By SUDHIN THANAWALA and GARY FIELDS, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — A migrant from Venezuela deported by the Trump administration to El Salvador has taken the first step toward suing the U.S. government, saying he was wrongly sent to a notorious prison in the Central American country where he was beaten by guards and kept from contacting his family or an attorney.

Neiyerver Adrián Leon Rengel, 27, has filed a claim for $1.3 million with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, his attorneys with Democracy Defenders Fund said Thursday. Rengel is among more than 250 migrants from Venezuela sent to El Salvador in March, out of the jurisdiction of U.S. courts, after President Donald Trump invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 against members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

Immigration agents took Rengel into custody on March 13 in the parking lot of his apartment in Irving, Texas, wrongly claiming his tattoos reflected an affiliation with Tren de Aragua, according to his claim. He had entered the U.S. in 2023. He worked as a barber and was scheduled to appear before an immigration judge in 2028.

Homeland Security said in an email that Rengel was a “confirmed associate” of the Tren de Aragua gang — though it did not specify how it reached that conclusion — who had entered the country illegally. It called his claims a fake “sob story.”

“President Trump and Secretary Noem will not allow foreign terrorist enemies to operate in our country and endanger Americans,” the email said. It added, “We hear far too much about gang members and criminals’ false sob stories and not enough about their victims.”

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At El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center, or CECOT, Rengel said guards hit him with fists and batons and, on one occasion, viciously beat him after taking him to an area of the prison without cameras.

Rengel was sent to Venezuela earlier this month as part of a prisoner exchange deal. His attorneys say he is living with his mother and is “terrified” to return to the United States.

They are seeking compensation for emotional and psychological injuries.

A federal judge ruled in June that the Trump administration must give some of the migrants sent to the prison in El Salvador a chance to challenge their deportations.

U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg said the people hadn’t been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they were members of Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges.

The judge wrote that “significant evidence” had surfaced indicating that many of the migrants were not connected to the gang “and thus were languishing in a foreign prison on flimsy, even frivolous, accusations.”

At a hearing on Thursday, an attorney for the Trump administration told Boasberg it would not immediately bring the migrants sent from El Salvador to Venezuela as part of the prisoner exchange back to the U.S.

Trump officials planned to await the outcome of other court cases before deciding whether to allow the migrants to return, U.S. Department of Justice attorney Tiberius Davis said.

Boasberg had ordered the administration to turn planes carrying the accused gang members around, but the demand was ignored. Rengel’s attorneys say he was on one of those planes.

The judge has found probable cause that the administration committed contempt of court.

Boasberg said Thursday he planned to expand his contempt probe to include a recent whistleblower complaint that claims a top Justice Department official suggested the Trump administration might have to ignore court orders as it prepared to deport Venezuelan migrants it accused of being gang members.

Thanawala reported from Atlanta.

By WILL WEISSERT, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday signed an executive order mandating that federal authorities clarify whether college athletes can be considered employees of the schools they play for — attempting to create clearer national standards for the NCAA’s name image and likeness program.

The move comes amid a dramatic increase in the money flowing into and around college athletics. It also follows key court victories won by current and former athletes angry that they were barred for decades, both from earning income based on their celebrity and from sharing in the billions of revenue they helped generate.

Facing a growing number of state laws undercutting its authority, the NCAA in July 2021 cleared the way for athletes to cash in with name, image and likeness deals with brands and sponsors.

That came mere days after a 9-0 decision from the Supreme Court that found the NCAA cannot impose caps on education-related benefits schools provide to their athletes because such limits violate antitrust law.

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Trump’s action directs the secretary of labor and the National Labor Relations Board to clarify the status of collegiate athletes through guidance or rules “that will maximize the educational benefits and opportunities provided by higher education institutions through athletics.”

The NCAA’s embrace of NIL deals set the stage for another massive change that took effect July 1: The ability of schools to begin paying millions of dollars to their own athletes, up to $20.5 million per school over the next year. The $2.8 billion House settlement shifts even more power to college athletes, who have also won the ability to transfer from school to school without waiting to play.

