ProPublica

by Hannah Allam

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An Egyptian chaplain whose detention sparked a community uproar and became a test of counterterrorism powers in immigration court was released from an Ohio jail on Friday as the Department of Homeland Security abruptly withdrew its case against him.

The outcome is a victory for 51-year-old Ayman Soliman, a popular Muslim cleric whose hundreds of supporters include families he counseled at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. The DHS move to restore his asylum status and drop deportation efforts comes after court filings documented errors and inconsistencies in the government’s evidence portraying him as a terrorist.

Just before 1 p.m., Soliman walked out of Butler County Jail with a broad smile and a plastic bag containing his belongings, a moment filmed by his friends and advocates. He had been scheduled for an immigration trial next week and faced deportation to Egypt, which he fled in 2014 because of political persecution.

“This is beyond my dreams,” Soliman told ProPublica in a call minutes after he was freed. “I’m still overwhelmed by the surprise.”

Soliman’s asylum status was reinstated and his application for a green card has been revived, said Robert Ratliff, one of his attorneys. Early Friday, Ratliff had filed documents showing wording discrepancies in what should have been identical asylum termination notices to Soliman. One version called him a “member” of a terrorist group and the other accused him of providing illegal aid to a terrorist group. Soliman has denied both contentions.

The filing on Friday documented the latest in a series of inconsistencies in the government’s evidence, which ProPublica reported this month.

“From the beginning, everything was flawed,” Ratliff said. “This is certainly a victory for him, and it’s huge. Unfortunately, he had to spend approximately 70 days in jail to get to this point.”

A DHS official said immigration authorities “cannot discuss the details of individual immigration cases and adjudication decisions.” But the official added, “An alien — even with a pending application or lawful status — is not shielded from immigration enforcement action.” The agency is “responsible for administering America’s lawful immigration system, ensuring the integrity of the immigration process.”

After leaving the jail, Soliman joined Friday communal prayers at a local mosque, where an imam welcomed his release as a godsend and celebrated his friend as “a free man, as he always should be.”

Flanked by supporters at a news conference Friday evening, Soliman said he was still in disbelief that his day had begun in custody. He’d just come from a restaurant where he enjoyed “salad and fruit and meat” after weeks of jail food. He said he was “out of words” for the support system that sprang to his defense. He said he received 760 letters while in jail from people he’d never met.

“I’m free today because of this advocacy,” Soliman said. “Don’t underestimate your voice.”

Ayman Soliman Is Free Soliman is greeted as he exits Butler County Jail in Ohio. (Courtesy of Ahmed Elkady)

Watch video ➜

Soliman’s ordeal, which spanned two administrations, is more complex than most targets of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.

After fleeing persecution over his journalistic and protest activities in Egypt, Soliman had been granted asylum in 2018 under the first Trump administration. Then, in the last month of the presidency of Joe Biden, immigration authorities moved to revoke the status based on sharply disputed claims of fraud and aid to a terrorist group. Once Trump returned to office weeks later, court records show, immigration officials bumped up the terrorism claims and formalized the asylum termination on June 3.

DHS had built the case on allegations that Soliman’s involvement with an Islamic charity provided illegal aid, or “material support,” to the Muslim Brotherhood. But neither the charity nor the Brotherhood is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and an Egyptian court found no official ties between the groups.

Material support laws ban almost any type of aid to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist groups. Prosecutors describe the laws as an invaluable tool against would-be attackers, but civil liberties groups have long complained of overreach.

The Biden-era DHS, which first flagged the charity issue, said it would revoke Soliman’s asylum if “a preponderance of the evidence supports termination” after a hearing, according to the December 2024 notice. At the time, court records show, the material support allegation was listed as a secondary concern after more common asylum questions about the veracity of official documents and Soliman’s claims of persecution in Egypt.

Once Trump came to power weeks later, Soliman’s attorneys said, the material support claims metastasized, with U.S. authorities declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a Tier III, or undesignated, terrorist group and adding new arguments about ties to Hamas. The Brotherhood, a nearly century-old Islamist political movement, renounced violence in the 1970s, though Hamas and other spinoffs are on the U.S. blacklist.

Court filings show DHS attorneys introducing, then withdrawing or amending, materials to build a case linking Soliman to the Brotherhood through the charity. Almost immediately, the evidence began unraveling.

