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To invoke wartime deportation powers, President Trump announced that a gang had invaded the United States and was committing crimes at the direction of Venezuela’s government. But U.S. intelligence analysts disagree, according to findings circulated last month that stand starkly at odds with Mr. Trump’s claims, The New York Times reports . The disclosure calls into question the credibility of Mr. Trump’s basis for invoking a rarely used wartime law, the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, to transfer  a group of Venezuelans to a high-security prison in El Salvador  last weekend, with no due process. The White House still defends the move and his conclusion, that Tren de Aragua was a proxy for the Venezuelan government and was committing crimes in the United States at its direction because Maduro sought to destabilize the country. The intelligence community assessment concluded that the gang, Tren de Aragua, was not directed by Venezuela’s government or committing crimes in the United States on its orders, according to the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. It concluded that the gang was not acting at the direction of the Maduro administration and that the two are instead hostile to each other, citing incidents in which Venezuelan security forces exchanged gunfire with gang members. Analysts put that conclusion at a “moderate” confidence level, the officials said, because of a limited volume of available reporting about the gang. Most of the intelligence community, including the C.I.A. and the National Security Agency, agreed with that assessment. Only one agency, the F.B.I., partly dissented, maintaining that the gang has a connection to the administration of Venezuela’s authoritarian president, Nicolás Maduro, based on information the other agencies did not find credible.

The Justice Department made an unusual effort on Thursday to short-circuit a series of civil lawsuits seeking to hold President Trump accountable for his supporters’ attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, The New York Times reports . The lawsuits were brought against Trump by groups of Capitol Police officers and by lawmakers who claim they were injured when the mob stormed the building. But DOJ lawyers argued in court filings that Trump was acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6 and so the federal government itself should take his place as the defendant. That move, if successful, could protect Trump from having to face judgment for his role in the Capitol attack and from having to pay financial damages if he were found liable. The suits are the  last remaining effort to hold Mr. Trump responsible for his role in the Capitol attack  after two Jan. 6-related criminal cases against him collapsed last year. The department’s attempt to place the federal government itself in the lawsuits’ line of fire instead of the president hinges on whether lawyers can persuade U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta that Trump was in fact acting in his official capacity as president on Jan. 6.The department has argued that under the law federal officials acting within the scope of their office or employment cannot be sued personally, and that in such instances the government is the only entity that can be targeted. Still, if judge ultimately finds, in the context of these new filings,  that Trump was not performing official duties on Jan. 6, it would throw a significant wrench into the Justice Department’s new effort to get him out of the case.

Jessie Hoffman, the 46-year-old man gassed to death by Louisiana on Tuesday, was not someone who led a life of crime that ended in the murder conviction that put him on the state's Death Row 28 years ago. When he was arrested, people around him were baffled, perplexed. Because of his quiet, do-gooder character, some people close to him still believe he's innocent - though he's not, as The Lens reported in "Explaining Jessie Hoffman," a story that draws on dozens of interviews with family and friends and years of childhood records gathered and pieced together by his psych team. Hoffman became a model prisoner, with even a prison guard vouching for him, saying that, because of "Jessie's character," he would be invited to family functions if circumstances were different and they were neighbors on the outside. Hoffman practiced Buddhism, which led to a challenge to his execution by nitrogen hypoxia -- Louisiana's first -- because Hoffman maintained that he could not continue his religious practice through breathing if nitrogen gas was streaming into a face mask. Yet his conviction was for a gruesome crime: the kidnapping, murder and rape of a young ad-firm executive, a newlywed whom Hoffman, then 18, saw in the Central Business District in New Orleans as he left for a lunch break from his job as a valet for a local hotel. Hoffman told a psychiatrist that he remembers telling himself to stop but he couldn't make it happen. A psychiatric team determined that Hoffman had learned to dissociate as a child, for survival. Because of that, he could mentally remove himself so that it was as though he was simply "in the room," not the victim of what was one of psychiatrists deemed "ongoing sadistic abuse." The level of abuse he had endured as a child was extreme that even longtime death-penalty attorneys had never seen anything close to it. One social worker, an early mitigation specialist on the case, said that there were 10 times more records in Hoffman's case than any other case she'd worked on, most of it covering his life up to age 10. Repeated police calls by neighbors to the household, reporting public disturbance, drunkenness, battery, domestic violence, and cruelty to juveniles. Even as a toddler, he was hospitalized for three weeks because his mother had burned his hand -- by putting it over a stove's burner until it blistered. It was a regular punishment for her children. If the hand wasn't blistered when she pulled it off, she'd put it back on the burner. Hoffman disassociated that violence to the point where he could go to school and football practice and be a likeable, quiet child. While others in his family drank and used drugs, Hoffman avoided all of that, going to school, going to practice, going home. Even a former New Orleans Police Department assistant superintendent remembers the shock he felt hearing that Hoffman -- a football player in a police sports league -- had committed such a crime. As the execution drew closers, the top police official drove to Baton Rouge, to a rally in front of the governor's office, to plead for Hoffman's life.

