Latest news with #US-Mexico
New York Post
a day ago
- New York Post
American woman gunned down by Mexican cartel who mistake her dad's truck for a rival gang's
An American woman was gunned down by ruthless Mexican cartel members who mistook her father's pickup truck for one belonging to a rival gang, according to reports. Isabel Ashanti Gomez, 22, was riding with her dad, Valentin, in his Ford F-150 when they were ambushed in a cartel-controlled zone on the Zitácuaro-Aputzio highway in Juárez, El Universal reported. Instead of stopping at a makeshift roadblock, which cops believe was set up by the notoriously ultra-violent Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), Valetin accelerated and tried to crash through the barrier, The Sun reported. Advertisement 3 Isabel Ashanti Gomez, 22, was riding with her dad, Valentin, in his Ford F-150 when they were ambushed in a cartel-controlled zone on the Zitácuaro-Aputzio highway. NX Cartel members assumed it was a rival gang driving the truck and opened fire, killing Gomez in a hail of bullets, local outlets confirmed. Her father was seriously wounded in the ambush, as was a friend with them, only identified as Danae, 26, authorities said. Advertisement Just hours before her death, Gomez posted a joyful video dancing with her uncle to wish him a happy birthday. 'I hope you keep celebrating many more birthdays. See you later, after I've had a shower,' the caption said. 3 Cartel members assumed it was a rival gang driving the truck and opened fire, killing Gomez in a hail of bullets, local outlets confirmed. NX 3 The shooting is still under investigation, according to reports. REUTERS Advertisement Gomez held dual US-Mexico citizenship and often visited the area with her family, the outlet said. The shooting remains under investigation.
American Military News
a day ago
- Politics
- American Military News
2 new military zones created by Trump admin along US-Mexico border
President Donald Trump's Department of Defense is creating two new military zones along the southern border between the United States and Mexico. According to The New York Times, two Defense Department officials said that the Pentagon is establishing new military zones in Texas and Arizona. The Texas military zone will be part of the Marine Corps Air Station, which is located in Yuma, and the Arizona military zone will be part of Joint Base San Antonio, according to the outlet. A defense official confirmed The New York Times report in a statement to The Hill. The anonymous defense official explained that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth instructed the secretaries of the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force to 'take necessary action to establish National Defense Areas along the U.S.-Mexico border.' The defense official added, 'DoD's new jurisdiction over these stretches of land and river will enhance the authority of the Department to secure the U.S. southern border from unlawful entry and to maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States.' In a Wednesday press release, the Air Force said it will now oversee a National Defense Area spanning roughly 250 miles of the Rio Grande River in Texas' Hidalgo and Cameron Counties. READ MORE: US troops detain 'illegal aliens' in military zones along US-Mexico border 'Joint Task Force-Southern Border (JTF-SB) service members, under the direction of USNORTHCOM, will operate within the NDA,' the Air Force stated. 'Their responsibilities include enhanced detection and monitoring through stationary positions and mobile patrols, temporarily detaining trespassers until they are transferred to the appropriate law enforcement authorities, and supporting the installation of temporary barriers, and signage to secure the area.' The Air Force explained that the new National Defense Area is the 'latest in a series' of military zones created to 'strengthen interagency coordination and bolster security operations along the U.S. southern border.' The Air Force noted that the Defense Department previously established National Defense Areas in Texas and New Mexico as part of U.S. Northern Command's 'whole-of-government approach to homeland defense.' According to the press release, the first National Defense Area was created in New Mexico on April 21 and includes roughly 170 miles of land as part of an extension of Fort Huachuca, while a second National Defense Area was created in West Texas on May 1 and includes roughly 63 miles of land as part of an extension of Fort Bliss. 'These efforts reflect USNORTHCOM's ongoing mission as the DoD's operational lead for homeland defense, ensuring the territorial integrity of the United States' southern border,' the Air Force concluded.
