Suspect wanted for attempted sexual assault of a child on an RTD light rail train
According to the Metro Denver Crime Stoppers, a man attempted sexual assault on a child at about 8 p.m. in the 8200 block of East Smith Road while riding the light rail train.
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The area is near the Central Park station, which is part of the A Line from Union Station to the Denver International Airport.
Police described the suspect as a Hispanic male, between 30 and 49 years old, standing about 5 feet, 8 inches tall with a medium build and short black hair that's shaved on the sides.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the Metro Denver Crime Stoppers at 720-813-7867 or online at metrodenvercrimestoppers.com
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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USA Today
25 minutes ago
- USA Today
Deportations are taking a toll on California's economy - and have only just begun
ICE raids and mass deportations could cost California $275 billion in lost wages and other funds, a report finds. Lupe Lopez can't help but notice that business and foot traffic are painfully slow these days in the predominantly Hispanic neighborhood of East San Jose, California. "A lot more people are either staying closer to home or not coming out at all," said Lopez, 69, whose family owns nine Arteagas Food Center supermarkets, one of which is in East San Jose. Young people are buying in bulk, she said, because their parents are afraid of being outside, where they might be picked up by immigration agents. "We're seeing a change in shopping habits," said Lopez, co-founder of Avanzando, a nonprofit helping Latinos make advances through education. Even as the Trump administration prepares to ramp up its immigration enforcement nationwide, the focus so far in California has already hurt local economies, research and anecdotal reports suggest. One recent study estimated that the hit to California, the world's fourth-largest economy, could be as much as $275 billion. "It's a pretty massive amount that even took us by surprise," said Bay Area Council Economic Institute Research Director Abby Raisz, author of the nonprofit's June report. "We anticipated it would be big, but we didn't realize how expansive and significant a role undocumented workers play in sustaining California's economy. It's bigger than we thought." Immigration raids led to drop in California's workforce Since the report's release, the Trump administration has expanded immigration raids to include many more people without criminal records. The Department of Homeland Security said nearly 2,800 undocumented immigrants have been arrested in Greater Los Angeles. Local media reported that many were between June 6 and 22. The raids had a dramatic and immediate impact on the workforce. Almost 465,000 California workers fled from the labor ranks during the week of June 8, as immigration authorities raided worksites across the Los Angeles area, according to a July University of California, Merced study. As a result, people working in private-sector jobs in California dropped by 3.1%, a decline not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, the study noted, though it's unclear whether they left permanently or just for a short time. California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis said immigrants are the backbone of the state's economic workforce. "They are the workers who feed us, the caretakers who support us, the entrepreneurs who drive innovation, and the neighbors who strengthen our communities," Kounalakis said in a statement. "The ripple effects of mass deportation in California would be felt nationwide and beyond." "Carry your papers": The Trump administration is telling immigrants 'Carry your papers.' Here's what to know. Report: Undocumented workers' imprint cannot be underestimated Of California's 10.6 million immigrants, 2.3 million are undocumented, according to Pew Research Center. They account for 8% of all workers statewide. Undocumented immigrants are more likely to be in the workforce than Californians born in the United States, Bay Area Council's Raisz said, with 72% of undocumented immigrants participating in the workforce compared to about 67% of native-born. Immigrants are widespread, but concentrated in certain fields and geographic areas. More than 60% of California's agricultural workers are immigrants and almost 26% are undocumented; about 41% of the state's construction workers are immigrants and 14% are undocumented, Raisz' report found. Those workers are concentrated in coastal urban areas in the Bay Area and Greater Los Angeles, as well as in agricultural hubs in the Central Valley. "These regions are critical drivers of California's economy and understanding the potential impact of deportation on local, state, and national economies has never been more critical," the report