Northeast
DHS demands Letitia James take action over New York’s refusal to honor ICE detainers
Trump tightens US immigration after DC shooting
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The Department of Homeland Security is calling on New York Attorney General Letita James to take action against New York City over its handling of illegal immigrants.
“New York City’s failure to honor ICE detainers has resulted in the release of 6,947 criminal illegal aliens since January 20. There are another 7,000 still in the custody of a New York jurisdiction with an active detainer,” DHS wrote on X.
“We are calling on NY Attorney General Letitia James to stop this dangerous derangement and commit to honoring our ICE arrest detainers. It’s common sense.”
In response to a request for comment, James’ office referred Fox News Digital to a letter that the state attorney general sent to Acting U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Director Todd Lyons in September. The letter from James was sent in response to a Sept. 10 message from Lyons. First, she stated that the New York Attorney General’s Office does not receive detainer requests “as we rarely take custody of individuals.”
ICE OFFICERS IN ILLINOIS TARGETED BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS WHO USED ‘VEHICLES AS WEAPONS,’ OFFICIALS SAY
New York Attorney General Letita James speaks outside federal court in Norfolk, Va., on Friday, Oct. 24, 2025. (Eric Lee/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
She said “detainer requests are sent to a variety of entities within the State of New York, many of them local police department and local jails, each of which may have applicable laws and policies with respect to whether, to what degree, and under what circumstances to respond to federal detainer requests.”
“This creates a range of lawful practices that we cannot address in our capacity as the attorney general,” James’ letter reads.
On Monday, Lyons sent a fresh letter to James. In the letter, which was obtained by Fox News Digital, he included details about criminals in New York’s custody and examples of instances in which ICE was able to capture illegal immigrants accused of criminal activity.
“These are people who are not only in the country illegally but who have committed additional crimes, including heinous crimes like murder, rape, possession of child pornography, armed robbery, and many others. Virtually all Americans agree that people like this should be swiftly removed from the United States when they leave New York’s custody and not be returned to our streets to wreak havoc on law-abiding citizens,” Lyons wrote.
Federal immigration officers consult as they wait for respondents to depart from their hearings to conduct targeted detainments at U.S. immigration court in Manhattan, in New York City, Oct. 24, 2025. (David ‘Dee’ Delgado/Reuters)
RIOTERS ARRESTED AFTER ATTACKING ICE VEHICLES IN NEW YORK CITY; OFFICIALS SAY GROUP ORGANIZED ON SOCIAL MEDIA
One of the men mentioned in Lyons’ letter was Steven Daniel Henriquez Galicia, who was arrested by local authorities for attempted murder and criminal possession of a weapon. ICE later nabbed him in the Bronx, New York, and he remains in federal custody pending the outcome of immigration proceedings.
Vyacheslav Danilovich Kim, who was also featured in Lyons’ letter, was arrested by New York State Police for “use of a child less than 17 years of age in a sexual performance; rape in the second degree; disseminate indecent materials to minors; and patronizing a person for prostitution in the second degree of a person less than 15 years of age.”
Lyons said Kim was convicted in February 2013 and was sentenced to time served as well as five years’ probation. He also alleged that “Albany County and New York Probation refused to assist ICE in locating and/or arresting Kim.” However, ICE was able to arrest him in September 2024 as he was leaving an appointment with his probation officer. He was deported, according to the letter.
Another man mentioned in the letter was Anderson Smith Satuye-Martinez, an accused Crips gang member. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) noted that Satuye-Martinez had a conviction for assault. He was arrested in August for criminal possession of a weapon and possession of a controlled substance. Despite having an active ICE detainer, Satuye-Martinez was released. However, ICE arrested him in September. He remains in federal custody.
Street vendors, many of whom are recent arrivals from West Africa, sell bags, watches, and jewelry along Canal Street on Dec. 1, 2025, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
US ATTORNEY NARROWLY ESCAPES KNIFE ATTACK BY ILLEGAL IMMIGRANT, BLAMES NEW YORK’S SANCTUARY POLICIES
“Attorney General James and her fellow New York Sanctuary politicians are releasing murderers, terrorists, and sexual predators back into our neighborhoods and putting American lives at risk,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement provided to Fox News Digital.
