SAN DIEGO — A rideshare driver allowed to live in the U.S. under a program for immigrants who arrived undocumented as children said that he mistakenly drove into Tijuana while transporting passengers near San Ysidro.

Now, Erick Alexander Hernández, a 34-year-old man originally from El Salvador, is in immigration custody in San Diego and being fast-tracked for deportation, despite his explanations that it was an honest mistake. He has lived in the United States for 20 years.

“It’s a horrible nightmare,” his mother, Elsa Hernández, said on Friday. “It was a mistake. It could happen to anyone.”

His mother said that Hernández is unfamiliar with the roads in San Diego because he lives in Los Angeles. He works installing air conditioners and drives for ride-sharing services to earn extra income.

On June 1, Hernández was driving two passengers from Los Angeles, who had attended a soccer match, to San Diego. However, he missed the last exit in San Ysidro and accidentally drove into Mexico, he said in a letter shared by his attorney. The case was first reported by NBC 7 San Diego.

Hernández explained what had happened to the Mexican border officials, who then guided him to the San Ysidro Port of Entry into the United States to turn around. He was later arrested.

Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, began in 2012 under the Obama administration for individuals who arrived in the United States as children and met certain requirements. The program provides temporary protection from deportation and work authorization. His mother said that her son has been a DACA recipient from the beginning.

However, DACA recipients cannot leave the country without prior authorization.

While Hernández says he made a mistake — one that numerous southbound drivers in San Diego have made over the decades — the Department of Homeland Security has characterized his border-crossing differently.

DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said Hernández “self-deported and then tried to illegally re-enter the U.S.”

In the June 23 letter, Hernández said he told U.S. border officials at the port of entry that he crossed the border by accident and showed them documents proving he is a DACA recipient.

He also claimed that while detained at the port, an official asked him for $800 to allow him to return. McLaughlin said the matter is under investigation.

“CBP takes all allegations of misconduct seriously, investigates thoroughly, and holds employees accountable when policies are violated,” she said. “This matter has been referred to the CBP Office of Professional Responsibility for review.”

Hernández is married to a U.S. citizen, and they had begun the process of legalizing his status beyond DACA, the family said.

He is currently in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement at the Otay Mesa Detention Center, now facing expedited removal proceedings, a process that allows the government to quickly remove someone from the country without a full hearing before an immigration judge.

His attorney, Valerie Sigamani, said she requested a stay of removal because his wife is about to give birth and his family depends on him financially. He could also be a witness in a potential corruption case, she said.

A similar scenario occurred to another DACA recipient during the first Trump administration.

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In early 2018, a UC San Diego student accidentally crossed the border while returning from a shopping mall in San Ysidro. He was arrested at the border on his way back but was released from immigration custody days later.

Pedro Ríos, director of the U.S.-Mexico program at the American Friends Service Committee, said that amid the Trump administration’s current crackdown on immigration, anyone who is not a citizen could be subject to questioning or detention.

Last month, a DACA recipient who is deaf and mute was arrested during a federal immigration raid at the car wash where he worked, the Los Angeles Times reported. He was released on bond after being detained for weeks in Texas despite having proper documentation.

“DACA does not confer any form of legal status in this country,” McLaughlin said in her statement. “Any illegal alien who is a DACA recipient may be subject to arrest and deportation.”

By LORNE COOK

BRUSSELS (AP) — France’s prime minister described it as a “dark day” for the European Union, a “submission” to U.S. tariff demands. Commentators said EU Commission chief Ursula von der Leyen’s handshake with President Donald Trump amounted to capitulation.

The trouble is, Europe depends mightily on the United States, and not just for trade.

Mirroring Trump, Von der Leyen gushed that the arrangement she endorsed over the weekend to set U.S. tariff levels on most European exports to 15%, which is 10% higher than currently, was “huge.” Her staff texted reporters insisting that the pact, which starts to enter force on Friday, is the “biggest trade deal ever.”

