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MIAMI (AP) — Franco Caraballo called his wife Friday night, crying and panicked. Hours earlier, the 26-year-old barber and dozens of other Venezuelan migrants at a federal detention facility in Texas were dressed in white clothes, handcuffed and taken onto a plane. He had no idea where he was going.

Twenty-four hours later, Caraballo’s name disappeared from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s online detainee locator.

On Monday, his wife, Johanny Sánchez, learned Caraballo was among more than 200 Venezuelan immigrants flown over the weekend to El Salvador, where they are in a maximum-security prison after being accused by the Trump administration of belonging to the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua gang.

Sánchez insists her husband isn’t a gang member. She struggles even to find logic in the accusation.

The weekend flights

Flights by U.S. immigration authorities set off a frantic scramble among terrified families after hundreds of immigrants vanished from ICE’s online locator.

Some turned up at that massive El Salvador prison, where visitors, recreation and education are not allowed. The U.S. has paid El Salvador’s government $6 million to hold immigrants, many of them Venezuelan, whose government rarely accepts deportees from the U.S.

But many families have no idea where to find their loved ones. El Salvador has no online database to look up inmates, and families there often struggle to get information.

“I don’t know anything about my son,” said Xiomara Vizcaya, a 46-year-old Venezuelan.

Ali David Navas Vizcaya had been in U.S. detention since early 2024, when he was stopped at a U.S.-Mexico border crossing where he had an appointment to talk to immigration officers. He called her late Friday and said he thought he was being deported to Venezuela or Mexico.

“He told me, ‘Finally, we’re going to be together, and this nightmare is going to be over,’” Vizcaya said in telephone interview from her home in the northern Venezuela city of Barquisimeto.

His name is no longer in ICE’s system. She said he has no criminal record and suspects he may have been mistakenly identified as a Tren de Aragua member because of several tattoos.

“He left for the American dream, to be able to help me financially, but he never had the chance to get out” of prison, she said.

Nearly 8 million Venezuelans have left their homeland since 2013, when its oil-dependent economy collapsed. Most initially went to other Latin American countries but more headed to the U.S. after COVID-19 restrictions lifted during the Biden administration.

An 18th century law

On Saturday, President Donald Trump announced he had invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which allows the U.S. to deport noncitizens without any legal recourse, including rights to appear before an immigration or federal court judge.

Many conservatives have cheered the deportations and the Trump administration for taking a hard stance on immigration.

The administration says it is using the wartime Alien Enemies Act to deport alleged Tren de Aragua members, saying the gang was invading the U.S., though it has not provided any evidence to back up gang-membership claims.

U.S. officials acknowledged in a court filing Monday that many people sent to El Salvador do not have criminal records, though they insisted all are suspected gang members.

“The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” said a sworn declaration in the filing, adding that along with their suspected gang membership “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose.”

ICE regional supervisor Robert Cerna said in an affidavit that agents did not rely on “tattoos alone” to identify potential members.

“We followed the law”

On Feb. 3, Caraballo went to an ICE office in Dallas office for one of his regular mandatory check-ins with agents handling his asylum request.

He was “apprehended and released” after illegally crossing the southern U.S. border in October 2023, according to Department of Homeland Security documents provided by his wife. The documents said he was a “member/active” of Tren de Aragua, but offered no evidence to support that.

What gang member, his wife asked, would walk into a federal law enforcement office during a Trump administration crackdown that has left immigrants across the country terrified?

“We followed the law like we were told to. We never missed any” meetings with authorities, said Sánchez, who remains in the U.S. trying to secure her husband’s release. Sánchez said her husband, whom she married in 2024 in Texas, has had no run-ins with the law in the U.S. She also showed The Associated Press a Venezuelan document showing he has a clean criminal record there.

Sánchez believes he was wrongly accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua because of a clock-shaped tattoo marking his daughter’s birthday.

“He has lots of tattoos, but that’s not a reason to discriminate against him,” she said.