Business Insider
5 days ago
- Business Insider
How this lawyer used AI to help him win a $1.5 million case
Some lawyers continue to fall for made-up cases generated by artificial intelligence. Others are quietly finding ways to make the technology work for them. Joseph McMullen, a San Diego civil rights and criminal defense attorney, is one of them. Last year, he said, he used AI-powered legal software to help him win a major case by sifting through evidence and making his filings more persuasive. The case that led McMullen to rethink his tools started with a 9-year-old girl, a passport photo, and a border agent who thought something didn't add up. In 2019, Julia, a fourth grader, and her 14-year-old brother, Oscar, rose early every weekday morning to cross the US-Mexico border to go to school. The siblings were born in the US but lived in a Tijuana border town, court records show. For local kids, the commute was as familiar as brushing their teeth. They'd crossed the border many times without incident until March 18, when a US Customs and Border Protection officer noticed a dot on Julia's passport photo that looked like a mole she didn't have in person. Julia was taken to a secondary inspection area and interviewed alone, which the court would later find violated the agency's policy on questioning children. In a lawsuit, the family alleged that border officers pressured her to claim she was her Mexican cousin. The government denied any coercion and argued that the length of the children's detention was justified because Julia repeatedly identified herself as her cousin. A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson declined to comment. Julia was detained for 34 hours, and Oscar for roughly 14 hours, before they were reunited with their mother. Swearing off ChatGPT As he built his lawsuit against Customs and Border Protection over the children's detention, McMullen, who runs his own law practice, turned to technology to interpret the evidence. By early 2024, he had three federal civil trials in three months. Time was short, and help was scarce. He approached tools such as ChatGPT with deep skepticism. In one of his early tests, the chatbot surfaced a case that seemed perfect — until he realized it didn't exist. "That was it. Never again," he said. Barely a month went by without another story of a lawyer getting burned by bogus case law. Judges were catching on. A public database maintained by the legal data analyst Damien Charlotin lists 120 cases in which courts caught lawyers using fake or hallucinated citations. Most of the cases were in the US in the past 18 months. Still, the idea of using AI stuck with McMullen. Unlike lawyers who lean heavily on case law, he spends most of his time combing through police reports, surveillance footage, transcripts, and emails, then figuring out what he has, what's missing, and what story the evidence tells. He wondered how better tech could help him, like taking a metal detector to a haystack. Get to the point There was no jury in his trial against CBP, which meant US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel would make the decision. That made written filings even more crucial. "It was important to make it as easy as possible for [Curiel] to get the information that I really wanted him to look at," McMullen said. Another attorney recommended Clearbrief, a tool that integrates with Microsoft Word and lets lawyers link every factual claim to the underlying evidence. The plug-in recognizes citations using natural language processing and automatically generates links to relevant case law or documents. When an attorney files a brief using Clearbrief, a judge or any recipient can open a hyperlinked version in Word or a browser. Each citation becomes interactive: Clicking on one pulls up the exact source text side-by-side with the brief, allowing the reader to verify claims faster without digging through exhibits or databases. While preparing for trial, McMullen found a California unlawful detainment case that had resulted in a large damages award. To try to steer Curiel toward a similar judgment, he used Clearbrief to link an appellate brief from that case — buried deep in a district court docket — directly in his trial memo. McMullen said being concise in briefs isn't just about saving time; it's a persuasive strategy in itself. Effective advocacy, he said, isn't about "inundating a finder of fact with all the evidence," but presenting "the most important things that you need to know." (He's certain Curiel and his clerks were thorough in their review.) "Being efficient with anyone's time is persuasive," he said. Clearbrief and the competition Lawyers can also use Microsoft Word to hyperlink text. The Clearbrief difference, its founder and CEO, Jacqueline Schafer, said, is that it automatically creates the hyperlinks and checks the citations against databases such as LexisNexis and vLex Fastcase. The tool flags any mismatch between what the lawyer writes and what the source says. Schafer said it speeds up drafting and reduces the burden on judges to confirm that every citation is accurate and not the product of an AI hallucination. Clearbrief's client list includes law firms, courts, and legal departments with names such as Hogan Lovells, Microsoft, and the American Arbitration Association. The service starts at $200 a month per user for solo practitioners and small teams, with higher rates for larger organizations. Westlaw and LexisNexis also offer tools to assist with legal research and drafting, but they don't affect how the final document appears to the court or recipient. Another Clearbrief feature McMullen relied on was timelines. The tool turned over dozens of depositions and other records and created a case chronology, complete with hyperlinks to the source documents that support the dates and events shown in the timeline. McMullen didn't submit the timeline in court — it was "maybe a thousand lines," he said — but he read it closely in trial prep to make sure he hadn't missed anything. Better outcomes Last year, Curiel ruled that CBP falsely imprisoned the siblings and was liable for the "intentional infliction of emotional distress" in the 2019 incident. Oscar's grades went down. Julia suffered from insomnia and nightmares. Their parents sought therapy for them both. Curiel wrote in his decision that the government's conduct was "beyond the bounds" of what is "usually tolerated in a civilized community. " He ruled that the agency must pay the family $1.5 million in total damages. The US government appealed the decision and then dropped its appeal. Many legal tech startups promise lawyers they'll be able to take on more cases. For McMullen, the promise of AI isn't about churning through more cases so much as going deeper on the ones he has. He said he used the time he saved to visit Julia's family in Mexico. "There are several aspects of the practice that are gratifying," McMullen said. But, "there's not a single person who says, 'I really love the tedium of formatting that table.'"
