Guided-missile destroyer USS Rafael Peralta enforces the U.S. blockade of Iranian ports against M/T Stream after it attempted to sail to an Iranian port, April 26, 2026. (U.S. Central Command)
(WASHINGTON) — The Trump administration is seeking the participation of other countries to form an international coalition to help reopen the Strait of Hormuz, according to an internal cable sent this week by the State Department to posts around the world.
Dubbed the “Maritime Freedom Construct,” the coalition would help with coordinating diplomatic efforts, including aligning on sanctions and information sharing to help with safe transit through the waterway, according to a U.S. official.
The cable called on diplomats to announce the formation of the new coalition and “ask for partner participation” by Friday.
The Maritime Freedom Construct would take steps to ensure safe passage, including providing real-time information, safety guidance, and coordination to ensure vessels can transit the waters securely, the cable said.
The Wall Street Journal first reported on the cable.
“The MFC’s efforts will enhance maritime domain awareness and support the safe passage of commercial operators and their crews,” a State Department official said.
The United Kingdom and France have already launched a multilateral effort involving 30+ nations toward securing the strait that could eventually involve deploying military assets if a peace deal is reached, according to those countries’ governments.
However, last week during a Pentagon press briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth mocked the European efforts, saying Europe might want to start having “less fancy conferences in Europe and get in a boat.”
He dismissed the U.K. and French effort aimed at ensuring the future security of the critical Gulf waterway as “silly.”
“Europe and Asia have benefited from our protection for decades, but the time for free-riding is over,” he said.
Shahram Irani, Iran’s Navy commander, called the U.S. blockade “piracy” and the U.S. as “maritime terrorists.”
“The Strait of Hormuz is closed from the Arabian Gulf, meaning they have no right of passage from there, and there is no entry. As soon as they come, operational and tactical action is taken against them,” he said.
He went on to call the blockade piracy and american actions as “maritime terrorists”
On Thursday, United Nations Secretary General Antonio Guterres warned the consequences of continued disruptions to the global energy supply caused by the Iran war and the closure of the strait “grow worse with each passing hour.”
Guterres the worst-case scenario could be “the specter of a global recession” if disruptions to the strait continue through 2026. Even in the best case, if restrictions were relieved today, “supply chains will take months to recover” and warned that developing countries will be hit the hardest by economic instability.
According to the cable, the coalition will be led by the departments of State and Defense through U.S. Central Command.
The State-led component, based in Washington, D.C., will serve as the diplomatic operations hub, uniting partners and the commercial shipping industry. The Pentagon component operating out of CENTCOM headquarters in Florida would coordinate real-time maritime traffic and communicate directly with vessels transiting the Strait, the cable said.
“It will provide a platform to coordinate diplomatic actions and socialize and align economic measures designed to impose costs on Iran for disrupting maritime security,” the State official said.
ABC News’ Desiree Adib contributed to this report.
Debris is piled up at the entrance to Camp Mystic on July 07, 2025 in Hunt, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(KERR COUNTY, Texas) — Camp Mystic announced that it will not be reopening for the summer amid ongoing investigations into deadly flooding that killed 25 girls and two teen counselors last year.
The camp said it informed the Texas Department of State Health Services on Thursday that it is withdrawing its application for a summer 2026 camp license.
“No administrative process or summer season should move forward while families continue to grieve, while investigations continue and while so many Texans still carry the pain of last July’s tragedy,” Camp Mystic said in a statement.
The Christian all-girls sleepaway camp said it is choosing to withdraw its application for its Cypress Lake location “rather than risk defending our rights under Texas law in a manner that may unintentionally effect further harm.”
Twenty-five campers and two teen counselors died during a devastating Fourth of July flash flood last summer, after rapidly rising waters inundated cabins at the camp’s location along the Guadalupe River. The director of the camp also died.
Camp Mystic said it had planned to welcome more than 800 girls to its Cypress Lake location, which did not experience any fatalities, this summer, before withdrawing its application.
“This decision is intended to remove any doubt that Camp Mystic has heard the concerns expressed by grieving families, members of the Texas House and Senate investigating committees and citizens across our state. Respect for those voices requires that we step back now,” the camp said.
The camp said it will “continue to fully cooperate with all ongoing investigations, comply with every lawful requirement and continue supporting recovery and healing efforts.”
Families of the flood victims and some officials, including Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, had called on the Texas Department of State Health Services to block Camp Mystic’s license for the summer. Patrick said the camp shouldn’t reopen until the flood was fully investigated and any necessary corrective actions were taken.
