Category: Security

George Santos’ first gig out of Congress is selling Cameo appearances for $200 apiece.

The disgraced politician on Friday became the sixth congressman to be expelled from the House of Representatives following a scathing Ethics Committee report alleging misappropriation of campaign funds. But supporters still wanting to hear Santos’ voice can hire him to record a video greeting.

One of his first recordings is addressed to someone named Megan. In that clip, which lasts nearly a minute, the 35-year-old Republican offers advice on coping with criticism.

“They can boot me out of Congress, but they can’t take away my good humor or my larger-than-life personality,” Santos said.

Santos’ refers to himself as a “Former congressional ‘Icon’” on his Cameo profile. Those wishing to buy a personalized message can choose from topics including holiday greetings, gossip and advice.

When Santos started selling video messages, they cost only $150, according to The Hill. Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, by comparison, charges only$20 per message.

In another sample Cameo clip Santos posted, he said, “It doesn’t matter if you either get fired from a job or if you find a new job, what matters is what you make of it.”

Santos was elected to the House of Representatives in November 2022 thanks to a campaign built almost entirely on lies about his education, work history and family background. He was exposed by a bombshell report in The New York Times that generously claimed he “seems to have misrepresented a number of his career highlights.”

Santos faces nearly two dozen felony counts that could send him to prison. He said at a press conference last week before being voted out of government that he didn’t know what his next move would be, but “the future is endless.”

A link to his congressional biography page shows a list of “Current Vacancies of the 118th Congress.” A special election will be held to fill the 3rd Congressional District seat Santos vacated.

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© 2023 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The city’s teachers union is calling on Mayor Eric Adams to ditch new shelter limits for migrant families, saying they are expected to be a major disruption to children’s education and to school operations.

The policy, instituted amid continuing financial pressure on the city, forces newcomers to reapply for emergency shelter beds every 60 days or find alternative housing.

But there are no guarantees that new shelter placements will be anywhere near the schools children are already attending, potentially forcing a choice between children moving to new schools or traveling long distances each day.

“Our asylum seekers have endured great trauma getting here,” United Federation of Teachers President Michael Mulgrew said in a statement. “The city public schools have welcomed them. Educators have built trust with their new students, and have made schools a secure, consistent force in the children’s lives.”

“The mayor’s eviction policy will disrupt that trust,” the union president said.

A recent tally of 2,700 families have been notified of imminent eviction from their current housing, according to the UFT. The union started a petition Monday that as of the late afternoon had 120 signatures criticizing the move to break up relationships and lesson plans.

“To uproot these families from their current housing during the coldest months of the year and interrupt these students’ educational progress … is reprehensible,” read the petition. “With this action, you will traumatize not only these families but entire school communities.

“Our schools are working through enough challenges as it is, without this callous disregard for the humanity of an already vulnerable population.”

The policy came under fire at a hearing of the City Council Education and Immigration committees last Wednesday and has been the subject of multiple parent-led education council resolutions.

In Manhattan’s District 2, which spans many of the large-scale emergency shelters that are affected by the change, including the Row on Eighth Ave., the local board last month asked the administration for a waiver for migrant families enrolled in city public schools.

The public schools do not have a data sharing agreement with NYC Health + Hospitals, which operates the emergency sites. That means schools may struggle to track families moving in and out of shelters until an agreement is made final, which is expected by the new year.

While homeless students have the federal right to stay in their current schools, logistics from delayed transportation arrangements to impractical, long commutes across boroughs could block families from having a real choice in the matter.

City Education Department chief of staff Melissa Aviles-Ramos said at the Council hearing that the public schools were “made aware” of the 60-day policy before it was announced, but would not say if they pushed back against City Hall on its implementation.

“Like with any productive partnership, we talk about the challenges, especially the ones that we know very well from our purview,” said Aviles-Ramos. “And we make sure that whatever the situation is, we do our best to make sure that there is minimal disruption to children’s education.”

City Hall did not return a request for comment.

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© 2023 New York Daily News

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A former U.S. ambassador with a long career in the federal government was arrested Friday on charges of working secretly since the early 1980s for Cuba’s intelligence services as an unregistered “covert” foreign agent in the United States, according to an FBI complaint filed in Miami federal court.

Victor Manual Rocha, 73, a former ambassador to Bolivia who had also worked as a senior diplomat in the U.S. Interests Section in Cuba, spent the weekend in custody at the Federal Detention Center in Miami and made his first appearance in federal court Monday afternoon. Federal prosecutors said they plan to file a grand jury indictment Tuesday and seek his detention at a bond hearing Wednesday before Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres, who signed the complaint for Rocha’s arrest.

His defense attorney, Jacqueline Arango, a former Miami federal prosecutor with a national security background, declined to comment but plans to fight for Rocha’s release before trial. His arraignment is scheduled for Dec. 18.

Although the FBI complaint does not charge Rocha with spying for the Cuban government, the nation’s top law enforcement official characterized him that way in a statement released Monday by the Justice Department.

“This action exposes one of the highest-reaching and longest-lasting infiltrations of the United States government by a foreign agent,” Attorney General Merrick B. Garland said.

Under U.S. law, it is required for anyone working as an agent for a foreign government in the United States to register with the Attorney General’s Office in the Department of Justice. The FBI criminal complaint charges Rocha, who was born in Colombia and naturalized as a U.S. citizen in 1978, with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government and to defraud the United States, acting as an illegal agent of a foreign government, and use of a passport obtained by a false statement.

