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Chance encounter: A young migrant takes a seat next to an NPR reporter
About a month ago, I was on a plane to New York City. I was coming back from reporting in California, for NPR, out on the border. I sat next to a young man from Ecuador. He had big black eyes and braces, and despite being 22, an adolescent sheepishness. Ramón. I won’t use his full name because he’s worried about repercussions for his family from the people who financed his trip.
“Excuse me,” he said in Spanish, tapping me hesitantly. “I haven’t really flown a lot. Would you mind recording a video out the window?”
I myself am very scared of flying, by the way. In fact, he had caught me just as I searched for the prescription medication I take to calm my nerves on a plane. My arm was still deep in my bag, searching for the pills, as I answered.
“Sure. No problem.”
I decided I would knock myself out later. I put my phone up against the window, and started recording.
“Do you fly a lot?” He asked. I noticed his voice had a boyish crackle to it.
“Yeah”, I told him. “I don’t love it.”
Ramón told me, this was actually his second time flying. The first had been just a few weeks ago. A short trip from Ecuador to El Salvador. He told me he’d crossed the border into the US two days ago. Border Patrol had apprehended him, processed him, and let him go with a notice to appear in immigration court in a few months. I wondered where he was going to stay once we landed. He told me he was going to go be with his cousins in the city.
“It’s cold in New York.” I warned him. “Very, very cold. Do you have a jacket?”
He said he did and pointed to the hoodie he was wearing.
I looked out the window at the San Diego palm trees and thought about how bitingly cold New York City is in December.
I turned back to him. He looked terrified.
“If you want”, I offered, “I can hold your hand.” He smiled and grabbed my hand as the plane started speeding down the runway.
Thousands of feet down below, I could see the desert. I’d been there just a few days ago, reporting for NPR.
Ramón leaned in over my shoulder and looked out.
He told me that looked like the desert he crossed, at the end of a 21-day journey. Mostly on foot. From Ecuador to the US border. He said it like even he couldn’t believe it.
As an immigration correspondent for NPR, I’ve heard so many stories like this in the last year, from people on the border, who’ve traveled for days and months, mostly by foot, to come to the US. In their mouths, places like Daly City, California, or Manassas, Virginia sound like Xanadu or El Dorado.
A lot of them will get an immigration court date. It’s a common process called “parole,” and it is very controversial. Ramón’s court date is in March. There are a few different possible outcomes, and I don’t know what his will be. But even as we sped towards New York, in his pocket was a document getting the ball rolling on his deportation.
Back in Ecuador, Ramón tells me, drug cartels have spread through the country like wildfire. It’s gotten terrifying. So he says he sold everything he owned to pay for coyotes. Those are the people who will get you to the US border and across it.
He paid them 3 thousand dollars. He still owes them 2 thousand.
He showed me a picture of three cousins, saying goodbye to him. They were smiling. He said his mom and grandma couldn’t bear to pose for the picture, they felt too broken by his leaving. I could tell he didn’t want to cry in front of me, and he was about to. So I pointed out the window. We were going over the Rockies.
“That white stuff is snow?” He asked me.
“It is. You know, the first time I experienced snow,” I told him, “it felt like walking on sugar.”
This cheered him up, and he started talking about how he was going to get a job as soon as he got to New York. Pay off his debt. As he talked, I thought about New York and the over 150 thousand people who have arrived in less than two years. New York officials say there’s no more room, no more money, and migrants need to stop coming. Almost every single day, I get a wave of desperate text messages, from recently arrived people I’ve interviewed, telling me they are scared, they can’t find housing, they are barely surviving.
I changed the subject and pointed out the window at the Great Plains. “Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa”, I listed, “it’s pretty flat.”
A few hours later, the flight attendant announced that we were approaching New York.
I explained that we were about to start descending. So he should buckle his seatbelt and press the button on his armrest, to straighten his seat.
“Wait”, he said. “I could have been reclining this whole time?!”
The plane whined mechanically. Ramon grabbed the front of the seat and gasped. I remembered every reassurance I’d ever been given by people watching me panic on a plane. “Ramón,” I said, “Imaginate que sos un pajaro.” Ramon, Imagine that you are a bird. And that machine noise is the sound of you extending your wings to land. Suddenly, the city appeared, like an open mouth filled with a million sparkling teeth, taking us in.
“That’s New York”, I told him. “And that’s called Queens. It’s really the best borough.”
“Queens?”
“Queens.”
“I am already in love with it”, he responded. “I want to get out and see it all. I’ve seen it in the movies.”
As we taxied to our gate, we sat silently. What to do you say to someone who has just landed in New York, several thousand dollars in debt to a cartel, with an immigration court summons in his pocket?
So I just turned to him and said,
“You made it.”
new video loaded: Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
transcript
transcript
Singer D4vd Is Charged With Murder of Celeste Rivas Hernandez
The musician D4vd was charged with murder on Monday, seven months after the police said that the body of a teenage girl, Celeste Rivas Hernandez, had been found in the trunk of his Tesla. D4vd, whose real name is David Burke, pleaded not guilty to the charges.
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“On April 23, 2025, as has been alleged by the complaint, Celeste, a 14-year-old at that time, went to Mr. Burke’s house in the Hollywood Hills. She was never heard from again.” “These charges include the most serious charges that a D.A.‘s office can bring. That is first-degree murder with special circumstances. The special circumstances being lying in wait, committing this crime for financial gain or murdering a witness in an investigation. These special circumstances carry with it, along with the first-degree murder charge, a maximum sentence of life without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty.” “We believe the actual evidence will show David Burke did not murder Celeste Revis Hernandez nor was he the cause of her death.”