A month after NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte ingratiated himself with Trump by referring to him as “daddy,” the Europeans had again conceded that swallowing the costs and praising an unpredictable president is more palatable than losing America.

“It’s not only about the trade. It’s about security. It’s about Ukraine. It’s about current geopolitical volatility. I cannot go into all the details,” EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič told reporters Monday.

“I can assure you it was not only about the trade,” he insisted, a day after “the deal” was sealed in an hour-long meeting once Trump finished playing a round of golf with his son at the course he owns in Scotland.

The state of Europe’s security dependency

Indeed, Europe depends on the U.S. for its security and that security is anything but a game, especially since Russia invaded Ukraine. U.S. allies are convinced that, should he win, President Vladimir Putin is likely to take aim at one of them next.

So high are these fears that European countries are buying U.S. weapons to help Ukraine to defend itself. Some are prepared to send their own air defense systems and replace them with U.S. equipment, once it can be delivered.

“We’re going to be sending now military equipment and other equipment to NATO, and they’ll be doing what they want, but I guess it’s for the most part working with Ukraine,” Trump said Sunday, sounding ambivalent about America’s role in the alliance.

The Europeans also are wary about a U.S. troop drawdown, which the Pentagon is expected to announce by October. Around 84,000 U.S. personnel are based in Europe, and they guarantee NATO’s deterrent effect against an adversary like Russia.

At the same time, Trump is slapping duties on America’s own NATO partners, ostensibly due to concerns about U.S. security interests, using Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, a logic that seems absurd from across the Atlantic.

Weaning Europe off foreign suppliers

“The EU is in a difficult situation because we’re very dependent on the U.S. for security,” said Niclas Poitiers at the Bruegel research institution in Brussels. “Ukraine is a very big part of that, but also generally our defense is underwritten by NATO.”

“I think there was not a big willingness to pick a major fight, which is the one (the EU) might have needed with the U.S.” to better position itself on trade, Poitiers told The Associated Press about key reasons for von der Leyen to accept the tariff demands.

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Part of the agreement involves a commitment to buy American oil and gas. Over the course of the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its fourth year, most of the EU has slashed its dependence on unreliable energy supplies from Russia, but Hungary and Slovakia still have not.

“Purchases of U.S. energy products will diversify our sources of supply and contribute to Europe’s energy security. We will replace Russian gas and oil with significant purchases of U.S. LNG, oil and nuclear fuels,” von der Leyen said in Scotland on Sunday.

In essence, as Europe slowly weans itself off Russian energy it is also struggling to end its reliance on the United States for its security. The Trump administration has warned its priorities now lie elsewhere, in Asia, the Middle East and on its own borders.

That was why European allies agreed at NATO’s summit last month to spend hundreds of billions of dollars more on defense over the next decade. Primarily for their own security, but also to keep America among their ranks.

The diplomacy involved was not always elegant.

“Europe is going to pay in a BIG way, as they should, and it will be your win,” Rutte wrote in a private text message to Trump, which the U.S. leader promptly posted on social media.

Rutte brushed off questions about potential embarrassment or concern that Trump had aired it, saying: “I have absolutely no trouble or problem with that because there’s nothing in it which had to stay secret.”

A price Europe feels it must pay

Von der Leyen did not appear obsequious in her meeting with Trump. She often stared at the floor or smiled politely. She did not rebut Trump when he said that only America is sending aid to Gaza. The EU is world’s biggest supplier of aid to the Palestinians.

With Trump’s threat of 30% tariffs hanging over European exports — whether real or brinksmanship is hard to say — and facing the prospect of a full-blown trade dispute while Europe’s biggest war in decades rages, 15% may have been a cheap price to pay.

“In terms of the economic impact on the EU economy itself, it will be negative,” Poitiers said. “But it’s not something that is on a comparable magnitude like the energy crisis after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, or even COVID.”

“This is a negative shock for our economy, but it is something that’s very manageable,” he said.

