ICE Forced to Return Two U.S. Citizen Kids It Deported in Error

Immigration and Customs Enforcement deported two 12-year-old American twin sisters to Guatemala, even after their mother—who was also deported—requested for them to stay in Florida with their grandmother. Now ICE has been ordered to bring them home.

Marly Carolina Morataya Zepeda was ordered to appear at an Orlando, Florida, ICE facility on March 9 with her “children and documents” to complete her deportation process. Her mother, Sonia Garcia Valles, waited outside the courthouse with the twins until an ICE officer told her to bring the twins into the detention center, where they were taken into custody.

The court filed a temporary restraining order against the twins’ deportation, only to learn hours later that they were already on a plane to Guatemala, even though their mother filled out the proper paperwork to have her children, who were born in Orlando, stay in the U.S.

The traumatic error is being remedied.

“Respondents are DIRECTED to coordinate with Petitioners and their counsel to facilitate, including by covering all associated costs, the IMMEDIATE AND SAFE RETURN of minor Petitioners A.E.T.M. and A.E.T.M. to the United States, specifically to the custody of their grandmother, Sonia Garcia Valles, in Orlando, Florida via the Orlando International Airport,” the court order read.

This massive mistake has become all too common during the Trump administration, even as it claims time and time again that it does not deport American citizens, much less middle schoolers.

“The Trump mass deportation push has led to ICE screwing up at levels we’ve never seen before,” American Immigration Council senior fellow Aaron Reichlin-Melnick wrote on Wednesday. “These kinds of errors have always happened on occasion in the past, but now they’re happening daily/weekly as basic accountability measures have been pushed aside in the rush to deport.”

U.S. special envoy Steve Witkoff is back showing just how clueless the Trump administration is when it comes to warmaking.

Asked Tuesday night by Fox News’s Sean Hannity to explain America’s negotiations with Iran last summer, Witkoff said the Iranians “opened up by telling us they had the unalienable right to enrich. To which we responded … that we had the unalienable right to stop them from enriching.”

Witkoff portrayed the Iranians as stubborn, alleging the country’s officials gloated about their enriched uranium. “It was a clear threat,” he said. “They were boasting about having it.”

Witkoff then added: “They said to us—and this was some challenge—‘You’re not going to get from us diplomatically what you could not achieve militarily.’ Now, yes, we had destroyed their three main enrichment and conversion centers … that was clear. They, of course, didn’t want to admit it.”

Setting aside the insinuation that Iranian officials were literally taunting the U.S. into going to war with them, Witkoff is somehow arguing that the Trump administration destroyed Iran’s uranium enrichment capabilities with its June strikes but also that Iran was still actively enriching uranium, and bragging about its enrichment, after these facilities were destroyed.

Witkoff has a track record of being concerningly obtuse on Iran. Previously, experts questioned whether Iran’s nuclear reactors could even produce the type of uranium he claimed they could.

More recently, Witkoff was asked by CNBC’s Sarah Eisen how he thought the war in Iran would end. His response? “I don’t know, Sarah.”

Iran has declared that U.S. tech and banking companies are now legitimate targets.

An Iranian media outlet affiliated with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Tasnim news agency, released a list of offices and infrastructure run by American companies, including Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia, and Oracle, and called them “Iran’s new targets,” Al Jazeera English reports.

“As the scope of the regional war expands to infrastructure war, the scope of Iran’s legitimate targets expands,” Tasnim said. The offices and infrastructure on the list are located in Persian Gulf countries and Israel.

On Wednesday, Iran’s state broadcaster said that “the enemy,” referring to the United States and Israel, had declared financial institutions as targets themselves due to an Israeli attack on a Tehran bank branch, which it called an “illegitimate and unusual act in war.”

A spokesperson for the Khatam Al Anbiya Headquarters, a group described as IRGC-owned by the United Nations, also said Wednesday that “the enemy left our hands open to targeting economic centres and banks belonging to the United States and the Zionist regime in the region.”

