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Maryland
5-star basketball recruit Derik Queen, a Baltimore native, commits to Maryland
Derik Queen, a Baltimore native and one of the nationâs top basketball prospects in the Class of 2024, committed to Maryland on Wednesday, giving Terps coach Kevin Willard a potential cornerstone big man after a winding pursuit.
Queen, a consensus five-star recruit, chose the Terps over Indiana, Kansas and Houston. Maryland was long considered the favorite for the 6-foot-10 McDonaldâs All American, but Queenâs decision to not sign his letter of intent during the NCAAâs early signing period in November drew out his recruitment. Only two other top-50 prospects in 247Sportsâs composite rankings for the Class of 2024 entered the week uncommitted.
Maryland was among the first schools to seriously recruit Queen, offering him a scholarship the summer before his freshman year of high school. Their relationship endured despite significant shakeups. In July 2021, Queen announced that he was leaving St. Frances Academy, where heâd earned MaxPreps National Freshman of the Year honors and played alongside future Maryland guard Jahnathan Lamothe, and transferring to Floridaâs Montverde Academy, a perennial national power.
In March 2022, Seton Hallâs Kevin Willard was hired as the Terpsâ head coach, replacing Mark Turgeon, whoâd stepped down four months earlier. Willard landed three top-150 prospects in his first recruiting class, all from the Baltimore-Washington area, but he lost assistant coach Tony Skinn, Queenâs primary recruiter, after he was named George Masonâs head coach in March.
âOur first couple recruits, we really tried to get local kids, just to kind of let the fanbase know that this area is huge to us,â Willard told reporters during his first season. âWeâre going to recruit it, weâre going to bring kids in, weâre going to make sure that theyâre the stars, kind of what ⦠I did at Seton Hall.â
In 28 games this season for Montverde, which features three other five-star recruits, including Cooper Flagg, a potential top pick in the 2025 NBA draft, Queen is averaging 16.7 points and 7.8 rebounds per game, both team highs, while shooting a team-high 69% from the field, according to MaxPreps. While Queen is not considered exceptionally athletic or a reliable outside shooter, heâs a gifted rebounder and finisher with a well-rounded skill set.
âOverall, he projects as a skilled facilitating big who can handle, pass, rebound, and create all kinds of mismatch problems because of the rare overlap of those tools. If his shooting, conditioning, and athleticism evolve, it will unlock new levels to his game altogether,â 247Sports director of scouting Adam Finkelstein wrote last year.
Queen, the No. 15 overall player in 247Sportsâ composite rankings, is Marylandâs highest-ranked pledge since fellow Baltimore native Jalen Smith signed in 2017. Queen joins guard Malachi Palmer, a three-star guard and top-150 recruit, in the Terpsâ class, though he canât officially sign until mid-April.
Still, Willard will need to add more than just Queen over the next offseason to help restore the program to prominence. Maryland, which was picked to finish third in the Big Ten Conference this season, fell to 14-13 overall and 12th in the league after a 74-70 loss Tuesday at Wisconsin. Barring a run in the Big Ten tournament, the team is expected to miss the NCAA tournament for the third time in the past five years.
Even if forward Julian Reese (13.8 points per game) returns for his senior season in College Park, pairing with Queen down low, the Terpsâ offense could again struggle. Maryland ranks No. 338 out of 351 Division I teams in 3-point shooting (28.8%) and is set to lose its two most prolific outside shooters, star guard Jahmir Young (21.1 points per game) and starting forward Donta Scott (11.6 points per game)
Maryland
Arrest of illegal immigrant previously convicted of rape in Maryland marks record for ICE
Immigration authorities in Baltimore, Maryland, have arrested 153 illegal immigrant sex offenders this fiscal year, a record, with the latest being a Honduran man who was deported from the United States after he was previously convicted of raping a Maryland resident.
The Enforcement and Removal Operations branch under U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) said last week that Madai Gamaliel Amaya was taken into custody on Aug. 29 in the suburb of Montgomery Village.
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“This is a landmark arrest for ERO Baltimore, in that they secured a record 153 noncitizen sex offenders arrested in their area of operations during a single fiscal year, but more importantly, there are 153 victims who need not fear their predators because of ERO officers,” said ERO Executive Associate Director Daniel Bible.
Amaya initially illegally entered the U.S. at an unknown date and place years ago, ICE said. On Jan. 8, 2009, he was arrested by Montgomery County police and charged with second-degree rape.
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He was convicted months later and sentenced to 10 years in prison and three years of supervised probation upon his release. Two years and six months of the sentence was suspended by a judge. ICE filed a detainer request in 2010 with local authorities and Amaya was deported in 2013.
On July 27, 2016, Amaya was caught trying to illegally enter the U.S. by U.S. Border Patrol agents near Hidalgo, Texas. He was convicted of unlawful entry in 2017 and sentenced to 30 months in an Oklahoma federal prison.
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He was deported once again in 2018. He then entered the U.S. again at an unknown date.
His most recent arrest came last month and he remains in custody pending deportation proceedings, authorities said.
Maryland
Maryland elections officials deal with threats of violence, turnover concerns ahead of presidential election
BALTIMORE Since the last presidential election, Maryland has seen a concerning rise in turnover among our state’s election officials—with almost half new to their positions—according to research from the Bipartisan Policy Center.
As of January 2024, Maryland saw turnover in 11 voting jurisdictions.
Turnover is also on the rise nationally according to a CBS News investigation.
What is driving the exodus? Some blame an increasingly hostile environment, fueled by citizens who do not trust the election system.