It remains an open question as to how long this entente will last.

Mark Carlson in Brussels contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Transportation Safety Board will hold three days of hearings starting Wednesday on January’s midair collision between an American Airlines passenger jet and an Army helicopter over the nation’s capital that killed 67 people.

The goal: Pinpoint exactly what went wrong and what can be done to avoid similar midair crashes between passenger planes and military aircraft. The accident was the nation’s deadliest plane crash since November 2001.

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The hearings in Washington will involve NTSB board members, investigators and witnesses. Panels will focus on military helicopter routes in the Washington area, collision avoidance technology and training for air traffic controllers at Ronald Reagan National Airport, among other subjects.

NTSB officials have already said the FAA failed to recognize a concerning pattern after there were 85 near misses in Washington airspace in just three years. The FAA has since banned some helicopter routes to make sure helicopters and planes no longer share the same airspace, but there have still been additional near misses in recent months.

Investigators have also said that the Army helicopter may have had inaccurate altitude readings, and the crew may not have heard key instructions from air traffic controllers.

Meanwhile, federal officials have raised concerns over the nation’s overtaxed and understaffed air traffic control system. During January’s mid-air crash above Washington, one controller was handing both commercial airline and helicopter traffic at the busy airport.

The hearings come at a time of heightened scrutiny of the safety of air travel amid the growing list of aircraft tragedies, mishaps and near misses in 2025. They include an Air India plane crash in June that killed at least 260 people as well as two unrelatedclose calls in the U.S. this month in which passenger jets took evasive action to avoid military planes.

Here’s a look at the crash, the investigation so far and other notable aircraft incidents this year.

What happened?

American Airlines Flight 5342 from Wichita, Kansas, was carrying 60 passengers and four crew members as it approached to land on a clear night at Ronald Reagan National Airport. Nearby, the Army Black Hawk, with three soldiers on board, was practicing emergency evacuation routes that would be used to ferry out key government officials in an emergency.

Investigators have said the helicopter crew was wearing night-vision goggles that would have limited their peripheral vision.

A few minutes before the twin-engine jet was to land, air traffic controllers asked if it could use a shorter runway. The pilots agreed, and flight-tracking sites show the plane turned to adjust its approach. The FAA has since permanently banned that particular helicopter route when planes are using that runway.

Shortly before the collision, a controller got an alert saying the plane and Black Hawk were converging and asked the helicopter if it had the jet in sight. The military pilot said yes and asked for “visual separation” with the jet for a second time, allowing it to fly closer than if the pilots couldn’t see the plane.

Controllers approved the request roughly 20 seconds before the collision.

The NTSB has said there were 85 dangerous close calls between planes and helicopters near Reagan National in the three years before the crash, and collision alarms had been ordering pilots to take evasive action at least once a month since 2011.

The investigation

NTSB Chairwoman Jennifer Homendy told reporters in February that the Black Hawk’s cockpit recorder suggested an incomplete radio transmission may have left the crew unable to hear air traffic control tell them, just before the crash, to move behind the jet. She said the crew was unable to hear the words “pass behind the” because its microphone key was pressed.

The radio altitude of the helicopter was 278 feet (85 meters) at the time, which would put it above its 200-foot (61-meter) limit for that location.

Cockpit conversations a few minutes before the crash indicate that the crew may not have had accurate altitude readings, with the helicopter’s pilot calling out that they were at 300 feet (91 meters) but the instructor pilot saying 400 feet (122 meters), Homendy said.

That generation of Black Hawks typically has two types of altimeters: one relying on barometric pressure and the other on radio frequency signals bounced off the ground. Helicopter pilots typically rely on barometric readings while flying, but the helicopter’s black box captures its radio altitude.

Almost immediately after the crash, President Donald Trump faulted the helicopter for flying too high. He also blamed federal diversity and inclusion efforts, particularly regarding air traffic controllers. When pressed by reporters, the president could not back up those claims. A few days later, he blamed an “obsolete” air traffic control system.

