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They asked nicely at first.After an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three whod recently moved to Minneapolis, local law enforcement officials requested a partnership with the federal government to investigate the case, as theyd done in past shootings involving federal agents.When the Trump administration refused to cooperate, Minnesota prosecutors ratcheted up their efforts. They sent a series of strongly worded legal letters demanding evidence in the Good shooting as well as the shootings of Julio Cesar Sosa-Celis, a Venezuelan immigrant who was wounded a week after Good was shot, and Alex Pretti, who was killed on Jan. 24.Still, the administration rebuffed the requests.This week, prosecutors from Hennepin County and the state of Minnesota took the next step to force the Trump administrations hand. They filed a federal lawsuit against the departments of Homeland Security and Justice over the evidence in the shootings, an action that Hennepin County Attorney Mary Moriarty, whose jurisdiction covers Minneapolis, characterized as unprecedented in American history.The Trump administration has declined to release the names of the agents involved in the shootings, even after the Minnesota Star Tribune and ProPublica identified the officers involved in the Good and Pretti incidents.The federal government has refused to cooperate with state law enforcement, which is unique, rare and simply cannot be tolerated, Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison told reporters. [We] cant sit around and let them do it.Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison holds up a copy of the states lawsuit against the federal government at a press conference on Tuesday. Peter DiCampo/ProPublicaIn the standoff over evidence, the case has already become a game of constitutional chicken over states rights versus federal immunity, a battle that will have implications for others who wish to hold agents in the presidents immigration surge criminally accountable.So far, neither side is showing signs of backing down, foreshadowing a fight that could take years. If prosecutors do eventually file charges against federal agents involved in the shootings, legal experts said the path to trial, much less winning convictions, will be filled with legal and procedural challenges.State prosecutors across the country are going to be watching what happens in Minnesota really closely, said Alicia Bannon, director of the judiciary program at the nonprofit Brennan Center for Justice.The first test for prosecutors, if they file charges, would be to prove the agents dont qualify for immunity through the Constitutions supremacy clause, a rarely invoked legal doctrine that protects federal officers from state prosecutions if theyre acting lawfully and within the scope of their duties.Failing to pass that test would likely end the case.The U.S. Supreme Court hasnt taken up a case involving supremacy clause immunity in over 100 years, Bannon said, and judges have come down differently on legal issues related to its application.Theres no easy answer as to whether Minnesota will be able to get past a supremacy clause defense, said Jill Hasday, a constitutional law professor at the University of Minnesota.That depends on the facts, but probably the odds are stacked against it, she said.Even if they survive such a fight, the cases could be dogged by a series of logistical challenges. Moriarty, who has been leading the investigations, has decided not to seek reelection and will leave office at the end of the year. That means whoever wins the election for her seat in November could inherit the prosecutions.In addition to not having the names of the agents, prosecutors dont know where those agents are now. Minnesota may need to extradite them, potentially from a MAGA-leaning state that may balk at sending them to Hennepin County to stand trial.Will the federal government or other states cooperate with that? I think the answer to that is sort of iffy, said Ilya Somin, a law professor at George Mason University in Virginia. (Indeed, in a case involving a doctor charged with illegally mailing abortion medication to a Louisiana woman, the state of California has rejected an extradition request, citing its own laws protecting doctors from prosecution elsewhere.)The fight is focused on three shootings. But Moriartys office has opened criminal investigations into 14 additional cases of potentially unlawful behavior by federal agents during Operation Metro Surge, which started in early December and has wound down over the past few weeks.The other cases Moriarty is examining involve allegations of excessive force or other misconduct by federal agents, such as an incident in early January in which agents allegedly used force on staff and students on the grounds of a high school.Prosecutors are also investigating Gregory Bovino, the outgoing Border Patrol commander who helped to lead immigration surges into several American cities and who was seen on video lobbing green-smoke canisters into crowds at a park in Minneapolis. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said at the time that Bovino and other agents were responding to a hostile crowd.The tension has played out in a series of demand letters sent by Moriarty to the Justice and Homeland Security departments. Public transparency is vitally important in these cases not just for the people of Hennepin County and Minnesota, but for the public nationwide, Moriarty wrote in one of the letters. The only way to achieve transparency is through investigation conducted at a local level.Gregory Bovino, at the time a Border Patrol commander, and federal agents confront protesters following the shooting death of Good on Jan. 7. Prosecutors say they are investigating Bovino and the use of aggressive force by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents during their deployment to the Twin Cities. Tim EvansIn January, after the shooting of Good, federal officials had agreed to participate in a joint investigation with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension Minnesotas state police agency tasked with examining use of deadly force cases according to the letters signed by Moriarty.State officials presumed theyd be able to examine evidence, such as the car Good was driving and the guns used to shoot her and the other victims. But the investigators later learned through public statements by high-ranking Trump administration officials that federal agents were no longer planning to share evidence, the letter states.Local and state prosecutors dont have the authority to subpoena them for evidence like in a typical criminal investigation. The demand letters, called Touhy letters, are formal written requests, used as an alternative to a subpoena, asking a federal agency to provide evidence or testimony in a case in which the government is not a party. Moriarty sought an extensive list of evidence in the shootings, from the guns fired by the agents in all three cases to official reports, agent GPS devices and witness statements. The Touhy letters asked for a response by Feb. 17.Normally, the federal government complies with Touhy letters as a matter of protocol, as long as releasing the information doesnt violate an internal policy, said Timothy Johnson, a political science and law professor at the University of Minnesota.But on Feb. 13, the FBI told BCA investigators that it wont share investigative materials in the Pretti case, BCA Superintendent Drew Evans said in a statement. Evans said the police agency had reiterated its requests for evidence in the Good and Sosa-Celis cases.More than a month after the deadline set by prosecutors, the Trump administration still hasnt turned over the materials.There has been no cooperation from federal authorities, BCA spokesperson Michael Ernster said.The agents involved in the shootings have not spoken publicly, but a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security defended Goods shooting, saying the agent acted in self-defense. They said the Pretti shooting was under investigation by the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, with the Border Patrol conducting its own investigation. Those investigations could result in discipline or charges, including for civil rights violations.The Department of Homeland Security spokesperson said federal officials found that, after Sosa-Celis shooting, officers made false statements. But the agency did not say whether it would cooperate with the local authorities or follow a court ruling requiring it to do so.The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment or to questions. Neither agency has responded to the lawsuit.Moriarty called the lawsuit critically important to investigating the shooting cases but also said she had not made any decisions on whether her office will file charges.There has to be an investigation anytime a federal agent or a state agent takes the life of a person in our community, she said. And ultimately the decision may be it was lawful. You dont know, but thats why you do the investigation. You are transparent with the results of that investigation, and you are public with your transparency about the decision and how you got there.But a lawsuit does not guarantee that prosecutors will get all they want. The question then becomes, even if Hennepin County or Minneapolis wins the suit, will they comply then? Johnson asked. And the answer is probably no.If the Trump administration did eventually defy a judges order, he said, prosecutors could try to appeal up to the U.S. Supreme Court. As far as what could happen next: Its anyones guess.The post Minnesota Kicks Off Legal Battle With Trump Administration to Hold ICE Shooters Accountable appeared first on ProPublica.

The mayor of Hammond, Indiana, says train company Norfolk Southern is reneging on a promise to partly finance the construction of a pedestrian overpass at a dangerous rail crossing that was the subject of a ProPublica investigation. And without the funding, he added, the project is dead.Officials began pursuing the overpass in 2023, after the news organization and its reporting partner, InvestigateTV, documented dozens of children crawling through, over and under trains that blocked them from getting to and from school in the city.Hammond is a nearby suburb of Chicago, the busiest train hub in the nation. At the time, the area served as a kind of parking lot for Norfolk Southerns trains as they idled between two busy intersections a growing problem in Hammond and railroad communities like it across the country as trains get longer.After publication, Norfolk Southerns CEO at the time, Alan Shaw, called Hammond Mayor Thomas McDermott to discuss solutions, including a pedestrian overpass. The mayor said Shaw committed to paying the full cost of the project. A spokesperson for Norfolk Southern told ProPublica the company never made any such commitment.The company would later make operational changes, such as stopping the trains in a different location to reduce the impact to Hammond and the schoolchildren. Still, one child was captured on video jumping from a moving train after Norfolk Southern said it made those changes.For a while, the overpass effort seemed to have some momentum. The company paid for engineering and design plans, and in June 2023 the city received a $7.7 million federal grant for the project. While it required a local match of $2.6 million, McDermott said Shaw agreed to pay it.The mayor said the company made no written commitment, and Shaw was fired by the railroad in 2024. Now, McDermott is accusing Norfolk Southern, under its current CEO, Mark George, of backing out of the handshake deal. The new guy got amnesia, the mayor told ProPublica.Shaw did not respond to messages seeking comment.A spokesperson for Norfolk Southern, which reported $2.9 billion in profit in 2025 according to its Securities and Exchange Commission filings, disputed McDermotts claims that the company agreed to provide the matching funds but said it did provide the city with $450,000 and assisted officials in successfully applying for a federal grant to make the citys plan for a pedestrian bridge possible.The spokesperson also said that the changes the company made in 2023 to reduce the impact on schools are working.More than two years later, these changes continue to yield results, including a nearly 50% drop in blocked crossing calls into our communications center at this location, the spokesperson wrote in an email.But local and state officials say Hammond is still seeing blocked crossings near schools. Carlotta Blake-King, the local school board president, told ProPublica that district employees saw children at a different location traversing a stopped train as they left school as recently as last week.A Norfolk Southern spokesperson acknowledged the blockage but said it was not typical for that location. The company said its trains normally have clear passage through that area without stopping. We never want to inconvenience our communities with a stopped train, and we encourage everyone to always stay off railroad tracks and never attempt to cross between rail cars, the spokesperson wrote.McDermott said hes also noticed Norfolk Southerns trains beginning to block the roadways again and worries that it will slowly but surely resume to where it was.Ive already been lied to once by Norfolk Southern, the mayor said, so I have no reason to believe that theyre going to keep on trying to reduce the impacts upon our city.McDermott said the community will ultimately see some relief in the form of a vehicle overpass in the area where the children routinely encounter the train. The project, however, wont be completed until at least 2029. And while it will include a path for pedestrians, it wont help many students, as they would need to walk at least a mile out of their way to reach it.Indiana state Rep. Carolyn Jackson, a Democrat who represents the Hammond area and has in the past introduced legislation to address blocked crossings, said she doesnt want the communitys children to grow up thinking that crawling under or over the train is a way of life. Her fear is that without the bridge, a child will be severely injured or killed in Hammond.McDermott said he has the same fear: I hope to God, and I pray it never happens.The post Walkway Over Dangerous Train Crossing Is Dead After Norfolk Southern Backtracks on Funds, Mayor Says appeared first on ProPublica.

Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek is on the verge of giving the Portland Trail Blazers a major gift: hundreds of millions in taxpayer dollars to overhaul the teams arena in an effort to keep the Blazers incoming owner, billionaire Tom Dundon, from moving the NBA franchise to a new city.The deal came together with little public discussion of how Oregon and other states in 2020 landed a $550 million settlement with the car loan company where Dundon built his wealth. The settlement followed an investigation into lending practices that Oregons then-attorney general, in a news release, described as predatory and harmful.Now, Oregon Public Broadcasting and ProPublica have obtained documents that reveal the role Dundon played in pushing some of the key company practices that regulators later presented as problematic.Specifically, the documents show that Dundon, as the companys CEO, was behind what regulators called an aggressive push at Santander Consumer USA in 2013 to waive requirements that car dealers prove borrowers had enough income to afford loans. The company would then charge more for those loans to ensure profit even in cases where borrowers ultimately failed to keep up with payments, according to internal emails and a slide deck that described findings in the multistate investigation.Oregon officials wrote in their 2020 court complaint against Santander Consumer that many customers took out loans under the false pretense that they were acquiring a car theyd eventually own, when in fact the terms of the loans were so onerous that they would almost certainly result in the loan defaulting and the car getting repossessed.Oregon Attorney General Dan Rayfield, when asked about Dundons call for waiving proof of income on car loans when he was at Santander Consumer, said in a statement: Proof of income requirements exist for a reason they protect borrowers from being sold loans they cannot afford. When those guardrails get waived, dealerships win in the short term, and consumers lose.Rayfield, who was elected in 2024, is working with other state attorneys general in a continuing investigation into another auto loan company, Exeter Finance, where Dundons website lists him as an investor and where he has served as chairman of its board. Dundon left Santander Consumer in 2015.Working families put a lot on the line when they take out a loan, Rayfield said, and they deserve lenders who treat them fairly and follow the law.Read MoreBefore Tom Dundon Agreed to Buy the Portland Trail Blazers, Oregon Accused the Company He Created of Predatory LendingDundon, whose deal to buy the Trail Blazers is expected to close on March 31, did not answer emails sent to his investment firm from OPB and ProPublica that included a copy of the newly obtained records and a list of questions. When provided separately with an overview of the story via text to his phone, he responded simply: Can talk after 3/31.Exeter has said in regulatory filings that it is cooperating with the current multistate investigation. A spokesperson for Exeter declined to comment.Asked for comment by OPB and ProPublica, Santander Consumer referred back to the statement it gave the newsrooms for an October story: Operating in a highly regulated industry, we have robust processes in place that are designed to protect customers and adhere to all regulatory requirements and industry best practices.Lawmakers recently approved $365 million in public funding to renovate Portlands 30-year-old Moda Center, home to the Blazers, one of Oregons most prominent businesses. The bill awaits Koteks signature. Combined with city and county money, the total proposed public backing has reached $870 million, far exceeding what the team originally asked for.Koteks office did not respond when asked when she became aware of the investigations into businesses connected to Dundon and whether it affected her position on giving public money to the team. Instead, a spokesperson pointed to public remarks Kotek made in support of public funding for the Blazers arena as the Legislature adjourned.This is a great first step, Kotek told reporters at the time. Were going to get the best deal possible for Oregon, and the economic impact of keeping not only the Blazers but all the activity at Moda is really important for the state.The chief sponsor of the bill, Senate President Rob Wagner, a Democrat representing the Portland suburb of Lake Oswego, also declined to answer when asked if he was aware of Oregons investigations into Dundons businesses.The Oregon Legislature does not have a role in who owns the Trail Blazers, Wagner said in a statement. Our goal all along has been to support the renovation of Oregons Arena so it can remain an economic and entertainment hub for the region.But a prominent critic of the deal with the Blazers said Dundons history with regulators is troubling.State Sen. Khanh Pham, a Portland Democrat who cast one of just six no votes in the 30-person chamber, wrote at the time that she supported a public investment in the arena but worried the Legislature wasnt including enough protections for taxpayers. She tried unsuccessfully to win amendments that would require the state to negotiate a private investment and revenue sharing with the Blazers.Pham said she wasnt aware of Dundons history in Oregon until OPB and ProPublica asked her about the newly obtained emails.This new information affirms that guardrails on public-private partnerships are important in all instances and especially this one, Pham said in a statement.Ignoring This Internal ConcernDundon was known as a key player in the rise of subprime lending to car buyers, a niche that supporters say makes car ownership possible for people with poor credit. He sold the subprime company he founded to a Spanish firm in 2006, retaining a 10% stake and becoming CEO of the newly formed company.In January 2013, he took a step that would keep the companys lending from being slowed down by people having to prove they could afford the cars they were buying. He set a plan in motion that would let the company advertise to car dealers that Santander Consumer wasnt going to ask anymore for proof of income, or POI, in order to issue a loan.Dundon wrote an email to two senior employees about easing loan restrictions. Obtained by OPB and ProPublicaLets do a test, Dundon wrote to two of his senior employees, Karthik Chandrasekhar and Steve Zemaitis. I want to waive poi more often.As the plan moved forward, Santander Consumers chief risk and compliance officer, Michele Rodgers, sent an email on Jan. 21, 2013, to Zemaitis and various senior executives expressing worry the companys plan could violate federal law.Rodgers identified potential concerns surrounding anti-money laundering and identity theft laws. She also noted that federal regulators were less than a year from implementing a new rule for another type of loan home mortgages requiring those lenders to determine the consumers ability to repay both the principal and the interest over the long term.But the records collected by the attorneys general indicate the plan proceeded.Two weeks after Dundons email, Santanders marketing and sales teams got involved, records show.Matt Fitzgerald, Santander Consumers executive vice president of sales and marketing, described a conversation with Dundon about stips, or statements stipulating the borrowers income, address and phone number have been verified.I just rode up the elevator with TD and he wants us to market (fax, e-mails, sale handout) the waiving of stips to all dealers, Fitzgerald wrote on Jan. 30, 2013. And he wants to see these communications by the end of the day.He added: We can serve it up to dealers that due to their good performance of the loans, we have decided to waive these certain stips to make it easier for you to close deals.Mark Williams, a former Federal Reserve regulator who teaches finance at Boston Universitys Questrom School of Business, reviewed the states summary of the companys correspondence and said it was troubling that internal concerns seemed to go unheeded.Williams described proof of income as one of the pillars of bank lending.To say, Sure, Ill give you a loan and we dont even care whether you make income or not, or, You dont even have to state your income, thats counter to just sound banking practices, he said.By early February of that year, the company was days away from announcing its new plan to car dealers, including a fax-based marketing plan and promotional flyer, ready for final approval.Flyer looks good, Robert OBrien, senior vice president at Santander, wrote on Tuesday, Feb. 5, however the POI change will not be in the system until Thursday.Attorneys general highlighted this flyer about a simplified process for loans in a presentation to Santander Consumer summarizing the findings of a multistate investigation into the companys lending practices. Obtained by OPB and ProPublicaHe suggested holding off a couple of days. Then Rodgers, the companys chief risk and compliance officer, chimed in again with a question.What is the POI Change? she asked.Tom wants to waive POI as much as possible and build in pricing to cover the incremental risk, OBrien wrote back. OBrien said that their tests showed the stated income was correct on most loans, and that they would continue to require proof of income for dealers with a history of problems. He said they found that requiring proof of income reduces capture especially in the nearprime segment.In other words, the company felt it was limiting its business opportunities by forcing potential customers to prove they could afford to pay back a car loan. Any increase in risk created by the new approach would be made up through fees and interest rates.I am just trying to ensure we arent disparately treating any of our customer base, Rodgers wrote to OBrien on Feb. 5, 2013. Under fair lending laws, companies are not allowed to enact policies that would have disparate impacts on certain groups of customers, such as people of a particular race or gender.Dundon is not listed as a recipient on the emails that Rodgers sent, and the degree to which her concerns may have been shared with him is unclear from the company emails obtained by OPB and ProPublica.However, in the slide presentation regulators gave to Santander Consumer, they said the remarks OBrien and Fitzgerald described Dundon making showed he continued to push for waiving proof of income even after Rodgers raised red flags on Jan. 21. The slides characterized Dundon as ignoring this internal concern from his companys risk and compliance officer.Oregons subsequent 2020 legal complaint against the company alleged Santander Consumer did not, as OBriens email suggested it would, continue requiring proof of income from dealers with a history of fudging borrowers incomes as it launched its new approach.When Santander rolled out this change to its funding requirements, Santander did not bar those dealers identified as problematic by Santander from using stated income on loan applications, Oregons attorney general wrote in the 2020 complaint. Santanders decision to broadly market its new stated-income policy, even to dealers with a history of misstating income, led to a significant spike in the number of early payment defaults.Dundons 2015 departure from Santander Consumer came with a separation agreement of more than $700 million, including cash for stock he owned, according to Securities and Exchange Commission filings.Rodgers, Zemaitis and Chandrasekhar all left Santander Consumer and are currently listed as senior executives at Exeter Finance, a subprime car lender where a number of top