Venezuela, Drug Boats and Trump’s Latest Claim: What to Know - The New York Times

Is Venezuela Flooding the U.S. With Drugs? Here’s What to Know.

"The Trump administration says Venezuela is sending vast amounts of cocaine to the United States. Venezuela’s role in the drug trade is overstated, experts say.

Sept. 3, 2025Updated 12:40 p.m. ET

The U.S. Navy warship USS Sampson in Panama City on Tuesday.Martin Bernetti/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The United States has deployed several Navy ships and thousands of troops near Venezuelan waters. The Trump administration says the military buildup is intended to target Venezuelan drug shipments to the United States.

This week, the moves took a drastic turn. President Trump said Tuesday that U.S. forces had killed 11 people in a strike on a boat in the southern Caribbean that he said was transporting drugs from Venezuela. He posted a video that he said depicted the attack. Venezuela’s government claimed, without offering evidence, that the video was made with artificial intelligence.

U.S. officials have said that Venezuelan cocaine shipments are contributing to overdose deaths in the United States and that cocaine is often laced with fentanyl. They accuse the country’s autocratic leader, Nicolás Maduro, of overseeing a narcotics cartel.

Mr. Maduro, at a news conference on Monday in the capital, Caracas, called the naval buildup “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years.”

What exactly is Venezuela’s role in the drug trade? And does Mr. Maduro have links to the illicit business?

Venezuela doesn’t produce much cocaine, but it helps move it around the world.

Venezuela is not a major producer of cocaine but serves as a transit hub for it. The country’s long, porous border with Colombia — the world’s largest producer — and long coastline provides traffickers access to global markets.

Weak state institutions and widespread corruption have entrenched the trade. U.S. indictments and leaked Colombian records describe Venezuelan security forces as overseeing drug shipments worth billions of dollars.

Estimates by the United States in 2020 said that 200 to 250 metric tons of cocaine flowed through Venezuela annually — roughly 10 to 13 percent of the global supply.

But other countries have a much bigger hand in moving cocaine. In 2018, 1,400 metric tons of cocaine moved through Guatemala, U.S. data shows. And Venezuela’s domestic cocaine cultivation is negligible, experts said.

A port facility in La Guaira, Venezuela, last year. Venezuela has a long coastline along the Caribbean, and experts say it provides drug traffickers access to global markets.Leonardo Fernandez Viloria/Reuters

Unlike Mexican cartels, Venezuelan gangs rely more on local extortion than on drug trafficking to generate money, according to David A. Smilde, a sociologist who studies violence in Venezuela at Tulane University.

Venezuela plays virtually no role in the fentanyl trade.

Fentanyl is almost entirely produced in Mexico with chemicals imported from China, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, the Justice Department and the Congressional Research Service. Mexico is close to the U.S. market, and Mexican cartels already control many fentanyl smuggling routes.

There is no proof that it is manufactured or trafficked from Venezuela or anywhere else in South America.

While U.S. cocaine sometimes shows traces of fentanyl, according to the D.E.A. and academic studies, experts say any mixing would happen in Mexico or inside the United States, not in South America.

Maduro has been charged with drug trafficking.

U.S. prosecutors have accused Venezuela’s president of leading the Cartel de los Soles (Cartel of the Suns), a term used to describe networks of military and political elites who profit from drug smuggling and other illicit trades.

In 2020, the Justice Department charged Mr. Maduro and 14 accomplices with conspiring with Colombian armed groups to ship cocaine to the United States, claiming he personally negotiated shipments and supplied weapons to traffickers.

Mr. Maduro has not faced trial, and many of the charges remain unproven. But analysts say illicit revenues — from corrupt contracts, drug trafficking, illegal gold mining and the diversion of funds meant for state programs — help secure their loyalty and sustain his rule. These funds flow to Mr. Maduro and his inner circle, experts say, including the armed forces and party elites — an example of how the Cartel de los Soles functions.

“If there’s one thing that Maduro is good at, it’s keeping the upper ranks fat and happy,” said Geoff Ramsey, a senior fellow for Venezuela at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institute. “He’s bought off the military leadership and party apparatus through massive patronage schemes and a nationwide web of corruption.”

