(WASHINGTON) — Immigrants who arrive in the United States illegally will no longer be eligible for a bond hearing, a move that comes as the Trump administration ramps up efforts to keep immigrants who enter the country legally detained, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The new policy change was announced in a memo last week from the acting ICE Director Todd Lyons. The memo was described to ABC News.
Before the policy change, immigrants could request a bond hearing before an immigration judge. The extensive new detention policy is also expected to face legal challenges
The news was first reported by The Washington Post.
WASHINGTON — As federal authorities continue to crack down on the spread of fentanyl across the country, the Drug Enforcement Administration is warning about a surge in the use of methamphetamine, with DEA officials expressing particular concern over meth-laced pills being sold as drugs like Adderall to college-age adults.
“What we’ve seen here recently, that frightens me,” acting DEA administrator Robert Murphy told ABC News’ Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas in an exclusive interview.
Murphy said the DEA expects its seizures of methamphetamine to nearly double this year compared to last year.
The DEA has so far seized about 70,000 pounds of the drug this year, already nearly matching the numbers reached in all of 2024, Murphy said.
“Methamphetamine is by far the most coveted drug,” Murphy said. “This is what people want.”
The DEA has become so concerned about the continuing boom of methamphetamine use that it’s planning to hold a press conference on Tuesday to draw attention to it.
“In the first six months of this year, we’ve already seen more than … what we seized last year,” Murphy told ABC News. “And we project … we’re going to double what we seized last year.”
Murphy said that one of the most disturbing things about methamphetamine is that “Mexican cartels control 100% of it.”
“They control production, the smuggling, the distribution in the United States, and obviously the actual collection of monies and getting the money back into Mexico,” he said.
And cartels are growingly increasingly creative in how they try to smuggle meth across the U.S.-Mexico border — from hiding packages of meth pills among green onions to disguising meth shipments as loads of celery.
In one location during the week of July 4, the DEA discovered hundreds of boxes of cucumbers that had been lined with several hundred pounds of meth, worth nearly $4 million.
And in May, with assistance from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, federal authorities arrested six people who were allegedly bringing liquid meth into the United States and driving it to Kansas by hiding it in the septic tank of a charter bus.
Authorities became suspicious after realizing that the bus rarely had any passengers.
“They’re only limited by their imagination,” Murphy said of the smugglers. “And they have a very broad imagination.”
Murphy called it “a cat and mouse game.”
He said cartels now have a “huge focus” on pills, which he said have less of a stigma than injectable drugs.
As a result, Murphy said, turning meth into pill form makes it more marketable, and therefore more easily sold as something it’s not, such as fake Adderall or fake MDMA — the active ingredient in ecstasy.
“[It’s] all of the drugs that that are wanted by our college-age kids, and younger,” he said. “They’re actually getting meth, and they don’t know this.”
According to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdose deaths in the United States sharply decreased by almost 27% last year.
But while fentanyl and other opioid-related overdoses dropped the most — by more than a third — overdoses related to meth and other psychostimulants dropped the least — by nearly 22%.
“You’re buying a pill off the street nowadays, you’re taking your life in your own hands,” Murphy warned, saying that that “almost everything” the DEA is now seizing turns out to be “fake.”
“And as an investigator, our men and women have a hard time distinguishing between what’s real and what’s not,” Murphy said. “So there’s no way the average user is going to be able to do that.”
HUNT, Texas — Camp Mystic’s executive director Dick Eastland began evacuating campers approximately 45 minutes after the National Weather Service issued an alert about a “life-threatening flash flooding,” according to an Eastland Family spokesperson.
The catastrophic flooding that continues to threaten central Texas left 27 dead at Camp Mystic, an all-girls Christian summer camp located in Hunt, Texas, along the Guadalupe River.
Eastland received an alert on his phone from the National Weather Service at 1:14 a.m. on the morning of July 4 and began evaluating whether to evacuate the young campers who were sleeping in their cabins without access to electronics, according to Eastland family spokesperson Jeff Carr.
Based on a preliminary timeline of events, Eastland began moving campers to higher elevation by 2:00 a.m., as the situation began to deteriorate, according to Carr.