Over the span of 40 years as an employee in the State Department and private sector, “Rocha secretly supported the Republic of Cuba and its clandestine intelligence-gathering mission against the United States by serving as a cover agent of Cuba’s intelligence services,” according to an affidavit filed with the FBI complaint.

In his covert role, Rocha secured diplomatic positions in the U.S. government that “provided him access to nonpublic information, including classified information,” and “the ability to affect United States foreign policy.”

“After his (government) employment ended (in 2002), Rocha held other positions and engaged in other acts intended to support Cuba’s intelligence services,” states the affidavit, adding that Rocha provided “false and misleading information to the United States to maintain his secret mission, traveled outside the United States to meet with Cuban intelligence operatives, and made false and misleading statements to obtain travel documents.”

The 22-page complaint with affidavit alleges that an FBI undercover agent posing as covert Cuban General Directorate of Intelligence representative met in Miami with Rocha during a series of meetings in 2022 and 2023 in which Rocha made repeated statements admitting his “decades” of work for Cuba that spanned “40 years.”

When the FBI undercover agent told Rocha he was “a covert representative here in Miami” whose mission was “to contact you, introduce myself as your new contact, and establish a new communication plan,” Rocha answered “Yes,” according to the affidavit. Rocha then went on to describe and celebrate his activity as a Cuban intelligence agent.

Throughout the meetings, Rocha behaved as a Cuban agent, consistently referring to the United States as “the enemy,” and using the term “we” to describe himself and Cuba, according to the affidavit. Rocha also praised the late Fidel Castro as the “Comandante,” and referred to his contacts in Cuban intelligence as his “Compañeros” (comrades) and to the Cuban intelligence services as the “Dirección.”

Rocha described his work as a Cuban agent as “a grand slam,” the affidavit states.

Word of Rocha’s arrest Friday was kept secret by U.S. authorities over the weekend.

On Sunday, FBI spokesman James Marshall declined to comment on Rocha’s arrest at his Miami area home. The U.S. attorney’s office spokeswoman, prosecutor Sarah Schall, did not respond to several text, email and voice mail messages seeking comment Sunday. After The Assocuated Press broke a story that evening about Rocha’s arrest, Schall said later that she could not comment.

Rocha’s most recent former employer, the Foley & Lardner law firm in Miami, where he worked as a senior adviser on international business, said he left the office in August. “We are neither representing nor providing legal assistance to Ambassador Rocha,” a spokeswoman said Sunday afternoon.

The charge brought against Rocha under the Foreign Agents Registration Act has been used by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in the past, including a pending case against former Miami Congressman David Rivera, who is accused of lobbying on behalf of the Venezuelan government without registering as a foreign agent. The offense was also among several charges brought against a Cuban spy ring in the late 1990s, when a group of Cuban government operatives were accused of espionage and a conspiracy to shoot down two Brothers to the Rescue planes in the Florida Straits, killing three U.S. citizens and one Cuban American.

Rocha, who gradated from Yale University and obtained graduate degrees from Harvard University and Georgetown University, had a long diplomatic career working in various foreign posts in the Caribbean, Mexico and South America for the U.S. government, including his service as U.S. ambassador to Bolivia during the administrations of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

A former colleague said it was hard to believe that Rocha was charged with being an unregistered foreign agent for the Cuban government.

“This is shocking,” said a former U.S. official who knew him. “Manuel would not be in the list of people I would think would be working for these guys.”

While serving as ambassador to Bolivia, Rocha gained some notoriety when he warned voters ahead of the 2002 election that if socialist Evo Morales were elected president, the country would risk losing U.S. aid.

“He was considered sort of a conservative career officer,” said the former official, who did not want to be identified. “(He) spent a lot of time licking these wounds over Bolivia, where he drew a lot of fire and criticism because of what he said about Evo Morales in the middle of an election, with people later claiming that those comments got Morales elected.”

Rocha’s term as ambassador ended in August 2002.

Until that controversy, Rocha was known as a versatile diplomat who moved from one U.S. Embassy post to another, starting in the early 1980s during the Reagan administration. Along the way, he also served as deputy principal officer of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, as well as the director for Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council in Washington, D.C.

In his post-government career, Rocha was a member of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York and served on the University of Miami’s International Advisory Board. He also served on the advisory board of the Cuba Transition Project at UM and as a special adviser to the U.S. military commander of U.S. Southern Command in Miami. He was also a member of the late Henry Kissinger’s International Council on Terrorism.

In addition, Rocha was director of government relations for Arcos Dorados Holdings, which owns and manages most of the McDonald’s restaurants in Latin America.

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© 2023 Miami Herald

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Three homes were destroyed and the remains of a woman and one other individual were found after an early-morning fire in Sylmar, California, that set off ammunition as firefighters struggled to extinguish the blaze.

Los Angeles firefighters responded to the scene in the 13700 block of Glenoaks Boulevard about 4:30 a.m. Sunday and found multiple structures ablaze, authorities said.

The remains of a woman and another person, whose gender has not yet been confirmed, as well as a dog were found inside one of the homes on the property.

Firefighters’ efforts to knock down the fire were hampered by the presence of ammunition in one of the homes, according to L.A. Fire Department Capt. Erik Scott. The blaze’s heat then set off the ammunition, leaving the impression that a gun was being fired, he said.

Once the fire was under control, firefighters found the human remains as well as multiple guns in one of the three houses on the property.

“I saw at least two, what appeared to be, automatic weapons — a rifle, ammunition lined up,” Scott told KTLA-TV. “That obviously concerns us — why is that out?”

The cause of the fire has not been determined.

