ABQ Ride to cease operation of Luminaria Tour

JOURNAL STAFF REPORT

September 19, 2026

’Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the city, the Luminaria Tour is busless, which seems like a pity.

The city of Albuquerque announced Friday that ABQ Ride will cease operation of its annual Luminaria Tour starting this year.

Tickets for the event, which cost $1.50 in 2025, would often sell out quickly. But the city said that over the last decade, an average of 62% of reserved tickets went unused. In 2025, the tour cost approximately $200,000 to serve 586 attendees at $341 per person. The cost includes transit operations, staffing, barricades, police traffic control and signage.

Rules set in place by the Federal Transit Administration prohibit ABQ Ride from charging more than its regular bus fare for the tour.

“Luminarias are part of who we are as Albuquerque, and that tradition isn’t going anywhere,” Leslie Keener, city of Albuquerque transit director, said in a news release. “We’re working closely with community members on new ways for the public to enjoy the luminaria tradition while supporting neighborhood needs, using resources efficiently, and creating an approach that can be sustained.”

The city said ABQ Ride and the Huning Castle Neighborhood Association are working on alternatives that will preserve the luminaria tradition while reducing the operational demands of the bus tour, including a possible walking tour or revised bus tour option.

Billions in Taxes Go Unpaid. Under Trump, the I.R.S. Won’t Say How Much.

The absence of the annual estimate on the tax gap could make it more difficult to assess whether more taxes are going unpaid since President Trump took office.

By Andrew Duehren for The New York Times

September 16, 2026

The Trump administration has held up the publication of an annual Internal Revenue Service estimate of unpaid taxes, a delay that could mask the fiscal cost of the steep decline in the agency’s ability to audit the rich.

The I.R.S. has long published an estimate of the tax gap, the amount of tax owed under existing law that goes uncollected each year. The agency began releasing an estimate of the tax gap annually during the Biden administration, but under President Trump, it has yet put out an update. The current leader of the I.R.S., Frank Bisignano, has cast doubt on the metric and indicated he wants to focus instead on what he called the “addressable tax gap.”

The shift comes after the Trump administration pushed out roughly a quarter of the I.R.S. work force and cut the agency’s budget, weakening the government’s ability to conduct time-intensive audits. An inspector general report last month found that revenue collected from audits dropped by more than a third last fiscal year, a sign that the tax gap could be growing under Mr. Trump.

In its most recent projection, released in October 2024, the I.R.S. estimated that roughly $700 billion in owed taxes went uncollected in 2022, though the agency said it expected that roughly $90 billion of that would eventually be paid. The next estimate, for 2023, was scheduled for publication last fall, but has not been released.

The absence of an updated tax gap estimate is part of a pattern across the Trump administration, which has either stopped collecting or sought to change the measurement of federal data that scientists and other researchers have long relied on for a rigorous, unvarnished understanding of the country. The Pentagon declined to provide information to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office about the cost of the war in Iran, and last year the president fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which produces the monthly job numbers, baselessly calling the labor market data “rigged.”

An I.R.S. spokesman said the agency was updating the methodologies used to calculate the tax gap and would release the figure when it was ready. Mr. Bisignano, in a statement, said revenue from tax enforcement was increasing this year and did not depend on the number of auditors.

“The I.R.S. is working smarter by using better data, advanced analytics, and technology like A.I. to address noncompliance more precisely, reduce false positives, and focus resources where they have the greatest impact,” Mr. Bisignano said in a statement. “The tax gap estimates are an important part of that work, but it is not a measure of current enforcement.”

In an email to I.R.S. staff on Tuesday, Mr. Bisignano said Vincent LaPadula, who joined the I.R.S. this summer from JPMorgan Chase & Company, would lead the agency’s work on the tax gap.

Since it covers 2023, the delayed report would not yet capture any change in tax compliance resulting from the Trump administration’s push to downsize the I.R.S. But the absence of the data could make it more difficult to assess whether more taxes were going uncollected after Mr. Trump took office.

“Without a metric of the tax gap that is telling us in real time about trends in compliance and how they’re changing, I worry that it’s hard for policymakers to see the full swath of the damage that’s been done by the gutting of the agency,” said Natasha Sarin, a Treasury official during the Biden administration who has written extensively about the tax gap. “And, in fact, I worry that’s the point.”

Beyond illustrating the extent and sources of tax noncompliance, the tax gap has also been a figure often cited to argue for giving more resources to the I.R.S. In 2021, Charles P. Rettig, Mr. Trump’s first-term pick to lead the I.R.S., speculated that the tax gap could be as much as $1 trillion a year, a figure much larger than the I.R.S. estimate at the time, as he called for a bigger budget for the agency.

