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Internet Disruption; Nuclear Agency Begins Furloughs; ICE in Court. Aired 1-1:30p ET

Aired October 20, 2025 - 13:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: ICE feeling the heat, a judge questioning federal officials over tactics used during the immigration crackdown in Chicago. We're following the latest from court.

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: Outage outrage. Millions of people worldwide are feeling it today, a major Internet disruption bringing down popular Web sites and impacting everything from banks and social media to airlines.

Plus, a humiliating heist that just took seven minutes to carry out, how a group of thieves managed to steal priceless jewels from the world's most visited museum and what authorities are doing right now to recover them before it's too late.

We're following these major developing stories and many more all coming in right here to CNN NEWS CENTRAL.

SANCHEZ: We begin this hour with top officials from ice and Border Patrol testifying before a federal judge in Chicago about the tactics being used to carry out the Trump administration's immigration crackdown in and around the Windy City.

The judge issuing a restraining order this month restricting agents' crowd control tactics and use of force against protesters and journalists. But she says she's still hearing reports of tear gas being deployed without warning and she has serious concerns her orders are not being followed.

Let's get some perspective with Ankush Khardori. He's a former federal prosecutor and a senior writer for "Politico" magazine.

Ankush, great to see you, as always.

So, Ellis actually demanded that the ice field director, Russell Hott, appear in court today, but he's returned to D.C. on what DHS is calling a planned return. Is that typical? What do you make of it?

ANKUSH KHARDORI, SENIOR WRITER, POLITICO: It is unusual. Usually, when a judge requests a specific government official show up,

they expect that official to show up and that person shows up. So, no, it's unusual.

SANCHEZ: There are two federal officials taking his place essentially and testifying. What do you think the judge wants answered from those officials?

KHARDORI: Well, I think there are going to be two levels of questions, right? One is, what can you tell me about what's actually happening, right, meaning I saw this news report about tear gas being used in this neighborhood. What can you tell me about the facts?

And, two, and this I think is important, what is your basis of knowledge? How do you know this? Is it because someone else told you? Is it because you were directing them? Is it because you have reviewed field reports? This has been a big issue actually with some of the government's representations in court. They will put people up who know little to nothing about the relevant issues.

So I expect her to put some pressure on that level of analysis too.

SANCHEZ: Relevant issues in terms of the response that we have seen thus far and, in her words, a skepticism that her orders are being followed.

KHARDORI: Right.

SANCHEZ: This may seem like a dumb question, but how does a judge know whether the orders are being followed or not? How does she determine that?

KHARDORI: She's doing what she should be doing, right? She's seen a report, some indication that it's not being followed, right, for instance, tear gas being used as a residential neighborhood. Her order required that that only occur if there's some sort of actual threat, imminent threat to the officers.

So the question is going to be, here's a report. I'm going to call the relevant people in. I'm going to ask them some questions. The other lawyer is going to get to ask them some questions. It's going to be an adversarial process. And the government's going to be able to offer its proof in support of its version of events, and the challengers will offer their proof in their support of it.

But it's a slow process to determine that the government has violated a court order, and it's an incremental one.

SANCHEZ: She has issued an order demanding that certain officials on the ground, not undercover agents, and not certain federal agents, wear body cameras. There's been reporting that there's been a dispute about ICE agents not wanting to work with FBI agents who are wearing body cameras.

How does that all work? And what is the argument from DOJ? Because they're opposing this, right? KHARDORI: Yes, they are opposing this. It has been limited -- the

judge limited it to exclude some sort of undercover operations, that sort of thing. The use of body cameras is a complicated area of the law. And there are exceptions. It's not necessarily mandated across all federal officers.

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But I do think, in this particular context, she is right to be sort of pushing the line on this. I think it's become apparent, quite honestly, that the anonymity of the agents, the masking has become a real problem.

SANCHEZ: Some of that reporting indicated that those agents were concerned about some of their tactics being made public. And I think that raises a number of red flags.

For the judge, how far can she go in getting answers from DOJ in terms of what officials she might designate accountable? And also, if she's found that her rulings are ignored, what options are at her disposal?

KHARDORI: Well, we saw a version of this. You remember with the Alien Enemies Act deportations, right?

SANCHEZ: Right.

KHARDORI: We had Judge Boasberg here in D.C. raising questions about whether his orders were followed.

And the process of sort of airing that out is a slow one. You have to bring folks in, determine whether or not there was an actual intentional violation of the order at some point, either by officials on the ground or maybe there were misrepresentations by DOJ, by lawyers at DOJ to the judge. That remains to be seen, right?