“They had no information that indicated the magnitude of what was coming. They got a standard run-of-the-mill NWS warning that they’ve seen dozens of times before,” Carr said on a call with ABC News.
Eastland died trying to help evacuate campers from their cabins, as the waters of the Guadalupe River rose. ABC News previously reported that some of those cabins lay in the river’s floodway, which Kerr County officials deemed “an extremely hazardous area due to the velocity of flood waters which carry debris, potential projectiles and erosion potential.”
The information provided by Carr provides one of the first windows into the late-night scramble that took place at the isolated camp, where 27 counselors and campers lost their lives in the flooding.
Carr previously told the Washington Post that the evacuations began at 2:30 a.m. but walked back the timeline when speaking to ABC News. He cautioned that the timeline determined by the family is preliminary and estimated the evacuations began closer to 2 a.m.. He said the timeline was pieced together based on the accounts of family members who assisted in the evacuation and Camp Mystic’s night watchman.
According to Carr, Eastland began communicating with his family members over walkie-talkie shortly after the first alert to begin assessing the scope of the rising waters. When they began to see the extent of the flood waters, Eastland began the process of moving campers from the lower-lying cabins to Camp Mystic’s recreational center, he said.
The National Weather Service issued a more dire alert at 4:03 a.m., warning in part, “This is a FLASH FLOOD EMERGENCY for South-central Kerr County, including Hunt. This is a PARTICULARLY DANGEROUS SITUATION. SEEK HIGHER GROUND NOW!”
FALL RIVER, Mass. — The Massachusetts assisted-living facility that caught fire Sunday evening, leaving nine dead, was slated to undergo a recertification and compliance review process later this year.
“Gabriel House is up for recertification in November 2025 and is on the list of compliance reviews to be conducted this Fall,” a spokesperson for the Massachusetts Executive Office of Health and Human Services said in a statement Monday evening.
An official briefed on the probe into the cause of the deadly fire told ABC News that, as a preliminary matter, the fire does not appear to have been set intentionally. More likely, the source said, it appears to have been caused by some sort of electrical or mechanical problem.
Thirty people, including five firefighters, were taken to local hospitals after the deadly fire, according to officials.
The facility in Fall River is classified as an assisted-living residence, not a nursing home. This distinction means that complexes like Gabriel House are subject to a different inspection, certification and regulatory process than Massachusetts nursing homes.
The Massachusetts Division of Health Care Facility Licensure and Certification’s website says that the division conducts unannounced inspections of nursing homes every nine to 15 months.
Since Gabriel House is considered an assisted-living residence, its last onsite visit by representatives of the Massachusetts Executive Office of Aging & Independence occurred in October 2023.
The office said that at the time, it found areas where Gabriel House “was not in compliance with state regulations,” and the facility was required to submit a plan of correction.
A compliance review report sent to Gabriel House Executive Director Dennis Etzkorn indicated the alleged violations were primarily related to missing documentation.
One part of the report noted that state representatives reviewed a 90-day correspondence log “required to communicate information necessary to maintain the continuity of care for all Residents.”
“The Residence did not consistently document for each 24-hour period in the Correspondence Log,” the document stated. “The Residence did not use the Correspondence Log to communicate all significant or pertinent information necessary to maintain the continuity of care for all Residents.”
Another part of the report said, “Documentation of the Residence monitoring the effectiveness of its Evidence Informed Falls Prevention Program was missing for all calendar years” and that the personnel records of three employees “were missing documentation of a pre-employment physical examination.”
Gabriel House’s plan of correction indicated that changes were made and it received a certificate in December 2023. The certificate allowed Gabriel House to operate until November of this year.
(WASHINGTON) — Attorney General Pam Bondi has fired one of the top career officials tasked with advising her and other senior Justice Department officials of their ethical obligations, an official familiar with the dismissal confirmed to ABC News Monday.
Joseph Tirrell on Monday took to LinkedIn to post news of his termination, including a photo of his termination notice which provided no reasoning for his firing.
“Until Friday evening, I was the senior ethics attorney at the Department of Justice responsible for advising the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General directly on federal employee ethics,” Tirrell said in the post. “I was also responsible for the day-to-day operations of the ethics program across the Department.”
