Klaebo becomes 1st athlete to win 6 golds at a Winter Games as Norway sweeps 50km mass start

TESERO, Italy (AP) — Norway’s Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo completed his historic gold medal sweep of the men’s cross-country skiing events on Saturday by winning his sixth race and setting the record for the most golds by one athlete in a single Winter Olympics.

Klaebo’s victory in the 50-kilometer mass start race shattered the nearly 50-year record set by American speed skater Eric Heiden, who won five golds in the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.

All of Heiden’s wins were in individual races and two of Klaebo’s have come in team events, so Heiden’s record for individual wins still stands.

Klaebo said he was overwhelmed with emotions crossing the finish line and couldn't describe how he felt after repeating the feat he accomplished at last year's world championships in Trondheim, Norway, when he won all six events.

“It’s unbelievable,” he said. “It still feels really good to race, and I’m always looking forward to going out there and fighting for the medal."

Klaebo’s teammates, Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, took silver, and Emil Iversen, won bronze in a Norwegian sweep.

"I'm starting to believe maybe he is a machine," Nyenget said of Klaebo, who sprinted uphill past him at the end to win in his trademark fashion. “It's close to impossible to beat him in the finish.”

The three Norwegians broke out to an early lead and then continued to build the gap on their chasers.

In the final lap, Nyenget and Klaebo pushed uphill and dropped Iversen. Klaebo stayed in second waiting to launch his winning move.

As the two reached the final hill, Klaebo literally ran away from Nyenget and was bound for glory.

As he glided toward the finish, he pointed his fingers toward the sky, took one stride across the line, toppled over on his right hip and rolled onto his back.

France’s Theo Schely finished fourth, nearly three minutes back and Savelii Korostelev, a Russian competing as an individual neutral athlete, finished fifth at 3:38.3 back.

The highest-placed U.S. skier was Gus Schumacher, who won a silver in a team relay, in 13th place.

The win extends Klaebo's record for most career Winter Olympic gold medals to 11 over three Games. The previous record had been eight, which Klaebo broke Feb. 15.

Klaebo has the second-most Olympic golds overall. U.S. swimming great Michael Phelps has 23.

The win gave Norway a record 18th gold medal and further increased their lead in the total medal count in these games to 40 overall.

The country set the record Friday for the most gold medals won by a nation at a single Winter Olympics when biathlete Johannes Dale-Skjevdal won the 15-kilometer mass start race.

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

Silver medalist Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo and bronze medalist Emil Iversen, all three of Norway, pose on the podium of the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)

Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, of Norway, crosses the finish line to win the silver medal, behind Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, also of Norway, in the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Silver medalist Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, gold medalist Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo and bronze medalist Emil Iversen, all three of Norway, pose after the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. . (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, of Norway, from left, Emil Iversen, of Norway, and Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, of Norway, compete in the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, of Norway, right, leads at the start of the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Theo Schely, of France, competes in the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, from left, Martin Loewstroem Nyenget and Emil Iversen, all three of Norway, compete in the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Kirsty Wigglesworth)

Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo, from left, Emil Iversen and Martin Loewstroem Nyenget, all three of Norway, compete in the cross country skiing men's 50km mass start Classic at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Tesero, Italy, Saturday, Feb. 21, 2026. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

SOCORRO, Texas (AP) — In a Texas town at the edge of the Rio Grande and a tall metal border wall, rumors swirled that federal immigration officials wanted to purchase three hulking warehouses to transform into a detention center.

As local officials scrambled to find out what was happening, a deed was filed showing the Department of Homeland Security had already inked a $122.8 million deal for the 826,000-square-foot (76,738-square-meter) warehouses in Socorro, a bedroom community of 40,000 people outside El Paso.

“Nobody from the federal government bothered to pick up the phone or even send us any type of correspondence letting us know what’s about to take place,” said Rudy Cruz Jr., the mayor of the predominantly Hispanic town of low-slung ranch homes and trailer parks, where orchards and irrigation ditches share the landscape with strip malls, truck stops, recycling plants and distribution warehouses.

Socorro is among at least 20 communities with large warehouses across the U.S. that have become stealth targets for Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s $45-billion expansion of detention centers.

As public support for the agency and President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown sags, communities are objecting to mass detentions and raising concerns that the facilities could strain water supplies and other services while reducing local tax revenue. In many cases, mayors, county commissioners, governors and members of Congress learned about ICE’s ambitions only after the agency bought or leased space for detainees, leading to shock and frustration even in areas that have backed Trump.

“I just feel,” said Cruz, whose wife was born in Mexico, “that they do these things in silence so that they don’t get opposition.”

ICE, which is part of DHS, has purchased at least seven warehouses in Arizona, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Texas, signed deeds show. Other deals have been announced but not yet finalized, though buyers scuttled sales in eight locations.

DHS objected to calling the sites warehouses, stressing in a statement that they would be “very well structured detention facilities meeting our regular detention standards.”

The process has been chaotic at times. ICE this past week acknowledged it made a “mistake” when it announced warehouse purchases in Chester, New York, and Roxbury, New Jersey. Roxbury then announced Friday that the sale there had closed.

