Pennsylvania
Courts order ICE not to deport man who spent 43 years in prison before murder case overturned
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Two separate courts have ordered immigration officials not to deport a Pennsylvania man who spent four decades in prison before his murder conviction was overturned.
Subramanyam Vedam, 64, is currently detained at a short-term holding center in Alexandria, Louisiana, that’s equipped with an airstrip for deportations. Vedam, a legal permanent resident known as “Subu,” was transferred there from central Pennsylvania last week, relatives said.
An immigration judge stayed his deportation on Thursday until the Bureau of Immigration Appeals decides whether to review his case. That could take several months. Vedam’s lawyers also got a stay the same day in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania, but said that case may be on hold given the immigration court ruling.
Vedam came to the U.S. legally from India as an infant and grew up in State College, where his father taught at Penn State. He was serving a life sentence in a friend’s 1980 death before his conviction was overturned this year.
He was released from state prison on Oct. 3, only to be taken straight into immigration custody.
The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to deport Vedam over his no contest plea to charges of LSD delivery, filed when he was about 20. His lawyers argue that the four decades he wrongly spent in prison, where he earned degrees and tutored fellow inmates, should outweigh the drug case.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Monday that the reversal in the murder case does not negate the drug conviction.
“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration law,” Tricia McLaughlin,” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, said in an email.
Vedam’s sister said Monday that the family is relieved “that two different judges have agreed that Subu’s deportation is unwarranted while his effort to re-open his immigration case is still pending.”
“We’re also hopeful that Board of Immigration Appeals will ultimately agree that Subu’s deportation would represent another untenable injustice,” Saraswathi Vedam said, “inflicted on a man who not only endured 43 years in a maximum-security prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but has also lived in the U.S. since he was 9-months-old.”
Michigan
Man arraigned on multiple counts of possession of child porn
George Pointer, 68, of Mt. Clemens, Mich., was arraigned on multiple counts of possession of child sexually abusive material and using a computer to commit a crime, according to Macomb County Prosecutor Peter J. Lucido.
It is alleged that on Monday, April 14, 2025, Pointer was found to have many files of child sexually abusive material.
On Friday, Oct. 31, 2025, Pointer was arraigned in the 41B District Court in Clinton Township, MI before Magistrate Ryan Zemke. Pointer was arraigned on the following charges:
Count 1- Aggravated Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material, a 10-year felony
Count 2- Using a Computer to Commit a Crime (related to Aggravated Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material), a 10-year felony
Counts 3 & 4- Using a Computer to Commit a Crime (related to Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material), each a 7-year felony
Counts 5 & 6- Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material, each a 4-year felony
Magistrate Zemke set Pointer’ bond at $500,000 cash/surety/10%. If released, he is subject to the following conditions: GPS house arrest tether, have no contact with minors, no use of the internet except related to court, no drugs or alcohol, and no weapons.
Pointer is scheduled for a Probable Cause Conference before Judge Jacob Femminineo at the 41B District Court in Clinton Township on Monday, Nov. 10 at 8:30 a.m.
California
Father who killed his 7-month-old son sentenced to more than 30 years in prison
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California father who pleaded guilty to killing his missing 7-month-old son was sentenced Monday to more than 30 years in prison.
Jake Haro, 32, was sentenced after he pleaded guilty last month to the second-degree murder of his son, Emmanuel, the Riverside County District Attorney’s office said in a statement. A monthslong investigation has failed to locate the child’s remains.
Haro and his wife, Rebecca, had reported the baby was kidnapped outside a store in Southern California in August, saying Rebecca Haro was attacked and left unconscious while changing the boy’s diaper. The case drew widespread attention as authorities and members of the public fanned out to search for the boy.
The couple were arrested a little more than a week later at their home in the desert community of Cabazon, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of Palm Springs, after Rebecca Haro was confronted about inconsistencies in their account.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary Polk sentenced Haro to seven years and two months in prison for a probation violation and other charges, then 25 years to life for assault on a child under age 8, according to the Press-Enterprise. The sentences will run consecutively. Haro was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution.
