By DEE-ANN DURBIN

Anger over the Trump administration’s tariffs and rhetoric will likely cause international travel to the U.S. to fall even further than expected this year, an influential travel forecasting company said Tuesday.

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Tourism Economics said it expects the number of people arriving in the U.S. from abroad to decline by 9.4% this year. That’s almost twice the 5% drop the company forecast at the end of February.

At the beginning of the year, Tourism Economics predicted a booming year for international travel to the U.S., with visits up 9% from 2024.

But Tourism Economics President Adam Sacks said high-profile lockups of European tourists at the U.S. border in recent weeks have chilled international travelers. Potential visitors have also been angered by tariffs, Trump’s stance toward Canada and Greenland, and his heated White House exchange with Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

“With each policy development, each rhetorical missive, we’re just seeing unforced error after unforced error in the administration,” Sacks said. “It has a direct impact on international travel to the U.S.”

The decline will have consequences for airlines, hotels, national parks and other sites frequented by tourists.

Tourism Economics expects travel from Canada to plummet 20% this year, a decline that will be acutely felt in border states like New York and Michigan but also popular tourist destinations like California, Nevada and Florida.

The U.S. Travel Association, a trade group, has also warned about Canadians staying away. Even a 10% reduction in travel from Canada could mean 2.0 million fewer visits, $2.1 billion in lost spending and 14,000 job losses, the group said in February.

Other travel-related companies have noted worrying signs. At its annual shareholder meeting on Monday, Air Canada said bookings to the U.S. were down 10% for the April-September period compared to the same period a year ago.

Sacks said he now expects foreign visitors to spend $9 billion less in the U.S. compared to 2024, when international tourism to the country rose 9.1%.

“The irony is that the tariffs are being put in place to help right the trade deficit, but they’re harming the trade balance by causing fewer international travelers to come and spend money here,” Sacks said.

Sacks said international arrivals had been getting close to returning to 2019 numbers, before the coronavirus pandemic halted most travel. Now he thinks they won’t get back to that level until 2029.

NEW YORK (AP) — The major car companies say sales rose sharply in March, with most reporting double-digit gains. For some companies, the strong performance last month helped make up for a sluggish start to the year.

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Automakers sold nearly 1.6 million vehicles in the U.S. in March, up 13.6%. That brought total sales for the first quarter to more than 3.9 million vehicles, Motorintelligence.com said Tuesday. Almost all automakers saw a surge in sales of electric vehicles.

What future months hold for the automakers is uncertain. President Donald Trump announced 25% tariffs on auto imports that go into effect on April 3. The tariffs are set to expand to applicable auto parts in the following weeks, through May 3. The tax hike means automakers could face higher costs and lower sales, though Trump argues that the tariffs will lead to more factories opening in the United States.

Auto industry analyst Sam Abuelsamid at Telemetry Insight said expectations were that the March numbers would be higher due to some pre-buying ahead of the imposition of tariffs, although the pre-buying was likely “limited to some degree by affordability and continuing high interest rates.”

Here’s a look at the latest results:

General Motors

— Overall U.S. sales rose 17% during the first quarter on strong sales of full-size pickups and SUVs.

— Chevrolet sales rose 14% during the quarter, making it the brand’s best quarter since 2019.

— GMC sales rose 18% for the brand’s best quarter ever, with electric vehicle sales nearly tripling.

Ford Motor

— Total sales rose 10% in March as strong sales of the F-150 pickup and electric vehicles helped offset a drop in sales of SUVs.

— Total sales fell 1% for the first quarter due to fewer sales to rental car companies and the discontinuation of two models.

— Sales of all-electric and hybrid vehicles increased and made up about 15% of total sales for the first quarter.

Toyota

— U.S. sales for Toyota Motor North America rose 7.7% in March.

— Electric vehicle sales rose 44.1% in March and represented nearly half of the overall sales volume for the month.

— Total sales for Toyota Motor North America rose 0.9% during the first quarter.

Honda

— Total sales for American Honda rose 13.2% in March as the company’s light trucks notched their best month of sales.

— Electrified vehicle sales surged 89.1% in March and made up nearly a third of all vehicle sales.

— Total sales rose 5.3% during the first quarter, as a surge in truck sales offset a drop in car sales.

Nissan

— Total sales rose 5.7% in the first quarter, boosted by gains for the Sentra sedan and the Kicks compact crossover.

— Sales of the Leaf electric vehicle doubled in the quarter.

Hyundai

— Total sales for Hyundai Motor America rose 13% in March, led by sales of the Tucson and Santa FE SUVs and the Elantra Sedan.

— Total sales for the first quarter rose 10%.

— First-quarter sales of the company’s hybrid-electric vehicles jumped 68%.

KIA

— Kia America said sales rose 13.1% in March and 10.7% for the first quarter.

By MICHAEL CASEY

BOSTON (AP) — A judge in Boston is holding a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in contempt after he detained a suspect while the man was on trial.

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ICE agent Brian Sullivan detained Wilson Martell-Lebron last week as he was leaving court. But a Boston Municipal Court judge issued a ruling Monday against Sullivan, arguing that he had deprived Martell-Lebron of his rights to due process and a fair trial by taking him into custody.

“It’s a case of violating a defendant’s right to present at trial and confront witnesses against him,” Judge Mark Summerville said from the bench. “It couldn’t be more serious.”

Judge acts following arrest

Summerville dismissed the charge against Martell-Lebron of making false statements on his driver’s license application — namely that he wasn’t Martell-Lebron. After that, Summerville filed the contempt charge against Sullivan, which could lead Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden review the case to determine if any charges should be filed.

