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A new White House anti-fraud task force that will search for welfare abuses in California and other states is in the final stages of planning by the vice president and the head of an independent consumer protection agency, multiple sources briefed on the plans told CBS News. 

President Trump intends to sign an executive order in coming days naming Vice President JD Vance as chairman of the task force, a move that’s meant to signal the importance of the effort to the president. 

Andrew Ferguson, a federal official whose job is to prevent consumers from being exploited, will be vice chairman. Ferguson will manage both the Federal Trade Commission, where he is currently chairman, and the daily activities of the new task force, two of the sources said. 

The plan calls for Colin McDonald, who has been nominated by Mr. Trump for a newly created fraud investigator role at the Justice Department, to fall within the DOJ’s management structure – reporting to Attorney General Pam Bondi and Deputy AG Todd Blanche – but to work closely with Vance and Ferguson.

Such an arrangement will likely trigger concerns from Democrats and watchdogs about whether the White House could try to exert political pressure on McDonald to investigate Mr. Trump’s enemies. 

The new anti-fraud efforts could sidestep existing fraud units at the Justice Department. That’s partly because of frustration with resistance from career staff who disagree with some of Mr. Trump’s priorities and tactics, which some officials think Bondi and Blanche have struggled to deal with, one of the sources said. 

Other officials said the DOJ’s national fraud enforcement division, which Vance announced last month, and the task force came about because of keen interest in clamping down on fraud in taxpayer-funded programs.

California auditors have discovered billions in fraud in unemployment claims, pandemic assistance, and health care. Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, a likely presidential candidate in 2028, has defended efforts to clean up and block fraud.

In Minnesota, Democratic Gov. Tim Walz dropped his reelection bid amid scrutiny of massive fraud in state child care and other welfare programs.

The timeline for Mr. Trump’s signature creating the task force could shift to later this month, sources said. 

White House spokespeople declined to comment.

Vance currently serves as the vice chair of the White House’s task forces for the 2026 FIFA World Cup 2026 and 2028 Summer Olympics, and well as finance chair for the Republican National Committee — a key fundraising position that allows him to interact with a network of campaign donors. 

He is one of the top messengers of the administration’s economic agenda, traveling to numerous states, and a central defender of the administration’s immigration policies after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in encounters with federal officials in Minnesota.

At the trade commission, Ferguson has continued litigation against major U.S. companies, including tech giants, and has sought refunds for consumers. Amazon in September agreed to a $2.5 billion settlement, and FTC is appealing its case against Meta for allegedly breaking antitrust laws when it bought Instagram and WhatsApp.

Officials in Blanche’s office were still in the early stages of figuring out how to build the Justice Department’s new fraud division from scratch, including factors such as where it will be located, how it will be be staffed and what IT infrastructure needs to be in place, a source familiar with the planning said this week.

It was also unclear how it would be structured to avoid duplicating the several existing units that pursue fraud probes, both at the department’s Washington, D.C. headquarters and in U.S. attorneys’ offices across the country.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump said Wednesday he and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the situation in Iran in a wide-ranging call that comes as the U.S. administration pushes Beijing and others to isolate Tehran.

Trump said the two leaders also discussed a broad range of other critical issues in the U.S.-China relationship, including trade and Taiwan and his plans to visit Beijing in April.

“The relationship with China, and my personal relationship with President Xi, is an extremely good one, and we both realize how important it is to keep it that way,” Trump said in a social media posting about the call.

Trump, who continues to weigh taking military action against Iran, announced last month in a social media post he would impose a 25% tax on imports to the United States from countries that do business with Iran.

Years of sanctions aimed at stopping Iran’s nuclear program have left the country isolated. But Tehran still did nearly $125 billion in international trade in 2024, including $32 billion with China, $28 billion with the United Arab Emirates and $17 billion with Turkey, according to the World Trade Organization.

Treasury Secretary Bessent is expected to testify before the House Financial Services Committee Wednesday.

