News

News

May 20, 2025

244 Arrested in 9-Day Prostitution Sting Operation in Florida

Polk County officials say that some of the suspects allegedly engaging in human trafficking were illegal immigrants.

Officials in a Florida county announced last week that 244 suspects were arrested during a multi-day operation targeting human trafficking.

In a statement on May 16, Polk County Sheriff’s officials said that the suspects arrested over nine days were allegedly “involved in illegal acts related to soliciting prostitutes, offering to commit prostitution, or aiding/abetting or transporting prostitutes.”

The office said that federal offices, including the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the U.S. Army Criminal Investigations Division, were involved, along with local law enforcement.

Notably, 36 people who were arrested were in the United States illegally from eight different countries: Venezuela, Cuba, Honduras, Mexico, Haiti, Colombia, Guatemala, and Brazil, according to the statement.

Twenty-two of the suspects said they were receiving government assistance, and 221 were traveling from outside Polk County, including people coming to Florida from 12 states. The youngest person arrested was 17, and the oldest was 70, according to the sheriff’s office.

Some 93 suspects accused of traveling “to commit prostitution were screened by detectives and the social services organizations to determine if they were being trafficked or exploited by others, and were offered services by the social services organizations at the operation,” the sheriff’s office stated, adding that four possible human trafficking victims were located.

Another 141 suspects were arrested for soliciting a prostitute, while 10 were arrested for aiding and abetting, transporting, or deriving proceeds from prostitution, according to the statement.

One suspect was actively in the military, 13 were veterans, and several were involved in the health care industry, law enforcement officials said.

FBI’s top boss Kash Patel says bureau ran cover for Hillary but it all ends under Trump

Kash Patel claims former FBI leadership also ‘bastardized the FISA process’ and hid documentation in Crossfire Hurricane investigation

FBI Director Kash Patel hinted at a “wave of transparency” on the horizon as the agency struggles to rebuild public trust, especially in the wake of longstanding controversy over alleged politicization and selective prosecution.

Sitting alongside FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino for a “Sunday Morning Futures” exclusive interview, Patel pointed to the FBI’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as an example of political bias and institutional failure. He claimed senior officials within the Department of Justice “hijacked” their constitutional responsibilities by selectively deciding which cases to pursue.

“You asked in the beginning how the FBI was weaponized,” he said to host Maria Bartiromo. “Well, the FBI hijacked the constitutional responsibility of the Department of Justice and the Attorney General, and James Comey and others specifically decided what cases to prosecute and not prosecute. Don’t believe me? Go to the videotape in the Hillary Clinton investigation.”

“We don’t decide prosecutions, and neither does any agent or intel analyst. We have great partners under Attorney General [Pam] Bondi. We work with them and discuss the matter with them, but the prosecutorial decision is with them,” he said.

Patel said that new agency leadership has uncovered additional details regarding the Crossfire Hurricane investigation into President Donald Trump‘s alleged ties to Russia and are working with Congress to put out information surrounding the episode.

“That’s how vindictive and vicious the former leadership structure here was. Not only did they bastardize the FISA process and lie to the American public, they withheld and hid documentation and put it in rooms where people weren’t supposed to look,” Patel said.

“It’s a good thing we’re here now to clean it up, and you’re about to see a wave of transparency… Just give us about a week or two.”

Patel and Bongino’s wide-ranging interview with Bartiromo centered on investments in homeland security, alleged corruption among past agency leadership and restoring public trust in the institution.

In a pointed critique, Patel accused his FBI predecessors of “intentionally failing the American public” by putting on what he called the “biggest D.C. deception game” ever seen.

He claimed the bureau’s reputation as a storied law enforcement agency was damaged by the likes of leaders like James Comey, Andrew McCabe and Peter Strzok and accused them of weaponizing the FBI for political purposes, misleading both the courts and the American people.

“They said the FBI was the most storied institution for law enforcement, and it was, and it will be again very soon,” Patel vowed, tossing in an allegation that the former leadership used taxpayer funds, potentially illegally, to run their operation and withheld key evidence from the court. 

“That’s what broke the FBI. And then, when they were caught, they lied about it… and [few media personalities] were brave enough to cover it six, seven, eight years ago, and we’re still talking about it today because Congress is working rigorously with us [and] the Crossfire Hurricane documents are coming fast and hard, and they’re being sent there un-redacted so we can have full accountability.”

“That’s how you restore the trust that was lost to the American public when it comes to the FBI,” Patel said.

Supreme Court Allows Trump to Remove Protected Status for Venezuelans

The Supreme Court has granted President Donald Trump’s request to remove legal protections for Venezuelan nationals, opening them up to potential deportation.

The decision came in a brief order on May 19. It noted that the order was “without prejudice” toward a challenge to the policy implemented by Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson would have denied the administration’s request, according to the order. The Supreme Court’s block was temporary and allows the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit to weigh in on the issue. If the justices take up the case for more thorough consideration, the stay will expire when they issue a judgment.

In early May, the Trump administration asked the Supreme Court to remove a lower court’s block on its decision to remove temporary legal protections for more than 300,000 Venezuelan nationals.

The order came after another decision on May 16 in which the Supreme Court blocked the president from deporting suspected Venezuelan gang members under the Alien Enemies Act.

U.S. Solicitor General D. John Sauer, addressing the temporary legal protections case, told the Supreme Court in a brief on May 1 that a federal judge in California had overstepped his authority.

“The court contravened an express bar on judicial review, sidestepped black-letter law authorizing agencies to reverse as-yet-inoperative actions, and embraced a baseless equal-protection theory on the road to issuing impermissible universal relief that intrudes on central Executive Branch operations,” Sauer said.

He argued that the order “upsets the judgments of the political branches, prohibiting the executive branch from enforcing a time-sensitive immigration policy and indefinitely extending an immigration status that Congress intended to be” temporary.

The Ninth Circuit rejected the administration’s request for a stay of the lower court’s bar pending appeal.

Noem canceled the extension of the 2023 designation shortly after she was sworn in, which meant that branch of the program would end on April 7. The 2021 version of the program is set to continue until September.