For a time, there was bipartisan interest in giving the I.R.S. more resources to narrow the tax gap, since doing so generates more tax revenue for the government without having to raise taxes. That changed after Democrats approved an additional $80 billion for the I.R.S. in 2022. Republicans renewed their attacks on the agency and eventually clawed back much of the extra money. G.O.P. officials, cheered on by business groups, also began to question the reliability of the agency’s tax gap estimates.

“Republicans didn’t like that it really points the finger at the wealthy as being the problem,” said Barry Johnson, who previously oversaw the tax gap report as the chief data and analytics officer at the I.R.S.

The tax gap encompasses several types of unpaid taxes. It includes taxes that are simply late in being paid, as well as taxes that are uncollected as a result of people not filing a tax return. But most of the gap comes from people who file a tax return but do not report all of their income to the I.R.S., intentionally or not.

The agency has consistently found that income independently reported to the I.R.S., like wages, is rarely underreported, while income without third-party verification, like business profits, often goes unreported. Overall, 85 percent of owed taxes were paid voluntarily and on time in 2022, the I.R.S. said.

Still, the tax gap is somewhat imprecise, since I.R.S. analysts are estimating taxes owed on income that is not revealed to the agency. To do so, the I.R.S. conducts a statistical sample of intensive audits, and then extrapolates the rates of noncompliance it finds to the taxpayer population more broadly. Previously, the agency released a new tax gap estimate every few years, but during the Biden administration it started providing an annual update, responding to requests from lawmakers of both parties for more regular data.

Pooling together enough audit results takes time, though, and so the I.R.S. relies on the results from older samples to project noncompliance for a given year — and then updates the numbers as more recent data becomes available. For example, the 2022 estimate of the tax gap is based on noncompliance rates observed in tax filings from 2014 through 2016. Alan Plumley, a retired I.R.S. analyst who worked on the tax gap, said that methodology meant that an annual headline figure was not particularly meaningful.

“Doing random audits has become a luxury where in the past they had been viewed as a necessity,” he said. “If people realized how soft the tax gap estimates are, they would realize they shouldn’t be putting a lot of weight on the estimated total.”

In appearances before Congress in the spring, Mr. Bisignano, the first chief executive officer of the I.R.S., suggested that he was skeptical of the methodology behind the tax gap, saying that he wanted to focus on the subset of unpaid taxes that the I.R.S. could realistically collect.

“What I’ve seen is nobody’s ever worked on the tax gap,” Mr. Bisignano, who is also the commissioner of the Social Security Administration, said in April. “And we need to decide what is the addressable tax gap and we need to go get it.”

Former I.R.S. officials said that focusing limited resources on easier-to-collect taxes made sense and reflected current practice, since closing the tax gap entirely would be an enormous undertaking. Still, if the I.R.S. adopted a new standard for publicly reporting the tax gap, they said, it should also continue publishing estimates using the previous methodology, so that researchers can see trends.

And Mr. Bisignano has not yet defined what he considers “addressable,” a key point given that what is achievable for the I.R.S. depends on the budget and tax laws approved by Congress.

“The devil is in the details of what you’re describing as ‘addressable’ versus not,” said Daniel Werfel, who was tapped by President Joseph R. Biden Jr. to lead the I.R.S. and stepped down in 2025.

Pentagon Inspector General Details U.S. Losses and Challenges in Iran War

Helicopters for evacuating casualties were pulled from four countries, and hundreds of military facilities were destroyed, according to a new report.

By John Ismay for The New York Times

September 15, 2026

Some of the most detailed information about the Iran war has come not from the office of the defense secretary or the White House, but from a report released by the Defense Department’s inspector general.

The independent oversight agency offered glimpses into the U.S. military’s inventory shortfalls, and the damage from Iranian counterattacks to consulates and other diplomatic facilities in the region.

The document, which was issued on Monday, covered only the first four months of the war, from Feb. 28 to June 30. On Tuesday, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said in a separate report that war had cost the United States roughly $38 billion through Aug. 1.

Here are some key takeaways from the inspector general’s report.

A secret mission statement

The Pentagon and White House have said that their goal in Iran is to destroy its nuclear programs, attack drones, ballistic and cruise missiles, and its means of producing those weapons.

But the inspector general’s report noted that the Pentagon’s full mission statement for the Iran war “is classified.” That suggests that the military may have other goals that have not been made public.

Costs

The inspector general said that “it can be difficult to calculate the total ‘cost’” of the Iran war, given that the Pentagon has never had a separate appropriation from Congress to fund it.

Noting that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth did not request additional funds from Congress before launching combat operations, the report stated that funds for the war are coming from the department’s existing budget for training and maintenance of the force.

