How Paul and Christy Akeo returned home to Michigan
The Akeos spoke to the media late Thursday night about their experiences, and U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett (R-Charlotte), who flew to Mexico personally to advocate for their release, sat down with 6 News Friday to provide some insight into what happened behind the scenes.
The Akeo parents were initially arrested on March 4 at a Cancún airport, accused of defrauding resort chain out of more than $116,000 by cancelling membership charges on a credit card. The family and their lawyer disputes these allegations, saying the the timeshare contract they had with the Akeos and were actually at fault in the conflict.
Paul told 6 News what happened to them after they were arrested, saying days went by before they could talk to their family or even each other.
'We were whisked off to another facility, and then we were sent directly to prison. We weren't able to talk to anybody, didn't have any contact with lawyers, didn't have our phones, so we were just sitting there,' said Paul.
The language barrier also made the couple's stay in prison more difficult, with Lemke things are not being translated for them and that various 'odd situations' complicated their experiences.
The Akeo children previously told 6 News that their parents' stay in prison was impacting their health—especially Christy's, whose allergies led her to avoid most meals.
'The problem is there's been several times where they've served her food that she's allergic to or cannot eat because of that,' the Akeo's son, Michael Lemke, 'She's been having this rash that keeps breaking out on her just after some food, so she's only able to eat certain things.'
In a , the Akeos' daughter Lindsey Hull, began asking for help on March 24. That same day, Barrett of the Akeos' situation and began working to get them released. But for him, everything really began moving on Tuesday.
'There wasn't a feeling of urgency involved,' says Barrett. 'And so on Tuesday afternoon, I got a briefing from the State Department back here in the United States, in my office in Washington, D.C.'
He expressed his dissatisfaction with the way the Akeos' situation was being handled.
'I felt like this had not progressed in the way we needed. And so, I made the decision to fly down as quickly as I could to just bring about a resolution to this,' says Barrett. 'We went directly to the prison, met with Paul and Christy at the prison immediately upon our arrival.'
He spoke with the Akeos for an hour and called the conditions they were facing in the prison 'horrific,' with 'rubbled walls, overcrowded cells, toilets that don't flush, and disgusting food.' He says that from there, he met with the president of the Quintana Roo Supreme Court and others to negotiate their release.
MORE: Where in Mexico are the Spring Arbor parents being held?
'From there, we left the prison and went and met with the president of the Supreme Court of Mexico, begin that process of negotiating some of the court proceedings side of it,' says Barrett. 'That can be very bureaucratic in Mexico.'
6 News previously spoke with Lemke, who that his parents could have been held for more than six months, as that was how long a judge gave Palace Elite to gather evidence. However, Barrett says it would have been longer than that.
'You might you know, their trial was not supposed to be for about a year from now,' Barrett told 6 News.
The congressman says the negotiations for the Akeos' release were tricky, involving both legal talks and separate discussions with the company. However, after he met with Mexican officials, they arranged a hearing for Thursday, where the charges against Paul and Christy were dropped.
'So for us to be able to get them into a courtroom meant that we had to move a lot of channels to be able to do that,' says Barrett. 'And then in the background, on a parallel track, we had to negotiate with the company around the terms of what we could agree to, to ultimately get them released and how that was going to work.'
As a result, the Akeos are no longer facing any charges in Mexico—but they still have obligations to take care of regarding the conditions of their release.
Barrett says the Akeos and the company made a public statement where neither of them assigned blame or responsibility to the other and that both parties will be donating money equalling the amount of the disputed charges—around $116,000—to a charity that operates a Mexican orphanage.
'So, the two parties are investing the money into that charitable nonprofit, so a good resolution. Everyone seems to be happy, and they're home safe, and that's ultimately what I was trying to bring about with the parties,' says Barrett.
The congressman gave 6 News an idea of his thought process throughout the dispute.
'I looked at it from the standpoint of, number one, if you have a financial contract dispute in the United States, you handle that through civil litigation,' Barrett told 6 News. 'You don't have a party in the desperate conditions that they were in down in Mexico as leverage for a settlement in a dispute of that kind. '
He says that in the end, he wasn't focused on who was at fault.
