Murder accused Julia DeLuney changed clothes night of mother's death
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RNZ News
3 hours ago
- RNZ News
California worker dead, hundreds arrested after cannabis farm raid
California National Guard troops face off with protesters during a Federal Immigration raid on Glass House Farms in Camarillo, California. Photo: AFP / Blake Fagan By Leah Douglas, of Reuters A California farm worker died from injuries sustained when US immigration agents raided a cannabis operation and arrested hundreds of workers, according to a farm worker advocacy group. Separately, a federal judge in California ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt some of its most aggressive tactics in rounding up undocumented immigrants. Dozens of migrant-rights activists faced off with federal agents in rural Southern California on Thursday (local time) in the latest escalation of President Donald Trump's campaign for mass deportations of immigrants in the US illegally. His administration had made conflicting statements about whether immigration agents would target the farm labour workforce, about half of which was unauthorised to work in the US, according to government estimates. The Department of Homeland Security said about 200 people in the country illegally were arrested in the raid, which targeted two locations of the cannabis operation Glass House Farms. Agents also found 10 migrant minors at the farm, the department said in an emailed statement. The facility is under investigation for child labour violations, Customs and Border Protection Commissioner Rodney Scott posted on X. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The scene at the farm was chaotic, with federal agents in helmets and face masks using tear gas and smoke canisters on angry protesters, according to photos and videos of the scene. Several farm workers were injured and one died on Friday from injuries sustained after a nine-metre fall from a building during the raid, said United Farm Workers national vice president . Elizabeth Strater. The worker who died was identified as Jaime Alanis on a verified GoFundMe page created by his family, who said they were raising money to help his family and for his burial in Mexico. "He was his family's provider," Alanis' family wrote on the GoFundMe page. "They took one of our family members - we need justice." US citizens were detained during the raid and some are still unaccounted for, Strater said. DHS said its agents were not responsible for the man's death, saying that "although he was not being pursued by law enforcement, this individual climbed up to the roof of a green house and fell 30 feet". Agents immediately called for a medical evacuation, DHS said. California Rural Legal Assistance, which provides legal services and other support to farm workers, was working on picking up checks for detained Glass House workers, said directing attorney Angelica Preciado. Some Glass House workers detained during the raid were only able to call family members after they signed voluntary deportation orders and were told they could be jailed for life, because they worked at a cannabis facility, Preciado said. DHS spokeswoman Tricia McLaughlin rejected those allegations, saying "allegations that ICE or CBP agents denied detainees from calling legal assistance are unequivocally false". Some detained citizen workers reported only being released from custody, after deleting photos and videos of the raid from their phones, UFW President Teresa Romero said. "These violent and cruel federal actions terrorise American communities, disrupt the American food supply chain, threaten lives and separate families," Romero said. Farm groups have warned that mass deportation of farm workers would cripple the country's food supply chain. In her most recent comments, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said there would be "no amnesty" for farm workers from deportation, but Trump has said migrant workers should be permitted to stay on farms. US District Court Judge Maame Frimpong granted two temporary restraining orders blocking the administration from detaining immigrants suspected of being in the country illegally based on racial profiling and from denying detained people the right to speak with a lawyer. The ruling, made in response to a lawsuit from immigration advocacy groups, says the administration is violating the Fourth and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution by conducting "roving patrols" to sweep up suspected undocumented immigrants based on their being Latinos, and then denying them access to lawyers. "What the federal government would have this Court believe - in the face of a mountain of evidence presented in this case - is that none of this is actually happening," Frimpong wrote in her ruling. Additional reporting by Ted Hesson, Kanishka Singh, Kristina Cooke and Brad Brooks. - Reuters
RNZ News
13 hours ago
- RNZ News
El Chapo's son Ovidio Guzman Lopez pleads guilty to US drug charges