Business Insider
5 days ago
- Business Insider
A family was awarded $1.5 million after US border officers wrongfully detained their 9-year-old. Their lawyer shares which AI tool helped him win the case.
Some lawyers continue to fall for made-up cases generated by artificial intelligence. Others are quietly finding ways to make the technology work for them. Joseph McMullen, a San Diego civil rights and criminal defense attorney, is one of them. Last year, he said, he used AI-powered legal software to help him win a major case by sifting through evidence and making his filings more persuasive. The case that led McMullen to rethink his tools started with a 9-year-old girl, a passport photo, and a border agent who thought something didn't add up. In 2019, Julia, a fourth grader, and her 14-year-old brother, Oscar, rose early every weekday morning to cross the US-Mexico border to go to school. The siblings were born in the US but lived in a Tijuana border town, court records show. For local kids, the commute was as familiar as brushing their teeth. They'd crossed the border many times without incident until March 18, when a US Customs and Border Protection officer noticed a dot on Julia's passport photo that looked like a mole she didn't have in person. Julia was taken to a secondary inspection area and interviewed alone, which the court would later find violated the agency's policy on questioning children. In a lawsuit, the family alleged that border officers pressured her to claim she was her Mexican cousin. The government denied any coercion and argued that the length of the children's detention was justified because Julia repeatedly identified herself as her cousin. A Customs and Border Protection spokesperson declined to comment. Julia was detained for 34 hours, and Oscar for roughly 14 hours, before they were reunited with their mother. Swearing off ChatGPT As he built his lawsuit against Customs and Border Protection over the children's detention, McMullen, who runs his own law practice, turned to technology to interpret the evidence. By early 2024, he had three federal civil trials in three months. Time was short, and help was scarce. He approached tools like ChatGPT with deep skepticism. In one of his early tests, the chatbot surfaced a case that seemed perfect — until he realized it didn't exist. "That was it. Never again," he said. Barely a month went by without another story of a lawyer getting burned by bogus case law. Judges were catching on. A public database maintained by legal data analyst Damien Charlotin lists 120 cases where courts caught lawyers using fake or hallucinated citations. Most of the cases were in the US in the past 18 months. Still, the idea of using AI stuck with McMullen. Unlike lawyers who lean heavily on case law, he spends most of his time combing through police reports, surveillance footage, transcripts, and emails, then figuring out what he has, what's missing, and what story the evidence tells. He wondered how better tech could help him, like taking a metal detector to a haystack. Get to the point There was no jury in his trial against CBP, which meant US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel would make the decision. That made written filings even more crucial. "It was important to make it as easy as possible for [Curiel] to get the information that I really wanted him to look at," McMullen said. Another attorney recommended Clearbrief, a tool that integrates with Microsoft Word and lets lawyers link every factual claim to the underlying evidence. The plugin recognizes citations using natural language processing and automatically generates links to relevant case law or documents. When an attorney files a brief using Clearbrief, a judge or any recipient can open a hyperlinked version in Word or a browser. Each citation becomes interactive: Clicking on one pulls up the exact source text side-by-side with the brief, allowing the reader to verify claims faster without digging through exhibits or databases. While preparing for trial, McMullen found a California unlawful detainment case that had resulted in a large damages award. To try and steer Curiel toward a similar judgment, he used Clearbrief to link an appellate brief from that case — buried deep in a district court docket — directly in his trial memo. McMullen said being concise in briefs is not just about saving time; it is a persuasive strategy in itself. Effective advocacy, he said, isn't about "inundating a finder of fact with all the evidence," but presenting "the most important things that you need to know." (He's certain Curiel and his clerks were thorough in their review.) "Being efficient with anyone's time is persuasive," he said. Clearbrief and the competition Lawyers can also use Microsoft Word to hyperlink text. The Clearbrief difference, founder and CEO Jacqueline Schafer said, is that it automatically creates the hyperlinks and checks the citations against databases like LexisNexis and vLex Fastcase. The tool flags any mismatch between what the lawyer writes and what the source says. Schafer said it speeds up drafting and reduces the burden on judges to confirm that every citation is accurate and not the product of an AI hallucination. Clearbrief's client list includes law firms, courts, and legal departments with names like Hogan Lovells, Microsoft, and the American Arbitration Association. The service starts at $200 a month per user for solo practitioners and small teams, with higher rates for larger organizations. Westlaw and LexisNexis also offer tools to assist with legal research and drafting, but they don't affect how the final document appears to the court or recipient. Another Clearbrief feature McMullen relied on was timelines. The tool turned over dozens of depositions and other records and created a case chronology, complete with hyperlinks to the source documents that support the dates and events shown in the timeline. McMullen didn't submit the timeline in court — it was "maybe a thousand lines" — but he read it closely in trial prep to make sure he hadn't missed anything. Better outcomes Last year, Curiel ruled that CBP falsely imprisoned the siblings and was liable for the "intentional infliction of emotional distress" in the 2019 incident. Oscar's grades went down. Julia suffered from insomnia and nightmares. Their parents sought therapy for them both. Curiel wrote in his decision that the government's conduct was "beyond the bounds" of what is "usually tolerated in a civilized community. " He ruled that the agency must pay the family $1.5 million in total damages. The US government appealed the decision, then dropped its appeal. Many legal tech startups promise lawyers they'll be able to take on more cases. For McMullen, the promise of AI isn't about churning through more cases so much as going deeper on the ones he has. He said he used the time he saved to visit Julia's family in Mexico. "There are several aspects of the practice that are gratifying," McMullen said. But, "there's not a single person who says, 'I really love the tedium of formatting that table.'"