But you want to establish first that there is an actual factual basis for this. And then the sorts of sanctions that may follow could be sort of referrals to the bar, for instance, or discipline for lawyers in that sort of context, but there are gradations to it.

So this is an area of the law where things tend to move a little slowly, but this judge, I think, correctly wants some answers quickly.

SANCHEZ: Ankush Khardori, great analysis. Appreciate the expertise. Thanks for being with us.

KHARDORI: Thanks.

SANCHEZ: Brianna.

KEILAR: The third longest government shutdown in U.S. history just hit its 20th day with the stalemate on Capitol Hill showing no signs of ending any time soon. And the furloughs impacting thousands of federal workers are now coming for a critical group of employees at the agency that oversees the U.S. nuclear stockpile. The Energy Department says the National Nuclear Security

Administration will begin furloughing most of its staff today. We're talking about 1,400 federal workers, which means fewer than 400 will remain on the job.

CNN's Rene Marsh is with us with more on this story.

This department has never had to furlough workers, right, during a shutdown, so what's the immediate impact here?

RENE MARSH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yes, this is a first.

And the 1,400 who will be furloughed, those employees will now stay home, and, as you said, more than -- fewer than 400 will remain on the job. What this essentially means is that the federal workers who are in charge of the oversight looking over the work that these contractors are doing as they design and build these nuclear weapons, they will remain home.

The Department of Energy telling us in a statement that, again, this is the first time that have to experience this. They said that they have done all that they could up until this point. They tried to extend their funding, but they essentially have run out of money.

And then there is this other wave of disruption that is lingering in the background. About a week from now, Brianna, federal contractors, who also depend on federal monies, and they are doing the work, the building and the designing of these nuclear weapons, they too could run out of money as soon as a week from now.

And that would just essentially mean that all of that work that they're doing will grind to a halt. So, again, this morning, the vast majority of these employees at this agency, they are being furloughed. And so they do the oversight. And then a week from now, the contractors doing the work, the designing, the building of these weapons, they too could begin to run out of money.

KEILAR: How risky is this when it comes to national security?

MARSH: I talked to my sources within NNSA about this. They say right now the national security of the country is not in danger at this moment.

The big concern is really the big picture, the long-term impact here. They say that guards will continue to watch over facilities that have sensitive materials and nuclear weapons, so that those people will remain on the job. But the big picture is the reliability, the long- term reliability of the nuclear stockpile.

They will not be able to stay on schedule for delivering weapons to the military, stay on schedule for their maintenance, refurbishing these nuclear weapons, if this shutdown drags on for weeks and weeks to come.

KEILAR: Those sound like very important tasks.

MARSH: Yes.

KEILAR: Rene Marsh, thank you very much for the report.

Still to come: President Trump meeting the Australian prime minister at the White House, what he said about the upcoming China meeting, Putin and his new threat to -- quote -- "eradicate Hamas" if it doesn't abide by his cease-fire agreement.

Plus, Amazon says the issues that brought down Internet sites for banks, airlines, delivery apps and many other Web sites has been -- quote -- "fully mitigated." We have the latest on that.

And then later, the latest on the manhunt for the thieves that snatched precious and priceless jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris.

We have that and much more coming up on CNN NEWS CENTRAL

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SANCHEZ: We are closely watching the White House today, where President Trump is meeting with Australia's prime minister, earlier, the two leaders signing a rare earth minerals deal, as President Trump then ramped up pressure on China with a new trade threat.

Meantime, his feud with Colombia is escalating, the president saying he will announce new tariffs today as fallout builds over the U.S.' recent deadly strikes on alleged drug boats.

Let's take you live at the White House now with CNN's Kristen Holmes.

Kristen, the president balancing news on several foreign policy fronts today.

KRISTEN HOLMES, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Yes, that's right.

I mean, we will start with Ukraine. He talked about his phone call with Vladimir Putin, that 2.5-hour phone call last week, in which he said, confirmed that he had told Putin to stop striking civilian targets, although he then continued to say that it was mostly soldiers who were dying.

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We also heard him say that he didn't believe that Ukraine would win the war, but that maybe they could win the war, kind of hedging on something that he had said about a month-and-a-half ago, when he seemed to imply that Ukraine seriously could win the war, backing away from that statement.

Now, on top of that, he talked about what was going on in the Middle East, saying that if Hamas continues their actions and continues to violate the pact, that they would eradicate Hamas. When asked specifically about who the we is, as we have continued to press him on, he said it wouldn't have to be U.S. troops, it wouldn't have to be the U.S. There are a number of countries that have offered to help on that front.

