u.s. atty

WASHINGTON — Throwing a sandwich at a federal agent turned Sean Charles Dunn into a symbol of resistance against President Trump’s law-enforcement surge in the nation’s capital. This week, federal prosecutors are trying to persuade a jury of fellow Washington, D.C., residents that Dunn simply broke the law.

That could be a tough sell for the government in a city that has chafed against Trump’s federal takeover, which is entering its third month. A grand jury refused to indict Dunn on a felony assault count before U.S. Atty. Jeanine Pirro’s office opted to charge him instead with a misdemeanor.

Securing a trial conviction could prove to be equally challenging for Justice Department prosecutors in Washington, where murals glorifying Dunn’s sandwich toss popped up virtually overnight.

Before jury selection started Monday, the judge presiding over Dunn’s trial seemed to acknowledge how unusual it is for a case like this to be heard in federal court. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was nominated to the bench by Trump, said he expects the trial to last no more than two days “because it’s the simplest case in the world.”

A video that went viral on social media captured Dunn hurling his subway-style sandwich at a Customs and Border Protection agent outside a nightclub on the night of Aug. 10. That same weekend, Trump announced his deployment of hundreds of National Guard troops and federal agents to assist with police patrols in Washington.

When Dunn approached a group of CBP agents who were in front of the club, which was hosting a “Latin Night,” he called them “fascists” and “racists” and chanted “shame” toward them. An observer’s video captured Dunn throwing a sandwich at an agent’s chest.

“Why are you here? I don’t want you in my city!” Dunn shouted, according to police.

Dunn ran away but was apprehended. He was released from custody but rearrested when a team of armed federal agents in riot gear raided his home. The White House posted a highly produced “propaganda” video of the raid on its official X account, Dunn’s lawyers said. They noted that Dunn had offered to surrender to police before the raid.

Dunn worked as an international affairs specialist in the Justice Department’s criminal division. After Dunn’s arrest, U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi announced his firing in a social media post that referred to him as “an example of the Deep State.”

Before trial, Dunn’s lawyers urged the judge to dismiss the case for what they allege is a vindictive and selective prosecution. They argued that the posts by Bondi and the White House prove Dunn was impermissibly targeted for his political speech.

Julia Gatto, one of Dunn’s lawyers, questioned why Trump’s Justice Department is prosecuting Dunn after the Republican president issued pardons and ordered the dismissal of assault cases stemming from a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

“It’s an obvious answer,” Gatto said during a hearing last Thursday. “The answer is they have different politics. And that’s selective prosecution.”

Prosecutors countered that Dunn’s political expressions don’t make him immune from prosecution for assaulting the agent.

“The defendant is being prosecuted for the obvious reason that he was recorded throwing a sandwich at a federal officer at point-blank range,” they wrote.

Dunn is charged with assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer. Dozens of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol were convicted of felonies for assaulting or interfering with police during the Jan. 6 attack. Trump pardoned or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of them.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

The chief spokesperson for the Los Angeles Police Department has resigned amid accusations from the region’s top federal prosecutor that her office was leaking information, according to three sources familiar with the matter but not cleared to speak publicly.

Jennifer Forkish, the LAPD’s public information director, said she left the department Thursday at the request of Chief Jim McDonnell but vehemently denied making any unauthorized disclosures.

“Any suggestion that I have ever shared or leaked information to the media is categorically false,” she said in a statement. “No one in the Department, including the Chief has ever raised or discussed this baseless allegation with me, because it simply never happened. Anyone claiming otherwise is lying.”

The three law enforcement sources said the chief’s concerns about Forkish’s overall performance had been mounting, and that pressure Tuesday from acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli may have prompted her ouster.

The drama began the prior evening after a Times reporter reached out to an official at the U.S. Attorney’s office to inquire about plans to schedule a news conference related to the Palisades fire.

Flanked by McDonnell and other law enforcement leaders, Essayli announced at a briefing on Wednesday that authorities had arrested and charged a 29-year-old Uber driver with intentionally sparking one of the most destructive fires in California history.

Before the media event, according to the three sources who had been briefed on the matter, Essayli called LAPD senior staff and demanded to know who in the department had tipped the paper off to the news conference, which had not yet been officially scheduled when The Times asked about it.