Among the supporting documents filed by the government were three academic reports by scholars with deep knowledge of Islamic charities in Egypt. Soliman’s legal team filed statements from all three balking at how DHS had cherry-picked their research. The scholars described “important mistakes of fact and interpretation,” “a mischaracterization” and “a dishonest manipulation of my text.”

Separate from U.S. attempts to tie Soliman to the Brotherhood was a puzzling footnote in which DHS attorneys alluded to warrants for “murder and terrorism” in Iraq, a country Soliman has never visited. DHS acknowledged in court that the line had been an error — after it had been included in the government’s successful argument for keeping him in custody.

Legal scholars specializing in national security were monitoring the case as a gauge of how much power the Trump administration could wield at the intersection of counterterrorism and immigration.

Ratliff said that the win was important but that he didn’t think the outcome would deter DHS from invoking similar arguments in other immigration cases, especially involving cartels, which the Trump administration designated as terrorist organizations, unlocking material support powers.

“The connections in this case were always going to be too tenuous to withstand scrutiny,” Ratliff said. “I think, though, that this format is still the format we’re going to see DHS take.”

Soliman’s supporters — from religious leaders to university students to parents he met at the hospital — welcomed his release.

“I know tomorrow he’ll get right back to the work he does, of caring for his community,” said Lynn Tramonte, executive director of the Ohio Immigrant Alliance, one of the advocacy groups that pushed for his release.

by Debbie Cenziper and Megan Rose, ProPublica, and Katherine Dailey, Medill Investigative Lab

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Two prominent U.S. senators are demanding the Food and Drug Administration provide an immediate accounting of the foreign generic drugmakers allowed to skirt bans meant to keep dangerous medication out of the United States.

The top members of the Senate Special Committee on Aging cited a recent ProPublica investigation that exposed how the FDA quietly awarded special passes to troubled manufacturers so they could continue shipping medication to Americans even after the agency barred their factories because of serious quality concerns.

“These exemptions undermine the goals of U.S. policy, threaten the safety of drugs, and place Americans’ health at risk,” the senators wrote in a bipartisan letter to FDA Commissioner Marty Makary.

Committee Chair Rick Scott, R-Fla., and ranking member Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., described “urgent concerns” about the FDA’s oversight of foreign drugmakers and whether medication coming into the United States was safe.

ProPublica found the agency granted exemptions from import bans to more than 20 foreign factories since 2013, including a Sun Pharma plant in India where quality breaches repeatedly risked the contamination of sterile injectable drugs. All told, ProPublica found, the FDA allowed more than 150 drugs or their ingredients into the United States from banned factories, including antibiotics, anti-seizure drugs and chemotherapy treatments.

The FDA said the exemptions were used to prevent shortages of essential medication. The practice, however, was largely kept hidden from doctors, pharmacists, consumers and lawmakers. Despite a 2012 law requiring the FDA to describe all the ways it was dealing with drug shortages, the agency didn’t mention the practice to Congress until 2024 — and even then, only in a single footnote of a 25-page report.

Scott said he fears for patient safety.

“We’ve seen the FDA impose import bans on foreign drug manufacturing facilities for violating basic quality and safety standards, only to later issue exemptions … that allow drugs from those same facilities to still be imported simply because they’re on a shortage list,” he said in a statement to ProPublica. “That means the FDA may be allowing potentially unsafe, low-quality drugs into American homes, and our seniors are especially at risk. That’s unacceptable.”

Sun Pharma has said it maintains “a relentless focus on quality” and is working with the FDA to resolve regulatory issues. The FDA did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency previously said that companies receiving exemptions from import bans were required to conduct extra drug quality testing with third-party oversight to “help assure consumer safety.”

Makary is new at the FDA: He took the helm of the agency earlier this year after he was appointed by President Donald Trump and has called for “radical transparency” in agency decision-making.

The letter from Scott and Gillibrand comes on the heels of a Senate hearing on drug safety, where a former FDA inspector who spent years in India and China said he repeatedly found “shortcuts and fraud” at substandard factories and feared bad medicine was being shipped en masse to the United States.

“What we found was terrifying,” said Peter Baker, who reported a series of failures overseas from 2012 to 2018.

Baker said his findings and those of other inspectors were undermined by the exemptions from import bans.

