Tech News
Trump administration deports hundreds as judge orders their removals be stopped with planes already in the air

The Trump administration has transferred hundreds of immigrants to El Salvador even as a federal judge issued an order temporarily barring the deportations under an 18th century wartime declaration targeting Venezuelan gang members, officials said Sunday. Flights were in the air at the time of the ruling.
U.S. District Judge James E. Boasberg issued an order Saturday blocking the deportations, but lawyers told him there were already two planes with immigrants in the air — one headed for El Salvador, the other for Honduras. Boasberg verbally ordered the planes be turned around, but they apparently were not and he did not include the directive in his written order.
In a court filing Sunday, the Department of Justice, which has appealed Boasberg’s decision, said the immigrants “had already been removed from U.S. territory” when the written order was issued at 7:26 pm.
Trump’s allies were gleeful over the results.
“Oopsie…Too late,” Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who agreed to house about 300 immigrants for a year at a cost of $6 million in his country’s prisons, wrote on the social media site X above an article about Boasberg’s ruling. That post was recirculated by White House communications director Steven Cheung.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who negotiated an earlier deal with Bukele to house immigrants, posted on the site: “We sent over 250 alien enemy members of Tren de Aragua which El Salvador has agreed to hold in their very good jails at a fair price that will also save our taxpayer dollars.”
Steve Vladeck, a professor at the Georgetown University Law Center, said that Boasberg’s verbal directive to turn around the planes was not technically part of his final order but that the Trump administration clearly violated the “spirit” of it.
“This just incentivizes future courts to be hyper specific in their orders and not give the government any wiggle room,” Vladeck said.
The immigrants were deported after Trump’s declaration of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, which has been used only three times in U.S. history.
The law, invoked during the War of 1812 and World Wars I and II, requires a president to declare the United States is at war, giving him extraordinary powers to detain or remove foreigners who otherwise would have protections under immigration or criminal laws. It was last used to justify the detention of Japanese-American civilians during World War II.
A Justice Department spokesperson on Sunday referred to an earlier statement from Attorney General Pam Bondi blasting Boasberg’s ruling and didn’t immediately answer questions about whether the administration ignored the court’s order.
Venezuela’s government in a statement Sunday rejected the use of Trump’s declaration of the law, characterizing it as evocative of “the darkest episodes in human history, from slavery to the horror of the Nazi concentration camps.”
Tren de Aragua originated in an infamously lawless prison in the central state of Aragua and accompanied an exodus of millions of Venezuelans, the overwhelming majority of whom were seeking better living conditions after their nation’s economy came undone during the past decade. Trump seized on the gang during his campaign to paint misleading pictures of communities that he contended were “taken over” by what were actually a handful of lawbreakers.
The Trump administration has not identified the immigrants deported, provided any evidence they are in fact members of Tren de Aragua or that they committed any crimes in the United States. It also sent two top members of the Salvadoran MS-13 gang to El Salvador who had been arrested in the United States.
Video released by El Salvador’s government Sunday showed men exiting airplanes onto an airport tarmac lined by officers in riot gear. The men, who had their hands and ankles shackled, struggled to walk as officers pushed their heads down to have them bend down at the waist.
The video also showed the men being transported to prison in a large convoy of buses guarded by police and military vehicles and at least one helicopter. The men were shown kneeling on the ground as their heads were shaved before they changed into the prison’s all-white uniform — knee-length shorts, T-shirt, socks and rubber clogs — and placed in cells.
The immigrants were taken to the notorious CECOT facility, the centerpiece of Bukele’s push to pacify his once violence-wracked country through tough police measures and limits on basic rights
The Trump administration said the president actually signed the proclamation contending Tren de Aragua was invading the United States on Friday night but didn’t announce it until Saturday afternoon. Immigration lawyers said that, late Friday, they noticed Venezuelans who otherwise couldn’t be deported under immigration law being moved to Texas for deportation flights. They began to file lawsuits to halt the transfers.
“Basically any Venezuelan citizen in the US may be removed on pretext of belonging to Tren de Aragua, with no chance at defense,” Adam Isacson of the Washington Office for Latin America, a human rights group, warned on X.
The litigation that led to the hold on deportations was filed on behalf of five Venezuelans held in Texas who lawyers said were concerned they’d be falsely accused of being members of the gang. Once the act is invoked, they warned, Trump could simply declare anyone a Tren de Aragua member and remove them from the country.