Documenting Threats in Harford County
Stephanie Taylor oversees elections in Harford County.
She gets a lot of correspondence from the public—and keeps all of it in a binder with the title “Love and Not So Much Love Notes” on the cover.
“These are our nice letters, and these are our nasty letters,” she showed WJZ Investigator Mike Hellgren
“There’s a lot of cursing. We’ve been called Nazis,” Taylor said. “We’ve been accused of cheating, changing voter turnouts, changing the results, which is very hurtful to us because we take great pride in our job that we do here.”
Hellgren asked her what that says about where Maryland stands right now. “There are a lot of angry people who do not trust the election process. I don’t know how to get through to them,” she said.
Since the 2020 presidential election, Maryland has seen a 46 percent turnover rate among election officials. That is larger than the 36 percent national average.
“Have you had people leave because they could not take it?” Hellgren asked.
“Yes,” Taylor admitted. “One person who was with the office for quite a long time. She had a key role in this office. Just the stress of it—she’s just like, ‘I’m done.’ And she quit.”
To make sure her staff members feel safe, Taylor has used grants to dramatically increase security at their office and warehouse in Forest Hill.
“This is one thing everyone in the office said we needed to enclose this after all the craziness started happening after January 6th,” Taylor said as she showed WJZ the public entrance area.
She had bullet- and bomb-deflecting glass installed that will not shatter.
“We have changed the whole look of this office. We used to have an open reception area. We put walls up. We put glass in. It is not bulletproof glass, but it will change the direction of a bullet. We have coating on our windows that if someone were to put a bomb outside, this coating would catch it and it would just drop it so there wouldn’t be shards,” Taylor said.
There are also new cameras and stronger locks.
“Now, if it’s unlocked, it has a high-powered magnet and you have to be buzzed in,” she said at a secondary door to the board room.
“We have our own FBI contact. I never in my life thought I would say that I have my own FBI contact. It just never even crossed my mind,” Taylor told Hellgren.
“They were being disruptive, calling us names. We got a threat in one of the meetings that we got on tape. I did turn that in to the FBI and the sheriff’s department. It’s just the way the world looks at us now. It’s so different,” she said.
New Law Means Stiffer Penalties
Earlier this year in Annapolis, the General Assembly took action to protect poll workers, election judges and their families from threats which have been on the rise across the country.
Citing the turnover, Governor Wes Moore’s administration advocated for and and won changes to the law. There are now tougher penalties against those convicted of threatening election workers, with fines increasing from $1,000 to $2,500.
“It is becoming harder to recruit election judges. It is becoming harder to recruit elections administrators, and we need to respond to that,” said Eric Luedtke, the governor’s chief legislative officer at a hearing on February 21st.
Violators could also get up to three years behind bars.
During that hearing about the legislation, Baltimore County’s elections director revealed she, too, had been threatened.
“After receiving a threat firsthand, I was overwhelmingly thankful for the protection from my county, the FBI and homeland security,” Ruie Lavoie, the director of Baltimore County elections, told lawmakers.
WJZ asked Maryland’s state elections administrator Jared DeMarinis whether the new law does enough to deter people from threatening election workers. “I hope so. I think time will tell on that, but I think you have to have the first step and I think this was a great first step,” DeMarinis said.
State Safeguards the Vote
DeMarinis took over as elections administrator from Linda Lamone last year.
She had served in that position for more than 35 years, but DeMarinis also worked in that office for almost two decades.
“Yes, I’m a new person, but it’s not like I don’t know the electoral process,” DeMarinis told Hellgren.
On the threats, DeMarinis acknowledged “those types of incidents really shake you to the core.”
He said, “This is really trying to take it to a new level where you’re trying to inflict bodily harm or even death upon you know a person just doing their job and making sure that our democracy works.”
He made it a priority to stamp out misinformation and added a “rumor control” section to the state elections website.
“Before, there was a trust. There was an understanding in the process here, and there’s a segment of the population now that just doesn’t believe in any of that,” DeMarinis said.
DeMarinis is also pushing young people to get involved as election judges and poll workers.
He is aware that when elections officials leave, so does their experience and knowledge of the process. That is why he is partnering more experienced elections officials with newer ones to lessen the impact of any turnover.
And DeMarinis believes that turnover is not always a negative.
“Turnover brings new blood, new ideas, new points of view to the process. It helps streamline things. But yes, there is a concern about losing a lot of institutional knowledge,” he said.
A Veteran in Charge in Baltimore City
“I just don’t want to believe that people are not interested in an important process as this,” said Armstead Jones, Baltimore City’s election director
Baltimore has one of the longest-serving elections directors in the state.
Armstead Jones said in the city, the problem is not threats, but getting enough people motivated to staff the polls.
“At one time, we’d have as many as 3,200 election judges working Election Day and those numbers have dropped over the years,” Jones said. “I believe in this last election, we may have had about 1,500 judges to work. Maybe 2,100 trained, 600 did not show so those numbers are getting lower each time.”
The state remains committed to smooth and transparent elections, despite the challenges.
“Having that full confidence in the system is the underpinning of everything that we do with good, solid elections,” DeMarinis said.
Staying Despite Challenges
“I love the job. I love the people I work with,” said Taylor of her Harford County position. “If you’re in a polling location, it’s so much fun to be there and you see people coming in and taking part in democracy.”
She told Hellgren she has no plans to leave and be part of the turnover despite uncertainty about the future.
“Do you see it getting any better?” Hellgren asked. “I’ll let you know after this election. It depends on what happens after this election,” she said.
Maryland
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