Experts say the Cartel de los Soles is not a cartel in the conventional sense, but shorthand for Venezuela’s criminal patronage system. The phrase, used since the 1990s, refers to the sun insignia worn by Venezuelan generals who have been implicated in trafficking.

President of Venezuela Nicolás Maduro called the U.S. naval buildup “the greatest threat our continent has seen in the last 100 years.”Jesus Vargas/Getty Images

“There’s nobody that would say ‘I’m part of the Cartel de Los Soles,’” Mr. Smilde said. “It’s really just a sort of fiction that’s become an urban legend.”

Venezuelan officials have long had ties, experts say, to Colombian armed groups involved in cocaine, first with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, and more recently with the National Liberation Army, or ELN, which has operations inside Venezuela.

Several former senior officials who have broken with the government have accused top leaders of allowing or directly participating in the trade.

Attorney General Pam Bondi recently announced a $50 million reward for information leading to Mr. Maduro’s arrest.

“He is one of the largest narcotraffickers in the world and a threat to our national security,” she said last month.

The U.S. naval buildup isn’t likely to prevent much smuggling.

Most cocaine bound for the United States moves through the Pacific, not the Caribbean, according to data from Colombia, the United States and the United Nations.

About 74 percent of cocaine shipments in 2019 were transported through the Pacific, mostly from Colombia and Ecuador, compared with 24 percent through the Caribbean, according to D.E.A. data.

“The Pacific Corridor has established itself as the main cocaine transit route to North America,” the Colombian Navy reported this year.

Cocaine routes are diffuse and resilient, and the United States has failed at disrupting them despite decades of effort and billions of dollars.

The strike seems intended to make a point.

Analysts said the deployment was more a show of force than an antidrug strategy. Mr. Ramsey said that Mr. Trump, who campaigned on ending wars, was unlikely to attack Venezuela. 

“This is less of a counternarcotics operation, more of a show of strength,” Mr. Ramsey said. “This is ultimately an attempt to saber-rattle and see what comes out of it.”

An oil tanker in Lake Maracaibo in Venezuela in March. The Trump administration has allowed the energy company Chevron to restart operations in Venezuela.Henry Chirinos via, Shutterstock

The move also plays to domestic politics, he added. Many Venezuelan and Cuban voters in South Florida who oppose any business ties between Venezuela and the United States were angered by the Trump administration’s decision to allow Chevron to restart oil operations in Venezuela, and by direct negotiations that led to the resumption of deportation flights to Caracas. Oil is a major source of revenue for Venezuela.

Both developments were seen as a sign of warming relations that conferred legitimacy on Mr. Maduro.

The naval buildup provides a way to demonstrate toughness without jeopardizing U.S. policy, analysts said.

The move could also provide another advantage. Mr. Trump has invoked the Alien Enemies Act, a wartime law, to deport Venezuelans without due process.

A U.S. federal appeals court on Tuesday rejected the use of the act to expel the Venezuelans, saying the act did not apply given that the United States was not at war with Venezuela.

The Supreme Court is likely to make the final ruling on the issue.

The administration could use the naval deployment and the attack on the boat to justify the use of the law, Mr. Smilde said — particularly if Venezuela retaliates.

“Then that’s plausible for them to say, oh, we have this open conflict with Venezuela,” he said.

Julie Turkewitz contributed reporting from Bogotá.

Genevieve Glatsky is a reporter for The Times, based in Bogotá, Colombia."

Venezuela, Drug Boats and Trump’s Latest Claim: What to Know - The New York Times

Appeals Court Blocks Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans - The New York Times

Appeals Court Blocks Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans

"The case appears set to return to the Supreme Court in a decisive battle over President Trump’s use of the 18th-century law to deport migrants.

Sept. 3, 2025Updated 9:39 a.m. ET

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit was the first time that federal appellate judges had weighed in on the substantive question of whether President Trump had properly invoked the Alien Enemies Act.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

A federal appeals court late Tuesday rejected President Trump’s attempts to use an 18th-century wartime law to deport immigrants he has accused of belonging to a violent Venezuelan street gang.