Rebecca Haro, 41, has pleaded not guilty and is being held on $1 million bail. She is due to appear in court in January.
Riverside County prosecutors asked for Jake Haro to be sentenced to 31 years to life in prison for killing Emmanuel and for assaulting another child in 2018. Haro pleaded guilty to child endangerment for causing severe and lasting injuries to his then-10-month-old daughter and was given a 6-year suspended prison term that prosecutors said should now be applied.
“Jake Haro murdered seven-month-old Emmanuel but, in reality, he comes before this court having taken the lives of two young children. If there are lower forms of evil in this world, I am not aware of them,” Brandon Smith, assistant district attorney in Riverside County, wrote in court filings.
A message seeking comment was sent to Jake Haro’s attorney, Allison Lowe.
Illinois
Government defends conditions at Chicago-area immigration site as judge considers options
CHICAGO (AP) — A judge opened a court hearing Tuesday into allegations of heartless conditions at a key Chicago-area immigration building that is a stop for people rounded up during immigration sweeps by the Trump administration.
The government is accused of denying detainees proper access to food, water and medical care and coercing them to sign documents they don’t understand. Without that knowledge, and without private communication with lawyers, they have unknowingly relinquished their rights and faced deportation, the lawsuit alleges.
“This is not an issue of not getting a toilet or a Fiji water bottle,” attorney Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center told the judge. “These are a set of dire conditions that when taken together paint a harrowing picture.”
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman presided at the hearing just days after Van Brunt’s group and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed the lawsuit and sought a temporary restraining order.
Gettleman said his role is “to determine whether or not the conditions are constitutional.”
The Department of Homeland Security denies the allegations at the Broadview site, just outside Chicago, and says such claims have contributed to death threats against immigration officers.
Attorney Jana Brady of the Justice Department acknowledged there are no beds in the building because it was not intended to be a long-term detention site.
Authorities have “improved the operations” over the past few months, she said, adding there has been a “learning curve.”
“The conditions are not sufficiently serious,” Brady told the judge.
The lead plaintiffs in the case, Pablo Moreno Gonzalez and Felipe Agustin Zamacona, were in the courtroom Tuesday at the judge’s insistence. The Mexican immigrants, who’ve lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, had been held at Broadview until Friday but remain in government custody.
For months advocates have raised concerns about conditions at the facility, which has drawn scrutiny from members of Congress, political candidates and activist groups. Lawyers and relatives of people held there have called it a de facto detention center, saying up to 200 people have been held at a time without access to legal counsel.
The Broadview center has also drawn demonstrations, leading to the arrests of numerous protesters. The demonstrations are at the center of a separate lawsuit from a coalition of news outlets and protesters who claim federal agents violated their First Amendment rights by repeatedly using tear gas and other weapons on them.
Florida
Man accused in a series of 1980s rapes is convicted in another attack
MIAMI (AP) — A man suspected of being the “pillowcase rapist” in a string of South Florida rapes back in the 1980s was convicted Monday in another one of the attacks.
Miami-Dade County jurors found Robert Koehler, 66, guilty of sexual battery, kidnapping and burglary after deliberating for less than two hours. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 24.
Monday’s conviction involves a woman who was 22 years old in 1984 when someone broke into her southwest Miami-Dade County home and raped her. Koehler was sentenced to 17 years in prison nearly three years ago for a similar attack on a 25-year-old woman in 1983.
Authorities say the “pillowcase rapist” terrified his victims by breaking into their homes at night. The attacker used a pillowcase or other fabric to cover his face — or the faces of his victims — before assaulting them, tying them up and stealing from their homes.
The assaults attracted extensive media attention in South Florida and authorities created a task force to investigate. The trail had turned cold until 2020, when authorities say a DNA hit for one of Koehler’s relatives led police to him.
Prosecutors have said they’ve connected Koehler’s DNA to at least 25 attacks, but there could be more than 40 victims.
Courts order ICE not to deport man who spent 43 years in prison before murder case overturned
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Two separate courts have ordered immigration officials not to deport a Pennsylvania man who spent four decades in prison before his murder conviction was overturned.