said. And even these high figures are probably an undercount, said Darlene Tenes, the executive director of Farmworker Caravan, a San Jose-based nonprofit assisting area farmworkers with some basic needs. "It's very, very difficult to document the undocumented. They are very much a shadow community," Tenes told USA TODAY. "I think it's hard to put a number on it. You have to understand, almost every industry in California uses undocumented workers." Crossroads: Farmers are facing a fork on Trump's immigration highway. So what's next? Undocumented workers' impact on agriculture, construction Raisz said her report shows how entrenched undocumented immigrants are in California and how much they contribute to their communities. "About two-thirds of them have lived here for more than a decade, and about a third own their own homes, so they pay both income and property taxes," Raisz said. Without undocumented labor, GDP generated by California's agriculture would decline by 14%, Raisz said, and the state's construction industry would see a 16% decrease. Both sectors were already experiencing labor shortages, he said, which will only be compounded by immigration crackdowns. Tenes said Americans and some parts of the world won't have access to fresh fruits and vegetables without undocumented workers, as California's coastal counties and Central Valley are consistently among the largest agricultural producers in the nation. 'Cost burdened': America's housing is pulling further out of reach, report finds "Without (undocumented workers), we don't eat, period," Tenes said. "Everything that you eat from a grocery store, strawberries, grapes, lettuce, bread, cereal, all came from the ground at some point. Guess who picks them?" About half of the nation's 4.3 million construction workers are Hispanic and as many as 1 million of them are undocumented, according to George Carillo, CEO of the Hispanic Construction Council. Thousands of those workers are in California and will be needed as the nation faces a housing shortage of around 4.5 million homes and Los Angeles recovers from this year's deadly wildfires, Carillo said. "Who do you think is going to help rebuild those homes that were lost?" Carillo said.
Miami Herald
8 hours ago
- Miami Herald
‘They didn't vote for this': Support erodes as ICE targets noncriminal immigrants
It started with the 'bad hombres.' In a 2016 presidential debate, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to deport drug lords and violent criminals. At a rally in Hialeah in 2023, Trump made a pledge in a city where three-fourths of residents are foreign-born: to end the 'invasion' of the United States by undocumented immigrants. Now in his second term, Trump is carrying out a mass deportation campaign that his administration says focuses on criminals — 'the worst of the worst,' according to Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem. But under the current Trump administration, the idea of who is considered a 'criminal' has broadened to include all undocumented people. And in Florida, the governor was quick to assist the president make the leap from 'bad hombres' to anyone without papers. In February, at the first meeting of his State Board of Immigration meeting, Gov. Ron DeSantis said, 'If you are here illegally that is a crime too, OK? You can't just say you have free range to be here illegally until you commit some type of felony. I want you out before you commit the felony.' ICE raids and arrests of undocumented immigrants, regardless of their criminal history, has ignited fear and anger from Hispanic communities across the country, a diverse voting bloc Trump made inroads with in 2024. Recent national polling shows Americans disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration. Some South Florida Republican elected officials now find themselves in a precarious situation: stay loyal to Trump's agenda or answer to their immigrant voter base. 'There's this huge upsurge of sentiment that this is a country of immigrants, that these immigrants are not all bad,' said Eduardo Gamarra, a political science professor at Florida International University. 'And that even those who are being deported should be treated in a more humane way.' 'Everyone is basically at risk' While on a recent report for the New York Times, a reporter watched as ICE officers in Miami looked for an undocumented man. They arrested him when they found him, along with brother who happened to be with him. 'That brother that was arrested today, although [...] he hasn't committed a crime, that doesn't mean that he can't potentially commit a crime,' Carlos Nuñez, an ICE officer in Miami told the New York Times. 'And as I see it, he's committed a crime the minute he enters the United States without admission.' Under previous presidential administrations, Fort Lauderdale immigration attorney Mark Hamburger said, there was an understanding that migrants who commit serious crimes should be prioritized for deportation over undocumented people with clean records and families in the country that depend on them. 