The license withdrawal comes after the Texas Department of State Health Services notified Camp Mystic last week of nearly two dozen deficiencies in the emergency plan in its license application.
The department said that all camps that had submitted an emergency plan had received a deficiency letter due to statutory changes and increased emergency plan requirements enacted in the wake of the deadly flooding at Camp Mystic.
The tragedy was the focus of an emotional two-day hearing before Texas lawmakers earlier this week. A Houston attorney hired by the state legislature to investigate the deadly flood presented a review based on interviews with approximately 150 people, including campers, counselors, the camp’s owners and the victims’ families.
The attorney, Casey Garrett, said there was inadequate training or drills for counselors and campers regarding a flood threat.
The Texas Rangers have also opened a criminal investigation of Camp Mystic, according to Patrick.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth testifies during the Senate Armed Services Committee hearing on the Defense Department’s budget request on Thursday, April 30, 2026. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told a Senate committee on Thursday that dissent from the “cheap seats” in Congress sought to undermine the military’s efforts in its war in Iran only two months into the campaign.
“Defeatists from the cheap seats who, two months in, seek to undermine the incredible efforts that have been undertaken and the historic nature of taking on a 47-year threat,” Hegseth said in his opening statement.
The statement was nearly identical to what he told the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday in the first of two hearings on the Pentagon’s 2027 budget plan in which he faces questions on the war in his first appearances before Congress since the war started in February.
The hearings were scheduled to discuss the Pentagon’s request for a $1.5 trillion budget for 2027, the most the Pentagon has ever requested. In Wednesday’s hearing, Jules Hurst III, the Pentagon comptroller, testified the war has so far cost $25 billion. The Pentagon has said it will ask for $200 billion in supplemental funding for the campaign.
In both hearings, Hegseth asserted the the U.S.’s “biggest adversary” in the war is from within.
“Unfortunately, as I said yesterday, and I’ll say it again today, the biggest adversary we face at this point are the reckless naysayers and defeatist words of congressional Democrats and some Republicans,” he said.
Democratic Rep. Chrissy Houlahan pushed back against Hegseth’s assertion on Wednesday, telling him, “Mr. Secretary, you reserved more words and more time and more vitriol to condemn Democrats than you did for [Chinese President Xi Jinping] and for [Russian Federation President Vladimir] Putin combined. It’s pretty telling to me that you decided to use your words and your time for that.”
Leaving Thursday’s hearing, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said, “Secretary Hegseth seems to feel that by attacking the committee, he somehow is persuading the American people. “It’s exactly the opposite — his antagonism and seeming reluctance to tell the truth, I think, is doing this administration and the country a tremendous disfavor. And by refusing to come clean, give us precise numbers on costs, when we know that the true figures are higher than what has been told us, I think just undermines his credibility.”
Democrats and some Republicans in Congress have questioned the rationale behind launching the campaign against Iran, its endgame and the strains it has put on the economy and alliances with U.S. partners.
Hegseth was briefly interrupted by protesters during Thursday’s hearing.
Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared to agree with Senate Armed Services Chairman Roger Wicker’s assertion that Russia has tried to to undermine the U.S. operation in Iran.
“General Caine, there’s no question that Vladimir Putin’s Russia is taking serious action to undermine our efforts for success in Iran. Is there any question about that?” Wicker asked.
“I think there’s actions and activities. [I’m] mindful of the hearing room we’re in, but there’s, there’s, there’s definitely some action there,” Caine said. Wicker described the war against Iran as a success.
“While we all mourn the tragic loss of the 14 service members who have lost their lives in this conflict, we do so knowing the world is safer without a nuclear Iran,” he said.
But he noted the threat that Iran still poses.
“Most of Iran’s leaders are now deceased, but they and those who survived them have consistently sought violence against America, Israel, our Gulf allies,” Wicker said.
Wicker said Iran was part of an axis of aggressors with China, Russia and North Korea.
“This growing alliance cannot be denied,” the chairman said, adding later that “ties have never been closer among these four … dictatorships.”
Ranking Democrat Jack Reed said that the war has put the U.S. “in a worse strategic position,” pointing out that the Strait of Hormuz had closed because of the war and Iran’s nuclear material remained unaddressed and telling Hegseth his declaration of victory on April 8 was premature.
“Mr. Secretary, I am concerned that you have been telling the president what he wants to hear, instead of what he needs to hear,” Reed said. “Bold assurances of success are a disservice to both the commander-in-chief and the troops who risk their lives based on them. Our military has performed heroically. But military force without a sound strategy is a path to long-term defeat.”