Iran has already attacked data centers in the Gulf, striking Amazon Web Services facilities in the UAE and Bahrain and causing outages for banking, payments, enterprise, and consumer services in the region. The move threatens to upend tech companies’ investments, as well as AI expansion in the Middle East.

OpenAI is building a 10-square-mile AI campus in the UAE called Stargate, which has involvement from Oracle, Nvidia, and Cisco. Microsoft is reportedly planning to invest $15 billion in the UAE in the next three years. But if Iran steps up its attacks on these companies’ Middle Eastern assets, all of this will be in limbo.

Many of these companies have also curried favor with the Trump administration, or have extensive U.S. government contracts. Oracle’s chairman and founder, Larry Ellison, as well as Palantir founder Peter Thiel, are both strong supporters of President Trump and may not be happy if their investments are literally blown up. Did anyone in the White House foresee the possibility of attacks on tech infrastructure? It appears not, providing more proof that there was little, if any, planning for this reckless war.

Whoever replaces Kristi Noem is going to have to deal with the mountain of paperwork she’s left behind, as multiple vendors await payments from the Department of Homeland Security, Axios reported Wednesday.

“There’s a mountain of backed-up contracts and invoices on her desk that the new guy will just have to deal with,” a source familiar with the situation at DHS told Axios.

The backlog on Noem’s desk predated the ongoing partial government shutdown, as the result of the outgoing secretary’s policy to personally approve all expenditures above $100,000. Those disruptions are now exacerbated by the shutdown.

Under Noem’s tenure, multiple contracts with immigration detention facilities across the country have lapsed, according to Axios. Camp East Montana, the country’s largest immigration detention facility, had a contract with DHS that expired at the end of February. A contract with a family detention center in Dilley, Texas—which holds dozens of immigrant children—expired at the beginning of March. New Jersey’s Delaney Hall is also operating without a contract, and many small county jails are similarly awaiting payments.

Noem has also delayed distribution of disaster relief funds through the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

A source familiar with FEMA’s delays told Axios that DHS’s front office was a “giant shit-show.”

“The ramifications of her tenure are going to be felt for years and years and years and years,” the source said. “We’re not really going to know exactly how bad it is until we have a major hurricane that unfortunately impacts someplace in the United States.”

Another source familiar with the situation at DHS told Axios that even if Noem’s review policy was reversed and “everything goes back to the way it was … it’s going to take weeks, if not months, of constant work” to restore funding to DHS vendors.

DHS adviser Corey Lewandowski told Axios that the government shutdown limited certain spending, and he insisted that all possible funding had been distributed.

The Department of Homeland Security wants access to the Federal Parent Locator Service, which is considered to be the government’s largest, most detailed database, ProPublica reports.

The database, which Bethanne Barnes of the Administration for Children and Families called “the most powerful people-finder system that the U.S. government has,” exists so that the government can locate parents who owe child support if they move states or change their employment status. It holds the name, Social Security number, address, and pay of every single employed person in the country.

The Locator Service also holds the names of every single child involved in a child support case, along with their gender, birth date, Social Security number, and family members. It also notes if they or their mother have experienced domestic violence—something that potential abusers within law enforcement would be able to see if given access to the database.

Child support workers at the state level have expressed concern that employers will no longer report new hire information to them out of fear of DHS retribution, which in turn will bog down the child support system and hurt children and their parents in the process.

“And if we’re not learning from employers when a parent who owes child support gets a new job, who loses in that situation?” said Kate Cooper Richardson, Oregon’s former child support program lead. “The one in five U.S. children who rely on consistent and regular child support.”

It’s up to the Department of Health and Human Services to approve this access request. It has yet to comment.

Attorney General Pam Bondi has left her apartment in Washington, D.C., and moved to a military base in the area after reportedly facing threats from drug cartels and critics of her handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case.

