Gary Police work with FBI to investigate teenage girl's disappearance, offer $20K for information
'We're happy that they're doing something and just not doing anything,' Guerrero said. 'We don't want this to be a cold case, by any means.'
The Gary Police Department and Federal Bureau of Investigation announced Monday that the two agencies are working together to find Ja'Niyah McMichael, a 14-year-old girl who has been missing since Aug. 12, 2024.
The two agencies are also offering a $20,000 reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of those involved with McMichael's disappearance. The city of Gary and FBI are both offering $10,000 each.
A news release from the two agencies said investigators believe McMichael might be the victim of foul play, and the search remains an active and ongoing investigation.
McMichael's 14th birthday was Monday, Guerrero said.
'She should be like any other 14-year-old today,' Guerrero added. 'She should be having a birthday party with her friends and family.'
Jasmine McMichael, Ja'Niyah McMichael's mother, first reported her daughter missing from their home in the 1900 block of Malcolm X Drive in Gary. McMichael was seen wearing a black hoodie, black pajamas and red and black Air Jordans.
The city of Gary first released an update on McMichael's disappearance on Oct. 5, 2024. In October, the city said it was working with the FBI and Department of Child Services to investigate the case, reported tips and leads, according to the city's website.
'We strongly urge the public to refrain from sharing unvetted information as this can severely impede the ongoing investigation,' Gary's October news release said. 'Our actions to date have been aimed at ensuring compliance with the law and preserving the integrity of the investigation.'
The city of Gary has not included another update on McMichael's investigation online since October.
In September, Darnell Compton Jr., 31, was charged with starting a brawl during a search party for McMichael, according to Post-Tribune archives. He was charged with three counts of battery, one count of strangulation and three misdemeanors. Darnell has a hearing scheduled for the end of May, according to online court records.
Jasmine McMichael said Compton showed up uninvited with several family members and wanted to take their other children with him, according to Post-Tribune archives. Compton fought multiple people, including Jasmine McMichael, her aunt, Dequan Jones, and tried to punch an officer as he was arrested.
McMichael was originally reported as a runaway, according to Post-Tribune archives. Guerrero said in January that the family didn't believe that theory.
Representatives from the city of Gary did not immediately respond to requests for comment Monday, including about why the reward money was now announced.
Police Chief Derrick Cannon has continually communicated with Guerrero, she said Monday.
'They're still working on (McMichael's investigation),' Guerrero said. 'We're just missing her and wish someone would speak.'
Anyone with information is urged to come forward, according to the release from the FBI and city of Gary. Tips can be anonymously submitted to the FBI at 1-800-CALL-FBI or online at tips.fbi.gov.
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Chicago Tribune
7 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
‘Dehumanizing': Inside the Broadview ICE facility where immigrants sleep on cold concrete
The sounds of weeping mothers curled on cold concrete floors echoed through the walls at the federal immigration processing center in Broadview, keeping Gladis Chavez awake for most of the night. The cries came in waves, she recalled. Quiet whimpers, choked gasps and occasional prayers. About children left behind and fears of what would happen next. Most of the women who had been detained at a routine check-in June 4 at a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Chicago now had nothing but each other and a few jackets they shared to fight off the nightly chill that seeped into their bones in a nondescript brick building just off the Eisenhower Expressway. By day three, Chavez said, her body ached with exhaustion. On day four, she and some of the other women were finally transferred out. The west suburban processing center is designed to hold people for no more than 12 hours before transferring them to a formal immigration detention facility. It has no beds, let alone any covers, Chavez said. They were not offered showers or hot food. No toothbrushes or feminine products. And certainly, Chavez recalled, those detained had no answers from immigration authorities about what would happen next. An investigation by the Chicago Tribune found that immigration detainees such as Chavez have been held for days at the processing center, a two-story building that is designed as a temporary way station until detainees can be transferred to jails out of state. For busier periods in June, data shows the typical detainee was held two or three days — far longer than the five or so hours typical in years past. The findings, which come from a Tribune analysis of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement data obtained and shared by the research group Deportation Data Project, show that the federal agency has routinely violated ICE's internal guidelines, which say the facility shouldn't hold people for more than 12 hours. Chavez became one of hundreds of people held in the facility for longer than 12 hours under the latest crackdown. Data showed that at least three people spent six or more days there. 'There were nearly 30 other women there in a single big room. Most were mothers who couldn't stop crying. The group of men were in a separate room,' Chavez said in Spanish, speaking to the Tribune in a Zoom interview from Honduras. In the group, she said, she met women who were nursing, pregnant women and elderly women. 