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March 15, 2026

2 entries on this date.

Interim U.S. Attorney Darin Smith committed grand-jury misconduct in Wyoming case, calling defendants 'murderers'

On March 15, 2026, in Casper, Wyoming, interim U.S. Attorney Darin Smith told a federal grand jury the nine defendants in a firearms, drug, and child pornography case were "bad guys" and "murderers" before any evidence was presented, said deliberations "won't take long," and passed out business cards inviting improper ex parte contact with jurors. Three federal judges later found the conduct "deeply concerning" and dismissed the resulting indictments without prejudice.

AP investigation revealed DHS, ICE, State Department and USCIS immigration data had gone stale amid Trump's deportation push

An Associated Press investigation published March 15, 2026 found that federal immigration-enforcement data from the Department of Homeland Security, ICE, the State Department, and USCIS had gone stale or stopped updating amid the Trump administration's mass-deportation push. DHS's Office of Homeland Security Statistics had not updated its monthly enforcement reports since early 2025, ICE's arrest/removal dashboard had not updated past January 2025, and State Department and USCIS statistics had also gone stale, while DHS made inconsistent, unverifiable public claims about deportation totals. Researchers, including the UC Berkeley/UCLA Deportation Data Project, had to pursue FOIA litigation to reconstruct basic enforcement figures.