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(WASHINGTON) — Federal watchdogs have raised concerns about the Federal Aviation Administration’s air traffic control system for decades, an ABC News analysis of government reports found.

In the weeks since the fatal plane crash over the Potomac River near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, DOT Secretary Sean Duffy said the FAA is hoping to deploy a “brand-new air traffic control system” within the next four years.

“This should have happened four years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago,” Duffy said. “Right now, we’re at a point where we can actually do it, and we can do it really fast again.”

Red flags regarding the FAA’s handling of air traffic control matters have spanned Republican and Democratic administrations for more than 30 years.

In 1990, Government Accountability Office Transportation Issues Director Kenneth Mead told a congressional subcommittee that although the FAA had made progress, the agency had “inexperience in developing large-scale, highly automated systems” and was “still experiencing problems in modernizing the ATC system.”

“In light of the tremendous levels of F&E [facilities and equipment] funding projected for the next few years, it is crucial that FAA show[s] the Congress, the aviation community, and the flying public that ongoing and future activities will result in demonstrable improvements,” Mead added at the time.

The modifications may have been easier said than done.

“Planned improvements in safety and capacity have been delayed, and the costs, both of maintaining existing technologies and of replacing outdated ATC systems and infrastructure, have grown,” a 2005 GAO panel found, noting that cultural, technical and budgetary factors constrained or impeded ATC modernization.

“FAA no longer sees its modernization program as a multiyear initiative with a defined end; rather, it now sees the program as an ongoing investment in technological advances designed to improve aviation safety and capacity,” the panel explained.

The Office of Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Transportation, which conducts investigations at DOT divisions such as the FAA, the Federal Railroad Administration and the Federal Transit Administration, took a deep dive into the FAA’s handling of ATC matters multiple times.

Inspector general reports in 2008 and 2012 found that the physical conditions of many ATC facilities were deteriorating, with issues ranging from “poor facility design” to water leaks and ventilation problems.

The 2008 IG report mentioned that the FAA was expected to finish implementing its Next Generation Air Transportation System, or NextGen, by 2025. The GAO posted on its website earlier this month that there was “mixed progress” with NextGen’s implementation.

As the years went on, the investigations into the FAA continued.

In 2015, the IG included the tower at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on its list of “frequently least efficient” large hub airport towers.

Less than two years later, the IG recognized some improvements made by the FAA to its contingency plans, but found that their ATC facilities “are not yet fully prepared to respond effectively to major system disruptions, in part because of a lack of necessary controller training for these types of emergency events.”

By 2023, concerns over staffing at FAA ATC centers were making headlines.

“FAA has made limited efforts to ensure adequate controller staffing at critical air traffic control facilities,” the IG found at the time, pointing out that the FAA’s Washington Center was authorized to have 21 traffic management coordinators but instead had 13, while the facility was authorized to have 36 operational supervisors but instead had 25.

One of the final federal investigative reports prior to the fatal collision over the Potomac came in September 2024. The GAO made seven recommendations to the FAA, including calling on the agency to report to Congress on how it was handling risks involving “unsustainable and critical systems.”

The FAA “has been slow to modernize the most critical and at-risk systems,” the GAO said at the time. “About one third of FAA ATC systems are considered unsustainable.”

ABC News’ Josh Margolin, Sam Sweeney and Ayesha Ali contributed to this report.

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(PALM COAST, FL) — A toddler found wandering in the middle of a Florida street with a heavily soiled diaper ended up leading police to a home with extremely hazardous living conditions with the father passed out intoxicated in his bed, police say.

The incident occurred on Sunday when the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department in Florida responded to multiple emergency reports concerning a 2-year-old child “walking in the middle of the street in pajamas with a heavily soiled diaper,” according to a statement from the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department on Tuesday.

Prior to the incident, witnesses say that they observed a child in the front yard of a nearby home and that they took the child to the residence where they found the child’s father, 44-year-old Ross Judy of Palm Coast, “passed out in his bed intoxicated,” police said.

