Woman charged with murder for allegedly drowning 1-year-old boy in Lake Michigan
Surah Amon, 31, was charged on Monday, July 21, with first-degree murder and murder with a strong probability for death or injury for the death of the boy on Friday, July 18, a Chicago Police Department news release states.
Just before 10 p.m. CT on July 18, police responded to the 7000 block of S. South Shore Drive, located on South Shore Beach in Chicago's Yacht Harbor. Amon was identified as the suspect in the child's death.
Chicago Police Department Public Information Officer Anthony Spicuzza told USA TODAY that the boy was transported to Comer Children's Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Greta Cross is a national trending reporter at USA TODAY. Story idea? Email her at gcross@usatoday.com.
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Chicago Tribune
20 hours ago
- Chicago Tribune
Neighborhood ties still propel violence in a changing Cabrini-Green
Julia Tate was headed to bed a few weeks ago when her daughter burst into their rowhouse screaming. Tate's cousin, Devon LaSalle, had been shot. The family had urged LaSalle to not come around the neighborhood so much, but he grew up in a now-closed part of the Cabrini-Green rowhouses. He still spent a lot of time there in spite of how much had changed since he was a kid on Mohawk Street. At 41, LaSalle was one of many people who stuck around the rowhouses even as development exploded around the now-vacant lots where the infamous high-rises once stood. Old relationships persisted too, for better or worse. When LaSalle and another man were killed days apart on the same block in what's left of the original public housing development, authorities said both had known their alleged shooters for years. It's been two decades since there were slayings so close together in the Cabrini-Green rowhouses, a patch of 146 public housing units ringed by new construction in the well-heeled River North area. Chicago Police Department sources and neighborhood violence interrupters say the killings likely came from personal history and were not tied to wider gang conflicts. And they came at a time when a leader with his own links to Cabrini-Green is seeking to run the Chicago Housing Authority. Now-former Ald. Walter Burnett Jr., who stepped down from his City Council spot while angling for the post, grew up there and has long decried people's tendency to hang out in their old neighborhoods, Sue Popkin, a researcher who has tracked the impact of the CHA's Plan for Transformation across a number of now-demolished housing complexes, including Cabrini, said old residents and people with ties to the developments keep coming back and maintain social lives in their old neighborhoods long after they've moved away. She offered another CHA development, the Ida B. Wells Homes, as an example. It took years for the homes to be dismantled, she said — 'but until it was entirely gone,' former residents returned. 'People go back to places after disasters,' Popkin said. 'You can't get people to move away from the edge of the ocean, even after there's a flood. There's a very powerful pull of home.' That pull was true for Devon LaSalle, his family said. He came back often to spend time with his girlfriend and his cousins, who are Cabrini residents. LaSalle made an excellent plate of Spanish rice, they said, and would set up in a nearby park to cook and sell plates with a few friends. He had a lot of history on those blocks. Court records show he was arrested last year and charged with aggravated discharge of a firearm after he allegedly fired a gun down Cambridge Avenue into a group of people. That case was still pending at the time of his death. More recently, LaSalle had started working as one of 21 peacekeepers through the organization Near North 3.6.5, and meant to use his own close street relationships around the neighborhood to prevent further violence. The group's leader, the Rev. Randall K. Blakey, said LaSalle had been considered 'one of the best and most promising' men to work with the program, which started in April of this year. He had not been on duty the night he was shot, Blakey said. Just after midnight on July 13, Assistant State's Attorney Mike Pekara said, LaSalle spoke to a man, Maurice Timms, briefly in one of the courtyards that separate the banks of rowhouses. After LaSalle turned away, Timms allegedly shot him once before he approached and fired again. A citizen called 911 a few hours after the shooting to report that Timms had returned to the area and he was asleep in a nearby pickup truck, Pekara said. Officers arrested Timms after a group of residents identified him as the alleged shooter, according to police records. Eight days earlier, 46-year-old Darrin Carter was killed about 50 yards down the block, authorities said. Obbie Sanders allegedly approached Carter as he sat in his car, took out a gun and shot him multiple times. Carter then sought help from a nearby squad car before he lost consciousness, Pekara said. Sanders — who wears leg braces and uses a cane to walk because he's been shot so many times — was allegedly captured on surveillance video fleeing the shooting scene, and police arrested him after he crashed a car near Wacker and DuSable Lake Shore drives. Both Sanders and Timms had been in the neighborhood's social mix days or weeks before the slayings, Pekara said. LaSalle's father, Ralph LaSalle, has been trying to think what could have pushed someone to allegedly 'execute' his son, particularly someone who they'd all known personally. 