NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration lashed out Monday against New York City officials over their sanctuary policies as authorities arrested a second man living in the country illegally in connection with the nonfatal shooting of an off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem called the two suspects, both from the Dominican Republic, “scum of the earth.” She said they'd accumulated lengthy criminal records in just a few years and should not have been free to commit Saturday’s robbery-gone-wrong in a Manhattan park.
Noem blamed the mayor and city council, nearly all Democrats, saying “the people that were in charge of keeping the public safe refused to do so.”
Border czar Tom Homan, meanwhile, vowed the administration would “flood the zone” with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents following the shooting.
“So sanctuary cities get exactly what they don’t want: more agents in the community,” he said alongside Noem and other officials during a news conference at CBP’s offices in Manhattan.
New York and other cities have longstanding laws and policies that limit or restrict local government involvement in federal immigration enforcement. New York Democrats also passed a 2019 law abolishing pretrial incarceration for most nonviolent offenses, modifying a system that had previously allowed wealthier defendants to go free while they awaited trial by paying bail, while denying release to those who didn't have the money.
Christhian Aybar Berroa, who authorities accused of being the getaway driver, was apprehended early Monday, officials said.
The man accused of being the shooter, Miguel Francisco Mora Nunez, was arrested Sunday after arriving at a Bronx hospital with gunshot wounds to the groin and leg. Police say Mora Nunez shot the Customs and Border Protection officer in the face and arm before being wounded and fleeing.
The 42-year-old officer, who was not in uniform, had been sitting with a woman in a park beneath the George Washington Bridge when two men approached on a moped, according to police. When he realized he was being robbed, the officer drew his service weapon. Both he and one of the robbers fired, police said.
The officer, who has not been identified by authorities, is recovering and is expected to survive, Noem said. He works for Customs and Border Protection, whose officers are stationed at airports and other border crossings.
No lawyers were listed for Aybar Berroa or Mora Nunez on the federal court case database.
Aybar Berroa has been arrested at least four times since his arrival in the U.S. in 2022, according to Noem.
She said he'd been ordered deported by a federal immigration judge in 2023, but New York City officials ignored a request that he be detained so federal agents could take him into custody.
Police say Mora Nunez, 21, entered the country illegally in 2023 and had two prior arrests for domestic violence in New York. He is wanted in New York to face accusations of robbery and felony assault, and in Massachusetts over a stolen weapons case.
Mayor Eric Adams, at a separate press conference, distanced himself from the so-called sanctuary city policies that Noem and other federal officials blamed for the shooting.
“I’ve always been clear: stop the revolving door system,” said the former police captain, who has long called for increased cooperation between city police and federal immigration authorities. “Go after the dangerous migrants and asylum seekers.”
At the same time, Adams said the city’s sanctuary policies were enacted in order to encourage otherwise law-abiding immigrants to seek police help or medical care without fear of being deported.
Adams issued an executive order earlier this year allowing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other federal agencies to maintain office space at the city’s notorious Rikers Island jail complex.
That plan, a priority for President Donald Trump’s nationwide crackdown on illegal immigration, was blocked by a state judge last month.
The City Council had sued, casting it as a concerning potential case of Adams changing city policy in return for Trump’s Justice Department dropping corruption charges against him.
The New York Civil Liberties Union and other immigrant advocates criticized Noem and federal officials on Monday for “exploiting a tragedy” to further the Republican administration’s immigration agenda.
Follow Philip Marcelo on X: @philmarcelo
Traffic moves over the George Washington Bridge as seen from Fort Lee, N.J., Saturday, May 24, 2025. (AP Photo/Pablo Salinas)
Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem speaks during a news conference at the Nashville International Airport, Thursday, July 17, 2025, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)
FILE - NYPD police commissioner Jessica Tisch speaks during a news conference in New York, Tuesday, Feb. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)
NUUK, Greenland (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has made an American takeover of Greenland a focus of his second term in the White House, calling it a national security priority while repeating false claims about the strategic Arctic island.
In recent comments, he has floated using military force as an option to take control of Greenland. He has said if the U.S. does not acquire the island, which is a self-governing territory of NATO ally Denmark, then it will fall into Chinese or Russian hands.
Here’s a closer look at the facts.
TRUMP, discussing the security situation in the Arctic: “We need that because if you take a look outside of Greenland right now, there are Russian destroyers, there are Chinese destroyers and, bigger, there are Russian submarines all over the place. We’re not gonna have Russia or China occupy Greenland, and that’s what they’re going to do if we don’t."
THE FACTS: Experts have repeatedly rebuffed Trump's claims of Chinese and Russian military forces lurking off Greenland's coastline. Experts say Russia instead operates in the Barents Sea, off the Scandinavian coast, and both China and Russia have a presence in the Bering Sea south of Alaska.
“That statement makes no sense in terms of facts,” said Andreas Østhagen, research director for Arctic and ocean politics at the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in Oslo, Norway. “There are no Russian and Chinese ships all over the place around Greenland. Russia and/or China has no capacity to occupy Greenland or to take control over Greenland.”