The hearing begins at 10 a.m. EST. Watch live in our video player above.

Bessent will weigh in on an annual report from the Financial Stability Oversight Council.

This story is developing and will be updated.

Artificial intelligence is here. It’s overhyped, poorly understood, and flawed but already core to our lives—and it’s only going to extend its reach.

AI powers driverless car research, spots otherwise invisible signs of disease on medical images, finds an answer when you ask Alexa a question, and lets you unlock your phone with your face to talk to friends as an animated poop on the iPhone X using Apple’s Animoji. Those are just a few ways AI already touches our lives, and there’s plenty of work still to be done. But don’t worry, superintelligent algorithms aren’t about to take all the jobs or wipe out humanity.

The current boom in all things AI was catalyzed by breakthroughs in an area known as machine learning. It involves “training” computers to perform tasks based on examples, rather than relying on programming by a human. A technique called deep learning has made this approach much more powerful. Just ask Lee Sedol, holder of 18 international titles at the complex game of Go. He got creamed by software called AlphaGo in 2016.

There’s evidence that AI can make us happier and healthier. But there’s also reason for caution. Incidents in which algorithms picked up or amplified societal biases around race or gender show that an AI-enhanced future won’t automatically be a better one.

The Beginnings of Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence as we know it began as a vacation project. Dartmouth professor John McCarthy coined the term in the summer of 1956, when he invited a small group to spend a few weeks musing on how to make machines do things like use language.

He had high hopes of a breakthrough in the drive toward human-level machines. “We think that a significant advance can be made,” he wrote with his co-organizers, “if a carefully selected group of scientists work on it together for a summer.”

Those hopes were not met, and McCarthy later conceded that he had been overly optimistic. But the workshop helped researchers dreaming of intelligent machines coalesce into a recognized academic field.

Early work often focused on solving fairly abstract problems in math and logic. But it wasn’t long before AI started to show promising results on more human tasks. In the late 1950s, Arthur Samuel created programs that learned to play checkers. In 1962, one scored a win over a master at the game. In 1967, a program called Dendral showed it could replicate the way chemists interpreted mass-spectrometry data on the makeup of chemical samples.

As the field of AI developed, so did different strategies for making smarter machines. Some researchers tried to distill human knowledge into code or come up with rules for specific tasks, like understanding language. Others were inspired by the importance of learning to understand human and animal intelligence. They built systems that could get better at a task over time, perhaps by simulating evolution or by learning from example data. The field hit milestone after milestone as computers mastered tasks that could previously only be completed by people.

Deep learning, the rocket fuel of the current AI boom, is a revival of one of the oldest ideas in AI. The technique involves passing data through webs of math loosely inspired by the working of brain cells that are known as artificial neural networks. As a network processes training data, connections between the parts of the network adjust, building up an ability to interpret future data.

Artificial neural networks became an established idea in AI not long after the Dartmouth workshop. The room-filling Perceptron Mark 1 from 1958, for example, learned to distinguish different geometric shapes and got written up in The New York Times as the “Embryo of Computer Designed to Read and Grow Wiser.” But neural networks tumbled from favor after an influential 1969 book coauthored by MIT’s Marvin Minsky suggested they couldn’t be very powerful.

Not everyone was convinced by the skeptics, however, and some researchers kept the technique alive over the decades. They were vindicated in 2012, when a series of experiments showed that neural networks fueled with large piles of data could give machines new powers of perception. Churning through so much data was difficult using traditional computer chips, but a shift to graphics cards precipitated an explosion in processing power.

In one notable result, researchers at the University of Toronto trounced rivals in an annual competition where software is tasked with categorizing images. In another, researchers from IBM, Microsoft, and Google teamed up to publish results showing deep learning could also deliver a significant jump in the accuracy of speech recognition. Tech companies began frantically hiring all the deep-learning experts they could find. It’s important to note however that the AI field has had several booms and busts (aka, “AI winters”) in the past, and a sea change remains a possibility again today.