Authorities have not yet released any information about the identity of the deceased people. Dogs were used to search for human remains, and Los Angeles police were assisting in the investigation.

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© 2023 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC

A Haitian gang leader charged with kidnapping three U.S citizens at gunpoint in two separate incidents in the volatile Caribbean country has been extradited to the United States, Haiti police said.

Jhon Peter Fleronvil was extradited on Monday, according to Haiti National Police, which posted photographs of him in handcuffs on its social media pages. Fleronvil had been in custody since September 11, 2022, when he was arrested in the northeastern Haitian city of Fort-Liberté while attempting to travel to the neighboring Dominican Republic by crossing the Ouanaminthe-Dajabón border.

An FBI arrest warrant and affidavit Fleronvil, whose first name is spelled “John” in U.S. court documents, was filed in the District of Colombia federal court on Nov. 7. There is no indication in the court files, however, of his appearance yet in federal court and a spokesperson for the FBI did not respond to a request for comment.

Fleronvil is a member of the brutal rural gang Kokorat san Ras. The armed group was recently identified in a United Nations sanctions report on Haiti, and operates in the country’s rice growing Artibonite Valley between Port-au-Prince to the south and the city of Port-de-Paix to the northwest.

The gang has been accused of committing acts of extreme violence that have forced people to abandon their homes and farmland as members carry out armed robberies, assassinations, rapes and kidnappings for ransom. The gang is known to torture victims and kill them when ransoms are not paid, the U.N. reported. It’s among two of the most vicious gangs operating in the rural valley, which has become a high-risk area for anyone who ventures there, including police, who routinely engage in gun battles and are subject to armed attacks.

U.S. authorities say in July of 2022 during one such gun battle with police, two U.S. citizens, a married couple visiting family in Port-de-Paix, was abducted by armed gang members and later held hostage by Fleronvil and another leader of his gang, Jean Renald Dolcin, until a $10,500 ransom was paid. The next day a third U.S. citizen was taken captive by the gang in the town of Tibwadom while in route to Port-de-Paix, and held in the same location, U.S. authorities said. That victim was also released after a ransom payment.

Gang violence recently forced the evacuation of dozens of sick babies and pregnant women from a hospital in the country’s largest slum, and led to more Haitians being displaced in the capital.

On Wednesday, Martin Griffiths, the United Nations under-secretary-general for humanitarian affairs and emergency relief coordinator, referred to the attacks in a post on X.

“Very concerned about the situation in Port-au-Prince where violent clashes last week left dozens of people dead, including children,” he said. “Homes were burned down, families were displaced and hospital patients had to be evacuated. People in #Haiti deserve to work and live in dignity.”

With attacks, sexual violence and kidnappings increasingly on the rise in Haiti, where gangs now control at least 80% of metropolitan Port-au-Prince, the State Department announced last week that U.S. authorities are “committed to ensuring that those involved in the kidnapping and killing of U.S. citizens face severe consequences for their criminal actions.”

This has led to the indictments of several Haitian gang members and leaders. Last November, Fleronvil was among seven gang leaders indicted for their alleged role in the kidnappings of U.S. citizens in Haiti. Three of the leaders were involved in the abduction of 16 Christian missionaries, the Department of Justice said.

That group, which included five children, was kidnapped in Croix-des-Bouquets while returning from visiting an orphanage and most of them were held captive for 61 days after a ransom was paid. The leaders of the 400 Mawozo gang, Lanmo Sanjou, aka Joseph Wilson, and Jermaine Stephenson, aka Gaspiyay, were charged in the missionaries’ kidnapping along with Vitel’homme Innocent, leader of the Kraze Barye gang.

Last week, the FBI announced that it had doubled a $1 million reward to $2 million for information leading to the arrest of Innocent, who was also placed on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The gang leader’s face is also splattered on billboards across South Florida as part of a strategy that the FBI hopes will lead to his capture in Haiti where his increasing violence and kidnappings forced the U.S. Embassy in Tabarre in July to curtail services, withdraw non-emergency personnel and order U.S. citizens to leave the country.

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© 2023 Miami Herald

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

A convicted drug trafficker linked to the Sinaloa cartel who worked for the son of Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman was gunned down Thursday morning in an industrial stretch of Willowbrook, according to authorities and court records

Eduardo Escobedo, 39, was one of two men killed in the 14200 block of Towne Avenue, according to officials from the Los Angeles Medical Examiner-Coroner and Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. The other victim was Guillermo De Los Angeles Jr., 47.

Around 8 a.m. Thursday, sheriff’s deputies responded to an industrial area filled with warehouses, including a truck yard, pallet storage facility and a church. Escobedo and De Los Angeles died at the scene. A third man was taken to a hospital with non-life threatening gunshot wounds.

“It appears that there was some type of gathering or party at the location from last night to early this morning,” Lt. Omar Camacho told KABC-TV Channel 7 at the scene.

Escobedo, whose nickname, “El Mago,” translates to “The Magician,” served four years and nine months in federal prison for conspiring to distribute more than 10,000 kilograms of marijuana and laundering drug proceeds. He was released in 2018.

Raised in East Los Angeles, Escobedo rose to become the primary distributor of marijuana in Los Angeles for Guzman’s oldest son, Ivan Archivaldo Guzman Salazar, a prosecutor said at a 2014 detention hearing. He laundered the proceeds in part by buying exotic cars and shipping them to Culiacan, the capital of Sinaloa and the cartel’s stronghold.

Escobedo was also alleged to have ordered the death of a rival trafficker who was gunned down in his Bentley on the 101 Freeway in 2008. While Escobedo was never charged in the murder, his brother and another man were convicted and are serving life sentences.