“The only Chinese I see is when I go to the fast food market,” Lars Vintner, a heating engineer told The Associated Press in Greenland's capital Nuuk. He said he frequently goes sailing and hunting and has never seen Russian or Chinese ships. Another Greenlander, Hans Nørgaard, told AP that Trump's claims are “fantasy.”
Lin Mortensgaard, an expert on the international politics of the Arctic at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said that while there are probably Russian submarines — as there are across the vast Arctic region — near Greenland, there are no surface vessels.
China has research vessels in the Central Arctic Ocean, and while the Chinese and Russian militaries have done joint exercises in the Arctic, they have taken place closer to Alaska, she said.
Asked about Trump’s claim that there are multiple Chinese and Russian ships and submarines around the island, Greenland business minister Naaja Nathanielsen responded Tuesday: "Not that we are aware of."
While Russia and China have an interest in the Arctic, “we don’t detect an actual threat," she said.
“America is still recognized as quite a big superpower,” Nathanielsen added, “and I don’t see any appetite from Russia or China to destabilize this.”
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TRUMP, discussing Denmark's defenses in Greenland: "You know what their defense is? Two dog sleds."
THE FACTS: The Sirius Dog Sled Patrol, an elite Danish naval unit that conducts long-range reconnaissance and enforces Danish sovereignty in the Arctic wilderness, is stationed in Greenland.
It's a key part of the Danish military infrastructure in the inhospitable Arctic terrain, experts say.
“Remember, transportation of the area is either by sea or by air. There are no highways,” said Steven Lamy, an international relations professor and Arctic security expert at the University of Southern California. “You can't basically get in a car or a Bradley vehicle or tank or anything and go up there. So they have dog sleds.”
In addition to these special elite forces, Denmark has several surface patrol ships and surveillance aircraft and the kingdom is moving to further strengthen its military presence around Greenland and in the wider North Atlantic. Last year, the government announced a roughly 14.6 billion-kroner ($2.3 billion) agreement with parties including the governments of Greenland and the Faroe Islands, another self-governing territory of Denmark, to “improve capabilities for surveillance and maintaining sovereignty in the region.”
The plan includes three new Arctic naval vessels, two additional long-range surveillance drones and satellite capacity.
Meanwhile, Denmark’s Joint Arctic Command is headquartered in Nuuk, the capital, and tasked with the “surveillance, assertion of sovereignty and military defense of Greenland and the Faroe Islands,” according to its website. It has smaller satellite stations across the island. Greenland also guards part of what is known as the GIUK (Greenland, Iceland, United Kingdom) Gap, where NATO monitors Russian naval movements in the North Atlantic.
The U.S. Department of Defense also operates the remote Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, which was built after the U.S. and Denmark signed the Defense of Greenland Treaty in 1951. It supports missile warning, missile defense and space surveillance operations for the U.S. and NATO.
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TRUMP, discussing why Greenland is part of the Danish kingdom: “The fact that they had a boat land there 500 years ago doesn’t mean that they own the land. I’m sure we had lots of boats go there also.”
THE FACTS: The first humans arrived in northern Greenland circa 2,500 B.C., traveling from what is now Canada after the narrow strait separating the island from North America froze over. The Norse explorer Erik the Red arrived circa A.D. 985 with a fleet of Viking ships, according to the medieval Icelandic sagas.
In 1721, Lutheran missionary Hans Egede arrived in Greenland and ultimately began efforts to convert the Indigenous people to Christianity, marking the start of Denmark’s modern colonization of Greenland, which formally became a Danish colony in 1814. The U.S. government recognized Denmark’s right to the whole of Greenland more than a century later.
“It’s the same logic about the U.S. and sovereignty, right? You have a couple of boats arriving from Europe and now you own the United States of America,” said Østhagen, of the Fridtjof Nansen Institute. “The Indigenous population was there before you guys."
In 2009, Greenland became a self-governing country within the Danish kingdom. The island has a right to independence when requested by local voters.
International law has developed over the centuries, pivoting from land-grabbing colonial powers to modern-day treaties honoring borders largely developed after World War II.
Ulrik Pram Gad, a senior researcher and Arctic security expert at the Danish Institute for International Studies, said postwar it has remained important, especially to the U.S., for countries to refrain from exerting power over other territories.
“We shouldn’t just grab and go to war,” he said. “Rather, it should be peoples who have their self-determination.”
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Find AP Fact Checks here: https://apnews.com/APFactCheck.
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Dazio reported from Berlin and Zhang reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.
FILE - Coloured houses covered by snow are seen from the sea in Nuuk, Greenland, on March 6, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka, File)
FILE - Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance tour the U.S. military's Pituffik Space Base in Greenland, March 28, 2025. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP, File)
Pituffik Space Base is pictured as Vice President JD Vance visits, Friday, March 28, 2025, in Greenland. (Jim Watson/Pool via AP)
Houses covered by snow are seen on the coast of a sea inlet of Nuuk, Greenland, on Monday, Jan. 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)