The removal letter from Bondi mirrors that of letters sent to multiple other DOJ employees fired in recent weeks, including at least 20 officials who supported former special counsel Jack Smith’s team in his prosecutions of President Donald Trump.
Tirrell did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News. A DOJ spokesperson declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
Tirrell’s post outlined an extensive resume in public service, beginning with his time as a United States Naval Officer before he joined the FBI in 2006 in various ethics-related posts.
In 2023 he was appointed as the director of the DOJ’s Ethics Office, which advises employees of the rules governing financial disclosures, conflicts of interest and instances mandating recusal. among others.
It’s unclear what specifically prompted Tirrell’s firing, though several former officials noted that he was leading the office when Smith disclosed, after departing the DOJ, that Smith had accepted $140,000 in pro bono legal services as a “gift.” The disclosure noted that Tirrell specifically signed off on the gift as being in compliance with applicable ethics laws and regulations.
Tirrell’s dismissal also comes amid several other removals of officials who worked on Smith’s team, as well as at least two more career prosecutors who worked on the investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Both investigations have been under the microscope of former interim D.C. U.S. Attorney Ed Martin since he joined the main Justice Department to lead its so-called “Weaponization Working Group.”
Robert Knopes/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Monday lifted an injunction against the Trump administration’s efforts to gut the Department of Education.
The move allows the administration to proceed, for now, with mass firings that slashed nearly half of the agency’s workforce in March as well as other actions, such as shifting management of the federal student loan portfolio.
A federal judge in Massachusetts had barred the administration from moving forward, rejecting the administration’s argument that the steps were aimed at efficiency rather than effectively carrying out President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign promise to shutter the agency, something that would require congressional approval.
Legal challenges continue in the lower courts against the Trump education orders.
The Supreme Court’s majority didn’t explain its decision. The three liberal justices opposed the order, with Justice Sonia Sotomayor writing in dissent.
“The Department is responsible for providing critical funding and services to millions of students and scores of schools across the country. Lifting the District Court’s injunction will unleash untold harm, delaying or denying educational opportunities and leaving students to suffer from discrimination, sexual assault, and other civil rights violations without the federal resources Congress intended,” Sotomayor wrote.
“The majority is either willfully blind to the implications of its ruling or naive, but either way the threat to our Constitution’s separation of powers is grave,” Sotomayor added.
Education Secretary Linda McMahon celebrated the decision, saying the agency will carry out its reduction in workforce and ongoing efforts to return education to the states.
“Today, the Supreme Court again confirmed the obvious: the President of the United States, as the head of the Executive Branch, has the ultimate authority to make decisions about staffing levels, administrative organization, and day-to-day operations of federal agencies,” McMahon said in a statement.
While McMahon called the ruling a victory, she said it was a “shame that the highest court in the land had to step in to allow President Trump to advance the reforms Americans elected him to deliver using the authorities granted to him by the U.S. Constitution.”
National Parents Union President Keri Rodrigues blasted the Supreme Court’s decision in a statement.
“The Supreme Court chose politics over the Constitution and, in doing so, put millions of American students at risk,” Rodrigues said. “This ruling gives the green light to an outrageous and unlawful power grab by President Trump, who is attempting to dismantle the U.S. Department of Education without any action from Congress.”
The Supreme Court’s decision to grant the administration’s emergency request is another win, albeit a temporary one, for Trump’s efforts to overhaul the federal government.
Last week, the nation’s high court lifted a preliminary injunction to let Trump move forward with an executive order mandating a restructure of federal agencies and mass layoffs of federal workers.
(NEW YORK) — Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced on Monday that he will actively stay in the New York City mayoral race, but that he will accept a pledge to abide by the results of a proposed September poll, where he and other candidates would drop out if they aren’t leading.
“The fight to save our city isn’t over… The general election is in November, and I am in it to win it,” Cuomo said in a video posted on X on Monday, where he acknowledged his primary loss and apologized to his supporters.
“As my grandfather used to say, when you get knocked down, learn the lesson and pick yourself back up and get in the game, and that is what I’m going to do,” Cuomo said.
Cuomo criticized his opponent and presumptive Democratic nominee for mayor Zohran Mamdani as offering “slick slogans, but no real solutions.”