Boasberg barred those Venezuelans’ deportations Saturday morning when the suit was filed, but only broadened it to all people in federal custody who could be targeted by the act after his afternoon hearing. He noted that the law has never before been used outside of a congressionally declared war and that plaintiffs may successfully argue Trump exceeded his legal authority in invoking it.
The bar on deportations stands for up to 14 days and the immigrants will remain in federal custody during that time. Boasberg has scheduled a hearing Friday to hear additional arguments in the case.
He said he had to act because the immigrants whose deportations may actually violate the U.S. Constitution deserved a chance to have their pleas heard in court.
“Once they’re out of the country,” Boasberg said, “there’s little I could do.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
In wake of tragedies, BofA tasks senior execs with overseeing junior banker workload

Bank of America, which has come under scrutiny for its treatment of junior bankers, is changing who is overseeing the workloads of its young executives. The bank is now having senior bankers—those who hold a title of director or above—monitor the nature and volume of assignments piled on lower level staff who, in an industry famous for grueling hours, often work well into the night to complete deals.
Bank of America’s efforts come after a series of tragedies involving young people that have shaken the investment banking sector. In January, Carter Anthony McIntosh, a 28-year-old investment banking associate at Jefferies, passed away from a suspected drug overdose. McIntoch was working as much as 100 hours a week, the New York Post reported. Leo Lukenas, a BofA junior banker, died in May from a blood clot. Lukenas had worked 100-plus hour weeks before his passing. BofA in 2014 instituted policies to limit young banker hours, the junior execs were often pressured into lying about their workloads, the WSJ has reported.
To carry out its oversight program, BofA has long relied on what it calls a chief resource officer model. Under this model, BofA used mid-level executives, on one-year rotations, to allocate work to junior investment bankers, according to the Wall Street Journal.
BofA has opted to shake up the model as it seeks to build the next generation of leaders, a person familiar with the situation said. The investment bank will now rely on senior bankers, working in permanent, full-time positions across sectors and regions, who will supervise young banker development as their CROs.
Bank of America is picking volunteers or assigning the role to the senior bankers, who are no longer dealmakers, the person said. BofA is seeking executives who have a very strong leadership quality, have managed teams and feel strongly about the evolution of junior bankers, they said.
“We want all of our junior bankers to have the best experience possible, learning from the teammates they work with and further benefiting from the career growth and development this role brings,” according to a BofA statement.
BofA Securities, the investment banking division of Bank of America, employs thousands of bankers. It’s unclear how many are junior bankers. Young executives typically spend several years as a junior banker, including two as an analyst and two to three years as an associate, before they move up to vice president. At that point they usually work on a sector team, like consumer or technology or industrials.
BofA also cut roughly 150 junior investment banking roles, the person. The majority of people that were reduced were “mapped to new roles” outside of investment banking like financial analysis or strategic planning, the person said. “They were given the opportunity to move somewhere else,” they said.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
Four teens charged for alleged pistol-whipping, attempted Bitcoin robbery of OnlyFans influencer

Four teenagers in Houston, Texas, were charged Thursday for assaulting and trying to steal Bitcoin and Ethereum from an OnlyFans influencer in early March. Kaitlyn Siragusa, known online as “Amouranth,” was sleeping in her home in northwest Houston when three men broke into her room and demanded cryptocurrency, reported FOX 26. Siragusa had previously posted on social media a screenshot of her more than $20 million in cryptocurrency balances, according to the New York Post.
The three men allegedly pistol-whipped the OnlyFans influencer three times before Siragusa’s husband fired shots at the suspects, who then fled Siragusa’s home, according to FOX. The Harris County District Clerk’s Office identified the three men on Friday as Demarcus Morris Jr., 17; Dylan Nesho Campbell, 18; and Bryan Anthony Salazar Guerrero, 19. Officials also identified a 16-year-old as a suspect.
“They brought duct tape and masks and were armed with handguns,” Siragusa posted on X.
The assault and attempted robbery is just one of a series of recent attacks on individuals with known crypto holdings.
In late January, French police leapt into action after a group of criminals kidnapped David Balland, cofounder of the crypto hardware developer Ledger, and his wife, demanding a ransom in Bitcoin. French authorities, however, tracked down the kidnappers and rescued the couple. Balland’s wife was found unharmed but the Ledger cofounder had his finger severed in the ordeal. The Paris prosecutor’s office said that police had arrested 10 individuals alleged to be part of the kidnapping.