'There is no line anymore. Everyone is basically at risk,' Hamburger said. 'Trump wants to group all immigrants into this category of criminals, but that's just not true,' he said. 'I'm sure they'd love to say, 'They're all criminals, they all have records.' But they don't even say that anymore. Now, what the press secretary says is, 'Well, they're here unlawfully and that in itself is a crime, so we're detaining anyone who's here unlawfully.'' By targeting undocumented people in general, Hamburger said, the Trump administration has overwhelmed the court system and stoked fear, ultimately to push immigrants to self-deport. One of Hamburger's clients was a woman from Nicaragua who came to the United States in 2022 seeking political asylum, which her sister and cousin were able to secure. She had been living in Los Angeles, but was feeling paranoid amid the ICE raids and anti-ICE protests. Hamburger called her before her trial, which was finally set for last month. She was noticeably nervous over the phone and hung up. When he called back, she confessed: 'I'm in Honduras right now.' Though she had a strong political asylum case, Hamburger said, the stress was making her sick. She gave up on her case and left the country. 'I have many other cases like that where people are just slowly putting up the white flag,' Hamburger said. 'The chaos, the psychological torture, it reaches a certain point for immigrants where it starts to manifest physically as illness. And some people, ultimately, just give up.' Americans soften on immigration U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar from Miami, is walking a tightrope. How does a Republican abide by the MAGA rulebook while appealing to her largely immigrant constituency? Her solution: the Dignity Act. Salazar, along with Democrat Rep. Veronica Escobar of Texas, resurrected the Dignity Act of 2023, which, if passed, would grant undocumented immigrants living in the country for more than fiveyears with no criminal record a legal status that protects them from deportation. While its passage remains unlikely in a polarized Congress, it marks a notable attempt by Salazar to distance herself from the full scope of Trump's immigration crackdown. At a July 15 press conference, Salazar sang the praises of the Trump's Big Beautiful Bill, a sweeping piece of legislation that significantly increase funding for ICE and border security, while acknowledging the roughly 10 million undocumented immigrants that work in construction, hospitality, agriculture and food production 'who are not criminals.' As she pitched the Dignity Act to the American public — and Trump himself — Salazar reiterated a crucial point that undoubtedly resonates with her constituents in Miami: not all undocumented immigrants are criminals. 'Yes, they broke the law, but someone gave them a job because they needed those workers, workers who are still needed today,' she said. The timing is notable. A growing body of polling shows that the public mood is shifting — and fast. A July 11 Gallup poll found that Americans are becoming more positive about immigration, reversing four years of rising concern. In June 2024, 55 percent of respondents wanted immigration reduced. By July 2025, that number dropped to just 30 percent. Among Hispanic voters, Trump's approval on immigration now sits at 21 percent, well below his national average. A separate CBS News poll conducted that same month found that a majority of Americans believe Trump's administration is targeting 'people who aren't dangerous criminals' for deportation — and that his second-term policies have gone further than many voters expected. 'They didn't vote for this' What's behind this big change in public opinion? 'A lot of it has to do with overreach,' said Mike Madrid, a Republican political commentator and expert on Latino voters. '[Trump's] numbers are still very strong with Republicans. I think the vast majority of Republicans did vote for this and like it, and frankly, think he probably could still be more aggressive,' Madrid said. 