Santander Consumer employees have landed.They did not respond when OPB and ProPublica sent copies of the Santander Consumer correspondence in which they are named and requested comment. OBrien and Fitzgerald are no longer alive.Santander Consumer did not admit any wrongdoing as part of the settlement it paid to 33 states including Oregon and the District of Columbia.Private Business, Public MoneySix years after the settlement, Dundon and his associates are playing hardball in negotiations with state and city leaders to secure public money to revamp Portlands Moda Center.Although sports arena renovations in some cities have been 100% taxpayer-financed, at least 10 including in Atlanta; Phoenix; Jacksonville, Florida; and Cleveland have been funded wholly or partially with private money during the past decade. Just north of Portland, Seattles Climate Pledge Arena opened in 2021 after $1.15 billion in renovations that were entirely privately financed.That same precedent exists in Portland: When the Moda Center opened in 1995 back then it was Portlands Rose Garden Blazers owner Paul Allen got $34.5 million from the city of Portland but financed the rest of the $262 million construction himself.Dundon, too, has offered private dollars as part of arena renovations in the past. In 2023, he agreed to a new arena lease in Raleigh, North Carolina, for his professional hockey team, the Carolina Hurricanes. Raleigh put $300 million toward the arena while Dundon committed to investing $800 million over 20 years toward developing an entertainment district in the surrounding area.Portland was a different story.Portlands Moda Center in September 2025 Brooke Herbert/OPBAccording to a January chat group message from a city employee whose job is to manage sports venues, a consultant for the team and Dundons billionaire ownership group was asking for the public to cover 100% of the cost to renovate the Moda Center.A phalanx of lobbyists hired by the Blazers, meanwhile, were telling state lawmakers theyd need a total of $600 million, starting this year.The assumption that the incoming ownership group can finance an additional $600 million for Moda Center which is now a publicly-owned community asset is not possible, lobbying materials from the Blazers stated.After state and local leaders concluded that the teams initial ask wasnt nearly enough to cover rising construction costs, they bumped up the investment to $870 million.Team representatives wrote in the lobbying material that the Blazers future in Portland was at stake and that a departure would threaten the citys turnaround from pandemic-era headlines about downtown retail vacancies and crime.If the Portland Trail Blazers leave Rip City, team officials stated, we are losing far more than the tax revenue the Blazers generate for the General Fund. It would have a devastating impact on the Citys national and international reputation and would feed the doom loop narrative we have all been working to refute.The Blazers did not respond to emailed questions. When asked about the lobbying effort in a March 17 interview on OPBs Think Out Loud, the Blazers President of Business Operations Dewayne Hankins said Dundons ownership group never explicitly told the team it would move without a public investment. But he noted that other cities are pushing hard to get an NBA team and said the Blazers had heard rumblings of interest.You have a team that has very few years left on their lease, Hankins said of the Blazers. You have a team that could potentially be portable.Portland Mayor Keith Wilson declined to say whether Dundons business history would affect the citys ongoing negotiations with the Blazers after the late Paul Allens sister agreed to sell the team. The council plans to take up the issue of arena funding no later than this summer.Jody Allen chose to sell the team to the ownership group led by Tom Dundon, Wilson said in a statement, echoing a point made by Oregons Senate president. The City is not a decision maker in the process of approving franchise ownership changes; that authority lies exclusively with current team ownership and the NBA. The City will work in good faith with whoever owns the Trail Blazers.John Van Alst, senior attorney at the National Consumer Law Center, said state and local officials should use caution in negotiating with someone whose business the state previously accused of violating consumer protection laws.If theyre willing to violate those rules, Id be concerned about doing business with them, Van Alst said.Van Alst said leaders in Portland, far more so than people buying a car through a subprime lender like Santander Consumer or Exeter, have options at their disposal as they negotiate for the Blazers future.They have more resources to make good choices, hopefully, than a lot of folks do who get themselves tangled up in really bad subprime auto financing, Van Alst said.The post New Portland Trail Blazers Owner Played Key Role at Company Oregon Accused of Predatory Lending appeared first on ProPublica.

For much of last year, Trump administration officials insisted that no Americans were caught up in the governments immigration dragnet.ProPublica and many others repeatedly documented that is not true: Americans have even been kicked, dragged and detained for days by immigration agents.On Tuesday, House and Senate Democrats are spotlighting a particularly troubling part of the crackdown: the American children who have been collateral damage in the deportation campaign.The forum the lawmakers are holding is part of an ongoing congressional investigation prompted by ProPublicas report last fall that more than 170 U.S. citizens have been detained by immigration agents for some amount of time. That included Americans who have been handcuffed, held at gunpoint or simply prevented from leaving their location.As of last October, more than 20 of those citizens were children, ranging from toddlers to teens. A toddler, a preschooler and a 7-year-old all citizens were deported despite their documented parents claiming they wanted to keep the children in the U.S.In response to questions, Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement that Immigration and Customs Enforcement does NOT deport United States citizens or separate families,American children held along with their families will be sharing their stories at Tuesdays forum. That includes two families whose accounts were featured in ProPublica investigations.Eighteen-year-old Fernando Hernndez Garca, who is using a pseudonym to protect the safety of his family in Mexico, is speaking on behalf of his 11-year-old sister. Both siblings are citizens.Last year, the family was driving to Houston to get emergency treatment for the girl, who was recovering from brain cancer. Border Patrol agents ignored a hospital letter that the family had used previously to go through checkpoints. This time, agents held the family until they were deported the next day to Mexico. With few other options, the American children went with their parents except for Hernndez Garca, who had not been detained and stayed to earn money and send medicine home.The familys lawyers say they have not been able to access the care they need for their daughter in Mexico, and they have applied for humanitarian parole to return. Customs and Border Protection previously told ProPublica the familys account was inaccurate but declined to provide specifics.Read MoreWe Found That More Than 170 U.S. Citizens Have Been Held by Immigration Agents. Theyve Been Kicked, Dragged and Detained for Days.Some Americans Have Already Been Caught in Trumps Immigration Dragnet. More Will Be.We Found More Than 40 Cases of Immigration Agents Using Banned Chokeholds and Other Moves That Can Cut Off BreathingAlso speaking is 16-year-old Arnoldo Bazan. As ProPublica detailed earlier this year, Bazan was tackled and choked by immigration agents who were chasing his undocumented father in Houston.Bystanders filmed the teen screaming that he was a minor and a U.S. citizen. After agents knelt on his neck and put him in a choke hold, then they handcuffed him.Bazan told ProPublica that when he was in a choke hold, I felt like I was seeing the light. He said hes now speaking up including on Capitol Hill to help keep others from going through the same. I dont think nobodys safe anymore.DHS said in its statement that Bazan elbowed an officer in the face as he was detained, which the teen denies. The agencys spokesperson added that any allegations that agents assaulted Bazan are FALSE.Its unclear exactly how many American kids have been held. The government doesnt disclose how many Americans are detained, even briefly, during immigration enforcement.Former immigration officials told ProPublica that it used to be rare to encounter, let alone hold, American children for any amount of time. While the officials couldnt recall a specific policy prohibiting it, they said past administrations just didnt prioritize arresting families during immigration enforcement in the interior of the country. (A ProPublica investigation published Monday found that in his second term, President Donald Trump has deported mothers of U.S. children at four times the rate Biden did.)In a report shared with ProPublica, the minority staff from the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations and House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform compiled 128 cases of children a mix of citizens and noncitizens who were injured, left unattended or otherwise put at risk by enforcement operations conducted by Department of Homeland Security agents.The review found that citizen children caught up in immigration operations were also exposed to chemical agents, were placed in restraints or required medical attention, and some were held at gunpoint, were left unattended when agents detained their parents, or were present when agents smashed car windows or rammed their vehicles.The impact of all of these practices on children the physical injuries but also the trauma is really horrific, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., told ProPublica.SueHey Tello, 14, left, and her mother, Anabel Romero, 35, along with two other children in the family, were detained by federal agents in a raid at La Catedral Arena during a community horse racing event in Idaho. Sarahbeth Maney for ProPublicaSeveral other citizen teens and mothers of U.S. citizens who were detained by immigration agents will be delivering testimony at the forum.Anabel Romero, an Idaho mother, recalled how she was detained with three of her children during a multiagency raid at an Idaho racetrack. The stated target of the raid was illegal gambling, but it ended with more than 100 people in ICE custody.Officers pointed guns at Romeros 14-year-old, SueHey Tello, and at her 8-year-old and 6-year-old. Tello said they dragged her from the truck and eventually zip-tied her, leaving bruises and marks.Asked about the raid and agents conduct, DHS said, ICE does not zip tie or handcuff children. (Romero and Tello do not know which agencys officers zip-tied them.)Tello told ProPublica she was petrified and particularly worried for her younger siblings. My little sisters crying, my little brothers scared, Tello recalled. I dont know what to do. [I was] looking for any familiar face.Romero noted that the Trump administration has often said its immigration dragnet is keeping kids safe by going after predators and criminals. They say theyre doing this to protect children, recalled Romero. But they hurt my children.The post How American Kids Have Been Collateral Damage in Trumps Immigration Crackdown appeared first on ProPublica.

