Guatemala President Bernardo Arévalo said Friday he has not signed an agreement with the United States to take asylum seekers from other countries, pushing back against comments from U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem.

Noem and Arévalo met Thursday in Guatemala and the two governments publicly signed a joint security agreement that would allow U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers to work in the capital’s airport, training local agents how to screen for terrorism suspects.

But Noem said she had also been given a signed document she called a safe third country agreement. She said she reached a similar deal in Honduras and said they were important outcomes of her trip.

“Honduras and now Guatemala after today will be countries that will take those individuals and give them refugee status as well,” Noem said. “We’ve never believed that the United States should be the only option, that the guarantee for a refugee is that they go somewhere to be safe and to be protected from whatever threat they face in their country. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the United States.”

Asked about Noem’s comments Friday during a news conference, Arévalo said that nothing new was signed related to immigration and that Guatemala was still operating under an agreement reached with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in February.

That agreement stipulated that Guatemala would continue accepting the deportation of its own citizens, but also citizens of other Central American nations as a transit point on their way home.

UV president resigns under DEI pressure

The University of Virginia’s president, James E. Ryan, has told the board overseeing the school that he will resign in the face of demands by the Trump administration that he step aside in order to help resolve a Justice Department inquiry into the school’s diversity, equity and inclusion efforts, according to three people briefed on the matter.

The New York Times reported Thursday that the Justice Department had demanded Ryan’s resignation as a condition to settle a civil rights investigation into the school’s diversity practices.

In a letter to the head of the board overseeing the university sent Thursday, Ryan said that he had planned to step down at the end of the next academic year but “given the circumstances and today’s conversations” he had decided “with deep sadness” to tender his resignation, according to one of the people familiar with the matter.

Intelligence agency staff to be cut by Trump

President Donald Trump is pressing ahead with plans to slash staff at the top U.S. spy agency, determined to act at a time when he has openly challenged its director and rejected intelligence findings that contradict his public statements.

Trump has openly discussed dismantling the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, including when he nominated Tulsi Gabbard to lead it, according to people familiar with the situation, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. He’s floated the idea again more recently, they said.

Trump and members of his Cabinet also appear to be pushing Gabbard to the sideline to work with CIA Director John Ratcliffe on intelligence matters instead, other people familiar with the matter said.

The deliberations to cut ODNI were already in motion before Trump rejected Gabbard’s assessment that Iran wasn’t actively seeking a nuclear bomb and then clashed with the intelligence community this week over early findings that suggested his strike on the country’s nuclear sites didn’t fully destroy them.

The White House denied Gabbard is being sidelined.

Attorneys for Abrego Garcia want him in jail

Attorneys for Kilmar Abrego Garcia asked a federal judge in Tennessee on Friday to delay his release from jail because of “contradictory statements” by President Donald Trump’s administration over whether or not he’ll be deported upon release.

A federal judge in Nashville, Tenn., has been preparing to release Abrego Garcia to await trial on human smuggling charges. But she’s been holding off over concerns that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement would swiftly detain him and try to deport him again.

Abrego Garcia’s attorneys are now asking the judge to continue to detain him following statements by Trump administration officials “because we cannot put any faith in any representation made on this issue by” the Justice Department.

Democrats decry State Dept. layoffs

Sixty Democratic lawmakers told Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Friday to refrain from moving ahead with mass layoffs of State Department employees and to lift a hiring freeze at a time of widening global crises.

In a letter to Rubio, the lawmakers said they were concerned about reported plans to fire about 700 career diplomats, known as Foreign Service officers, based mainly on the fact that those employees are currently posted in the United States rather than overseas.

Diplomats spend much of their career abroad but rotate through Washington and other U.S. posts such as the United Nations, so firing people who happen to be currently on assignment in the country is seen as arbitrary and unfair by many State Department employees as well as by the lawmakers.

Newsom sues Fox over Trump coverage

Gov. Gavin Newsom of California sued Fox News on Friday, accusing the network of defaming him in its coverage of a phone call he had with President Donald Trump this month.

The suit, filed in Delaware, where Fox News is incorporated, seeks damages of at least $787 million and a court order prohibiting Fox from broadcasting or posting segments that mistakenly say Newsom lied about his call with Trump.

Newsom has adopted an increasingly combative approach with the president since Trump sent military troops to Los Angeles this month amid his administration’s immigration crackdown.

Fox News responded by questioning the sincerity of Newsom’s lawsuit.

The allegations at the heart of the lawsuit stem from volleys between Newsom and Trump after the president invoked a rarely used federal statute to seize control of the California National Guard over the governor’s objections to respond to protests against federal immigration raids. In covering the sequence of events, Newsom alleges, Fox News made deceptive video edits and false statements.

— From news services