'I never want any of my children, or any other person to go through this. It's dehumanizing, they treat us worse than criminals,' Chavez said. ICE, for its part, declined to respond to questions about the Tribune's findings and has not released its own data calculating how often it has held people in Broadview. But on the agency's website, it says it employs 'a robust, multilevel oversight and compliance program' to ensure each facility follows a 'strict set of detention standards.' A spokesperson for ICE reportedly told ABC 7 that: 'Any accusations that detainees are treated inhumanely in any way are categorically false. … There are occasions where detainees might need to stay at the Broadview office longer than the anticipated administrative processing time. While these instances are a rarity, detainees in such situations are given ample food, regular access to phones, showers and legal representation as well as medical care when needed.' Few can get inside to see what's going on, frustrating immigrant rights advocates and their allies in Congress. In mid-June, as the facility was cycling through detainees such as Chavez, four Democratic members of Congress were denied entry into the Broadview facility during an unannounced visit. On Wednesday, a dozen Democratic members of Congress who have been blocked from making oversight visits at immigration detention centers filed a federal lawsuit against President Donald Trump's administration that seeks to ensure they are granted entry into the facilities, including Broadview, even without prior notice. In Illinois, immigrant rights advocates are urging Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul to investigate the Broadview facility's ownership structure and contractual agreements with federal immigration authorities. They're also calling for a full site inspection and for the state to use all available legal tools to shut the facility down. State and local officials, however, say there's little they can do to force the U.S. government to change how it operates a federal facility. The longer detention times in Broadview have come as the Trump administration has pushed a massive boost in arrests while scrambling to build out the infrastructure to handle them, creating logistical logjams that can be particularly felt in Illinois, which has forbid local jails from holding ICE detainees. That means anyone arrested in the Chicago area must be sent out of state, once they're processed by ICE. So, for now, that can mean a small processing facility in the western suburbs — one that rarely held anyone overnight during the final years of President Joe Biden's administration — can end up warehousing dozens of detainees as they await ICE to move them. State Sen. Omar Aquino, a Chicago Democrat, was the primary sponsor of the Illinois Way Forward Act, which also limited local jails from contracting with ICE. He did not respond to questions regarding the unintentional hardships detainees are now facing because of the law. Instead, he said he 'stand(s) by the progress we have made in solidifying Illinois as a welcoming state, where immigrant families can live without fear and raise their children in a safe and supportive environment.' Chavez, who had been an immigration advocate in Chicago for nearly a decade, was deported on July 13 back to her native Honduras after spending more than a month in different ICE facilities in Illinois and Kentucky. She said she still feels traumatized by a system that separated her from her children and grandchildren while causing emotional and physical pain. Her ankles are still swollen from being shackled as she moved from one facility to another flown back to Honduras. 'I'm trying to heal both emotionally and physically,' she said. In 2023, the Department of Homeland Security, the parent agency of ICE, described the Broadview facility as a '12-hour hold facility with the typical stay of approximately five hours,' with a DHS auditor noting that 'absent exceptional circumstances, no detainee should be housed in a holding facility for longer than 12 hours.' When the members of Congress attempted to visit the site in June, Rep. Delia Ramirez noted, in a speech on the House floor, that ICE had posted a sign saying that the agency only 'processes' arrestees there and 'does not house aliens at these locations.' Yet, ICE's own data would suggest otherwise. The Tribune examined an ICE dataset, provided through the Deportation Data Project, that recorded dates and times of everyone detained at an ICE facility across the country, from September 2023 through June 26. The data had limitations. ICE recorded a time, down to the minute, when each person was checked in and out, but the Tribune found that the logs sometimes recorded people leaving Broadview only a minute or two before entering another facility hundreds of miles away, suggesting ICE may not have properly logged when someone left. To adjust for that, the Tribune computed earlier times people may have left Broadview, based on reasonable travel times from Broadview to the next ICE facilities — calculated through online mapping software and more plausible entries by ICE for others sent the same places. Even adjusting down the length of potential stays in Broadview, the analysis found a clear jump in how long detainees were held there, particularly earlier this summer. The median time logged for someone — meaning that half had shorter stays and half had longer — jumped beyond 12 hours for people booked into Broadview by mid-June. The median time continued rising as the month continued, eclipsing 24 hours for the typical detainee before they left Broadview, and then two days and sometimes three days. Even when the figures were averaged out over seven days — to smooth out any abnormally busy or slow days — the median stay in Broadview approached 48 hours for detainees, or four times as long as the 12-hour ICE guideline. While the ICE data doesn't name