The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, in New Orleans, was the first time that federal appellate judges had weighed in on the substantive question of whether Mr. Trump had properly invoked the law, the Alien Enemies Act, as part of his aggressive deportation agenda. While the ruling by a divided three-judge panel of one of the most conservative courts in the country was a defeat for the administration, the issue was still likely to be heard by the Supreme Court.

Mr. Trump had made the Alien Enemies Act, which was passed in 1798, the centerpiece of his earliest efforts to summarily deport a group of Venezuelan immigrants he claimed were members of the street gang Tren de Aragua. In March, he issued a presidential proclamation that drew on the law’s sweeping powers to round up and expel members of a hostile nation in times of declared war or during an invasion or predatory incursion.

But the appellate panel, in a 2-to-1 decision, rejected his assertions that the American homeland was in fact under invasion by Tren de Aragua, rebuffing the idea that immigration, even at a large scale, was synonymous with a military breach of U.S. borders.

“A country’s encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt or to otherwise harm the United States,” Judge Leslie H. Southwick wrote for the panel’s majority. “There is no finding that this mass immigration was an armed, organized force or forces.”

That finding could have legal and political implications given that Mr. Trump has used claims that immigrants are invading the United States not only to justify his use of extraordinary laws like the Alien Enemies Act but also to devise a broader anti-immigration narrative.

The Fifth Circuit’s ruling was the latest example of federal courts questioning the president’s basic version of reality and pushing back on his attempts to effectively manufacture crises as a way to grab more power.

Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled that Mr. Trump had exceeded his authority by claiming that a national economic emergency gave him the right to impose steep tariffs on several countries.

On Monday, a federal judge in San Francisco rejected Mr. Trump’s assertions that a “rebellion” against immigration raids in Los Angeles warranted the use of the Marines and National Guard troops to suppress it.

“There were indeed protests in Los Angeles, and some individuals engaged in violence,” Judge Charles R. Breyer wrote. “Yet there was no rebellion, nor was civilian law enforcement unable to respond to the protests and enforce the law.”

The decision by the Fifth Circuit panel barred the Trump administration from using the act to deport a group of people accused of being members of Tren de Aragua being held in an immigration detention center in Northern Texas until further notice. It would also likely serve as a ban on expelling other Venezuelan immigrants being held in other detention centers across the country.

Moreover, the ruling kept in place a provision that requires officials to provide any immigrants who might be expelled under the law with a week’s advance warning before their removal.

It was hailed by the American Civil Liberties Union, which has represented the Venezuelan immigrants.

“The Trump administration’s unprecedented use of a wartime statute during peacetime was properly rejected by the court,” said Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the A.C.L.U. who argued the case in front of the appeals court. “This is an enormous victory for the rule of law, making clear that the president cannot simply declare a military emergency and then invoke whatever powers he wants.”

Judge Southwick, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, was joined in the majority by Judge Irma C. Ramirez, a Biden appointee. The third judge on the panel, Andrew S. Oldham, a Trump appointee, assailed his colleagues in a 131-page dissent for questioning the president’s authority.

“Today the majority holds that President Trump is just an ordinary civil litigant,” Judge Oldham wrote. “His declaration of a predatory incursion is not conclusive. Far from it. Rather, President Trump must plead sufficient facts — as if he were some run-of-the-mill plaintiff in a breach-of-contract case — to convince a federal judge that he is entitled to relief.”

The panel’s decision was somewhat surprising given that Judge Southwick and Judge Oldham had repeatedly interrupted Mr. Gelernt during oral arguments in June.

Judge Oldham in particular had suggested that presidents should be granted great deference when it comes to deciding questions of war or foreign policy. But the panel ultimately rejected the administration’s claims that even federal judges should not be able to question the president’s invocation of laws like the Alien Enemies Act.

The case in front of the Fifth Circuit followed a series of rulings from district court judges across the country, most of whom have also rejected Mr. Trump’s assertion that the United States was being invaded by members of Tren de Aragua.