Reed also said cultural erosion has taken place in the military and would lead to “lasting harm.” He pointed to Kid Rock’s recent “joy ride” with Hegseth in Army attack helicopters, the firing of several senior officers, and “troubling” statements he said the secretary had made about the conduct of the war.
“You have made troubling statements about showing ‘no mercy’ and ‘no quarter’ to the Iranians: orders that would constitute war crimes,” Reed said.
Immigrant woman and children walk across a field as U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Enforcement and Removal Operations hosts a media tour at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, TX. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images)
(DILLEY, Texas) — Olivia Mabiala Andre made her youngest brother, Manuel, a promise.
“We’re going to go to the United States and we’re going to get you a bike,” the 19-year-old said she told him.
The promise of the bike for her brother and stability for her entire family of five, Andre said, kept them focused on their plan to travel from their home country of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, through South America and toward the United States. But three days into their journey, Manuel drowned while crossing a river in Colombia.
“He was the happiness of my house. He was the cutest boy you can imagine, he was our sunshine,” Andre said, speaking to ABC News from detention at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas.
Now more than three years after reaching the U.S., Andre and her family are facing deportation to their home country after the U.S. federal government denied their asylum request.
Andre, who was studying to be a nurse, has been detained since November 2025 and was only briefly reunited with her family. She says it is taking a toll.
According to a habeas petition, an independent expert confirmed Andrew “meets the diagnostic criteria for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder” and “has repeatedly expressed suicidal ideation.” Andre also displayed depression symptoms, the court filing claimed.
Their case is receiving national attention, with lawmakers and prominent figures like children’s educator and YouTube star Ms. Rachel calling for Andre’s release.
“It doesn’t make sense to hold this caring, wonderful person who wants to be a nurse who’s been through so much trauma. It’s just cruel to hold her there, especially while she’s having a mental health crisis, and she’s having suicidal thoughts,” said Ms. Rachel, whose real name is Rachel Anne Accurso, in an interview Thursday with ABC’s Diane Macedo.
Accurso says she has been keeping in touch with Andre while she remains detained.
“She’s overflowing compassion and faith and strength and it was a privilege to talk with her. I was so in awe of her,” Accurso said.
Attorneys representing the Andre family tell ABC News they fled their home country after Andre’s mother says she faced direct threats by high-level government officials.
“Her mother has suffered brutal abuse and torture, which led both her mother and her family to need to flee for their lives. They took a difficult journey to the United States, and along the way, Olivia witnessed her eight year old brother who she loved so much, drown on the journey, and it has caused devastating sadness for Olivia, her mother and her two siblings,” their attorney Elora Mukherjee said.
According to court documents, the Andre family entered the U.S. in December 2022 and applied for asylum, settling in Portland, Maine. An immigration judge denied their asylum petition, in part, because they believed they couldn’t provide enough corroborating evidence to support their claim and ordered them deported in February 2025.
The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) later affirmed the immigration judge’s decision, finding that her mother could not provide enough corroborating evidence to support her petition, the documents state.
Todd Pomerleau, who is now representing the family’s asylum case in immigration court, says a language barrier and interpretation issues contributed to the asylum claim being denied.
Days after the BIA denied the family’s appeal, Mukherjee said they attempted to cross into Canada to seek asylum there, but were prevented from doing so, because of a treaty between the two countries called the Canada-U.S. Safe Third Country Agreement. The treaty prevents some immigrants from seeking asylum in Canada if they’ve been denied a U.S. claim.
“Olivia and her family were desperate in their search for safety, because they know they cannot return to the Democratic Republic of Congo, they’re going to be killed there,” Mukherjee said.
Transfer to Dilley Detention Center
After being transferred to the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials on Nov. 12, 2025, Andre said she was detained apart from the rest of her family, the habeas petition says.
“They just took them away and put me on a different plane,” Andre said.
According to Andre, she was sent to four different facilities over the course of the following two weeks. She said she would ask personnel at the facility where her family was, but claims she never received an answer.
Andre was then sent to the immigration facility in Dilley, but said she did not know where the rest of her family was being held.
Two weeks later, Andre said she and a friend she made at the detention center were walking to the library when she heard her name being called. Her friend encouraged her to see a counselor at the facility who later determined that the rest of the family was also being held there. They were finally reunited, but held in different sections of the facility, according to her attorneys.
Andre’s mother and two siblings were held in areas reserved for family units, while Andre was held with other single adult women, the attorneys said.
