Most of those killed in Lisbon streetcar derailment were foreigners, police say

LISBON, Portugal (AP) — Police in Portugal said Friday that 11 of the 16 people killed when a streetcar derailed were foreigners, as an initial investigative report examining what caused the popular Lisbon tourist attraction to crash was delayed by a day.

The dead included five Portuguese nationals, three British citizens, two Canadians, two South Koreans, one American, one French, one Swiss and one Ukrainian, police said in a statement.

A German man also thought to have died in Wednesday’s crash was found to be in a Lisbon hospital, police said. It didn't provide an explanation for the error.

The list of nationalities was published following forensic identification.

The distinctive yellow-and-white Elevador da Gloria, which is classified as a national monument, was packed with locals and international tourists Wednesday evening when it came off its rails. Sixteen people were killed and 21 others were injured.

Multiple agencies are investigating what Prime Minister Luis Montenegro has described as "one of the biggest tragedies of our recent past.”

The government’s Office for Air and Rail Accident Investigations said that it has concluded its analysis of the wreckage and would issue a preliminary technical report Friday. But late in the day it informed Portugal's national news agency Lusa that the report would be published only on Saturday due to delays in carrying out procedures in conjunction with other bodies. It wasn't clear how revealing its initial report would be.

Chief police investigator Nelson Oliveira said that a preliminary police report, which has a broader scope, is expected within 45 days.

The streetcar's wreckage was removed from the scene overnight and placed in police custody.

A woman who was a French-Canadian dual citizen is among the dead, the French Foreign Ministry said Friday.

The transport workers’ trade union SITRA said the streetcar’s brakeman, André Marques, was among the dead. A national Portuguese charitable organization, Santa Casa da Misericórdia, whose main Lisbon headquarters are at the top of the hill where the streetcar runs, said four of its staff were killed.

Spaniards, Israelis, Portuguese, Brazilians, Italians and French people were injured, the executive director of Portugal’s National Health Service, Álvaro Santos, said.

“This tragedy … goes beyond our borders,” Montenegro said in a televised address from his official residence. Lisbon hosted around 8.5 million tourists last year, and long lines of people typically form for the streetcar’s short and picturesque trip a few hundred meters up and down a city street. Thursday was a national day of mourning.

Hundreds of people attended a somber Mass Thursday evening at Lisbon’s majestic Church of Saint Dominic. Montenegro, President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa and Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas were among the attendees, some dressed in black, in the candlelit sanctuary.

The electric streetcar, also known as a funicular, is harnessed by steel cables and can carry more than 40 people. Officials declined to comment on whether a faulty brake or a snapped cable may have prompted the descending streetcar to careen into a building where the steep downtown road bends.

“The city needs answers,” the mayor said, adding that talk of possible causes is “mere speculation.”

Aside from investigations by police, public prosecutors and government transport experts, the company that operates Lisbon's streetcars and buses, Carris, said it has opened its own investigation.

The streetcar, which has been in service since 1914, underwent a scheduled full maintenance program last year and the company conducted a 30-minute visual inspection of it every day, Carris CEO Pedro de Brito Bogas said Thursday.

The streetcar was last inspected nine hours before the derailment, he said during a news conference, but he didn't detail the visual inspection or specify when questioned whether all the cables were tested.

Lisbon’s City Council halted operations of three other funicular streetcars while immediate inspections were carried out.

Felicity Ferriter, a 70-year-old British tourist, said she was unpacking her suitcase at a nearby hotel when she heard “a horrendous crash.”

The couple had seen the streetcar when they arrived and intended to ride on it the next day.

“It was to be one of the highlights of our holiday,” she said, adding: “It could have been us.”

Francesca di Bello, a 23-year-old Italian tourist on a family vacation, had been on the Elevador da Gloria just hours before the derailment.

They walked by the crash site on Thursday, expressing shock at the wreckage. Asked if she would ride a funicular again in Portugal or elsewhere, Di Bello was emphatic: “Definitely not.”

Hernán Muñoz in Lisbon, and Angela Charlton in Paris, contributed to this report.

A couple attend a mass for the victims of a tourist streetcar that derailed and crashed in Lisbon, at the Church of St. Dominic, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ana Brigida)

Police officers inspect the site where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

People walk near the site where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Flowers are photographed at the site where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

A police officer walks at the site where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

View of the site where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Friday, Sept. 5, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, left, Lisbon Mayor Carlos Moedas, right, and Prime Minister Luis Montenegro visit a makeshift memorial for the victims at the site where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ana Brigida)

Workers remove the wreckage of a tourist streetcar that derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ana Brigida)

A person inspects the wreckage of a tourist streetcar that derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

A man reads a sign announcing that the streetcar is out of service in Lisbon, Portugal, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Ana Brigida)

Police officers cordon off the area where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

People look at a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

Police officers inspect the site where a tourist streetcar derailed and crashed in Lisbon, Portugal, Thursday, Sept. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Armando Franca)

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than a year before an American military operation deposed Nicolás Maduro, a senior aide to President Donald Trump argued that the Venezuelan leader had been dispatching gang members into the United States.