The State of AI Today

Improvements to AI hardware, growth in training courses in machine learning, and open source machine-learning projects have accelerated the spread of AI to other industries, from national security to business support and medicine.  

Alphabet-owned DeepMind has turned its AI loose on a variety of problems: the movement of soccer players, the restoration of ancient texts, and even ways to control nuclear fusion. In 2020, DeepMind said that its AlphaFold AI could predict the structure of proteins, a long-standing problem that had hampered research. This was widely seen as one of the first times a real scientific question has been answered with AI. AlphaFold was subsequently used to study Covid-19 and is now helping scientists study neglected diseases.

Automated Academic Illustration for AI Scientists

Disclaimer: This is an unofficial, community-driven open-source implementation of the paper
“PaperBanana: Automating Academic Illustration for AI Scientists” by Dawei Zhu, Rui Meng, Yale Song,
Xiyu Wei, Sujian Li, Tomas Pfister, and Jinsung Yoon (arXiv:2601.23265).
This project is not affiliated with or endorsed by the original authors or Google Research.
The implementation is based on the publicly available paper and may differ from the original system.

An agentic framework for generating publication-quality academic diagrams and statistical plots from text descriptions. Uses Google Gemini for both VLM and image generation.

• Python 3.10+
• A Google Gemini API key (available at no cost from Google AI Studio)

git clone https://github.com/llmsresearch/paperbanana.git
cd paperbanana

pip install -e ".[google]"

Run the interactive setup wizard:

This opens your browser to get a Google Gemini API key from Google AI Studio and saves it to .env.

Or set it up manually:

cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env and add: GOOGLE_API_KEY=your-key-here

# Using the included sample input
paperbanana generate \
  --input examples/sample_inputs/transformer_method.txt \
  --caption "Overview of our encoder-decoder architecture with sparse routing"

Or write your own methodology text:

cat > my_method.txt  'EOF'
Our framework consists of an encoder that processes input sequences
through multi-head self-attention layers, followed by a decoder that
generates output tokens auto-regressively using cross-attention to
the encoder representations. We add a novel routing mechanism that
selects relevant encoder states for each decoder step.
EOF

paperbanana generate \
  --input my_method.txt \
  --caption "Overview of our encoder-decoder framework"

Output is saved to outputs/run_/final_output.png along with all intermediate iterations and metadata.

PaperBanana implements a two-phase multi-agent pipeline with 5 specialized agents:

Phase 1 — Linear Planning:

1. Retriever selects the most relevant reference examples from a curated set of 13 methodology diagrams spanning agent/reasoning, vision/perception, generative/learning, and science/applications domains
2. Planner generates a detailed textual description of the target diagram via in-context learning from the retrieved examples
3. Stylist refines the description for visual aesthetics using NeurIPS-style guidelines (color palette, layout, typography)

Phase 2 — Iterative Refinement (3 rounds):

4. Visualizer renders the description into an image (Gemini 3 Pro for diagrams, Matplotlib code for plots)
5. Critic evaluates the generated image against the source context and provides a revised description addressing any issues
6. Steps 4-5 repeat for up to 3 iterations

paperbanana generate \
  --input method.txt \
  --caption "Overview of our framework" \
  --output diagram.png \
  --iterations 3

paperbanana plot \
  --data results.csv \
  --intent "Bar chart comparing model accuracy across benchmarks"

Comparative evaluation of a generated diagram against a human reference using VLM-as-a-Judge:

paperbanana evaluate \
  --generated diagram.png \
  --reference human_diagram.png \
  --context method.txt \
  --caption "Overview of our framework"

Scores on 4 dimensions (hierarchical aggregation per the paper):

• Primary: Faithfulness, Readability
• Secondary: Conciseness, Aesthetics

Interactive wizard that walks you through obtaining a Google Gemini API key and saving it to .env.

import asyncio
from paperbanana import PaperBananaPipeline, GenerationInput, DiagramType
from paperbanana.core.config import Settings

settings = Settings(
    vlm_provider="gemini",
    image_provider="google_imagen",
    refinement_iterations=3,
)

pipeline = PaperBananaPipeline(settings=settings)

result = asyncio.run(pipeline.generate(
    GenerationInput(
        source_context="Our framework consists of...",
        communicative_intent="Overview of the proposed method.",
        diagram_type=DiagramType.METHODOLOGY,
    )
))

print(f"Output: {result.image_path}")

See examples/generate_diagram.py and examples/generate_plot.py for complete working examples.