“It’s reprehensible,” Ryan Sullivan, one of Martell-Lebron’s lawyers said. “Law enforcement agents have a job to see justice is done. Prosecutors have a job to see justice is done. There is no greater injustice in my mind than the government arresting someone, without identifying themselves, and preventing them from exercising their constitutionally guaranteed right to a jury trial.”

A spokesman for ICE did not return a call seeking comment.

The move by ICE is the latest effort to target Boston over its handling of immigration.

President Donald Trump’s border czar Tom Homan and Republicans in Congress have accused the city of failing to cooperate to get people charged with violent crimes deported. Mayor Michelle Wu, a Democrat up for reelection this year, said she wants Boston be a welcoming place for immigrants and that city policies limit cooperation with immigration enforcement.

Tense scene outside courthouse

Sullivan described a tense scene, in which ICE agents pounced on Martell-Lebron without identifying themselves, put him into a pickup truck and sped away. The trial Thursday had just begun with opening statements and the first witnesses.

Sullivan said Martell-Lebron, who is from the Dominican Republic and living with family in Massachusetts, is now at the Plymouth detention facility for allegedly being an undocumented immigrant, he said.

“What we were challenging is that they arrested him in the middle of his trial and did not return him,” he said. “If he had been brought to court on Friday morning by ICE, we would not have moved to dismiss. We would not be asking for sanctions. We would have just finished the trial.”

ICE can make arrest outside courthouses

Immigration officers were a growing presence at courthouses during Trump’s first term, prompting some pushback from judges and other local officials. Trump has gone further in his second term by repealing a policy in place since 2011 to generally avoid schools, places of worship and hospitals.

Under current policy, immigration officials can make arrests “in or near courthouses when they have credible information that leads them to believe the targeted alien(s) is or will be present” and as long as they are not prohibited by state or local law.

During the two-day hearing, Sullivan said that the lead prosecution witnessed confirmed that both the Massachusetts State police and prosecutors were aware of ICE plans to arrest Martell-Lebron.

What did Massachusetts officials know about arrest?

In a statement, state police said they acted appropriately after learning of the plans of ICE. “As in any situation where a member becomes aware of federal immigration enforcement, the Troopers responded appropriately by neither assisting nor obstructing the federal action,” the statement said.

James Borghesani, a spokesman for the Suffolk County District Attorney Kevin Hayden said “we were dismayed and surprised when our prosecution of Wilson Martell-Lebron was interrupted by ICE apprehending him in the middle of his trial.”

“Any claim that we were aware of an attempt to prevent Mr Martell-Lebron from exercising his right to a trial is false.,” he said in a statement. “It was our intention to try Mr. Martell-Lebron and hold him accountable for the crimes alleged in the complaint. Federal authorities should not have detained him and interfered with our efforts to hold him accountable.”

The contempt case has been referred to the Suffolk district attorney’s office and a spokesman there said they were looking into it.

During Trump’s first term, the judicial system in the state wrestled with how to respond to ICE.

Two district attorneys in Massachusetts sued the federal government in 2019 seeking to prevent arrests at courthouses but dropped the case when former President Joe Biden took office.

Newton District Judge Shelley Joseph also faced charges – which were later dropped — of helping a man who was living in the U.S. illegally evade an immigration enforcement agent. The charges were dropped after she agreed to refer herself to a state agency that investigates allegations of misconduct by members of the bench.

By GEOFF MULVIHILL

The federal government has paused $27.5 million for organizations that provide family planning, contraception, cancer screenings and sexually transmitted infection services as it investigates whether they’re complying with the law.

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The National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association says 16 organizations received notice Monday that funding is on hold. At least 11 Planned Parenthood Federation of America regional affiliates and all recipients of federal family planning, or Title X, grants in seven states, had funding withheld.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services declined to say which laws or executive orders the groups are being investigated for violating, though NFPFHA said some of the letters cited civil rights laws. Trump has issued executive orders targeting programs that consider race in any way, some of which have been put on hold by judges.

Health and Human Services, which is in the midst of deep layoffs, also said that “no final decisions on any spending changes for Planned Parenthood have been made.”

Republicans have long railed against the millions of dollars that flow every year to Planned Parenthood and its clinics, which offer abortions but also birth control, cancer and disease screenings, among other things. Federal law prohibits taxpayer dollars from paying for most abortions.

Providers said the impact on health care will especially hit lower-income people.

“We know what happens when health care providers cannot use Title X funding,” Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, said in a statement. “People across the country suffer, cancers go undetected, access to birth control is severely reduced, and the nation’s STI crisis worsens.”

The reproductive health association, whose members include most Title X grant recipients, said that about one-fourth of them received the letter, including all the recipients in California, Hawaii, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana and Utah. Mississippi law bans abortion at all stages of pregnancy.

George Hill, president and CEO of Maine Family Planning, which provides abortion services, said that if necessary his organization would go to court to seek the funds.

“The Administration’s dangerous decision to withhold Maine Family Planning’s Title X funds jeopardizes access to critical health care services for thousands of Mainers. Any delay in disbursement of federal grants will have a detrimental effect on our state family planning network and the patients we serve,” Hill said.

The Missouri Family Health Council, which pays for programs throughout Missouri and part of Oklahoma, including Planned Parenthood affiliates, also had its funding blocked.

Planned Parenthood Great Plains, which includes Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas, said regional clinics remain committed to providing health care despite the funding uncertainty.

“They want to shut down Planned Parenthood health centers to appease their anti-abortion backers, and they’re willing to take away birth control, cancer screenings, and STI testing and treatment to get their way,” Great Plains Planned Parenthood President and CEO Emily Wales said in a statement. “If blocking health care for low-income patients is what the Trump administration means by ‘making America great again,’ then we want no part of it.”

Associated Press reporters Summer Ballentine and Amanda Seitz contributed to this article.