The Trump administration has moved to dismiss a Biden-era lawsuit against Texas over a state law that would allow local police to arrest migrants who enter the country illegally, days after the administration’s decision to dismiss similar lawsuits  against Iowa and Oklahoma, the Associated Press reports . The Justice Department under the Biden administration had sued Texas  over concerns that the law, known as Senate Bill 4, was unconstitutional and sought to supersede federal authority. Signed by Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in 2023, the law would allow law enforcement to arrest migrants for illegal entry and give judges the authority to order them to leave the country. It took effect for just a few hours last year before a federal appeals court put it on hold. Abbott signed the bill to challenge the federal government after accusing the Biden administration of failing to enact immigration enforcement. The Trump administration’s decision shadows its refusal to pursue lawsuits against Iowa  and Oklahoma , which enacted similar state immigration laws to allow state and local officials to arrest and charge immigrants in the U.S. illegally. Texas’ law has been considered the most far-encompassing by legal experts and opponents, allowing police anywhere to carry out immigration enforcement. Senate Bill 4 was one of many efforts by Abbott during the Biden administration to instill more state control over immigration enforcement, which has included busing tens of thousands of migrants to Democratic-controlled cities and installing giant buoys in the Rio Grande to deter migrants from crossing the river from Mexico.

A judge on Wednesday ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons to transfer two transgender women inmates back to federal women’s prisons after they had been sent to men’s facilities in the wake of President Donald Trump’s  executive order that truncated transgender protections . U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth in Washington issued a preliminary injunction after the women were added as plaintiffs in ongoing litigation over the impact of Trump’s executive order on transgender women in federal prisons, the Associated Press reports . Lamberth ordered the federal Bureau of Prisons  to “immediately transfer” the two women – identified in court papers by the pseudonyms Rachel and Ellen Doe – back to women’s facilities and said the agency must continue to provide them with hormone therapy treatment for gender dysphoria. The women said in court papers that they were living in constant fear of sexual assault and other violence after being moved to male prisons. Male inmates repeatedly propositioned them for sex and male officers subjected them strip searches without female officers present, they said. “The fact that they have already been transferred and, allegedly, have been abused at their new facilities can only strengthen their claims of irreparable harm,” Lamberth wrote. The preliminary injunction is the latest in a series of rulings thwarting the agency’s efforts to comply with the executive order, which calls for housing transgender women in men’s prisons, and for halting gender-affirming medical care Lamberth, who was appointed by Republican President Ronald Reagan , previously blocked the bureau from transferring a dozen other transgender women inmates to men’s prisons.

Despite its soaring stock prices, the $4 billion private prison company GEO Group continues to resist having to pay detainees more than $1 a day for cleaning facilities where the government has forced them to live, ProPublica reports. At the 1,575-bed detention center GEO runs for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Tacoma, Washington, detainees once prepared meals, washed laundry and scrubbed toilets, doing jobs that would otherwise require 85 full-time employees, the company estimated. The state’s minimum wage at the time was $11 an hour. (It’s now $16.66.) In 2017, Washington sued GEO to enforce it, and in October 2021 a federal jury ruled unanimously in the state’s favor. This year, GEO and Washington are back in court — for a third time — as the company tries to reverse the earlier decision that sided with the state. GEO has brought in contract cleaners at the Tacoma facility while the case plays out, keeping detainees there from paid work and from having a way to earn commissary money. It isn’t that GEO lacks the ability to pay, the company has made clear in legal filings. Its gross profit from its Tacoma facility, today called the Northwest ICE Processing Center, was about $20 million a year when Washington filed its lawsuit. The company told a judge in 2021 it could “pay the Judgments twenty times over.” The real issue is the precedent the Tacoma case could set. GEO, which manages 16 ICE detention facilities across the country, faces similar lawsuits in California and Colorado. The California case, also before the 9th Circuit, is on hold pending the outcome of Washington’s. Colorado’s is winding its way through a lower court. GEO frames the lawsuit as a fight over the federal government’s authority to make the laws of the nation. Multiple courts have decided  that the Fair Labor Standards Act, which sets the federal minimum wage, does not apply to detained migrants. At issue in the Tacoma case is the state minimum wage. “Simply put, we believe the State of Washington has unconstitutionally violated the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution,” GEO wrote in a news release.