January’s crash prompted the Federal Aviation Administration in March to announce that helicopters would be permanently restricted from flying on the same route where the collision occurred.

However, concerns over Washington’s airspace have persisted. On May 1, military air traffic controllers lost contact with an Army helicopter for about 20 seconds as it neared the Pentagon on a flight that caused two commercial jets to abort their landings. After that incident, the Army paused all flights into and out of the Pentagon as it works with the FAA to address safety issues.

The victims

The Army identified the Black Hawk crew as Capt. Rebecca M. Lobach, 28, of Durham, North Carolina; Staff Sgt. Ryan Austin O’Hara, 28, of Lilburn, Georgia; and Chief Warrant Officer 2 Andrew Loyd Eaves, 39, of Great Mills, Maryland. O’Hara was the crew chief, and Eaves and Lobach were pilots.

Among the jet’s passengers were several members of the Skating Club of Boston who were returning from a development camp for elite junior skaters that followed the 2025 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Wichita. A figure skating tribute event in Washington raised $1.2 million for the crash victims’ families.

Others included a group of hunters returning from a guided trip in Kansas; four members of a steamfitters’ union in suburban Maryland; nine students and parents from schools in Fairfax County, Virginia; and two Chinese nationals.

What about other crashes this year?

Besides the midair collision above Washington, a string of other recent crashes have brought attention to air travel, which remains overwhelmingly safe. The crashes include:

On Jan. 31 a medical transport jet crashed into a Philadelphia neighborhood, killing seven.

On Feb. 6 a small commuter aircraft went down off western Alaska, killing 10.

On Feb. 17, a Delta plane crashed and flipped over upon landing in Toronto but everyone survived. Two small planes collided in midair in Arizona on Feb. 19, killing two people.

On April 10, a New York City sightseeing helicopter broke apart in midair and crashed upside-down into the Hudson River, killing the pilot and a family of five Spanish tourists.

On April 11, three people were killed and one was injured when a small plane crashed in Boca Raton, Florida.

The crash of the Air India passenger plane in June occurred in the northwestern city of Ahmedabad, killing more than 240 people bound for London and others on the ground, officials said. A single passenger survived. The same month, a small plane crashed off the San Diego coast shortly after takeoff, killing all six people on board.

July included at least three fatal plane crashes. Two student pilots died when their single-engine planes crashed in midair south of Steinbach, in the Canadian province of Manitoba. A small plane crashed shortly after taking off from London Southend Airport, killing four people. A North Carolina family of four, including two school-age children, died when their small plane crashed as they flew back from Florida.

By SAM MEDNICK and CARA ANNA, Associated Press

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — The “worst-case scenario of famine is currently playing out in the Gaza Strip,” the leading international authority on food crises said in a new alert Tuesday, predicting “widespread death” without immediate action.

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The alert, still short of a formal famine declaration, follows an outcry over images of emaciated children in Gaza and reports of dozens of hunger-related deaths after nearly 22 months of war. International pressure led Israel over the weekend to announce measures, including daily humanitarian pauses in fighting in parts of Gaza and airdrops. The U.N. and Palestinians on the ground say little has changed, and desperate crowds continue to overwhelm delivery trucks before they reach their destinations.

The Integrated Food Security Phase Classification, or IPC, said Gaza has teetered on the brink of famine for two years, but recent developments have “dramatically worsened” the situation, including “increasingly stringent blockades” by Israel.

A formal famine declaration, which is rare, requires the kind of data that the lack of access to Gaza, and mobility within, has largely denied. The IPC has only declared famine a few times — in Somalia in 2011, South Sudan in 2017 and 2020, and parts of Sudan’s western Darfur region last year.

But independent experts say they don’t need a formal declaration to know what they’re seeing in Gaza.