The costs to repair or replace U.S. military facilities damaged or destroyed by Iranian attacks — such as the Navy’s base in Manama, Bahrain — have not been calculated, as the Pentagon has indicated it may choose to close or not rebuild them.

On June 24, the report said, the White House submitted a $67 billion supplemental funding request for the war, of which $21 billion was slated for replacing munitions expended up to that point.

The inspector general also said that the State Department estimated that its embassies, consulates and other diplomatic facilities in the Middle East had suffered about $184 million in damage from Iranian strikes.

The U.S. diplomatic mission in Iraq was hit by “more than 600” Iranian attacks just in the first four months of the war, sustaining more than $157 million in damages.

Shortfalls of munitions

The Pentagon’s top acquisition office told the inspector general’s office that the expenditure of munitions in the Iran war “has resulted in strategic inventory shortfalls.”

Military leaders have tried to speed up the production of munitions, the report noted, but added that “the defense industrial base requires ‘significant lead time’ to expand production capacities” for weapons.

Bottlenecks persist in the production of solid rocket motors that missiles rely on, as well as the supply of “high-grade explosives and propellants.”

The Congressional Budget Office report also found that the war had significantly depleted U.S. munitions. In response, Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said that “claims of U.S. munition shortages are false.”

Troops, ships, aircraft and buildings

The U.S. military force in the Middle East supporting the war has numbered roughly 50,000, even as units rotate on deployment.

According to the inspector general’s report, the war has seen “a dozen each” of fighter squadrons, destroyers and air defense batteries deployed as well as mobile launchers for artillery rockets and guided missiles like ATACMS and PrSM.

The war has also seen the deployment of four aircraft carrier strike groups thus far, and a “partial deployment” of the 82nd Airborne Division.

Iranian counterattacks damaged and destroyed “hundreds of buildings and structures” at U.S. military bases in Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, the report said.

Additionally, dozens of U.S. military aircraft have been damaged or destroyed, including 30 Reaper drones, 12 KC-135 aerial refueling planes, four F-15 fighters and an A-10 attack jet.

Casualties and medical support

The Defense Department has limited medical treatment facilities at every location where U.S. forces are deployed in the region, the report said, and has built more advanced facilities to provide surgical support in several countries.

For care beyond what those facilities can provide, the Pentagon has relied on hospitals in those host nations.

Medical evacuation helicopters in Iraq and Kuwait had to be relocated after Iranian strikes, the report said, adding that “the nature of operations” during the war has meant most U.S. casualties have been transported by vehicles and ambulances to medical treatment facilities.

The U.S. has suffered 18 killed and 824 wounded in the war, according to a Pentagon casualty database.

Logistics issues

The destruction of the Navy’s main logistics hub in Bahrain forced the Pentagon to look for additional supply ships that were outfitted to transfer fuel and supplies to warships at sea, the report said.

The Navy’s move to use the British-owned island Diego Garcia — roughly 2,200 miles from the Arabian Sea — as its new logistics center means that supply ships have to spend two to two and a half weeks to travel to the island, take on goods and fuel, and return to the Navy’s main operating areas outside the Persian Gulf, according to the report.

Strain on other combatant commanders

Of all the Pentagon’s “combatant commands,” which are responsible for military operations in different parts of the globe, U.S. European Command, based in Germany, has provided the most support to the Iran war, according to the report.

It transferred “munitions, equipment, aircraft and personnel, and requisitioned and distributed fuel, food, and medical supplies” to Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East.

Mr. Hegseth ordered Pacific Command, which is based in Oahu, Hawaii, to pursue and board suspected Iranian merchant ships in the Indian Ocean — expanding the mission far outside the Middle East.

Pacific Command was also ordered to give up six warships for the Iran war. They included the aircraft carrier strike group centered around the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln, which left San Diego on Nov. 21 and spent roughly nine months at sea without a port call for its crew to rest.

The ship is currently returning to its home port in Southern California.

Saudi Pipeline Attack Risks ‘Disastrous’ Loss of Oil as Fighting Escalates

Prolonged restrictions on exports could push oil prices even higher.

By Lisa Friedman for The New York Times

September 16, 2026

As Iran and its allies tightened their grip on shipping lanes in the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia scrambled this week to reroute millions of barrels of oil after being forced to close a critical pipeline damaged in an attack.

The shutdown of the East-West pipeline risks keeping 4 percent of the world’s oil supply from reaching international markets and driving energy prices even higher.

Saudi Arabia on Friday said it had temporarily shut the pipeline after it was struck by an Iran-backed militia. The pipeline, a 750-mile network that transports crude across Saudi Arabia to ports on the Red Sea, had been the kingdom’s primary way of exporting oil since the war in Iran began in February.