Andre said she later found out that her sister would yell her name out into the yard of the facility every day since being detained in hopes that she would end up at the same facility and hear her.
Andre and her family are now challenging their asylum claim denial. In February, the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals barred the Trump administration from deporting the family until they rule on the case, which could take several months.
Mukherjee filed a request to temporarily release the family while the court case continues. In March, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement released Andre’s mother and siblings, but she remains in detention.
Spotlight on the family’s case
Andre’s supporters highlight her accomplishments in the more than three years since coming to the U.S.
According to court documents, Andre graduated from high school in one and a half years. She completed a rigorous training program to become a certified nursing assistant and was in college studying to become a nurse at the time she was detained. She knows multiple languages, which she says can help her treat people from all over the world.
The loss of her brother inspired her to get into the medical field, Andre said.
“When I lost my brother, I was, like, I have to work and do something to help people,” she said.
To date, her attorneys say they have not received a formal reason for why she remains detained despite the government being prohibited from deporting her while her case unfolds in court.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told ABC News the Andre family has “received full due process” and the government will continue trying to deport the family.
“The facts are Olivia Mabiala Andre is an adult illegal alien with a final order of removal and no right to remain in the U.S. If we encounter illegal aliens who should have been detained but were instead released into the country by the Biden administration, we will detain them. The Trump administration is not going to ignore the rule of law,” the spokesperson said.
At times, Andre worries that she’ll be deported back to the Congo and what that would do to her mother.
“She already lost one child, she cannot lose another one,” she said.
The US Capitol is seen, April 20, 2026 in Washington. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — After months of resistance, the House on Thursday passed the Senate-backed Department of Homeland Security funding bill, which funds all agencies inside DHS except immigration enforcement operations.
There was no recorded vote requested.
The measure now heads to President Donald Trump’s desk now for signature — ending the record-long DHS shutdown after 76 days. Trump will sign the DHS funding bill later Thursday, according to a White House official.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Nicole Saphier attends the Patriot Awards, December 5, 2024 in Greenvale, New York. (Theo Wargo/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Thursday that he is nominating Dr. Nicole Saphier to be the next surgeon general.
Trump made the announcement on social media, calling Saphier a “STAR physician who has spent her career guiding women facing breast cancer through their diagnosis and treatment while tirelessly advocating to increase early cancer detection and prevention.”
Saphier is the director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth in New Jersey and a regular medical contributor on Fox News.
According to her profile on the Memorial Sloan Kettering website, she has experience “performing minimally invasive, image-guided procedures of the breast, kidney, pancreas, liver, thyroid and lymph nodes.”
Her nomination comes just two months after Trump’s previous nominee, Dr. Casey Means, appeared before the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee for her confirmation hearing.
During the hearing, Means indicated she supports vaccines but stopped short of recommending certain shots.
Means, who has a medical degree but does not hold an active medical license, appeared hesitant to say that some vaccines, such as the flu vaccine, prevent serious disease.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, who chairs the HELP committee and is a physician, noted that two children died last year from measles and pushed Means on whether she would encourage parents to vaccinate their children with the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine.
Means initially stressed personal autonomy and responded that she supported vaccination and that every patient should have a conversation with their doctor about getting vaccinated.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry speaks in the Roosevelt Room of the White House March 24, 2025 in Washington, DC. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill on Thursday said that the Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday against the state’s congressional map means that the planned May 16 congressional primaries won’t proceed as scheduled as lawmakers consider drawing a new map.
“The Supreme Court previously stayed an injunction against the State’s enforcement of the current Congressional map. By the Court’s order, however, that stay automatically terminated with yesterday’s decision. Accordingly, the State is currently enjoined from carrying out congressional elections under the current map. We are working together with the Legislature and the Secretary of State’s office to develop a path forward,” they wrote in the statement.
Landry told at least some Republican House candidates in Louisiana that he plans on Friday to suspend the state’s primaries, according to multiple Republican sources.
A Republican source told ABC News that the governor called one candidate on Wednesday and said he is making calls to all of the candidates that he plans on Friday to suspend the election using executive power. The Washington Post was first to report about the governor’s calls.
The source said it was unclear if this will apply to all of the planned primaries, which include a closely watched Senate primary, or just the primaries for the House that would be impacted by a new congressional map.
ABC News has reached out to Landry’s office and the office of the Louisiana secretary of state.
