By LEA SKENE, Associated Press

BALTIMORE (AP) — A federal judge on Thursday imposed new restrictions on billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency, limiting its access to Social Security systems that hold personal data on millions of Americans.

U.S. District Judge Ellen Hollander issued a preliminary injunction in the case, which was brought by a group of labor unions and retirees who allege DOGE’s recent actions violate privacy laws and present massive information security risks. Hollander had previously issued a temporary restraining order.

The injunction does allow DOGE staffers to access data that’s been redacted or stripped of anything personally identifiable, if they undergo training and background checks.

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Hollander said DOGE and any DOGE-affiliated staffers must purge any of the non-anonymized Social Security data that they have received since Jan. 20. They are also barred from making any changes to the computer code or software used by the Social Security Administration, must remove any software or code they might have already installed, and are forbidden from disclosing any of that code to others.

“The objective to address fraud, waste, mismanagement, and bloat is laudable, and one that the American public presumably applauds and supports,” Hollander wrote in the ruling issued late Thursday night. “Indeed, the taxpayers have every right to expect their government to make sure that their hard earned money is not squandered.”

But that’s not the issue, Hollander said — the issue is with how DOGE wants to do the work.

“For some 90 years, SSA has been guided by the foundational principle of an expectation of privacy with respect to its records. This case exposes a wide fissure in the foundation,” the judge wrote.

During a federal court hearing Tuesday in Baltimore, Hollander repeatedly asked the government’s attorneys why DOGE needs “seemingly unfettered access” to the agency’s troves of sensitive personal information to uncover Social Security fraud.

Union members and retirees gathered outside the courthouse to protest DOGE’s actions, which they consider a threat to the future of Social Security benefits.

“What is it we’re doing that needs all of that information?” Hollander said, questioning whether most of the data could be anonymized, at least in the early stages of analysis.

Attorneys for the Trump administration said changing the process would slow down their efforts.

“While anonymization is possible, it is extremely burdensome,” Justice Department attorney Bradley Humphreys told the court.

He argued the DOGE access doesn’t deviate significantly from normal practices inside the agency, where employees and auditors are routinely allowed to search its databases.

But attorneys for the plaintiffs called it unprecedented and “a sea change” in terms of how the agency handles sensitive information, including medical and mental health records and other data pertaining to children and people with disabilities — “issues that are not only sensitive but might carry a stigma.”

The access alone is a privacy violation that causes harm to Social Security recipients, said Alethea Anne Swift, an attorney with the legal services group Democracy Forward, which is behind the lawsuit.

“That intrusion causes an objectively reasonable unease,” she said.

The Social Security Administration has experienced turmoil since President Donald Trump began his second term. In February, the agency’s acting commissioner Michelle King stepped down from her role after refusing to provide DOGE staffers with the access they wanted.

The White House replaced her with Leland Dudek — who failed to appear at Tuesday’s hearing after Hollander requested his presence to testify about recent efforts involving DOGE. The judge issued a letter last month rebuking Dudek’s threats that he might have to shut down agency operations or suspend payments because of Hollander’s temporary restraining order.

Hollander made clear that her order didn’t apply to SSA workers who aren’t affiliated with or providing information to DOGE, so they can still access any data they use in the course of ordinary work. But DOGE staffers who want access to the anonymized data must first undergo the typical training and background checks required of other Social Security Administration staffers, she said.

In recent weeks, Dudek has faced calls to resign after he issued an order that would have required Maine parents to register their newborns for Social Security numbers at a federal office rather than the hospital. The order was quickly rescinded. But emails showed it was political payback to Maine Gov. Janet Mills, a Democrat who has defied the Trump administration’s push to deny federal funding to the state over transgender athletes.

Despite the fraught political context surrounding the DOGE access case, Hollander admonished Humphreys when he suggested during Tuesday’s hearing that her questioning was starting to “feel like a policy disagreement.”

“I do take offense at your comment because I’m just trying to understand the system,” the judge said during Tuesday’s hearing.

Hollander, 75, who was nominated to the federal bench by President Barack Obama, is the latest judge to consider a DOGE-related case.

