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By Amy Langfield

August 28, 2025

By Amy Langfield

August 28, 2025

 
 

Good afternoon and welcome to your afternoon news update from AP. Today, mystery surrounds a $1.2 billion Army contract to build a huge detention tent camp in Texas; New Orleans is marking the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina; and for many families, every meal is a struggle in Venezuela’s economic crisis.

 

UP FIRST

AP Morning Wire

This Aug. 7, 2025, satellite image shows construction of large white tents for a new immigrant detention center at Fort Bliss, a U.S. Army base outside El Paso, Texas. (Planet Labs via AP)

Mystery surrounds $1.2 billion Army contract to build huge detention tent camp in Texas desert

When President Donald Trump’s administration last month awarded a contract worth up to $1.2 billion to build and operate what it says will become the nation’s largest immigration detention complex, it didn’t turn to a large government contractor or even a firm that specializes in private prisons. Instead, it handed the project on a military base to Acquisition Logistics LLC, a small business that has no listed experience running a correction facility and had never won a federal contract worth more than $16 million. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

  • Trump administration asks military base outside Chicago for support on immigration operations
  • Fed official sues Trump over attempt to fire her, challenging his power over the independent agency
  • What polling shows about Trump’s pivot from immigration to crime
 

TOP STORIES

A series of photos of New Orleans. (AP Photos/Gerald Herbert)

PHOTO ESSAY: 20 years after Hurricane Katrina, these then-and-now photos show the power of place

The power of place is real. In an increasingly virtual world, the physical spots where momentous things happened remain potent — and able to evoke some of our deepest-cutting moments. That was the thinking behind these photos from New Orleans on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina. By projecting images of places at some of their worst moments onto the way those places and neighborhoods appear now, something of a rudimentary visual time machine emerges. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

  • How Hurricane Katrina shaped these New Orleans educators
  • A Mississippi city’s tax break spurred post-Katrina building. But will homes stand the next storm?
  • AP reporters reflect on Hurricane Katrina, 20 years later

For many families, every meal is a struggle in Venezuela’s economic crisis

Venezuela is in a protracted crisis – the economy has been unraveling amid changes to foreign aid and cuts to state subsidies. That has made many necessities, including food, unaffordable to millions and experts say kids are suffering the most. Read more.

RELATED COVERAGE ➤

  • PHOTO ESSAY: Millions of Venezuelans struggle with food insecurity
 

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IN OTHER NEWS

Workers pack fresh fish at the landing site in Tanji, Gambia in March. (AP Photo/Grace Ekpu)

West Africa: A ‘sea war’ brews off Gambia as desperate local fishermen attack foreign vessels, and each other

Sanaa: Israeli airstrikes hit Yemeni capital, Houthis say

Water shortages: The Colorado River is in trouble. Some groups want the government to step up

Emmett Till: Gun used in lynching is displayed in a museum 70 years after his murder

Southern California: Cardi B testifies she didn’t touch security guard who’s suing her alleging assault

‘Portrait of a Lady’: Argentina searches for a painting allegedly looted by a Nazi fugitive and spotted in an ad

WATCH: Japan uses AI-generated eruption of Mount Fuji to prepare Tokyo for worst-case scenario

Photo gallery: Highlights from the Venice Film Festival

Cooking: Celebrate summer and Labor Day with this corn and potato salad

 

TRENDING

Guillermo del Toro poses for a portrait on Aug. 12 at his "Bleak House" in Santa Monica, Calif. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP)

Guillermo del Toro almost lost his movie memorabilia in a wildfire. Now, he’s letting some of it go

Many fled