In a small but Pyrrhic victory for the administration, the panel agreed it was possible that gang members were working in concert with the administration of Nicolás Maduro, the Venezuelan president, and therefore could be thought of as agents of a hostile foreign government. But even that finding, the panel ruled, was not enough to justify invoking the Alien Enemies Act to deport the men.

The case resulting in the court’s decision emerged from an emergency petition the A.C.L.U. filed in April in Federal District Court in Abilene, Texas. It sought to stop the administration from deporting a group of Venezuelan men from an immigration detention center in nearby Anson.

After an all-day scramble, the petition ended up in front of the Supreme Court, which issued a narrow ruling saying that the Venezuelan men needed to be given ample time and opportunity to contest their removal under the Alien Enemies Act.

Ultimately, the Supreme Court sent the case back to the Fifth Circuit with instructions to consider two issues: the substantive question of whether Mr. Trump’s use of the act was legal in the first place and a narrower one about how much — and what sort of — warning immigrants should be given before being expelled under the law.

Now that the appeals court panel has answered those questions, the case could end up back at the Supreme Court.

John Yoon and Francesca Regalado contributed reporting.

Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump. "

Appeals Court Blocks Trump’s Use of Alien Enemies Act to Deport Venezuelans - The New York Times

Federal Appeals Court Reinstates an F.T.C. Commissioner Fired by Trump - The New York Times

Federal Appeals Court Reinstates an F.T.C. Commissioner Fired by Trump

"The court said the commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, had been illegally terminated “without cause.”

Sept. 2, 2025

The Democratic Party’s Troubles

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia on Tuesday reinstated Rebecca Kelly Slaughter to the Federal Trade Commission, saying she had been fired without cause.Susan Walsh/Associated Press

A federal appeals court on Tuesday reinstated a Democrat who was fired by President Trump from the Federal Trade Commission earlier this year, dealing a blow to Mr. Trump’s monthslong attempt to permanently remove her from the consumer protection and antitrust enforcement agency. 

In a split 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that the Trump administration’s attempt to block the commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, from resuming her role at the F.T.C. had “no prospect of success.” The court said that Mr. Trump had fired her without cause rather than on the required grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

In March, Mr. Trump dismissed Ms. Slaughter and another Democrat, Alvaro Bedoya, in an attempt to assert control over agencies that regulate companies and workplaces. A letter to one of the commissioners, which was reviewed by The New York Times, said: “Your continued service on the F.T.C. is inconsistent with my administration’s priorities.”

Read the Appeals Court’s Decision

In a split 2-to-1 decision, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia said that President Trump had fired a commissioner, Rebecca Kelly Slaughter, without the required grounds of “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”

Read Document 29 pages

Mr. Bedoya fought the dismissal but resigned in June, citing financial reasons. Ms. Slaughter pressed on with her suit to resume her role at the F.T.C., saying she was fired without cause, and in July a federal court ruled in her favor. The Trump administration filed for a stay of that decision with the appeals court, whose decision on Tuesday rejected its arguments. 

Since March, the F.T.C. has been led only by Republicans. Ms. Slaughter said in an interview Tuesday evening that she planned to go to the F.T.C. on Wednesday morning to work.

“Amid the efforts by the Trump administration to illegally abolish independent agencies, including the Federal Reserve, I’m heartened the court has recognized that he is not above the law,” Ms. Slaughter said.

Cecilia Kang reports on technology and regulatory policy for The Times from Washington. She has written about technology for over two decades."

Federal Appeals Court Reinstates an F.T.C. Commissioner Fired by Trump - The New York Times

OMG! Trump gets CAUGHT ON TAPE as TOTAL HAVOC BREAKS LOOSE

 

Trump Administration Live Updates: Judge Says President’s L.A. Troop Deployment Was Illegal

​

A federal judge ruled that President Trump’s deployment of 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles in June violated the Posse Comitatus Act. The ruling accused Trump of turning the troops into a police force and ordered the remaining troops to be released or limited to guarding federal buildings.