The Flagler County Sheriff’s Department responded to the home and, during their investigation, they found “dangerous tools and garbage in the interior and exterior of the home along with animal feces, filth, and an emaciated dog with an ear that was almost rotted off and fur missing from its body,” authorities said.

“The residence was in deplorable living conditions with several alcoholic beverage containers, bugs swimming in toilet water, and a sink piled high with several inches of cigarette ash to the point the sink was no longer visible,” according to the Flagler County Sheriff’s Department. “Pill bottles were scattered throughout a spare room and on top of living room shelves along with exposed razors and hypodermic needles, which were all accessible to the child.”

“No child should be living in deplorable conditions with an adult who obviously doesn’t care about their wellbeing,” said Flagler County Sheriff Rick Staly in a written statement following the incident. “The Flagler County Sheriff’s Office has no tolerance for anyone endangering children or animals. I am thankful to our residents who ‘saw something and said something’ so that our deputies could intervene.”

Judy was arrested and charged with child neglect without great bodily harm and abandon animal to die, sick, diseased or Infirm.

The suspect was taken to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility and is currently being held on a $4,000 bond, authorities said.

The Florida Department of Children and Families and Palm Coast Animal Control are also investigating this incident, and their investigation is currently ongoing.

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(WASHINGTON) — The National Archives on Tuesday released thousands of pages of declassified records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in 1963.

President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 23 directing the release of the remaining records, saying it was in the “public interest” to do so.

On Monday Trump announced to reporters that the administration would begin releasing the records on Tuesday, prompting a scramble inside the Justice Department to free up attorneys to assist with the declassification process.

Congress voted in 1992 to require the government to release and declassify all assassination-related records by 2017, but that deadline was repeatedly pushed back by Trump and President Joe Biden due to national security concerns.

Tuesday’s release represents a small, outstanding tranche of the more than six million pages of records collected by the National Archives — the majority of which have already been declassified and are available online or in person for review, according to the agency.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil called himself a “political prisoner” in a new letter dictated from the Louisiana detention center where he remains held following his arrest on Columbia University’s campus.

“I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices underway against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law,” Khalil stated in the letter, which was dictated over the phone to his family and obtained by ABC News from his legal team on Tuesday.

Khalil, a leader of the encampment protests at Columbia last spring, was detained on March 8. He was taken from his student apartment building to 26 Federal Plaza in lower Manhattan, and then to an immigration detention facility in Elizabeth, New Jersey, according to his legal team.
Officials from President Donald Trump’s administration have said Khalil was detained for his purported support of Hamas — a claim his legal team has rejected.

Khalil’s lawyers said that during his detainment, plain-clothed Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents said his student visa had been revoked — even though Khalil is in the U.S. on a green card. He has not been charged with a crime.

A federal judge has blocked Khalil’s removal from the U.S. while weighing a petition challenging his arrest.

He is set to appear before an immigration judge on March 27.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(CAPE CANAVERAL, FL) — The two NASA astronauts whose return to Earth was delayed for months have just splashed down to Earth.

NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission, carrying astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Barry “Butch” Wilmore, successfully landed off the coast of Florida after undocking from the International Space Station and traveling approximately 17 hours on its return mission to Earth, according to SpaceX.

The splashdown occurred at approximately 5:57 p.m. ET off the Tallahassee, Florida, coast.

When the spacecraft entered the atmosphere, its heat shield generated temperatures that reached more than 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, according to SpaceX.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov were also onboard the craft as it undocked at about 1:05 a.m. ET.

Williams and Wilmore had in June 2024 performed the first astronaut-crewed flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule. What was expected to be a weeklong trip to the ISS instead turned into a nine-month stay. The Boeing Starliner that was expected to carry them home after about 10 days experienced issues, leaving the pair at the station for months.

Their return spacecraft early on Tuesday maneuvered in space, moving above and behind the station, before firing a series of departure burns that sent it back toward Earth.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

ABC News’ Matthew Glasser and Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — An Albany woman pleaded guilty on Tuesday to mailing drug-soaked documents to inmates in correctional facilities in New York, according to federal prosecutors.