Inspectors over the years have uncovered filthy water, vials of medication that were “blackish” from contamination and raw materials tainted with unknown “extraneous matter” at foreign factories, government records show. Documents on drug quality testing have been destroyed, and in one case, workers poured acid on some that had been stuffed in a trash bag.

ProPublica found the decisions to override those findings and exempt drugs from import bans were made by a small, secretive group of agency insiders who reported to the longtime head of drug safety, Janet Woodcock.

In an interview, Woodcock told ProPublica that the FDA believed the exempted drugs were safe. “We felt we didn’t have to make it a public thing,” she said.

Woodcock retired in 2024 after nearly four decades at the agency.

In their letter to Makary, the senators asked the FDA to explain how it defines a drug shortage and provide market share data for all drugs exempted from import bans since 2020. They also asked for a complete list of those drugs.

The FDA has never released such a list. ProPublica published one in August after a yearlong investigation. Reporters harnessed artificial intelligence and wrote code that used keyword search and pattern matching to pull exempted drug names and manufacturing locations from hundreds of old reports that were put out by the FDA and are no longer on the agency’s website. The reports identified factories barred from shipping drugs to the United States and at times referenced the exemptions with almost no explanation.

ProPublica found the FDA did not regularly test the exempted drugs to ensure they were safe or use its massive repository of drug-related complaints to proactively track whether they were harming unsuspecting patients.

“I am deeply concerned by the FDA’s pattern of allowing foreign generic drugmakers to export drugs to America even when their facilities have been found to fall below our standards,” Gillibrand said. “This is a threat to our seniors and our national security.”

Several House members have also raised concerns.

“The FDA should never have allowed corporations with unsafe foreign factories to import risky drugs or ingredients,” Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., said in a statement. “We need stronger and better domestic pharmaceutical manufacturing, and we need a government that refuses to roll the dice on our health.”

The senators asked the FDA to provide more information about the exemptions by mid-October. The committee is planning to hold a second hearing.

by Renee Dudley

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

What Happened

The Defense Department has tightened cybersecurity requirements for tech companies that sell cloud computing services to the Pentagon.

The updates, issued this month, ban IT vendors from using China-based personnel to work on department computer systems and require companies to maintain a digital paper trail of maintenance performed by their foreign engineers.

Background

The changes follow a ProPublica investigation that exposed how Microsoft used China-based engineers to maintain government computer systems for nearly a decade — a practice that left some of the country’s most sensitive data vulnerable to hacking from its leading cyber adversary.

U.S.-based supervisors, known as “digital escorts,” were supposed to serve as a check on these foreign employees, but we found they often lacked the expertise needed to effectively supervise engineers with far more advanced technical skills.

What They Said

The Defense Department now says in its “Security Requirements Guide” that only “personnel from non-adversarial countries” may work on its cloud systems and that the escorts supervising those foreign workers “must be technically qualified in the code/system or technology they are providing access to.”

In addition, cloud providers must maintain detailed audit logs, a digital trail of actions in computer systems. The logs “must include identification of the escort and escorted,” including country of origin, as well as details of commands executed and settings changed.

Why It Matters

Until our reporting, top Pentagon officials said they had been unaware of Microsoft’s digital escort system, which the company developed as a work-around to a Defense Department requirement that people handling sensitive data be U.S. citizens or permanent residents.

Cybersecurity and intelligence experts have told ProPublica that the arrangement poses major risks to national security, given that laws in China grant the country’s officials broad authority to collect data. Leading members of Congress, in turn, have called on the Defense Department to strengthen its security requirements while blasting Microsoft for what some Republicans called “a national betrayal.”

The Pentagon is now conducting an investigation into the digital escort program, with a focus on Microsoft’s China-based engineers.

Response

Following ProPublica’s reporting, Microsoft announced in July that it would stop using China-based engineers to service Defense Department cloud systems. In a statement for this article, a spokesperson said the company was committed to implementing the department’s new requirements.

“Our commitment to national security is foundational, and we remain focused on providing the most secure services possible to the US government,” the spokesperson said. “We recently implemented changes to our Department support model, and will continue to work with our national security partners to evaluate and adjust our security protocols in light of the new directives.”

Doris Burke contributed research.

by Anna Clark

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

Just 15 months after receiving an award from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for excellence in community water fluoridation, the city of Grayling, Michigan, changed course.