On Wednesday, Saudi Arabia and the Houthi militia in Yemen exchanged fresh claims of attacks on one another. In what would be a sharp escalation in their fighting, the Houthis said they had downed a Saudi fighter jet, as Saudi Arabia said the Houthis fired a drone near the Muslim holy city of Mecca.

The Houthis last week gained control of a strategic Red Sea port and hit energy facilities in Saudi Arabia, exacerbating the squeeze on Saudi oil exports.

Now, Saudi Arabia, running out of options and under pressure to rapidly restore supply lines, is facing the prospect of a severe energy crisis with global implications, analysts said.

“It is unprecedented,” said Amena Bakr, head of Middle East & OPEC+ Insights at Kpler, a maritime data firm.

“We have two major waterways obstructed, active attacks, Iran escalating attacks, proxies being active and no signs of diplomatic talks,” Ms. Bakr said. “It’s a disastrous situation when you’re looking at it from an energy security angle.”

Any extended disruption to the pipeline network of Saudi Arabia, long the world’s biggest oil exporter, would send shock waves through the global energy market. Brent crude, the global benchmark for oil, hovered around $107 per barrel on Wednesday, up 50 percent from its prewar level.

The world could lose 120 million barrels of crude if the East-West Pipeline is offline for a month, according to estimates from Kpler.

Goldman Sachs warned that global oil prices could rise as high as $120 a barrel if attacks in the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea continue.

The precise amount of oil not making it to the global market will depend largely on the severity of the damage to the East-West pipeline. Neither the Saudi government nor Saudi Aramco, the national oil company, responded to requests for comment.

Saudi officials previously said only that the pipeline was shut as a precaution but have not disclosed the extent of the damage or a timetable for how long it might take to restart it. Satellite images taken on Sept. 10 and 11, reviewed by The New York Times, show damage at two pumping stations on the pipeline.

Estimates for how long it might take to get the pipeline running again vary widely.

Ms. Bakr, the Kpler analyst, said she believed it could take five to six weeks, but that partial repairs could be completed far sooner.

She and others noted that the kingdom has extensive experience dealing with attacks on infrastructure. In 2019, Aramco suffered a major Houthi attack on its facilities and was able to restart pumping operations within a few days. And in April, when a pumping station was attacked shortly after the war in Iran began, full capacity was restored within seven days.

Robin Brooks, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, said he did not believe the “nightmare scenarios” that the pipeline could be offline for months.

“This attack has again raised in markets the fear that we could be on the cusp of another big spike,” Mr. Brooks said. But, he said, “The track record is that these things get repaired within weeks, and there’s already indications from satellite imagery that repairs are happening.”

Chris Wright, the U.S. energy secretary, said he believed oil flows through the pipeline would resume soon. “This will be a brief and temporary interruption,” Mr. Wright told CNBC on Tuesday.

Saudi Arabia has oil stored across the country, including the capacity for about 24 million barrels at its Red Sea port at Yanbu, creating a cushion. But those storage tanks are unlikely to be full, according to Rystad Energy, a consulting firm that estimated the port has about three to six days’ worth of crude.

The East-West pipeline was Saudi Arabia’s workaround when the war in Iran effectively shut the Strait of Hormuz. Stretching from Abqaiq in the east to the Red Sea oil terminal of Yanbu in the west, the pipeline bypasses the strait entirely. Oil could be transported through the Bab al-Mandab Strait on the southern end of the Red Sea or via the Suez Canal and a pipeline across Egypt at the northern end of the sea, headed primarily to customers in Asia.

Ship traffic in the Strait of Hormuz is a fraction of what it was before the war, when about 130 vessels moved through the waterway daily. An average of approximately 20 ships a day have passed through the strait over the past week, according to Kpler.

Yasir O. Al-Rumayyan, the chairman of Aramco, said in June that engineers had expanded the pipeline’s capacity to carry up to seven million barrels per day, nearly 30 percent more than before the war.

We had a similar situation back in the ’80s, where the Strait of Hormuz was threatened to be blockaded by the Iranian regime,” Mr. Al-Rumayyan said. “It was decided since then that we will have a pipeline from east to west.”

With the Houthis now largely in control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait, Saudi Arabia is once again steering vessels through the Strait of Hormuz, analysts said. Since Sept. 7, just two Saudi vessels have traveled through the Red Sea, according to Kpler.

The U.S. Navy has been able to keep some oil flowing out of the Strait of Hormuz on sea paths close to the coast of Oman, the opposite side from Iran. But those efforts have required an extensive and dangerous operation.