Hugo Hollands aggressive legal tactics made him one of Louisianas most renowned prosecutors and helped turn Caddo Parish, a majority Black community in the northwest corner of the state, into one of the nations leaders in death penalty convictions.His nearly 40-year career, though, has been marked by controversies.In at least two death penalty cases, Louisiana judges found that Holland withheld evidence. In a third, he secured the conviction of a Black 16-year-old, comparing the boy to a dog and telling the jury to get rid of it; prosecutors later admitted that Holland and his team had failed to turn over evidence.Defense attorneys have also accused him of racism, pointing, for example, to a capital murder case several years ago in which Holland emailed one of them to say he was going to spend Veterans Day in his pickup truck looking for a Black guy or a Mex-can. Holland called it a joke.Holland, 62, is now running for judge in the First Judicial District Court in Caddo Parish, and his nascent campaign appears to have substantial backing. He has raised more than $61,000 in less than two months, according to the first campaign finance report released in February twice the amount many candidates running for the 1st Judicial Court spend in an entire campaign, said Jeffrey Sadow, an associate professor of political science at Louisiana State University in Shreveport.Hollands donors include an assistant district attorney with the Caddo Parish DAs office, the district attorney of neighboring Bossier and Webster parishes, a former state judge, and members of major law firms throughout the area.Hollands funding haul might prove to be so daunting that it scares off potential challengers, Sadow said, though candidates have until the end of July to enter the race. It shows hes got an awful lot of support and that hes considered a quality candidate, he said.In addition to his robust campaign fundraising, Holland has been able to bring on the head of the local Republican Party, Matthew Kay, as his campaign chair. (Kay also served as an elector for Donald Trump in 2024.)Holland declined multiple requests for comment about his candidacy and record as a prosecutor. Neither Kay nor nine of the 10 donors Verite News and ProPublica reached out to would respond or agree to speak about their support for Holland.Charles Jacobs, the city attorney for Bossier City and a former state judge who has known Holland for nearly 20 years, described him as a very fair prosecutor who sticks to the facts and the letter of the law. Jacobs donated $2,500 to Hollands campaign, saying that his extensive trial experience will serve him well on the bench.That guy cuts it right down the line black or white, brown or yellow. He doesnt care, said Jacobs, dismissing defense attorneys allegations of racism.Civil rights leaders and defense attorneys say they believe Holland lacks regard for the rights of the mostly Black defendants he prosecuted, and that makes him uniquely unfit to serve on the bench.Hes demonstrated that he is untrustworthy, unreserved in his aggression and without any judicial temperament, said defense attorney Ben Cohen, who represented the 16-year-old in the death penalty case in which Holland withheld evidence. He brings disrepute to the justice system in a way that undermines peoples faith in it.Hes demonstrated that he is untrustworthy, unreserved in his aggression and without any judicial temperament. Ben Cohen, defense attorneyAs an assistant district attorney in Caddo Parish from 1991 to 2012, Holland displayed a portrait of Confederate Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest, an early leader of the Ku Klux Klan, in his office. Local and national coverage of Hollands affinity for Forrest drew accusations of racism from Black residents and defense attorneys. Holland has insisted that he is not racist, claiming in interviews that he appreciated Forrest as a cavalry commander in the Civil War and not because he was a member of the Klan.In another controversy, Holland was forced to resign from the district attorneys office in 2012 after the state inspector general found that he and a colleague had submitted false information to obtain a cache of fully automatic M-16 rifles through a federal program. Holland said a special investigations unit needed the weapons for protection because we routinely participate in high-risk surveillance and arrests, a claim local law enforcement agencies refuted, according to the inspector general. Holland and his colleague told the inspector general that if they had the opportunity, they would word the justification differently, citing situations in which the weapons would be useful in protecting district attorney employees who work in dangerous areas and advise local law enforcement.These scandals, however, did little to damage Hollands career. After his resignation, he became a successful prosecutor-for-hire for more than a dozen district attorneys who lacked the staff or expertise to try high-profile murder cases on their own. In 2017, Holland was paid to lobby on behalf of the powerful Louisiana District Attorneys Association to stop a bill that would have eliminated the death penalty; the effort succeeded.Caddo Parish secured more death penalty convictions per capita than any other county in the United States between 2010 and 2014, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Of the people sent to death row during that time period, 80% were Black, even though Black people made up just under half the parish population. (Nationally, Black people made up just over 40% of death row prisoners and 13% of the U.S. population at that time.)Caddo Parish has long been a center of racial injustice, known from the Reconstruction era through the Jim Crow period as Bloody Caddo for having among the highest numbers of lynchings of any county in the country.A 30-foot-tall Confederate monument outside the Caddo Parish courthouse in Shreveport, Louisiana, in 2018. The parish removed the monument in 2022. Brent McDonald/The New York Times/ReduxTheron Jackson, the pastor of Morning Star Missionary Baptist Church in Shreveport, the largest city in the parish, fears that a Holland victory would be a step back toward those days of Bloody Caddo, when the failure of elected officials to protect and serve everybodys community resulted in the victimization of Black people.Withholding EvidenceThe doubts surrounding Hollands death row convictions have taken on even more urgency since the election of Jeff Landry, who upon being sworn in as governor in 2024 said he wanted to execute every prisoner on death row as quickly as possible.Of the at least 10 people Holland has sent to death row over four decades as prosecutor, one has been released, and two have had their sentences reduced to life in prison. Of the seven remaining on death row, at least two Bobby Hampton and David Brown are challenging their convictions after they discovered that Holland withheld evidence.In 1997, Holland secured a death sentence against Hampton for a murder that happened during a liquor store robbery in Shreveport. The Louisiana Supreme Court later found that Holland had withheld grand jury witness testimony that someone else fired the fatal shot. The court nonetheless ruled that the omitted testimony would not have changed the verdict because prosecutors did hand over a similar statement the witness had made to police. But a dissenting court opinion pointed out that the grand jury witness testimony, unlike the police statement, was given under oath and unambiguously identified another person as the shooter. Hampton remains on death row.Fourteen years later, a similar situation unfolded. The courts once again found that Holland failed to disclose evidence during his 2011 prosecution and conviction of Brown, one of five prisoners convicted of murdering a guard at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. Holland did not reveal that another prisoner had told prosecutors about a jailhouse confession from one of the five, who said he and another inmate not Brown had decided to kill the guard. As a result, a state judge vacated Browns sentence in 2014, but the Louisiana Supreme Court reinstated it after ruling that the withheld evidence would not necessarily have changed the jurys decision; the confession, they said, did not preclude Browns participation in the killing.Hampton and Brown maintain their innocence and are still challenging their convictions. Holland did not respond to requests for comment about the cases.Holland withheld evidence in a third death penalty case, involving Corey Williams, a 16-year-old convicted in the fatal shooting of a pizza delivery man in Shreveport. Williams 2000 death sentence was reduced to life without parole because the boy has a severe intellectual disability, according to court documents. As a child, Williams was hospitalized for extreme lead poisoning and was institutionalized multiple times for mental health reasons, according to court documents filed by his attorneys.Fifteen years after Williams conviction, his attorneys alerted the court that Holland had concealed a trove of evidence that they said proved his innocence: Witnesses on the night of the murder told police Williams was innocent, and detectives stated at the time that they believed several older men were responsible and trying to pin the blame on Williams, according to a court filing by Williams defense team.The actions by Hollands team led dozens of former U.S. Department of Justice officials and federal prosecutors to file a brief to the U.S. Supreme Court in support of efforts to overturn Williams conviction.A former Caddo Parish district attorney, who took office on an interim basis 15 years after Williams prosecution, acknowledged in 2015 court filings that Holland and his team had withheld evidence, but insisted that it did not prove Williams innocence and would not have changed the verdict. Before the U.S. Supreme Court could take up the issue, however, Williams team agreed to a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to plead guilty to manslaughter and obstruction of justice in return for his 2018 release from prison. Holland has said he did not withhold evidence and maintained that Williams is guilty.In other contexts, Holland questioned established law on the obligation to turn over evidence. Two years ago, a case came before the Louisiana Supreme Court to preserve a death sentence that defense attorneys claimed was secured after another prosecutor withheld key evidence. Arguing on behalf of the Rapides Parish district attorney, Holland expressed disdain for a 1995 U.S. Supreme Court ruling requiring prosecutors to turn over such evidence that could be considered favorable to defendants.Its a very poorly written opinion because it leaves far too much to conjecture by people on the bench, Holland said. Its got judges second-guessing juries.The state Supreme Court ultimately upheld the death sentence.Matilde Carbia, a defense attorney representing a death row inmate whom Holland helped convict, said Hollands antipathy toward transparency makes his candidacy dangerous. If that is the kind of perspective that he would bring to the judiciary, that would be wholesale damaging to criminal defendants across the board, Carbia said.He was doing everything he could to attempt to intimidate me. Matilde Carbia, defense attorneyHollands unprofessional behavior in and outside of the courtroom is also a grave concern, she said. During a 2018 postconviction hearing for a murder case, Carbia said Holland claimed he couldnt hear when she was questioning a witness, so he began following Carbia around the courtroom as she spoke.Hed come stand looming over my shoulder with his coattail pushed back so that you could see the firearm on his hip, Carbia recalled in a recent interview.In another incident, Carbia said Holland displayed an AR-15 rifle on his desk when she entered his office to review some files. He was doing everything he could to attempt to intimidate me, she said.Holland did not respond to questions about these incidents. Verite News and ProPublica spoke with another attorney who witnessed the events and confirmed Carbias account.An Evolving CaddoCaddo Parish has changed since Holland last worked for the district attorneys office, with Black voters now making up just over half of the parish population. With that increase has come more political influence.In 2011, parish leaders removed a Confederate flag that had flown in front of the courthouse for decades. Eleven years later, the parish removed a monument featuring four Confederate generals that also stood before the courthouse steps.The changes go beyond symbolic. Caddo voters elected the parishs first Black district attorney in 2015 by a 10-point margin. Nine years later, voters elected the parishs first Black sheriff by a similar edge.Holland, however, will not be facing voters parishwide. There are 14 open judicial seats in the parish, and candidates choose among three districts in which to run. Only one is majority Black, according to Sadow, the political science professor. Holland hasnt announced where he would run, but running in a majority white, conservative district would increase his odds of winning, Sadow said; Hollands prospects would also be boosted in one of the majority white districts by not having to run against an incumbent, who is retiring.Defense attorney Nick Trenticosta, who once faced off against Holland in a death penalty case, said he hopes voters will remember Hollands ethical controversies and reject him as a relic of the past.Caddo is not the same Caddo it was 30 years ago, Trenticosta said. The voters know who he is.The post He Compared a Black Child to a Dog and Withheld Evidence in Death Row Cases. Now Hes Running for Judge. appeared first on ProPublica.