With little notice or fanfare, council members voted unanimously in May to end Grayling’s decadeslong treatment program. The city shut down the equipment used to deliver the drinking water additive less than two weeks later.

Although it already paid for them, the town returned six unopened barrels of the fluoride treatment to the supplier.

Personal choice was the issue, said City Manager Erich Podjaske. “Why are we forcing something on residents and business owners, some of which don’t want fluoride in their water?” he said. He saw arguments for and against treatment in his research, he said, and figured that those who want fluoride can still get it at the dentist or in their toothpaste.

Drinking water fluoridation is widely heralded as a public health triumph, but it’s had critics since it was pioneered 80 years ago in Grand Rapids, about 150 miles southwest of Grayling. While once largely on the fringes, fluoridation skeptics now hold sway in federal, state and local government, and their arguments have seeped into the mainstream.

Even in the state where the treatment began, communities are backpedaling. And because customer notice requirements are patchy, people may not even know about it when their fluoridation stops.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, has called fluoride “industrial waste” and supports an end to community water fluoridation. The head of the Food and Drug Administration said on a newscast that the CDC’s online description of water fluoridation as one of the greatest public health achievements is “misinformation.”

The CDC, which is in the midst of a leadership exodus and staff revolt, and the Environmental Protection Agency are reviewing their respective approaches to fluoride in drinking water. At the same time, President Donald Trump’s administration dismantled the CDC’s Division of Oral Health, which, among other initiatives, provided research and technical assistance on fluoridation. That’s the office that helped present awards for well-run programs like the one in Grayling.

Since Kennedy was elevated to the nation’s top health post, Utah and Florida became the first states to ban communities from adding fluoride to public drinking water. The Utah ban included measures to make prescription fluoride supplements more accessible — but now, the FDA is moving to remove certain types of those supplements for children from the market.

Altogether, legislation was introduced this year in at least 21 states to prohibit or roll back provisions related to adding fluoride to public water systems, according to Abby Francl, policy analyst at the National Conference of State Legislatures. In addition, citing Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” initiative, Oklahoma’s governor issued an executive order instructing state agencies to cease promotion of fluoridation in the public water supply while it reviews the practice.

Some local communities across the country opted to stop treatment this year, including at least four in Alabama, the state with the second-lowest number of dentists per resident. Others are debating it. On Michigan’s east side, the medical director of St. Clair County’s health department urged the agency to take steps to “prohibit the addition of fluoride” to public water systems. Two Upper Peninsula cities with a shared water system had special council meetings this summer on fluoridation. In Hillsdale, the acting mayor has said that ending fluoridation is a top priority.

“I want to reform the water system now that we have RFK in Health and Human Services,” Joshua Paladino told a local paper in November. Paladino added in an email to ProPublica that he sees public water fluoridation as an imprecise tool because it gives a standard dose across the population.

According to Michigan’s environmental agency, some communities had temporarily stopped fluoridation and were “hesitant to restart because of uncertainty.” That prompted it to issue a five-page statement with the state health department in March, stressing that the levels recommended for water suppliers — 0.7 milligrams per liter of water — have no adverse health effects and that fluoridation benefits everyone.

“Local anti-fluoride movements can be vocal and persistent, but do not necessarily represent the viewpoints of the greater community,” the statement said.

Communities that end fluoridation will see more decaying teeth, according to Margherita Fontana, a professor at the University of Michigan School of Dentistry. Young children, older adults, people with disabilities and people who are poor are especially at risk, she said, but everyone will be vulnerable. Excessive tooth decay in children can require treatment in hospitals, under anesthesia. In rare but extreme cases, it can lead to death.

“It’s unfortunate, because we know how to prevent the disease,” Fontana said. “So it just seems like we’re going backwards in time rather than forward.”

A handful of states require customer notification when fluoridation ends. New York mandates such notice, yet fluoridation in Buffalo lapsed for years before it was widely known. Outside Detroit, the city of Wyandotte suspended treatment about a decade ago, despite saying on its website until early this summer that it used fluoride. The claim was removed only after a local reporter raised the issue.

Michigan doesn’t have a statewide protocol for notifying residents when fluoridation stops. The environmental agency’s spokesperson said in an email that while it strongly recommends that communities inform customers, it doesn’t have the authority to compel them.