Escobedo was born in the United States, his lawyer, Guadalupe Valencia, said at the detention hearing. He attended Garfield High School, where he met his wife, and later graduated from a continuation school, Valencia said.

In July 2011, Escobedo, then 27, was arrested leaving a stash house where police found a ton of marijuana, Adam Braverman, an assistant U.S. attorney, said at the detention hearing. Torrance police, which served the warrant, said the stash house was in the West Adams neighborhood.

In October 2013, Escobedo was caught on a wiretap speaking with Guzman Salazar about smuggling more than five tons of marijuana through a tunnel under the U.S.-Mexico border, Braverman said. Authorities seized 2.7 tons of cannabis from a courier working for Escobedo, according to the prosecutor.

Guzman Salazar remains one of Mexico’s most wanted men. One of his top lieutenants, Néstor Isidro Pérez Salas, nicknamed “El Nini,” was captured by the Mexican National Guard earlier this week in Culiacan. Justice Department officials are seeking to extradite Pérez Salas, who is charged in two U.S. jurisdictions with conspiring to traffic methamphetamine, fentanyl and cocaine; laundering money; retaliating against witnesses; and possessing machine guns.

Escobedo was also helping Guzman Salazar launder money through the purchase of sports cars that were shipped to Culiacan, Braverman said. Federal agents determined that Escobedo used a false name to buy two Lamborghinis from a dealership in Newport Beach.

Braverman said Escobedo was stopped by the Irwindale police driving one of the cars, a $175,000-dollar Murcielago. The Lamborghini was purchased with a series of cash deposits just beneath the $10,000 threshold that triggers a bank reporting requirement, according to a warrant for the car’s seizure.

Agents listened on a wiretap as Guzman Salazar asked Escobedo to purchase a Nissan GTR and make $50,000 in modifications, Braverman said. Mexican authorities seized the Nissan in Culiacan in 2014, as well as a McLaren that Escobedo had bought in California for $175,000, the prosecutor said.

At the time of his arrest in 2014, Escobedo was living in a sprawling Granada Hills home with a pool and tennis court. Drug Enforcement Administration agents searched Escobedo and found him carrying a large amount of cash, four phones and keys to five different cars.

A father of four, Escobedo claimed his annual income of about $200,000 came from a business he owned with his wife, International Hair Authority, that imported hair extensions and sold them. Escobedo also reported owning a record label, Magic Records Corporation.

Braverman said agents suspected Escobedo was using the hair company’s accounts to launder drug money, pointing to a $50,000 wire transfer from a man named Harvinder Singh. Scotland Yard, the London police force, arrested Singh and his associates, who were shipping cocaine from Mexico to London on British Airways flights, Braverman said.

After pleading guilty to conspiring to distribute marijuana and launder money, Escobedo was sentenced to 57 months in federal prison.

He was never charged in a murder that sent his younger brother to prison.

In 2008, police found a bullet-riddled silver Bentley Continental GT crashed on the center median of the 101 freeway in downtown Los Angeles. Jose Luis Macias, 25, was slumped behind the wheel. A bullet had gone through the back of his head.

Nicknamed “Huerito,” Macias worked for the Arellano Felix organization, a Tijuana-based cartel that rivals the Sinaloans. Macias’ friends often got into fights with Escobedo’s brother, Andy Medrano, at a Pico Rivera nightclub called El Rodeo, according to an appellate decision that summarized the evidence in Medrano’s trial.

In the early morning hours of Dec. 12, 2008, Macias was at a festival for the Virgin of Guadalupe on Olvera Street when he got into a fight with Medrano and a friend, Michael Aleman, a witness testified. Security guards broke it up.

Macias was waiting at a red light in his Bentley when two men approached the car on foot, a witness testified. The witness, a stranded motorist waiting for a tow truck, saw muzzle flashes erupt in quick succession, as if from automatic weapons. The Bentley made a U-turn and sped toward the freeway.

Police suspected Escobedo had ordered the killing. According to a search warrant affidavit reported by The Times in 2009, detectives believed he and Macias were engaged in “a power struggle” over control of trafficking networks.

At the 2014 detention hearing in federal court, Braverman said Los Angeles detectives suspected Escobedo “ordered the homicide to occur.”

“Our understanding is that individual was a rival drug trafficker driving in that Bentley,” he said.

Detectives arrested Escobedo in 2011 and questioned him about the homicide before letting him go. Valencia, his attorney, said Escobedo was subpoenaed to testify, but was told by a prosecutor he wasn’t being called as a witness in the trial. His brother and Aleman were convicted of Macias’ murder and sentenced to life terms.

After his release from federal prison in 2018, Escobedo opened a chain of restaurants and food trucks called Benihibachi, according to a motion his lawyer submitted to terminate his probation early. The motion included a photograph of Escobedo wearing a shirt with the restaurant’s logo, chopping a tub full of onions.

His attorney, Ezekiel Cortez, urged the judge to see the good Escobedo had done after leaving prison. “As a society, you recognize that they listened. You recognize people who turned their lives around,” Cortez said at a hearing. “You recognize people who cut their ties, as in this case, with former very bad associations.”

“Mr. Escobedo proved to the whole word that he cut his ties completely,” Cortez said. “And he acquired some risks.”

Calling Escobedo “an enormous success,” U.S. District Judge Dana M. Sabraw agreed to terminate his probation early. “Free from these influences,” Sabraw said of Escobedo’s ties to drug traffickers, “you are a very productive, wonderful human being.”