Many of her inquiries Tuesday focused on whether the Social Security case differs significantly from another Maryland case challenging DOGE’s access to data at three other agencies: the Education Department, the Treasury Department and the Office of Personnel Management. In that case, an appeals court recently blocked a preliminary injunction and cleared the way for DOGE to once again access people’s private data.

Hollander’s injunction could also be appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which sided with the Trump administration in other cases, including allowing DOGE access to the U.S. Agency for International Development and letting executive orders against diversity, equity and inclusion move forward.

ROME (AP) — U.S. Vice President JD Vance arrived in Rome on Friday for meetings with the Vatican No. 2 and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, fresh off the Italian leader’s visit to the White House a day earlier.

Meloni, who has positioned herself as a bridge between the U.S. and Europe, received praise from President Donald Trump for her crackdown on migration during a meeting at the Oval Office on Thursday.

Vance, who attended the meetings, was scheduled to meet with the Italian leader Friday in Rome and planned to attend Easter weekend events at the Vatican.

He was scheduled to meet with the Vatican secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the White House said.

No meeting with Pope Francis was announced. The 88-year-old pope has sharply cut back his work schedule as he recovers from a near-fatal case of double pneumonia.

Francis and Vance, a Catholic convert, have tangled sharply over migration and the Trump administration’s plans to deport migrants en masse.

Just days before he was hospitalized, Francis blasted the administration’s deportation plans, warning that they would deprive migrants of their inherent dignity. In a letter to U.S. bishops, Francis also apparently responded to Vance directly for having claimed that Catholic doctrine justified such policies.

Vance has acknowledged Francis’ criticism but has said he would continue to defend his views.

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By SARA CLINE and KATE BRUMBACK, Associated Press

JENA, La. (AP) — Amid rural Louisiana’s crawfish farms, towering pine trees and cafes serving po’boys, nearly 7,000 people are waiting at immigration detention centers to learn whether they will be expelled from the United States.

If President Donald Trump’s administration has its way, the capacity to hold tens of thousands more migrants will soon be added around the country as the U.S. seeks an explosive expansion of what is already the world’s largest immigration detention system.

Trump’s effort to conduct mass deportations as promised in the 2024 campaign represents a potential bonanza for private prison companies and a challenge to the government agencies responsible for the orderly expulsion of immigrants. Some critics say the administration’s plans also include a deliberate attempt to isolate detainees by locking them up and holding court proceedings far from their attorneys and support systems.

The Central Louisiana ICE processing facility in Jena, La., where Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil is being held, is shown Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephen Smith)

The acting director of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, Todd Lyons, said at a border security conference in Phoenix last week that the agency needs “to get better at treating this like a business” and suggested the nation’s deportation system could function “like Amazon, trying to get your product delivered in 24 hours.”

“So trying to figure out how to do that with human beings and trying to get them pretty much all over the globe is really something for us,” Lyons said.

ICE takes steps to add more immigration beds

This month, ICE invited companies to bid on contracts to operate detention centers at sites around the country for up to $45 billion as the agency begins to scale up from its current budget for about 41,000 beds to 100,000 beds.

The money isn’t yet there, but contracts are already being awarded. The House narrowly approved a broad spending bill that includes $175 billion for immigration enforcement, about 22 times ICE’s annual budget. The agency’s 100-plus detention centers nationwide currently hold about 46,000 people, causing overcrowding in locations including Miami.

ICE last week awarded a contract worth up to $3.85 billion to Deployed Resources LLC to operate a detention camp at the Fort Bliss Army base in Texas. The little-known company is shifting its business from Border Patrol tent encampments for people arriving in the United States — most of which are now closed — to ICE facilities for people being deported.

The Department of Homeland Security’s ICE detention facility is shown in Jena, La., on Friday, March 21, 2025. (AP Photo/Stephen Smith)

The Geo Group Inc. got a contract for 1,000 beds in Newark, New Jersey, valued at $1 billion over 15 years and another for 1,800 beds in Baldwin, Michigan. CoreCivic Inc., won a contract to house 2,400 people in families with young children in Dilley, Texas, for five years.