DHS has confirmed it is looking for more detention space but hasn’t disclosed individual sites ahead of acquisitions. Some cities learned that ICE was scouting warehouses through reporters. Others were tipped off by a spreadsheet circulating online among activists whose source is unclear.

It wasn’t until Feb. 13 that the scope of the warehouse project was confirmed, when the governor’s office in New Hampshire, where there is backlash to a planned 500-bed processing center, released a document from ICE showing the agency plans to spend $38.3 billion to boost detention capacity to 92,000 beds.

Since Trump took office, the number of people detained by ICE has increased to 75,000 from 40,000, spread across more than 225 sites.

ICE could use the warehouses to consolidate and to increase capacity. The document describes a project that includes eight large-scale detention centers, capable of housing 7,000 to 10,000 detainees each, and 16 smaller regional processing centers. The document also refers to the acquisition of 10 existing “turnkey” facilities.

The project is funded through the big tax and spending cuts bill passed by Congress last year that nearly doubled DHS' budget. To build the detention centers, the Trump administration is using military contracts.

Those contracts allow a lot of secrecy and for DHS to move quickly without following the usual processes and safeguards, said Charles Tiefer, a professor emeritus of law at the University of Baltimore Law School.

In Socorro, the ICE-owned warehouses are so large that 4 1/2 Walmart Supercenters could fit inside, standing in contrast to the remnants of the austere Spanish colonial and mission architecture that defines the town.

At a recent City Council meeting, public comments stretched for hours. “I think a lot of innocent people are getting caught up in their dragnet,” said Jorge Mendoza, an El Paso County retiree whose grandparents immigrated from Mexico.

Many speakers invoked concerns about three recent deaths at an ICE detention facility at the nearby Fort Bliss Army base.

Even communities that backed Trump in 2024 have been caught off guard by ICE's plans and have raised concerns.

In rural Pennsylvania's Berks County, commissioner Christian Leinbach called the district attorney, the sheriff, the jail warden and the county’s head of emergency services when he first heard ICE might buy a warehouse in Upper Bern Township, 3 miles (4.8 kilometers) from his home.

No one knew anything.

A few days later, a local official in charge of land records informed him that ICE had bought the building — promoted by developers as a “state-of-the art logistics center” — for $87.4 million.

“There was absolutely no warning,” Leinbach said during a meeting in which he raised concerns that turning the warehouse into a federal facility means a loss of more than $800,000 in local tax dollars.

ICE has touted the income taxes its workers would pay, though the facilities themselves will be exempt from property taxes.

In Social Circle, Georgia, which also strongly supported Trump in 2024, officials were stunned by ICE’s plans for a facility that could hold 7,500 to 10,000 people after first learning about it through a reporter.

The city, which has a population of just 5,000 and worries about the infrastructure needs for such a detention center, only heard from DHS after the $128.6 million sale of a 1 million-square-foot (92,900-square-meter) warehouse was completed. Like Socorro and Berks County, Social Circle questioned whether the water and sewage system could keep up.

ICE has said it did due diligence to ensure the sites don’t overwhelm city utilities. But Social Circle said the agency's analysis relied on a yet-to-be built sewer treatment plant.

“To be clear, the City has repeatedly communicated that it does not have the capacity or resources to accommodate this demand, and no proposal presented to date has demonstrated otherwise,” the city said in a statement.

And in the Phoenix suburb of Surprise, officials sent a scathing letter to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem after ICE without warning bought a massive warehouse in a residential area about a mile from a high school. Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, a Democrat, raised the prospect of going to court to have the site declared a public nuisance.

Back in Socorro, people waiting to speak against the ICE facility spilled out of the City Council chambers, some standing beside murals paying tribute to the World War II-era Braceros Program that allowed Mexican farmworkers to be guest workers in the U.S. The program stoked Socorro’s economy and population before President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s administration in the 1950s began mass deportations aimed at people who had crossed the border illegally.

Eduardo Castillo, formerly an attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, told city officials it is intimidating but “not impossible” to challenge the federal government.

“If you don’t at least try,” he said, “you will end up with another inhumane detention facility built in your jurisdiction and under your watch.”

Hollingsworth reported from Kansas City, Missouri. Holly Ramer in Concord, New Hampshire, and Marc Levy in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, also contributed.

A warehouse purchased by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Surprise, Ariz., is seen Saturday, Feb. 14, 2026. (AP Photo/Ty ONeil)

Three hulking warehouses light up the night in Socorro, Texas, Thursday, Feb. 12, 2026, amid concern about the purchase of the property by federal authorities in connection with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s $45-billion expansion of immigrant detention centers. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

A public comment session takes place at a City Council meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Socorro, Texas, regarding the purchase of three hulking warehouses in connection with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's expansion of immigrant detention centers. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

Mayor Rudy Cruz Jr., right, listens to public comments at a City Council meeting on Wednesday, Feb. 11, 2026, in Socorro, Texas, regarding the purchase of three hulking warehouses in connection with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's expansion of immigrant detention centers. (AP Photo/Morgan Lee)

A newly built warehouse is seen on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, in Social Circle, Ga., where officials are concerned about U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement's plans connected to a $45-billion expansion of immigrant detention centers. (AP Photo/Mike Stewart)