Capital Economics, an economic research firm, said that every week the East-West pipeline is closed, while the Strait of Hormuz is off limits, will shave at least 0.2 percent off Saudi Arabia’s economic activity.

Immigration Officer Found Guilty of Sexually Assaulting and Robbing Women

The officer, a Customs and Border Protection agent at a Chicago airport, was accused of assaulting and threatening four women, all of Chinese descent, at hotel rooms in 2022.

By Madaleine Rubin for The New York Times

September 17, 2026

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer was found guilty on Thursday of sexually assaulting, robbing and threatening four women with a gun at hotels in the Chicago area in 2022.

After a nearly two-week trial, a federal jury in Illinois convicted the officer, Luis Uribe, on all charges, including 10 counts of deprivation of rights and one count of brandishing a firearm.

According to prosecutors, on at least six occasions between February and October 2022 in Schaumburg and Naperville, Ill., Mr. Uribe, who worked at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago at the time, entered the hotel rooms of four women, brandished his badge and threatened them with a firearm issued by Customs and Border Protection.

Mr. Uribe robbed each of the women, who were all of Chinese descent, sexually assaulted two of them and tried to sexually assault the two others, said a spokesman from the U.S. attorney’s office in the Northern District of Illinois. At least two of the women said they were working as prostitutes at the time.

During trial, Mr. Uribe’s lawyers acknowledged that he had visited prostitutes, according to The Chicago Tribune. But they argued that the accusations were false and that the women, who had sought Mr. Uribe’s help with immigration matters, had set him up. Mr. Uribe said from the stand, “I never robbed anybody in my whole life,” and urged that the relations he had with the women were consensual.

Mr. Uribe’s lawyers could not immediately be reached for comment on Thursday.

The verdict came after a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Uribe in December 2025 on the same charges. He was arrested that month and placed in detention, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

Mr. Uribe’s lawyers tried to get the indictment thrown out, arguing in a motion that the grand jury had been “irreparably tainted” by the misconduct of the prosecutors, including one who “had inappropriate familiarity with grand jurors.” But the judge denied the motion, allowing Mr. Uribe’s trial to proceed.

Mr. Uribe, 45, is a former Marine who has worked for the federal government since 2009, court documents said. He has no history of addiction to alcohol or controlled substances and no mental health issues, the documents said. Mr. Uribe is still employed by Customs and Border Protection, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.

“C.B.P. takes all allegations of employee misconduct seriously,” a Customs and Border Protection spokesman said in a statement on Thursday, adding that the agency is committed to “ensuring that all employees are held to the highest standards of integrity, professionalism and personal conduct.”

Prosecutors said that Mr. Uribe had followed some of the women to their hotel rooms and forced his way in. In one instance, Mr. Uribe threatened a woman, who had moved hotels to avoid him, with a knife and tried to assault her, but was interrupted by a knock at the door, court records show.

According to the court records, in early 2022, a fifth woman, who said she worked as a prostitute, was asked by her boss to meet with Mr. Uribe and take a photo of him to distribute to others as word of his abuse spread. She was also told get Mr. Uribe to agree to stop attacking the women in exchange for free sexual relations. But Mr. Uribe “did not abide by the terms of the bargain,” the documents said.

Mr. Uribe is scheduled to be sentenced on Jan. 21, 2027. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison and a minimum of seven years.

ICE Agent Charged in Shooting Appears in Minnesota Court After Arrest

Christian Castro, the agent charged in the shooting of a Venezuelan immigrant in January, faces felony charges in state and federal courts. He was released from jail a day after his arrest.

By Ernesto Londoño for The New York Times

September 17, 2026

An immigration officer who spent months fighting extradition to Minnesota to face charges stemming from a shooting appeared before a judge in Minneapolis on Thursday after spending a night in the county jail.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer, Christian Castro, 52, was arrested Wednesday afternoon in Minneapolis after he drove from his South Texas hometown to Minnesota, where he faces felony charges in state and federal courts.

Appearing in court wearing handcuffs and an orange jail uniform, Mr. Castro agreed to waive the right to fight extradition from Texas as part of a series of conditions for his release pending trial.

Hennepin County District Judge Paul R. Scoggin set bail at $200,000 and prohibited Mr. Castro from possessing firearms and from having contact with victims and witnesses in the case. Mr. Castro also agreed to wear an electronic monitoring device.

Mr. Castro made no substantive remarks in the hearing, which he watched from an enclosed cubicle for detained defendants and spoke through a glass panel. He was released from jail on Thursday evening, according to a jail roster.

“Our commitment to accountability for Mr. Castro will be as strong as it has been from the beginning,” Mary Moriarty, the elected county prosecutor in Minneapolis, told reporters after the hearing.