Grayling’s water operator, Josh Carlson, said a district engineer at the agency told him he just needed to tell the state if the town decided to stop fluoridating the water.

“It was almost like she was caught off guard that we actually did it,” Carlson said.

From Fringe to Mainstream

Water fluoridation began in 1945 in Grand Rapids, Michigan’s second-largest city, as part of a planned trial intended to last 15 years. Muskegon, on the Lake Michigan shore, served as the control, meaning its water was not treated with a fluoride additive. An Illinois city with naturally occurring fluoride in its water was another point of comparison.

Six years in, Muskegon officials withdrew from the trial after determining that the health benefits were so significant, they couldn’t deny treatment any longer to Muskegon’s children. Similar studies elsewhere continued for years, showing positive outcomes.

“It was very usual to have dentures at a very young age” at the time, Fontana said. Fluoride treatment “was such a fantastic discovery, something so easy that nature already provided. It was already there. It was the greatest discovery, really, for oral health.”

Grand Rapids celebrates its role in public health history with plaques and a totemic sculpture. But the treatment has been criticized since the early days as, variously, a Communist plot, forced mass medication and an industrial byproduct that causes more harm than good. (Fluoride additives are commonly derived from the processing of phosphate fertilizer.)

Even as fluoridation became widespread, opposition persisted. Today’s critics note that fluoride is now available in toothpaste, as well as in ingestible drops and tablets like the ones for children that the FDA is working to remove from the marketplace. Dental care is also more accessible than it was in the 1940s. The need that fluoridated water was meant to address, critics say, isn’t as urgent.

While progress has made fluoridation’s effects less dramatic, they’re still significant. It was initially credited with a 65% reduction in tooth decay; now, it’s about 25%. No other fluoride source compares to the cost-effectiveness of drinking water, proponents say, especially for those least able to access dental care, either because of cost or because they live in areas with a shortage of dental providers.

“Steel Water,” a sculpture by artist Cyril Lixenberg, was erected in 2007 in Grand Rapids to celebrate the community’s role in advancing water fluoridation. (Joel Seewald, HMdb.org)

Community water fluoridation is supported by the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Dental Association and the American Medical Association. The CDC, at least for the moment, still recommends it.

Advocates say that its benefits are so pervasive, they’ve become invisible to many.

“Known benefits that are not visible, they take it for granted, whereas unknown risks are what they are always worried about,” said Jayanth Kumar, lead researcher on a systematic review of community water fluoridation and IQ. “Florida didn’t ban alcohol. Florida didn’t ban cigarettes. But they banned fluoride.”

Critics say the National Toxicology Program’s “state of the science” report from last year shows an association between fluoridated drinking water and a lowered IQ in children. But that assessment — which is both contested and much-cited — involves fluoride levels that are more than twice what the federal government recommends for drinking water, and it’s based on limited studies conducted outside the U.S., with different water conditions.

A post made on Gov. Ron DeSantis’ X account, celebrating Florida’s ban on local governments adding fluoride to public drinking water, was sent to ProPublica in response to a query to the governor’s office about the state’s policy. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Even the report’s abstract says that “more studies are needed to fully understand the potential for lower fluoride exposure to affect children’s IQ.”

In a lawsuit brought against the EPA by groups opposed to water fluoridation, a district judge relied in part on the NTP analysis in ruling that fluoridation presents such an “unreasonable risk” that the agency must take action. Even as it appeals the decision, the EPA said its review of new science on fluoride in drinking water “is being done in coordination with Secretary Kennedy and HHS.”

The court ruling, the NTP report and the wavering stance of federal agencies have empowered a backlash to fluoridation in state and local governments.

Stuart Cooper, executive director of the Fluoride Action Network, said he’s seen momentum shift over the last two decades as his group sought to eliminate fluoride treatment, not least as a plaintiff in the EPA lawsuit. Kennedy has given a jolt to the movement, he said. Now, “we have allies at every level.”

“Legislators and city councilors are calling us instead of me having to do vice versa,” he said.

Tooth Decay and Regrets

In Grayling, questions about fluoridation were brewing for at least a year before the town changed course. Podjaske, the city manager, said he discussed it off and on with Carlson, the city’s water operator. When it came time to reorder the fluoride additive, Podjaske wondered: Is this really necessary?