The stock market has rewarded both of these private corrections companies. Geo’s stock price has soared 94% since Trump was elected. Shares of CoreCivic have surged 62%.

Louisiana ranks No. 2 in the nation in immigration detention space

Louisiana, which has relatively few immigrants and doesn’t border Mexico, may not seem like an obvious choice to establish an immigration detention hub. But circumstances converged toward the end of the last decade that allowed ICE to take over five former criminal jails in the state in 2019 alone.

Now the state is second only to Texas in the amount of bed space it offers for detained immigrants. ICE was drawn to the state in part by relatively low labor costs, a generally favorable political environment and a ready supply of recently emptied jails.

An aerial view of the Central Louisiana ICE Processing Facility in Jena, La., Tuesday, April 8, 2025. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)

State laws in 2017 lowered criminal penalties, reducing the need for jail and prison beds. In rural areas, where a corrections facility is often a main driver of the local economy, officials were eager to sign contracts for immigration detention.

“Because Louisiana was a top incarcerator in the world, it’s not as though you have local legislators who are against prisons or against having a for-profit prison industrial complex come in and actually ensure that these continue to run,” said Nora Ahmed, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Louisiana.

Conservative federal courts in the Western District of Louisiana and at the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals make it tougher for people in Louisiana immigration jails to challenge detention conditions or to appeal immigration court rulings, said Mary Yanik, a professor and co-director of the Immigrant Rights Clinic at Tulane University Law School.

“ICE gets to choose, basically, the courts where their cases are heard by locating detention centers in particular places,” she said.

Detention centers are often hours away from cities and lawyers

Louisiana’s nine immigration detention centers are in the rural north or western parts of the state. That means a drive of several hours from its largest cities, where immigration advocates and lawyers are clustered. Detainees have long complained of isolation.

Being held in “deplorable conditions” and isolated from their families and support networks can cause people to stop fighting their deportation and make it easier for ICE to remove them, said Carly Pérez Fernández, spokesperson for Detention Watch Network, which helped organize nationwide protests against ICE detention on Thursday.

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“Detention really plays a crucial role in enabling Trump’s cruel mass deportation agenda,” she said. ”Increased detention capacity will exacerbate the detention conditions that we already know are inhumane.”

Most detention facilities are a relatively short distance from Alexandria, where ICE converted a former military base into a 400-bed, short-term holding center with an adjacent airstrip for deportation flights.

One facility is in Jena, which is home to 4,200 people, about 220 miles (355 kilometers) from New Orleans. The community has only a single advertised hotel called the Townsmen Inn.

The Jena detention center, operated under contract with the Geo Group, is surrounded by “no trespassing” signs, fencing with layers of razor wire and armed guards.

Homero Lopez, a lawyer at Immigration Services and Legal Advocacy, which provides free representation in Louisiana detention centers, said the faraway location “makes it a lot more difficult to protest and organize.”

The introduction of video links for immigration court has softened — but not eliminated — criticism that ICE is deliberately trying to distance detainees from their families, attorneys and other forms of support.

Lopez said he’s happy to use video conferencing for quick preliminary matters, but he prefers to make the drive to appear in person for substantive hearings. He said video links can be “dehumanizing” and may lead judges to fail to appreciate what’s at stake when they are not facing immigrants in person.

Brumback reported from Atlanta. Associated Press writer Elliot Spagat in San Diego contributed to this report.

By ANGELA CHARLTON and HANNA ARHIROVA, Associated Press

PARIS (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Friday that the U.S. may “move on” from trying to secure a Russia-Ukraine peace deal if there is no progress in the coming days, after months of efforts have failed to bring an end to the fighting.

He spoke in Paris after landmark talks among U.S., Ukrainian and European officials produced outlines for steps toward peace and appeared to make some long-awaited progress. A new meeting is expected next week in London, and Rubio suggested that could be decisive in determining whether the Trump administration continues its involvement.

“We are now reaching a point where we need to decide whether this is even possible or not,” Rubio told reporters upon departure. “Because if it’s not, then I think we’re just going to move on.”

“It’s not our war,” Rubio said. “We have other priorities to focus on.” He said the U.S. administration wants to decide “in a matter of days.”