Still, Escobedo flaunted his opulent lifestyle on social media in recent years. He posed for photographs with Floyd Mayweather and Al Pacino. He wore flashy tracksuits by Dolce and Gabbana and sported a diamond-encrusted Richard Mille watch. One photograph showed Escobedo holding a duffel bag full of money. In another, he embraces a member of the Mexican Mafia while holding a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne.

In a corrido, or ballad, titled “El Mago,” the group Edicion Especial sang that Escobedo had changed for the better. “A long time ago it was different,” the song goes, but today he has “los gringos” eating at his Japanese restaurants. He thinks often of his brother, “the one who is in prison.”

Investigators have not disclosed a motive for the killings. Camacho didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

De Los Angeles had been released from federal prison in December 2022, court records show. A member of the 18th Street gang called “Sad Boy,” he served 10 years for distributing methamphetamine.

After Escobedo’s death Thursday, the group Enigma Norteno put out a ballad called “El Mago Merlin.” Escobedo still hangs out in East Los Angeles and fears no one, the song goes. He baptized the child of Guzman Salazar, the kingpin’s son, and bought his “compadre” a white Lamborghini Huracan for his birthday.

“The dream,” the singer says, “has come true.”

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© 2023 Los Angeles Times

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Declaring it a threat to regional stability, the Venezuelan government said it will keep an eye on a British warship sent to Guyana to participate in a joint exercise as tensions continue to linger despite both South American nations recently agreeing to de-escalate over a border dispute.

HMS Trent was reported to have made a stop in Bridgetown, Barbados, after leaving its homeport at Gibraltar earlier this month. The vessel is scheduled to head towards Guyana this week and anchor off Georgetown to participate in a series of training exercises with the country’s navy and other allies, the BBC reported.

Venezuelan Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino López said the warship’s presence brings into question Guyana’s sincerity in agreeing to lower tensions amid the resurgence of a centuries-old border dispute.

“A warship in waters yet to be demarcated?” questioned Padrino López in his X account. “How does that fit with the commitment to good neighborliness and peaceful coexistence? And the agreement not to threaten or use force against each other under any circumstances?”

“We remain alert to these provocations that put the peace and stability of the Caribbean and our America at risk!” he warned.

Armed with a 30mm cannon, two mini-guns and several machine guns, the 297-feet long HMS Trent is mostly used to combat piracy and anti-smuggling operations. It normally carries a helicopter and a detachment of Royal Marines.

Seeking to lower tensions, Guyana President Irfaan Ali and Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met two weeks ago in St. Vincent and the Grenadine and pledged not to use force to resolve the dispute over which nation is the rightful owner of an oil- and mineral-rich region bordering the two countries, roughly the size of Florida.

The border dispute, which has been going on since the beginning of the 19th century,gained intensity following a referendum held on Dec. 3, in which the Caracas socialist regime asked Venezuelans to green-light the use of force to annex three-quarters of Guyana.

The Maduro government said that 95% of Venezuelans voted in favor of the forced annexation, but independent observers questioned the results saying that the empty polling stations seen during the vote did not support claims that more than 10 million people participated.

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© 2023 Miami Herald

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Gabriel “Sleepy” Huerta has been identified by testifying witnesses and confidential informants as an influential member of the Mexican Mafia, the prison-based organization that controls Latino gangs behind bars and on the streets of Southern California. But in a case brought this month, prosecutors accused Huerta of getting involved in a mundane squabble: A lost gun that led to a beat-down on the streets of his old neighborhood.

Already serving 17 years to life for second-degree murder, Huerta, 64, is now charged with conspiring to commit assault and gang participation. He has yet to enter a plea, and court records indicate he has not retained or been appointed a lawyer.

At a federal racketeering trial last year, a witness testified that Huerta sat on the Mexican Mafia’s “commission,” a three-man governing body that settles internal disputes. Huerta claims to no longer be affiliated with the Mexican Mafia, but Los Angeles County prosecutors say he still runs rackets from state prison, where he has been held since 1984.

Los Angeles Police Department officers used informants and a wiretap to seize modest amounts of guns, narcotics and money from members of Huerta’s old gang, Eastside Wilmas, according to a 14-page summary of the probe. Police recorded Eastside Wilmas members boasting they’d “stomped” one of their own who lost a rifle in a police raid.

It seemed an unlikely case to ensnare Huerta, who Deputy Dist. Atty. Louis Avila said is considered “a great among equals” in the Mexican Mafia, which has no leader or defined hierarchy.

“It’s absolutely not something that would generally happen,” said Avila, who leads the unit that is prosecuting Huerta. “Most of the time, you wouldn’t charge these guys unless it’s a murder. Anything else, it’s, ‘He’s a lifer, he’s not getting out. Why are we going to charge him?’”

But Avila said it was important to prove in court that Huerta and other prisoners direct crime on the streets. The case against Huerta underscores the idea, he said, that no crimes should go ignored by the state, even those committed by people already serving life sentences.

Huerta grew up in Wilmington, a working-class neighborhood that hugs the docks of the Port of Los Angeles. Raised by his mother after his father left when he was 7, Huerta told the state parole board in 2017 that he looked at the local gangsters with envy: “The wealth, the cars, the girls and the popularity. I was attracted to that.”

Asked at what age he joined the gang, Huerta told a parole commissioner “There’s really no certain membership thing [with] a certain date.”

“I live there all my life and you grow up with everybody,” he said.

At 18, Huerta was was convicted of stabbing a man to death in a brawl. He was granted parole four years and nine months into a possible life sentence.

