(ST. PAUL, Minn.) — Former CNN journalist Don Lemon pleaded not guilty on Friday to federal civil rights charges in connection with an incident in which anti-ICE protesters disrupted a service at a Minnesota church.
Lemon appeared in federal court in St. Paul before Magistrate Judge Douglas Micko, following his arrest in Los Angeles last month.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(DALLAS) — A missing Texas college student has been found safe, police said Friday.
Brianna Arango, 21, a student at Southern Methodist University, was reported missing on Thursday, according to police.
A family member contacted SMU Police at approximately 3:30 p.m. Thursday to report that Arango did not meet with them as planned earlier that afternoon, campus police said. She had a class at 1 p.m. that she also did not attend, police said.
She was last seen that day on the Dallas campus around 12:30 p.m. near Harold Simmons Hall, according to the Southern Methodist University Police Department.
SMU Police said in an advisory on Thursday that they were working to locate her and were “treating this as a matter of concern” while asking for the campus community’s help in locating her.
Campus police updated Friday that they had located Arangao and she is safe.
The incident remains under investigation, police said.
“We know this situation was concerning for many in our community, and we are grateful for your attention and assistance,” SMU Police said. “This remains an active investigation, and law enforcement is limited in the details that can be shared at this time.”
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(WASHINGTON) — The acting head of Immigration and Customs Enforcement says that two of its officers appear to have made “untruthful statements” about shooting a migrant in Minnesota and may face federal charges for their actions.
“Today, a joint review by ICE and the Department of Justice (DOJ) of video evidence has revealed that sworn testimony provided by two separate officers appears to have made untruthful statements,” Acting ICE Director Todd Lyons said in a statement.
“Both officers have been immediately placed on administrative leave pending the completion of a thorough internal investigation. Lying under oath is a serious federal offense. The U.S. Attorney’s Office is actively investigating these false statements,” the statement said.
“The men and women of ICE are entrusted with upholding the rule of law and are held to the highest standards of professionalism, integrity, and ethical conduct. Violations of this sacred sworn oath will not be tolerated. ICE remains fully committed to transparency, accountability, and the fair enforcement of our nation’s immigration laws,” Lyons added.
The statement from Lyons comes a day after the top federal prosecutor in Minnesota asked a judge to dismiss charges against two men, including one who was shot in the leg by an immigration agent, citing “newly discovered evidence” in what was initially framed as a “violent” attack on law enforcement during an enforcement operation.
“Newly discovered evidence in this matter is materially inconsistent with the allegations in the complaint affidavit. … as well as the preliminary-hearing testimony,” U.S. Attorney for the District of Minnesota Daniel Rosen wrote in the filing Wednesday evening. It remains unclear what specific new evidence Rosen was referencing.
Rosen has asked the court to dismiss the case with prejudice, meaning the charges cannot be refiled.
“Accordingly, dismissal with prejudice will serve the interests of justice,” Rosen wrote.
In the wake of the shooting on Jan. 14 — a week after an ICE agent fatally shot Renee Good in Minneapolis — the Trump administration said the man who was shot, Julio Cesar Sosa-Selis, attacked a federal law enforcement officer with a “shovel or a broom stick” and that the incident was part of “an attempt to evade arrest and obstruct law enforcement.”
Lawyers for another man charged in the incident, Alfredo Aljorna, said surveillance videos did not corroborate the FBI’s claims that an agent was assaulted and said Sosa-Celis was shot while standing at his doorway some distance away from the officer.
Earlier this month attorneys for Aljorna also urged a judge to prohibit the government from deporting key witnesses who they said cast doubt that an agent was repeatedly struck with a broom or a snow shovel, Judge Paul Magnuson granted the request.
The reversal on the assault charges for Sosa-Celis and Aljorna comes after several discrepancies emerged between statements from Department of Homeland Security officials and details outlined in court records regarding their arrests.