It wasn’t immediately clear why Forkish was suspected of revealing details about the news conference, which federal authorities announced to members of the media via email at 5 a.m. Wednesday.

Forkish had already left work that afternoon when McDonnell summoned her back to his office at LAPD headquarters for a meeting with him and Assistant Chief Dominic Choi, she told The Times. McDonnell did not reference a call with Essayli during the meeting, telling Forkish only that he did not share her long-term vision for the department’s public relations strategy, she said.

She said the conversation revolved around the difference of opinion about the department’s overall media strategy, adding “there has never been any conversation with me regarding the possibility of a leak with anyone from the LAPD.”

Choi would not address any phone conversation between LAPD leadership and Essayli. He told The Times he could not discuss Forkish’s case due to confidentiality around personnel matters but confirmed she submitted her letter of resignation on Thursday morning.

“We don’t wish any ill will or anything for her,” he said in a brief telephone interview. “We thank her for her service and everything she’s done and for her time with the department.”

McDonnell did not respond to a phone call and email seeking comment on Thursday. Inquiries to the U.S. Attorney’s office and Mayor Karen Bass also went unreturned.

Forkish expressed gratitude for her time with the LAPD.

“After much thought, I’ve decided to step down from my role to pursue new opportunities,” she wrote in a statement. “I do so with immense pride in what my team and I accomplished together. We told the hard stories with honesty and balance, supported our officers and our city in moments of crisis, and built a foundation of professionalism that I’ll always be proud of.”

For months, word has circulated in the U.S. Attorney’s office in Los Angeles that Essayli — a Trump appointee — is trying to root out leaks to the media. The LAPD has itself routinely opened investigations into employees who speak with journalists without authorization, and faced lawsuits from employees who claimed they were falsely accused of leaks.

Forkish began her career working for former Los Angeles City Councilman Dennis Zine, who worked as an LAPD cop for more than three decades before going into politics. She later had stints at PR firms around town, including GCG Rose & Kindel, where she worked with Celine Cordero, the future mayor’s deputy chief of staff.

After working as a vice president of corporate communications for casino giant Caesars Entertainment Corp. in Las Vegas, Forkish served as a spokesperson for former Los Angeles County Dist. Atty. George Gascón for several months in 2024.

Eric Rose, a partner at the lobbying and crisis communication firm EKA, where he was once Forkish’s boss, said she has made a positive mark at every stop of her career.

“Jennifer is an accomplished public affairs professional with deep and diverse expertise, having worked with elected officials at the local, state and federal levels for more than two decades,” he said.

But Forkish’s appointment to the LAPD job was not without controversy. Multiple department sources not authorized to speak publicly said a dispute over Forkish’s salary demands created tension before she started on the job. Then, the sources, said there was a disagreement over strategy between Forkish and her predecessor, Capt. Kelly Muniz, which ended with Muniz’s transfer to another unit.

Some press advocates say McDonnell’s tenure has been marked by conflict with the local media. The department faces lawsuits for aggressive behavior by officers toward journalists who covered protests against the Trump administration over the summer, and a federal judge has barred police from targeting reporters with less-lethal projectiles during demonstrations.

Adam Rose, a deputy director of advocacy for the Freedom of the Press Foundation, said the department has in recent months been frustratingly unresponsive when confronted with reports of abuses by officers.

“While I often vehemently disagreed with past PIOs and past department leadership, at least they were responsive,” Rose said. “The fact that McDonnell and his staff are so recalcitrant — and are so reluctant — to do their jobs is shameful.”

In her statement, Forkish said she is proud of her time at the LAPD.

“I’ve always approached this work with transparency, respect, and accountability, and that will never change,” she said.

Times staff writers James Queally and Brittny Mejia contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON — On a Phoenix tarmac in 2016, former President Clinton and U.S. Atty. Gen. Loretta Lynch had a serendipitous meeting on a private jet. The exchange caused a political firestorm. At a time when the Justice Department was investigating Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, the appearance of impropriety prompted a national scandal.

“Lynch made law enforcement decisions for political purposes,” Donald Trump, her Republican rival that year, would later write of the meeting on Twitter. “Totally illegal!”