The New York Times, citing unnamed sources, reports that the move took place within the last month and that federal law enforcement saw an uptick in criticism and threats against Bondi. These threats increased after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was abducted in January. Bondi joins other Trump administration officials who have moved to military housing, including Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Kristi Noem, Pete Hegseth, Army Secretary Daniel P. Driscoll, and Navy Secretary John Phelan.

The Trump administration has not disclosed whether any of these officials are paying for their new accommodations, although a spokesperson for Noem, the outgoing Homeland Security secretary, told the Times last year that she was paying “fair-market rent.”

Many of these officials were targeted by protesters upset with the Trump administration’s policies. At his previous residence in Arlington, Virginia, Miller was met with organized protests from a group called Arlington Neighbors United, which put up posters with his address alleging he’d committed “crimes against humanity” and wrote chalk messages on the sidewalk in front of his house saying that “Miller is preying on families.”

These moves to military bases are a hefty cost to taxpayers. Hegseth’s home on “Generals’ Row” at Fort McNair reportedly needed more than $137,000 in renovations before he could move in. Plus, military resources have to be expended to keep political appointees protected on the bases, while taking away homes from service members. If these Trump officials have angered the public enough that they can’t live among them, perhaps they should reexamine whether the administration’s policies are actually welcomed by the people they are supposed to be serving.

Iran was laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz while Donald Trump declared he was thinking of taking it over.

At least two people familiar with U.S. intelligence told CNN Tuesday that Iran began laying mines in recent days, but noted that the operation is still in an early phase. They estimated that Iran has so far only laid a few dozen mines and still retains upward of 80 percent to 90 percent of its mine layers, allowing for potentially hundreds of more mine placements within the bottleneck waterway, reported CNN.

The news broke hours after Trump told CBS News that he felt the war was “very complete” and was “thinking about taking [the Strait of Hormuz] over” as a result.

The president’s tune changed very quickly after reports on Iran’s mine operation began to circulate.

“If Iran has put out any mines in the Hormuz Strait, and we have no reports of them doing so, we want them removed, IMMEDIATELY!” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “If for any reason mines were placed, and they are not removed forthwith, the Military consequences to Iran will be at a level never seen before. If, on the other hand, they remove what may have been placed, it will be a giant step in the right direction!”

Minutes later, Trump issued another statement declaring that U.S. forces had “hit and completely destroyed” 10 inactive mine-laying boats in the area.

Situated between Iran and the United Arab Emirates, the Strait of Hormuz is the single most important energy transit point in the world, funneling approximately one-fifth of all crude oil shipments. Tehran has long threatened to close off the strait if Iran were under attack, effectively sealing the only sea passage from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the rest of the open ocean.

The U.S. could be caught in a difficult position if Iran chooses to escalate its mine-laying operation. In January, the Navy decommissioned four Avengers-class mine countermeasures ships that were stationed in the Persian Gulf, reported The War Zone at the time. Despite plans to scrap the boats, the vessels were transported to Philadelphia via a heavy-lift vessel. It was not clear why they were not retained and broken down in the region.

The Navy has deferred the responsibility of mine hunting to a trio of Independence-class littoral combat ships, or LCSs, commonly referred to as “little crappy ships.” Three littoral combat ships, the USS Santa Barbara, the USS Canberra, and the USS Tulsa, are operating near the strait.

The LCSs were constructed for coastal support and combat, but proved neither dependable enough nor strong enough for that mission, lacking adequate firepower. They were also slated for retirement before the war began, Task and Purpose reported in February.

It remains to be seen if the LCSs are capable of countering Iran’s mine operation. The two ship classes are constructed entirely differently: The newer ones feature a metal hull, while the older ships were built with fiberglass-coated wooden hulls to reduce vulnerability. And two of the three LCSs were fitted with operational mine countermeasure packages just last year “after more than a decade of fits, starts, and failed systems,” reported USNI News.

Democratic lawmakers are demanding answers about how Kristi Noem’s Department of Homeland Security awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to an eight-day-old media company.