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BURBANK, CAIn an effort to determine whether they needed to cease production immediately or if the films title simply sounded familiar,MarvelStudios reportedly called an emergency meeting Friday after concerns were raised that they had already made one calledAvengers: Doomsday. All right, gentlemen, quicklyname as manyAvengersfilms as you can, said company president Kevin Feige, who sat at the head of the table in a packed boardroom as executives shouted out Infinity Ultron! and Deadbolts! Weve already sunk millions and millions of dollars into this thing, so if it turns out we already did anAvengers: Doomsday, well, theres going to be hell to pay. Okay, everybody look through your emails right now and control-F for doomsday. At press time, Feige was overheard saying, Fuck it, its not like anyone gives a shit anyway.The post MarvelCalls Emergency Meeting To Determine If They Already Made One Called Avengers: Doomsday appeared first on The Onion.

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The baby needed somewhere to go. So in the frantic hours before officers took her parents away to immigration detention, her mom turned to their pastor and his wife. As squad cars waited outside the familys Lakeland, Florida, trailer home, she gave them a crash course in how to care for the 4-month-old.Briany, with her plump cheeks and full head of dark hair, wasnt normally this fussy. But it was late that January night around midnight and she was still hungry. Her mom, Doris Flores, had tried nursing her to calm her down. It didnt work. When she brought Briany to her breast, the milk wouldnt come. Flores thought it had to do with the panic that set in after the officers arrested the babys father and told her she was next.The baby also drank formula. The pastor and his wife, whod never had children of their own, should take her bottles and the yellow cans of formula, too, and follow the instructions on the label. They should use distilled water, never from the tap. Briany drank 5 ounces at each feeding. She needed to eat every two to two-and-a-half hours.She was almost due for her next round of vaccinations. She was getting big enough for Size 3 diapers. What made her happiest was to be held in someones arms.The Rev. Israel Vzquez, 58, soft-spoken with close-cropped hair, had held Briany before, when he formally presented the baby to God in a ceremony at his Pentecostal church in Lakeland. If he and his wife, a fellow pastor at the church, didnt take the girls in, they would have to go into foster care. What else could we do? he said.The Rev. Israel Vzquez and his wife, the Rev. Raysa Vzquez, assumed care in January for 4-month-old American citizen Briany after her parents were taken into immigration detention. Jennifer Ortiz for ProPublicaThe babys half-sister would be easier for the older couple to take care of. Eight-year-old Briana was quiet and humble. She preferred speaking in English rather than Spanish. Her favorite color was blue.Deputies from the Polk County Sheriffs Office helped load a baby stroller and bouncy swing into the couples car. Then the officers, employed by one of the hundreds of Florida agencies carrying out immigration enforcement for the Trump administration, handcuffed a sobbing Flores.Incidents like this, involving the arrest and detention of immigrant parents with American citizen children, occurred twice as often after President Donald Trump returned to office, according to an analysis of a new nationwide Immigration and Customs Enforcement dataset shared exclusively with ProPublica. In the first seven months of his second term, authorities arrested and detained parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children a number that, if the pace held up, will have roughly doubled by now. Thats an average of more than 50 U.S. citizen kids a day with a parent pulled into detention.The data underlying this analysis was obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights as part of an ongoing public records lawsuit. It covers the last three years of the Joe Biden administration and the Trump administration until mid-August 2025.Under Trump, Arrests of Immigrant Parents With U.S.-Born Children SurgedICE arrests of parents doubled in the first seven months of Trumps second term compared with the Biden administration.Note: Arrest figures for both administrations represent an undercount due to data limitations. See our methodology for more details. Source: ProPublica analysis of ICE data obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. Chris Alcantara/ProPublicaThe differences between the fates of detained immigrant parents under the two presidents are stark, our analysis shows. The impact on mothers is particularly pronounced. Trump is deporting about four times as many moms of U.S. citizen children per day as Biden did.Immigration authorities are arresting more of these moms in the first place, but that doesnt account for all of the surge in deportations. If arrested, they are seldom allowed to return home to their families anymore. About 30% of such arrests under Biden resulted in a deportation. Under Trump, almost 60% resulted in a deportation.Compared with the Biden administration, Trump officials are detaining many more parents with only minor criminal histories or none at all. Under Trump, more than half of the detained fathers of American citizen kids, and about three quarters of the mothers, had no criminal convictions in the United States except for traffic- or immigration-related offenses.Immigrant Mothers of U.S. Citizen Children Are Released Less Often During Trumps AdministrationProPublica compared what happened to U.S. citizen childrens mothers arrested during the same seven-month period Jan. 20 through Aug. 20 in 2024 (under Biden) and 2025 (under Trump), looking at over 1,000 cases. About a third of the arrests made during the Biden administration led to a deportation. Under Trump, that rate doubled.Note: Outcomes for arrests under Biden were measured as of October 15, 2024. Outcomes for arrests under Trump were measured on the same date in 2025. Arrest and outcome figures for both administrations represent an undercount due to data limitations. See our methodology for more details. Sources: ProPublica analysis of ICE data obtained by the University of Washington Center for Human Rights and the Deportation Data Project. Chris Alcantara/ProPublicaWhile thousands of children who arent U.S. citizens are also caught up in the administrations crackdown some of them detained with their parents, others by themselves families with mixed citizenship can be uniquely difficult to keep together. American-born kids like Briany cant legally join their parents in immigrant detention. So some end up in the care of friends or strangers.Current and former officials from the Department of Homeland Security said such separations are not necessarily a violation of policy. Instead, guidelines on the way officers should exercise discretion have changed. Among the changes: A document once known as the Parental Interests Directive has been given a new name under Trump the Detained Parents Directive. And its preamble, which once instructed agents to handle immigrant parents in a way that was humane, has been stripped of the word.John Sandweg, who oversaw ICE when the original directive was adopted under President Barack Obama, said, Back then, we were operating from a lens that family unity is everything. Tom Homan, then a top ICE official and now Trumps border czar, introduced the directive to field offices around the country. If agents encountered parents, the directive would help them enforce immigration laws without unnecessarily undermining their parental rights, according to his August 2013 talking points, which were obtained by ProPublica.Now, Sandweg and the other former officials said, the second Trump administration has put aggressive enforcement goals like arresting 3,000 immigrants a day above concerns about the harms of hastily separating children from their parents.ProPublica sent detailed questions about our findings to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which oversees ICE. DHS Acting Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis said in an emailed statement that the agency cannot verify the veracity of the data that ProPublica analyzed. (We validated the data, which the agency provided via Freedom of Information Act requests, and our approach with outside experts.) Bis also said in the statement, ICE does not separate families.Immigrant parents can choose to leave the country with their children or to designate someone to care for them, Bis said, which is consistent with past administrations policies. The revised directive simply standardizes the required forms. She added that under President Trump, ICE will not ignore the rule of law.A White House spokesperson wrote in a statement that those in the country illegally who wish to avoid the deportation process should self-deport.U.S. citizen children board a van in early February before taking a flight from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to Guatemala, to be reunited with parents who were deported. Boyzell Hosey/ProPublicaThe unraveling of Flores family began with another kids alleged threat against 8-year-old Briana.According to a Jan. 15 police report, the girls school bus driver had contacted the Polk County Sheriffs Office after Briana claimed a student at her elementary school, a boy with blond hair and blue eyes, had threatened to kill her.The sheriffs office dispatched a deputy to the familys mobile home, where she introduced herself to Flores and her fiance, Egdulio Velasquez, and asked to speak with Briana. The 8-year-old was timid, according to the police report, and initially denied any trouble with fellow students. The family said that the deputy questioned Briana alone outside the trailer. Eventually, the girl let on that her classmate had indeed been bothering her, poking her in the back and face with his fingers but did not say the boy had threatened to kill her, according to the police report.The deputy went to the classmates house, and the boy told her it was Briana who had