Subramanyam Vedam, 64, is currently detained at a short-term holding center in Alexandria, Louisiana, that’s equipped with an airstrip for deportations. Vedam, a legal permanent resident known as “Subu,” was transferred there from central Pennsylvania last week, relatives said.
An immigration judge stayed his deportation on Thursday until the Bureau of Immigration Appeals decides whether to review his case. That could take several months. Vedam’s lawyers also got a stay the same day in U.S. District Court in Pennsylvania, but said that case may be on hold given the immigration court ruling.
Vedam came to the U.S. legally from India as an infant and grew up in State College, where his father taught at Penn State. He was serving a life sentence in a friend’s 1980 death before his conviction was overturned this year.
He was released from state prison on Oct. 3, only to be taken straight into immigration custody.
The Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement is seeking to deport Vedam over his no contest plea to charges of LSD delivery, filed when he was about 20. His lawyers argue that the four decades he wrongly spent in prison, where he earned degrees and tutored fellow inmates, should outweigh the drug case.
A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said Monday that the reversal in the murder case does not negate the drug conviction.
“Having a single conviction vacated will not stop ICE’s enforcement of the federal immigration law,” Tricia McLaughlin,” Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs, said in an email.
Vedam’s sister said Monday that the family is relieved “that two different judges have agreed that Subu’s deportation is unwarranted while his effort to re-open his immigration case is still pending.”
“We’re also hopeful that Board of Immigration Appeals will ultimately agree that Subu’s deportation would represent another untenable injustice,” Saraswathi Vedam said, “inflicted on a man who not only endured 43 years in a maximum-security prison for a crime he didn’t commit, but has also lived in the U.S. since he was 9-months-old.”
Michigan
Man arraigned on multiple counts of possession of child porn
George Pointer, 68, of Mt. Clemens, Mich., was arraigned on multiple counts of possession of child sexually abusive material and using a computer to commit a crime, according to Macomb County Prosecutor Peter J. Lucido.
It is alleged that on Monday, April 14, 2025, Pointer was found to have many files of child sexually abusive material.
On Friday, Oct. 31, 2025, Pointer was arraigned in the 41B District Court in Clinton Township, MI before Magistrate Ryan Zemke. Pointer was arraigned on the following charges:
Count 1- Aggravated Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material, a 10-year felony
Count 2- Using a Computer to Commit a Crime (related to Aggravated Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material), a 10-year felony
Counts 3 & 4- Using a Computer to Commit a Crime (related to Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material), each a 7-year felony
Counts 5 & 6- Possession of Child Sexually Abusive Material, each a 4-year felony
Magistrate Zemke set Pointer’ bond at $500,000 cash/surety/10%. If released, he is subject to the following conditions: GPS house arrest tether, have no contact with minors, no use of the internet except related to court, no drugs or alcohol, and no weapons.
Pointer is scheduled for a Probable Cause Conference before Judge Jacob Femminineo at the 41B District Court in Clinton Township on Monday, Nov. 10 at 8:30 a.m.
California
Father who killed his 7-month-old son sentenced to more than 30 years in prison
RIVERSIDE, Calif. (AP) — A Southern California father who pleaded guilty to killing his missing 7-month-old son was sentenced Monday to more than 30 years in prison.
Jake Haro, 32, was sentenced after he pleaded guilty last month to the second-degree murder of his son, Emmanuel, the Riverside County District Attorney’s office said in a statement. A monthslong investigation has failed to locate the child’s remains.
Haro and his wife, Rebecca, had reported the baby was kidnapped outside a store in Southern California in August, saying Rebecca Haro was attacked and left unconscious while changing the boy’s diaper. The case drew widespread attention as authorities and members of the public fanned out to search for the boy.
The couple were arrested a little more than a week later at their home in the desert community of Cabazon, some 20 miles (32 kilometers) west of Palm Springs, after Rebecca Haro was confronted about inconsistencies in their account.
Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary Polk sentenced Haro to seven years and two months in prison for a probation violation and other charges, then 25 years to life for assault on a child under age 8, according to the Press-Enterprise. The sentences will run consecutively. Haro was also ordered to pay $10,000 in restitution.