DHS initially said in statements to media that officers were conducting a “targeted traffic stop” for Sosa-Celis when he fled in his vehicle, crashed into another car and attempted to evade arrest. The agency alleged that Sosa-Celis “violently” assaulted an officer and that two other individuals exited a nearby apartment and joined the attack “with a snow shovel and broom handle.”
According to DHS, Sosa-Celis struck the officer with “a shovel or broom stick,” prompting the officer to fire what the agency described as a defensive shot “to defend his life,” striking Sosa-Celis in the leg.
However, an affidavit from FBI Special Agent Timothy Schanz, who investigated the shooting, stated that ICE Enforcement and Removal Operations agents were attempting to stop a different man identified as Joffre Stalin Paucar Barrera — not Sosa-Celis — whom they believed was in the country illegally. According to Schanz, agents later identified the driver DHS agents stopped as a different man, Aljorna.
Schanz wrote that Aljorna struck a light pole and fled on foot toward his apartment building.
Sosa-Celis was allegedly standing on the porch and yelling at Aljorna to run faster, the affidavit says. Aljorna slipped and allegedly “began tussling” with the agent before Sosa-Celis grabbed a broom and began striking the agent, according to the affidavit.
The agent “then saw who he believed was a third Hispanic male approach with a snow shovel, and this male also began striking” him, Schanz said in the affidavit. The third man was identified as Gabriel Alejandro Hernandez-Ledezma by DHS, who accused him of also assaulting the officer.
Sosa-Celis was shot in the leg as he attempted to go inside the apartment, the affidavit says.
Video reviewed by ABC News’ Visual Verification team includes a 911 call from individuals identified as relatives of Sosa-Celis, who said agents fired as he was attempting to close the door.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(NEW YORK) — Valentine’s Day shoppers may feel jilted by runaway chocolate prices.
Chocolate prices soared 14.4% over the initial weeks of 2026 when compared to the same period a year earlier, nearly doubling the pace of price increases at the start of 2025, according to findings shared with ABC News by intelligence firm Datasembly.
The sharp rise in chocolate prices owes to a cocoa shortage caused primarily by adverse weather and crop disease in West Africa, which accounts for about 70% of the world’s cocoa, some analysts told ABC News.
The dearth of cocoa, analysts said, has ratcheted up input costs for chocolate makers and vaulted retail prices, leading to sticker shock in grocery and candy store aisles.
“There is a record gap between supply and demand,” David Branch, sector manager at the Wells Fargo Agri-Food Institute, told ABC News.
Raw cocoa bean prices have risen dramatically in recent years due to the choke in supply. A metric ton of cocoa beans cost as much $12,000 last year, Branch said. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, cocoa bean prices hovered between $2,000 and $2,500 per metric ton, International Monetary Fund data shows.
In recent months, supply problems have begun to ease, bringing cocoa bean costs down significantly from last year’s peak. A metric ton of cocoa beans now runs about $3,700.
Still, chocolate prices remain highly elevated as chocolate makers sell through candy made with cocoa beans bought earlier, analysts said.
“A lot of manufacturers bought cocoa when prices were high and that’s still very much moving through the supply chain,” David Ortega, a food economist at Michigan State University, told ABC News.
In November, the White House announced framework trade agreements with some Latin American countries in an attempt to ease surging prices for grocery staples such as cocoa. While the U.S. imports a significant share of cocoa from West Africa, supply also comes from Latin American countries like Ecuador, the U.S. Department of Agriculture says.
“Today’s announcements underscore the Administration’s unwavering commitment to fair and balanced trade at every opportunity to protect and strengthen our economic and national security,” the White House said when it unveiled the framework agreements.
Prices remain high for some other imported food items, such as coffee and beef.
Coffee prices surged about 18% in January compared to a year earlier, while ground beef prices climbed more than 17% over that span, Bureau of Labor Statistics data on Friday showed.
Grocery prices are rising at a faster pace than prices overall, climbing 2.9% over the year ending in January, according to BLS data.