The cases against Mr. Castro stem from a shooting on Jan. 14 that injured Julio Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant.

Prosecutors have said that after a person Mr. Castro was trying to detain led him on a high-speed chase through snowy streets, he fired a bullet through the closed front door of a Minneapolis duplex.

Shortly after the shooting, Mr. Castro falsely claimed that he had acted in self-defense after enduring a minutes-long attack with a shovel and a broomstick, according to state and federal investigators.

His account initially led federal prosecutors to charge Mr. Sosa-Celis and his roommate with assaulting a federal officer. The case unraveled after investigators watched a video of the incident that they said made Mr. Castro’s account implausible.

Daniel L. Gerdts, Mr. Castro’s lawyer, said after Thursday’s hearing that his client had intended to enter a not guilty plea in the state case. On Friday morning, he pleaded not guilty to the federal charges during a brief court hearing in St. Paul. Efforts to reach Mr. Castro for comment were unsuccessful.

Joshua Larson, the county prosecutor handling the case, asked Judge Scoggin to set a higher bail amount, arguing that state investigators have reason to believe Mr. Castro has mulled plans to travel to Mexico, where he has a romantic partner.

Mr. Gerdts said his client intended to attend future court hearings. “If he wanted to flee, he would have done that a long time ago,” he told the judge.

Mr. Castro faces four counts of felony assault with a dangerous weapon in the state case, a crime that carries a mandatory minimum three-year prison term.

That case led to a rare legal fight between Minnesota and Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas, a Republican, after Mr. Abbott refused to honor a request to extradite Mr. Castro. As the extradition fight played out, Mr. Castro spent three months in jail in Texas, but he was released in late August.

Early this month, a federal grand jury indicted Mr. Castro on six counts of making false statements about the Jan. 14 encounter. After federal officials detained Mr. Castro on the federal charges, he agreed to travel to Minnesota for court hearings.

The federal case was a rare instance of the Trump administration’s seeking to hold an ICE agent accountable for on-duty misconduct. Mr. Castro is scheduled to appear in federal court in St. Paul, Minn., on Friday morning for a preliminary hearing.

The state case is being closely watched as local prosecutors across the country consider criminal charges against other immigration agents who participated in the Trump administration’s mass deportation push.

State prosecutors face formidable challenges in Mr. Castro’s case because federal officials have broad immunity from prosecution for on-duty conduct.

Ms. Moriarty, the county prosecutor, said she expected that Mr. Castro would seek to move the state case to federal court under a seldom-used mechanism for cases involving defendants who are federal government employees.

If that happens, Mr. Castro would face trial in federal court, under Minnesota statutes.

E.U.-Canada Ambitions Face Reality Check as Trump Bristles

The bloc’s offer of “associate member” status to Ottawa shows how U.S. allies are pulling closer together. But their plans face significant obstacles.

By Matina Stevis-Gridneff and Jeanna Smialek for The New York Times

September 16, 2026

The European Union’s invitation to Canada on Wednesday to become an “associate member” of the bloc shows how intent traditional United States allies are on pursuing a more stable future by binding closer together, a move President Trump said could be perceived as “a hostile act.”

As if to confirm the deep concerns that pushed them closer, Mr. Trump threatened retribution.

“If Europe does that, with a bad intention — if it’s a good intention, that’s fine — if it’s bad intention we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe, which is a possibility,” he told reporters in North Carolina before a rally.

Hours earlier, Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, “We must urgently reimagine our partnerships.” A beaming Prime Minister Mark Carney of Canada sat beside her.

While details of what this relationship might look like remain scant, Ms. von der Leyen noted some potential areas of cooperation, including partnerships in manufacturing, technology, defense, energy policy and economic security.

This would not be “a partnership against anyone else,” she insisted, “but for our common strength.”

Mr. Carney’s office also said on Wednesday that Canada had formally applied to join the Joint Expeditionary Force, a British-led military coalition of 10 North Atlantic Treaty Organization members, seven of which are also part of the European Union.

European officials said that, in the lead-up to the speech on Wednesday, the bloc wanted to ensure that Mr. Trump did not see this new partnership with Canada as an anti-American move.

Still, if it isn’t precisely against the United States, then it’s unmistakably about it.

“Behind this is a desire to hedge against what for both partners is an increasingly fraught relationship with the United States,” said Ian Lesser, a distinguished fellow of the German Marshall Fund, based in Brussels.

“But it’s not just that it’s fraught,” he added. “It’s the most important geoeconomic and geopolitical relationship for both Europe and for Canada.”

Symbolism matters

For Mr. Carney, the invitation is both timely and symbolically important. He has decided to stand up to Mr. Trump, who has imposed tariffs on Canada and regularly threatens its sovereignty.