'For me, it wasn't so much 'Who's responsible for which part of this?' and 'Who's to blame for this?' and the other thing, I wasn't really interested in negotiating that part of it,' said Barrett. 'I was interested in what can we do that will expedite their return, their safe release, and return home as quickly as possible.'
6 News was at the Capital Region International Airport late Thursday night when the parents .
'I never thought we would be coming home for months,' Christy said. 'We are so happy that it's over.'
The couple expressed their gratitude toward all the people who made their return home possible.
'I don't even know how we're gonna repay or thank people. There's so many people that have just supported us, but we still don't know all of them. We've just been glimpsing,' said Christy. 'I mean, how do you repay or thank people?'
The Akeo parents were especially thankful for the work their children put into getting them home.
'Our kids, I can't say how proud I am for what our kids have done, the people they contacted, the using social media to let people be aware of what's going on, because we didn't know what we were going to do,' said Christy. 'How do you repay your kids for doing what they did?'
Paul echoed Christy's words, telling all the people who watched their story unfold to 'be thankful for what America has given us. Just be thankful for the little things.'
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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Politico
a day ago
- Politico
Vodka Toasts With the Dictator of Belarus: How Diplomacy Gets Done in Trump 2.0
A bus carrying 14 political prisoners with bags over their heads hurtled through the lush Belarusian countryside one morning last month, its destination unknown. Five years after President Alexander Lukashenko launched an unsparing crackdown on dissent in the former Soviet nation, some of the captives feared they were about to be executed. Among the group was the prominent dissident Siarhei Tsikhanouski whose wife, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya, became the face of the Belarusian opposition movement after his arrest in 2020. As the bus approached its destination, their minders from the Belarusian security services — which still goes by its Soviet name the KGB — removed the bags from their heads but told them to keep their eyes fixed on the floor. 'We kept looking ahead all the same,' said Ihar Karnei, a Belarusian journalist who was among the group and had been imprisoned for two years. 'We were interested: Where were they taking us?' The bus pulled up to a field not far from Belarus' border with Lithuania. The door of the van flew open, and they received a surprising greeting: 'President Trump sent me to take you home.' The man speaking to the bewildered prisoners was John Coale, one of President Donald Trump's lawyers and now a deputy special envoy to Ukraine. It took a moment for the reality of what was happening to sink in. 'They were terrified,' Coale recalled in an interview with POLITICO Magazine. 'Opening that door and getting them to realize that 'You are free' was quite a moment.' The prisoner release, a goodwill gesture by the Belarusian leader, marked the continuation of a cautious diplomatic opening between the United States and Belarus. The fraught relationship between the two countries came to a standstill in 2020 when protests against rigged elections were met with mass arrests and thousands of people were swept into the country's vast prison system. But the release also wouldn't have happened without Coale's efforts to forge a relationship with Lukashenko, including over a long lunch with vodka toasts. 'I did two shots, didn't throw up, but did not do a third one,' said Coale. The episode offers a window into the highly personalistic way in which foreign policy gets done during Trump's second term in office, as the president has tapped a slew of close friends and allies to serve as his envoys and implement his agenda abroad. Critics have balked at their lack of experience; after all, they smirk, can real estate magnate Steve Witkoff really lead negotiations to conclude Russia's war on Ukraine, tackle Iran's nuclear program and end Israel's war in Gaza? But the envoys bring the prospect of a direct line to the president and the chance to bypass State Department bureaucracy. They are also free to say and do things that traditional U.S. diplomats might not be able to. 