made the threats. He said she had pointed a broken pencil at him. The deputy filled out two threat assessment forms, one for the boy, one for the girl, noting that she hadnt checked the boys home for firearms because his father was uncooperative but had searched Brianas trailer.I was unable to determine probable cause, the deputy wrote in her report. She would have to drop the case. But her investigation had turned up something else: Flores and Velasquez were both immigrants from Honduras.A second sheriffs deputy arrived at the trailer not long after and took their passports. According to police records, he then called an ICE hotline, a requirement stemming from Floridas close cooperation with the agency. An operator told him that both parents had deportation orders: Velasquez from a DUI conviction and Flores from a missed asylum hearing.Flores said she had missed the hearing because of computer issues and was trying to appeal the ruling. Shed crossed the border into the United States and applied for asylum in 2023, after a man in Honduras had threatened to kill her. DHS Bis confirmed that Flores entered the country in 2023 and had a deportation order issued in May 2025.Flores had met Velasquez, who is from the same rural Honduran province of Olancho, in the United States. Briana, his daughter from a previous relationship, was born in Honduras. The family built a life together in Lakeland, where he worked in a factory that built shipping pallets, and they became members of Vzquezs church.A third squad car appeared outside the trailer. The officers arrested Velasquez first, keeping him handcuffed in the back of one of the cars for hours. But before they could arrest Flores, they needed to figure out what to do with the kids.Dont be like this, Flores recalled saying to the officers as she held baby Briany. My girl needs me. She said they told her they were just doing their jobs. She said she prayed to God: Lord, Im putting everything in your hands.According to Flores and Velasquez, one of the deputies took a liking to a family kitten and offered to take it home with him. Velasquez said he later saw the kitten clinging to the officers pants.The Polk County Sheriffs Office did not respond to specific questions about the incident, instead sending an emailed statement that outlined its state-mandated cooperation with federal immigration authorities.It was close to 11 p.m. when an investigator from Floridas child protective services finally arrived, the family said. She informed Flores that if she couldnt find someone to take the children, the state would place them in the foster care system. So Flores called her pastor.Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd recently began calling for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants who have committed no crimes and have strong community ties. A spokesperson for the sheriffs office wrote in the statement to ProPublica that deputies do not make any decisions on who to detain they report suspects to ICE, and ICE makes the decision.But she noted they now make an effort to determine citizenship status.Nothing has changed in how we deliver day-to-day law enforcement services in our community, she wrote, other than asking everyone with whom we interact their place of birth.ProPublicas reporting shows that the parents of at least 11,000 U.S. citizen children were arrested and detained in the first seven months of the Trump administrations immigration crackdown. First image: Two volunteers place a 2-year-old American child in a car so he can be reunited with his mother, who is from Honduras and awaits deportation at the Dilley, Texas, family detention center. Second image: Two American children, left, talk on the phone with their father, who is detained at Alligator Alcatraz in Florida after being arrested on Christmas. First image: Christopher Lee for ProPublica. Second image: Michelle Bruzzese for ProPublica.Federal policy still says ICE officers should ask people they arrest if they are the parents or legal guardians of minors and if they are, they should be allowed to make arrangements for the childrens care. The Trump administrations July revision to this directive, the one that removed the word humane from the preamble, also added a new line. It specifies that the directive in no way limits the ability of ICE personnel to make enforcement decisions on a case-by-case basis.In practice, instances when parents are spared are becoming increasingly rare, said Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, a former ICE official who oversaw implementation of the directive at ICE during the Obama and first Trump administrations. It may happen on a case-by-case basis because an officer in and of himself has humanity, he said.ProPublica followed multiple families through their sudden separations examining the moment itself and its aftermath and found a wide variety of outcomes for the children.Fernanda, a Florida restaurant worker, made an agonizing decision after the father of her children was arrested and deported: She would send their toddler son and 4-year-old daughter to Guatemala to live with him. She feared it was only a matter of time until immigration agents came knocking on her door. She didnt want the children, both U.S. citizens, to be stranded.Fernanda asked to be identified by only her middle name because of her immigration status. The Guatemalan-Maya Center, a nonprofit, helped her take the kids to the Fort Lauderdale airport in early February, the little boy dressed in a Spider-Man outfit, the little girl in a CoComelon sweatshirt and pink hat, and put them on a plane.Griselda, a single mom originally from Honduras, had to leave her young daughters with their babysitter for four months. She said she was getting a ride to a housepainting job in Melbourne, Florida, when the cars brakes failed and it crashed into a stop sign. Police officers showed up, she said, then called ICE.A domestic abuse survivor who asked to be identified by only her first name, Griselda said she told the officers, then ICE, about her children, but she was sent out of state to be detained in Dilley, Texas, without them. Griselda was desperate to reunite with her 4-year-old, who was born in Mexico during her journey to the southwest border, and her 1-year-old, who is a U.S. citizen. She said she decided not to file an appeal after a judge denied her asylum claim and that an ICE agent and a social worker were dispatched to Florida to retrieve the girls. Then, she said, she and her daughters were escorted to the border to cross on foot into Mexico where they knew no one and had no money.A DHS spokesperson confirmed that the family was sent to Mexico together.A deported father holds his 4-year-old daughter at La Aurora International Airport in Guatemala City. Their mother, Fernanda, decided to send her two children, both U.S. citizens, to Guatemala to live with him after he was deported, fearing the same would happen to her. Daniele Volpe for ProPublicaMauricio Ayala, a 24-year-old engineer working at a firm in downtown Seattle, called 911 after immigration agents arrested his dad last April. My father has been illegally detained, he told the dispatcher nervously, stumbling over his words. A bunch of masked men in unmarked vehicles pulled up and detained him. (A DHS spokesperson wrote in a statement that our officers verbally identify themselves and wear badges and vests that display their agency name.)His dad, a roofer, had been swept up in one of the first large-scale workplace raids of the new Trump administration. It was the beginning of a role reversal for Ayala, his college-age sister and his brother, a high school senior. All citizens, they would be the ones supporting their parents. Their mom had been forced to leave the country after an immigration arrest over a decade ago, Ayala said, but officers didnt arrest his dad at the time because there were young children in the home. His dad was found guilty of reckless driving in 2015 but had no other criminal convictions that we could find in the United States. But now, as the siblings entered adulthood, their dad would be deported, too.To cut costs and send money to his parents in Mexico, Ayala moved from his Seattle apartment back into the trailer his dad owned in a smaller city 90 minutes away. His sister did the same. Their little brother picked up part-time jobs.Maria Magdalena Callejas, her boyfriend and her 14-year-old son were detained in Texas while on a road trip last spring. She called a friend back home in California who shed asked to watch her two younger children both U.S. citizens until her return. She begged the friend to take care of them for even longer.Callejas boyfriend was deported. She and her older son, Edwin, were held in family detention, where he said he was stressed because it felt like a prison. He said he lost 10 pounds in a week after he got sick. He was so despondent, his mother said, that she felt her only option was to allow them to be sent back to El Salvador, a country Edwin left when he was 5. (ICE has said conditions in its facilities are safe for families and that everyone is provided proper medical care.)Callejas said she agreed to return to El Salvador only because she understood that her 6-year-old and 4-year-old would be allowed to join her and their older brother.The kids father had previously pleaded no contest to domestic battery and had a restraining order placed against him, which allowed brief supervised visitation. (Attorneys for both parents said Callejas allowed him to spend time with the kids despite the order.) When he found out their mom had been deported, he opposed the children leaving the country and decided to fight for custody. Since Callejas deportation, the children have been with a caretaker, and a judge has allowed their father more time with them, according to lawyers for both parents. The result: a monthslong battle in a Los Angeles court with Callejas attending hearings virtually from El Salvador.Israel and Raysa Vzquez check in at the passport agency in Miami, seeking an emergency infant passport for Briany. Jennifer Ortiz for ProPublicaBack in Lakeland, Israel Vzquez takes no credit for feeding the baby that first night