The alleged ringleader of a massive pandemic fraud case  in Minnesota was found guilty on all counts Wednesday for her role in a scheme that federal prosecutors say stole $250 million from a program meant to feed children in need, the Associated Press reports . Aimee Bock — the founder of Feeding our Future, the group that prosecutors say was at the heart of the plot — was one of 70 defendants charged in the overall case, said to be one of the country’s largest frauds  against COVID-19 relief programs. The Minnesota case has also drawn attention for an attempt to bribe a juror in an earlier trial and witness tampering in Bock’s trial, which began last month. Thirty-seven defendants have already pleaded guilty, while five were convicted  in a group of defendants who were tried last year. The jury also convicted a co-defendant, Salim Ahmed Said, the owner of the now-defunct Safari Restaurant in Minneapolis. Bock and Said were charged with multiple counts involving conspiracy, wire fraud and bribery. Said was also charged with money laundering. Bock allegedly pocketed nearly $2 million, while Said was accused of taking around $5 million. They both maintained their innocence and testified at trial. In closing arguments, prosecutors said the evidence showed that Bock and Said exploited the chaos of the early days of the the pandemic by submitting falsified paperwork to enrich themselves and failed to provide anywhere near as many meals to needy children as they claimed. Defense attorneys did not dispute that there was massive fraud but insisted that their clients were not responsible for it.

Military officials are reviewing plans that would cut the number of U.S. troops deployed to the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba to handle detained migrants by as much as half, because there are no detainees there now and the program has stumbled during legal challenges , The Associated Press has learned. U.S. officials said the military’s Southern Command was asked to give Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth a plan that would outline how many troops are actually needed and what additional space may be required if more detainees are sent there, The Associated Press reports. That plan, said officials, is expected to recommend that a number of the troops be sent home — and one official said the decision could chop the 900 troops there now in half. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the decisions are not yet finalized. Southern Command is preparing options that would address the fact that there have been no migrants transferred to the base since early March, but the administration has warned that future “high-threat” detainees may be sent to the base. U.S. authorities have transferred at least 290 detainees to Guantanamo since February. But on March 11, the 40 people still housed there were flown off the base to Louisiana. The base is best known for housing foreigners associated with the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks , but it has a separate facility used for decades to hold migrants intercepted trying to reach the U.S. by sea. That use had been expanded recently to include some of the migrants swept up in President Donald Trump’s broader campaign to secure the southern border. Trump has said he will send the worst criminal migrants to Guantanamo Bay , but civil rights attorneys say many detainees transferred there don’t have a criminal record and that the administration has exceeded its authority in violation of U.S. immigration law. A judge recently ruled against immigration and civil rights advocates who sued over the transfers, but it largely hinged on the fact that, at the current time, there were no migrant detainees being held there. Meanwhile, the 900 troops at the base have little to do. There are roughly 500 Army soldiers, nearly 300 Marines and several dozen sailors and airmen deployed to the base for the detainee program.

A federal judge in New York transferred an immigration petition filed by Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil to New Jersey. The decision on Wednesday offers a compromise in the bellwether case, while Khalil's lawyers and the Trump administration argue about whether Khalil should have been arrested by immigration authorities in the first place, NPR reports. Khalil, a lawful permanent resident, has been held in an immigration detention center in Louisiana for over a week. Trump administration lawyers wanted to move his case to Louisiana, where he is being held, and where any appeals are likely to end up in a more conservative-leaning court. But Khalil's lawyers sought to move the case to New York, where he resides and was first arrested. New York Judge Jesse Furman granted the transfer to New Jersey instead, where Khalil was briefly held at the Elizabeth Contract Detention Center while his attorneys filed a petition challenging his arrest order from Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "Given the undisputed fact that Khalil was detained in the District of New Jersey at the time his lawyer filed the Petition, this Court lacks jurisdiction over most, if not all, of Khalil's claims," Furman said in his decision. He added that the New Jersey court will need to decide on the various issues in Khalil's petition, including whether he should be released from the Louisiana detention center. In his decision, Furman kept in place his previous order that barred the government from moving forward with deporting Khalil while his case plays out. Khalil's arrest has been seen as a test case in President Trump's efforts to increase deportations and strip legal protections from those who go against the administration's priorities. Khalil, who was born in Syria but is of Palestinian descent, was one of the pro-Palestinian students who negotiated on behalf of campus protesters pressing Columbia University to divest from Israel over its war with Hamas in Gaza. Khalil's lawyers, who include the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), are asking federal courts to declare the Trump administration's detention of Khalil unlawful, and that he be allowed to return to New York, where his 8-month pregnant U.S. citizen wife resides . "This is just the beginning, but it is a moment to celebrate," Brett Max Kaufman, senior staff attorney at the ACLU, said in a statement. "The court's ruling sends a critical message to courts across the country, who are sure to face similar unprecedented challenges to their authority in the days that come, that the judiciary must not shy from its constitutional role."

