By ELLIOT SPAGAT and VALERIE GONZALEZ

SAN DIEGO (AP) — A week before Chancely Fanfan was scheduled to attend an immigration court hearing in San Diego, he received a letter from the Department of Homeland Security instructing him to show up for what he thought would be a routine check-in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement after his hearing.

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After the 31-year-old Haitian man showed up with his wife and 11-month-old baby to his court hearing and ICE check-in on Oct. 20, immigration officers arrested him, providing no reason other than that the government required it, his attorneys said.

Fanfan had no criminal history and showed up to all his court hearings and check-ins with ICE since his arrival in the U.S. last year, according to the petition filed Tuesday in the Southern District of California. The Center for Immigration Law and Policy and the Center for Human Rights & Constitutional Law are challenging the October detentions of Fanfan and two others following their check-ins with immigration officers.

“Petitioners have had no criminal contact since their prior releases from DHS custody, and two petitioners have no criminal history of any kind,” according to the petition.

The petitioners were detained after entering through or between U.S. ports of entry when they came to the country. After vetting, they were released from federal custody.

The lawsuit alleges immigrants are being deprived of due process after previously being declared fit for release, only to be arrested and detained when suddenly summoned to reappear at an ICE office. Many cases involve people whose cases in immigration court were reopened.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday.

The UCLA School of Law’s Center for Immigration Law and Policy said the detentions in San Diego alone “are certainly in the dozens, and likely exceeds 100.” The lawsuit is asking the judge to certify the class, which could mean that others who were arrested and detained in similar circumstances could benefit from a favorable ruling.

A gardener from Mexico who has lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years sat on the floor of a long hallway outside a packed waiting room at ICE’s San Diego office on Monday. He spoke to The Associated Press on condition that only his first name, Lorenzo, be published because he feared potential consequences.

About 10 years ago, Border Patrol arrested Lorenzo at a highway checkpoint in Southern California. He went before an immigration judge who closed his case and spared him from being deported. For years, he had heard nothing from immigration authorities until last week, when he was told his case was being reopened and that he was to report to ICE on Monday. He didn’t follow up with the AP after his check-in.

Arrests at ICE check-ins appear to have accelerated since early October in San Diego. Lynn Devine, a volunteer observer, saw one woman who checked in being escorted to an elevator in handcuffs by two officers on Monday.

“She was looking at the floor. I told her I was praying for her,” Devine said.

A federal judge will be deciding whether to release the three petitioners and whether to declare such detentions unlawful.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK

The federal Bureau of Prisons is closing a California lockup that was once home to Al Capone and Charles Manson over concerns about crumbling infrastructure, including falling concrete that threatens to knock out the facility’s heating system, according to an internal memo obtained by the Associated Press.

Director William K. Marshall III told staff on Tuesday that the agency is suspending operations at the Federal Correctional Institution, Terminal Island, a low-security prison south of Los Angeles. It currently houses nearly 1,000 inmates, including cryptocurrency fraudster Sam Bankman-Fried and disgraced celebrity lawyer Michael Avenatti.

The decision to close the facility, at least temporarily, “is not easy, but is absolutely necessary,” Marshall wrote, calling it a matter of “safety, common sense, and doing what is right for the people who work and live inside that institution.”

FCI Terminal Island, opened in 1938, is the latest Bureau of Prisons facility to be targeted for closure as the beleaguered agency struggles with mounting staff vacancies, a $3 billion repair backlog and an expanded mission to support President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown by taking in thousands of detainees.

Marshall cited problems with underground tunnels containing the facility’s steam heating system. Ceilings in the tunnels have begun to deteriorate, causing chunks of concrete to fall and putting employees and the heating system at risk, he said.

“We are not going to wait for a crisis,” Marshall told employees. “We are not going to gamble with lives. And we are not going to expect people to work or live in conditions that we would never accept for ourselves.”

Bureau of Prisons spokesperson Randilee Giamusso, responding to the AP’s questions about FCI Terminal Island, confirmed that the agency is taking “immediate action” to “safeguard staff and inmates.”

