cars, and some right out in public, like Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, and Keith Porter Jr., shot last New Year’s Eve in front of his L.A. apartment building by an off-duty ICE agent.

The deaths recall a deportation sweep in 1948, when a plane carrying 28 workers back to Mexico, with a crew of four, caught fire and crashed near Coalinga. The press coverage then identified the crew but not the dead Mexican workers, whose individual stories were finally told 70 years later in Tim Z. Hernandez’s book “All They Will Call You.”

The grave marker for the Mexican nationals killed in a 1948 plane crash did not include their names.

(Michael Robinson Chavez / Los Angeles Times)

The title is a line from Woody Guthrie’s celebrated song “Deportees,” about the crash, and what it signified in a nation that used and used up its foreign workers, and it ends like this:

“Is this the best way we can grow our big orchards?/Is this the best way we can grow our good fruit?/To fall like dry leaves to rot on my topsoil/And be called by no name except ‘deportees’?”

Explaining L.A. With Patt Morrison

Los Angeles is a complex place. In this weekly feature, Patt Morrison is explaining how it works, its history and its culture.

As an astronomer who studies how stars develop over tens of millions of years, Ben Zuckerman instinctively takes the long view. What he sees in regard to future U.S. population numbers troubles his environmentalist’s heart: As many as a billion people on the American landscape by 2100, as many as 100 million in California, courtesy of liberal immigration policies.

Zuckerman, a 58-year-old UCLA professor given to running shoes and organic rice cakes, believes environmentalists should be loudly demanding curbs on legal immigration and an end to illegal immigration, which are fueling the country’s surging population growth. The influential Sierra Club, to which he has belonged for more than three decades, ought to be especially vocal on the matter, he thinks.

Zuckerman’s views conflict directly with the club’s official neutrality on immigration reform. Nonetheless, he recently was elected to the club’s board of directors with the most votes, 36,383, among the five successful candidates, despite not being anointed by the organization’s nominating committee.

His victory, he says, is a vindication of keen-eyed Sierrans who see that “the No. 1 environmental problem–and it’s not even close–is overpopulation. A billion Americans is a disaster. I don’t know how my colleagues in the Sierra Club can save species and wetlands and so on when there are a billion Americans.”

At the time of the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, with American fertility rates reaching replacement levels, environmentalists foresaw the U.S. population being stabilized within a single generation.

Then the immigration freight train came roaring down the track. By the time it barreled through the 1990s, it had quadrupled traditional figures for legal immigration, which has reached 1 million-plus per year. Illegal immigration is estimated to be an additional 200,000 to 500,000 annually. From 1990 to 2000, the U.S. population swelled by 13%, its largest 10-year increase ever (in the rest of the developed world, population grew by 2.5%). According to government demographers, immigration and immigrant fertility accounted for about 70% of the national increase, and 90% of California’s.

Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, the Sierra Club supported immigration curbs. In the 1990s, however, the club’s leadership grew shy of the issue as it waxed in controversy. In 1998, Sierrans for U.S. Population Stabilization, a group co-founded by Zuckerman, forced a club referendum on the matter. The leadership pushed for neutrality, Zuckerman’s faction for support of immigration curbs. The leadership’s position won, but Zuckerman faction’s received 40% of the vote.

Now the club’s official posture is to focus on global, as opposed to U.S., population stabilization and to work for improved conditions in immigrant-producing countries.

What really motivates the club leadership, Zuckerman says, is fear. Fear of being called racist. Fear of losing minority-group members and fear of forfeiting financial support from big business and foundations.

Pro-immigration forces–including Latino politicians, the AFL-CIO and corporations, which covet both cheap labor and more consumers–are quick to swing the racism bludgeon. Zuckerman, a lifelong liberal and civil rights advocate, has borne such accusations painfully. “But the average person is overwhelmingly in favor of reduced legal immigration and an end to illegal immigration, and this cuts across every racial line,” he says. “How can it be racist to agree with a majority of every ethnic and racial group in the country?”

The Sierra Club’s timidity on the issue muddies its integrity. (How, he asks, can the club rail against polluters for breaking environmental laws but keep silent about immigrants who break immigration laws?) To save itself, he says, it must refocus on protecting the American environment and opposing growth for growth’s sake, which he calls “the ideology of a cancer cell.” Emboldened by Zuckerman’s victory, more Sierrans of his persuasion are certain to run in next year’s annual election for five of the 15 board seats.

The Sierra Club is headquartered in San Francisco. Presumedly, the people who run it have to commute every day through the congestion of the Bay Area. I have to wonder, do they ever ponder the discomfort of it? Do they really imagine, with residential development devouring space and wildlife habitat from San Diego to Sacramento, that natural California can survive the 50 million residents that demographers are projecting for 2025, much less the 100 million that could be living here by the end of the century if current patterns hold?