​

Updated 

Sept. 2, 2025, 10:37 a.m. ET3 minutes ago

President Trump mobilized National Guard troops in California in June.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York Times

Where Things Stand

• L.A. deployment: A federal judge in California said President Trump had violated the law with his deployment of roughly 5,000 Marines and National Guard troops to Los Angeles over immigration protests in June. The ruling accused Mr. Trump of effectively turning the soldiers into a police force, saying he and his co-defendants had “violated the Posse Comitatus Act,” which generally prohibits the use of the military to enforce domestic law. Read more ›

• Epstein case: As lawmakers return from recess, a House committee plans to meet on Tuesday with 10 people who have accused the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein of sex trafficking, putting further attention on an issue President Trump has sought to downplay. Read more ›

• Trump announcement: Mr. Trump will make “an exciting announcement related to the Department of Defense” on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

President Trump mobilized National Guard troops in California in June.Mark Abramson for The New York Times

The Trump administration illegally used thousands of military troops in Southern California, a federal judge said on Tuesday, in a ruling that accused the president of effectively turning nearly 5,000 Marines and National Guard soldiers into a national police force.

The ruling, by Judge Charles R. Breyer of the Federal District Court in San Francisco, came more than two months into a contentious deployment that was set off by immigration protests in June and has since dwindled to about 300 National Guard soldiers. The judge ordered that the remaining troops should either be released or limited to guarding federal buildings, but he placed his injunction on hold for 10 days.

Sept. 2, 2025, 8:21 a.m. ET

President Trump will make “an exciting announcement related to the Department of Defense” on Tuesday, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. 

Representative James Comer, Republican of Kentucky, has issued a subpoena to the Department of Justice and to Jeffrey Epstein’s estate for documents related to his case.Kenny Holston/The New York Times

A House committee plans to meet on Tuesday with 10 people who have accused the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein of sex trafficking, putting further attention on an issue President Trump has sought to downplay.

Mr. Trump’s supporters have been galvanized by conspiracy theories that Mr. Epstein was only one among a cabal of pedophiles in the upper echelons of American society. Mr. Epstein died in 2019 while in prison awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, a former mayor of New York City, advised President Trump during his 2016 presidential campaign and served as his lawyer during his first term.Kendrick Brinson for The New York Times

President Trump said on Monday that he would award Rudolph W. Giuliani, his onetime lawyer and a former mayor of New York City, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, two days after Mr. Giuliani was injured in a car accident.

In a statement posted to Truth Social, Mr. Trump called Mr. Giuliani “the greatest mayor in the history of New York City, and an equally great American Patriot“

“A Dark Path”: Ex-State Dept. Official Blasts Trump’s Plans for Postwar Gaza | Democracy Now!

 

“A Dark Path”: Ex-State Dept. Official Blasts Trump’s Plans for Postwar Gaza | Democracy Now!

Trump Administration Deports Jamaican Man to African Prison Years After U.S. Sentence - The New York Times

Man Who’d Served His Time in U.S. Is Deported to an African Prison

"The case of Orville Etoria highlights a tension in President Trump’s deportation agenda, in which immigrants can be sent abroad and detained indefinitely.

Sept. 1, 2025Updated 9:35 a.m. ET

An undated photograph of Orville Etoria on his graduation day.via Margaret McKen

After fatally shooting a man in the head in Brooklyn in 1996, Orville Etoria was convicted of murder and given a prison sentence of 25 years to life. During his incarceration, Mr. Etoria, a Jamaican citizen with legal residency in the United States, was ordered deported by an immigration judge.

But upon his release in 2021, immigration officials allowed him to stay in America, provided he complete annual check-ins with the authorities.

To those close to Mr. Etoria, 62, it was a reprieve that gave him a second chance at life. He earned a bachelor’s degree while behind bars, successfully completed parole after he got out, got a job at a men’s shelter and started pursuing a master’s degree in divinity.

To those who support President Trump’s stated mission to deport the “worst of the worst” and other immigrants in record numbers, Mr. Etoria is exactly the kind of dangerous felon who should be expelled from the United States.

In July, Mr. Etoria became a target of Mr. Trump’s immigration crackdown. He was among five men with criminal records deported to a prison in the kingdom of Eswatini, a southern African nation where none of the men hold citizenship. A Trump administration official called them “barbaric” and said that the men’s home countries had refused to accept them.

