The 2025 NFL season is here, and Brazil is the host of a clash between AFC West heavyweights Friday night: the three-time defending conference champion Kansas City Chiefs and 2024 wild card Los Angeles Chargers.

There’s plenty of fun matchups all over the field. Los Angeles returns much of its defensive core that comprised the NFL’s No. 1 scoring defense for the first of two showdowns with the Chiefs’ dynamic future Hall of Fame duo of quarterback Patrick Mahomes and tight end Travis Kelce. Kansas City will counter Chargers Pro Bowl quarterback Justin Herbert, fresh off a career year in 2024, with the league’s No. 4 scoring defense (19.2 points per game allowed) from a year ago.

It’s also a near guarantee Friday night’s showdown will go down to the wire even though the Chiefs have won the past seven matchups. Six of those meetings were one-score games.

Will the Chiefs, whose 17-game winning streak in one-score games including the playoffs is the longest in NFL history, escape with another narrow victory over their division rivals? Or will the ball finally bounce the Chargers’ way under the lights in Sao Paulo? 

Keep it locked here as CBS Sports provides you with live updates, highlights and analysis as the Chiefs battle the Chargers in Week 1. 

Where to watch Chiefs vs. Chargers

• Date: Friday, Sept. 5 | Time: 8 p.m. ET
• Location: Corinthians Arena (Sao Paulo, Brazil)
• Stream: YouTube
• Follow: CBS Sports App
• Odds: Chiefs -3; O/U 47.5 (via FanDuel Sportsbook)

The Trump administration told Kilmar Abrego Garcia on Friday it is now seeking to deport him to the tiny African kingdom of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, according to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement email obtained by CBS News.

The email from a top ICE official noted that Abrego Garcia’s attorneys have warned he fears being persecuted or tortured in Uganda, where federal authorities threatened to deport him last month after he was detained once again by immigration officials following his release from criminal custody.

The ICE official said Abrego Garcia, through his attorneys, has also claimed fear of being harmed if deported to more than 20 countries, most of them in Latin America. 

In the email, the official called the alleged claims “hard to take seriously,” but added: “Nonetheless, we hereby notify you that your new country of removal is Eswatini, Africa.”

CBS News reached out to representatives and an attorney for Abrego Garcia, asking for comment on the Trump administration’s threat to send their client to Eswatini.

Eswatini is at least the fourth possible destination that the Trump administration has floated for Abrego Garcia, a native of El Salvador who was mistakenly deported in March, held in a notorious Salvadoran prison and returned to the U.S. in June — only to face federal smuggling charges. 

Africa’s sole remaining absolute monarchy, Eswatini is one of several nations that has agreed to the Trump administration’s requests to accept deportees who are not their citizens from the U.S. Earlier this year, the U.S. sent a small group of deportees from Asia and Latin America who had been convicted of violent crimes to Eswatini. Attorneys say the men are being held incommunicado in a prison there.

Abrego Garcia was released from pre-trial jail last month, but ICE almost immediately detained him during a check-in appointment with the agency in Baltimore and began processing him for deportation to Uganda. His attorneys have fought that move, and alleged the government offered to deport him to Costa Rica instead if he agreed to a plea deal in his smuggling case.

And on Thursday, federal authorities argued they could have a legal route to deport him to El Salvador a second time. A 2019 immigration court ruling barred the government from sending him to the Central American country, citing a risk of persecution by gangs. But in a filing obtained by CBS News, the government argued those legal protections would be voided if Abrego Garcia’s request to reopen his immigration court case is granted.

Despite that legal protection issued in 2019, Abrego Garcia was deported to El Salvador in March, which government lawyers acknowledged was an “administrative error.”

A senior Trump administration official said, “Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s lawyers are playing with fire. If their attempts to reopen his immigration case are successful, his own lawyers will have opened the door for his return to El Salvador.”

Abrego Garcia remains in ICE custody in Virginia while his lawyers fight his criminal charges and deportation proceedings. His possible deportation to Uganda was paused by a federal judge in Maryland until at least next month.

Trump administration fights Abrego Garcia’s asylum case

Meanwhile, Abrego Garcia is seeking asylum in the U.S., a legal status granted to people who have a well-founded fear of persecution in another country.

In an immigration court filing Thursday, government lawyers asked a judge not to grant Abrego Garcia’s request to reopen his immigration case so he can seek asylum or some other legal protection, like a green card based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen.

The administration argued that Abrego Garcia is not eligible for asylum and other benefits, citing his alleged affiliation with the gang MS-13, his smuggling charges and a domestic violence complaint filed by his wife. The government alleges Abrego Garcia is a member of a foreign terrorist group, since MS-13 has been classified as such by the State Department.

Abrego Garcia has strongly denied any affiliation with MS-13 and has pleaded not guilty to his smuggling charges, which his attorneys have called “vindictive and selective.” Abrego Garcia’s wife filed a protective order alleging domestic violence in 2021, but she later said she decided not to follow through with the case. Abrego Garcia was not criminally charged in the matter.

Abrego Garcia’s attorney Simon Sandoval-Moshenberg told CBS News that if his client “is allowed a fair trial in immigration court, there’s no way he’s not going to prevail on his claim for asylum.”

“Kilmar Abrego Garcia was tortured in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison earlier this year,” he said. “The only reason he was denied asylum in 2019 was because he did not file within one year of entering the United States, a problem which the government has now solved.”

More details are emerging about a company that allegedly paid Clippers star Kawhi Leonard millions, including that the team came close in 2021 to granting naming rights for its Inglewood arena to Aspiration Partners.