Default settings are in configs/config.yaml. Override via CLI flags or a custom YAML:

paperbanana generate \
  --input method.txt \
  --caption "Overview" \
  --config my_config.yaml

Key settings:

vlm:
  provider: gemini
  model: gemini-2.0-flash

image:
  provider: google_imagen
  model: gemini-3-pro-image-preview

pipeline:
  num_retrieval_examples: 10
  refinement_iterations: 3
  output_resolution: "2k"

reference:
  path: data/reference_sets

output:
  dir: outputs
  save_iterations: true
  save_metadata: true

paperbanana/
├── paperbanana/
│   ├── core/          # Pipeline orchestration, types, config, utilities
│   ├── agents/        # Retriever, Planner, Stylist, Visualizer, Critic
│   ├── providers/     # VLM and image gen provider implementations
│   │   ├── vlm/       # Gemini VLM provider
│   │   └── image_gen/ # Gemini 3 Pro Image provider
│   ├── reference/     # Reference set management (13 curated examples)
│   ├── guidelines/    # Style guidelines loader
│   └── evaluation/    # VLM-as-Judge evaluation system
├── configs/           # YAML configuration files
├── prompts/           # Prompt templates for all 5 agents + evaluation
│   ├── diagram/       # retriever, planner, stylist, visualizer, critic
│   ├── plot/          # plot-specific prompt variants
│   └── evaluation/    # faithfulness, conciseness, readability, aesthetics
├── data/
│   ├── reference_sets/  # 13 verified methodology diagrams
│   └── guidelines/              # NeurIPS-style aesthetic guidelines
├── examples/          # Working example scripts + sample inputs
├── scripts/           # Data curation and build scripts
├── tests/             # Test suite (34 tests)
└── mcp_server/        # MCP server for IDE integration

# Install with dev dependencies
pip install -e ".[dev,google]"

# Run tests
pytest tests/ -v

# Lint
ruff check paperbanana/ tests/ scripts/

# Format
ruff format paperbanana/ tests/ scripts/

This is an unofficial implementation. If you use this work, please cite the original paper:

@article{zhu2026paperbanana,
  title={PaperBanana: Automating Academic Illustration for AI Scientists},
  author={Zhu, Dawei and Meng, Rui and Song, Yale and Wei, Xiyu
          and Li, Sujian and Pfister, Tomas and Yoon, Jinsung},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2601.23265},
  year={2026}
}

Original paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2601.23265

This project is an independent open-source reimplementation based on the publicly available paper.
It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to the original authors, Google Research, or
Peking University in any way. The implementation may differ from the original system described in the paper.
Use at your own discretion.

MIT

Nine months after Lilly and Jack Sullivan vanished without a trace in rural Nova Scotia, the silence surrounding their mother has been broken under the glare of intense public scrutiny.

In an exclusive interview with CBC News, members of Malehya Brooks-Murray’s inner circle are sharing new details about her life at the time of the disappearance and how the family is coping as the tragedy continues to unfold.

“Frustration comes to mind, especially when you sit there and you kind of feel like your hands are tied and [there’s] not much that you can do,” Angeline Maloney-Arsenault, Brooks-Murray’s childhood best friend, said during a recent interview in Brookfield, N.S.

Brooks-Murray has not spoken publicly about the case apart from one media interview during the initial search and a written statement she released through a volunteer search group. 