About a year after his release, a woman Huerta was pimping solicited two men, Octavio Cardozo and Guadalupe Nunez, who were working on a car on Blinn Avenue, according to a parole commissioner’s account of the crime.

Cardozo agreed to pay $15, but after having sex said he had only $11. He borrowed $4 from a neighbor, but Nunez told him not to give the money to Huerta.

“Alright,” Huerta said. “But I’m going to come back.”

He returned 30 minutes later and killed Nunez with a single shotgun blast.

Huerta told the parole board he intended only to “scare” the men, and said Cardozo fired at him first. The issue wasn’t “the $4 or whatever,” he said, but that they “made me feel disrespected.”

Huerta was sentenced to life without parole, which was reduced on appeal to 17 years to life. Even with the chance of parole, Huerta told the board in 1997: “I want you all to know that I have no illusions about ever getting out.”

As a lifer, Huerta recalled in 2017, he “lost all hope. There was nothing to lose.”

“I was searching to be vicious,” he said, “to be a bad dude.”

Huerta killed his cellmate, Nick “Nico” Velasquez at Tehachapi prison in 1988, according to prison records reviewed by The Times. Huerta was never charged with the homicide but acknowledged at a parole hearing he “caused” his cellmate’s death.

Velasquez, a Mexican Mafia member from La Puente, was targeted for death because he’d embraced Christianity and was suspected of becoming friendly with the associate warden, according to an informant’s statement to prison authorities.

Gang defectors told authorities that Huerta was inducted into the Mexican Mafia in the mid-1980s. He denied this for decades until, at a parole hearing in 2017, he acknowledged once being affiliated with the organization but claimed to have “pulled away.”

“I’m done with that,” he said. “My life is — right now I have a full cup.”

Huerta said he spends his time studying classics, mathematics, sociology and personal finance, which taught him to “save money and invest.” He told the board he encourages fellow inmates to care for their mental health, speaks out against drug use and lobbies for reading materials and access to college coursework.

A psychologist who interviewed Huerta in prison said he was pleasant and seemed to get along well with others, with the exception of “multiple episodes of extreme violence,” according to parole records.

Huerta was a key member of a group of 16 inmates that advocated against indefinite solitary confinement in California prisons. The group organized statewide hunger strikes and pressed their case to lawmakers and in the media over conditions in the maximum-security prison at Pelican Bay.

Law enforcement officials noted the committee was drawn from the state’s four major prison gangs: the Mexican Mafia, Nuestra Familia, Aryan Brotherhood and Black Guerrilla Family. But Huerta, who spent 25 years in Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit, told the parole board his advocacy had nothing to do with organized crime.

“I truly believed that there was constitutional violations,” he said, “and I felt something — we had to do something.”

Beginning in 2014, the state agreed to transfer Huerta and others into the prison system’s general population. Bud John Phineas, an Eastside Wilmas member called “Ghost” who served 16 years in prison for attempted murder, praised Huerta’s advocacy in an interview published by “Fresh Out,” a YouTube channel that profiles formerly incarcerated people.

Phineas said Huerta organized the hunger strikes and claimed he “has learned six languages so he can communicate with other countries to let them know what’s going on. He has degrees after degrees after degrees in college.”

Phineas was arrested this year after delivering methamphetamine to an undercover police officer in an exchange that federal agents say was facilitated by Huerta.

According to an FBI agent’s affidavit, an informant introduced the undercover officer to Huerta over WhatsApp. Using a contraband cellphone, the agent wrote, Huerta offered drugs in coded language: “What exactly does he want?? Black? White? Or what??”

When the informant said he wanted meth, Huerta replied he would “have the homie get at him.”

Ten minutes later, the undercover officer got a call from someone who identified himself as “El Borracho,” Spanish for The Drunk. Agents identified Borracho as Carlos Reyes, an Eastside Wilmas member serving 54 years to life for murdering his wife after she sought a divorce.

According to the affidavit, Reyes agreed to sell the undercover officer five pounds of meth for $6,500. Reyes said his “homie” would make the delivery at a Ralphs supermarket in Gardena, according to a police report.

The next day, Phineas dropped a shopping bag through the window of an informant’s car. Inside was slightly less than five pounds of pure meth.

Phineas pleaded guilty last month in federal court to distributing meth. He has yet to be sentenced.

Huerta and Reyes are charged in state court with facilitating the deal, said Deputy Dist. Atty. Abbigail Briones. Reyes has pleaded not guilty, while Huerta has yet to enter a plea. Both men are also accused of conspiring to assault an Eastside Wilmas member.

On Feb. 4, 2020, officers from the LAPD’s Harbor Division chased Gregorio Lopez Amaya, a 19-year-old Eastside Wilmas member nicknamed “Money,” into a home on L Street, according to a police report. Inside the house, which is less than a block away from Wilmington Park Elementary School, the officers found a handgun, ammunition and an assault rifle that prosecutors allege belonged to Reyes.

WhatsApp messages showed that Lopez Amaya was selling drugs for Reyes, according to the report. After Lopez Amaya was arrested, a fellow Eastside Wilmas member texted Reyes: “He ain’t take no losses with nothing, everything all good.”

But when Lopez Amaya was released from jail six months later, his associates grew suspicious he was cooperating with the authorities. “That’s weird,” Henry Cervantes wrote in a text message to Ulises “Lil Poste” Gutierrez, whose phone was tapped. “He had like 7 charges. We need to be careful.”

Gutierrez asked if it was “cool” to “pack him out” — slang for delivering a beating.