Carlson asked the state’s environmental agency about the protocol for discontinuing treatment and was told to keep the state posted. In April, Podjaske suggested adding the fluoridation question to the City Council’s agenda. At the May meeting, the council voted 4-0 to end treatment.

“I figured the best option was don’t push it on people,’’ council member Jack Pettyjohn said about his vote. “Don’t force them to have it in their water.”

There wasn’t any outreach to the public or health experts ahead of the vote. Meeting minutes say that Podjaske and Carlson discussed the removal of the fluoride additive after the water operator received “additional education and training.”

But both men say that isn’t right. Fluoridation was already on the agenda when Carlson attended a training that wasn’t about the treatment, but where he had an informal conversation with an instructor that made him worry about fluoride’s safety.

The vote would’ve occurred even without Kennedy’s activism, Podjaske and Pettyjohn said. Carlson, though, noted how Grayling’s pivot played out in context of “some of the new narratives coming out of Washington.”

“There’s a lot of mixed feelings about RFK Jr., but he seems to be anti-fluoride,” Carlson said. “I don’t know if that’s driving people’s complaints about fluoride.” With the proliferation of social media, he said, “I could see that being a factor, in the fact there’s more people with an opinion now.”

At the same time, he said, locals are more tuned in to water issues following the Flint water crisis and the contamination of waterways with PFAS chemicals linked to a nearby military base. PFAS are a group of “forever chemicals” that can carry a cancer risk.

Carlson said that in the occasional feedback he’s gotten on fluoridation over the last couple of decades, “the negatives were more than the positives in recent years.”

Following input from the state environmental agency, Grayling posted a notice about the change online in August, 10 weeks after treatment stopped. Some people didn’t see it. Mary Bobenmoyer, owner and general manager of Our Town Coffee & Treats, didn’t know until a reporter asked her about it in late August. “They did it?” she said.

Bobenmoyer spent seven years as a dental assistant. She encourages children especially to get fluoride treatment at the dentist. But, she said, “I personally don’t think it should be filtered in our water. We should have free and clear water.”

Over in Grand Rapids, there’s sporadic pushback on fluoridation, said water system manager Wayne Jernberg. But he hasn’t noticed any recent escalation. And he doesn’t see why there would be.

“We rely on the science of us,” Jernberg said. “We’ve been adding it for 80 years, OK? And we don’t see any issues in our community.”

Meanwhile, reports on dental health have caused some communities that dropped fluoridation to reconsider.

In Canada, just across the river from Detroit, the City Council of Windsor, Ontario, voted to stop fluoridation in 2013 after lengthy public debate. Less than six years later, the county health agency reported troubling outcomes from oral health screenings at area schools. It found that the percentage of children with decay or requiring urgent care increased 51% in five years, while the percentage of children that didn’t require any care decreased by 43%. The Windsor council soon decided to reintroduce water fluoridation, citing it as “a key prevention strategy.”

In the province of Alberta, Calgary’s council voted in 2011 to stop fluoridation in part because of community skepticism and because expensive repairs to the equipment were needed, according to Councillor Gian-Carlo Carrà. But in time, researchers found that local children developed significantly more cavities than their peers in Edmonton, where water is fluoridated.

“We saved ourselves some money,” said Carrà. “Fast-forward 10 years, and the results are clear that dental outcomes for Calgarians are worse after 10 years of not having fluoride in the water.”

When fluoridation was put on the ballot in 2021, 62% of voters supported its reintroduction. It took more than 28 million Canadian dollars and several years to start treatment again.

But, Carrà said, those costs — and the money to run the system — seem worthwhile. “I’m just much more interested in doing as much good as I possibly can,” Carrà said.

In Grayling, speaking more than two months after voting to end the treatment, Pettyjohn said he has an open mind about the future of fluoridation. “I would totally look at readdressing it, especially if the people of Grayling really wanted us to,” he said.

For now, though, he said he’s heard nothing negative from residents.

by Lauren McGaughy, The Texas Newsroom

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.*

This article is co-published with The Texas Newsroom and The Texas Tribune.

A group of state and national media organizations, including The Texas Newsroom, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune, are arguing in court that records in Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s divorce case should be made available to the public.