She has been heavily criticized in comments on social media for remaining silent as armchair sleuths have speculated online about what happened to her children.

But Cheryl Robinson, a close family friend, said if you knew Brooks-Murray personally, her silence would not be surprising.

“That’s just who she is. She was always quiet. She never was a confrontational person. She’s very shy,” said Robinson.

“I know that her behaviour to a lot of people may seem odd and may seem different and it may not be what a lot of people would do if their two kids were missing, but until you’re in that situation, you really don’t know how you would act.” 

WATCH | ‘I miss everything’ about Lilly and Jack, grandmother says:

Grandmother sheds light on Lilly and Jack Sullivan’s lives before disappearance

Cyndy Murray says her grandchildren were full of life prior to their disappearance on May 2, 2025. Friends of Lilly and Jack Sullivan’s mother describe them as happy kids who loved each other and their mom.

On the morning of May 2, 2025, Brooks-Murray called 911 to report that Lilly, 6, and Jack, then 4, had gone missing from the rural home she shared with her boyfriend, Daniel Martell, and their baby daughter.

An extensive grid search of 8.5 square kilometres of mostly thick woods involving 1,700 crew members over 12,000 hours turned up little evidence apart from Lilly’s pink blanket hanging in a tree and a child-size boot print on a nearby trail.

Cyndy Murray, Brooks-Murray’s mother, said the past nine months have been “absolute torture.”

Murray last saw her grandchildren about a month before they went missing, when they came to her house for an egg hunt on Easter weekend.

“I made them Easter dinner and they just played and laughed,” Murray told CBC News, clutching two heart-shaped photos of Lilly and Jack.

“I miss them calling me Nae Nae.”

The hardest part for her family, she said, is not knowing what happened.

“Two kids just go missing without a trace or answers, you know, doesn’t make any sense to me,” said Murray, pausing at times to compose herself.

“It’s just a nightmare. Like I can’t describe it. It’s mental torture to figure out … how come it’s taking so long for them to find out what happened?”

WATCH | ‘She’s not a bad mom’ say friends:

Inner circle of mother of missing children speak to CBC in exclusive interview

It’s been nine months since Lilly and Jack Sullivan went missing from Lansdowne, N.S. Now, their mother’s inner circle are sharing new details about her life at the time of the disappearance and how the family is coping with the tragedy.

Robinson said Brooks-Murray has been staying with her intermittently and she has not been doing well. As a result, Brooks-Murray tries to avoid the gossip circulating on the many YouTube shows and Facebook groups following the case.

“We just try to help her and guide her in the right direction and give her the hope that the kids will be found,” said a sombre Robinson.

“I’ve noticed a significant decrease in her weight since the kids have gone missing. She’s just trying to take it day by day.”

Since the disappearance, authorities have brought in cadaver dogs, conducted 75 interviews and several polygraph examinations, reviewed 1,079 tips and 8,100 video files, and have assigned RCMP units from multiple provinces to investigate.

The case is still being investigated under Nova Scotia’s Missing Persons Act and has not moved to a criminal investigation, according to RCMP.

As part of the investigation, police asked Brooks-Murray and Martell about their relationship.

Their statements are detailed in search warrant applications that were sought early on in the case and later released to CBC News and other media outlets. The documents set out the findings of the police investigation at the time the affidavits were sworn, between May 16, 2025, and July 16, 2025.

According to the court documents, the couple met on Facebook Dating in the spring of 2022 and the relationship moved quickly. Martell started living with Brooks-Murray at her grandmother’s house after two weeks. 

WATCH | Interview with stepfather of missing N.S. children:

Stepfather of N.S. children believes their disappearance is criminal

The following interview with Daniel Martell was recorded on Jan. 6, 2026 to discuss the disappearance of his stepchildren Jack and Lilly Sullivan. He was later charged on Jan. 29 with sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement involving an adult complainant. He has not responded to CBC’s request for comment on the charges.