'That guy, I knew him,' he said of Timms. 'He called me 'Pops.' I wouldn't have figured he would do (anything) like that.' Now 64, the elder LaSalle spent 10 years in prison as a young man after he was convicted of voluntary manslaughter. He has thought about the man he killed decades ago often over the last several weeks. 'The pain I'm feeling, now I know what his parents went through and how they felt,' he said. He doesn't plan to return to Cabrini-Green ever again. Burnett said the killings highlight issues the area has faced for years, even as the area has seen crime plummet and development take off around what's left of the rowhouses. A native of the Cabrini-Green rowhomes, Burnett may soon assume control of the CHA this summer. He said former residents of the rowhouses often return to the area after moving away or being released from prison, reigniting old conflicts. 'All these outside folks coming to the neighborhood, I think it's a detriment to the neighborhood,' Burnett said. 'It's hard to stop those incidents when folks are drinking or getting high and they get into it.' His comments largely echoed those he made five years ago when the killing of 9-year-old Janari Ricks jarred the city. Then, too, Burnett called for nonresidents to keep out of the rowhouses and 'do dirt' elsewhere. Residents of Cabrini-Green were critical in helping CPD officers find a suspect in that case, too, police officials said at the time. One man was charged with murder in the boy's death, and court records show that case is still pending. Janari's mother later filed a lawsuit against CHA, the security firm that patrolled the rowhouses and the property management company. That lawsuit, settled in 2024 for $7 million, alleged that the shooter who killed Janari was well-known in the neighborhood as a violent person, as was his intended target. The target of the shooting, it was alleged, was included on a CHA 'exclusion list' of people who were not to be allowed within the rowhouses. Burnett said CHA could do more to ensure that only those named on a lease are residing in a unit, though he said he couldn't say whether rules related to the list need to be strengthened. 'We need to check these places,' Burnett said. 'We've got a lot of folks harboring in apartments that (aren't) supposed to be there.' The CHA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Burnett told the Tribune that fostering a sense of community and respect for current residents would help deter behavior that can lead to violence. 'So I think the challenge is, one, the people in the neighborhood who may be related to these folks don't demand respect for their houses,' Burnett said. 'Your cousins, your brother, your baby's daddy, you don't demand that they respect your neighborhood.' In a statement, a CHA spokesperson said that all public housing residents needed to adhere to the rules laid out in their leases. According to the statement, the agency 'works hard not to perpetuate stigma for past, present, or future public housing residents' and is making it a priority to offer public gathering spaces where people with ties to the area can return and celebrate their history there. The intersection of Cleveland and Oak streets is known as Dantrell Davis Way, in memory of the 7-year-old boy slain by a sniper's bullet in 1992 as he walked to school through the high-rises with his mother. Scores of children were shot within the Cabrini-Green high-rises, and Dantrell's death catalyzed momentum for the structures' eventual demolition, which researchers like Popkin found led to dramatic dips in violent crime. Along the west side of Cleveland is a vacant lot, still owned by the CHA, where Dantrell's former school once stood. To the north, a new apartment building is under construction. A set of cubic gray and white rowhomes stand on the east side of the street behind a black fence, where people on a recent morning were watering their lawns and walking their dogs. South of Oak Street stand blocks of boarded-up rowhomes and the 800 block of North Cambridge Avenue. People lined the street on a recent afternoon, chatting in twos and threes as they leaned on