Mr. Carney has been pushing for Canada to get greater access to the European Union — its territory, its market, its funds and programs — without becoming a full member of the bloc.

He has found an enthusiastic partner in Ms. von der Leyen, who has painted Canada as a dependable source for Europe’s needs for energy and critical raw materials, as well as a steadfast ally that shares NATO membership, support for Ukraine and a commitment to the rule of law. Ms. von der Leyen does not represent the European Union’s 27 countries, but she sets the bloc’s agenda and commands its mighty bureaucracy.

The tie-up seems to make sense amid global turbulence and a shifting role for the United States. Between them, the European Union’s 27 members and Canada have more than 490 million citizens and include four of the world’s 10 largest economies.

What’s in a name?

The European Union is underpinned by dense, deep legal and procedural rules, built over decades by a group of nations that ceded sovereignty to one another, and to an unelected executive branch in Brussels.

Inserting a country an ocean away deeper into this web is not a straightforward business.

The label the European Union wants to confer on Canada, “associate member,” is not an existing type of partnership — meaning it is unclear what actions Canada would have to take to earn it, or for it to be given.

“It has no legal basis,” said Mujtaba Rahman, managing director for Europe at the Eurasia Group. “It’s more symbolism and signal,” he added.

Ms. von der Leyen was taking a risk using the term, which had been floating for weeks ahead of her speech, and drew consternation from several member states, according to European officials.

It is seen as vague, untethered from legal frameworks and potentially antagonistic toward countries that already have detailed legal agreements with the European Union. These range from candidate nations such as Albania to close partners including Britain, Switzerland and Norway. Those countries have deep trade ties to the bloc and, in the case of Switzerland and Norway, have free movement into and out of other European nations.

Some Canadian officials do not appear to love the term, either, as membership in the European Union implies forfeiting some sovereignty, which is the opposite of what Mr. Carney has pledged to do. The Conservative opposition leader seized on the term, arguing that if Canada was never to be the 51st state of the United States, it should also not become the 28th member state of the European Union.

“There’s a lot of good will, but once one starts to look just a little bit closer, one also finds that many Europeans really don’t know Canada all that well, and they maybe aren’t fully taking on board Canada’s own sensitivities to sovereignty,” Mr. Lesser said.

Hours after Ms. von der Leyen spoke on Wednesday, the incoming Canadian ambassador to the European Union said that labels did not matter — but suggested that Canada preferred “alliance for the future” to describe the emerging new bond with the European Union. That phrase also appeared in Ms. von der Leyen’s speech.

“I think we’re still a ways away from actually landing on what we think the best way to describe it is,” Jonathan Wilkinson said.

Three European diplomats said that the title “associate member” may not stick.

Old World problems?

Officials from both sides are working to find tangible progress that they hope to announce at a European Union-Canada summit scheduled to take place in Montreal at the end of October.

Two officials, one from the European Union and one from Canada, with knowledge of the talks, said that officials were trying hard to reach that goal, but that work had been slow and difficult, in part because it is highly technical.

Just how hard it can be to get the European Union to agree on anything has been displayed frequently over the years. For example, talks over a trade agreement with Mercosur, the South American bloc, lasted a quarter century.

Canada has its own experience with these E.U. rigidities — and has some of its own. Its free-trade agreement with the bloc, in effect in practice for a decade, has still not been ratified by 10 of the 27 member states, for various reasons.

Canada already participates in a handful of E.U. ventures, including Horizon, a technology and innovation research effort, and SAFE, a defense industrial program. It had to pay $100 million to participate in Horizon, and other E.U. programs will likely require Canada to contribute to a budget.

Big ideas

Another immediate benefit for Canada from closer ties to Europe may be securing funding from the European Investment Bank. The major development bank, owned by E.U. member states and with more than $630 billion in assets, is eager and ready to invest in Canadian projects, particularly in critical raw materials, and its leader is heading to Ottawa on Sunday to advance talks with the Canadian government.

The bank is ready to start work in Canada, a European official with knowledge of the preparations said, but needed Ottawa to approve certain administrative formalities, such as allowing E.U. diplomats to work there.

Some of the ideas being discussed ahead of the October summit show the ambitious scope of the Canada-E.U. future relationship.

For example, officials said, Mr. Carney wants the bloc to work with Canada to build systems for payments and cloud computing that will offer an alternative to those of the United States in a bid to secure sovereignty.

Discussions have also been underway on a digital trade agreement, which could deepen cooperation on cybersecurity and regulatory cooperation.

Talks are more advanced to bring Canadian regulations in line with European ones in energy, including the monitoring, reporting and evaluation system used by the bloc to track methane emissions from vessels fueled by liquefied natural gas, as well as gas imports entering the European Union market. This is a necessity if Canada is going to export gas to the European Union.