Authorities said Maya McIntosh, 33, sold the illicit documents on social media — and disguised them as legal paperwork when she sent them.

McIntosh, 33, pleaded guilty to “conspiracies to manufacture, distribute and possess with intent to distribute a controlled substance and controlled substance analogue, distribution and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance and controlled substance analogue, and unlawful possession and use of a means of identification,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of New York said in a press release on Tuesday.

Officials said McIntosh ordered chemicals used to create MDMB-4en-PINACA, a synthetic cannabinoid, in liquid form and then “sprayed and soaked the liquid onto copy paper and business envelopes,” the attorney’s office said.

The documents were placed in U.S. Priority Mail Express envelopes and addressed to inmates at various correctional facilities in New York, prosecutors said.

McIntosh disguised the envelopes as legal mail by “stamping the names of actual attorneys in the return address portion of the envelopes” without the lawyers’ knowledge or permission, according to prosecutors.

This method allowed for the drug-soaked documents to appear as if they were sent by lawyers and “contained legitimate legal paperwork instead of a controlled substance,” the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Officials said McIntosh used social media to sell the sheets and envelopes, with customers paying her to mail the documents to inmates at correctional facilities, the prosecutors said.

McIntosh is believed to have sent the drug-soaked papers between January 2023 through July 2024, prosecutors said.

McIntosh faces up to 20 years of imprisonment in each count, a maximum fine of $1 million on the drug counts, a fine of $250,000 on the remaining counts and a term of supervised release of at least three years and up to life, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

The United States Postal Inspection Service and Homeland Security Investigations are continuing to investigate the case.

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(WASHINGTON) — Many of the noncitizens who were deported pursuant to the Alien Enemies Act on Saturday did not have criminal records, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement official said in a sworn filing overnight.

In a sworn declaration, ICE Acting Field Office Director of Enforcement and Removal Operations Robert Cerna argued that “the lack of specific information about each individual actually highlights the risk they pose” and “demonstrates that they are terrorists with regard to whom we lack a complete profile.”

The declaration was included in the Trump administration’s recent motion to vacate Judge James Boasberg’s temporary restraining order blocking deportations pursuant to the AEA.

“While it is true that many of the [Tren de Aragua gang] members removed under the AEA do not have criminal records in the United States, that is because they have only been in the United States for a short period of time. The lack of a criminal record does not indicate they pose a limited threat,” Cerna said.

The admission that many of the men lacked criminal records – and were deported on the assumption that they might be terrorists – comes as top Trump administration officials insist that the men were violent criminals, with President Donald Trump labeling them “monsters.”

Cerna wrote that some of the men have been convicted or arrested for crimes including murder, assault, harassment, and drug offenses, writing that ICE personnel “carefully vetted each individual alien to ensure they were in fact members of TdA.”

To determine whether a noncitizen was a “member of TdA,” he said law enforcement allegedly used victim testimony, financial transactions, computer checks, and other “investigative techniques.”

“ICE did not simply rely on social media posts, photographs of the alien displaying gang-related hand gestures, or tattoos alone,” Cerna said.

According to Cerna, a review of ICE databases suggested that “numerous individuals removed” had been arrested or convicted outside of the U.S. At least five of the men were subject to INTERPOL notices for alleged crimes including rape, kidnapping, child, abduction, corruption, and possession of illegal firearms.

Cerna also noted that some of the men were arrested or encountered during federal law enforcement raids while they were in the U.S., though the declaration did not note if the men were ever charged or convicted for any crimes.

The identities and status of the deported men have not been disclosed by the Trump administration, making it unknown what portion of the over 200 noncitizens had criminal records in the U.S. or abroad.

Department of Justice lawyers said the judge’s temporary restraining orders “are an affront to the President’s broad constitutional and statutory authority to protect the United States from dangerous aliens who pose grave threats to the American people.

Judge Boasberg on Tuesday ordered the government to file under seal to the court by Wednesday at noon details regarding two aircraft that the administration did not return to the U.S. following the judge’s verbal order last week.

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