Mr. Etoria’s case represents a tension at the heart of the administration’s deportation agenda. Some legal experts argue that there is little justification for sending immigrants to far-flung countries where they have never been and can be detained indefinitely without charges, as is the case for Mr. Etoria. These critics argue that the administration is unnecessarily putting deportees at risk by sending them to unfamiliar nations where they have few prospects or access to due process, instead of simply sending them home.

In a statement to The New York Times, the Department of Homeland Security countered that Mr. Etoria should have been deported long ago. “Our message is clear: Criminals are not welcome in the United States,” the statement said.

Mr. Etoria has not seen a lawyer since his arrival in Eswatini, his lawyers say, and family members say they have had little contact with him and are worried about his condition.

Mr. Etoria’s aunt Margaret McKen asserted that he should have been deported to Jamaica, where he holds a valid passport.

“It’s inhumane,” she said. “He paid the penalty for what he did. Why is he in prison again?”

Neither Eswatini nor the United States has explained why Mr. Etoria is being held despite completing his sentence in America and not being accused of any new crimes.

Since the early days of Mr. Trump’s second term, his government has brokered deals with countries to accept deportees from other nations. Immigration officials have instituted new rules that allow these third-country deportations from the United States in as little as six hours.

Some experts say the policy is part of an effort to encourage people to leave the United States voluntarily or risk being sent to a distant, unknown land. The administration has already sent foreign nationals to third countries that have concerning human rights records, including El Salvador and South Sudan.

In its statement, D.H.S. warned that immigrants who commit crimes in the United States should expect to “end up in CECOT, Eswatini, South Sudan, or another third country.” (CECOT is a notorious prison in El Salvador.)

The Eswatini government at one point requested a half-billion dollars from the United States in exchange for taking in third-country deportees, according to documents obtained by The Times.

The documents indicate that Eswatini was willing to take more than 150 people from other nations for a cash payout of more than $10 million from the United States.

Eswatini officials also asked whether the United States expected deportees to be put on trial and sentenced by local officials once they arrived.

A spokeswoman for Eswatini’s government declined to comment on the details outlined in the documents, including on the amounts of money involved.

Immigration records show that Mr. Etoria was ordered deported in 2009, while he was still incarcerated. Matthew Hudak, a former senior official with the U.S. Border Patrol, said that if foreign nationals completed their sentences in the United States, immigration officials should work to deport them.

“When someone makes the decision to leave their home country,” he said, “they are agreeing to subject themselves to the laws of the country they are entering.”

Jamaican officials said it was untrue that their country had been unwilling to take Mr. Etoria. “Our position is that we do not refuse any of our nationals, regardless of whatever they have done,” Joan Thomas Edwards, Jamaica’s top diplomat in southern Africa, said in an interview this month.

Representatives of the Jamaican government visited Mr. Etoria in the Eswatini prison on Aug. 21, according to a statement from the island’s foreign minister. The minister, Kamina Johnson Smith, said Mr. Etoria was in good spirits and receiving necessary medical attention. The government was working to get him returned to Jamaica, she said.

Officials with the International Organization for Migration also visited Mr. Etoria and the other deportees last month at the request of Eswatini’s government, offering them humanitarian assistance and support in returning to their home countries if they want to, a spokeswoman for the organization said.

Mr. Etoria came to the United States on a green card in 1976 at age 12. He joined his mother, who had been sponsored by a family she worked for as a nanny, said Ms. McKen, his aunt. He had tough times early in life, she said. He saw his mother flee from his abusive father. In the United States, he struggled to adjust and was bullied in school, she said.

Mr. Etoria has a history of drug abuse, which he has blamed in part on head injuries he suffered as a child. He was also diagnosed with schizophrenia. Doctors noted that he has exhibited violent outbursts, hallucinations and paranoia, according to court records.

He was arrested in 1981 on charges of attempted murder, robbery and kidnapping. During a psychiatric evaluation, he said he could not remember exactly what happened, according to court records. He pleaded guilty and served three years in prison.