Another area where Canada is particularly eager to see movement is the ability of its citizens to spend longer stretches of time in the European Union visa-free, have their professional qualifications recognized there and be able to study in European universities.

Because these policy areas hinge on complex and politically fraught immigration rules, major breakthroughs could be difficult. Additionally, any agreement improving Canadians’ access to Europe would require reciprocity, meaning that it would grant the same access to Canada for 450 million Europeans.

Some European diplomats have suggested that Erasmus — Europe’s popular student exchange program — could be an easier starting point for collaboration.

First-generation American pilot excited to give family free ride on deportation flight

Air Force says family separation provides valuable joint-service experience

[from The Duffel Blog]

EL PASO, Texas — First-generation American C-17 pilot Capt. Maria Larkin said she was excited to finally give her family a ride on a military aircraft this week after learning they had been scheduled for deportation.

“I’ve been flying C-17s for years and they’ve always wanted to see what I do,” Larkin said. “I just assumed it would be at an air show.”

Instead, Larkin’s parents and three younger siblings are scheduled to board her aircraft during a Department of Homeland Security removal mission from Texas to Central America.

Larkin was born in the United States and later commissioned through Air Force ROTC. Her parents and siblings were born in Mexico.

“So technically I’m still good,” she said. “My husband is also a U.S. citizen and extremely white, which I’m told provides additional force protection.”

Military officials said Larkin’s assignment demonstrates the Defense Department’s commitment to supporting homeland-security operations while maintaining family readiness.

“Few pilots ever get the opportunity to combine professional development with a major family milestone,” said one Air Mobility Command official. “Captain Larkin will be able to log flight hours, support a federal mission, and personally watch her dependents leave the country.”

Larkin said the destination remained confusing.

“My family is from Mexico,” she said. “Apparently we’re taking them to Guatemala.”

Officials explained that exact destinations are determined by operational requirements, diplomatic agreements, and whether anyone involved has enough authority to ask basic questions.

The mission comes as immigration authorities have detained dozens of spouses and parents of active-duty service members, despite longstanding military programs intended to help some family members obtain legal status.

Pentagon officials emphasized that military service remains a strong pathway to citizenship.

“For the service member,” one official clarified.

Larkin said she initially believed her family’s connection to the military might help.

“I figured if I can be trusted to fly a $300 million aircraft into combat, maybe my mom could stay for my promotion ceremony,” she said.

“She cannot.”

Aircrews participating in the missions described the work as reminiscent of previous evacuation operations, with one important difference.

“In Afghanistan, we were flying people out of a dangerous country because they had helped us,” said one C-130 pilot. “Here, we’re flying military families away from the people currently helping us.”

He paused.

“Operationally, though, the per diem is excellent.”

Military officials said troops involved in the deportation missions are encouraged to focus on readiness rather than politics.

“Your job is not to question the mission,” said one mobility officer. “Your job is to execute it safely, efficiently and, if necessary, wave goodbye to your mother from the cockpit.”

Larkin said she planned to make the best of the experience.

“I’m going to give them the full Air Force treatment,” she said. “Safety briefing, turbulence warning, maybe let my little brother see the flight deck before we land.”

She added that her mother had already packed snacks for everyone.

“She still thinks we’re coming back together.”

At press time, Air Mobility Command was reviewing whether Larkin could receive family-separation allowance for deporting her own family.

Trump Enraged After Iran Renames Strait of Hormuz After JFK

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—In yet another setback for Donald J. Trump, on Thursday Iran renamed the Strait of Hormuz after President John F. Kennedy.

In a ceremonial unveiling, members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) removed a tarp covering a newly-installed toll booth on the Strait, revealing the words “The John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for International Shipping.”

“These people are sick and evil!” Trump said in a post on Truth Social, calling the Iranians “even worse than the Supreme Court.”

Such rhetoric did little to intimidate the Iran-backed Houthi rebels, who announced plans to rename the Bab al-Mandab Strait after Hillary Clinton.

Trump Offers Supreme Court $5000 Each to Change Mail-in Voting Decision

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Responding to the Supreme Court’s decision to block his mail voting restrictions for the midterms, on Tuesday Donald J. Trump offered the justices $5000 each to change their minds.

In a leaked phone call with Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Trump said that the 7-2 decision meant “I just need to find three votes.”

He told Kavanaugh that he was offering the money only to the four Republican justices who voted with the majority because “the three Democratic women are total losers who can’t be bought.”

In an effort to tempt Kavanaugh, Trump told him that he could spend “all five thousand dollars on beer,” but added, “It has to be American beer, Brett.”