'It's sort of easier to have an eye-to-eye conversation with the president's right hand,' said Artyom Shraibman, a nonresident scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Dispatching the national security advisor or secretary of State (currently Marco Rubio in both cases), could be seen as a full legitimization of Belarus' isolated president, said Franak Viacorka, chief of staff to Tsikhanouskaya, the opposition leader. 'But if we speak about envoys — an envoy's task is to make deals, to solve crises,' he said. Coale's adventures in Belarus began with a call from the State Department in late April with a special request. Was he willing to go to Minsk to meet with Lukashenko, a man often described as Europe's last dictator? 'Fine,' said Coale. Could he fly out the next day? 'Not fine,' he replied. 'But I did it anyway.' The 78-year-old Coale is a plainspoken, veteran litigator perhaps best known for helping to broker a $386 billion settlement from Big Tobacco in the late 1990s. He's also had a winding political life; a longtime Democrat, Coale endorsed John McCain in 2008 and befriended Sarah Palin, before backing Democrat Martin O'Malley's 2016 presidential bid. In 2021, he led Trump's longshot lawsuit against social media companies, accusing them of censorship. 'The woke stuff has moved me to the right,' he said in one interview. He first met Trump some 20 years ago through his wife Greta Van Susteren, the former Fox News host who has interviewed the president on numerous occasions. Days after the call, Coale and a handful of U.S. diplomats crossed the border from Lithuania into Belarus, stopping on a country road to swap out the diplomatic license plates on their vehicles so as not to attract attention. They arrived at Independence Palace, Lukashenko's residence in central Minsk which, with its glass facade and swooping metal roof, is the size of a small airport terminal. 'It's so big that Tom Brady couldn't throw a pass from one end of the lobby to the other,' Coale said. The imposing complex on the capital's Victory Avenue was built as a symbol of the country's independence, according to the website of the Belarusian president. That sovereignty was always tenuous. One of Russian President Vladimir Putin's closest allies, Lukashenko has long relied on subsidies from Moscow to prop up his ailing economy. In 2022, Belarus was used as a staging ground for Russian troops in their full-scale assault on Ukraine which further cemented his alienation from the West. Lukashenko has ruled Belarus since 1994, preserving many of the institutions and habits of the country's Soviet past. He has proven skilled at playing Russia and the West off against each other, flirting with Washington and Brussels to get Putin's attention or secure relief from economic sanctions imposed on the country. Political prisoners have often been used as a bargaining chip. In 2015, Lukashenko released all those deemed wrongfully detained, prompting Europe and America to lift some sanctions. The reprieve was to be short-lived. Over 5,000 people have been convicted of politically motivated charges over the past five years, according to the Belarusian human rights organization Vyasna, and some 1,150 remain in prison. Trump has made freeing wrongfully detained Americans a priority of his foreign policy, creating an opening for authoritarian leaders like Lukashenko to get his attention. Within a week of Trump's inauguration in January, Belarus unilaterally released U.S. citizen Anastasia Nuhfer from prison. 'Lukashenko is afraid of Trump,' said Viacorka. '[He] knows very well how to deal with ordinary politicians, but he doesn't have a clue how to deal with these strong and unpredictable leaders like Trump.' Three more political prisoners were released in February, after Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Chris Smith quietly travelled to Belarus, becoming the most senior U.S. official to visit the country in over five years. By April, they were on the cusp of getting another American citizen released and dispatched Coale in a bid to seal the deal. Over a long lunch in the palace, Coale was tasked with getting to know the garrulous Belarusian leader. 'They told me to charm him. To yuck it up with him, so I did that,' he said. '[Lukashenko] brought up stuff about the State Department and I said, 'Yeah all they want to do is blah blah blah,' so he loved that.' Lukashenko struck Coale as smart, savvy. 'He does want better relations with the United States,' Coale said, adding that the Belarusian leader seemed keen to play a role in negotiations regarding the war in Ukraine. At some point vodka — Lukashenko's own personal brand — was brought out and the toasts commenced. The Belarusian president offered a toast to Trump. Smith, the State Department official, nudged Coale to reciprocate, as is customary in the region. Coale followed suit with his own toast to Lukashenko, and soon, he began to worry about his stomach. As the afternoon wore on there were more toasts, and while there was little talk of politics, the two men got to know each other. A relationship was developing. 