Chocolate price hikes will likely ease over the coming months, some analysts said, noting the eventual pass through of lower cocoa prices into the cost of chocolate bought at stores. Analysts emphasized, however, the uncertainty surrounding the outlook due to the chance of weather-related challenges for growers.
Branch, of Wells Fargo, said chocolate prices could even fall by the latter part of this year as manufacturers find cost relief and pass it along to shoppers.
“If market trends stay where they are, we’ll see lower prices for Halloween,” Branch said.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(NEW YORK) — President Donald Trump on Friday said that a second American aircraft carrier will be “leaving very soon” to the Middle East to put pressure on Iran.
As he departed the White House for a trip to North Carolina, Trump told reporters that he’s ordered the USS Gerald R. Ford to the Middle East in case “we don’t make a deal” as negotiations between the U.S. and Iran continue over its nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
Those talks are taking place amid Trump’s threats to take military action against Iran isn’t willing to make a deal.
“Well, in case we don’t make a deal, we’ll need it, and if we don’t have a deal, we’ll need it. If we have a deal, we could cut it short. It’ll be leaving — it’ll be leaving very soon. We have one out there that just arrived. If we need it, we will — we have it ready. A very big force,” Trump said.
When asked how confident he is that negotiations will go well, Trump showed confidence, but said that if they don’t go well, Iran would face consequences.
“I think they’ll be successful and if they’re not, it’s going to be a bad day for Iran. Very bad,” he said.
Later, when asked whether he has a deadline for Iran, Trump remained coy, saying: “In my mind I do, yeah.”
The Ford carrier strike group is expected to leave the Caribbean and head toward the Middle East in the coming days, according to three U.S. officials.
The deployment of the Ford and the three destroyers accompanying it will mean that there will be two aircraft carriers in the Middle East as it joins the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group.
The deployment comes after Trump said earlier this week in an interview with Axios that he was considering sending a second carrier to the Middle East if talks with Iran about its nuclear program did not succeed.
The crew of the carrier and the supporting ships were told on Thursday about the new deployment to the Middle East, according to the officials.
The New York Times first reported the Ford’s new deployment to the Middle East.
The Ford is now expected to return to its home port in Norfolk around late April or early May, according to one U.S. official. The carrier had left Norfolk in late June for what was to be a seven-month deployment to Europe, but in late October it was redirected towards the Caribbean as part of the Trump administration’s large buildup of military forces to counter South American drug cartels.
A U.S. Southern Command spokesperson has issued provided a statement to ABC News saying that “While force posture evolves, our operational capability does not.” It adds that “SOUTHCOM forces remain fully ready to project power, defend themselves, and protect U.S. interests in the region.”
The carrier strike group will once again cross the Atlantic and the Mediterranean for a deployment that could now last as long as 10 months.
The Ford is the world’s largest carrier and its presence in the Caribbean was seen as putting pressure on then-Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his government.
Some of the aircraft aboard the carrier participated in the Jan. 3 raid in the Venezuelan capital of Caracas that led to Maduro’s capture.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(FAIRFAX, Va.) — Brazilian au pair Juliana Peres Magalhães, who went along with former IRS agent Brendan Banfield in a northern Virginia double murder plot, was sentenced to to 10 years in prison with two years of probation.
On Friday morning, Fairfax County Judge Penney Azcarate decided to give the 25-year-old the maximum sentence, which was up to 10 years on a manslaughter charge for which she pleaded guilty in 2024.
“Your actions were deliberate, self-serving, and demonstrated a profound disregard for human life,” Azcarate said in delivering her ruling. “So, let’s get straight: You do not deserve anything other than incarceration and a life of reflection on what you have done to the victim and this family.”
A new “20/20” episode about the case, “The Au Pair, The Affair and Murder” is scheduled to air Friday, Feb. 20, at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and streaming the next day on Disney+ and Hulu.
Magalhães and Banfield were separately arrested over their roles in the Feb. 24, 2023, murders of Joseph Ryan and Banfield’s wife, Christine Banfield, which were committed inside the Banfield home.