cars and against fences. A teenage boy rode a motorbike up and down the block, revving the engine every time he turned around. Rodnell Dennis stood at the far end of her block with his arms folded. A group of kids rounding the corner stopped for hugs and fist bumps before scattering into several rowhouses up and down Cambridge. Others dressed in swim gear waited on the steps or hurtled back and forth across the street, where a fence blocked off more boarded-up units. Dennis, 46, grew up in the high-rises and spent 20 years behind bars before he was paroled in 2012. He recalled finding a dramatically different Cabrini-Green upon his return — 146 of the original rowhouses surrounded by new construction. A CHA spokesperson said the agency had erected 4,000 units of public housing around the neighborhood since 2000. Another 4,000 units still planned for around the area will house people with a range of incomes, as part of the CHA's 'Cabrini Now' plan. The agency's ombudsman lets residents living in mixed-income communities offer feedback and voice concerns with community-building, a spokesperson said, and CHA works with several organizations in the Near North Side area on events where residents can get to know one another. But for Dennis, who now works as a peacekeeper through Near North 3.6.5, the distance between the old neighbors and the new feels vast. 'They don't know us,' he said. 'They just know the stories they've heard about us. They form opinions that have no relevance to who we are.' Dennis, who pleaded guilty to the murder of a 9-year-old boy when he was just 13, said he had come a long way from contributing to the violence that gave Cabrini-Green its notoriety. 'It goes to show you a level of growth from then to now,' he said. But he said it's hard to impress that on people who avoid the rowhouses despite living so close by. 'How do you communicate with people who live 15 feet from your front door but don't want to walk through your neighborhood?' he asked. Just behind Dennis, Julia Tate's rowhouse still had stuffed animals and a wilted flower from LaSalle's memorial gathering next to the front door. He left behind 14 children and had just welcomed his first grandchild, relatives said. On Wednesday afternoon, Tate's air conditioning was blasting and the blinds were drawn to keep out the start of the latest heat wave. Her phone rang every few minutes with relatives calling about funeral arrangements. Now 56, Tate has lived in the rowhouses all her life, on Iowa and Mohawk streets and now in a unit on the southern edge of the neighborhood. She remembers her mom growing cucumbers and cantaloupe out front, trips to Rainbo Roller Rink in the Uptown neighborhood and singing in the Sunshine Gospel Choir. Tate mentioned the 1970 murders of two police officers in nearby Seward Park as an example of the kind of violence that gave the housing projects their notoriety. Cabrini-Green 'had its day,' in her words. But the rowhouses had been another story. 'This area was always a safe haven for people,' she said. 'We had a childhood life, even though things might have been happening during the time when we were growing up.' People come back to the rowhomes because that's what's left, but also because they were considered a less risky place to be, she said. 'The people that come down here now are the people that used to be in the high-rises,' Tate said. And while crime has dropped sharply in the area since those towers were demolished, Tate feels that kids growing up in the last of the rowhouses today don't have as much access to the kind of programs that sprang up to help kids who lived in the high-rises. Some anti-violence workers said the new development in the area has actually made it harder to secure funding. City and state dollars often are allocated based on median-income in a particular ZIP code, making kids from struggling families less likely to stand out on paper in a wealthier zone. A CHA spokesperson said in a statement that the agency was always looking for ways to offer more options for youth activities. Currently, organizations like After School Matters and By the Hand Club for Kids run no- or low-cost programming for families in the area along with the Chicago Park District. Stacie Wade, LaSalle's second cousin who pounded up the stairs screaming the night he was killed, remembers programs from her youth in the rowhouses. Now 31, Wade doesn't recall worrying about shootings growing up. 'I used to like it down here,' she said. But LaSalle was like an older brother to her, and his death has made her reconsider the neighborhood where he spent so much time and she's lived most of her life. He was with people he trusted when he came back, she said. And still he was taken away.
USA Today
21 hours ago
- USA Today
ICE deported teenagers and children in immigration raids. Here are their stories.