The Supreme Court’s ruling on Wednesday reverses lower court decisions that said Louisiana’s map, drawn after the 2020 census, violated the Voting Rights Act because only one of six districts was majority Black. More than a third of the state’s voting age population is Black.
Those courts had ordered Louisiana to add a second majority-Black district, a process which in turn explicitly relied on race. In his opinion, Justice Samuel Alito said that move infringed on the rights of white voters under the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
Absentee ballots in Louisiana have already been sent out, and votes have likely been cast, although early voting in person does not start until Saturday, May 2. Absentee voting is relatively limited in Louisiana and requires a valid excuse.
Democratic Rep. Troy Carter from Louisiana said on Wednesday at the Congressional Black Caucus press conference that elections are too close at this point for congressional maps to change.
“We are in the 2026 election cycle now. The Supreme Court has set precedent just four years ago in a case in Louisiana, they ruled the district to be unconstitutional, said it’s too close to the election now, therefore we will do it in the next cycle,” Carter said, later adding that “if precedent matters, then clearly this is something that will have to be taken up in 2028 cycle, not the 2026.”
But the Louisiana’s existing map cannot be used, according to the Supreme Court’s ruling. Technically the state could revert back to its original 2022 map with one majority-Black district or redraw a new map entirely. Some legal experts have argued Louisiana could still keep its current map for the May primaries.
On Thursday, Murrill put in a filing with the Supreme Court saying, “Louisiana currently ‘is prohibited from using SB8’s map of congressional districts for any election’. The Governor and Attorney General are thus working with the Legislature– which is in session until June 1 — to immediately produce a constitutional map and electoral process for Louisiana.”
On Wednesday, Landry praised the ruling, but declined to say if it would have an impact on those primaries or not.
“Look, I think that anyone who jumps to conclusions right now — I think it’s going to take us at least 24 hours to really pore through the opinion to understand what exactly that opinion is telling us,” he told reporters. But he left the option open to a map redraw: “I mean, look, the Supreme Court picked an interesting time to be able to drop that on us… the court decides to give it to us on the eve of the election. What are they telling us? Are they telling us we have to draw? Telling us we don’t have to draw?”
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
A man named Cole Allen, who appears to be the same person as the suspect in the shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., April 25, 2026, is interviewed by KABC in Los Angeles in March 2017. (KABC)
Allen, dressed in an orange jail jumpsuit, appeared calm and did not speak during the hearing.
Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He has not entered a plea and is set to return to court on May 11.
The California native — who was carrying a shotgun, a pistol and knives — was tackled by law enforcement after Saturday night’s gunfire inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.
In an overnight court filing, Allen’s attorneys questioned what evidence the government has to determine Allen fired his weapon.
According to U.S. Attorney for D.C. Jeanine Pirro, “We know [Allen] fired off that 12-gauge shotgun one time.”
“The cartridge was still in the weapon. He fired that gun in the direction of the Secret Service officer,” Pirro told Fox News on Thursday. “The Secret Service officer fired his weapon five times and we know that based on the number of bullets that were left in the weapon.”
The Secret Service agent did not shoot himself, she said.
“We’re waiting for the official ballistics test, but at the same time we filed papers in court this morning for the detention hearing today indicating that this defendant was calculated, he was premeditated and he had every intention of killing the president and anyone who got in his way,” she said.
Pirro said Allen will face additional charges. She also said investigators are searching for anyone he might’ve threatened by name.
Allen’s court appearance came a day after federal prosecutors filed a detention memo, supporting their request for a judge to hold the defendant in custody pending trial.
“The defendant attempted to kill the President of the United States, Donald J. Trump. The crimes with which the defendant is charged are among the most serious in the United States Code, and the evidence of his guilt is overwhelming,” prosecutors wrote.
Under what prosecutors titled in court records as “The Defendant’s Assassination Plan,” prosecutors cited his writings in which he allegedly laid out his plan to target top members of the Trump administration, according to the memo.
The suspect also sent a prescheduled email to his employer minutes before launching the attack, in which he allegedly apologized for his “unprofessionality [sic],” according to a pretrial detention memo prosecutors filed in federal court on Wednesday.
“Consider me to be submitting my resignation effective immediately (if it matters.),” Cole allegedly wrote in the email, according to the memo.
The tutoring company C2 Education, where Allen purportedly worked, said they are cooperating “fully” with law enforcement and denounced the “horrifying incident” at the correspondents’ Dinner, but omitted details of Allen’s work history.
“We were shocked to hear the news of the horrifying incident that transpired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner,” the tutoring company said in a statement on Sunday. “We are cooperating fully with law enforcement to assist them in their investigation. Violence of any kind is never the answer.”