More than a decade later, Mr. Etoria walked into a leather goods shop and shot the victim three times in the head, according to Brooklyn court records. The motive was never determined, and there was no indication that he knew the victim or that the crime was gang-related.

During his testimony at a 2003 appeal hearing, Mr. Etoria said he did not remember what happened because he was on drugs at the time and suffered hallucinations in the days leading up to the shooting.

Since leaving prison in 2021, Mr. Etoria, a father of three adult children, has spoken regularly with his aunt, she said. He has discussed his job at the shelter, and how he was learning to use the computer.

“He was finally getting some clarity on his life,” Ms. McKen said. “I would say, finally becoming human again.”

When he went for his annual check-in with immigration officials in June, they took him into custody, said Mia Unger, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society in New York, which is handling Mr. Etoria’s case.

Ms. McKen said she tracked her nephew’s movements on the government’s online immigration database after he was detained. She saw that he was moved to a detention facility in upstate New York, then to Louisiana, then to Texas. On June 26, Mr. Etoria called one of his sons and told him that he had been put on a plane to Jamaica, but was removed without explanation before it took off, according to Ms. McKen.

A few weeks later, Ms. McKen said, Mr. Etoria’s name no longer appeared on the database. After a few days, he resurfaced on the administration’s list of men deported to Eswatini.

Jonah E. Bromwich contributed reporting from New York. Camille Williams contributed reporting from Kingston, Jamaica. Sheelagh McNeill contributed research.

John Eligon is the Johannesburg bureau chief for The Times, covering a wide range of events and trends that influence and shape the lives of ordinary people across southern Africa.

Hamed Aleaziz covers the Department of Homeland Security and immigration policy for The Times."

Trump Administration Deports Jamaican Man to African Prison Years After U.S. Sentence - The New York Times

Crime Festers in Republican States While Their Troops Patrol Washington - The New York Times

Crime Festers in Republican States While Their Troops Patrol Washington

"Republican governors who have mustered National Guard troops for deployment in blue-state cities may re-examine their deployments if federal intervention significantly brings crime down.

Sept. 1, 2025, 5:03 a.m. ET

National Guard troops patrolling around the Washington Monument.Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times

When Tennessee’s Republican governor, Bill Lee, dispatched his National Guard troops to Washington to support President Trump’s crackdown on crime, Democrats and other critics wondered why he didn’t keep them within state lines.

Memphis, after all, has long been one of the most dangerous cities in the country, with a murder rate about twice as high as the nation’s capital, according to F.B.I. statistics. Nashville has a higher rate of violent crime than Washington as well.

The same questions could be asked of other Republican governors like Greg Abbott in Texas, Mike DeWine in Ohio and Mike Kehoe in Missouri, since cities under their purview all have higher rates of violent crime than the nation’s capital. Yet no Republican governor has asked for federal intervention.

The image of red-state governors mustering uniformed troops for duty in blue-state cities has left many Americans with the foreboding sense of a nation dangerously divided, perhaps even drifting toward open conflict. Mr. Trump denied statistical reality last week when he was asked whether he might send federal forces into high-crime cities in Republican-led states. “Sure,” he said, “but there aren’t that many.”

There are that many: Kansas City, St. Louis and Springfield, Mo.; Birmingham, Ala.; Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo, Ohio; Tulsa, Okla.; Memphis and Nashville; Houston; Little Rock, Ark.; Salt Lake City; and Shreveport La., all have crime rates comparable to Washington’s, according to F.B.I. statistics.

But the reality of Mr. Trump’s deployments in Washington has also not matched the stark “invasion” rhetoric of some Democrats, who have raised the specter of an uninvited occupying force in their cities. Indeed, Republican governors who have so far declined to ask the president for an intervention in their cities might be tempted to rethink that stance.

The supplementary forces in Washington, provided by and funded by Mr. Trump, have had a noticeable impact, at least in the short term. Washington’s mayor, Muriel Bowser, has softened her tone on the deployment, crediting it for “more accountability” and a reduction in some crimes, particularly carjackings.