Several students who attended K-12 schools in the United States last year won't return this fall after ICE deported them to other countries. An empty seat. Martir Garcia Lara's fourth-grade teacher and classmates went on with the school day in Torrance, California without him on May 29. About 20 miles north of his fourth grade classroom, United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested and detained the boy and his father at their scheduled immigration hearing in Downtown Los Angeles. The federal immigration enforcement agency, which under President Donald Trump has more aggressively deported undocumented immigrants, separated the young boy and his father for a time and took them to an immigration detention facility in Texas. Garcia Lara and his father were reunited and deported to Honduras this summer. Garcia Lara is one of at least five young children and teens who have been rounded up by ICE and deported from the United States with their parents since the start of Trump's second presidential term. Many won't return to their school campuses in the fall. "Martir's absence rippled beyond the school walls, touching the hearts of neighbors and strangers alike, who united in a shared hope for his safe return," Sara Myers, a spokesperson for the Torrance Unified School District, told USA TODAY. Trisha McLaughlin, assistant secretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said his father Martir Garcia-Banegas, 50, illegally entered the United States in 2021 with his son from the Central American country and an immigration judge ordered them to "removed to Honduras" in Sept. 2022. "They exhausted due process and had no legal remedies left to pursue," McLaughlin wrote USA TODAY in an email. The young boy is now in Honduras without his teacher, classmates and a brother who lives in Torrance. "I was scared to come here," Lara told a reporter at the California-based news station ABC7 in Spanish. "I want to see my friends again. All of my friends are there. I miss all my friends very much." Although no reported ICE deportations have taken place on school grounds, school administrators, teachers and students told USA TODAY that fear lingers for many immigrant students in anticipation of the new school year. The Trump administration has ramped up immigration enforcement in the United States. A Reuters analysis of ICE and White House data shows the Trump administration has doubled the daily arrest rates compared to the last decade. Trump recently signed the House and Senate backed "One Big Beautiful Bill," which increases ICE funding by $75 billion to use to enforce immigration policy and arrest, detain and deport immigrants in the United States. Although Trump has said he wants to remove immigrants from the country who entered illegally and committed violent crimes, many people without criminal records have also been arrested and deported, including school students who have been picked up along with or in lieu of their parents. Abigail Jackson, a spokesperson for the White House, says the Trump administration's immigration agencies are not targeting children in their raids. She called an insinuation that they are "a fake narrative when the truth tells a much different story." "In many of these examples, the children's parents were illegally present in the country – some posing a risk to the communities they were illegally present in – and when they were going to be removed they chose to take their children with them," Jackson said. "If you have a final deportation order, as many of these illegal immigrant parents did, you have no right to stay in the United States and should immediately self-deport.' Parents can choose to leave their kids behind if they are arrested, detained and deported from the United States, she said. Some advocates for immigrants in the United States dispute that claim. National Immigration Project executive director Sirine Shebaya said she's aware of undocumented immigrant parents were not given the choice to leave their kids behind or opportunity to make arrangement for them to stay in the United States. In several cases, ICE targeted parents when they attended routine immigration appointments, while traffic stops led to deportations of two high school students. School principals, teachers and classmates say their absence is sharply felt and other students are afraid they could be next. From Los Angeles to Massachusetts: arrested, detained and deported The coastal community of Torrance is in uproar over Garcia Lara's deportation. After hearing about the arrest of him and his father, Jasmin King, president of the PTA for Torrance Elementary School, asked parents in the group for advice on how to help them. "One of our students, Martir Garcia Lara, 4th grade, who has been one of our students since 1st grade has recently been held captive in an ICE facility located in Houston Texas," King wrote in a memo to school parents obtained by KTLA in late May. "We are trying to help Martir and his family." School district officials also received inquiries from the community about what people could do to assist Garcia Lara and his family, said Myers, the district spokesperson. In the end, they couldn't do much to help the child stay in the United States. Elementary, middle and high school campuses have historically been safe settings for immigrant students and their families, but students may be picked up by ICE when they are off-campus. 'One of our classmates was deported' About 10 miles north of the White House, Montgomery Blair High School in Silver Spring, Maryland, also lost a high school junior near the end of the school year. ICE deported the student to Guatemala, according to the student organization Montgomery Blair Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform. Liliana López, a spokesperson for the district, said ICE has not appeared on the district's campuses. 'Last week, one of our classmates was deported,' the group wrote on social media. 