It was the beginning of a pattern from Trump claiming political interference by Democrats and career public servants in Justice Department matters, regardless of the evidence.

Now, Trump’s years-long claim that it was his opponents who politicized the justice system has become the basis for the most aggressive spree of political prosecutions in modern American history.

“What Trump is doing now with the U.S. attorneys is really in complete opposition to how the people who created those offices imagined what those officials would do — the Founders simply did not envision the office in this way,” said Peter Kastor, chair of the history department at Washington University in St. Louis.

“From the inception of the Justice Department,” he added, “one of the most remarkable things is how it was never used in this way.”

On Thursday, at Trump’s express direction, federal charges were filed against James Comey, the former FBI director, alleging he gave false testimony before Congress and attempted to obstruct a congressional proceeding five years ago.

The indictment was secured from a federal grand jury after Trump fired a U.S. attorney with doubts about the strength of the case — replacing him with a loyalist, and telling Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi openly on social media to pursue charges against him and others.

“JAMES COMEY IS A DIRTY COP,” Trump wrote on social media after the charges were filed. “MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!”

Comey, who was fired by Trump in 2017, denies the charges.

“My family and I have known for years that there are costs to standing up to Donald Trump, but we couldn’t imagine ourselves living any other way,” Comey said in a statement posted online. “We will not live on our knees, and you shouldn’t either.

“My heart is broken for the Department of Justice. But I have great confidence in the federal judicial system,” Comey continued. “And I’m innocent. So let’s have a trial and keep the faith.”

Behind the charges against Comey, legal experts see a weak case wielded as a cudgel in a political persecution of Trump’s perceived enemy. Comey is accused of lying about authorizing a leak to the media about an FBI investigation through an anonymous source.

It is only the latest example. Over the summer, Trump’s director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, Bill Pulte, used his position to accuse three of the president’s political foes of mortgage fraud, referring the cases to the Justice Department for potential charges — actions actively encouraged by Trump online.

“It’s not a list,” Trump said Thursday, asked whether more prosecutions are coming. “I think there will be others. They’re corrupt. These were corrupt radical left Democrats. Comey essentially was Dem — he’s worse than a Democrat.”

The president’s overt use of the Justice Department as a partisan tool threatens a new era of political persecutions that could well backfire on his own allies. The Supreme Court has made clear that presidents enjoy broad immunity for their actions while in office. But their aides do not. Bondi, Pulte and others, just like Comey, are obligated to provide occasional testimony to House and Senate committees under oath.

“The Comey indictment is notable for its personalized politicization being so open,” said Andrew Rudalevige, a professor of government at Bowdoin College. “The same actions carried out clandestinely would seem scandalous, because they are — and the fact they were so blatantly advertised does not make them less corrupt.”

But the Comey case can also be seen as a test of the viability of a prosecution based purely on politics. Already, lawyers for Trump’s other legal targets have said they plan on using his overt threats against them to get cases against their clients thrown out in court.

This week, Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, defended Trump’s vocal advocacy for criminal charges against political foes as a matter of “accountability.”

“We are not going to tolerate gaslighting from anyone in the media, from anyone on the other side who is trying to say that it’s the president who is weaponizing the DOJ,” Leavitt said.

“You look at people like [California Sen.] Adam Schiff, and like James Comey, and like [New York Atty. Gen.] Letitia James, who the president is rightfully frustrated with,” she continued. “He wants accountability for these corrupt fraudsters who abused their power, who abused their oath of office to target the former president.”

But Trump’s accusations against Democrats have routinely failed the tests of inspectors general, journalistic inquiry and public scrutiny.

When Trump was investigated over potential coordination between his campaign and the Russian government in the 2016 race, he claimed a liberal, “deep state” cabal was behind an inquiry based on, as the special prosecutor’s report concluded, “numerous links between the Russian government and the Trump campaign.”

And when charged with federal crimes over his handling of highly classified material, and his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, he dismissed the charges as a witch hunt choreographed by President Biden and his attorney general, a claim that had no basis in fact.

The special counsel investigations against Trump, Kastor said, were “prosecutions, not persecutions.”

“His claims that the investigations surrounding him are specious — the investigations were appropriate,” Kastor added. “These investigations are not.”