In August 2023, they moved to his mother’s property in Lansdowne, a sparsely populated community roughly 65 kilometres from Brooks-Murray’s support circle in Truro, N.S., the documents said.

Soon after, she started distancing herself from her friends and family, said Robinson. She said she heard through family members that Brooks-Murray was not happy in the months before the children vanished.

Martell told police during an interview that he and Brooks-Murray had been recently fighting about money, according to the documents. Martell has previously said he was only working one shift a week at a local sawmill.

Lilly and Jack’s father, Cody Sullivan, had not seen the children in a few years. He was paying child support, but stopped after losing his job around August 2024, the documents said.

Brooks-Murray was asked by police if Martell was ever physically abusive during their three-year relationship.

“Malehya said he would try to block her, hold her down and once he pushed her,” the officer said in court documents when recounting the interview.

“She said he would also take her phone from her when she tried to call her mom, which would sometimes be physical and hurt.”

Martell, meanwhile, told investigators there was no physical violence in their relationship, the documents said.

WATCH | N.S. RCMP say they are confident in the investigation:

Missing children are ‘not going to be a cold case,’ N.S. RCMP say

RCMP Staff Sgt. Rob McCamon says he is confident in the work the major crimes unit has done to date on the case of missing Nova Scotia children Jack and Lilly Sullivan, who disappeared nine months ago.

In a recent interview with CBC News, Martell denied abusing Brooks-Murray. 

When asked if he monitored her phone, Martell said: “She also monitored mine.”

“She blocked her friends on my phone and she blocked them on her own phone,” said Martell.

None of the allegations have been proven in court.

Robinson said the day the children went missing was the first time she saw where Brooks-Murray had been living, in a mobile home on an isolated property. She also met Martell and some of his family members.

Inside the home, it was cluttered and disorderly, she said. Outside, chaos was unfolding, as loved ones of Lilly and Jack and dozens of police and searchers tried to piece together what happened.

Something felt off, said Robinson. She described the mood as “different.”

“A lot of controversy, a lot of family issues, a lot of family dynamics,” she said. “[It] just didn’t feel very welcoming.”

‘They all started screaming’

She didn’t know it at the time, but it was foreshadowing a fallout between the two families.

The next day, an argument broke out in the driveway of the home.

Martell told CBC News members of Brooks-Murray’s family discovered he had used drugs in the past — meth and cocaine — and “they all started screaming.” 

Brooks-Murray’s sister was particularly incensed, said Martell. He said this led to Martell’s mother ordering her off the property, so Brooks-Murray and her family left. 

Several other people who were there during the heated exchange on May 3 confirmed to CBC News this is what happened.

Robinson said they all went to the nearby command centre for a briefing on the search. 

As she reviewed maps of the large swaths of woods that crews had already covered — with no trace of Lilly and Jack — Brooks-Murray handed off her baby to a loved one because she was having a panic attack and received medical attention, said Robinson.

She would never return to the Martell property.

“We weren’t leaving her there,” said Robinson. “After learning everything … we did, and seeing the condition that [the baby] was living in, it just wasn’t the proper fit.”

Last week, RCMP laid charges of sexual assault, assault and forcible confinement against Martell in connection with an adult complainant. He’s due to appear in Pictou provincial court on March 2.

Martell could not be reached for comment.

When it comes to the missing persons investigation, Martell has repeatedly said he is fully co-operating with RCMP. In December, he voluntarily provided a DNA sample to investigators, said Martell.

He said when he signed the consent form, there was a box checked that said “no criminal involvement.”

“I’ve known since the start that I’m 100 per cent innocent … but then to also see it visually with my own eyes, it was a big thing,” said Martell.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Rob McCamon confirmed investigators took a blood sample from Martell, “because it was the appropriate time.”

McCamon said police sometimes find DNA in places they expect to find it, and blood samples are taken to eliminate sources.

“It’s something that we do, especially in missing persons cases, to collect the information and make sure it’s safeguarded,” McCamon told CBC News.