“We are calling on Letitia James to stop this dangerous derangement and commit to honoring the ICE arrest detainers of the more than 7,000 criminal illegal aliens in New York’s custody. It is common sense,” she added. “Criminal illegal aliens should not be released back onto our streets to terrorize more innocent Americans.”
McLaughlin also directed her ire at New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, writing in a post on X, “Under [Gov. Hochul] New York has refused to honor [ICE] detainers and RELEASED back onto New York’s streets 6,947 criminal illegal aliens since January 20.”
McLaughlin said that the crimes committed by the nearly 7,000 illegal immigrants include 29 homicides, 2,509 assaults, 207 sexual predatory offenses, 199 burglaries, 305 robberies, 392 dangerous drug offenses and 300 weapons offenses.
A spokesperson for Hochul called the claims “categorically false.”
“Since 2021, more than 1,500 individuals convicted of violent crimes have been turned over to federal immigration authorities following their time served at State prisons. Meanwhile, between January and November of this year, President Trump’s Department of Homeland Security failed to pick up 20 deportable felons that New York informed them would soon be released from prisons,” the spokesperson told Fox News Digital.
“If federal immigration authorities are serious about safety, they should continue to work with us to hold violent offenders accountable and stop wasting critical resources trying to separate families and deport immigrants who are making meaningful contributions to our communities.”
Police and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officers stand guard as people gather near a General Services Administration (GSA) parking lot to prevent ICE from leaving for an immigration raid in the Manhattan borough of New York City, Nov. 29, 2025. (David Dee Delgado/Reuters)
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There are currently 7,113 illegal immigrants with active retainers in custody in New York, according to DHS. The individuals who are locked up are accused of committing 148 homicides, 717 assaults, 134 burglaries, 106 robberies, 235 dangerous drug offenses, 152 weapons offenses and 260 sexually predatory offenses.
ICE has faced challenges in New York City as it engages in a crackdown on illegal immigrants in Chinatown. The operation has sparked protests in the area for over a month.
On Saturday, police confirmed officers made multiple arrests during a protest in Lower Manhattan.
The NYPD told Fox News Digital that upon arriving at the scene, officers found agitators blocking the street and its exits at different locations. Video footage showed rioters pushing large potted plants in front of ICE vehicles, throwing trash at officers and screaming obscenities. They were also spotted hurling trash cans and recycling bins and pushing barricades against officers. Many were arrested after failing to comply with police demands that they disperse.
Fox News Digital’s Alexandra Koch and Fox News’ CB Cotton contributed to this report.
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Pittsburg, PA
Pittsburgh International’s T. rex could soon disappear from view
Connecticut
Connecticut moves to crack down on bottle redemption fraud
It’s a scheme made famous by a nearly 30-year-old episode of the sitcom Seinfeld.
Hoping to earn a quick buck, two characters load a mail truck full of soda bottles and beer cans purchased with a redeemable 5-cent deposit in New York, before traveling to Michigan, where they can be recycled for 10 cents apiece. With few thousand cans, they calculate, the trip will earn a decent profit. In the end, the plan fell apart.
But after Connecticut raised the value of its own bottle deposits to 10 cents in 2024, officials say, they were caught off guard by a flood of such fraudulent returns coming in from out of state. Redemption rates have reached 97%, and some beverage distributors have reported millions of dollars in losses as a result of having to pay out for excess returns of their products.
On Thursday, state lawmakers passed an emergency bill to crack down on illegal returns by increasing fines, requiring redemption centers to keep track of bulk drop-offs and allowing local police to go after out-of-state violators.
“I’m heartbroken,” said House Speaker Matt Ritter, D-Hartford, who supported the effort to increase deposits to 10 cents and expand the number of items eligible for redemption. “I spent a lot of political capital to get the bottle bill passed in 2021, and never in a million years did I think that New York, New Jersey and Rhode Island residents would return so many bottles.”
The legislation, Senate Bill 299, would increase fines for violating the bottle bill law from $50 to $500 on a first offense. For third and subsequent offenses, the penalty would increase from $250 to $2,000 and misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison.
In addition, it requires redemption centers to be licensed by the state’s Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (previously, those businesses were only required to register with DEEP). As a condition of their license, redemption centers must keep records of anyone seeking to redeem more than 1,000 bottles and cans in a single day.