Sánchez said she and her husband left Venezuela with barely $200 and spent three months sleeping in plazas, eating out of trash cans and relying on fellow migrants’ goodwill as they journeyed north.

She thought the sacrifice would be worth it. Her husband had been working as a barber since the age of 13 and was hopeful he could find a new start in the U.S., escaping poverty wages and Nicolas Maduro’s ironfisted rule in Venezuela.

Venezuela responds

The Venezuelan government has called the flights “kidnappings.” It urged its citizens living in the U.S. to return home and vowed get others back from El Salvador. But with diplomatic ties long broken between Venezuela and El Salvador, the prisoners have few advocates.

The U.S. deportations exacerbate Venezuela’s immigration crisis by turning “migrants into geopolitical pawns,” said Oscar Murillo, head of the Venezuelan human rights group Provea. “There is a lack of transparency on the part of the U.S. and El Salvador regarding the status of deported individuals and the crimes for which they are being prosecuted.”

Sánchez is among those who believes the American dream has turned ugly. She wants to leave the U.S. once she finds her husband.

“We fled Venezuela for a better future. We never imagined things would be worse.”

 

SAN ANTONIO (AP) — Two smugglers charged after 53 immigrants died in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer with no air conditioning were found guilty Tuesday after a two-week trial. The 2022 tragedy in San Antonio was the nation’s deadliest smuggling attempt across the U.S.-Mexico border.

Jurors in federal court in San Antonio took only about an hour to convict Felipe Orduna-Torres and Armando Gonzales-Ortega, finding that they were part of a human smuggling conspiracy that resulted in death and injury. They face up to life in prison and have a June 27 sentencing date.

The immigrants had come from Guatemala, Honduras and Mexico and had paid between $12,000 and $15,000 each to be smuggled into the United States, according to an indictment in the case. They had made it as far as the Texas border city of Laredo when they were placed into a tractor-trailer with broken air conditioning for a three-hour drive to San Antonio.

As the temperature inside the trailer rose, those inside screamed and banged the walls of the trailer for help or tried to claw their way out, investigators said. Most eventually passed out. When the trailer was opened in San Antonio, 48 people were already dead. Another 16 were taken to hospitals, where five more died. The dead included six children and a pregnant woman.

“These defendants knew the air conditioning did not work. Nevertheless they disregarded the danger,” Acting U.S. Attorney Margaret Leachman for the Western District of Texas said in a news conference after the verdict Tuesday. Orduna-Torres was the leader of the smuggling group inside the U.S., and Gonzales-Ortega was his “right-hand man” she said.

Five men previously pleaded guilty to felony charges in the smuggling case, including the truck driver Homero Zamorano Jr., who was found hiding near the trailer in some bushes. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. Also pleading guilty are Christian Martinez, Luis Alberto Rivera-Leal, Riley Covarrubias-Ponce and Juan Francisco D’Luna Bilbao. All five will be sentenced later this year. Another person charged in the U.S. remains a fugitive, Leachman said. Several others have been charged in Mexico and Guatemala.

The incident is the deadliest among tragedies that have claimed thousands of lives in recent decades as people attempt to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. Ten immigrants died in 2017 after they were trapped inside a truck parked at a Walmart in San Antonio. In 2003, the bodies of 19 immigrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.

AUSTIN (AP) — A second person has been arrested in connection to a Texas midwife who is accused of providing illegal abortions at a network of clinics operated outside of the Houston area.

Jose Manuel Cendan Ley, a 29-year-old medical assistant, is accused of performing an illegal abortion and practicing without a license at a clinic in connection to Maria Margarita Rojas whose arrest was announced Monday by Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.

Court records show Ley was arrested on March 6, released on bond a few days later, then arrested again Monday.

Rojas, 48, was also charged with providing an illegal abortion and practicing medicine without a license, which are second- and third-degree felonies. She is accused of operating three clinics northwest of Houston that performed illegal abortion procedures. Her arrest signified the first time authorities have filed criminal charges under the state’s near-total abortion ban.