And then the big one was China. We know that President Trump and Xi are meeting at the end of the month. He was rather bullish on that meeting, saying that he thinks they have a good relationship, that he believes that they're going to have a fair deal, at one point starting to talk about Taiwan.

There were a lot of questions about that saying he didn't believe that Xi was going to go after Taiwan, which if you talk to a number of foreign policy experts, they would disagree with that front, but clearly in a space moving forward on China where he feels like it's going to go in the right direction, despite the fact that he has threatened these enormous tariffs to take effect on November 1 should it not go in that direction.

SANCHEZ: And, Kristen, we just learned that the Colombian Embassy is recalling the U.S. -- the Colombian ambassador to the U.S. back to Bogota. What are you hearing about that?

HOLMES: Yes, I mean, we're really seeing this escalate and escalate quickly.

Part of the reason that he is being recalled back to Bogota is that he -- is that President Trump not only threatened to cut off aid to Colombia, but, in fact, made a number of pretty disparaging comments about the leader there, at one point over the weekend saying he was the worst president they have ever had. He called him a lunatic.

And, of course, this is after we have already heard President Trump saying that he was an illegal drug leader. Now, all of this is stemming from the fact that the leader of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, has criticized those lethal strikes off the coast of Venezuela, saying that they are not legal, that they should stop.

That has now caused this ripple effect here. We did hear President Trump confirm that he plans on ramping up tariffs on Colombia as early as today.

SANCHEZ: Kristen Holmes from the White House, thank you so much for that update.

Up next: the Internet on the fritz, millions of users worldwide reporting disruptions after an outage temporarily brings down popular apps and Internet sites. We have the details next.

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KEILAR: A new update from the world's number one provider of Internet cloud services. Amazon Web Services saying moments ago that its plan to fix ongoing Internet connectivity issues appears to be working. The company has been back and forth on whether it was seeing progress

after a global outage impacted Web sites and apps big and small, everything from banking services and airlines to social networks, online shopping sites, entertainment and gaming platforms, thousands of services, millions of people worldwide all forced offline.

Let's bring in CNN tech reporter Clare Duffy.

Clare, this is huge. What's happening here?

CLARE DUFFY, CNN TECH REPORTER: Yes, Brianna, the Internet has been on a real roller coaster this morning, but the latest I can tell you is that Amazon says its services appear to be recovering once again.

This outage started to be reported around 3:00 a.m. Eastern time today as millions of users, users on the East Coast started to wake up to their services, their online apps and Web sites that they wanted to visit not functioning.

Within about three hours, Amazon said that it had identified the root cause and fully mitigated that issue. But, more recently, Amazon said those connectivity issues had come back and were continuing. Now the company says it has identified the problem and its services are recovering. We will see how long that stands.

But I think it helps to understand here what exactly Amazon Web Services is because this sits at the heart of so much of the Internet. Previously, lots of businesses and online services would operate their own computers, their own services to put their Web sites online. Now, millions of businesses rent that server space from Amazon Web Services, which for them is cheaper and easier as long, as Amazon doesn't have one of the outages like we saw today.

The impact of this, as you said there, has been really broad, United and Delta Air Lines Web sites down, Snapchat, Facebook, "Fortnite," Perplexity, Coinbase, U.K. government and banking Web sites. It really just gives you a sense of how much of the Internet is reliant on this one service provider.

And one expert I spoke to told me that the financial impact of this could be in the billions of dollars as consumers haven't been able to spend money normally, people haven't been able to do their jobs, so a really significant impact, and hopefully this is now truly on the mend.

KEILAR: Yes, not to mention the Wordle. If you can't do your job, you need the Wordle, right?

So why do these outages keep happening?

DUFFY: Yes, I mean, I think it gives you a sense of just how much of the Internet is reliant on these relatively small number of infrastructure providers.

The Internet used to be this really decentralized place, but we have come to a world where so many businesses, so many Web sites and apps and services are reliant on a small number of providers. And these outages can have a number of causes. It could be a faulty update or a bad line of code, occasionally a cyberattack, although there's no evidence that was the case here.

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But when one of these things happens, it can take down thousands, if not millions of services that people around the world use.

KEILAR: Yes, huge impacts here.

Clare, thank you for the update on that.

And still ahead: the world's largest museum remaining closed following a historic heist -- why some of the Louvre's stolen jewels may never be recovered.

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KEILAR: The Louvre is closed today after a brazen daytime heist that took just a few minutes to carry out. This is some new video showing the moment that thieves broke through display cabinets. They took off with priceless artifacts from the French crown jewels.