And in February, six men were accused in a Federal Bureau of Investigation affidavit of kidnapping three family members and a nanny from a Chicago townhouse, according to the Chicago Tribune. The criminals released the victims after they forced the family to hand over more than $15 million in cryptocurrency.
Crypto executives and wealthy crypto owners are taking notice. Some are hiring bodyguards to protect themselves from would-be attackers, according to WIRED. And others are buying up “wrench-attack” insurance, or policies designed to insure individuals if they’re the victims of a physical-force crypto robbery.
“In general the best things Bitcoiners can do to stay safe is to remain private,” Jameson Lopp, a famous early Bitcoiner, told Fortune. “The goal should be to avoid becoming a target,” he said. “Don’t go around telling anyone about your Bitcoin holdings. Don’t flaunt your wealth online or in meatspace. Don’t engage in risk activities such as high-value face-to-face trades.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
Tech News
A French politician wants the U.S. to return the Statue of Liberty after 140 years. But it can’t actually do that

Hey, America: Give the Statue of Liberty back to France.
So says a French politician who is making headlines in his country for suggesting that the U.S. is no longer worthy of the monument that was a gift from France nearly 140 years ago.
As a member of the European Parliament and co-president of a small left-wing party in France, Raphaël Glucksmann cannot claim to speak for all of his compatriots.
But his assertion in a speech this weekend that some Americans “have chosen to switch to the side of the tyrants” reflects the broad shockwaves that U.S. President Donald Trump’s seismic shifts in foreign and domestic policy are triggering in France and elsewhere in Europe.
“Give us back the Statue of Liberty,” Glucksmann said, speaking Sunday to supporters of his Public Place party, who applauded and whistled.
“It was our gift to you. But apparently you despise her. So she will be happy here with us,” Glucksmann said.
The White House brushed back on the comments Monday, saying France instead should still be “grateful” for U.S. support during World War I and World War II.
Can France claim it back?
Dream on.
UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural arm that has the statue on its list of World Heritage treasures, notes that the iconic monument is U.S. government property.
It was initially envisaged as a monumental gesture of French-American friendship to mark the 100th anniversary of the July 4, 1776, Declaration of Independence.
But a war that erupted in 1870 between France and German states led by Prussia diverted the energies of the monument’s designer, French sculptor Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi.
The gift also took time to be funded, with a decision taken that the French would pay for the statue and Americans would cover the costs of its pedestal.
Transported in 350 pieces from France, the statue was officially unveiled Oct. 28, 1886.
Is France’s government offering asylum to Lady Liberty?
No. French-U.S. relations would have to drop off a cliff before Glucksmann found support from French President Emmanuel Macron’s government.
For the moment, the French president is treading a fine line — trying to work with Trump and temper some of his policy shifts on the one hand but also pushing back hard against some White House decisions, notably Trump’s tariff hikes.
Macron has let his prime minister, François Bayrou, play the role of being a more critical voice. Bayrou tore into the “brutality” that was shown to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during his White House visit and suggested that Trump’s administration risked handing victory to Russia when it paused military aid to Ukraine.
Glucksmann’s party has been even more critical, posting accusations on its website that Trump is wielding power in an “authoritarian” manner and is “preparing to deliver Ukraine on a silver platter” to Russia.
In his speech, Glucksmann referenced New York poet Emma Lazarus’ words about the statue, the “mighty woman with a torch” who promised a home for the “huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
“Today, this land is ceasing to be what it was,” Glucksmann said.
What is the White House saying?
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt was asked Monday about Glucksmann’s comments, and responded that the U.S. would “absolutely not” be parting with the iconic statue.
“My advice to that unnamed low-level French politician would be to remind them that it’s only because of the United States of America that the French are not speaking German right now,” Leavitt said, apparently referencing the U.S. fight with allied powers to free France from Nazi occupation in World War II and alongside France during World War I. “They should be very grateful.”
But the debt of gratitude runs both ways. Leavitt skipped past France’s key role in supporting the future United States during its war for independence from the United Kingdom.
Leavitt is one of three administration officials who face a lawsuit from The Associated Press on First- and Fifth-Amendment grounds. The AP says the three are punishing the news agency for editorial decisions they oppose. The White House says the AP is not following an executive order to refer to the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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