transferred

NASHVILLE — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was wrongfully deported from the United States to his native El Salvador and whose case became an intensely watched focus of President Trump’s immigration crackdown, has been moved from a Virginia detention center to a facility in Pennsylvania.

Court records show Immigration and Customs Enforcement notified Abrego Garcia’s lawyers Friday that he was transferred to the Moshannon Valley Processing Center in Philipsburg. It said the location would make it easier for the attorneys to access him.

But his attorneys raised concerns about conditions at Moshannon, saying there have been recent reports of “assaults, inadequate medical care, and insufficient food,” according to a federal court filing.

The Trump administration has claimed that Abrego Garcia was a member of the MS-13 gang, an allegation that he denies and for which he was not charged.

The administration returned Abrego Garcia to the U.S. in June, but only to face human smuggling charges. His lawyers have called the case preposterous and vindictive.

WASHINGTON — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, has been moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas as her criminal case generates renewed public attention.

The federal Bureau of Prisons said Friday that Maxwell had been transferred to Bryan, Texas, but did not explain the circumstances. Her attorney confirmed the move but also declined to discuss the reasons for it.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 of helping Epstein sexually abuse underage girls and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She had been held at a low-security prison in Tallahassee, Fla., until her transfer to the prison camp in Texas, where other inmates include Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes and Jen Shah of “The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City.”

Minimum-security federal prison camps house inmates the Bureau of Prisons considers to be the lowest security risk. Some don’t even have fences.

The prison camps were originally designed with low security to make operations easier and to allow inmates tasked with performing work at the prison, such as landscaping and maintenance, to avoid repeatedly checking in and out of a main prison facility.

Maxwell’s case has been the subject of heightened public focus since an outcry over the Justice Department’s statement last month saying that it would not be releasing any additional documents from the Epstein sex trafficking investigation.

Since then, administration officials have tried to cast themselves as promoting transparency in the case, including by requesting from courts the unsealing of grand jury transcripts.

Maxwell was interviewed at a Florida courthouse over two days last week by Deputy Atty. Gen. Todd Blanche.

The House Oversight Committee has separately said that it wants to speak with Maxwell. Her lawyers said this week that she would be open to an interview but only if the panel were to give her immunity from prosecution for anything she said.

Tucker writes for the Associated Press. AP writer Michael Balsamo contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON, July 23 (UPI) — Thousands of unaccompanied migrant children went missing in the United States in recent years after they were released to their sponsors, the Department of Homeland Security inspector general told a congressional subcommittee Wednesday.

These children were among more than 448,000 unaccompanied migrant children transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services between 2021 and 2024, according to government figures.

Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Federal Law Enforcement, DHS Inspector General Joseph Cuffari said the government had not reliably tracked children after their release from custody, leaving them vulnerable to labor exploitation, human trafficking and other abuses.

“Our review found that DHS and ICE lacked the ability to monitor or reliably determine the location of unaccompanied children after transfer to HHS,” Cuffari said. “As a result, children have been released into situations where they are unaccounted for or placed at risk.”

According to his written testimony, some 300,000 of those unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear for their immigration court proceedings as of September. Nearly 58,000 of them were under 12.

Cuffari told lawmakers that Immigration Customs Enforcement and Department of Homeland Security lacked sufficient coordination with HHS, and said agencies released some children to sponsors with missing address information or no familial connection.

“In many cases, we found missing sponsor addresses, sponsors with no known relation to the child and some sponsors housing multiple children without adequate oversight,” he said.

Cuffari described a February 2025 enforcement initiative in which ICE reviewed approximately 50,000 sponsor addresses. Of those, only 12,347 children were located. Additionally,403 sponsors were arrested, many on charges related to immigration fraud or child endangerment.

Cuffari emphasized that the federal government lacks the personnel and resources to fix the problems with unaccompanied minor children, especially those who have been released to sponsors beyond the scope of federal monitoring.

Rep. Summer Lee, D-Pa, condemned conditions in child detention facilities. “We are detaining, warehousing and denying children basic human rights, food, clean water, attorneys, and then wondering why they disappear.”

Republicans on the panel used the testimony to fault the Biden administration for what they described as a breakdown in accountability.

“In 2021, DHS under [Alejandro] Mayorkas removed ICE vetting and handed the reins to HHS,” said Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Ariz.

Rep. Scott Perry, R-Pa., asked whether criminal charges should be considered. “What would it take to investigate Secretary Mayorkas for child endangerment? Thirty thousand missing kids isn’t enough?”

Democrats redirected criticism toward policies enacted under the Trump administration, highlighting the long-term effects of the children sent to detention centers.

“These children are shackled,” said Rep. Lateefah Simon, D-Calif. “The physical and mental health and long-term trauma will exacerbate their pre-existing conditions to the trauma of their detention by our government.”

McALESTER, Okla. — Oklahoma executed a man Thursday whose transfer to state custody was expedited by the Trump administration.

John Fitzgerald Hanson, 61, received a three-drug lethal injection at the Oklahoma State Penitentiary in McAlester and was pronounced dead at 10:11 a.m., prison officials said. Hanson was sentenced to die after he was convicted of carjacking, kidnapping and killing a Tulsa woman in 1999.

“Peace to everyone,” Hanson said while strapped to a gurney inside the prison’s death chamber.

The execution began at 10:01 a.m. After the lethal drugs began to flow, a doctor entered the death chamber at 10:06 a.m. and declared him unconscious.

Hanson, whose name in some federal court records is George John Hanson, had been serving a life sentence in federal prison in Louisiana for several unrelated federal convictions. Federal officials transferred him to Oklahoma’s custody in March to follow through on President Trump’s sweeping executive order to more actively support the death penalty.

Hanson’s attorneys argued in a last-minute appeal that he did not receive a fair clemency hearing last month, claiming that one of the board members who denied him clemency was biased because he worked for the Tulsa County district attorney’s office when Hanson was prosecuted. A district court judge this week issued a temporary stay halting the execution, but that was later vacated.

Prosecutors alleged Hanson and accomplice Victor Miller kidnapped Mary Bowles from a Tulsa shopping mall. Prosecutors alleged the pair drove Bowles to a gravel pit near Owasso, where Miller shot and killed property owner Jerald Thurman. The two then drove Bowles a short distance away, where Hanson shot and killed Bowles, according to prosecutors. Miller received a no-parole life prison sentence for his role.

Thurman’s son, Jacob Thurman, witnessed Thursday’s execution and said it was the culmination of “the longest nightmare of our lives.”

“All families lose in this situation,” he said. “No one’s a winner.”

Bowles’ niece, Sara Mooney, expressed frustration that the litigation over Hanson’s death sentence dragged on for decades, calling it an “expensive and ridiculous exercise.”

“Capital punishment is not an effective form of justice when it takes 26 years,” she said.

During last month’s clemency hearing, Hanson expressed remorse for his involvement in the crimes and apologized to the victims’ families.

“I’m not an evil person,” Hanson said via a video link from the prison. “I was caught in a situation I couldn’t control. I can’t change the past, but I would if I could.”

Hanson’s attorneys acknowledged that he participated in the kidnapping and carjacking, but said there was no definitive evidence that he shot and killed Bowles. They painted Hanson as a troubled youth with autism who was controlled and manipulated by the domineering Miller.

Both Oklahoma Atty. Gen. Gentner Drummond and his predecessor, John O’Connor, had sought Hanson’s transfer during President Biden’s administration, but the U.S. Bureau of Prisons denied it, saying the transfer was not in the public interest.

Murphy writes for the Associated Press.