“Every day, I’m going to be hitting the streets meeting you where you are,” Cuomo said, “to hear the good and the bad. Problems and solutions. Because for the next few months, it’s my responsibility to earn your vote.”
In a separate email to supporters, Cuomo wrote, “I also believe that all of us who love New York City must be united in running the strongest possible candidate against Zohran Mamdani in the November general election for mayor. … That is why I have accepted the proposal put forth by former Governor David Paterson and candidate Jim Walden that, in mid-September, we will determine which candidate is strongest against Mamdani and all other candidates will stand down, rather than act as spoilers and guarantee Mamdani’s election.”
Cuomo conceded in the Democratic mayoral primary to Mamdani, a progressive who netted 56% of the primary vote after ranked-choice tabulation, but still will be on the ballot on an independent ballot line.
The former governor and other candidates have been facing calls from opponents of Mamdani to step aside from the race to try to coalesce support for one non-Mamdani candidate.
Independent candidate Jim Walden suggested earlier this month that an independent poll should be run close to the election, and the candidates that lose in the poll would endorse whoever won and stop campaigning. Cuomo’s campaign had previously said it was reviewing the proposal.
NewsNation was the first to report about Cuomo’s decision, before he officially made the announcement on Monday.
Walden told ABC News on Monday, before Cuomo’s announcement, that he is heartened that Cuomo is set to take up his proposal and he hopes Adams and Sliwa also take it on. He affirmed that he himself would drop out of the race if he was behind in the poll, and said he believes Cuomo and Adams will sign on because “no one” would want to be the one who lets Mamdani win.
However, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams – running as an independent – and Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, are continuing to dig in.
“Andrew Cuomo lost the Democratic primary by double digits and is now doing the same thing he did to respected leaders like Charlie King, Governor David Paterson, and Carl McCall, Assembly Keith Wright – FORCE A BLACK ELECTED OUT OF OFFICE,” Adams said in a statement over the weekend.
On Monday, asked about the poll proposal at an unrelated event, Adams was defiant.
“[Cuomo is] He’s saying that [we should] utilize polling to determine who should run against the Democratic primary winner. Remember, polls showed him up 40 points… He lost by 13 points,” he said. “So if we’re going to use these methods of making this determination that they have already proven inaccurate, why are we going to put the risk of New Yorkers by someone who has not kept his word? As he has a consistent record of not keeping his word, why are we going to trust him now?”
Curtis Sliwa told ABC News in an interview on Monday before Cuomo’s announcement that he won’t back down from the race. He also criticized the poll gambit.
“I don’t want [Cuomo] to leave. I want the voters to make the decision. I’m not afraid of people. I think people will make a decision… They’re welcome to drop out. I’m in until November, but if the three independents — Cuomo, Adams, Walden — want to play musical chair on the Titanic and choose one independent’s line. That’s their choice. But the people have a right to vote for the candidate of their choice,” Sliwa said.
A spokesperson for Mamdani’s campaign, meanwhile, positioned the presumptive Democratic nominee as above the fray, in a statement before Cuomo’s announcement.
“While Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams are tripping over themselves to cut backroom deals with billionaires and Republicans, Zohran Mamdani is focused on making this city more affordable for New Yorkers. That’s the choice this November,” the spokesperson wrote in a statement to ABC News New York station WABC.
Mamdani responded to Cuomo’s Monday video on X with a fundraising link for his own campaign.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(CLACKAMAS COUNTY, Ore.) — An avid mountain biker has been reported missing in Oregon after not returning from a planned biking trip near Mount Hood on Friday, according to the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Office.
Ralph Sawyer, 52, was reported missing on Friday at approximately 10:30 p.m. after he had left home that morning for a mountain biking trip and had not returned home at the expected time of 8:30 p.m., officials said in a statement on Sunday.
“A search and rescue mission was immediately launched to locate him,” the sheriff’s office said.
Sawyer, who has a “long history of mountain biking in the area and is familiar with the terrain,” has not been locate, with officials entering their third day of search efforts on Monday, the sheriff’s office said.
Officials were able to locate Sawyer’s vehicle, a blue Kia Soul, at 12:15 a.m. on Saturday. His cellphone was also found inside the vehicle, officials said.