A former Walmart employee who tried to intervene as Border Patrol agents arrested an undocumented custodial worker in Pico Rivera in June was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday.

Adrian Martinez, 20, was indicted by a Santa Ana jury on the charge of conspiracy to impede a federal officer tied to the events of June 17, which unfolded at the height of the Trump administration’s immigration raids in the Los Angeles area. Martinez’s violent arrest was caught on video and quickly went viral.

According to the three-page indictment, Martinez confronted Border Patrol agents as they tried to arrest the custodial worker in the parking lot of a shopping center and blocked the agents’ vehicle with his own. Prosecutors allege that he positioned himself with a growing crowd to surround the agents’ vehicle and prevent it from leaving the area.

Martinez then allegedly grabbed a large trash can and moved it in front of the agents’ vehicle, blocking them from being able to pass.

According to the U.S. attorney’s office in L.A., Martinez faces up to six years in prison if convicted. He is set to be arraigned in downtown L.A. on Thursday.

“Make no mistake: There are serious, life-altering consequences for impeding law enforcement,” acting U.S. Atty. Bill Essayli said in a news release Wednesday.

Martinez’s lawyers released a statement noting that “just as in other cases arising out of recent illegal and inhumane ICE raids, the U.S. Attorney’s Office had to travel out of Los Angeles county to secure this indictment.”

The Times previously reported on Essayli’s struggles to secure indictments in protest cases.

“Although we are disappointed that Adrian’s case has not been dismissed, we always anticipated being required to litigate this case post-indictment,” the Miller Law Group, which represents Martinez, said in its statement.

The lawyers also criticized Essayli for posting on X, “before we had even officially been notified of the outcome of the indictment” and using it “to maliciously spread falsehoods and fearmonger at our client’s expense.”

In a June interview with the Times, Martinez said he was on break when he spotted the custodial worker, “getting grabbed very aggressively, getting manhandled,” by the agents. Martinez said he drove over, told the agents that their actions weren’t right and they should leave the worker alone.

Surveillance and spectator video captured at the scene and looped in social media feeds show an agent rushing Martinez and shoving him to the ground. Martinez gets back up, there is more shoving, and he exchanges angry words with a masked officer carrying a rifle. Then other agents swarmed him, pushed him back down and dragged him to their truck.

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Agents ultimately arrested both the custodial worker and Martinez.

In the June interview with the Times, Martinez said after his arrest he was taken to a parking structure, where he was told he’d been arrested for assaulting a federal officer by striking an agent in the face and breaking his glasses. Martinez, who weighs around 150 pounds, said the agents arresting him pointed to the colleague he was being accused of attacking, who looked “like a grizzly bear.”

“I don’t even remember you,” Martinez recalled saying. “It just seemed like they were trying to get me to say like, ‘yes, you assaulted him,’ but I knew I didn’t.”

The next day, Essayli posted a photo on X of Martinez, still in his blue Walmart vest. Martinez, he wrote, had been arrested “for an allegation of punching a border patrol agent in the face.”

Martinez was charged in a June 19 criminal complaint with conspiracy to impede a federal officer. The complaint makes no reference to a punch and neither does Wednesday’s indictment.

Bloomberg Law previously reported that Essayli had rejected office supervisors’ advice not to charge Martinez for assaulting a federal officer and that an an FBI agent felt there was insufficient evidence and declined to sign a complaint attesting probable cause to a judge.

Within a day, the outlet reported, another agent signed off on the charge of conspiracy to impede.

In an interview a week after his arrest, Martinez wore a brace on his right leg, where he’d suffered a contusion, and said he’d been bruised and scratched all over his body.

Walmart later terminated Martinez, citing “gross misconduct,” according to a separation notice reviewed by the Times.

“I was just speaking up for a man,” Martinez said. “How can I go from that to this?”

“People have the right to speak up for themselves and for someone else,” he added. “You don’t have to get treated like this, thrown on the floor and manhandled because of that.”

NASHVILLE — Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia asked a federal judge in Tennessee on Friday to delay his release from jail because of “contradictory statements” by President Trump’s administration over whether he’ll be deported upon release.

