New Jersey
Food importer files a lawsuit challenging Trump’s 50% tariffs on Canadian goods
WASHINGTON (AP) — A New Jersey food importer filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging President Donald Trump’s power to invoke a Depression-era law to levy a 50% tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.
The Gellert Global Group, a third-generation family business that imports Canadian cheese, took its case to the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York.
In August, Trump reached back to Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose the tariffs on Canada, prompting dollar-for-dollar retaliation from Ottawa and straining already-tense relations between the neighbors and longtime allies. The president last month escalated the conflict by announcing an outright ban on nearly $1 billion worth of Canadian products, including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles.
The president’s Section 338 tariff authority had never been used in a trade dispute, let alone tested in court.
“No president should have the power to pull a dormant statute off the shelf and use it to impose sweeping tariffs or import bans without the limits Congress required,” said Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian advocacy group that is representing the Gellert firm and which successfully challenged previous Trump tariffs before the Supreme Court earlier this year.
The White House said the administration would vigorously defend Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports and considers Section 338 appropriate to counter what the administration considers Canadian discrimination against American dairy, alcohol and auto exports.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has sought to build a wall of protective tariffs — import taxes — around the U.S. economy. The centerpiece of the policy originally was his use of a 1977 law to declare America’s longstanding trade deficits a national emergency, justifying double-digit tariffs on almost every country. But the Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February, and the Trump
administration was forced to refund billions of dollars to the importers that paid them.
Trump has since looked for other legal authority to tax imports. In July, for example, he hit dozens of U.S. trading partners with tariffs of 10% to 12.5%, charging that they had not done enough to crack down on imports produced by forced labor. Those tariffs are also being challenged in court.
Then he invoked Section 338 to sanction Canada for allegedly discriminating against U.S. dairy, auto and alcoholic beverages.
As Section 338 sat on the books unused for decades, Congress passed new trade laws. Some of them ceded to the president tariff power, which the Constitution originally granted to Congress. But the new laws also limited the president’s authority to certain circumstances — including dealing with national security threats and foreign currency crises — and required the government to carry out investigations and meet other procedural requirements beforehand.
The Liberty Justice Center argues that the newer trade legislation superseded the president’s Section 338 tariff authority and rendered it obsolete.
New Mexico
State AG accuses Epstein attorney and accountant of abuse cover-up at Santa Fe ranch
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico’s attorney general filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Jeffrey Epstein’s attorney and accountant, accusing them of concealing his sex trafficking operation at a sprawling Santa Fe-area ranch where the disgraced financier entertained guests.
The lawsuit seeks to stop attorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn from accepting any payments from Epstein’s estate, estimated at more than $100 million.
Indyke worked as Epstein’s attorney for roughly two decades. Both he and Kahn have testified in Congress that they did not know about Epstein’s abuse, though New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has a different view.
“None of this could be done by just one man,” Torrez said. “This was something that was facilitated, that was made possible by handlers, by lawyers, by accountants, by others who have yet to face real consequences.”
He said Indyke and Kahn “stand to benefit substantially” from Epstein’s estate unless a court intervenes.
“Those resources rightfully belong in the hands of survivors,” Torrez said, referring to victims of Epstein’s abuse.
Phone and email messages seeking comment from attorneys for Indyke and Kahn were not immediately returned Wednesday. The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately return an email seeking comment on any federal investigation of the pair in New Mexico.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 in a federal jail in New York City, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
His former girlfriend and close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges in New York. Witness testimony at Maxwell’s trial alleged she and Epstein had sexually abused women at the New Mexico ranch.
Epstein purchased the Zorro Ranch in Stanley, a sparsely populated ranching community about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Santa Fe, in 1993. He built a 26,700-square-foot mansion with a sprawling courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home, and a private airstrip and helipad.
Epstein never faced charges in New Mexico, though the state attorney general’s office in 2019 confirmed that it was investigating and planned to forward its findings to federal authorities in New York. Hector Balderas, who was attorney general at the time, said the state’s outdated laws failed to protect children from abuse.