Inmates at the facility will be moved to other federal prisons “with a priority on keeping individuals as close as possible to their anticipated release locations,” Giamusso said. In his memo to staff, Marshall indicated that the process could take several weeks.

The facility’s future will be decided once the Bureau of Prisons has “assessed the situation further and ensured the safety of all those involved,” she said.

The Bureau of Prisons has long been bedeviled by FCI Terminal Island’s aging infrastructure, Giamusso said. In April 2024, an architectural and engineering firm contracted by the agency identified more than $110 million in critical repairs needed over the next 20 years.

The closure echoes that of the agency’s federal jail in Manhattan in 2021.

The Bureau of Prisons, the Justice Department’s largest employer, has more than 30,000 workers, 122 facilities, about 155,000 inmates and an annual budget that exceeds $8.5 billion. But the agency’s footprint has shrunk over the last year as it wrestles with financial constraints, chronic understaffing and changing priorities.

An Associated Press investigation has uncovered deep, previously unreported flaws within the Bureau of Prisons, including rampant sexual abuse, widespread criminal activity by employees, dozens of escapes and the free flow of guns, drugs and other contraband.

In December 2024, in a cost-cutting move, the agency announced it was idling six prison camps and permanently closing a women’s prison in Dublin, California, that was known as the “rape club” because of rampant sexual abuse by the warden and other employees.

In February, an agency official told Congress that 4,000 beds meant for inmates at various facilities were unusable because of dangerous conditions like leaking or failing roofs, mold, asbestos or lead.

At the same time, the agency is building a new prison in Kentucky and, at Trump’s direction, exploring the possibility of reopening Alcatraz, the notorious penitentiary in San Francisco Bay that last held inmates more than 60 years ago.

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Marshall, his top deputy and Attorney General Pam Bondi visited in July, but four months later, Alcatraz remains a tourist attraction and a relic of a bygone era in corrections.

In addition to failing facilities, the Bureau of Prisons has been plagued for years by severe staffing shortages that have led to long overtime shifts and the use of prison nurses, teachers, cooks and other workers to guard inmates.

That problem has only worsened in recent months, in part because of a hiring freeze and recruiting by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which has lured correctional officers away with promises of signing bonuses of up to $50,000.

In September, Marshall said the Bureau of Prisons was canceling its collective bargaining agreement with workers. He said their union had become “an obstacle to progress instead of a partner in it.” The union, the Council of Prison Locals, is suing to block the move, calling it “arbitrary and capricious.”

By FREIDA FRISARO and KATE PAYNE

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — A federal judge in Miami set a $60,000 bond Tuesday for U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, who made her first appearance in court on charges of conspiring to steal $5 million in federal disaster funds meant to slow the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

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The Florida Democrat is facing 15 federal counts that accuse her of stealing funds that had been overpaid to her family’s health care company, Trinity Healthcare Services, prosecutors alleged. The company had a contract to register people for COVID-19 vaccinations.

Cherfilus-McCormick stood with her attorneys as Judge Enjoliqué Lett read all 15 charges, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. She told the judge she is aware of the charges she faces.

She said in a statement sent to the AP that she plans to fight for her constituents.

“Today I made my initial appearance in a case that is both politically timed and politically motivated,” Cherfilus-McCormick said in the statement. “Let me be clear: I am innocent and I look forward to my day in court. This has been a fight not just for my name — it’s a fight for my constituents, an attack on the progress we have been making and the movement we have started.”

She said she will not be “intimidated or silenced.”

In addition to bail, the judge said Cherfilus-McCormick must surrender her personal passport, and she is restricted from traveling to and from Florida from anywhere other than Washington, D.C., Maryland and the Eastern District of Virginia.

The congresswoman will be allowed to retain her congressional passport so she can do certain duties for her job.

In a federal indictment unsealed earlier this month, prosecutors claimed that within two months of receiving the funds in 2021, more than $100,000 had been spent to purchase a 3-carat yellow diamond ring for the congresswoman.