'We're heartbroken, we're angry, and we're not staying silent.' Kyara Romero Lira, 17, who attends Montgomery Blair, said she found out about the student's deportation through a friend who was close to the girl. She said she could not name the student because the student and her family requested privacy. ICE did not respond to an inquiry from USA TODAY for more information about the student or why she was deported. School officials said they could not confirm the student's status or name due to privacy regulations. The teen's arrest elicited an emotional student walkout on the school campus in June. Romero Lira and Senaya Asfaw, the leaders of a student group on campus called Students For Asylum and Immigration Reform organized the walkout. They are both daughters of immigrants. Other high schoolers joined them on campus on June 12 in protest of the student's deportation. The teens described the protest as "extremely successful." Asfaw said there is an increased presence of ICE in their community, which has a large immigrant population. "There's been unrest, confusion and fear since the new administration came in," Asfaw told USA TODAY. "There's been a lot more ICE sightings in general, not on campus, but in the community." Romero Lira said the student's deportation "brought something that felt so far away to our doorstep." She feels "extremely scared" even though she's in a community that's historically friendly to immigrants, she said. Asfaw agreed and reiterated the surprise about the student's deportation hitting so close to home. "Our school does so much to try to help the immigrant students and parents and families. You can see that within the hallways of Blair," Asfaw said. "There are all kids of immigrants, a lot of Latino immigrants and other immigrants from all over the world." Detroit teacher will 'miss him in my classroom next year' Immigration officials arrested Detroit teen and high school senior Maykol Bogoya-Duarte on May 20 when he was driving to a school field trip. Authorities say he was tailgating a car in front of him, which turned out to be an unmarked police car. Local police officers found out he didn't have a driver's license and arrested the teen during the traffic stop, said his attorney, Ruby Robinson with the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center. A copy of the police report in the case, provided to USA TODAY by the Michigan Immigrant Rights Center, showed that police officers called local border patrol agents on the scene to "provide interpretation" between officers and Bogoya-Duarte. Robinson said immigration agents learned then that Bogoya-Duarte was undocumented and had a deportation order and arrested him. He was 18 at the time of the arrest. He was also just 3.5 credits away from graduating high school. Authorities sent him to an immigration processing center in Louisiana and deported him to Colombia in June after he lost his legal appeal to stay in the country to earn his high school diploma. Bogoya-Duarte had lived in the United States since 2022 and was denied asylum to stay in the country in 2024, Robinson said. Bogoya-Duarte was planning to return to Colombia with his mother after he graduated from high school. He was in the process of obtaining a new passport. Jackson, from the White House, said Bogoya-Duarte had "previously ignored a judge's removal order and lost his appeal." "His asylum request was adjudicated prior to removal," she said. Dozens of community members spoke at a recent Detroit Public Schools meeting condemning Bogoya-Duarte's arrest, Chalkbeat Detroit reported. "On the day the rest of his classmates were starting summer and graduating, he was in a detention center," Robinson said. He described the teen as conscientious, focused on school, and said his grades had been improving since he entered the United States. "It was an opportunity cut short for him," he said. Robinson said Bogoya-Duarte was unable to apply for or receive a drivers license because of state restrictions that don't allow undocumented immigrants to obtain them. Angel Garcia, principal of Western International High School where Bogoya-Duarte attended school, called it "a really scary time" for his community. "I feel terrible for Maykol's family, but also for our other families who witnessed what happened from afar," Garcia said. Bogoya-Duarte's deportation and the Trump administration's heavy hand on immigration enforcement caused "quite a dip" in attendance last school year, he said. Kristen Schoettle, Bogoya-Duarte's teacher from Western International High School, told Chalkbeat Detroit that she's "devastated" and will "miss him in my classroom next year." 'This kid, my bright student, was passed along to prisons for a month, scared and facing awful conditions I'm sure, for the crime of what — fleeing his country as a minor in search of a better life?" said Schoettle to Chalkbeat Detroit. "And the US government decided his time was better spent in prison than finishing out the school year." 'The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable' Younger school children who attended Louisiana schools have also been caught in the crosshairs. ICE deported a 7-year-old girl in New Orleans to Honduras with her mother and her 4-year-old brother who has cancer in late April, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. The children are both United States citizens and lived their entires lives in the country, said Sirine Shebaya from the National Immigration Project, which is representing the family. The family was attending a routine immigration appointment when they were arrested and the mother did not have a criminal history, she said. The United States Department of Homeland Security said the kids' mother "entered the country illegally and was released into the interior in 2013." "She was given a final order of deportation in 2015," reads an April 29 post from the agency on X. "In February of 2025, she was arrested by Kenner Police Department in Louisiana for speeding, driving without insurance, and driving without a license," the agency wrote. "When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring both children, who are American citizens, with her to Honduras and presented a valid United States passport for each child." Shebaya said she was not given the option to leave her kids behind or make arrangements for them to stay and they were deported within 24 hours. "ICE is supposed to give families time to figure out what options there are for care for their children, but in any cases families are taken into routine check ins, taken into hotel rooms for an extremely brief time and they're told deported tomorrow," Shebaya said. ICE also deported another New Orleans family, including the mother of an 11-year-old girl and a 2-year-old boy, who is an American citizen, after they attended a routine immigration appointment in April. They were given 72 hours before they were deported, Shebaya said. The mother and the daughter entered the United States together during the first Trump administration and were undocumented immigrants. The young girl was attending school in the United States for about four years, Shebaya said. Officials from the Department of Homeland Security said on X that the mother "illegally entered the U.S. three times." "Her and her daughter were