"If you’re a dictator of a poor country with a high crime rate, wouldn’t you send your criminals to our open border?” Stephen Miller told reporters in the closing stretch of Trump's 2024 comeback campaign.

Miller now serves as the White House chief of staff for policy, where he plays a prominent role in promoting Trump's policy agenda. His bombastic style and zero-sum worldview have made him a lightning rod within the administration. Critics argue that Miller’s rhetoric about foreign nations and immigrants echoes racist and imperialist ideas that have undergirded military actions by the U.S. and other nations for centuries.

A joint statement from the governments of Spain and five Latin American countries following the Venezuela operation called for countries in the region to engage in “mutual respect, the peaceful settlement of disputes, and nonintervention,” while Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called the administration's Venezuela policy “old-fashioned imperialism.”

“Advocating for policies that put American citizens first isn’t racist. Anyone who says so is either intentionally lying or just plain stupid,” said White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson.

Here's a look at how Miller laid the rhetorical groundwork for this month's attack on Venezuela and what his comments say about the administration's broader worldview.

Shortly after the U.S. operation that captured Maduro, Miller wrote on social media: “Not long after World War II the West dissolved its empires and colonies and began sending colossal sums of taxpayer-funded aid to these former territories (despite have already made them far wealthier and more successful). The West opened its borders, a kind of reverse colonization, providing welfare and thus remittances, while extending to these newcomers and their families not only the full franchise but preferential legal and financial treatment over the native citizenry. The neoliberal experiment, at its core, has been a long self-punishment of the places and peoples that built the modern world."

Two weeks before Maduro's arrest, Miller in December echoed arguments by Trump that the Venezuelan oil industry was stolen from American oil companies:

“American sweat, ingenuity and toil created the oil industry in Venezuela. Its tyrannical expropriation was the largest recorded theft of American wealth and property. These pillaged assets were then used to fund terrorism and flood our streets with killers, mercenaries and drugs,” Miller wrote on social media.

Miller in January claimed to reporters that U.S. military power had ensured compliance from the Caracas government.

“We have an oil embargo in Venezuela for them to do any kind of commerce. They need our permission. We have our massive fleet or armada still present there. This is an active and ongoing U.S. government military operation, and so, of course, we set the terms and conditions," Miller said.

He added: “Our conversations are that we are very much getting full, complete and total cooperation from the government of Venezuela, and as a result of that cooperation, the people of Venezuela are going to become richer than they ever have before. And of course, the United States is going to benefit from this massively in terms of economic, security and military cooperation, counter-narcotics, counterterrorism and every other dimension of our security."

During a wide-ranging January interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper, Miller repeatedly argued for the primacy of American power and criticized the international order the U.S. once led.

“You can talk all you want about international niceties and everything else. But we live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power. These are the iron laws of the world," said Miller.

Miller also dismissed concerns that Trump's vows to take Greenland from Denmark, a fellow member of the NATO military alliance, may trigger a military conflict with Europe.

“Nobody’s going to fight the United States militarily over the future of Greenland," said Miller.

In the same interview, Miller said it would be “absurd and preposterous” and “not even a serious question” to propose the administration support Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado's bid to lead the country because the military would not back her.

Tapper then asked whether the South American country should hold elections.

Miller replied: “The United States is using its military to secure our interests unapologetically in our hemisphere. We’re a superpower, and under President Trump, we are going to conduct ourselves as a superpower. It is absurd that we would allow a nation in our own backyard to become the supplier of resources to our adversaries, but not to us, to hoard weapons from our adversaries, to be able to be positioned as an asset against the United States, rather than on behalf of the United States.”

The anchor pressed Miller on whether sovereign countries had the right to conduct their own affairs.

Miller explained the administration’s stance: “The Monroe Doctrine and the Trump Doctrine is all about securing the national interest of America. For years, we sent our soldiers to die in deserts in the Middle East to try to build them parliaments, to try to build them democracies, to try to give them more oil, try to give them more resources. The future of the free world, Jake, depends on America being able to assert ourselves and our interests without apology." He called for an end to "This whole period that happened after World War II, where the West began apologizing and groveling and engaging in these massive reparations schemes.”

He also defended the administration's operation and echoed his past claims that Maduro had sent criminals into the U.S.: “We’re not going to let tinpot communist dictators send rapists into our country, send drugs into our country, send weapons into our country."

Miller has returned to promoting the administration's stance on domestic issues like immigration and partisan politics.

On Tuesday, following nationwide protests after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer shot and killed a woman in Minnesota, Miller wrote on social media: “Americans voting overwhelmingly for mass deportation. Congress passed laws requiring it and then passed new legislation to fully fund it. The response of the Democrat Party and its activists has been to support and orchestrate violent resistance against federal law enforcement.”

He later added in a separate post, “In case it isn’t clear by now, if Democrats won they would have made every city into Mogadishu or Kabul or Port-au-Prince."

FILE - United States Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller reacts on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Sunday, Oct. 26, 2025. (AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein), File)