“Just as a family physician can often diagnose a patient she’s familiar with based on visible symptoms without having to send samples to the lab and wait for results, so too we can interpret Gaza’s symptoms. This is famine,” Alex de Waal, author of “Mass Starvation: The History and Future of Famine” and executive director of the World Peace Foundation, told The Associated Press.

Palestinians struggle to get donated food at a community kitchen, in Gaza City, northern Gaza Strip, Saturday, July 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Abdel Kareem Hana)

What it takes to declare famine

An area is classified as in famine when all three of the following conditions are confirmed:

At least 20% of households have an extreme lack of food, or are essentially starving. At least 30% of children six months to 5 years old suffer from acute malnutrition or wasting, meaning they’re too thin for their height. And at least two people or four children under 5 per 10,000 are dying daily due to starvation or the interaction of malnutrition and disease.

The report is based on available information through July 25 and says the crisis has reached “an alarming and deadly turning point.” It says data indicate that famine thresholds have been reached for food consumption in most of Gaza — at its lowest level since the war began — and for acute malnutrition in Gaza City. The report says nearly 17 out of every 100 children under the age of 5 in Gaza City are acutely malnourished.

Mounting evidence shows “widespread starvation.” Essential health and other services have collapsed. One in three people in Gaza is going without food for days at a time, according to the World Food Program. Hospitals report a rapid increase in hunger-related deaths in children under 5. Gaza’s population of over 2 million has been squeezed into increasingly tiny areas of the devastated territory.

“This is not a warning. It is a reality unfolding before our eyes,” U.N. secretary-general Antonio Guterres said in a statement on the new report, adding that the “trickle of aid must become an ocean.”

Naima Abu Ful poses for a photo with her 2-year-old malnourished child, Yazan, at their home in the Shati refugee camp in Gaza City, Wednesday, July 23, 2025. (AP Photo/Jehad Alshrafi)

More deaths to come

The IPC alert calls for immediate and large-scale action and warns: “Failure to act now will result in widespread death in much of the strip.”

Humanitarian workers agreed.

“If we don’t have the conditions to react to this mass starvation, we will see this exponential rise,” said Rachael Cummings, humanitarian director for Save the Children International, based in Gaza. “So we will see thousands and potentially tens of thousands of people die in Gaza. That is preventable.” She described children digging through trash piles outside their office, looking for food.

Anything less than a ceasefire and a return to the U.N.-led aid system in place before Israel’s blockade in early March “is policymakers condemning tens of thousands of people in Gaza to death, starvation and disease,” said Rob Williams, CEO for War Child Alliance.

“All of the children who are currently malnourished will die. That is, unless there’s an absolutely rapid and consistent reversal of what is happening,” said Dr. Tarek Loubani, medical director for Glia, based in Gaza.

‘Open every border crossing’

Israel has restricted aid to varying degrees throughout the war. In March, it cut off the entry of all goods, including fuel, food and medicine, to pressure Hamas to free hostages. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Israel eased those restrictions in May but also pushed ahead with a new U.S.-backed aid delivery system that has been wracked by chaos and violence. The traditional, U.N.-led aid providers say deliveries have been hampered by Israeli military restrictions and incidents of looting, while criminals and hungry crowds swarm entering convoys.

While Israel says there’s no limit on how many aid trucks can enter Gaza, U.N. agencies and aid groups say even the latest humanitarian measures are not enough to counter the worsening starvation.

“The fastest and most effective way to save lives right now is to open every border crossing,” Tjada D’Oyen McKenna, head of Mercy Corps. the international relief agency, said in a statement Tuesday. Aid groups call the airdrops ineffective and dangerous, saying they deliver less aid than trucks.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said no one is starving in Gaza and that Israel has supplied enough aid throughout the war, “otherwise, there would be no Gazans.”

Israel’s closest ally now appears to disagree. “Those children look very hungry,” President Donald Trump said Monday.

Anna reported from Lowville, New York. Associated Press writer Fatma Khaled in Cairo contributed.