When asked if any of the children’s family members are considered suspects in this case, McCamon said there are no suspects he can identify at this time.

Murray, the children’s grandmother, said the RCMP have not been forthcoming with details about the case, and as time ticks on, it’s harder to be patient.

“I hope that they’re checking every avenue and doing as much as they possibly can,” said Murray. “In my heart, I want to believe that that’s what they’re doing.”

Brooks-Murray’s inner circle believes the children may have been abducted, and question why it was ruled out as a possibility so early on.

But McCamon said there is no “direct evidence” to suggest they were taken.

“If that were something that took place, we will gather the information and we’ll pursue that and we will pursue any charges related to anything like that that took place,” said McCamon, the officer in charge of major crime and behavioural sciences.

“Sometimes when it comes to not sharing information more broadly, it’s because we need to ensure we maintain the integrity in order for us to pursue the investigative efforts that we need to do.”

Robinson hangs her head as a fuzzy blanket decorated with red cherries is pulled from a garbage bag of the children’s belongings, where it has sat crumpled since being taken from their home.

It’s the first time she’s been able to bring herself to look inside the bag of bedding. It was stashed in her shed with the hope that Lilly and Jack will someday be able to cuddle up with their blankets again.

“It was one of her favourite blankets,” Robinson said in a soft voice. “But every blanket she had was her ‘favourite,’ as long as it was pink.”

The many unanswered questions have driven Maloney-Arsenault to sleuth the internet for every piece of information.

“[It’s] kind of like a second job. You don’t know what types of things are on there that could actually lead up to something huge, right?”

The ordeal has brought Maloney-Arsenault and Robinson closer under a common goal.

“We all have one main focus, and it’s to find Lilly and Jack and hopefully find answers as to what happened to them,” said Robinson.

“We want to bring them home.”

MORE TOP STORIES

Tom Homan cites increased cooperation with local authorities but promises enforcement operations will continue.

United States border security chief Tom Homan has announced that the administration of President Donald Trump will “draw down” 700 immigration enforcement personnel from Minnesota while promising to continue operations in the northern state.

The update on Wednesday was the latest indication of the Trump administration pivoting on its enforcement surge in the state following the killing of two US citizens by immigration agents in Minneapolis in January.

Homan, who is officially called Trump’s “border czar”, said the decision came amid new cooperation agreements with local authorities, particularly related to detaining individuals at county jails. Details of those agreements were not immediately available.

About 3,000 immigration enforcement agents are currently believed to be in Minnesota as part of Trump’s enforcement operations.

“Given this increase in unprecedented collaboration, and as a result of the need for less law enforcement officers to do this work in a safer environment, I have announced, effective immediately, we will draw down 700 people effective today – 700 law enforcement personnel,” Homan said.

The announcement comes after Homan was sent to Minnesota at the end of January in response to widespread protests over immigration enforcement and the killing of Renee Nicole Good on January 7 by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent and Alex Pretti on January 24 by a US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officer, both in Minneapolis.

Homan said reforms made since his arrival have included consolidating ICE and CBP under a single chain of command.

He said Trump “fully intends to achieve mass deportations during this administration, and immigration enforcement actions will continue every day throughout this country”.

Immigration rights observers have said the administration’s mass deportation approach has seen agents use increasingly “dragnet” tactics to meet large detention quotas, including randomly stopping individuals and asking for their papers. The administration has increasingly detained undocumented individuals with no criminal records, even US citizens and people who have legal status to live in the US.

Homan said agents would prioritise who they considered to be “public safety threats” but added, “Just because you prioritise public safety threats, don’t mean we forget about everybody else. We will continue to enforce the immigration laws in this country.”

The “drawdown”, he added, would not apply to what he described as “personnel providing security for our officers”.

“We will not draw down on personnel providing security and responding to hostile incidents until we see a change,” he said.

Critics have accused immigration enforcement officers, who do not receive the same level of crowd control training as most local police forces, of using excessive violence in responding to protesters and individuals legally monitoring their actions.