given final orders of removal in March of 2020," they wrote."When she was taken into ICE custody in April 2025, she chose to bring her daughter, an American citizen, with her to Honduras." Shebaya said the mother was told to bring her children and their passports to her immigration appointment. ICE is "actively instructing people to bring kids in some situations," she said. "If you're a child going to school or family with mixed status within it, there's a shock factor for families and for schoolmates going to school with them and not seeing them showing up," she said. "If anything, it creates terror day in and day out. Kids are being affected by it." DHS officials said in a statement about the New Orleans cases that the agency is "not deporting American children" and "takes its responsibility to protect children seriously and will continue to work with federal law enforcement to ensure that children are safe and protected." "Parents, who are here illegally, can take control of their departure," they wrote. Immigration attorneys from the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Immigration Project and other advocates have condemned both New Orleans families' deportation and Trump's immigration crackdown, particularly when children are affected. 'Deporting U.S. citizen children is illegal, unconstitutional, and immoral," said Erin Ware, a senior associate at the law firm Ware Immigration, in a news release from the American Civil Liberties Union, about the New Orleans case. "The speed, brutality, and clandestine manner in which these children were deported is beyond unconscionable, and every official responsible for it should be held accountable.' 'I was hoping to graduate with my friends' Nory Sontay Ramos, a 17-year-old honors student at Miguel Contreras High School in Westlake, Los Angeles was preparing for her senior year before she and her mother were arrested by ICE at an immigration appointment. 'ICE took us to a room, and they ended up telling my mom, 'Your case is over, so we have to take you guys with us,'' Sontay Ramos told the news outlet The 19th. The teen and her mother were undocumented. The duo entered the United States as asylum seekers when Sontay Ramos was 6 years old, NBC 4 Los Angeles reported. McLaughlin said Sontay Ramos and her mother "exhausted all of their legal options to remain in the U.S." "On March 12, 2019, an immigration judge ordered their removal," she said. "On August 12, 2022, the Board of Immigration Appeals dismissed their appeal." Authorities took the teen and her mother to Texas and deported them to Guatemala on July 4. 'I feel really sad because I was hoping to graduate with my friends and be there with them doing track and field,' she told NBC 4. At Miguel Contreras Learning Complex where she attended school, physical education teacher Manuel Guevara told The 19th that she was "happy-go-lucky." 'Nory is going into her senior year, which is another thing that's just killing me," he told the news outlet. "She was going into her senior year with all this momentum.' 'Nobody should be in there' A student who was detained and later released on bond is left with emotional scars after his experience in a Massachusetts detention facility. ICE pulled over and arrested Marcelo Gomes da Silva, 18, on his drive to volleyball practice at Milford High School in Massachusetts on May 31. The next day, Gomes da Silva's girlfriend and the other seniors at Milford High School graduated under a cloud of angst. Gomes da Silva, an 11th grader, was absent, as were two of the graduating students and the families of many others who feared arrest and deportation if they showed up. "I heard many stories of people who didn't cheer for their children," for fear of being exposed to immigration authorities, Coleen Greco, mother of a volleyball teammate of Gomes da Silva's, told USA TODAY. Federal officials said they were targeting Gomes da Silva's father, who owns the car he was driving, because he is undocumented and has a history of speeding. Gomes da Silva's attorney Robin Nice said his father has no arrests or convictions for speeding. The family moved to the United States from Brazil when Gomes da Silva was 7 years old and overstayed their visa, according to Nice. At the school's graduation ceremony, Milford High School Principal Joshua Otlin referred to the community's lingering "fear and anxiety" after Gomes da Silva's arrest. 'There is wrenching despair and righteous anger, where there should be gratitude and joy," he said. Gomes da Silva was later released from the ICE detention facility after six days in custody. He has applied for asylum in the hopes of avoiding deportation. A new surge of fear for immigrant families with school children Officials at schools with large immigrant populations say many students have been fearful since Trump ramped up immigration enforcement. "There's been very high levels of anxiety in the community about immigration enforcement for many months," said Otlin. Many immigrant families in Los Angeles County, where Sontay Ramos and Garcia Lara lived, avoided graduation ceremonies after Trump sent National Guard Troops to the Southern California city when Angelenos protested ICE arrests there in June. How LA school graduations Became the epicenter of fear for ICE family separations Los Angeles Unified School District has produced 'know your rights' cards with directions on how to respond if approached by immigration agents to students who request them, said Christy Hagen, a spokesperson for the district. Officials there are urging parents and guardians to update their students' emergency contact information and designate a trusted adult as an authorized caregiver in the event they are detained, she said. School officials elsewhere said they are also making plans to aid immigrant students ahead of the new school year. Garcia, the high school principal from Detroit, said the school may increase English language instruction for students who speak it as a second language. He wants to give students "more agency in knowing their rights." "We have to be more up front and honest with students about the dangers that we're currently experiencing in our country, especially for those who are not citizens." he said. While Garcia Lara won't return to nearby Torrance Unified in the fall, Myers, the spokesperson for his old school district, said the school community's concern about the young boy and his father's well-being has "reaffirmed our district's belief in the human spirit." Contributing: Ben Adler, USA TODAY; Max Reinhart, The Detroit News Contact Kayla Jimenez at kjimenez@ Follow her on X at @kaylajjimenez.