In a series of letters Tuesday, Senators Richard Blumenthal and Peter Welch requested information and documents from three companies with ties to Noem’s inner circle. The organizations had received a total of $220 million to make a slate of anti-immigrant ads, the backlash to which likely contributed to Noem’s firing earlier this month.

The first letter was to Safe America Media, a company that received a $143 million no-bid contract to produce a number of advertisements for DHS. It was later reported that the company had only been formed eight days before it won the nine-figure government contract.

“As far as we can tell, Safe America Media has no office, no website, and no social media presence,” the lawmakers wrote to Michael McElwain, a veteran Republican operative who appeared to own the property associated with the company.

The second letter was to the Strategy Group, which received a subcontract to work on Safe America Media’s ad campaign, receiving a total of $226,137 for five film shoots, 45 video, and six radio ad spots.

Strategy Group CEO Benjamin Yoho is married to Tricia McLaughlin, a former spokesperson for DHS who departed her role earlier this year. Yoho has a long-standing relationship with Noem, having produced advertisements for her 2022 gubernatorial campaign and beyond. The outgoing secretary was reportedly put in touch with the agency by her alleged paramour and chief adviser, Corey Lewandowski.

McLaughlin claimed on social media that neither Yoho nor the Strategy Group “have ever had a contract with DHS.” But in their letter, Welch and Blumenthal noted that the Strategy Group admitted that it had indeed received a subcontract.

The third letter was to Jay Connaughton, the managing partner at People Who Think, a marketing consulting firm that received a $77 million no-bid contract to produce the same slate of ads. Connaughton is also connected to Lewandowski; the two worked together on Louisiana Governor Jeff Landy’s 2023 campaign.

The lawmakers requested copies of contracts, subcontracts, and invoices, as well as all correspondence between the companies and DHS.

An employee at Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency may have taken Social Security data with him to a new job, in what would be a major security breach.

The Washington Post reports that the Social Security Administration’s inspector general is looking into a whistleblower complaint that a former DOGE software engineer claimed he had access to two sensitive SSA databases and was planning to share the information with a private employer. Seventy million Americans rely on the SSA, but hundreds of millions are alleged to be affected.

The inspector general told Congress and the Government Accountability Office about the investigation, and the whistleblower spoke with the Post anonymously out of fear of retaliation. The complaint reportedly states that the former DOGE employee worked at the SSA last year before moving to a government contractor in October. He allegedly told several of his co-workers that he had two restricted databases containing U.S. citizens’ private information, with at least one on a thumb drive.

The databases, named “Numident” and the “Master Death File,” contain the Social Security numbers, places and dates of birth, citizenship, race and ethnicity, and parents’ names of over 500 million living and dead Americans. The complaint doesn’t specifically state when the engineer told his co-workers about the databases, but one alleged event took place in January, when the complaint was filed with the inspector general.

The engineer allegedly told the whistleblower that he needed help transferring data from the thumb drive to a personal computer to “sanitize” the data before using it at the company. He then told colleagues that once personal details were scrubbed, he wanted to upload it to his company’s systems. He said to a colleague, who refused to help him out of legal concerns, that he expected a pardon from President Trump if his actions were illegal.

The SSA and the engineer’s company, when contacted by the Post, hadn’t heard of the complaint. They then reportedly looked into the allegations but didn’t find any supporting evidence.

Congressional Democrats informed about the whistleblower complaint were alarmed at the security implications of such a massive data breach.

“Not only has an ex-DOGE bro been accused of running around with the Social Security information of every American on a flash drive, he also may have the ability to edit and manipulate data at the Social Security Administration at will,” said Representative Robert Garcia, the ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, in a statement. “This is dangerous and outrageous, and Oversight Committee Democrats will fight for transparency and accountability.”

Last year, DOGE employees gained alarming access to sensitive information across government agencies, not just in the SSA. That information could be used for terrifying purposes, including by corporations and foreign actors. If this whistleblower complaint is accurate, the entire country could be at risk.