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio looks on as he arrives at the Quai d’Orsay, France’s Minister of Foreign Affairs for high-level talks to discuss Ukraine and its security in Paris Thursday, April 17, 2025. (Julien de Rosa, Pool via AP)

US and Ukraine make progress on minerals deal

His comments came as the U.S. and Ukraine are nearing a long-delayed deal granting the U.S. access to Ukraine’s vast mineral resources, which has been intertwined with President Donald Trump’s peace push. Trump said Thursday, “We have a minerals deal,” and Ukraine’s economy minister said Friday that the two countries signed a memorandum of intent ahead of a possible fuller agreement later.

The deal, which Ukrainian Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko said she signed with U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, is expected to pave the way for significant investments, infrastructure modernization and long-term cooperation.

The framework of the mineral deal had stalled in February following a contentious Oval Office meeting between Trump, U.S. Vice President JD Vance, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. Negotiations have since resumed.

Despite apparent growing U.S. impatience with the peace efforts, Rubio called Thursday’s Paris talks constructive. “Nobody rejected anything, nobody got up from the table or walked away.”

Rubio didn’t single out Russia or Ukraine as blocking peace efforts. He said he informed Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov about the outlines that emerged when they spoke after the Paris talks, but wouldn’t say how Lavrov reacted.

When asked about Rubio’s comments on Friday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters that “fairly complex” negotiations are ongoing between Russia and the U.S. He did not give details but said no direct talks between Trump and Putin are scheduled in the coming days.

“Russia is striving toward resolving this conflict, securing its own interests, and is open to dialogue. We are continuing to do this,” he said.

After weeks of tensions with European allies, Rubio told reporters in Paris that the European negotiators proved helpful. “The U.K. and France and Germany can help us move the ball on this.”

European concerns are growing about Trump’s readiness to draw closer to Russia. These talks were the first time since Trump’s inauguration that top American, Ukrainian and European officials met to discuss an end to the war, which has posed the biggest security challenge to Europe since World War II.

The meetings addressed security guarantees for Ukraine in the future, but Rubio wouldn’t discuss any possible U.S. role in that. Some kind of U.S. support for Ukraine is seen as crucial to ensuring that Russia would not attack again after a peace deal is reached.

Rubio and presidential envoy Steve Witkoff have helped lead U.S. efforts to seek peace, and Witkoff has met three times with Putin, Rubio said. Several rounds of negotiations have been held in Saudi Arabia.

Moscow has effectively refused to accept a comprehensive ceasefire that Trump has pushed and Ukraine has endorsed. Russia has made it conditional on a halt in Ukraine’s mobilization efforts and Western arms supplies, which are demands rejected by Ukraine.

Russia attacks 2 Ukrainian cities, wounding scores

Meanwhile, Russia kept up a series of deadly strikes on Ukrainian cities, according to officials there, wounding scores of civilians days after missiles killed at least 34 during Palm Sunday celebrations in the northern city of Sumy.

One person died and 98 others, including six children, were hurt as Russia hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, early in the day, its mayor Ihor Terekhov reported on Friday. He said cluster munitions struck a “densely populated” neighborhood four times.

In this photo taken from video distributed by Russian Defense Ministry Press Service on Friday, April 18, 2025, the Russian BM-21 “Grad” self-propelled 122 mm multiple rocket launcher fires towards Ukrainian positions in Ukraine. (Russian Defense Ministry Press Service via AP)

Russian drones also targeted a bakery in Sumy, less than a week after the deadly Palm Sunday strike there, killing a customer and wounding an employee, the regional prosecutor’s office said. Photos released by the agency showed rows of Easter cakes stacked inside a devastated building, covered in thick dust, as a huge hole gaped in the wall behind them and rubble piled up on the floor.

Last Sunday’s strike on Sumy, resulting in mass casualties, was the second large-scale missile attack to claim civilian lives in just over a week. Some 20 people, including nine children, died on April 4 as missiles struck Zelenskyy’s hometown of Kryvyi Rih.

Arhirova reported from Kyiv, Ukraine. Illia Novikov in Kyiv and Joanna Kozlowska in London contributed to this report.