“Handle,” Cervantes replied. “I doubt anyone is gonna speak for him. Ima verify with the homies too.”

Officers told Lopez Amaya he was in danger and advised him to “lay low,” the report says.

In a recorded call four days later, Gutierrez bragged that he and “the homies” had “stomped” Lopez Amaya, complaining to another gang member he’d “f-ed up” his ankle when he kicked Lopez Amaya in the head, according to the report.

In other wiretapped calls, Gutierrez boasted he got permission from “the big homie” to assault Lopez Amaya. He said “the homies in there” — an apparent reference to imprisoned gang members — had told him “to pack him out and cut him off.”

Gutierrez, 30, pleaded guilty to gang participation and was sentenced in October to four years and four months in prison. Cervantes, 34, has pleaded not guilty to charges of gang participation, drug and firearms possession, and conspiracy to commit assault.

Cervantes’ lawyer, Nicholas Rosenberg, told The Times he considered the case an “exaggerated prosecution,” although he acknowledged his client was caught making statements on a wiretap. Cervantes works in the oil and gas industry and had “aged out” of gang life, his lawyer said.

Referring to Huerta, Rosenberg said: “Any time they charge someone who’s already serving life, I have to ask, What’s the purpose? It doesn’t necessarily make sense, but hey — I’m not a prosecutor.”

The wiretap on Gutierrez’s phone opened a window onto a life that seemed neither glamorous nor lucrative. Eastside Wilmas members sold strips of the addiction treatment Suboxone to opioid users in withdrawal, and bought and resold $20 quantities of heroin. Two were intercepted discussing a drug deal that netted $400 in profit. They lived with their parents into their 40s. One drove a 20-year-old Honda Accord.

As prosecutors, Avila said their responsibility is to “not just go after the low-hanging fruit.” By proving in court that Huerta and Reyes directed crimes on the street from their prison cells, Avila said he hopes prison officials will tighten conditions for lifers who have so far been breaking the law “with impunity.”

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© 2023 Los Angeles Times

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A national gun owners advocacy group has vowed to appeal a federal judge’s ruling that Massachusetts’ assault weapons ban is constitutional.

Bay State resident Joseph Capen and the National Association for Gun Rights, a nonprofit advocacy group, challenged the law banning the sale and possession of assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines, arguing that it burdens their constitutional right to keep and bear arms under the Second and Fourteenth Amendments.

They filed the lawsuit in September 2022, months after the Supreme Court handed down a ruling in the landmark Bruen case, requiring states to fashion gun laws in line with the history and tradition of the Second Amendment.

Capen alleges that, if it weren’t for the ban, he would purchase certain firearms and magazines “to keep in his home for self-defense and other lawful purposes.”

Massachusetts U.S. District Court Chief Judge Dennis Saylor on Thursday denied a request to halt the ban which he said is consistent with the country’s historical tradition of limiting access to “dangerous and unusual weapons” due to their lethal nature and relative lack of use for self-defense.

Hannah Hill, NAGR’s director of legal affairs, indicated in a social media post Friday that the group will be appealing the decision to the First Circuit Court of Appeals in the new year.

“And the Grinch Award goes to our MA judge, who totally tried to ruin Christmas with this denial of preliminary injunction in our lawsuit to overturn the Romney assault weapons ban,” Hill stated on X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter. “Appeal to the 1st Circuit coming in 2024!”

The statute at issue, modeled after the 1994 Public Safety and Recreational Firearms Use Protection Act, prohibits the possession, sale, and transfer of certain semiautomatic assault weapons and magazines capable of holding more than 10 rounds of ammunition or more than five shotgun shells.

Then-Gov. Mitt Romney implemented the statute after the federal act expired in 2004.

Capen and NAGR claimed restrictions on “dangerous and unusual weapons” cannot apply to today’s firearms because they are “in common use.”

Saylor, however, countered: “The relevant history affirms the principle that in 1791, as now, there was a tradition of regulating ‘dangerous and unusual’ weapons — specifically, those that are not reasonably necessary for self-defense.”

Attorney General Andrea Campbell in February opposed the plaintiff’s request, saying that “combat-style assault rifles and large-capacity magazines … pose an inordinate risk to the safety of the public and law enforcement officers, with no meaningful utility for individual self-defense.”

On Friday, Campbell called the court’s decision a “significant win that will protect the public and continue Massachusetts’ leadership on gun violence prevention.”

Saylor found that Capen and NAGR did not “seriously challenge” their assertion that AR-15s are useful for “ordinary self-defense purposes,” as they reiterated the banned weapons are in “common use” across the country.

“The features of modern assault weapons — particularly the AR-15’s radical increases in muzzle velocity, range, accuracy, and functionality — along with the types of injuries they can inflict are so different from colonial firearms that the two are not reasonably comparable,” Saylor wrote in his order.

In June, NAGR President Dudley Brown claimed Massachusetts has been violating the Second Amendment “for decades” and that he believed the Bruen ruling would lead to the lifting of the assault weapons ban.

“If the court disagrees and refuses to grant us a preliminary injunction, we look forward to appealing to the First Circuit Court of Appeals and on to the Supreme Court if necessary,” he said. “Bans on commonly owned weapons fly in the face of both the Constitution and the Supreme Court’s Heller and Bruen rulings, and they cannot be allowed to stand.”

The upholding of the ban comes after the state House approved a sweeping gun reform bill in October that police chiefs across the state unanimously oppose.

The bill, which has yet to receive action from the Senate, looks to update the definition of assault weapons and crack down on the sale of ghost guns, among other objectives.