'It was all fun,' Coale said. Lukashenko seems to have agreed. Hours later, the American delegation got what they had come for as the Belarusian authorities handed over Youras Ziankovich, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was arrested in Moscow in 2021 and accused of plotting a coup against Lukashenko. The U.S. government deemed him wrongfully detained earlier this year. Discussions continued behind the scenes into the summer and by June, another prisoner release was set in motion. When she awoke on the morning of Saturday June 21, Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya had little idea that she was about to be reunited with her husband, Siarhei. A popular YouTube blogger, he was swiftly arrested after attempting to run against Lukashenko in the 2020 presidential elections. Tsikhanouskaya, a soft-spoken former teacher, took up her husband's mantle after his arrest and was herself quickly forced into exile in Lithuania, becoming the most recognizable face of the Belarusian opposition. For five years she has shuttled between global capitals to raise awareness about her country's political prisoners, often carrying a folder bearing a photograph of her husband. On the morning her husband was released, Tsikhanouskaya was flying back from Poland to the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius. She knew that Trump's special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, had been in Belarus the night before with Coale and that negotiations about a prisoner release were underway. She speculated with her chief of staff, Viacorka, who might be released but didn't dare expect her husband would be included. Having been held without access to anyone on the outside for over two years, Siarhei was on a shortlist of some 200 prisoners deemed a priority for release by Belarusian human rights defenders on humanitarian grounds. The majority of the 14 people who were about to be released were citizens of other countries who had been swept up in the crackdown, or, had some kind of affiliation with the West. It wasn't until the morning of the release that Coale learned the final details of the prisoners to be freed. As Tsikhanouskaya made her way back to Vilnius, the bus carrying her husband and 13 other political prisoners made its way to the Belarusian border with Lithuania, after the KGB handed them over to Coale and representatives from the State Department. By the time the now-former prisoners made it to the border, it was hours since they had been fed. Many were gaunt after years of meager prison rations. Siarhei, once a bear of man, emerged from prison unrecognizable with hollow cheeks. 'For some reason, in one of our cars was a whole basket of little Tootsie Rolls,' said Coale, which they passed around the group. As they waited to be processed into the country, Coale and the other diplomats passed their cellphones around so people could call their loved ones and let them know that they had been released. 'Nobody had any idea this was happening,' he said. In the Vilnius airport, Tsikhanouskaya received a call from her husband, with whom she hadn't had any contact in over two years. 'When I heard the voice of my husband on the phone, it was a huge surprise,' she said. He told her: 'My dear, I am free.' While Trump's efforts to broker an end to the war in Ukraine have run headlong into Putin's intransigence, Tsikhanouskaya hopes that her country could offer the diplomatic victory that Trump craves so dearly. 'Belarus can be a success story for President Trump,' she said. '[A] free, independent Belarus is in the interest of the USA as well.' Lukashenko also senses an opportunity to return to relevance as the U.S. president seeks to strike a deal between Russia and Ukraine, said Shraibman of the Carnegie Endowment. 'He wants to be relevant to the peace process. He wants to speak to the big guys. This is a prize in itself.' But Belarus isn't Switzerland. 'Lukashenko is so, so deeply dependent on Putin and Russia these days that it is simply beyond the power of the United States, no matter how hard it tries, to decouple these two countries,' Shraibman said. Coale isn't too preoccupied with Lukashenko's diplomatic dance. 'That's for Rubio to worry about.' 'I look at the thing of, can I free some more people,' he told me. 'And if it plays into my purpose and what I'm trying to do, I don't care.'