'But the voters that he needs to get to a majority — young voters, Hispanic voters, independents — they have fled in pretty historic numbers. The collapse is pretty spectacular, especially given a very short time frame.' The optics overall are bad. Many are critical of the Trump administration for circumventing due process and sending military vehicles to cities like Los Angeles, Madrid said. Americans have also been inundated with harrowing anecdotes in the news and on social media of undocumented immigrants being detained by ICE and separated from their families. Immigration attorneys across the country are hustling to help clients who have been swept up in the crackdown despite having no criminal history. Hamburger told the Herald most of his clients either have no criminal history or have been charged with misdemeanors, the most common being driving without a license. Two clients of his were arrested while fishing without a license, he said. Now, they're in Alligator Alcatraz, the state-run immigration detention facility built in the Everglades where detainees reportedly face harsh and disgusting conditions. Hundreds of detainees who earlier this month were held in Alligator Alcatraz or scheduled to be sent there had no criminal convictions or pending charges in the United States, the Herald reported this month. Salazar, who represents a diverse swath of Miami-Dade County with large populations of Cubans, Haitians, Caribbeans, Colombians and Venezuelans, is 'in a bind,' said Gamarra, the FIU professor. While Gamarra said the Dignity Act bill is unlikely to pass, 'it helps her public stance.' Salazar will have to answer to that large constituency in the mid-terms, though Gamara said it's too early to tell exactly how Latino voters in Miami will respond to South Florida Republicans. But there are some notable trends emerging. An FIU survey Gamarra conducted in May among Venezuelans in Florida showed real disillusionment among a third of Trump voters with his administration's immigration policy, particularly the ending of Temporary Protected Status and humanitarian parole. 'I can tell you from looking at the Venezuelan data that there is a degree of sentiment, very deeply held sentiment, that they were betrayed, that they didn't vote for this,' Gamarra said. 'They thought it was going to only be criminals because they made that distinction that 'we're not criminals.' But they didn't anticipate the broader definition of 'criminal' behavior that the administration has adopted.' Madrid thinks its unlikely for Democrats to regain the Latino support they once had. Still, he said, there are 'fascinating' shifts occurring in different Latino communities. For the first time in his career, Madrid said he is seeing the Cuban American community respond to this moment the same way the Mexican American community is, despite their very different histories in the United States and typical political beliefs. He recalled attending a recent press conference where Cuban and Venezuelan community leaders called on FIFA to protect attendees from ICE the way the Dodgers' did in Los Angeles. 'That same fear, that same terror, is not something we normally see from the Cuban American community with a Republican president!' he said. 'We've never seen that before.'
CBS News
16 hours ago
- CBS News
Irvine man charged with hate crimes after allegedly beating elderly driver and throwing hot coffee at another
An Irvine man faces hate crime charges after he allegedly threw a hot cup of coffee at a man and beat an elderly driver while shouting racial slurs. The Orange County District Attorney's Office described suspect Robert Tackett's actions as "hate motivated attacks" against two Hispanic men. Prosecutors charged Tackett, 54, with four counts related to the assaults, including inflicting injury on an elderly adult. He faces a maximum of eight years in state prison if convicted on all counts. He's being held at the Orange County Jail in lieu of $500,000 bail. "Hate is a venom that poisons everything – and everyone – it touches. An attack motivated by hate is not an attack on just a single individual; it is an attack on the very fabric of our society and our community as a whole," Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer said. The two alleged assaults happened on July 22 in two Orange County cities. In the morning, Tackett allegedly followed a garbage truck driver through Irvine on Sand Canyon Avenue near the 5 Freeway. The Irvine Police Department said Tackett tried to run the other driver off the road while shouting racial slurs at him. The Orange County District Attorney's Office said he allegedly tried to crash into the garbage truck twice, but the other driver quickly slammed the brakes and avoided a collision each time. After intentionally trying to crash into the victim, Tackett allegedly threw a hot cop of coffee that landed on the victim's face, hands and car interior, according to Irvine PD. The second assault happened at around 5:30 p.m. in Westminster. Tackett allegedly got out of his work van while stopped at a light, repeatedly punched a 72-year-old driver through an open window and shouted racial slurs. The California Highway Patrol arrested Tackett in Mammoth two days after the attacks. "Every member of our society deserves to go about their days unafraid that they would be targeted because of the color of their skin, their gender, or their sexual orientation," Spitzer said. "We must collectively combat hate by speaking up and speaking out against hate – and haters – to continue to send a strong message that hate will never be tolerated here in Orange County or anywhere."
