JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — A passenger bus crash killed at least 16 people on Indonesia’s main island of Java just after midnight Monday, officials said.
The bus carrying 34 people lost control on a toll road and struck a concrete barrier before rolling onto its side, said Budiono, a search and rescue agency chief who goes by single name like many Indonesians.
The inter-province bus was traveling from the capital Jakarta to the country’s ancient royal city of Yogyakarta when it overturned while entering a curved exit ramp at the Krapyak toll way in Central Java's Semarang city, he said.
“The forceful impact threw several passengers and left them trapped against the bus body,” Budiono said.
Police and rescue teams arrived about 40 minutes after the accident and recovered the bodies of six passengers who died at the scene. Another 10 people died on the way to a hospital or while being treated, Budiono said.
The 18 victims being treated at two nearby hospitals included five people in critical condition and 13 in serious condition, he said.
Television news reports showed the yellow bus overturned on its side and surrounded by National Search and Rescue Agency personnel, police and passersby as ambulances transported victims and the dead away from the accident scene.
Witnesses told authorities the bus was traveling at high speed before the driver lost control, Central Java Police Chief Ribut Hari Wibowo said at Dr. Karyadi General Hospital in Semarang where the bodies were being identified.
The driver was a substitute who sustained serious injuries but was able to communicate while under medical care, he said.
“We are still investigating the cause of the crash and questioning the injured substitute driver,” Wibowo said, adding that police planned to test the driver for prohibited substances including drugs.
In this photo released by the Semarang Search and Rescue Office, rescuers tend to a victim of a deadly bus crash on a toll road in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (Semarang SAR Office via AP)
In this photo released by the Semarang Search and Rescue Office, rescuers carry a survivor of a deadly bus crash on a stretcher, in Semarang, Central Java, Indonesia, Monday, Dec. 22, 2025. (Semarang SAR Office via AP)
GREENBELT, Md. (AP) — A federal judge on Monday will hear arguments about whether Kilmar Abrego Garcia should be returned to immigration custody after being free for just over a week.
Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation to El Salvador has become a lightning rod for both sides of the immigration debate, had been in immigration detention since August. In that time, the government has said it planned to deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia. However, officials have made no effort to deport him to the one country he has agreed to go to — Costa Rica. U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, in Maryland, has even accused the government of misleading her by falsely claiming that Costa Rica was unwilling to take him.
The government's “persistent refusal to acknowledge Costa Rica as a viable removal option, their threats to send Abrego Garcia to African countries that never agreed to take him, and their misrepresentation to the Court that Liberia is now the only country available to Abrego Garcia, all reflect that whatever purpose was behind his detention, it was not for the ‘basic purpose’ of timely third-country removal,” she wrote.
Xinis’ Dec. 11 order that Abrego Garcia be released from immigration custody also concluded that the immigration judge who heard his case in 2019 had failed to issue an order of removal from the U.S., and he cannot be deported anywhere without a removal order.
Abrego Garcia has an American wife and child and has lived in Maryland for years, but he immigrated to the U.S. illegally from El Salvador as a teenager. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country, finding he faced danger there from a gang that had targeted his family. In March, he was mistakenly deported there anyway. U.S. officials resisted calls to bring him back until the Supreme Court weighed in. However, officials have said he cannot stay in the U.S. and have vowed to deport him to a third country.
In filings last week, government attorneys argued that, with or without a final order of removal, they are still working to deport Abrego Garcia, so they can legally detain him during the process.
“If there is no final order of removal, immigration proceedings are ongoing, and Petitioner is subject to pre-final order detention,” they wrote.
Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia's attorneys cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that “because immigration proceedings ‘are civil, not criminal’ detention must be ‘nonpunitive.’” They argued that in Abrego Garcia's case, detention is punitive because the government wants to be allowed to hold him indefinitely without a viable plan to deport him.
“If immigration detention does not serve the legitimate purpose of effectuating reasonably foreseeable removal, it is punitive, potentially indefinite, and unconstitutional,” they wrote.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia cries during a rally ahead of a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia waits to enter the building for a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
Kilmar Abrego Garcia listens during a rally ahead of a mandatory check at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement office in Baltimore, Friday, Dec. 12, 2025, after he was released from detention on Thursday under a judge's order. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)