Yahoo
20-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Chain Reaction: Michael Goldman of Caru Containers on Why ‘Sourcing Diversity is Paramount'
Chain Reaction is Sourcing Journal's discussion series with industry executives to get their take on today's logistics challenges and learn about ways their company is working to keep the flow of goods moving. Here, Michael Goldman, general manager of North America at Caru Containers, discusses how the global transportation company supports its partners in building more resilient and diversified supply chains amid ongoing disruptions and what the U.S. can learn from China. Name: Michael Goldman More from Sourcing Journal $10B Trump-Approved 'Green Corridors' Project to Drive Efficiency in US-Mexico Trade Forward Air Chairman Ousted, Potential Sale Appears in View Byte-Sized AI: Perfect Corp. and Nvidia Team Up; LuminX Gets Seed Round Title: General manager, North America Company: Caru Containers What is Caru Containers? Caru Containers is a global company with Dutch roots. Operating from 10 offices and active in over 70 countries, we trade new and used shipping containers worldwide. We lease containers to major shipping lines and purchase decommissioned fleets from some of the industry's largest players. These containers are then resold through various distribution channels for reuse in domestic commercial storage What industries do you primarily serve? We serve multiple industries including ocean shipping, international freight forwarding and domestic container storage. What is the main thing brands and retailers could do right now that would immediately improve logistics? Sourcing diversity is paramount. Business thrives on stability and predictability, but those qualities are often absent in today's post Covid-19 logistics landscape. Since the steady rise of globalization, we've entered an era shaped by disruption. Whether caused by extreme weather, labor strikes, war or self-inflicted geopolitical tensions, disruption comes in many forms. Even a summer intern will hear the phrase 'Let's not put all our eggs in one basket' within their first week. A cliché, yes, but never more relevant to strengthening international logistics resilience than it is today. When it comes to supply chain logistics challenges, there are things companies can fix, and things that are beyond their control. How can the former help the latter? First and foremost, companies need a diverse supplier portfolio. Relying on a single vendor for a specific product or service all but guarantees vulnerability to unexpected market disruptions beyond a business's control. The globally connected companies best positioned to navigate the next decade will be those with agile supply chains capable of quickly pivoting in response to disruption. What area of logistics isn't receiving the industry attention it deserves? Limited access to rail transport for small and midsized U.S. businesses—due to high pricing and volume thresholds—harms both the domestic economy and overall quality of life. Our freight rail system is largely designed to serve massive corporations, leaving smaller players reliant on trucking. The result? More congestion on our roads, higher emissions and worsening urban gridlock. Meanwhile, China's Belt and Road initiative enables goods to move by rail across two continents—from China to Europe—at costs lower than many long-haul domestic trucking routes in the U.S. As global businesses take advantage of this infrastructure, American companies should be asking both public and private sectors why similar supply chain capabilities aren't available here. What is your company doing to make the movement of goods more sustainable? As a sustainability-minded company, we understand the lack of efficiency in shipping an empty container. We have recently invested significantly in scaling our One-Way Lease capabilities, which focus on matching our empty containers to cargo destined for the same location. Combining what would have been two containers traveling the same route into one container reduces our carbon footprint. Are you optimistic about the state of supply chains in the next few years? Despite ongoing global political shifts and the resulting supply chain disruptions, I'm impressed by how swiftly businesses pivot and adapt with smarter solutions. For years, the shipping and logistics industries lagged behind in adopting digital tools, even as commercial internet use surged over the past three decades. But that's changed. Today, we see global positioning system (GPS) trackers on containers, reefer data delivered straight to beneficial cargo owners' (BCO) phones, blockchain adoption by major carriers and major strides in reducing emissions to meet International Maritime Organization (IMO) standards. Though slow to start, the industry is catching up fast. And because of that, I'm more optimistic than ever about the future of global supply chains. Error while retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data Error while retrieving data