Trump administration officials have regularly blamed unrest on “agitators”. They accused both Good and Pretti of threatening officers before their killings although video evidence of the exchanges has contradicted that characterisation.

Last week, the administration announced it was opening a federal civil rights investigation into the killing of Pretti, who was fatally shot while he was pinned to the ground by immigration agents. That came moments after an agent removed a gun from Pretti’s body, which the 37-year-old had not drawn and was legally carrying.

Federal authorities have not opened a civil rights investigation into the killing of Good, who they have maintained sought to run over an ICE agent before she was fatally shot. Video evidence appeared to show Good trying to turn away from the agent.

On Friday, thousands of people took to the streets of Minneapolis and other US cities amid calls for a federal strike in protest against the Trump administration’s deportation drive.

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison and other state and local officials have also challenged the immigration enforcement surge in the state, arguing that the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE and the CBP, has been violating constitutional protections.

A federal judge last week said she will not halt the operations as a lawsuit progresses in court. Department of Justice lawyers have dismissed the suit as “legally frivolous”.

Some people have returned to a northern Manitoba First Nation after a power outage in late December wreaked havoc on homes and buildings.

Chief David Monias says about 116 of the approximately 4,000 people forced out due to frozen pipes have gone back to Pimicikamak Cree Nation because their homes have been repaired, but he’s asking hundreds of remaining evacuees to be patient.

“We want to make sure that they’re returning to a safe environment and safe homes,” Monias told CBC’s Faith Fundal on Up To Speed Tuesday afternoon.

He says assessments and repairs are continuing, with plumbers, electricians and carpenters making sure homes have water that’s clean and safe for consumption, cleaning and washing.

A snapped power line triggered a days-long outage starting Dec. 28, which led to frozen and burst pipes and flooding in homes in the First Nation, located about 530 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

The water plant was damaged and many people were without heat when outside temperatures dropped below the -20 C mark.

Power was fully restored by Jan. 2, but hundreds of homes were rendered unsafe, prompting an evacuation that saw people from Pimicikamak sent to Thompson and Winnipeg.

Monias says evacuees need food, clothing, feminine hygiene products and baby supplies, adding those who want to help can drop off donations at the Best Western Plus on Wellington Avenue in Winnipeg.

“They’re not able to store those things properly in the rooms that they’re in. They’re running out of those products fairly fast,” he said. “They’re having hot water with macaroni or noodles and stuff like that. That’s what they’re doing because they don’t have proper kitchen facilities.”

Monias understands evacuees want to go home, with some expressing concern about the quality of education their children are getting while they’re displaced.

“So they’re worried about that but they’re also worried about how long their house is going to be in that condition or will it get worse,” he said. 

Timeline to finish all repairs unclear

Monias says some of the homes had frozen pipes, damaged flooring and drywall and insulation that needed to be replaced.

“There’s a lot of work that’s needed to get done,” Monias said.

He said there’s a “high number” of carpenters and electricians capable of fixing between five to 10 homes a day.

“How long that takes depends on the severity of the damage that’s in the house,” Monias said.

The uncertainty means he isn’t sure exactly how long it will take to repair all the homes.

“We’re not even in the recovery phase because we’re still in the emergency state,” he said. “We ’re trying to look at how we’re going to recover from this by looking at how we’re planning in terms of what went wrong and what lessons we learned.”   

Monias says the First Nation wants to find out why generators failed, while buying new ones and also wood stoves.

If people have wood stoves in their homes it will help if something similar ever happens, he says, but it’s not as simple as just buying and setting them up: They’ll have to work with insurance providers to allow wood stoves to be installed.

Monias also wants Manitoba Hydro to move its line along the highway so it’s more accessible. The 300-metre section of line that failed runs between two islands on the Nelson River, making repairs complicated.

“So if it does break it’ll be just a matter of hours, not days,” he said, “so we wouldn’t have to face this again.”