Torrez reopened the state’s investigation this year. In August, he sued the Justice Department, accusing it of blocking the state from investigating alleged sex crimes at the ranch. The government said it was not releasing some information to the state to avoid disclosing victim-identifying information.
Also in August, a commission established by state lawmakers to investigate whether local authorities looked the other way, released a 119-page report that found that authorities repeatedly deferred to investigations in New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Virgin Islands, while leaving Epstein’s offenses in New Mexico unexamined and unpunished.
The ranch was sold by Epstein’s estate in 2023 to the family of Don Huffines, a Republican who is the Texas state comptroller. The money was set aside for creditors.
Probate proceedings related to Epstein’s will and assets are being handled in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Texas
Guatemalan man gets 30 years for role in smuggling tragedy that killed 53 people
A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Guatemalan man extradited to the U.S. over his role in a 2022 human smuggling attempt that ended in the deaths of 53 migrants who had been transported in a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas.
U.S. and Guatemalan prosecutors called Rigoberto Ramon Miranda Orozco’s sentencing another step toward justice in one of the deadliest smuggling attempts along the U.S.-Mexico border. Miranda Orozco, 50, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after admitting to arranging travel and accommodations for two people who died and another who was seriously injured.
Nearly 20 people in the U.S. and Guatemala have been convicted since the discovery of the abandoned trailer full of bodies horrified communities accustomed to seeing their young people leave, trying to flee poverty or violence in Central America and Mexico.
“It was clear that they suffered tremendously in their last few hours on this earth,” U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons told reporters at a news conference following the sentencing.
The trailer’s air conditioning malfunctioned and would not blow cool air to the people trapped inside during the sweltering, three-hour ride in June 2022 from the border city of Laredo to San Antonio, authorities said. Prosecutors have said migrants paid up to $15,000 each to be taken across the U.S. border.
When the abandoned trailer was opened on a remote San Antonio back road, 48 migrants were dead. Another 16 were taken to hospitals, where five more died.
Simmons said investigators found clothing passengers had shed to cool off and claw marks on the trailer’s walls.
“They were literally trying to claw their way out,” he said.
Twenty-one of those who died were from Guatemala, Simmons said.
Miranda Orozco’s attorney, Alfonso Cabanas Jr., called the sentence “very tough.” He said his client was in Guatemala at the time and had no control over the type of transportation the migrants would take to San Antonio nor did he know the air conditioning was malfunctioning.
Cabanas said he doesn’t think harsh punishments will “make a dent” in such operations.
“What we do need is comprehensive immigration reform,” Cabanas said.
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Miranda Orozco, who was arrested in Guatemala in 2024 and extradited to the U.S. the following year.
He pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to bring a migrant into the U.S. resulting in death, aiding and abetting bringing a migrant into the U.S. resulting in death, as well as aiding and abetting bringing a migrant into the U.S. resulting in serious bodily injury, prosecutors said.
Simmons said prosecutors in Guatemala were integral in securing convictions for Miranda Orozco and others. Simmons was joined by Guatemalan Attorney General Gabriel García Luna, who reflected on the suffering the migrants inside the tractor-trailer endured.
“They paid for a promise, and those who cashed in on that promise abandoned them to their fate,” García Luna said.
Last year, Felipe Orduna-Torres, described by prosecutors as the leader of the smuggling operations inside the U.S., was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. Armando Gonzales-Ortega, his top assistant, was sentenced to 83 years.
Sentencing dates have been set for more people, including the truck’s driver.
The tragedy is the deadliest among those that have claimed thousands of lives in recent decades as people attempt to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. Ten migrants died in 2017 after they were trapped inside a truck parked at a Walmart in San Antonio.
In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.
Food importer files a lawsuit challenging Trump’s 50% tariffs on Canadian goods
WASHINGTON (AP) — A New Jersey food importer filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging President Donald Trump’s power to invoke a Depression-era law to levy a 50% tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods.
The Gellert Global Group, a third-generation family business that imports Canadian cheese, took its case to the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized court in New York.