The NCAA has been lobbying for several years for limited antitrust protection to keep some kind of control over this new landscape — and avoid more crippling lawsuits — but a handful of bills have gone nowhere in Congress.

The 1,100 universities that comprise the NCAA have insisted for decades that athletes are students who cannot be considered anything like a school employee.

This stance has long been a part of the amateur model at the heart of college athletics, but that model is rapidly being replaced by a more professional structure fed by money that is coming from donors, brands and now the schools themselves.

Some coaches have even suggested collective bargaining is a potential solution to the chaos they see.

It is a complicated topic: Universities would become responsible for paying wages, benefits, and workers’ compensation and schools and conferences have insisted they will fight any such move in court (some already have).

While private institutions fall under the National Labor Relations Board, public universities must follow labor laws that vary from state to state and it’s worth noting that virtually every state in the South has “right to work” laws that present challenges for unions.

By SARA CLINE, Associated Press

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — A woman detained at a citizenship appointment in May will not be deported following a judge’s ruling this week barring her removal, but her Marine Corps veteran husband said she remains in custody at immigration detention center in Louisiana.

For two months, Paola Clouatre, 25, has been held at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement complex in Monroe, waiting to learn whether she will be allowed to remain in the country. Once a week she is allowed to see her husband, who makes the eight-hour roundtrip trek from Baton Rouge so the mother can breastfeed their 4-month-old baby and see their 2-year-old son.

Clouatre, a Mexican national, entered the U.S. seeking asylum with her mother more than a decade ago. After marrying her husband in 2024 and applying for her green card to legally live and work in the U.S., she learned that ICE had issued an order for her deportation in 2018 after her mother failed to appear at an immigration hearing.

In May, during a U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services appointment in New Orleans, a staffer asked about the deportation order. Clouatre explained that she was trying to reopen her case, with her husband telling The Associated Press that he and his wife were trying “to do the right thing.” Soon after, officers arrived and handcuffed Clouatre.

Adrian Clouatre has spent nearly eight weeks fighting for his wife’s release, remaining optimistic that their family would soon be reunited outside the detention facility located nearly 180 miles from their south Louisiana home.

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On Wednesday, they got word that a judge in California — the original jurisdiction for Paola Clouatre’s case — had stayed the order for her removal.

Adrian Clouatre welcomed the decision. He said their lawyer is preparing paperwork seeking his wife’s release, though it’s not guaranteed and could take weeks even in the best of scenarios.

“I just keep telling our son, “‘Mom’s coming home soon,’” Adrian Clouatre said.

Meanwhile, the couple’s lawyer is working to get the Baton Rouge mother’s green card process back on track, The New Orleans Advocate/The Times-Picayune reported. While the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services has already ruled that the couple has a valid marriage, the process has been held up amid the legal battle.

The Baton Rouge mother is one of tens of thousands of people in custody as part of President Donald Trump’s pledge to remove millions of people who are in the country without legal permission.

Clouatre said GOP U.S. Sen. John Kennedy has also requested that the Department of Homeland Security release his wife from custody. Kennedy’s office did not return AP’s emailed request for comment.

Kennedy is not the first Louisiana Republican to get involved in an immigration case in the reliably red state. Earlier this month, An Iranian mother, who was detained by ICE after living in the U.S. for nearly five decades, was released following advocacy from Republican U.S. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise.

By TODD RICHMOND, Associated Press

MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The father of a Wisconsin school shooter must stand trial on charges he allowed her access to the guns she used in the deadly attack, a court commissioner ruled Thursday, rejecting arguments that he didn’t know she was considering violence and didn’t physically hand her the weapons at the school.

Dane County Court Commissioner John Rome issued the order in Jeffrey Rupnow’s case following a preliminary hearing, a routine step in the criminal justice process in which a court official decides whether enough evidence exists to order a trial.