Anyone not affiliated with a qualified nonprofit would be prohibited from redeeming more than 4,000 bottles a day, down from the previous limit of 5,000.
The bill also seeks to pressure some larger redemption centers into adopting automated scanning technologies, such as reverse vending machines, by temporarily lowering the handling fee that is paid on each beverage container processed by those centers.
The bill easily passed the Senate on Wednesday and the House on Thursday on its way to Gov. Ned Lamont.
While the bill drew bipartisan support, Republicans described it as a temporary fix to a growing problem.
House Minority Leader Vincent Candelora, R-North Branford, called the switch to 10-cent deposits an “unmitigated disaster” and said he believed out-of-state redemption centers were offloading much of their inventory within Connecticut.
“The sheer quantity that is being redeemed in the state of Connecticut, this isn’t two people putting cans into a post office truck,” Candelora said. “This is far more organized than that.”
The impact of those excess returns is felt mostly by the state’s wholesale beverage distributors, who initiate the redemption process by collecting an additional 10 cents on every eligible bottle and can they sell to supermarkets, liquor stores and other retailers within Connecticut. The distributors are required to pay that money back — plus a handling fee — once the containers are returned to the store or a redemption center.
According to the state’s Department of Revenue Services, nearly 12% of wholesalers reported having to pay out more redemptions than they collected in deposits in 2025. Those losses totaled $11.3 million.
Peter Gallo, the vice president of Star Distributors in West Haven, said his company’s losses alone have totaled more than $2 million since the increase on deposits went into effect two years ago. As time goes on, he said, the deficit has only grown.
“We’re hoping we can get something fixed here, because it’s a tough pill to be holding on to debt that we should get paid for,” Gallo said.
Still, officials say they have no way of tracking precisely how many of the roughly 2 billion containers that were redeemed in the state last year were illegally brought in from other states. That’s because most products lack any kind of identifiable marking indicating where they were sold.
“There’s no way to tell right now. That’s one of the core issues here,” said state Rep. John-Michael Parker, D-Madison, who co-chairs the legislature’s Environment Committee.
Parker said the issue could be solved if product labels were printed with a specific barcode or other feature that would be unique to Connecticut. Such a solution, for now, has faced technological challenges and pushback from the beverage industry, he said.
Not everyone involved in the handling, sorting and redemption of bottles is happy about the upcoming changes — or the process by which they were approved.
Francis Bartolomeo, the owner of a Fran’s Cans and Bart’s Bottles in Watertown, said he was only made aware of the legislation on Monday from a fellow redemption center owner. Since then, he said, he’s been contacting his legislators to oppose the bill and was frustrated by the lack of a public hearing.
“I know other people are as flabbergasted as I am because they don’t know where it comes out of,” Bartolomeo said “It’s a one sided affair, really.”
Bartolomeo said one of his biggest concerns with the bill is the $2,500 annual licensing fee that it would place on redemption centers. While he agreed that out-of-state redemptions are a problem, he said it should be up to the state to improve enforcement.
“We’re cleaning up the mess, and we’re going to end up being penalized,” Bartolomeo said. “Get rid of it and go back to 5 cents if it’s that big of a hindrance, but don’t penalize the redemption centers for what you imposed.”
Lynn Little of New Milford Redemption Center supports the increased penalties but believes the solution ultimately lies with better labeling by the distributors. She is also frustrated by the volume caps after the state initially gave grants to residents looking to open their own bottle redemption businesses.
“They’re taking a volume business, because any business where you make 3 cents per unit (the average handling fee) is a volume business, and limiting the volume we can take in, you’re crushing small businesses,” Little said.
Ritter said that he opposed a move back to the 5-cent deposit, which he noted was increased to encourage recycling. However, he said the current situation has become politically untenable and puts the state at risk of a lawsuit from distributors.
“We’re getting to a point where we’re going to lose the bottle bill,” Ritter said. “If we got sued in court, I think we’d lose.”
Maine
2026 Southern Maine Athletes of the Week: Winter Week 12
Posted inSports, Varsity Maine
Press Herald sports writers nominate high school athletes from the prior week’s games.
Readers vote for their top choice and the winner will be announced in the newspapers the following Sunday all season long!
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