A federal judge in Nashville has been preparing to release Abrego Garcia to await trial on human smuggling charges. But she’s been holding off over concerns that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would swiftly detain him and try to deport him again.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are now asking the judge to continue to detain him following statements by Trump administration officials “because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by” the Justice Department.

“The irony of this request is not lost on anyone,” the attorneys wrote.

Abrego Garcia, a construction worker who had been living in Maryland, became a flashpoint over Trump’s hard-line immigration policies when he was mistakenly deported to his native El Salvador in March. Facing mounting pressure and a Supreme Court order, Trump’s Republican administration returned him this month to face the smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “preposterous.”

In a response to the request by Abrego Garcia’s attorneys on Friday, acting U.S. Atty. Rob McGuire agreed to delaying Abrego Garcia’s release. He reiterated his stance that Abrego Garcia should remain in jail before trial and that he lacks jurisdiction over ICE, stating that he has no way to prevent Abrego Garcia’s deportation.

Justice Department spokesman Chad Gilmartin told the Associated Press on Thursday that the department intends to try Abrego Garcia on the smuggling charges before it moves to deport him, stating that Abrego Garcia “has been charged with horrific crimes, including trafficking children, and will not walk free in our country again.”

Hours earlier, Justice Department attorney Jonathan Guynn told a federal judge in Maryland that the U.S. government plans to deport Abrego Garcia to a “third country” that isn’t El Salvador. Guynn said there was no timeline for the deportation plans.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote in their filing on Friday that Guynn’s statements were the “first time the government has represented, to anyone, that it intended not to deport Mr. Abrego back to El Salvador following a trial on these charges, but to deport him to a third country immediately.”

The filing by Abrego Garcia’s lawyers also cited a post on X on Thursday from White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson: “Abrego Garcia was returned to the United States to face trial for the egregious charges against him,” Jackson stated. “He will face the full force of the American justice system — including serving time in American prison for the crimes he’s committed.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys wrote Friday the Trump administration brought Abrego Garcia back “only to convict him in the court of public opinion.”

“In a just world, he would not seek to prolong his detention further,” his attorneys wrote. “And yet the government — a government that has, at all levels, told the American people that it is bringing Mr. Abrego back home to the United States to face ‘American justice’ — apparently has little interest in actually bringing this case to trial.”

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have asked the judge to delay his release until a July 16 court hearing, which will consider a request by prosecutors to revoke Abrego Garcia’s release order while he awaits trial.

Abrego Garcia pleaded not guilty on June 13 to smuggling charges that his attorneys have characterized as an attempt to justify his mistaken expulsion to a notorious prison in El Salvador.

When the Trump administration deported Abrego Garcia in March, it violated a U.S. immigration judge’s order in 2019 that barred his expulsion to his native country. The immigration judge had found that Abrego Garcia faced a credible threat from gangs that had terrorized him and his family.

The human smuggling charges pending against Abrego Garcia stem from a 2022 traffic stop for speeding in Tennessee, during which Abrego Garcia was driving a vehicle with nine passengers without luggage.

U.S. Magistrate Judge Barbara Holmes in Nashville wrote in a ruling Sunday that federal prosecutors failed to show that Abrego Garcia was a flight risk or a danger to the community.

During a court hearing Wednesday, Holmes set specific conditions for Abrego Garcia’s release that included him living with his brother, a U.S. citizen, in Maryland. But she held off on releasing him over concerns that prosecutors can’t prevent U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement from deporting him.

Finley and Loller write for the Associated Press. Finley reported from Norfolk, Va.

McALLEN, Texas — Adults fighting kids for clean water, despondent toddlers, and a child with swollen feet denied a medical exam: These first-hand accounts from immigrant families at detention centers included in a motion filed by advocates Friday night are offering a glimpse of conditions at Texas facilities.

Families shared their testimonies with immigrant advocates filing a lawsuit to prevent the Trump administration from terminating the Flores settlement agreement, a 1990s-era policy that requires immigrant children detained in federal custody be held in safe and sanitary conditions.

The agreement could challenge President Trump’s family detention provisions in his massive tax and spending bill, which also seeks to make the detention time indefinite and comes as the administration ramps up arrests of immigrants nationwide.

“At a time when Congress is considering funding the indefinite detention of children and families, defending the Flores Settlement is more urgent than ever,” Mishan Wroe, a senior immigration attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, said in a statement Friday.