The attorney general’s office is alleging that Ley worked as a medical assistant at one of Rojas’ three clinics and performed at least one abortion illegally. In an announcement on Tuesday, the office states that Ley is a Cuban national who entered the U.S. illegally in 2022 and was later placed on parole. Rubildo Labanino Matos, 54, was also arrested in connection to the investigation for practicing medicine without a license, according to Paxton’s office.

“Individuals killing unborn babies by performing illegal abortions in Texas will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, and I will not rest until justice is served,” Paxton said in a statement. “I will continue to fight to protect life and work to ensure that anyone guilty of violating our state’s pro-life laws is held accountable.”

Court records did not list an attorney for Ley or Rojas who could comment on their behalf.

Those convicted of performing an illegal abortion can face up to 20 years in prison, while practicing medicine without a license carries a penalty of up to 10 years in prison.

Texas law bans an abortion at all stages of a pregnancy and only allows exceptions when a patient has a life-threatening condition, making it one of the strictest abortion bans in the nation. Opponents of the ban say it is too vague when defining allowable medical exceptions. A state lawmaker has filed a bill that aims to clarify when medical exceptions are allowed under the law.

Earlier this year, a Louisiana grand jury indicted a New York doctor on charges that she illegally prescribed abortion pills online to a Louisiana resident. Paxton has filed a civil lawsuit against the doctor under a similar accusation.

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — In an effort to limit fraudulent claims, the Social Security Administration will impose tighter identity-proofing measures — which will require millions of recipients and applicants to visit agency field offices rather than interact with the agency over the phone.

Beginning March 31st, people will no longer be able to verify their identity to the SSA over the phone and those who cannot properly verify their identity over the agency’s “my Social Security” online service, will be required to visit an agency field office in person to complete the verification process, agency leadership told reporters Tuesday.

The change will apply to new Social Security applicants and existing recipients who want to change their direct deposit information.

Retiree advocates warn that the change will negatively impact older Americans in rural areas, including those with disabilities, mobility limitations, those who live far from SSA offices and have limited internet access.

The plan also comes as the agency plans to shutter dozens of Social Security offices throughout the country and has already laid out plans to lay off thousands of workers.

In addition to the identity verification change, the agency announced that it plans to expedite processing of recipients’ direct deposit change requests – both in person and online – to one business day. Previously, online direct deposit changes were held for 30 days.

“The Social Security Administration is losing over $100 million a year in direct deposit fraud,” Leland Dudek, the agency’s acting commissioner, said on a Tuesday evening call with reporters — his first call with the media. “Social Security can better protect Americans while expediting service.”

He said a problem with eliminating fraudulent claims is that “the information that we use through knowledge-based authentication is already in the public domain.”

“This is a common sense measure,” Dudek added.

More than 72.5 million people, including retirees and children, receive retirement and disability benefits through the Social Security Administration.

Connecticut Rep. John Larson, the top Democrat on the House Ways and Means Social Security Subcommittee, said in a statement that “by requiring seniors and disabled Americans to enroll online or in person at the same field offices they are trying to close, rather than over the phone, Trump and Musk are trying to create chaos and inefficiencies at SSA so they can privatize the system.”

The DOGE website says that leases for 47 Social Security field offices across the country, including in Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky and North Carolina, have been or will be ended. However, Dudek downplayed the impact of its offices shuttering, saying many were small remote hearing sites that served few members of the public.

Many Americans have been concerned that SSA office closures and massive layoffs of federal workers — part of an effort by President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency to shrink the size of the federal government — will make getting benefits even more difficult.

Musk has pushed debunked theories about Social Security and described the federal benefit programs as rife with fraud, and called it a “Ponzi scheme” suggesting the program will be a primary target in his crusade to reduce government spending.

Voters have flooded town halls across the country to question Republican lawmakers about the Trump administration’s cuts, including its plans for the old-age benefits program.