Married women will need to update their identification documentation in order to vote if the SAVE America Act passes Congress, according to White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt.

Responding to a reporter’s question Tuesday in the White House briefing room, Leavitt argued that the act—if realized—would not prevent married women from voting. Seconds later, she admitted that the bill actually would require married women and anyone else who has changed their name to re-register before they vote.

“The Democrats have created this myth.… Let me be very clear: The SAVE America Act does not prohibit anyone from voting, with the exception of illegal aliens,” Leavitt said. “As far as married women who have changed their name, if they’ve already registered to vote, they’re entirely unaffected by the SAVE Act. For the small fraction of individuals who have changed their name or their address, they can still register to vote, of course. They just have to go through their state processes to update that documentation.

“This is something that the American people, married women, and minorities—people all across this country who the Democrats are insultingly saying cannot do this—they’re already doing it every day. Going to the Social Security office, going to the DMV. I think it’s frankly insulting,” Leavitt said.

The SAVE America Act suggests numerous amendments to the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, including line items that would abolish mail-in voting, require voters to bring proof of citizenship and proof of residency to register to vote, require voter ID, and mandate voter roll purges every 30 days, an enormous bureaucratic task that would place undue burdens on local election officials.

“This is popular and rooted in common sense,” Leavitt said while outlining the proposed changes, repeating that the alterations were “simple.”

But the act doesn’t stop there. It would also sprinkle in a couple other superficially unrelated regulations, including a federal law to prevent men from competing in women’s sports and a ban on “transgender mutilation surgery.”

“Passing the SAVE America Act is the most important thing that Republicans and, frankly, Democrats can do to strengthen election integrity and protect our democracy,” Leavitt insisted.

Yet the SAVE Act has been anything but popular: Republicans’ first effort to pass the SAVE Act failed in late 2025 under enormous nationwide opposition. Previous versions included demands that Americans bring proof of citizenship to the polls every time they vote, though that stipulation has since been erased.

Donald Trump ordered House Republicans on Monday to pass another revised version of the voter ID bill, even though a previously passed iteration already awaits a Senate vote. The president spent roughly 13 minutes of an hours-long speech on the topic while speaking to conservative lawmakers at his Doral resort, insisting the SAVE America bill should be the party’s “number one priority.”

“It will guarantee the midterms,” Trump said. “If you don’t get it, big trouble, my opinion.”

It is not clear how barring undocumented immigrants—who, along with legal noncitizen residents, already cannot vote—could “guarantee” the outcome of the election. It is far easier to imagine, however, how crowds of perfectly eligible voters could be sent away from the polls due to insufficient documentation. More than half of all Americans do not have a passport, according to a 2023 YouGov survey, and requesting official birth certificate copies can take significant time. What’s more, acquiring passports or copies of a birth certificate costs money that some Americans may not be able to afford.

Further still, it is easy to imagine how state agencies such as the DMV or Social Security offices, which already notoriously feature grueling wait times, could buckle under the stress of millions of Americans suddenly needing to register—particularly as the Trump administration plans to decrease SSA field office visitors by as much as 50 percent.

Addressing the GOP caucus, Trump said that failure is not an option, and underscored that he would not sign any legislation until it passes. In a phone call with NBC News last week, Trump said he would “close government over” the issue.

“I don’t think we should approve anything until this is approved,” Trump said at the Republican retreat.

Trump already tried and failed to implement voter ID in June. At the time, a federal judge excoriated the president’s efforts, arguing that adding layers of difficulty to the voting process would only serve to harm eligible voters by adding significant barriers before they can cast their ballots.

Critics argue that restrictions on the front end of the electoral process—such as one-day voting, mail-in ballots, and requiring day-of voter ID—would minimize voter turnout and limit American democracy’s ability to represent its constituents. This would especially be true in high-density areas such as the nation’s biggest cities, where those stipulations would significantly drain resources (such as the number of volunteers required at voting stations) and require more time to process, potentially leading to more delays that Republicans could weaponize to further restrict voter access.