Bruce Hamilton, the Sierra Club’s national conservation director, says the organization remains committed to its long-standing goal of population stabilization. It just takes a global approach now rather than a national one. Immigration to the U.S. will dwindle, the club believes, when conditions in immigrant-producing countries no longer compel people to leave home.

Or, I might point out, when conditions here become equally bad, the swollen masses just as poor, the environment just as degraded.

Sept. 8, 2026 7:54 AM PT

MIAMI — Secretary of State Marco Rubio begins a three-nation tour of Latin America on Tuesday, visiting U.S.-aligned conservative leaders as the Trump administration steps up military operations to combat drug trafficking and seeks further inroads in the Western Hemisphere aimed at improving America’s energy standing and combating illegal migration.

Just a week after sealing a massive oil deal with Venezuelan leaders after a U.S. military operation in January deposed then-leader Nicolás Maduro, Rubio was traveling to neighboring Colombia to meet President Abelardo de la Espriella. Colombia’s new leader has embraced President Trump’s policies on issues ranging from drugs to immigration and energy.

De la Espriella is one of a new generation of right-wing conservatives to win election and show support for Trump’s muscular approach to a region that had tilted leftward in recent decades.

In announcing the trip last week, which also will take Rubio to Ecuador and Peru, the State Department said Rubio and all three leaders would be discussing “enhanced cooperation in the shared fight against narcoterrorism, which threatens our hemisphere.”

Rubio visits as Latin American allies help expanded efforts to fight drug trafficking

The trip comes a day after U.S. forces intercepted and sank another Ecuadorian vessel that Washington accuses of links to the criminal group Los Choneros.

It was the latest action by the U.S. against boats and vessels in Latin America that it says are involved in drug trafficking. Expanded operations in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean began a year ago, coinciding with an extreme crackdown on migrants in the U.S. illegally, many of them from Latin America.

The vessel sunk Monday was the fifth targeted by U.S. forces in the region in less than two weeks — in most cases with the cooperation or at least tacit support of the conservative leaders with whom Rubio will meet.

But unlike strikes on alleged drug-trafficking boats in Latin American waters that began in September 2025, those on board the vessel were removed and transferred to Ecuadorian authorities. It appears to be a shift after a series of strikes on boats over the year have killed at least 227 people, which the Trump administration accuses of being “narcoterrorists” but without providing evidence.

The U.S. military carried out at least two of those deadly strikes last month before starting to intercept floating refueling stations that it says support illicit drug trafficking operations at sea.

Colombia’s president vows to crack down on drug trafficking and immigration

Colombian Foreign Minister Omar Bula said in a video released Tuesday that Rubio’s visit marks the beginning of “rebuilding a strategic alliance with the United States, our main partner in the region.” He affirmed that Colombia will focus on discussing security, which includes combating drug trafficking, trade, and the defense of “shared values.”

De la Espriella has promised to take a hard line against drug traffickers and pledges to deport thousands of migrants who are in Colombia without residence permits, mainly Venezuelans, as he tries to make significant changes to the nation’s immigration policies that he says will reduce crime.

After taking office last month, De la Espriella brought Colombia into the Americas Counter Cartels Coalition and strengthened long-standing security cooperation with the United States, following strained relations during the 2022-2026 administration of progressive Gustavo Petro.

In just a month in office, De la Espriella has carried out at least three bombings against illegal armed groups and increased military operations. However, several minors have died during the bombings, which has drawn criticism from opposition leaders.

As part of his security strategy, he has focused his efforts on showcasing the results of military operations. However, there was criticism from the opposition and the state-run Ombudsman’s Office after De la Espriella displayed the bodies of alleged criminals wrapped in white bags on the ground alongside seized ammunition.

After winning the election, De la Espriella identified several leaders of Colombia’s illegal armed groups as “military targets.” Last week, he announced that the first of these, Naín Andrés Pérez Toncel, alias “Bendito Menor,” one of the leaders of the Self-Defense Forces of the Sierra Nevada, an illegal armed group in the north of the country, had been killed by police.

Nicknamed “El Tigre,” or The Tiger, the president has shifted the country’s security policy, closing the peace negotiations initiated by Petro during his administration, which he considers a failed effort that only increased violence in Colombia.

Colombia grapples with illegal armed groups vying for control of territories strategically important for drug trafficking and illegal mining, despite the fact that a decade ago the state signed a historic peace agreement with the FARC rebel group.

After meeting De la Espriella in Barranquilla on the Caribbean, where he will sign a civil nuclear cooperation deal and a critical minerals agreement, Rubio will make a brief stop in Quito.

He will meet Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa whose government has steadily increased counternarcotics operations conducted with the U.S. military.

Rubio will round out the visit with a stop in Lima, Peru, where he will meet new President Keiko Fujimori — the daughter of former leader Alberto Fujimori — as the government also has taken a rightward turn.

Lee and Suárez write for the Associated Press. Suarez reported from Bogota, Colombia.