those detained, Chavez's biographical data and description of her journey through ICE facilities matched what was logged for one person. The log describes a Honduran woman as a widow, born the same year as her, with no criminal record but a deportation order issued in January, who was booked into the Broadview facility the morning of June 4 and not transferred out until more than three days later. The Tribune analysis found that ICE booked more arrestees on June 4 — 88 — than any on other day covered by the data. They joined another 23 who had been shipped that day to Broadview from facilities in Wisconsin and Indiana that house ICE detainees, as ICE shuffled detainees across the country. That made it the busiest day for bookings in Broadview through late June, as ICE ramped up enforcement in the Chicago area, and fueled the long stays in a place where advocates and family members of the detained say people have been held without basic necessities or medical care. In the federal government's 2023 audit of the facility, it confirmed the facility has six holding cells — two large ones, two smaller ones and two single-occupancy — with the four largest cells each having a toilet for detainees to share, as well as 'a place to sit while awaiting processing.' The audit said the facility lacked a medical unit, medical staff, food facilities or food staff. 'While the two large holding rooms are equipped with a single shower; these showers are inoperable, and the space is currently used for storage,' the 2023 audit noted. Marina Lopez Perez also was detained on June 4 after she showed up to a check-in with ICE in its South Loop facility. The Guatemala native spent three days in Broadview before she was taken to Grayson Country Detention Center in Kentucky, where she awaits her release or deportation. She left behind three children, two of them U.S. citizens, and a husband. She calls when she can, said her husband, who asked that his name be withheld, fearing ICE retaliation. Though he first tried to shield their two younger kids from the truth, telling them that their mother was at work, time, fear and reality that she may be deported, caught up to him. Now the children know, though they don't fully understand, that their mother is in jail. 'There are times when I hear her crying through the phone,' Lopez's husband said. 'I know it is not easy to be in there.' Their older son, a 13-year-old, whose name the Tribune is withholding at the family's request, said he worries constantly about his mother, especially after learning about the complaints of conditions at facilities such as Broadview. 'There are nights when I can't sleep thinking about my mom,' the teen said. 'I wonder if she's sleeping, or if she even got to eat.' Immigrant rights advocates complain that such conditions not only violate detainees' human rights, but also ICE's own policies. 'It's overflowed. They're not able to take people out within the times they are supposed to,' said Brandon Lee, with the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights. In July, advocates outlined their concerns about the Broadview facility's violations of state law in a letter to Raoul and Cook County State's Attorney Eileen O'Neill Burke, asking for their support. But both elected officials said that they do not possess direct investigating authority over ICE. Raoul added that only Congress could step in, while noting that reports of conditions at Broadview, 'while disturbing, are consistent with the deplorable conditions we have seen at federal ICE facilities around the nation.' Fred Tsao, senior policy counsel at the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights, agreed that state law cannot force changes at federally operated facilities like Broadview. He said the group is pushing Congress for more oversight of ICE operations, which the Republican-controlled body infused with a significant boost in cash to ramp up immigration enforcement, including building new detention centers. Some advocates want Broadview shut down altogether. 'The 'facilities' also use torture-based tactics to create an even more hostile environment inside for immigrants — from lights on all the time that don't let them sleep, lack of medical care, lack of mental health support from officers — to the point that individuals detained had to create networks of emotional support,' said Antonio Gutierrez, co-founder and current Strategic Coordinator for Organized Communities Against Deportations. Without oversight, federal agencies may get away with violating their own rules and with that the rights of immigrants, said Ramirez, who represents Illinois' 3rd Congressional District. In a speech on the House floor June 25, Ramirez noted the irony that ICE insisted the Broadview facility was a processing center, and not a detention center, so it didn't have to allow members of Congress inside. 'Let me be very clear. Just because something isn't named a detention facility doesn't mean this administration isn't going to use it as one,' she said at the time. 'If people are detained there, it is a detention facility, period.' For now, the families of detained loved ones endure — whether it is Chavez back in Honduras, thousands of miles away from her three children, or Lopez, who is only a couple of hundred of miles away from her three children, but still unable to see them. Even if Lopez's husband wanted to take the children to see their mother in detention, the trip would be too difficult, he said. The family lives in north suburban Lake County and Lopez is in Kentucky. Chavez said she is still trying to comprehend how she ended up detained, sleeping on the cold floor in Broadview, shackled and deprived of basic necessities. 'We prayed. Sometimes we braided each other's hair. We cried,' recalling her detention in Broadview and Kentucky, Chavez said. Her lawyer said they will continue to appeal her asylum case from Honduras.