Early in the investigation, detectives discovered evidence suggesting that Banfield and Magalhães were having an affair — and that they had plotted to kill his 37-year-old wife.
Part of that plot, according to prosecutors and Magalhães’ testimony, involved covertly creating a profile for, and thus masquerading as, Christine on a social media site for sexual fetishes.
Ryan, 39, took the bait in what prosecutors called the “catfishing” scheme. Ryan communicated back and forth with the profile account that was allegedly posing as Christine, as they together crafted a rape fantasy scenario using a knife, chains and rope.
“I have caused pain that cannot be measured. I pray for forgiveness from the Benson family, and from the Joseph Ryan family,” Magalhães said during Friday’s sentencing hearing.
“There is nothing I could possibly do to make it up to you, for your loss. There are so many regrets, this is my biggest. It’s a tragedy I have been carrying with me, and I know I can never take back the devastation of what I have done,” she added.
Saying she lost herself in the relationship with Banfield, she has changed in jail over the past three years.
At the time, Magalhães and Banfield told police they came home to find Ryan — a stranger to them — stabbing Christine Banfield to death. Banfield and Magalhães each fired a shot, killing Ryan, they said both in their 911 call and to responding officers at the scene.
In October 2023, Magalhães was charged with the second-degree murder of Ryan, as she had admitted to firing the second, fatal shot.
One year later, Magalhães took a plea deal with prosecutors, turning on Banfield in exchange for a lesser charge of manslaughter. Prosecutors also promised to recommend to the judge upon sentencing that Magalhães only get time served.
With that agreement, Magalhães sat for nearly four hours of interviews with prosecutors, largely confirming the theory detectives had developed about their scheme.
Magalhães also took the stand in the trial against Banfield in January, as he maintained his innocence. During his three-week-long trial, Banfield even took the stand, testifying in his own defense.
After two days — nearly nine hours total — of deliberations in the trial, the jury reached a verdict on Feb. 2. The jury found Banfield guilty on all four counts, which included two counts of aggravated murder, one count of child endangerment, and possession of a firearm in commission of a felony.
Family and friends of Christine Banfield and Joseph Ryan filled the courtroom Friday morning for Magalhães’ sentencing.
Joining remotely online from Florida, Ryan’s mother, Deirdre Fisher, delivered her victim impact statement. She said her son was born two days before Christmas, making it a special holiday for them. Since Ryan’s murder, she has not been able to take down her Christmas tree, which sits behind the urn holding her son’s ashes.
“I say good morning to him each day when I turn on the tree’s lights, and I tell him I love him each night when I turn off the lights,” Fisher told the court.
Fisher said she has missed so many milestones now, including the chance to be a grandmother. There have been many times, Fisher said, when she’s reached for the phone to call her son, only to remember that he can’t and won’t answer.
Ryan’s aunt, Sangeeta Ryan, delivered her impact statement from the courtroom, pausing periodically between sobs.
“He was fun-loving and loved from the beginning. He was inquisitive, curious, smart, charming, and so dang talkative,” she said.
Ryan’s aunt described her nephew’s love for animals and the environment, noting that he often rescued and adopted dogs.
Sangeeta Ryan, added that he also was a dedicated member of their family, especially in taking care of his grandmother, who, she said, sold her home in wake of Ryan’s murder to “dodge memories, grief, and reporters.”
Acknowledging that Magalhães did eventually come forward with the truth, Sangeeta Ryan said that this still was not an act of heroism on Magalhães’ part.
“This could have been a very different ending where Juliana saved two lives,” she said could have been the case if Magalhães had not gone along with Banfield’s plot.
As Magalhães was charged only in Ryan’s murder, Judge Azcarate ruled that prosecutors could not include victim impact statements that Christine Banfield’s family members had prepared.
The death penalty was abolished in Virginia in 2021, meaning that, following his conviction, Banfield is facing life in prison without parole.
His sentencing hearing is set for May 8.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(WASHINGTON) — More than two dozen Senate Democrats are launching an independent investigation into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over a rule change on how the agency calculates the health benefits from curbing air pollution.