Officials said the search for Sawyer has been centered along East Still Creed Road to Veda Lake and Kinzel Lake, along with the United States Forest Service roads around Trillium Lake, which is about 40 miles southeast of Portland.
On Saturday, nearly 40 people were involved in the search for Sawyer, while around 70 were mobilized on Sunday, officials said.
ATVs, canine units and drones have also been utilized in the search efforts, officials said.
Sawyer, who is described as 6 feet, 1 inch tall with brown hair, was last seen wearing an orange bike helmet, blue shirt and black bike shorts, officials said.
(FALL RIVER, Mass.) — Nine people have been killed and dozens are hurt after a five-alarm fire tore through an assisted-living facility in Fall River, Massachusetts, officials said.
Firefighters, police and other responders descended on the scene of the Sunday night fire at the Gabriel House assisted-living facility, where they found multiple people “hanging out of the windows, screaming and begging to be rescued,” Fall River Fire Chief Jeffrey Bacon said.
Smoke was all over the building, Bacon said.
“This was not a situation where teams arrived and people were able to get out easily — all of these people needed assistance,” Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey said. “Many were in wheelchairs, many were immobile, many had oxygen tanks.”
About 12 “non-ambulatory residents were physically carried out by our officers,” according to Fall River police.
Thirty people, including five firefighters, were taken to local hospitals, Bacon said.
One person is in critical condition, Bacon said. The five firefighters have already been released, officials said.
The building — which was home to about 70 people — is now clear, officials said.
It’s not clear if the sprinklers went off, officials said.
“My heart goes out to those who are waking up to the most horrific news imaginable about their loved ones this morning,” Healey said in a statement on Monday.
Later at a news conference, the governor expressed her gratitude for the first responders’ quick actions.
“Were it not for that, we would’ve seen an even far — an unimaginable loss of life here, given the vulnerability of this population,” she said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation. One official briefed on the probe told ABC News that, as a preliminary matter, the fire does not appear to have been set intentionally. More likely, the source said, it appears to have been caused by some sort of electrical or mechanical problem.
Fall River, near the Massachusetts-Rhode Island border, is about 50 miles south of Boston.
The building was built in 1964 and underwent an exterior remodeling in 2000, according to tax assessment records. It was listed on the assessment form used by the city as having an “average-good” physical condition as of this February, the records said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Jared Kofsky, Matt Foster and Jessica Gorman contributed to this report.
NORTH RIM, Ariz. — The Grand Canyon Lodge was one of dozens of structures destroyed in a fast-moving wildfire in Arizona over the weekend, the National Park Service (NPS) confirmed.
The lodge, which sits on the North Rim of Grand Canyon National Park, first opened in 1937 and is listed as a National Historic Landmark. It is the only in-park lodging option in that region of the park.
The fire, dubbed by officials as the Dragon Bravo Fire, had scorched over 5,000 acres as of Sunday morning and is being fueled by extreme summer heat, low humidity and strong winds.
A second fire, the White Sage Fire, is also threatening the Grand Canyon’s North Rim, according to NPS.
The lodge is one of approximately 50 to 80 structures that have been lost, including the National Park Service’s administrative building and visitor facilities.
NPS officials said aerial bucket drops were conducted to slow fire movement near the lodge; however, a chlorine gas leak at the nearby water treatment facility prompted the evacuation of firefighting personnel from critical zones.
Chlorine gas can quickly settle into lower elevations such as the inner canyon, posing a health risk, officials added.
No deaths or injuries have been reported in the fire, and all staff and residents were successfully evacuated before the fire’s escalation, NPS officials said.
The North Rim will remain closed to all visitor access for the remainder of the 2025 season, according to NPS.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs released a statement on Sunday, saying she’s “incredibly saddened by the destruction of the historic Grand Canyon Lodge.”
“As someone who was born and raised in Arizona, I know what the Grand Canyon National Park means to so many people, not just in Arizona, but all over the world, and how devastating it is to see this damage done to one of Arizona’s most cherished landmarks,” Hobbs said.
Hobbs also called for “scrutiny” into the federal government’s emergency response to the wildfire. “They must first take aggressive action to end the wildfire and prevent further damage,” Hobbs said.