By Renee Hickman and Jack Queen , Reuters The moment of the arrest of alleged drug trafficker Ovidio Guzman Lopez or El Raton. Photo: AFP PHOTO / CEPROPIE / HO A son of imprisoned Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman has pleaded guilty to four criminal counts in two related drug trafficking cases targeting the notorious Sinaloa Cartel. Ovidio Guzman Lopez, 35, pleaded guilty to two counts of drug distribution and two counts of participation in a continuing criminal enterprise before US District Judge Sharon Coleman in Chicago. He faces a possible life sentence. Prosecutors allege Ovidio Guzman Lopez and his brothers - known as the "Chapitos," or little Chapos - revived the Sinaloa Cartel after their father's arrest in 2016 by embracing fentanyl, reaping hundreds of millions of dollars in profits by sending the deadly opioid to the US. Ovidio Guzman Lopez, also known as "El Raton" or "Raton Nuevo" was extradited to the US from Mexico in September 2023 as part of the federal government's war on fentanyl, a highly lethal drug that killed nearly 200 Americans daily in 2023. That death toll has been a flashpoint in President Donald Trump's trade negotiations with Mexico, with Trump demanding Mexico do more to stop the flow of fentanyl in exchange for tariff relief. Mexican drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman escorted into a helicopter at Mexico City's airport following his recapture in 2016. Photo: AFP Ovidio Guzman Lopez brother Joaquin Guzman Lopez was arrested in El Paso along with Sinaloa kingpin Ismael "El Mayo" Zambada last July in a dramatic coup for US authorities, who recruited Joaquin Guzman Lopez to lure Zambada into the country on a private plane. Also known as "El Guero" or "Guero Moreno", Joaquin Guzman Lopez pleaded not guilty to drug trafficking and money laundering charges, and prosecutors said they would not pursue the death penalty against him. Zambada, who co-founded the Sinaloa Cartel with El Chapo, has also pleaded not guilty. In February, his lawyer told Reuters he would be willing to plead guilty if prosecutors agreed to spare him the death penalty. El Chapo is serving a life sentence at a maximum security prison in Colorado after his 2019 drug trafficking conviction. - Reuters
RNZ News
15 hours ago
- RNZ News
Murder-accused Julia DeLuney quizzed on blood spread around crime scene
Julia DeLuney suggested she spread the blood around the house, trying to wipe it off her own hands. Photo: RNZ / Mark Papalii Murder-accused Julia DeLuney's second video interview with police has been played to the court, with a detective questioning how so much blood was spread around the house. DeLuney is on trial at the High Court in Wellington for the murder of 79-year-old mother Helen Gregory on 24 January last year, a charge she denies. On Friday, the jury watched her second video interview, recorded at the Porirua police station on 27 January, 2024, three days after her mother's death. During the interview, she told Detective Olivia Meares, who was conducting the interview, she might have put the bloody smears on the wall in the hallway and around the attic herself. "I was trying to get it off me," she said. "There was a lot of it ... it looked like coagulated. "Look, it just gave me ... it freaked me out, so I was just trying to get it off." Meares asked her to explain further, saying, "There's a few things that aren't making sense to me". The Crown's case is that DeLuney attacked her mother and staged it to look like a fall, but the defence says, in the 90-minute window when she went to get help after the fall, someone else caused fatal injuries to her elderly mother. During this second interview, Meares asked DeLuney: "From what you've described to me, I'm struggling to understand how there is all this blood on the top of the ladder." "I think that's my blood, I mean, mum's blood on me," DeLuney said. "I was trying to get it off." . "Julia, that doesn't make sense," Meares said, questioning why she would go up into the attic to do that. "I don't know what I was doing," DeLuney said. "You've got to get over all this stuff [she gestures to a picture of the cupboard's contents strewn on the floor] and then climb up," Meares said. "It's not making sense." DeLuney did not offer an explanation to this point. When pressed for more detail about what had happened immediately after the fall, DeLuney explained her mother was struggling and trying to get up, so she had straddled her to try and keep her still. Meares asked: "Julia, did you get angry at your mum when that was happening?" "I didn't get angry. I was getting scared, I didn't get angry." DeLuney explained she panicked she would be in trouble for letting her mother go up into the roof. Meares told DeLuney that, according to the pathologist, her mother's injuries - "multiple blunt force trauma to the back of her head" - were not consistent with a fall. "Can you tell me how that happened?" "No, I can't," DeLuney replied. "I think we should stop now, I think I need a lawyer. "I didn't hit my mum, I didn't hurt her at all, I was trying to help her." The interview ended at 10.01pm. The trial continues, with the defence expected to call its first witnesses next week. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