Clippers owner Steve Ballmer nearly granted naming rights to the company, but ended up choosing financial services firm Intuit to grace the $2-billion venue, a source familiar with the matter said. Intuit, which has a $186-billion net worth and developed TurboTax, Credit Karma and QuickBooks, ended up paying a reported $500 million over 23 years for the naming rights. The source requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Four years later, Aspiration, a sustainability firm that also generated and sold carbon credits, is out of business. Co-founder Joseph Sanberg has agreed to plead guilty to defrauding multiple investors and lenders. Listed among creditors in Aspiration’s bankruptcy documents is Leonard, raising questions about whether his $28-million endorsement deal with the company skirted NBA salary cap rules.

One of the investors Sanberg defrauded was Ballmer, listed by Fortune magazine as the sixth-richest person in the world, with a net worth of $157 billion. The Clippers owner invested $50 million in Aspiration, which in turn entered into a $330-million sponsorship agreement with the team.

This week, the Athletic reported allegations that Aspiration agreed to pay Leonard $28 million for a job with no responsibilities. Anonymous sources quoted by the outlet said the payment was an effort to circumvent the NBA salary cap.

Ballmer was interviewed Thursday night by ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne and denied involvement in Leonard’s deal with Aspiration, but the NBA has launched an investigation.

Ballmer said he was “conned” by the company and that the Clippers did not circumvent NBA salary cap rules, which the team was accused of doing in a podcast report by Pablo Torre of the Athletic.

Ballmer told Shelburne that Aspiration offered more than Intuit for dome naming rights, and a Clippers spokesman confirmed that account. However, Ballmer insisted that the Clippers did not violate NBA rules against skirting the salary cap, and the team had agreed to a contract extension with Leonard and the sponsorship deal with Aspiration before the player and the company met.

“We were done with Kawhi, we were done with Aspiration,” Ballmer said. “The deals were all locked and loaded. Then, they did request to be introduced to Kawhi, and under the rules, we can introduce our sponsors to our athletes. We just can’t be involved.”

The Clippers signed Leonard to a four-year, $176-million contract in August 2021 even though he was recovering from a partially torn ACL in his right knee that kept him sidelined the entire 2021-22 season. Ballmer said the sponsorship deal with Aspiration was completed in September 2021 and that the Clippers introduced Leonard to Aspiration two months later.

“As part of our cooperation with the Department of Justice and Securities and Exchange Commission, we produced texts and emails,” Ballmer said. “It was part of the document production in their investigation. We even found the email that made the first introduction [between Aspiration and Leonard]. It was early in November.

“Where could any of this circumvention happened? It couldn’t have, it didn’t. The introduction got made and they were off to the races on their own. We weren’t involved.”

The Boston Sports Journal reported that Leonard did not appear in promotional material as other endorsers did because Aspiration executives “saw no brand synergy with Leonard and chose not to use his services. They instead preferred to partner with climate-focused influencers.”

Ballmer couldn’t explain why Leonard did no marketing or endorsement work for Aspiration, telling Shelburne that he never spoke with the player about his deal with the company.

“I don’t know why they did what they did and I don’t know how different it is, I really don’t,” he said. “And, frankly, any speculation would be crazy. These were guys who committed fraud. Look, they conned me. I made an investment in these guys thinking it was on the up-and-up and they conned me. At this stage, I have no ability to predict why they did anything they did.”

The salary cap is a dollar amount that limits what teams can spend on player payroll. The purpose of the cap is to ensure parity, preventing the wealthiest teams from outspending smaller markets to acquire the best players.

Circumventing the cap by paying a player outside of his contract is strictly prohibited. Teams that exceed the cap must pay luxury tax penalties that grow increasingly severe. Revenues from the tax penalties are then distributed in part to smaller-market teams and in part to teams that do not exceed the salary cap.

The NBA said it will investigate the allegations laid out by Torre. Ballmer said he welcomes the probe. If allegations were made against a team other than the Clippers, “I’d want the league to investigate, to take it seriously,” he said.

“We know the rules, and if anything is not clear, we remind ourselves what the rules are. And we make it absolutely clear we will abide by those rules.”

The cap was implemented before the 1984-85 season at a mere $3.6 million. Ten years later, it was $15.9 million, and 10 years after that it had risen to $43.9 million. By the 2014-15 season it was $63.1 million.

The biggest spike came before the 2016-2017 season when it jumped to $94 million because of an influx of revenue from a new nine-year, $24-billion media rights deal with ESPN and TNT.

Salary cap rules negotiated between the NBA and the players’ union are spelled out in the Collective Bargaining Agreement. Proven incidents of teams circumventing the cap are few, with a violation by the Minnesota Timberwolves in 2000 serving as the most egregious.

The Timberwolves made a secret agreement with free agent and former No. 1 overall draft pick Joe Smith, signing him to a succession of below-market one-year deals in order to enable the team to go over the cap with a huge contract ahead of the 2001-02 season.

The NBA voided his contract, fined the Timberwolves $3.5 million, and stripped them of five first-round draft picks — two of which were later returned. Also, owner Glen Taylor and general manager Kevin McHale were suspended.

Then-NBA commissioner David Stern told the Minnesota Star Tribune at the time: “What was done here was a fraud of major proportions. There were no fewer than five undisclosed contracts tightly tucked away, in the hope that they would never see the light of day. … The magnitude of this offense was shocking.”

According to Article 13 of the CBA, if the Clippers were found to have circumvented the cap, it would be a first offense punishable by a $4.5-million fine, the loss of one first-round draft pick, and voiding of Leonard’s contract. However, the Clippers don’t have a first-round pick until 2027.