Homeland Security News

The Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security surged hundreds of federal agents to Portland, Oregon, last summer with incomplete training and missing equipment, a new watchdog report says.

The department's inspector general flagged several major concerns with the deployment of more than 700 officers, including failure to properly train them to police riots and to conduct crowd control operations, raising concerns of increased risk to both officers and the public.

Tensions grew in Portland over the summer after federal officers arrived in the city, which had experienced prolonged and at times violent protests over demands for racial justice and police accountability.

Read more: CNN

A Chinese man was arrested for creating a fake U.S. Army unit and convincing immigrants that joining the squad was a path to citizenship, authorities said.

Yupeng Deng, 51, allegedly gave his recruits military uniforms, had them parade in a Los Angeles suburb and took them to the decommissioned USS Midway aircraft carrier, which is a museum in San Diego.

Deng charged more than 100 fellow Chinese nationals a fee of between $300 and $450 to join the fake Army unit, according to the Los Angeles District Attorney’s Office.

He called his bogus squad the U.S. Army/Military Special Forces Reserve unit, or MSFR for short, and he gave himself the lofty title of supreme commander, prosecutors said.

Read more: Reuters

A Michigan man challenged the constitutionality of the government’s so-called no-fly list in a lawsuit on Tuesday, accusing the F.B.I. of violating his due process rights by barring him from air travel and giving him no meaningful opportunity to challenge their decision.

The case, developed by the American Civil Liberties Union, opens a new front in a still-unresolved clash between the scope of individual rights and collective security measures after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001: the government’s practice of placing people on watch lists based on suspicions of links to terrorism.

Including people in such databases can lead to increased scrutiny at airports and during encounters with the police, deny them government benefits or contracts, and — in the case of the no-fly list — bar them from boarding aircraft or traveling through American airspace on planes that took off abroad.

Read more: New York Times

A Missouri man was sentenced to 12 years in federal prison without parole today for attempting to purchase a chemical weapon, capable of killing hundreds of people, on the dark web with Bitcoin.

Jason William Siesser, 46, of Columbia, Mo., pleaded guilty to one count of attempting to acquire a chemical weapon and one count of aggravated identity theft on Aug. 4, 2020. According to court documents, Siesser admitted that he attempted to acquire a chemical weapon on two occasions between June 14 and Aug. 23, 2018. He provided a shipping address in the name of a juvenile, whose identity he used without authorization, to place the orders for a highly toxic chemical in amounts capable of killing many people. Siesser paid for the chemical weapon with the digital cryptocurrency known as Bitcoin.

Siesser ordered two 10 mL units of the chemical on July 4, 2018, and paid with Bitcoin. The seller did not ship the chemical weapon at that time. Siesser continued to contact the seller. On July 19, 2018, Siesser told the seller that, “I plan to use it soon after I receive it.”

Read more: Department of Justice

U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrested two Yemeni men on a terrorism watch list, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced Monday.

The men, ages 33 and 26, were arrested Jan. 29 and March 30 on suspicion of illegally entering the United States after being apprehended several miles from the Calexico Port of Entry.

The agency did not release the names of the two men. Both were on the FBI’s Terrorism Watch List and on a “no-fly list,” according to the agency.

Officials said they found a cellphone SIM card hidden underneath the insole of the 33-year-old.

Read more: Los Angeles Times