In August, Trump reached back to Section 338 of the Tariff Act of 1930 to impose the tariffs on Canada, prompting dollar-for-dollar retaliation from Ottawa and straining already-tense relations between the neighbors and longtime allies. The president last month escalated the conflict by announcing an outright ban on nearly $1 billion worth of Canadian products, including alcoholic beverages, dairy products and motorcycles.
The president’s Section 338 tariff authority had never been used in a trade dispute, let alone tested in court.
“No president should have the power to pull a dormant statute off the shelf and use it to impose sweeping tariffs or import bans without the limits Congress required,” said Sara Albrecht, chair of the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian advocacy group that is representing the Gellert firm and which successfully challenged previous Trump tariffs before the Supreme Court earlier this year.
The White House said the administration would vigorously defend Trump’s tariffs on Canadian imports and considers Section 338 appropriate to counter what the administration considers Canadian discrimination against American dairy, alcohol and auto exports.
Since returning to the White House last year, Trump has sought to build a wall of protective tariffs — import taxes — around the U.S. economy. The centerpiece of the policy originally was his use of a 1977 law to declare America’s longstanding trade deficits a national emergency, justifying double-digit tariffs on almost every country. But the Supreme Court struck down those tariffs in February, and the Trump
administration was forced to refund billions of dollars to the importers that paid them.
Trump has since looked for other legal authority to tax imports. In July, for example, he hit dozens of U.S. trading partners with tariffs of 10% to 12.5%, charging that they had not done enough to crack down on imports produced by forced labor. Those tariffs are also being challenged in court.
Then he invoked Section 338 to sanction Canada for allegedly discriminating against U.S. dairy, auto and alcoholic beverages.
As Section 338 sat on the books unused for decades, Congress passed new trade laws. Some of them ceded to the president tariff power, which the Constitution originally granted to Congress. But the new laws also limited the president’s authority to certain circumstances — including dealing with national security threats and foreign currency crises — and required the government to carry out investigations and meet other procedural requirements beforehand.
The Liberty Justice Center argues that the newer trade legislation superseded the president’s Section 338 tariff authority and rendered it obsolete.
New Mexico
State AG accuses Epstein attorney and accountant of abuse cover-up at Santa Fe ranch
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — New Mexico’s attorney general filed a lawsuit Wednesday against Jeffrey Epstein’s attorney and accountant, accusing them of concealing his sex trafficking operation at a sprawling Santa Fe-area ranch where the disgraced financier entertained guests.
The lawsuit seeks to stop attorney Darren Indyke and accountant Richard Kahn from accepting any payments from Epstein’s estate, estimated at more than $100 million.
Indyke worked as Epstein’s attorney for roughly two decades. Both he and Kahn have testified in Congress that they did not know about Epstein’s abuse, though New Mexico Attorney General Raúl Torrez has a different view.
“None of this could be done by just one man,” Torrez said. “This was something that was facilitated, that was made possible by handlers, by lawyers, by accountants, by others who have yet to face real consequences.”
He said Indyke and Kahn “stand to benefit substantially” from Epstein’s estate unless a court intervenes.
“Those resources rightfully belong in the hands of survivors,” Torrez said, referring to victims of Epstein’s abuse.
Phone and email messages seeking comment from attorneys for Indyke and Kahn were not immediately returned Wednesday. The U.S. Justice Department did not immediately return an email seeking comment on any federal investigation of the pair in New Mexico.
Epstein killed himself in August 2019 in a federal jail in New York City, where he was awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges.
His former girlfriend and close associate, Ghislaine Maxwell, is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction on sex trafficking charges in New York. Witness testimony at Maxwell’s trial alleged she and Epstein had sexually abused women at the New Mexico ranch.
Epstein purchased the Zorro Ranch in Stanley, a sparsely populated ranching community about 30 miles (48 kilometers) south of Santa Fe, in 1993. He built a 26,700-square-foot mansion with a sprawling courtyard, a living room roughly the size of the average American home, and a private airstrip and helipad.
Epstein never faced charges in New Mexico, though the state attorney general’s office in 2019 confirmed that it was investigating and planned to forward its findings to federal authorities in New York. Hector Balderas, who was attorney general at the time, said the state’s outdated laws failed to protect children from abuse.