The EPA wrote in its regulatory impact analysis last month that it would no longer apply a dollar value to the health benefits that result from its regulations for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone because the agency says there’s too much uncertainty in the estimates. In the past, the EPA calculated a dollar value based on the health benefits of reducing air pollution, which included the number of premature deaths and illnesses avoided, such as asthma attacks.
The senators described the new policy as “irrational” and said it will lead to the EPA rejecting actions that would impose “relatively minor costs” on polluting industries that could result in “massive benefits” to public health, according to a letter sent to the EPA on Thursday and obtained by ABC News.
“The only beneficiaries will be polluting industries, many of which are among President Trump’s largest donors,” the senators wrote.
Led by Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works Ranking Member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the senators are requesting documents and information about how EPA made this determination by Feb. 26.
The decision to not quantify the health benefits of environmental regulations is “completely unsupported” and “a very stark departure” from the way the EPA has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations over the last several decades, said Richard L. Revesz, dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law who specializes in environmental and regulatory law and policy.
The regulatory impact analysis does not cite any science or economics and did not allow for public comments, Revesz told ABC News. The approach was also not submitted to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, “which is standard,” nor was it submitted for peer review, he added.
“Each of those things are necessary elements for changing scientific policies like this, and EPA violated every single one of them,” Revesz said.
Senate democrats are seeking the basis on which the EPA made the decision; what the EPA willl take into account when undertaking Clean Air Act rulemaking; whether the EPA has discussed ceasing to quantify health effects of other pollutants; and whether the EPA consulted with any third parties, including the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Surgeon General, public health experts and interested civil society groups.
It was industry executives who pushed for benefit-cost analysis during Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s, said Janet McCabe, visiting professor at Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law and former deputy administrator of the EPA between 2021 and 2024. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12866, which instructs each agency to perform rigorous cost benefit analysis for any rule or regulation to be implemented.
“There’s a whole field of environmental economics where models and analytical methods and data collection have evolved on both the cost and the benefit side to help decision-makers and the public understand,” McCabe told ABC News.
While the EPA points to uncertainties in the estimates, assigning a number to monetize health benefits is “very defensible” because of the vast number of studies that allow economists to estimate ranges of health impacts in terms of monetary value, McCabe said.
In the past, when the EPA felt like it could not rigorously assign a number to either cost or health benefit, “it would say so,” McCabe said.
The EPA has received the letter and will respond through the proper channels, an EPA spokesperson told ABC News.
PM2.5 and ozone — soot and smog — are two of the most dangerous and widespread pollutants in the U.S., according to health and environmental policy experts. They are produced by a number of sources, including emissions from vehicles, power plants, the agriculture industry and oil refineries.
The agency is still considering the impacts that fine particulate matter and ozone emissions have on human health, like it “always has,” but that it will not be monetizing the impacts “at this time,” an EPA spokesperson told ABC News last month.
“EPA is fully committed to its core mission of protecting human health and the environment by relying on gold standard science, not the approval of so-called environmental groups that are funded by far-left activists,” the EPA spokesperson said.
The new EPA rule could prove dangerous to human health in the future because it will make it easier for the Trump administration to weaken air pollution controls, the experts who spoke with ABC News said. The EPA will only have the cost to industry to consider when making policy decisions without factoring in the benefits to health, the experts said.
“There will be nothing on the health side to balance them,” McCabe said. “That will make rules much easier to justify from a cost benefit perspective, because all you will see is the costs.”
In its regulatory impact analysis published in January 2024, the EPA calculated the benefit avoided morbidities and premature death in the year 2032 as worth between $22 billion and $46 billion. In February 2024, when the EPA tightened the amount of PM2.5 that could be emitted by industrial facilities, it estimated that the rule would prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths by 2032.
This data will no longer be considered under the new rule.