Advocates with the center, as well as the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law, RAICES and Children’s Rights contacted or visited children and their families held in two Texas family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes, which reopened this year.

The conditions of the family detention facilities were undisclosed until immigration attorneys filed an opposing motion Friday night before a California federal court.

The oversight of the detention facilities was possible because of the settlement, and the visits help ensure standards of compliance and transparency, said Sergio Perez, the executive director of the Center for Human Rights and Constitutional Law. Without the settlement, those overseeing the facilities would lose access to them and could not document what is happening inside.

Out of 90 families who spoke to RAICES, an immigration legal support group, since March, 40 expressed medical concerns, according to the court documents. Several testimonies expressed concern over water quantity and quality.

Emailed messages seeking comment were sent to the office of U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi and to CoreCivic and Geo Group, the private prison companies that operate the detention facilities in Dilley and Karnes, respectively. There was no response from Bondi’s office or the operators of the facilities as of midday Saturday.

One mother was told she would have to use tap water for formula for her 9-month-old, who had diarrhea for three days after. A 16-year-old girl described people scrambling over one another for water.

“We don’t get enough water. They put out a little case of water, and everyone has to run for it,” said the declaration from the girl held with her mother and two younger siblings at the Karnes County Immigration Processing Center. “An adult here even pushed my little sister out of the way to get to the water first.”

Faisal Al-Juburi, chief external affairs officer for RAICES, said Friday in a statement that the conditions “only serve to reinforce the vital need for transparent and enforceable standards and accountability measures,” citing an “unconscionable obstruction of medical care for those with acute, chronic, and terminal illnesses.”

One family with a young boy with cancer said he missed his doctor’s appointment after the family was arrested after they attended an immigration court hearing. He is now experiencing relapse symptoms, according to the motion. Another family said their 9-month-old lost more than 8 pounds while in detention for a month.

Children spoke openly about their trauma during visits with legal monitors, including a 12-year-old boy with a blood condition. He reported that his feet became too inflamed to walk, and even though he saw a doctor, he was denied further testing. Now, he stays mostly off his feet. “It hurts when I walk,” he said in a court declaration.

Arrests have left psychological trauma. A mother of a 3-year-old boy who saw agents go inside his babysitter’s home with guns started acting differently after detention. She said he now throws himself on the ground, bruises himself and refuses to eat most days.

Growing concerns as ICE ramps up operations

Many of the families in detention were already living in the U.S., reflecting the recent shift from immigration arrests at the border to internal operations.

Stephen Miller, White House deputy chief of staff and main architect of Trump’s immigration policies, said U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers would target at least 3,000 arrests a day, up from about 650 a day during the first few months of Trump’s second term.

Leecia Welch, the deputy legal director at Children’s Rights, said that as bad as facility conditions are, they will only get worse as more immigrants are brought in.

“As of early June, the census at Dilley was around 300, and only two of its five areas were open,” Welch said of her visits. “With a capacity of around 2,400, it’s hard to imagine what it would be like with 2,000 more people.”

Pediatricians such as Dr. Marsha Griffin with the American Academy of Pediatrics Council said they are concerned and are advocating across the country to allow pediatric monitors with child welfare experts inside the facilities.

Challenge to Flores agreement

The Flores agreement is poised to become more relevant if Trump’s tax and spending legislation, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passes with the current language allowing the indefinite detention of immigrant families, which is not allowed under the Flores agreement.

Trump’s legislation approved by the House also proposes setting aside $45 billion in funding, a threefold spending increase, over the next four years to expand ICE detention of adults and families. The Senate is now considering the bill.

Under these increased efforts to add more detention space, Geo Group, the corporation operating the detention facility in Karnes, will soon be reopening an infamous prison — which housed gangsters Al Capone and Machine Gun Kelly — for migrant detention in Leavenworth, Kan.

Immigration advocates argue that if the settlement were terminated, the government would need to create regulations that conform to the agreement’s terms.

“Plaintiffs did not settle for policy making — they settled for rulemaking,” the motion read.

The federal government will have a chance to submit a reply brief. A court hearing is scheduled for mid-July.

Gonzalez writes for the Associated Press.