USA Today
a day ago
- USA Today
Former CEO of Christian nonprofit pleads guilty to possessing child pornography
The former CEO of My Faith Votes, a nonprofit that encourages "Christians in America to vote in every election," has pleaded guilty to possessing child sexual abuse images, months after his arrest. Jason Christopher Yates, 56, pleaded guilty to two of eight felony counts of possession of child pornography on Tuesday, July 22, in a district court in McLeod County, Minnesota, according to a plea petition obtained by USA TODAY. Yates was initially charged and arrested in October 2024, according to Minnesota state court records. My Faith Votes told Religion News Service that Yates served as its CEO until August 2024. 'In early August 2024, the My Faith Votes board of directors separated Jason Yates from My Faith Votes and board member Chris Sadler assumed the position of Acting CEO," the statement reads. "Over the last three months Chris has been working with the dedicated My Faith Votes team to encourage millions of Christians to vote, pray and think biblically about this election in America.' Yates became the CEO of My Faith Votes in 2015 during the nonprofit's inception, according to his Truth & Liberty Coalition bio. USA TODAY contacted My Faith Votes on Saturday, July 26, but has not received a response. The Tamburino Law Group, whose attorneys served as Yates' legal counsel in the case, told USA TODAY in an email, "We are not commenting on this matter." What did Jason Yates do? According to a probable cause affidavit obtained by USA TODAY, an individual gave the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension a hard drive that contained child sexual abuse images on July 31, 2024. The person told agents that they received the hard drive from a relative of Yates who "accidentally discovered it" inside a dresser in the former CEO's office in McLeod County, Minnesota, according to the affidavit. Yates' relative stumbled upon the child sex abuse images when they tried putting the hard drive in their computer for more storage, the affidavit reads. The hard drive contained more than 100 sexually explicit images of children, according to the document. When agents met with Yates on Sept. 13, 2024, he confirmed that the child sex abuse images on the hard drive did not belong to the relative who found them, the affidavit states. He also told the agents that he had a prior conviction for possessing child sex abuse images, but it had been expunged, the document continued. What is My Faith Votes? My Faith Votes describes itself as a "non-partisan movement" that motivates Christians in the U.S. to vote in elections, according to the Fort Worth, Texas-based nonprofit's website. "We desire to see an America where God is honored in the public square and biblical truth is advanced in our culture," My Faith Votes' website states. The nonprofit was founded in 2015 by Sealy Yates, an attorney who previously served on President Donald Trump's evangelical advisory board, according to Politico. He is also Jason Yates' uncle, according to Christian news site The Roys Report. Both are also literary agents representing Christian authors. While My Faith Votes claims to be "non-partisan," the nonprofit has backed several Republican officials and conservative views, including anti-abortion. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was My Faith Votes' honorary national chairman before becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Israel under Trump's administration, according to the nonprofit. Dr. Ben Carson was the founding honorary national chairman for the nonprofit before he became the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development during Trump's first presidency. Jason Yates is scheduled to be sentenced on Sept. 29, according to Minnesota court records.