“While the Commonwealth annually ranks as one of the safest states in the entire country from gun violence, the Supreme Court’s Bruen decision nullified existing components of our gun laws, threatening the safety of the Commonwealth’s residents,” House Speaker Ron Mariano said in October.

NAGR has taken exception to the comprehensive bill, issuing a travel advisory in July for gun owners to and within Massachusetts in response to the proposed reforms.

“Your gun rights and your freedom are at serious risk in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts,” Brown said in a release highlighting the advisory. “If you live there you might want to pack your bags and if you are thinking of traveling there, you need to reconsider.”

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The family of a Black woman shot and killed in front of her 9-year-old daughter earlier this month by a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy has filed a claim signaling they plan to sue the county and the Sheriff’s Department for $30 million.

The potential lawsuit stems from an incident that occurred on the evening of Dec. 4, when deputies responded to a domestic violence call in Lancaster. The sheriff’s department said 27-year-old Niani Finlayson had a knife and was threatening to stab her estranged boyfriend when deputies arrived, but attorney Bradley Gage, who is representing the slain woman’s family, disputed that during a news conference Thursday morning.

“Niani was sitting on the ground when she was shot in the back,” Gage told reporters. “She was not engaging in any type of physically threatening behavior at all. In fact, she was the victim.”

The Sheriff’s Department has not yet made public body camera footage of the shooting, which Gage demanded be released in its entirety. Both he and Finlayson’s family called for the deputy who fired the fatal shots to be prosecuted.

In a statement, the department said the case would undergo a “robust review process” to figure out whether the shooting was legally justified and whether prosecutors will file criminal charges.

“In the effort of transparency, the department will be releasing the body-worn camera footage of the incident by next week, which is earlier than the required timeframe,” the statement said. “The department is deeply committed to protecting our diverse communities without bias and prejudice.”

Previously, the department identified the deputy involved in the shooting as Ty Shelton. Shelton did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

The fatal encounter started after Finlayson called 911 for help because her former boyfriend was strangling her and trying to hurt her daughter, according to Gage’s claim, which serves as the precursor to a lawsuit.

At some point before deputies arrived, 9-year-old Xaisha Davis said she handed her mother a knife.

“He was hurting my mother and me,” the girl told reporters Thursday. “I didn’t have [any] choice but to get something sharp.”

According to the claim, Finlayson was sitting on the ground inside her home and “not threatening anyone” when deputies showed up and opened fire from outside, shooting her four times through a sliding glass door.

“She called for help and cried out in pain,” according to the claim. “Her nine-year-old witnessed the entire murder and her mother’s suffering.”

Gage said Finlayson’s estranged boyfriend told deputies there was no reason for them to shoot the mother of two — and deputies allegedly responded to his statement by beating him up.

The department offered a different account in a news release posted online earlier this month. When deputies arrived at Finlayson’s East Avenue apartment, they could hear shouting inside, according to the release.

“As they attempted to make forced entry into the apartment, a female adult opened the front door, armed with a large kitchen knife,” the release said. “Finlayson told deputies she was going to stab her boyfriend for pushing her daughter.”

The mother then retreated inside the apartment, the release said, heading toward where her former boyfriend was sitting. Deputies followed her inside, and saw Finlayson grab her estranged boyfriend “in an apparent attempt to stab him.”

Then, the release said, “a deputy-involved shooting occurred.”

Finlayson fell to the floor, dropping the knife. The deputies tried giving first aid until paramedics arrived to take her to a local hospital, where she died.

During Thursday’s press conference, Xaisha accused officials of lying about her mother’s alleged threat to stab her estranged boyfriend.

“I was there,” she said. “I know the truth about everything.”

The girl said she wanted to see Shelton prosecuted. She spoke about how much she missed her mother, and how she struggled with knowing she’d eventually need to tell her 2-year-old sister what happened.

“She knows mom is definitely gone, she knows something is wrong,” Xaisha said. “It’s unfair to my little sister, it’s unfair to me.”

Shelton was involved in at least one other fatal shooting in Lancaster, also in response to a domestic violence call. County records show that in 2020 Shelton killed 62-year-old Michael Thomas as he and another deputy tried to detain him. The deputies said he tried to grab one of their guns. His fiancee disputed that, telling a local TV station that Thomas had refused to let the deputies enter the house and was turning away from them when he was shot.

County records show prosecutors declined to file charges against Shelton in that case, though they acknowledged “there may have been other reasonable options available” to him instead of killing Thomas.

“That’s another case that I will go to my grave believing was completely unjustified,” said Gage, who also represented a member of the Thomas family.

Last week, organizers with the community coalition Cancel the Contract Antelope Valley held a vigil in Lancaster for Finlayson. They called for the release of video footage of the shooting, the immediate removal of any deputies involved and an independent investigation by the FBI and other federal agencies.

Finlayson’s death marks the third time this year that a deputy’s use-of-force against a Black woman in the Antelope Valley has attracted attention. In June, a Lancaster deputy responding to a reported robbery threw a woman to the ground as she filmed their interaction outside a WinCo Foods grocery store. In July, Sheriff Robert Luna released body-camera footage showing a Palmdale deputy punching a young mother in the face while she held her 3-week-old baby in her arms, begging authorities not to take the child. Afterward, the FBI began investigating the incident and the mother filed a federal lawsuit against the county, which is still pending.

In Finlayson’s case, the claim says a possible suit could focus on allegations of wrongful death, assault, civil rights violations and more.

“This is a case about justice,” Gage said. “This is a case about protecting the community.”

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