In addition a group of labor unions last week sued and asked a federal court for an emergency order to stop DOGE from accessing the sensitive Social Security data of millions of Americans.

DALLAS (AP) — Unredacted files related to the 1963 assassination of President John F. Kennedy were released Tuesday evening.

About 2,200 files consisting of over 63,000 pages were posted on the website of the U.S. National Archives and Records Administration. The vast majority of the National Archives’ collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination had previously been released.

President Donald Trump told reporters on Monday that the release was coming, though he estimated it at about 80,000 pages.

“We have a tremendous amount of paper. You’ve got a lot of reading,” Trump said while visiting the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington.

There is an intense interest in details related to the assassination, which has spawned countless conspiracy theories.

Here are some things to know:

Trump’s order

Shortly after he was sworn into office, Trump ordered the release of the remaining classified files related to the assassination

He directed the national intelligence director and attorney general to develop a plan to release the records. The order also aimed to declassify the remaining federal records related to the 1968 assassinations of Sen. Robert F. Kennedy and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

After signing the order, Trump handed the pen to an aide and directed that it be given to Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Trump administration’s top health official. He’s the nephew of John F. Kennedy and son of Robert F. Kennedy. The younger Kennedy, whose anti-vaccine activism has alienated him from much of his family, has said he isn’t convinced that a lone gunman was solely responsible for his uncle’s assassination.

Nov. 22, 1963

When Air Force One carrying JFK and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy touched down in Dallas, they were greeted by a clear sky and enthusiastic crowds. With a reelection campaign on the horizon the next year, they went to Texas for a political fence-mending trip.

But as the motorcade was finishing its parade route downtown, shots rang out from the Texas School Book Depository building. Police arrested 24-year-old Lee Harvey Oswald, who had positioned himself from a sniper’s perch on the sixth floor. Two days later, nightclub owner Jack Ruby fatally shot Oswald during a jail transfer.

A year after the assassination, the Warren Commission, which President Lyndon B. Johnson established to investigate, concluded that Oswald acted alone and that there was no evidence of a conspiracy. But that didn’t quell a web of alternative theories over the decades.

The JFK files

In the early 1990s, the federal government mandated that all assassination-related documents be housed in a single collection in the National Archives and Records Administration. The collection was required to be opened by 2017, barring any exemptions designated by the president.

Trump, who took office for his first term in 2017, had said that he would allow the release of all of the remaining records but ended up holding some back because of what he called the potential harm to national security. And while files continued to be released during President Joe Biden’s administration, some remain unseen.

The National Archives says that the vast majority of its collection of over 6 million pages of records, photographs, motion pictures, sound recordings and artifacts related to the assassination have already been released.

Researchers have estimated that 3,000 files or so haven’t been released, either in whole or in part. And last month, the FBI said that it had discovered about 2,400 new records related to the assassination. The agency said then that it was working to transfer the records to the National Archives to be included in the declassification process.

Around 500 documents, including tax returns, were not subject to the 2017 disclosure requirement.

What’s been learned

Some of the documents from previous releases have offered details on the way intelligence services operated at the time, including CIA cables and memos discussing visits by Oswald to the Soviet and Cuban embassies during a trip to Mexico City just weeks before the assassination. The former Marine had previously defected to the Soviet Union before returning home to Texas.

One CIA memo describes how Oswald phoned the Soviet Embassy while in Mexico City to ask for a visa to visit the Soviet Union. He also visited the Cuban Embassy, apparently interested in a travel visa that would permit him to visit Cuba and wait there for a Soviet visa. On Oct. 3, more than a month before the assassination, he drove back into the United States through a crossing point at the Texas border.

Another memo, dated the day after Kennedy’s assassination, says that according to an intercepted phone call in Mexico City, Oswald communicated with a KGB officer while at the Soviet Embassy that September. The releases have also contributed to the understanding of that time period during the Cold War, researchers said.