Torrez reopened the state’s investigation this year. In August, he sued the Justice Department, accusing it of blocking the state from investigating alleged sex crimes at the ranch. The government said it was not releasing some information to the state to avoid disclosing victim-identifying information.
Also in August, a commission established by state lawmakers to investigate whether local authorities looked the other way, released a 119-page report that found that authorities repeatedly deferred to investigations in New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and the Virgin Islands, while leaving Epstein’s offenses in New Mexico unexamined and unpunished.
The ranch was sold by Epstein’s estate in 2023 to the family of Don Huffines, a Republican who is the Texas state comptroller. The money was set aside for creditors.
Probate proceedings related to Epstein’s will and assets are being handled in the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Texas
Guatemalan man gets 30 years for role in smuggling tragedy that killed 53 people
A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a Guatemalan man extradited to the U.S. over his role in a 2022 human smuggling attempt that ended in the deaths of 53 migrants who had been transported in a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas.
U.S. and Guatemalan prosecutors called Rigoberto Ramon Miranda Orozco’s sentencing another step toward justice in one of the deadliest smuggling attempts along the U.S.-Mexico border. Miranda Orozco, 50, was sentenced to 30 years in prison after admitting to arranging travel and accommodations for two people who died and another who was seriously injured.
Nearly 20 people in the U.S. and Guatemala have been convicted since the discovery of the abandoned trailer full of bodies horrified communities accustomed to seeing their young people leave, trying to flee poverty or violence in Central America and Mexico.
“It was clear that they suffered tremendously in their last few hours on this earth,” U.S. Attorney Justin Simmons told reporters at a news conference following the sentencing.
The trailer’s air conditioning malfunctioned and would not blow cool air to the people trapped inside during the sweltering, three-hour ride in June 2022 from the border city of Laredo to San Antonio, authorities said. Prosecutors have said migrants paid up to $15,000 each to be taken across the U.S. border.
When the abandoned trailer was opened on a remote San Antonio back road, 48 migrants were dead. Another 16 were taken to hospitals, where five more died.
Simmons said investigators found clothing passengers had shed to cool off and claw marks on the trailer’s walls.
“They were literally trying to claw their way out,” he said.
Twenty-one of those who died were from Guatemala, Simmons said.
Miranda Orozco’s attorney, Alfonso Cabanas Jr., called the sentence “very tough.” He said his client was in Guatemala at the time and had no control over the type of transportation the migrants would take to San Antonio nor did he know the air conditioning was malfunctioning.
Cabanas said he doesn’t think harsh punishments will “make a dent” in such operations.
“What we do need is comprehensive immigration reform,” Cabanas said.
U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia sentenced Miranda Orozco, who was arrested in Guatemala in 2024 and extradited to the U.S. the following year.
He pleaded guilty in July to conspiracy to bring a migrant into the U.S. resulting in death, aiding and abetting bringing a migrant into the U.S. resulting in death, as well as aiding and abetting bringing a migrant into the U.S. resulting in serious bodily injury, prosecutors said.
Simmons said prosecutors in Guatemala were integral in securing convictions for Miranda Orozco and others. Simmons was joined by Guatemalan Attorney General Gabriel García Luna, who reflected on the suffering the migrants inside the tractor-trailer endured.
“They paid for a promise, and those who cashed in on that promise abandoned them to their fate,” García Luna said.
Last year, Felipe Orduna-Torres, described by prosecutors as the leader of the smuggling operations inside the U.S., was sentenced to life in prison in the U.S. Armando Gonzales-Ortega, his top assistant, was sentenced to 83 years.
Sentencing dates have been set for more people, including the truck’s driver.
The tragedy is the deadliest among those that have claimed thousands of lives in recent decades as people attempt to cross the U.S. border from Mexico. Ten migrants died in 2017 after they were trapped inside a truck parked at a Walmart in San Antonio.
In 2003, the bodies of 19 migrants were found in a sweltering truck southeast of San Antonio.