or the ones after. That girl can drink milk! he said. His wife, the Rev. Raysa Vzquez, woke up every couple of hours and tended to Briany, sitting with her in the brown recliner in the living room, rocking her back to sleep.They did not know how long the girls would be with them. They decided 8-year-old Briana should stay at the same elementary school, to keep her with her friends and teacher. They drove around 45 minutes round trip to the school every day.Meanwhile, the girls parents bounced among hold rooms, jails and detention centers. In detention, Flores said, she began to suffer a painful swelling, which she believed could have been mastitis brought on by her inability to nurse her baby. Her chest became hot to the touch, her whole body feverish. The fever lasted a week.The couple wanted to do whatever they could to make the girls feel at home. But they also wanted to make sure the girls could be reunited with their parents. If Flores and Velasquez were going to be deported, the pastors wanted the girls to go with them. And to go with them, Briany would need a passport. The pastors would have to get both parents signatures while they were in detention.Briany was sitting on Raysas lap as they watched TV in the living room, babbling along as she listened to the couple talk, when Israels phone rang. It was an ICE deportation officer. He said Flores would be removed from the country soon and the window for getting her daughters on a plane with her was closing. He offered to help the Vzquezes get the parents signatures and said ICE would bring Flores to Tampa.The next day, they drove to a government office in Tampa to get Flores signature, where the girls were allowed to see and hug her. She let out a loud scream and started weeping at the sight of the children. In Mississippi, volunteers rushed to the detention center where Velasquez was being held and got his signature, too.The couple drove Briany to Miami a few days later and picked up her passport. Then they brought the girls to the Tampa airport.They met Flores at the terminal. She was clad in a sweatshirt and bleary from the early hour. Israel handed over the diaper bag hed been carrying around and the babys bottles. Flores fiance would be deported a few weeks later on a separate flight to Honduras. Her eldest child, a son from a previous relationship who had to go live with his father after she was arrested, would remain in the U.S. So for now it was just Flores and the two girls. They posed for a photo, then said goodbye.Brianys family is now back together and living in the town of San Jos in rural Honduras. Daniele Volpe for ProPublicaThe family now lives at Velasquezs fathers house in the town of San Jos, deep in rural Honduras. The baby no longer breastfeeds. She hasnt since the night deputies separated her from her mother. I brought her to my breast, Flores said, but she doesnt want it anymore.Brianys preferred formula costs too much for the family to afford. To keep the baby fed, they rely again on their church. A box of it recently arrived, enough to last several weeks, sent by the Vzquezes and their Lakeland congregation.Doris Flores with Briana and Briany at their new home in Honduras Daniele Volpe for ProPublicaHow We Measured Separations of Families with U.S. Citizen ChildrenOurs is the most detailed accounting to date of the U.S. citizen children whose immigrant parents have been arrested, detained and in many cases deported. Underlying the analysis is a database of ICE I-213 records obtained by the University of Washington. Immigration agents fill out Form I-213 when they arrest someone alleging they are in the country without permission. Among other pieces of information, it records the citizenship and number of minor children of each arrestee.The data appears to contain arrests only by ICE and does not cover arrests by Customs and Border Protection. It covers late 2021 to mid-August 2025. We used this data to calculate the number of parents of U.S. citizen children arrested each day.To learn what happened to parents after they were arrested by ICE, including detention, final release from ICE custody in the United States or removal from the country, we combined the I-213 data with records from the Deportation Data Project, which covers late 2023 to mid-October 2025. The I-213 dataset contains about 17% fewer arrests by ICE in any given month than the Deportation Data Projects arrest dataset.We were able to combine these two datasets using fields common to both of them, including date of arrest, gender, age, nationality, location and method of arrest. We matched about 85% of the arrests in the I-213 data to a unique record in the ICE arrest and detention data. (An additional 7% had multiple possible matches, so we did not include them, and about 7% had no possible match. These rates were similar across presidential administrations.)We used the overlapping 85% to make statements about the number of U.S. citizen children who had a parent arrested and detained by ICE since Trump returned to office and about the criminal status of their parents. We also used these combined records to compare how their mothers were treated differently by the Trump and Biden administrations.To calculate that more than 11,000 U.S. citizen children had a parent arrested and detained by ICE, we counted only children of fathers. We did this to avoid double-counting children in cases where both parents were detained, and fathers made up a large majority of the parents detained. We were limited to the first seven months of Trumps second term, the time period covered in the I-213 data. If a father was arrested and detained more than once under Trump, we counted that fathers children only once. All other calculations were performed at the arrest level, meaning that in a very small number of instances, the same parent could be included more than once for each time they were arrested, detained, released or removed.The government cannot legally detain U.S. citizen children with their parents or deport them. According to immigration experts and current and former officials, the arrest and detention of parents of U.S. citizens often leads to a family separation, even if its brief.We counted a parent as having been detained by ICE if they were booked into a facility for any length of time according to the Deportation Data Projects detention records. In a very small minority of cases during the Trump administration, parents were released from ICE custody in less than a few days. This was more common under Biden. When we calculated the criminal history of parents arrested and detained by ICE, we relied on the criminal charges in these detention records.To calculate that Trump has deported mothers of U.S. citizen children at four times the rate that Biden did, we calculated the total number of mothers removed under each administration in the period covered by our data and divided by the number of days each president was in office during that period. We used the period from November 2023 through mid-August 2025 to minimize undercounting at the start and end of our detention dataset. We also compared equivalent seven-month periods in 2024 and 2025, which produced a similar result. For the purposes of our analysis, we counted a small number of detained mothers who agreed to leave the country voluntarily as having been deported.Validating Our ApproachWe verified our matches between the two data sources in several ways. First, there were three fields in the I-213 data that were in other parts of the Deportation Data Project data but not used as part of the linkage process: marital status, processing disposition and date of entry. For records we linked that contained values in those fields (some were empty in one or both datasets), we found that those data points matched more than 98% of the time.Next, we checked to make sure that there were no systematic differences in which ICE arrests appeared in the I-213 dataset compared to those contained in the Deportation Data Project records. We checked to make sure that women and men were equally represented, the different ICE field offices were equally represented, nationalities were equally represented, etc. We found no appreciable difference between the two datasets.We also compared records for which we found a match between the two datasets to records that had no match and found no strong patterns suggesting systematic differences between the two.ICE publishes the number of parents of U.S. citizens arrested on its detention management website and in reports to Congress. We compared our analysis against these numbers and found that for fiscal years 2023 and 2024, our data showed about 15% fewer such parents arrested by ICE than the official statistics noted. We do not know exactly why this is, although it is in line with how many fewer I-213 records we have than there are arrest records in the Deportation Data Project.We ran our findings and methodology by Phil Neff, a researcher at the University of Washington Center for Human Rights and Joseph Gunther, a mathematician who researches immigration-related datasets and former ICE officials.We also were able to link some of the data to leaked ICE flight manifests, which allowed us in some cases to find the full names redacted in most of the other data of some of the deported parents. In a handful of those cases, we found their phone numbers or those of family members, and we reached out to hear their stories.We conducted interviews in Spanish and English with close to two dozen detained or deported parents or their relatives or lawyers. We also spoke with nonprofits like the American Friends Service Committee and Each Step Home, which assist immigrant families including Flores family after they are separated.The parents we followed through the arrest process were originally from a range of mostly Latin American countries: Honduras, Guatemala, Mexico and Ecuador. They and their children had made lives in all corners of the United States, including California, Washington state, New York, Massachusetts and Florida. Most of the parents we interviewed were moms.The post Trump Has Detained the Parents of More Than 11,000 U.S. Citizen Kids appeared first on ProPublica.