The health care company owned by Cherfilus-McCormick’s family had received payments through a COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract, the indictment said. Her brother, Edwin Cherfilus, requested $50,000, but they mistakenly received $5 million and didn’t return the difference.

Cherfilus-McCormick has denied the charges, through her attorney, David Oscar Markus.

Prosecutors said the funds received by Trinity Healthcare were distributed to various accounts, including to friends and relatives who then donated to Cherfilus-McCormick’s campaign for Congress.

Cherfilus-McCormick won a special election in January 2022 to represent Florida’s 20th District, which includes parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, after Rep. Alcee Hastings died in 2021.

The charges she faces include theft of government funds; making and receiving straw donor contributions; aiding and assisting a false and fraudulent statement on a tax return; and money laundering, as well as conspiracy charges associated with each of those counts.

According to a statement provided by the congresswoman’s chief of staff, she doesn’t plan to resign from office and maintains her innocence. She said she has cooperated with “every lawful request” and will continue to do so until the matter is resolved.

Payne, who reported from Tallahassee, Florida, is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

As a school bus driver, Mebal Kaanyi has to pay attention.

So when she was driving her afternoon bus route last week for Roseville Area Schools, she noticed a four-year-old boy running down the street crying. He didn’t appear to have parents with him and was barefoot with no sweatshirt, she said.

“He crossed that Owasso Boulevard, as busy as it was, and went to the other side of the road and on that side, it’s a lake – Lake Owasso,” Kaanyi, of Shoreview, said.

Despite fencing by the lake, Kaanyi said the gate must not have been latched and the boy was able to make it to the water where he fell in.

“Of course, even me, I was terrified on entering the water because I do not know how to swim,” she said. “I’ve never done that in my whole life so I was afraid to follow him, but still, something kept on pushing me – ‘You need to save that kid because if you don’t save him, nobody’s going to know he’s in there.”

Kaanyi, a Shoreview resident, got into the water and though the boy was struggling, he pushed himself toward her, allowing her to then grab his hand and pull him from the lake, she said.

People driving by who saw the rescue offered to bring Kaanyi towels for the boy, who was soaking wet and shaking. Kaanyi, who had called her work dispatch to request police, waited with the boy until first responders arrived.

The Ramsey County Sheriff’s Office contacted Kaanyi the next day to thank her and let her know that the boy had been reunited with his parents, she said. A spokesperson with the sheriff’s office confirmed on Tuesday the boy’s reunion with his parents.

On Tuesday, Kaanyi was recognized for her actions with a $1,000 check from Sheletta Brundidge, through Brundidge’s company ShelettaMakesMeLaugh.com, a podcast network and promotions company based in Cottage Grove.

Brundidge for about the last two years has traveled to different parts of the country providing free interior keyless door locks to parents to help keep their children from wandering, like the child Kaanyi rescued. She travels to cities where children have wandered away and drowned and estimates she’s spent around $30,000 to $40,000 on locks for parents that can’t afford them, she said. When she heard about Kaanyi’s rescue of the boy, she wanted to surprise her.

“Here we are, just letting her know what a hero she is and how amazing it is that she saved this child,” Brundidge said.

Children with autism are more prone to wander, something Brundidge has experienced with her own son, who is autistic.

“I like to say I’m just a mama with a mouth on a mission to help other parents because I don’t want any mother to have to bury her child,” Brundidge said. “And so it’s my job to make sure that the awareness is made, that the awards are handed out, that the locks are given away.”

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Kaanyi, who is a single mother, said she plans to save the money she received on Tuesday to support her 9-year-old daughter.

“It’s just telling people out there to always do you — be you, and do you. Never look at color, race, something like that. Just do what your heart tells you,” Kaanyi said. “Do good things and people should treat each other, one another with kindness. That day it will be that kid, next time it will be me, my daughter. You know, you don’t need to help somebody with you expecting to get something in return. Just do you.”