Even in Chicago, which Mr. Trump has said may be next in his crime agenda, the signals lately have been mixed. Brandon Johnson, the city’s progressive Democratic mayor, has stood resolutely against his streets being “occupied by federal troops,” but his police chief, Larry Snelling, has struck a softer tone. If the National Guard were to flood his city, Mr. Snelling told reporters last week, he hoped that with better communication, local and federal forces could “find some type of balance” and avoid “an adversarial environment.”

Red-state governors sending their National Guard troops to blue-state cities is just another example of the political divide in the country that has become the standard. It is also another example of Republicans going out of the way to curry favor with Mr. Trump.

Republican governors did not want to answer why they were willing to send their National Guard troops to Washington while not inviting the same attention to their cities.

In Texas, Andrew Mahaleris, a spokesman for Mr. Abbott, declined to comment on whether the governor had made any specific requests of Mr. Trump to help fight crime in San Antonio or Houston. The question, he said, should be directed to the Department of Homeland Security.

Dan Tierney, a spokesman for Governor DeWine, said under Ohio law, mayors would have to request any assistance from the state, and “no current mayoral requests for National Guard assistance” have come in.

Aides to Governor Lee of Tennessee did not respond to the question.

Adam Gelb, the president and chief executive of the Council on Criminal Justice, a nonpartisan research organization, stated what he said was obvious — Mr. Trump is not basing his interventions on crime rates.

“The federal government almost never does anything based on pure statistics,” Mr. Gelb said. “No administration would just look at a chart and go straight down the list based on rates of violence.”

Jeffrey A. Butts, executive director of the Research and Evaluation Center at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York, noted that even in Washington, federal resources are not actually being targeted where they would make the most difference, in high-crime neighborhoods far from the photogenic monuments and government buildings where National Guard troops are patrolling.

“If you accept the premise that it is OK to use military resources in the name of securing public safety, which is very debatable and I think historically should be rejected, they would be in the communities with the highest rates of gun violence,” Mr. Butts said.

“They’re not doing it to improve public safety,” he continued. “It’s designed to humiliate political opponents.”

But if Mr. Trump has a political imperative, so do his targets. States need to balance their budgets, unlike the federal government. The federal government is covering the cost of more than 2,000 National Guard troops sent to Washington from six states, at an estimated cost of $1 million a day. That serves as a reminder that such resources could also be available in other cities, if requested.

Federal support for local policing has also had a long history of bipartisan support. Ms. Bowser is one of many Democratic politicians who have sought to put more police on the beat but have run up against budget constraints. Democrats in Congress have been the primary champions of federal assistance for local police forces through the Community Oriented Policing Services — or COPS — program, first passed as part of President Bill Clinton’s crime bill in 1994.

Federal-local partnerships have always shown promise, said Thomas Abt, founding director of the Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction at the University of Maryland. Working with mayors and local officials, the center has become involved with policing in Memphis and Knoxville, Tenn., as well as St. Louis and Boston.

In all four cities, police reforms have emphasized intervening with the people and places at the highest risk of violence, balancing law enforcement accountability with empathy for the difficulties the police face, and maintaining legitimacy and credibility in high-crime communities, said Mr. Abt, who wrote a book on policing, “Bleeding Out.”

Knoxville, St. Louis and Boston have seen violent crime rates decline faster than the national average, he said, and Memphis — the newest city to partner with the center — is on track to join them.

“Reducing crime is a team sport,” he said. “Mayors and governors would appreciate sustained support and sustained collaboration from their federal partners. They always have and they always will.”

But Democratic governors say that vision has little in common with the masked federal agents and uniformed military troops on Washington’s streets. In a statement last week, 19 Democratic governors said the president had cut federal funding for law enforcement and was undermining their authority over their respective National Guards.

“Whether it’s Illinois, Maryland and New York or another state tomorrow, the president’s threats and efforts to deploy a state’s National Guard without the request and consent of that state’s governor is an alarming abuse of power, ineffective, and undermines the mission of our service members,” the governors said.

David W. Chen reports on state legislatures, state level policymaking and the political forces behind them."

Crime Festers in Republican States While Their Troops Patrol Washington - The New York Times