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Yahoo
Trump administration pulls back on work combating human trafficking, long a top GOP priority
President Donald Trump holds up the "big, beautiful bill" that was signed into law as during a Fourth of July military family picnic on the South Lawn of the White House on July 4, 2025 in Washington, D.C. (-Pool) A key office charged by Congress with coordinating the federal government's work against human trafficking was gutted July 11, the latest in a string of cuts across different agencies to the government's work on an issue that Republicans have long hailed as a top priority. The cuts at the State Department's Office to Monitor and Combat Trafficking in Persons (TIP) decimated a team that worked to combat labor and sex trafficking abroad and helped coordinate domestic efforts across other agencies, including the departments of Justice, Health and Human Services, and Labor. The so-called 'reduction-in-force' at the State Department came amid a maelstrom surrounding the Trump administration over its handling of federal investigations into sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, who died in prison while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges in 2019. Officials have said he died by suicide, but his death sparked new conspiracy theories that were fueled by President Donald Trump, who at one point maintained a friendship with Epstein. When this month the Justice Department said there was no Epstein client list, after previously promising to release it, many who had supported Trump and Attorney General Pam Bondi were angered, in part because they believed the client list would reveal new truths about Epstein. Republicans have for years made human trafficking a key issue, pushing for legislation to boost law enforcement and support for victims and telling voters that combating trafficking was a major priority. This report was originally published by The 19th. The Illuminator is a founding member of The 19th News Network. For Secretary of State Marco Rubio, anti-trafficking work has been a centerpiece of his policy agenda. Rubio cosponsored bipartisan legislation to help domestic trafficking survivors during his time in the Senate and as recently as May discussed his concerns about a rise in human trafficking in an unstable Haiti. He criticized former President Joe Biden's immigration policy by saying it 'empowered' child trafficking into the United States. Bondi, too, has long been an advocate of local and federal efforts to combat human trafficking, making it a key focus of her tenure as Florida's attorney general. She went on to lobby on behalf of a Christian anti-human-trafficking advocacy group and the Qatari government on anti-human-trafficking efforts. People working on human trafficking issues in the federal government and for advocacy groups on the front lines of that work in the United States and abroad have been surprised at the pullback. The administration's attention to the issue during Trump's first term and the ascent of high-profile advocates to the Cabinet gave them the impression that their work would be shielded from the kinds of cuts they were seeing elsewhere. Instead, funding and staffing for human trafficking work has taken sizable hits. 'We really thought that the broad, bipartisan nature of the issue of trafficking was going to provide some protection for our office. All Americans are against trafficking — Republicans, Democrats, everybody,' said Cindy Dyer, the former ambassador-at-large under Biden to monitor and combat trafficking in persons at the State Department. The office she oversaw had close to 90 full-time staffers. It lost about a dozen to the Trump administration's voluntary resignation program earlier in the year, and, last Friday, about half were dismissed. The remaining were demoted, Dyer said. The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The office's work spanned a broad range of human trafficking issues, including sex trafficking, which disproportionately affects women, girls and LGBTQ+ people, and forced domestic labor, which also disproportionately affects women and girls. Dyer is now the chief program officer at the McCain Institute at Arizona State University, which promotes democracy and human rights across the world. 'We really thought that broad bipartisan support we have had for 25 years — ever since the Trafficking Victims Protection Act passed in 2000 — would provide us some protection, and it did not. And I think people are really both surprised and disappointed,' said Dyer, who also worked in the Justice Department in the George W. Bush administration. Gov. Landry makes leadership change at Children and Family Services The most recent reauthorization of the law was approved in 2017, during the first Trump administration. The law charged the TIP office with producing an annual report that was due to Congress on June 30; this year's report has been delayed without explanation. Last week's cuts severely impacted the team working on that report, which is widely considered a critical global assessment of human trafficking prevention work. Before those staffing cuts, the office had also paused the disbursement of grants for nongovernmental organizations working on human trafficking. The 19th could not confirm the current status of those grants. Varina Winder, who worked as the chief of staff in the Office of Global Women's Issues at the State Department during the Biden administration, said she was dismayed by the pullback on work to uphold global human rights, including stopping trafficking at TIP. 'If you can't empower the office that is literally ending human slavery, what does that say about your larger ambitions about the value proposition of humans in this administration?' she said. Martina Vandenberg of the Human Trafficking Legal Center said federal work to combat human trafficking falls into four buckets: the State Department's global work, prosecution at the Justice Department, federal funding for outside groups and immigration policy. Every area has taken a hit since the start of the administration, Vandenberg said. 'We have grave concerns,' said Vandenberg, whose anti-trafficking advocacy group connects trafficking survivors with pro bono representation. 