Rupnow, 43, faces two counts of intentionally giving a dangerous weapon to a minor and one count of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. The charges carry a combined maximum sentence of 18 years in prison.

Jeffrey Rupnow, father of Abundant Life Christian School shooter Natalie Rupnow, looks towards the state prosecutors during a preliminary hearing on Thursday, July 24, 2025, at Dane County Courthouse in Madison, Wis. (Owen Ziliak/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, Pool)

Deadly attack at Madison school

Rupnow’s 15-year-old daughter, Natalie Rupnow, opened fire in December at Abundant Life Christian School, a religious school she attended in Madison. She killed teacher Erin Michelle West and 14-year-old old student Rubi Bergara and wounded six others before she shot herself in the head.

Investigators recovered a 9 mm Glock handgun from the room where Natalie Rupnow died as well as a .22-caliber Sig Sauer pistol from a bag the girl was carrying. Also in the bag were three magazines loaded with .22 ammunition and a 50-round box of 9 mm ammunition.

Prosecutors charged Jeffery Rupnow this past May, alleging in a criminal complaint that he told investigators his daughter was struggling to cope with her parents’ divorce and he bought her the guns as way to connect with her.

He also told investigators that he kept the guns in a safe but told her the code to unlock it, according to the complaint. The day before the school attack, the complaint says he took the Sig Sauer out of the safe so she could clean it, but he wasn’t sure if he put the weapon back in the safe or locked it.

Jeffrey Rupnow, father of Abundant Life Christian School shooter Natalie Rupnow, appears for a preliminary hearing on Thursday, July 24, 2025, at Dane County Courthouse in Madison, Wis. (Owen Ziliak/Wisconsin State Journal via AP, Pool)

Shooter declared a ‘War Against Humanity’

A search of Natalie’s room netted a six-page document the girl had written entitled “War Against Humanity,” the complaint said. She started the piece by describing humanity as “filth” and saying she hated people who don’t care and “smoke their lungs out with weed or drink as much as they can like my own father.”

She wrote about how she admired school shooters, how her mother was not in her life and how she obtained her weapons “by lies and manipulation, and my fathers stupidity.”

Rupnow looked on in silence Thursday as his attorney, Lisa Goldman, argued that he acted like a reasonable parent. He kept all their guns in a safe, which isn’t required under Wisconsin law. Many Wisconsin parents teach their children how to shoot and Natalie passed a gun safety course, Goldman added.

Even though he told investigators that Natalie was struggling over the divorce, he had no reason to think giving her guns would cause more problems, Goldman said. He didn’t know how to access her social media accounts, Natalie rarely let him into her room and her therapy records from 2021 to the spring of 2024 showed no indication of suicidal thoughts, Goldman added.

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Rupnow told Natalie that the gun safe code was his Social Security number in reverse but never gave her the actual number, Goldman continued. She questioned whether Natalie’s mother may have given her the number, pointing out that police never checked her mother’s electronic devices.

Goldman also argued that the school attack took place outside of Rupnow’s parental supervision — he was at his job as a recycling truck driver when Natalie opened fire — and he would have had to hand Natalie the guns at Abundant Life to be criminally liable.

Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne countered that Goldman should make her arguments at trial, not during a preliminary hearing.

Rome said in his order sending Rupnow to trial that giving his daughter guns could amount to giving her the pass code and giving her the Sig Sauer the night before the attack.

Parents charged in school shootings across the country

Rupnow is another in a line of parents to face charges in connection with a school shooting.

Last year, the mother and father of a school shooter in Michigan who killed four students in 2021 were each convicted of involuntary manslaughter. The mother was the first parent in the U.S. to be held responsible for a child carrying out a mass school attack.

The father of a 14-year-old boy accused of fatally shooting four people at a Georgia high school was arrested in September and faces charges including second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter for letting his son possess a weapon.

In 2023, the father of a man charged in a deadly Fourth of July parade shooting in suburban Chicago pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanors related to how his son obtained a gun license.