Rebecca Haro, 41, has pleaded not guilty and is being held on $1 million bail. She is due to appear in court in January.
Riverside County prosecutors asked for Jake Haro to be sentenced to 31 years to life in prison for killing Emmanuel and for assaulting another child in 2018. Haro pleaded guilty to child endangerment for causing severe and lasting injuries to his then-10-month-old daughter and was given a 6-year suspended prison term that prosecutors said should now be applied.
“Jake Haro murdered seven-month-old Emmanuel but, in reality, he comes before this court having taken the lives of two young children. If there are lower forms of evil in this world, I am not aware of them,” Brandon Smith, assistant district attorney in Riverside County, wrote in court filings.
A message seeking comment was sent to Jake Haro’s attorney, Allison Lowe.
Illinois
Government defends conditions at Chicago-area immigration site as judge considers options
CHICAGO (AP) — A judge opened a court hearing Tuesday into allegations of heartless conditions at a key Chicago-area immigration building that is a stop for people rounded up during immigration sweeps by the Trump administration.
The government is accused of denying detainees proper access to food, water and medical care and coercing them to sign documents they don’t understand. Without that knowledge, and without private communication with lawyers, they have unknowingly relinquished their rights and faced deportation, the lawsuit alleges.
“This is not an issue of not getting a toilet or a Fiji water bottle,” attorney Alexa Van Brunt of the MacArthur Justice Center told the judge. “These are a set of dire conditions that when taken together paint a harrowing picture.”
U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman presided at the hearing just days after Van Brunt’s group and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois filed the lawsuit and sought a temporary restraining order.
Gettleman said his role is “to determine whether or not the conditions are constitutional.”
The Department of Homeland Security denies the allegations at the Broadview site, just outside Chicago, and says such claims have contributed to death threats against immigration officers.
Attorney Jana Brady of the Justice Department acknowledged there are no beds in the building because it was not intended to be a long-term detention site.
Authorities have “improved the operations” over the past few months, she said, adding there has been a “learning curve.”
“The conditions are not sufficiently serious,” Brady told the judge.
The lead plaintiffs in the case, Pablo Moreno Gonzalez and Felipe Agustin Zamacona, were in the courtroom Tuesday at the judge’s insistence. The Mexican immigrants, who’ve lived in the U.S. for more than 30 years, had been held at Broadview until Friday but remain in government custody.
For months advocates have raised concerns about conditions at the facility, which has drawn scrutiny from members of Congress, political candidates and activist groups. Lawyers and relatives of people held there have called it a de facto detention center, saying up to 200 people have been held at a time without access to legal counsel.
The Broadview center has also drawn demonstrations, leading to the arrests of numerous protesters. The demonstrations are at the center of a separate lawsuit from a coalition of news outlets and protesters who claim federal agents violated their First Amendment rights by repeatedly using tear gas and other weapons on them.
Florida
Man accused in a series of 1980s rapes is convicted in another attack
MIAMI (AP) — A man suspected of being the “pillowcase rapist” in a string of South Florida rapes back in the 1980s was convicted Monday in another one of the attacks.
Miami-Dade County jurors found Robert Koehler, 66, guilty of sexual battery, kidnapping and burglary after deliberating for less than two hours. His sentencing is scheduled for Nov. 24.
Monday’s conviction involves a woman who was 22 years old in 1984 when someone broke into her southwest Miami-Dade County home and raped her. Koehler was sentenced to 17 years in prison nearly three years ago for a similar attack on a 25-year-old woman in 1983.
Authorities say the “pillowcase rapist” terrified his victims by breaking into their homes at night. The attacker used a pillowcase or other fabric to cover his face — or the faces of his victims — before assaulting them, tying them up and stealing from their homes.
The assaults attracted extensive media attention in South Florida and authorities created a task force to investigate. The trail had turned cold until 2020, when authorities say a DNA hit for one of Koehler’s relatives led police to him.
Prosecutors have said they’ve connected Koehler’s DNA to at least 25 attacks, but there could be more than 40 victims.