'It is distressing to see U.S. anti-trafficking programs decimated by an administration that rode to victory, at least in part, on claims that it would combat human trafficking.' The Human Trafficking Legal Center published an analysis of federal data this week showing that visas for victims of human trafficking who cooperate with law enforcement to arrest and prosecute traffickers are being issued at record-low levels, despite a growing backlog. At the Labor Department, the Trump administration in March put an end to close to 70 programs and more than $500 million in grant funding that the agency was using to combat child labor and human trafficking in countries that have trade agreements with the United States. The funding helped ensure foreign governments were fighting human trafficking while also protecting U.S. jobs, The Washington Post reported at the time. The office that managed the funding was also tasked with producing a congressionally mandated report that, in part, outlined goods produced with child labor. 'To have this administration cut funding so significantly has just been a huge blow to the progress that has been made over the last several decades,' said a federal government employee familiar with this work who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation. 'Within the anti-trafficking movement and in the government, we were hoping that we would be protected in some way since during Trump's first administration, there was more funding for anti-trafficking then than there had been in previous administrations even. And Ivanka Trump took a really strong interest in the issue,' the employee said. In his first term, the president's oldest daughter made the issue central to her portfolio and hosted a summit at the White House. 'We've just seen a huge shift in this administration, and honestly, it's sent shock waves through the community,' the employee said. On Thursday night, Trump said he would authorize Bondi to request from a federal court the grand jury testimony from Epstein's trial. It was a reversal from her previous position on what she would release, though it is still unclear what transcripts the courts could approve to be made public. Reps. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, and Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican, have been trying to force a floor vote on releasing the complete Epstein files. Several far-right Republicans have signed on to the discharge petition effort so far, including Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Eli Crane, Lauren Boebert and Max Miller. Discharge petitions are a procedural maneuver that circumvents House leadership and the powerful Rules Committee to force a floor vote. They've rarely been successful because they require a majority of House members' signatures to kick off. Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, managed to kill the last one raised in April, which would have let new parents vote by proxy while away from the Capitol. But Khanna said he's confident that the petition will move forward: 'We have the votes.' 'Moms being allowed to vote in the House is important,' he said of the failed discharge petition effort, then added: 'But the release of the Epstein files to the MAGA base matters 100 times more to them. I think it's a totally different situation in terms of the intensity of scrutiny. … The base cares so deeply about this.' Next week, a group of high-profile Republicans are expected to gather at the Capitol for the annual International Summit Against Human Trafficking put on by the Conservative Political Action Conference, the group behind the annual gathering of right-wing activists and politicians. 'This pivotal event upholds CPAC's steadfast dedication to eradicating modern-day slavery by uniting survivors, legislators, advocates, and law enforcement from both domestic and international communities to drive bold solutions,' the announcement for the event reads. The group said earlier this month that Trump's investments in immigration enforcement in the 'one big beautiful bill' will 'hit traffickers where it hurts by taking away the shadows they exploit.' Just days later, Freedom Network USA, one of the leading anti-trafficking groups in the country, is planning to hold a webinar on World Day Against Trafficking in Persons 'to break down how the Trump administration's heinous attacks have impacted human trafficking survivors.' This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay, Marissa Martinez and Jennifer Gerson of The 19th. Meet Mel , Marissa and Jennifer and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy. SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
2 days ago
Makeup artist is one of the US deportees sent from El Salvador to Venezuela, congressman says
WASHINGTON -- Andry Hernández Romero, a makeup artist from Venezuela who was deported to El Salvador by the Trump administration and held in a notorious mega-prison, was among the scores of migrants sent back to Venezuela in a three-nation exchange Friday, a California congressman said. Rep. Robert Garcia posted on social media Friday night: 'We have been in touch with Andry Hernández Romero's legal team and they have confirmed he is out of CECOT and back in Venezuela. We are grateful he is alive and are engaged with both the State Department and his team.' Romero, a gay man, fled Venezuela last summer and sought asylum in the U.S. He used a U.S. Customs and Border Protection phone app to arrange an appointment at a U.S. border crossing in San Diego. That's where he was asked about his tattoos. U.S. immigration authorities use a series of 'gang identifiers' to help them spot members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. Romero, who is in his early 20s, has a crown tattooed on each wrist. One is next to the word 'Mom.' The other next to 'Dad.' The crowns, according to his lawyer, also pay homage to his hometown's Christmastime 'Three Kings' festival, and to his work in beauty pageants, where crowns are common. Romero, who insisted he has no ties to Tren, was taken into Immigration and Customs Enforcement custody and transferred to a California detention center. He was eventually flown to the Salvadoran mega-prison known as the Terrorism Confinement Center
