When 92 Somali detainees were flown from Louisiana to Dakar, Senegal, and then inexplicably taken to Miami at the end of 2017, immigration lawyers representing the group were particularly worried about one thing: While some of the detainees were being held at Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Krome Processing Center in West Miami-Dade…
This past May 11, county commission candidate and longtime GOP insider Alex Diaz de la Portilla glad-handed seniors at the Little Havana Activities and Nutrition Center. Slinging heaping plates of paella right alongside him was Miami Commissioner Joe Carollo, a fellow Trump-backing MAGA warrior who was among Diaz de la Portilla’s biggest backers in his failed bid for office.
In 2016, after years of financial mismanagement left Opa-locka nearly $8 million in debt, Florida Gov. Rick Scott declared a state of financial emergency and placed city officials on a restrictive spending diet. A state oversight board tasked with keeping the city on track warned that the belt-tightening might take some getting used to…
By the middle of 2016, it seemed like Marco Rubio had become a failed presidential candidate doomed to sit at home on his couch going bald while watching Donald Trump confuse the lyrics of “God Bless America” with the theme song from Growing Pains. Improbably, since he took office, Trump has instead let Senator Rubio influence every major Latin American policy decision…
American’s incarceration rate is absurdly, stupidly high. The United States imprisons more of its population than noted human-rights scofflaws such as Cuba, Russia, Turkey, and Iran — by a huge margin.
Yesterday New Times published a profile of controversial SoundCloud artist XXXTentacion. The 20-year-old rapper, whose real name is Jahseh Onfroy, is on house arrest while awaiting trial for a long list of disturbing charges, including witness tampering, witness harassment, false imprisonment, and aggravated battery of a pregnant victim. The piece reported that Onfroy’s alleged victim, Geneva Ayala, started a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for her extensive hospital bills.
In January 2016, 15-year-old Alder Hill was bicycling home through Liberty City when someone jumped him, dragged him into a grassy field, and sprayed his body full of bullets. Dozens of people soon gathered at the murder scene, some snapping photos of the dead teen and uploading them to social media.
Let’s be completely honest, Miami. Many Heat fans are only now getting over the fact that LeBron James left four years ago to return to his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers. We had to journey through a full 12-step process to reach acceptance, and along the way, many Heat fans had to collect a medallion at each achievement.
When gun store owner Ted Budd successfully ran for Congress in North Carolina in 2016, he recorded an ad about how much he loves weapons. The ad included shots of him selling guns, cocking a rifle outdoors, and loading an assault-style rifle. In 2012, Budd speculated that the Sandy Hook massacre likely led to increased sales at his shop.
When 72 percent of Florida voters chose to legalize medical marijuana via a 2016 ballot initiative, most of them expected to be able to light up bongs, bowls, and blunts stuffed with newly legal cannabis. Because nothing is ever easy in Florida, that wasn’t the case: The state Legislature outlawed smoking medical pot and instead legalized only edibles, vaporized pot, and cannabis oil.
Slightly more than three months after David Hogg was forced to hide in a closet to avoid being shot to death in a school massacre, some monster today prank-called a SWAT team to the teen’s house. Thankfully, the Miami Herald reports Hogg wasn’t home at the time — but that doesn’t make the prank any less heinous and cruel.
In 2014, James Eric McDonough walked into Homestead Police Chief Al Rolle’s office, placed his cell phone on the chief’s desk, and began recording. Rolle later claimed McDonough never warned him he was capturing their conversation, which, if true, might have been a violation of Florida’s “wiretapping” laws requiring that all parties consent to being recorded. Rolle contacted Miami-Dade County State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, who sent McDonough a letter threatening to arrest him if he ever recorded the chief like that again.
Every morning for the past 25 years, a flock of blue and gold macaws has flown into Daria Feinstein’s backyard in Coral Gables. They swoop between surrounding homes and over boats docked on the nearby canal to perch on Feinstein’s royal palms and poincianas or maybe have a bite to eat on the artificial nests she’s set up for them.
At 10 a.m. Monday, the students of March for Our Lives gathered at Pine Trails Park in Parkland to announce the latest phase of their gun-control movement: a national tour to register young voters. Focusing on cities where the debate over gun control is particularly charged, the 60-day campaign will…
In 1996, Democrats and Republicans of all stripes were united in what they then referred to as “welfare reform,” a project designed to make it more difficult for low-income Americans to obtain benefits such as food stamps or Medicaid. By making it harder to get assistance, politicos argued, the poor would try harder to get work. After passing a law banning felons with drug convictions from receiving food stamps, the feds said the reforms would also strike a blow to drug crimes.
Yoinis Cruz Peña, a 29-year-old motorcyclist, died after crashing on the Rickenbacker Causeway last weekend. His wife Yailen also suffered serious injuries. The bikers who were riding with Peña that day have insisted a Miami Police officer was chasing him when the crash occurred even though MPD said it had no record of any officer pursuing a motorcycle that day. The department’s union president, Ed Lugo, even spent the weekend on Twitter refuting that claim and insulting the motorcyclists.
Miami New Times and the Memphis Flyer dominated the Society for Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Awards in its nondaily journalism awards, which were announced last week. The competition covers the 11 Southeastern states.
Sea turtle advocate Jennifer Rotker often walks the beach near her home in Surfside to pick up trash. Finding water bottles, soda caps, and abandoned cups are a regular occurrence, but one item that bugs her most is the plastic straw.
Maybe the rainy weather had everyone in a funk. Maybe planetary cycles were weird all month. Perhaps local drug-enforcement police were designed from the start to act like an occupying force in communities of color and ought to be de-funded. Regardless of the reasons, Miami-area cops sure got filmed doing…
The Miami Police Department has been banned since 1998 from arresting homeless people for sleeping outside or from destroying their property on public sidewalks. Thanks to a decade-long ACLU lawsuit that resulted in that ’98 agreement, cops must give the homeless a chance to enter a shelter before they can be arrested for “life-sustaining” activities such as showering outdoors.
After North Bay Village Commissioner Douglas Hornsby dramatically announced he was being blackmailed over an old cocaine charge, the town’s police chief, Carlos Noriega, quickly homed in on a trio of high-profile suspects: Mayor Connie Leon-Kreps, the wife of Commissioner Jose Alvarez, and Ana Watson, a well-connected city board member and friend of the mayor’s.
Ever since they found out the company that promised to bring their ideas to life was actually just a massive scam, the would-be inventors who lost thousands to World Patent Marketing have hoped to see the company’s CEO behind bars.