Fox News
16 hours ago
- Fox News
Patel fires back at media critics after uncovering secret FBI 'burn bags' with classified documents
FBI Director Kash Patel called out the left-wing media Saturday for labeling him a liar over his discovery of a trove of sensitive documents related to the origins of the Trump-Russia probe buried in multiple "burn bags" in a secret room inside the bureau. Sources previously told Fox News Digital the "burn bag" system is used to destroy documents designated as classified or higher. Sources also said multiple burn bags were found and filled with thousands of documents. One document FBI officials found in a burn bag, sources said, was the classified annex to former special counsel John Durham's final report, which includes the underlying intelligence he reviewed. Patel addressed the burn bags on X, reminding people of what he proved in 2017 and 2018. "In 2017/18, I proved the Steele Dossier was fictitious intelligence, weaponized by corrupt FBI officials to deceive a federal judge and unlawfully spy on then presidential candidate Trump's campaign – all paid for by his opponent," the FBI director said. "The media called me a liar. "Now I'm the FBI Director: We just uncovered burn bags/room filled with Russia Gate files, including the Durham annex, and declassified them," Patel continued. "Once again, I released the prior FBI's own documents and exposed the truth. The same media is calling me a liar again. Maybe this FBI will release more docs directly, from FBI HQ…so we can see who is lying – wouldn't want to deprive the fake news of more bogus Pulitzers." The declassification of the classified annex is being done in close coordination between CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Patel, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, Attorney General Pam Bondi and acting National Security Agency Director William Hartman. The declassified annex will be transmitted to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, who ultimately will release the document to the public. Patel, in a June interview with podcast host Joe Rogan, revealed that he found a room full of documents and computer hard drives "that no one had ever seen or heard of." "Just think about this," Patel told Rogan. "Me, as director of the FBI, the former 'Russiagate guy,' when I first got to the bureau, found a room that Comey and others hid from the world in the Hoover Building, full of documents and computer hard drives that no one had ever seen or heard of. Locked the key and hid access and just said, 'No one's ever gonna find this place.'" Patel and his staff have been working through the documents, some of which are related to sensitive investigations, including the FBI's original Trump–Russia probe, known inside the bureau as Crossfire Hurricane. It is unclear what the latest documents cover specifically, but sources told Fox News Digital that the most recent discovery was pursuant to an investigative request from Grassley. Patel has turned the documents over to Grassley. Grassley has been requesting information related to Durham's probe. Durham was appointed after then-special counsel Robert Mueller completed his yearslong investigation into the origins of the Trump–Russia probe — including intelligence community malfeasance during and in the aftermath of the 2016 election. Sources told Fox News Digital that Grassley's team is now reviewing the underlying information as part of its investigative work. As for the other records, Patel's staff is working to turn them over to Congress pursuant to investigative requests by committees of jurisdiction.
CBS News
17 hours ago
- CBS News
Michigan man sentenced for traveling with explosive devices to Massachusetts
A 31-year-old man has been sentenced for traveling with several explosive devices from Michigan to Massachusetts, federal officials said on Friday. A judge sentenced Luke Isaac Terpstra to three years in prison, according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Michigan. He pleaded guilty to possession of an unregistered destructive device in April. Between late summer and early fall of 2023, Terpestra built several improvised explosive devices, also known as IEDs, the attorney's office said. In September of that same year, he traveled from Grant, Michigan, to Salem, Massachusetts, with the devices, multiple firearms and ammunition. One IED had coins attached to its side, while another had rifle ammunition attached. Both devices had a piece of cannon fuse on them, according to the attorney's office. Terpstra said he built the IEDs because he wanted to destroy a Satanic Temple by setting it on fire, officials said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation worked with the Grant Police Department, Kent County Sheriff's Office and Michigan State Police on the case. "The sentence in this case is significant and it reinforces that individuals who build bombs with the intent to injure innocent civilians and destroy property will be held accountable," U.S. Attorney Timothy VerHey said in a news release on Friday.