Last October, President Donald Trump nominated nursing home owner Benjamin Landa as his next ambassador to Hungary, a key position that would place him in a country with a vigorous conservative movement. Trump has endorsed the countrys prime minister, Viktor Orbn, a long-standing ally, for reelection, saying he does an unbelievable job.One month after Landas appointment, the inspector general of Trumps Department of Health and Human Services issued a blunt audit estimating that a nursing home Landa co-owns received Medicare overpayments of at least $31.2 million and recommending that the government recoup the money.Now that facility, Pinnacle Multicare Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, is suing the very administration that is nominating Landa to the diplomatic post. The suit, filed Feb. 26 in federal district court in New York, asks the court to stop the governments collection efforts and names HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Mehmet Oz, HHS Inspector General Thomas March Bell and a Medicare contractor as defendants. A federal district judge denied Pinnacles request for a temporary restraining order.As of March, Landa has an ownership interest in more than 100 nursing homes in eight states, CMS data shows. Landa also is a donor to Republican causes, but his biggest donation by far was $5 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump Super PAC, in August 2025, two months before his nomination.Critics of Landas track record point to the audits findings, along with other legal actions against homes connected to him, as reasons that his nomination should face additional scrutiny.Sen. Ron Wyden, an Oregon Democrat and ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, which oversees Medicare and Medicaid, described Landa as an example of giant corporate health care interests that prey on the vulnerable and use clever tricks to exploit loopholes at taxpayers expense.Its no surprise that these companies and their owners are cozy with Trump: instead of accountability, theyve been rewarded, Wyden said in a statement, with plum political appointments and ambassadorships in Europe.The White House and the Department of State did not respond to requests for comment about the status of Landas nomination. An attorney for Landa denied wrongdoing in a statement, saying the issues identified in the audit occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic when nursing homes were in the midst of a crisis.At Pinnacle MultiCare, patient care comes first period, full stop, attorney Alyssa Friedman wrote in an email to ProPublica. That commitment drove every decision during the pandemic and continues to define operations today.Lets be clear: this is about decisive actions taken during the height of COVID-19 that prioritized patients and saved lives in one of the pandemics epicenters decisions now being second-guessed years later through an absurdly flawed audit of billing paperwork and a retroactive reinterpretation of the rules by government bureaucrats, she added.The inspector generals audit and the resulting lawsuit are the latest controversy involving Landa.In November 2022, New York Attorney General Letitia James sued The Villages at Orleans Health and Rehabilitation Center, as well as Landa and others she said were owners of the facility. A press release announcing the suit alleged years of financial fraud that resulted in significant resident neglect and harm. Between 2015 and 2022, Landa made at least $1.49 million from the facility, James suit alleged, through means that James characterized as looting. Meanwhile, Landa contributed nothing and failed to prevent the abuse and neglect, the suit alleged. James described a pattern of harm to residents at the home, due in part to what the suit said was systemic understaffing and cost cutting, which included potentially preventable deaths of residents due to delayed wound care and suicide.The home and the defendants named as owners have disputed the suit. In 2024, a state Supreme Court judge allowed multiple claims in the case to proceed; in 2025, Landa appealed that decision. The case is ongoing.Landas attorney said her client merely owned a minority interest in the company that owned the real estate and served as the landlord of the building out of which the facility operated. He had no interest in the licensed operator of the facility and no involvement in the operations of the facility. The attorney generals claims against Mr. Landa are baseless and a waste of the courts time and taxpayer dollars.One month after filing the suit against The Villages, James sued Cold Spring Hills Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, based in Long Island, making nearly identical claims to her prior suit. Landa owned 25% of the facilitys property holding company, according to the lawsuit. Over a number of years, the facility paid over $15 million in rent to the property holding company co-owned by Landa; over $1.4 million to a management company co-owned by Landa; and almost $500,000 in consulting fees to a company owned by Landa, the lawsuit alleged. At the same time, residents were losing significant weight and developing malnutrition, enduring life-threatening pressure ulcers and repeatedly suffering unwitnessed falls, in part due to understaffing, James alleged.The home and its owners disputed the allegations. In March 2024, a judge in Long Island ordered four defendants, including Landa, to pay a total of $2 million back to the nursing home, and ordered that an independent health care monitor be appointed to run the facility. Landa and his co-defendants have appealed various orders in the case. In January 2025, Cold Spring Hills filed for bankruptcy; in March 2025, the facility sold itself for $10 to a third-party receiver and changed its name. (Our facility is now under new ownership with a renewed vision for excellence, the nursing homes rebranded website reads. A new chapter in compassionate care has begun.) The appeals and bankruptcy proceedings are ongoing.Landas attorney said he was merely a landlord of Cold Spring Hills and was not involved in operating the facility. She noted that the judge found no fraud committed by Landa, that all business arrangements between Landa and the home were approved by the state health department, and that none of the defendants enriched themselves at the expense of patient care.Landa has been involved with other legal actions related to his nursing homes. In 2017, for example, an employment agency co-owned by Landa was sued on behalf of a class of Filipino nurses alleging that it had trafficked them, withheld wages, and threatened civil and criminal litigation should the nurses leave. In September 2019, a New York district court found the agency and its owners had violated the Trafficking Victims Protection Act; in April 2022, the case was settled for $3 million on the condition that the findings involving trafficking were vacated. Landas attorney did not respond to follow-up questions about the other suits in which he has been involved.In one of her 2022 lawsuits, James estimated Landas net worth at more than $300 million in 2016.The audit at the center of the current lawsuit was the governments first related to a new nursing home payment system rolled out during Trumps first term. Under the previous system, nursing homes were reimbursed based on the number of minutes of therapy provided to patients, which created financial incentives for them to focus on patients who needed therapy, according to the November audit report. In contrast, the new payment system was designed to improve payment accuracy and appropriateness by focusing on the enrollee, rather than volume of services provided, according to the report.The inspector generals office found that Pinnacle, located in the Bronx, received significantly higher reimbursements from Medicare under the new payment system than the old one, raising red flags at the agency.Read MoreProPublica Adds Ownership Search to Nursing Home Inspect DatabaseThe inspector general found that Pinnacle had violated CMS billing requirements in 99 of the 100 claims it audited. The agency noted that, in 95 of those 99 claims, Pinnacle requested reimbursement for levels of services that were higher than what was justifiable when the agency reviewed patients charts for example, billing for speech therapy for aphasia in a patient who clinicians had explicitly stated did not need speech therapy. Additionally, in 54 of the 99 claims, the agency found, Pinnacle provided services that could not be justified by the patients charts for example, billing for bed mobility and wheelchair training for patients who were able to walk on their own.The HHS inspector generals office declined to comment on the audit, citing pending litigation.Separately, the New York State Department of Health has imposed three financial penalties against Pinnacle since 2021.In its lawsuit, Pinnacle alleges that the auditors blatantly ignore state and federal waivers for documentation and billing requirements issued as part of the effort to reduce administrative barriers to patient care during the COVID-19 public health emergency. Pinnacles efforts to provide exceptional care to its patients were an undeniable success, the facility wrote in the lawsuit.Additionally, the facility only had two COVID-19 deaths at the height of the pandemic one of the lowest COVID related death totals among New York nursing homes despite being a 480-bed facility located in one of the most heavily affected areas, Landas attorney said. The outcomes during that period are the most important measure of care, she added.In its suit, Pinnacle characterized the governments demand for repayment as an administrative process riddled with constitutional violations. That request would immediately paralyze Pinnacle by rendering it unable to pay its employees, the facility added, and would result in the shut down of the entire nursing facility leaving highly vulnerable patients without life-saving care, depriving hundreds of individuals of jobs and income, and divesting New York City of this critical medical facility.Industry watchdogs say threatening closure in response to state or federal enforcement actions is a familiar ploy for nursing home owners.Thats their constant refrain whenever they dont get what they want, said Kevin Walsh, former New Jersey comptroller who investigated tens of millions of dollars in nursing home fraud during his tenure.The risk of closure based on the finances and cost reports that Ive seen seems low, Walsh added. Theyre not going to kill the golden goose theyre using to siphon profits.Landa has repeatedly filed lawsuits in response to allegations against nursing homes with which he is affiliated. In 2022, he brought a suit for libel against The American Prospect, as well as one of its reporters and an editor, following an investigation titled The Nursing Home Slumlord Manifesto. Years earlier, he sued freelancers writing for ProPublica, also alleging defamation. Judges dismissed both cases.Landas nomination remains under consideration by the Senate Foreign Relations committee. (No hearing has been scheduled.) But if confirmed as ambassador to Hungary, Landa would hold a powerful position.Hungary, despite its small population and historically minor role in U.S. foreign policy, holds increasing symbolic importance in the global conservative movement.In a mid-February visit to Budapest, Trump administration officials reinforced their support for Orban. Secretary of State Marco Rubio signed an agreement to nurture Hungarys civilian nuclear program. (The country does not presently have nuclear weapons, according to the World Nuclear Association, an international organization that publishes reports on global nuclear activity.)We are entering this golden era of relations between our countries, Rubio said in a press conference in Budapest, not simply because of the alignment of our people, but because of the relationship that you have with the president of the United States.The post Nominee for Ambassador to Hungary Co-Owns a Nursing Home Thats Suing the Trump Administration Over Medicare Payments appeared first on ProPublica.

The owner of a nursing home can significantly impact the quality of care that homes residents receive, research has shown. One owners influence can be widespread: Nearly one-fifth of people or companies who report an ownership interest in a nursing home have a financial stake in five or more homes, according to data from the Centers for Medicaid and Medicare Services. Nearly 100 owners have direct or indirect ownership in 50 or more homes.One such owner, Benjamin Landa, was nominated by President Donald Trump in October to be ambassador to Hungary. ProPublica reported Monday that Pinnacle Multicare Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, which Landa co-owns, is suing the Trump administration following a Department of Health and Human Services audit that estimated more than $30 million in Medicare overpayments had been made to the facility.An attorney for Landa denied wrongdoing in a statement, saying the issues identified in the audit occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic when nursing homes were in the midst of a crisis.To give the public more insight into who owns American nursing homes, ProPublica has added the ability to search by owner, manager or officer name to Nursing Home Inspect, our database that helps you find issues that federal inspectors have identified in more than 14,000 facilities. The update allows users to find all references to an owners name across homes and filter results based on location or the persons role in the nursing home.The database now allows users to search by owner, manager or officer name. ProPublicaProPublica already publishes data provided by CMS on affiliated entities, groups of homes determined to share an owner, officer or entity with managerial control. However, these groups do not always capture every home a person or company has a relationship with. For example, CMS lists Landa as an affiliated entity associated with 55 nursing homes across four states. But the name Benjamin Landa appears in the CMS ownership data for 102 nursing homes in eight states.To make connections between owners more visible, if you search for a specific person or company name, the database now also surfaces others who frequently appear alongside the searched name.ProPublica plans to continue improving Nursing Home Inspect in the coming months. If you write a story using the ownership search, come across issues or have ideas for improvements, please let us know!The post ProPublica Adds Ownership Search to Nursing Home Inspect Database appeared first on ProPublica.

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