ABC News’ Luke Barr and Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
The booking photo for Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson. (Jefferson Parish Jail)
(NEW ORLEANS) — A Louisiana sheriff has been indicted on over two dozen felony counts following a brazen jailbreak last year that saw 10 inmates escape from a New Orleans detention center, officials announced Wednesday.
A special grand jury indicted Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson on 30 felony counts, according to the Louisiana Attorney General’s office.
Bianka Brown, the chief financial officer for the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, was also indicted on 20 felony counts, the office said.
“While Sheriff Hutson did not personally open the doors of the jail for the escapees, her refusal to comply with basic legal requirements and to take even minimal precautions in the discharge of her duties directly contributed to and enabled the escape,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said in a statement.
Hutson was indicted on 14 counts of malfeasance in office and four counts of conspiracy to commit malfeasance in office. Additional counts included filing or maintaining false public records and obstruction of justice. A judge set her bond at $300,000.
Brown was indicted on similar charges and her bond was set at $200,000.
Both were booked into the Jefferson Parish Jail last night for security reasons and have since bonded out.
During a status hearing Thursday morning, they surrendered their passports and were told not to leave Louisiana.
Their attorneys declined to comment to ABC News New Orleans affiliate WGNO.
Murrill requested that Orleans Parish convene the special grand jury following the May 16, 2025, jailbreak, her office said.
Authorities said the 10 inmates escaped from the Orleans Justice Center in the early morning hours after climbing through a hole behind a toilet. Their disappearance was not noticed for several hours and touched off a massive manhunt.
Three of the 10 inmates who escaped were apprehended in New Orleans within the first 24 hours of the jailbreak. Others were captured in the following days, including in Baton Rouge and Texas.
The ninth inmate, Antoine Massey, was located in New Orleans in late June 2025 after the sheriff’s office said it received a tip. Louisiana authorities were investigating a video circulating online earlier that month that appeared to show Massey pleading to rappers and President Donald Trump to help him while he was still on the run.
The tenth and final inmate, Derrick Groves, was apprehended following a “brief stand-off” in Atlanta in October 2025, police said.
Over a dozen people were arrested on suspicion of helping the escapees, including another inmate in the jail and a jail maintenance worker who is accused of shutting off water to the toilet, allowing escapees to remove it.
“Nearly a year ago, I made a commitment to the people of New Orleans and the people of our state that those responsible for the Orleans Parish Prison break would be held accountable,” Murrill said in a statement. “Since that day, through the hard work of my office, along with the Louisiana State Police and our many federal, state, and local law enforcement partners, every escapee is behind bars, and others who facilitated and enabled the escape are currently being prosecuted.”
Hutson ran for reelection last year but drew just 17% of the vote. In a final speech to her staff on Tuesday, she said that over the past four years, the sheriff’s office has become a “stronger, more accountable and definitely more modern organization.”
She acknowledged the jailbreak while talking with reporters, saying, “It’s completely overshadowed the hard work.”
“It’s not going to define me,” she added. “That whole story hasn’t been told yet, but I hope it is told.”
Orleans Parish Sheriff-elect Michelle Woodfork will be sworn in on Monday. Murrill said she will continue to work with Woodfork “on how to improve operations, secure the facility, and build in basic financial oversight that complies with state law.”
A man named Cole Allen, who appears to be the same person as the suspect in the shooting incident at the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner in Washington, D.C., April 25, 2026, is interviewed by KABC in Los Angeles in March 2017. (KABC)
The government argued earlier that Allen poses a grave risk of danger to the public for allegedly seeking to carry out an attack at Saturday’s dinner.
“This was a planned attack of unfathomable malice that risked the lives of hundreds of people whose only transgression was attending an annual event celebrating the media and featuring the President of the United States,” prosecutors said in a filing on Wednesday. “It was, at its core, an anti-democratic act of political violence.”
Allen, 31, faces three felony counts of attempted assassination of the President of the United States, transportation of a firearm and ammunition over state lines with the intent to commit a felony and discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence. He has not entered a plea.
The California native — who was carrying a shotgun, a pistol and knives — was tackled by law enforcement after Saturday night’s gunfire inside the Washington, D.C., Hilton hotel, where thousands of journalists as well as President Donald Trump and members of his Cabinet were gathered for the annual dinner. Allen did not reach the ballroom, where the dinner was underway. A Secret Service member was shot during the incident, but the bullet hit the agent’s protective vest, officials said.
