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A 79-year-old Colorado pastor who lost 35 pounds and the strength to walkafter being placed in immigration detention 13 months ago has been released by order of a federal magistrate judge.
The Rev. Edward Nalwamba left the Aurora Detention Center on Tuesday. U.S. Magistrate Judge Cyrus Y. Chung ruled that federal officials had “no concrete plan” to return him to Uganda, the country he fled 24 years ago, and had exceeded the “presumptively reasonable” six months of holding time.
The Rev. Phil Eberhart, lead pastor at Resurrection Anglican church outside Denver, where Nalwamba worked for years before his recent retirement, said the government ignored requests for a wheelchair and some advance notice so supporters could safely escort Nalwamba out of the detention center.
Instead, photos posted on social media show three other detainees carrying Nalwamba to a waiting vehicle.
Eberhart says Nalwamba had pneumonia for three weeks in detention, was never treated and has had a chest cough since June. The Department of Homeland Security has said claims that the pastor was denied medical treatment are false.
On Wednesday, DHS said Nalwamba had overstayed his visa for decades and resisted earlier rulings telling him to leave. Nalwamba and his attorneys say he tried repeatedly to hire attorneys and seek legal status but was scammed or made legal errors.
“The immigration system is the most opaque system in the government and it’s so broken it’s unbelievable,” Eberhart said. “The system is inhumane.”
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President Donald Trump said he called Google’s Sundar Pichai to discuss renaming the Atlantic Ocean, but would “probably pass” after the chief executive told him: “Please don’t ask us to do that.”
Trump, who controversially renamed the Gulf of Mexico and Lake Ontario, floated the idea at a rally in South Carolina on Wednesday evening, saying: “We have a lake and we have a gulf, now we need a river and we need an ocean.”
He said he “called Google Maps, who were really great,” with the previous name changes, and asked Pichai if Google could “handle” a name change for the Atlantic.
Trump said Pichai responded: “No, no, no. This time, I’m not doing it,” and “Oceans are different, Sir,” as they border “a lot of countries.”
Google has not confirmed the call took place, and it did not immediately respond to an overnight request for comment.
Google, and other private companies that offer online maps, have generally acquiesced to Trump’s previous name changes for U.S. users.
Trump added he would “probably pass” on renaming the Atlantic Ocean following his call with Pichai, but mused he could rename the Pacific “the American Ocean” instead.
The Trump administration said Wednesday night that construction on President Donald Trump’s planned triumphal arch could begin immediately after the National Capital Planning Commission meets next month.
“Construction could commence as early as November 5, 2026,” if the commission approves the towering arch and the Interior Department formally authorizes it that same day, the Justice Department said in a court filing. A federal judge has been weighing whether to halt the project, but Trump officials have argued that intervention is premature given that work has not begun.
Trump has packed the commission, which reviews federal construction projects, with allies who are expected to approve his project. The administration this week added several political appointees as alternate commissioners, replacing career officials, ahead of next month’s vote.
Veterans groups, local advocacy organizations and historic preservationists have called for the administration to scale down the planned 250-foot arch or pick a different place to build it. Three Vietnam War veterans and a historic preservationist have sued to halt thework, saying the towering structure would interfere with their experience visiting nearby Arlington National Cemetery.
U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an Obama appointee who is reviewing the veterans’ case, has warned the administration not to abruptly begin construction on the arch — as Trump did when he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build his ballroom without seeking approval from federal review panels or from Congress.
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum — who has publicly touted plans to build the arch — has said that he has not approved it.
“A final decision on the undertaking will not be made until the National Capital Planning Commission completes its review,” Burgum wrote in an Oct. 9 letter to the commission.
Zookeepers aren’t sure how Dolly feels about her new name. But they say it matches the bold and feisty personality of their “most vocal” recent red panda cub.
National Zoo officials put it to the people, and they (more than 20,000 of them) were clear: Dolpa came in at 15 percent; Pyra netted 20 percent; and a nod to the country superstar took roughly 65 percent.
“With flaming locks of auburn fur and a cuteness that extends beyond the hours of 9 to 5, this little firecracker officially has a name,” officials said of their 4-month-old female cub, who was born in Front Royal, Virginia, at the Smithsonian’s National Zoo and Conservation Biology Institute.
It’s not the only thing named for Dolly Parton. In late August, shortly after Parton’s death, the entity overseeing the Nashville International Airport voted to start the process of modifying the facility’s name in her honor. Three decades earlier, Dolly, the cloned sheep, helped set things in motion.
The Trump administration deported 980,000 migrants from the United States in the first 18 months of President Donald Trump’s second term, according to an analysis released Thursday.
Trump returned to office on Jan. 20, 2025, promising mass deportations of 1 million migrants a year. But his administration halted the release of detailed deportation statistics, making it challenging to gauge enforcement. Some immigration hard-liners have criticized Trump’s approach, saying he hasn’t gone far enough to remove undocumented immigrants from the country.
The new report, authored by Marc Rosenblum, a former head of the DHS Office of Homeland Security Statistics who left in July, relies on other records obtained through open-records requests and analyzed by outside groups.
The deportation tally counts both DHS “removals” — which have steeper legal consequences — and less punitive “returns.”
For removals, the Trump administration’s yearly average of 380,000 is lower than the 392,000 average during the first term of President Barack Obama, the report found. Obama removed slightly fewer than 380,000 migrants a year during his second term.
The 432,000 removals in fiscal year 2013 under Obama remain the highest on record, the report said.
Good morning. It’s Thursday, Oct. 22, and my morning has been immeasurably improved by seeing these adorable raccoons. Kudos to the couple who rescued them.
The midterm election campaign dominates today’s edition of The 7 briefing. We start in Ohio, where Republican governor candidate Vivek Ramaswamy has doubled down on his controversial attack ad featuring the long-estranged mother of his Democratic rival Amy Acton.
There were Senate debates in two competitive states last night. Abdul El-Sayed (D) and Mike Rogers (R) clashed in their second and final debate in Michigan. In Kansas, an unexpected midterm battleground, Sen. Roger Marshall (R) took on Adam Hamilton (D). We have takeaways from both.
Beyond the midterms, the briefing includes an extraordinary story about a broken globe. We look at how air pollution may change your brain. And we take a trip to America’s new national park.
Read today’s edition of The 7 here.
California voters will decide next month whether roughly 250 billionaires in the state must pay a one-time tax on their riches. The ballot proposal is already having ripple effects among California’s wealthiest people, including Mark Zuckerberg, the Meta CEO worth $246 billion.
A short explanation of a complicated situation: Zuckerberg has final say over major decisions at Meta, thanks to special stock that lets him outvote everyone on decisions requiring shareholder approval.
Zuckerberg says he would need to sell Meta stock to pay the 5 percent tax on his assets under California’s voter measure, the company said in a financial document Wednesday. Zuckerberg also told Meta’s board of directors that he was considering moving his primary residence out of California, presumably to try to avoid paying the tax.
The directors did not want Zuckerberg to imperil his absolute control over Meta, and they did not want him to move away from Meta’s headquarters. Their solution was reworking Meta’s stock to ensure he can sell some shares and still retain absolute voting power.
Meta tried to do something like this a decade ago. It dropped the plan after other stockholders sued, saying Zuckerberg would empower himself at their expense.
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