“It’s not even estimating how many deaths that is, even though the models for doing both things have been very well established for a long, long time,” Revesz said.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(DALLAS) — Police are looking for a missing Texas college student, calling it a “matter of concern.”
Brianna Arango, 21, a student at Southern Methodist University, was last seen midday Thursday on the Dallas campus, according to police.
She was last seen around 12:30 p.m. near Harold Simmons Hall, according to the Southern Methodist University Police Department.
A family member contacted SMU Police at approximately 3:30 p.m. Thursday to report that Arango did not meet with them as planned earlier that afternoon, campus police said. She had a class at 1 p.m. that she also did not attend, police said.
“Based on the information available, SMU Police are actively working to locate Brianna and are treating this as a matter of concern,” the department said in an advisory.
“SMU Police are asking for the campus community’s assistance in locating her,” the advisory added.
Arango was last seen wearing a white shirt, blue sweatpants and carrying a beige tote bag, police said.
Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact SMU Police at 214-768-3388.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(DEDHAM, Mass.) — New England Patriots wide receiver Stefon Diggs was arraigned on charges of strangulation Friday morning.
The charges stem from a December 2025 incident in which he allegedly assaulted a private chef.
Diggs did not speak at the hearing, but his attorney entered a not guilty plea on his behalf.
The judge released him on his own recognizance and he was ordered to have no contact with the victim, including third party contact.
The incident stemmed from a dispute over wages the victim was requesting Diggs pay her, according to police records obtained by ABC News.
Diggs is accused of strangling or suffocating Mila Adams on Dec. 2, according to police records.
Diggs allegedly entered Adams’ unlocked bedroom, where they began to discuss the unpaid wages. Adams told police that during the discussion, he got angry and allegedly smacked her across the face, according to a police report.
She then tried to push him away, but then he choked her using the crook of his elbow around her neck. As she tried to pry him away, he tightened his grip, Adams told police. He then threw her on the bed, according to a police report.
When she told him she still hadn’t received her money, Diggs allegedly told her “lies,” according to the police report.
“Stefon Diggs categorically denies these allegations. They are unsubstantiated, uncorroborated, and were never investigated — because they did not occur,” Diggs’ attorney David Meier said in a statement in December. “The timing and motivation for making the allegations is crystal clear: they are the direct result of an employee-employer financial dispute that was not resolved to the employee’s satisfaction. Stefon looks forward to establishing the truth in a court of law.”
Adams told police she believes she is still owed a month of wages, according to police records.
The next court hearing was set for April 1, 2026.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.
(NEW YORK) — The billionaire CEO of logistics giant DP World has resigned following the disclosure of his communications with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem, an Emirati billionaire, stepped down from the company on Friday, “effective immediately,” the massive global supply chain and logistics company said in an announcement.
The move comes after financial groups in Canada and the U.K. earlier this week announced a pause in their investments with DP World on the heels of the U.S. Justice Department’s release of Epstein files.
A company spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
For years, before and after Epstein became a convicted sex offender in 2008, Bin Sulayem and Epstein maintained a free-flowing exchange of emails that ran the gamut from workshopping financial proposals to rating sexual conquests, according to the DOJ files.
“Are you going to the Clinton Forum?” Epstein asked Bin Sulayem in one email exchange. “I see that the Secretary General is scheduled to attend. If so, we can go to my island after the forum. Call me so we can discuss the details.” Bin Sulayem replied that his meetings were “flexible” and could be rearranged around Epstein’s.
Later on in the exchange, Epstein wanted to know from Bin Sulayem “what time you would like your massage today in new york.”
In April 2009, Epstein emailed, “where are you? are you ok, I loved the torture video.” There is no further explanation or context of the video mentioned. Bin Sulayem said he was in China and would return in a couple of weeks. “Hope to see you,” Epstein said.
Bin Sulayem was among six names read out on the floor of the House of Representatives Tuesday by Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the authors of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, who has criticized the DOJ and Trump administration for what he and others have regarded as a lack of transparency when it comes to the Epstein files saga.
Copyright © 2026, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.