By Jackeline Luna
April 20, 2026
In this photo illustration, The Onion website is displayed on a computer screen, showing a satirical story titled Here’s Why I Decided To Buy ‘InfoWars’, on November 14, 2024 in Pasadena, California.
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The satirical website, The Onion, has a new deal to take over Infowars, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s far-right media company. If approved by a Texas judge, the deal would take away his Infowars microphone, and allow The Onion to resume its plans to turn the website into a parody of itself.
Families of those killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, who sued Jones for defamation, want the sale to happen. They’re still waiting to collect on the nearly $1.3 billion judgement they won against Jones for spreading lies that they faked the deaths of their children in order to boost support for gun control. That prompted Jones’s followers to harass and threaten the families for years.
The families are also eager to take away Jones’s platform for spewing such conspiracy theories. The deal not only would divorce Jones from his Infowars brand, but it would turn the platform against him by allowing The Onion to mock his kind of conspiracy mongering and advocate for gun control.
The families “took on Alex Jones to stop him from inflicting the same harm on others” by using “his corrupt business platform to torment and harass them for profit,” said Chris Mattei, one of the attorneys for the families. “When Infowars finally goes dark, the machinery of lies that Jones built will become a force for social good, thanks to the families’ courage and The Onion’s vision, persistence and stewardship.”
A mourner visits the Sandy Hook Permanent Memorial on the 10th anniversary of the school shooting on Dec.14, 2022 in Newtown, Connecticut. Twenty-six people were shot and killed, including 20 first graders and 6 educators, in one of the deadliest elementary school shootings in U.S. history.
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For its part The Onion called it a “significant step in an effort to transform one of the internet’s more notorious misinformation platforms into a new comedy network for satire.” The company says it could announce its new rollout of Infowars in a matter of weeks if the judge approves the deal.
“Eight years, almost to the day, after the Sandy Hook parents first filed suit against Alex Jones, they’ll finally get some justice, and even some money,” said Ben Collins, CEO of The Onion. “This is a chance to make something genuinely new out of a very broken piece of media history.”
On its website Monday, The Onion posted a satirical message from the fictional CEO of its parent company, Global Tetrahedron, “Bryce P. Tetraeder,” stating a “dream is finally coming true.”
Jones’s posted on X Monday that “The Onion Has Fraudulently Claimed AGAIN That It Owns Infowars!!!” adding that “The Democrat Party Disinformation Publication Is Publicly Bragging About Its Plan To Silence Alex Jones’ Infowars And Then Steal & Misrepresent His Identity!”
On a podcast in March, Jones alluded to the impending demise of Infowars, saying, “We’re getting shut down. We beat so many attacks. But finally, we’re shutting down like the middle of next month,” before insisting, “We’re going to be fine.”
Jones suggested Monday he would appeal any court decision to approve the leasing deal. And even if he loses control of Infowars, Jones could continue to broadcast from another studio, under another name.
Jones’s attorneys did not respond to a request for comment.
More than a year ago, a federal bankruptcy judge rejected The Onion’s first attempt to buy Infowars through a bankruptcy auction, saying the process was flawed. Since then, the bankruptcy court clarified that because Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, is not itself in bankruptcy, its property should be handled instead by a Texas state receiver. That cleared the way for the new pending deal to lease Infowars to The Onion, with the hope that a future sale could be approved.
In papers filed in state court, the Texas receiver said he “determined that licensing the Intellectual Property is in the best interest of the receivership estate.”
The deal calls for The Onion to pay $81,000 a month to license the Infowars.com domain and brand name, which the receiver says will “cover carrying costs to preserve and protect the assets of the receivership estate” until an appeal filed by Jones is decided and the path is cleared for a sale.
Jones’s personal bankruptcy case is proceeding in federal bankruptcy court, where a trustee continues to sell off Jones’s personal property, including cars, homes, watches and guns, with proceeds intended for the families.
A memorial to massacre victims stands near the former site of Sandy Hook Elementary on Dec. 14, 2013 in Newtown, Connecticut, one year after Adam Lanza shot and killed 20 first graders and six adults at the school.
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US negotiators to head to Pakistan and Iranian cargo ship seized – a recappublished at 00:37 BST 20 April
Tankers in the Strait of Hormuz on Saturday
Here’s a recap of the latest developments.
US negotiators will head to Pakistan on Monday with the intention of holding further talks on ending the war, Trump says – but Iranian state media cites unnamed officials as saying Tehran has “no plans for now to participate”.
The prospect of further high-level negotiations – a White House official says Vice-President JD Vance will attend – comes amid reports of fresh attacks on commercial vessels.
Trump says the navy intercepted and took “custody” of an Iranian tanker attempting to pass through the US blockade, “blowing a hole” in the ship’s engine room in the process.
Earlier, in the same post announcing his representatives would travel for more talks, Trump renewed his threat to destroy Iranian energy sites and bridges if no deal is reached.
Reports in Iranian media over the weekend suggest Iran is continuing to work on plans to potentially apply a toll to ships passing through the strait – although it’s unclear if such a move will be implemented.
Iranian state TV cites unnamed officials as saying that “continuation of the so-called naval blockade, violation of the ceasefire and threatening US rhetoric” are slowing progress in reaching an agreement.
Trump also accused Iran of violating the ceasefire, saying more commercial ships have been attacked by Iran in the Strait of Hormuz.
A UK maritime agency reported two commercial ships came under fire in the strait on Saturday.
Iran’s foreign minister had said on Friday that the strait would be opened – which was shortly followed by Trump saying the US naval blockade of Iranian ports would remain in place until a deal is reached. Iran has since said the strait is closed again.
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