At 10:33 a.m. on Wednesday, March 19, Aaron Gunches died by lethal injection in Arizona as punishment for the murder of Ted Price in 2002. Gunches’ execution was attended by five media witnesses, members of Ted Price’s family and legal advisors for both Gunches and Price’s family.  Gunches was transferred to the Arizona State Prison Complex in Florence on Tuesday night after his last meal, which consisted of a double western burger, spicy gyros, onion rings and baklava, the Arizona Mirror reports. On Wednesday morning at 10:02, Gunches was brought into the execution chamber and laid down on the table by five corrections staff members. Four members of a medical team, their identities shielded by masks and white hoodies, inserted IVs in both of his arms. At 10:14, he was asked if he had any last words. Gunches only shook his head. An executioner in another room injected pentobarbital into lines that led to the IVs. Gunches barely moved and squeezed his eyes shut. He exhaled hard seven or eight times and then remained motionless. His heart stopped and he was pronounced dead at 10:33.  Media witnesses and members of Ted Price’s family, in addition to Maricopa County Attorney Rachel Mitchell and Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes discussed the execution at a briefing. “The family of Ted Price has been waiting for justice for more than two decades,” Mayes said. “They deserve closure.” The execution was “the final chapter in a process that has spanned nearly 23 years,” Ted Price’s sister, Karen, said. Gunches was sentenced to death for the November 2002 murder of Price, the ex-boyfriend of a woman Gunches did drugs with. Price, 40, was staying at the woman’s apartment while waiting to receive student grant money. The two got into a violent argument, and the woman threw a telephone at him, hitting him in the face and dazing him so badly he couldn’t stand up. Gunches arrived and berated the man, holding a gun to his head. Then, with one of the girlfriend’s roommates driving, he took Price first to the bus station to send him home. When he found he didn’t have enough money to pay for a bus ticket, Gunches had the roommate drive to a remote spot off the Beeline Highway where he shot Price four times. Price’s body was not found for nearly a month, and Gunches was not apprehended for two months, when he got into a gunfight with a state trooper in La Paz County after a routine traffic stop. The shootout landed him in prison. He was not charged with the Price murder until 2004. But through two trials (one sentence was thrown out by the Arizona Supreme Court), Gunches insisted on acting as his own attorney and then refused to offer any defense at all, committing what one judge called “ suicide by jury ” and being “the architect of his own disaster,” according to one of his former court-appointed attorneys.

The Republican governor of Alabama, Kay Ivey, signed a gun control bill on Wednesday, banning “Glock switches” and other devices that turn rifles and pistols into machine guns. Ivey said: “While there is a federal ban on these gun conversion devices, we needed a way to empower our own law enforcement here in Alabama to get these illegal and extremely dangerous Glock switches off our streets, the Guardian reports. “I am proud to support law enforcement and work to combat crime by putting my signature on SB116.” Ivey’s office said the bill was part of a “Safe Alabama public safety package” and Ivey looked forward “to the other bills … reaching her desk”. Everytown for Gun Safety, a group that campaigns for gun safety reform, defines “Glock switches” as a form of auto sear, “devices that convert semi-automatic firearms, which are designed to fire one shot per trigger pull, into fully automatic machine guns, allowing a shooter to continue firing as long as the trigger is depressed and the gun has ammunition." “In other words, with an auto sear (also known as a ‘machine gun conversion device’ or MCD), someone can fire an entire magazine’s worth of ammunition in mere seconds. Worse yet, auto sears are very easy to manufacture and can even be 3D printed, which is why these components – especially those designed by third parties for Glock pistols, known as ‘Glock switches’ – are showing up at more and more crime scenes around the country.” Everytown points out that “Glock switches” are not made by Glock, “even if they are branded or referred to as such”. Such devices have been banned federally since 1986 and were banned by 23 states before Alabama followed suit. Gun rights groups oppose state bans, with the National Rifle Association saying : “There’s plenty to be done using existing law before law-abiding gun owners should countenance any further restrictions on their rights.” Gun Owners of America said: “The rise in new ‘machine gun conversion devices’ is further proof that gun laws only apply to law abiding citizens and do nothing to stop criminals.”