The organizations filed their plea to intervene with the Collin County district court handling the Paxtons’ case on Tuesday. The filing requests that the court reverse a July decision to seal the case records, arguing that both the attorney general and his wife, state Sen. Angela Paxton, are elected officials subject to public scrutiny. The documents should be available for “review and inspection” with limited exceptions, the media organizations said.

“The grounds alleged for divorce and the disposition of property are of substantial public interest because they bear on integrity in public office, potential use of public resources, and transparency in judicial proceedings,” the media organizations argued.

The organizations noted that family law cases across the country, including divorce proceedings, are presumed public and that the couple’s political positions in Texas and Paxton’s decision in April to run for U.S. Senate add to the public interest.

Paxton served more than a decade in the Texas House of Representatives and Texas Senate before his election as state attorney general in 2014. Angela Paxton was first elected to the state Senate in 2018.

“Where, as here, the parties are not private citizens but elected constitutional officers, the need for transparency is heightened, not diminished,” the filing read. “Allegations that might suggest abuse of marital assets, concealment of financial information, or personal conduct inconsistent with public responsibility are not merely private — they are of public consequence.”

The eight organizations that signed on to the filing are Dow Jones & Co. (publisher of The Wall Street Journal), The Washington Post, Hearst Newspapers (which owns the Austin American-Statesman, Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News), ProPublica, The Texas Lawbook, the Texas Observer, The Texas Tribune and The Texas Newsroom.

Angela Paxton filed for divorce in July, accusing her husband of adultery. Soon after, she requested all records in the case be placed under seal, arguing that doing so would “not have an adverse affect on the public health or safety.”

Judge Ray Wheless granted her request in mid-July. He then recused himself. It’s not clear why, but Wheless and his wife, also a district court judge in Collin County, have donated to the Paxtons’ campaigns in the past.

The current judge listed online as presiding over the case is Lindsey Wynne.

After news of the divorce went public, Ken Paxton posted on the social media site X that he and his wife “decided to start a new chapter in our lives.” He attributed the divorce to the work of political enemies. In court, his attorney filed a brief general denial of Angela Paxton’s divorce petition.

In their filing calling for the records to be unsealed, the media organizations note that Paxton has been accused of impropriety at least six times while in elected office, including fraud, abuse of office and self-dealing.

In one of the most serious cases, he was charged with multiple felonies in 2015 for allegedly encouraging investors to buy into a McKinney, Texas, tech firm without telling them that he had a financial interest in the company and also failing to register with the state before soliciting clients for a friend’s investment firm. After years in court, Paxton cut a deal to do community service in lieu of facing trial. He did not admit guilt in this case and has not been convicted of a crime.

Then in 2023, the Texas House impeached him for alleged official misconduct, some of it related to accusations that he swapped political favors with a campaign donor in exchange for a job for the woman with whom he was allegedly having an affair. Paxton called it a political witch hunt and denied that he broke the law.

After a trial, the Texas Senate acquitted him and he was reinstated to office.

“These sustained, serious, and high-profile matters raise questions about AG Paxton’s conduct in public office and his fidelity to the law,” the organizations argued.

The couple’s assets, which were scrutinized during the impeachment process, will be a subject of the divorce case.

The Paxtons have purchased multiple homes and parcels of land in several states but failed for years to disclose them on state ethics filings.

This summer, after The Texas Newsroom revealed the lack of disclosure, the couple listed more information about the property acquisitions on their annual financial statements. In a note on the documents, Paxton said he believes the disclosure rules are murky and contradictory and that he was only disclosing properties “that continue to have bank notes serviced by the filer and/or the filer’s spouse.”

Angela Paxton has asked for a “disproportionate share” of the couple’s assets in her initial divorce filing, which The Texas Newsroom obtained prior to the records being sealed. She wanted sole use of their McKinney home while the case is pending as well exclusive access to her business account.

She also wants Ken Paxton to admit fault in the breakup of the marriage.

A lawyer for Ken Paxton did not immediately respond to requests for comment about the media organizations’ request. A spokesperson for Angela Paxton declined to comment.

Update, Sept. 17, 2025: This story has been updated to add a response from Angela Paxton’s spokesperson.

Lauren McGaughy is a journalist with The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration among NPR and the public radio stations in Texas. She is based at KUT in Austin. Reach her at lmcgaughy@kut.org.

by ProPublica

ProPublica has selected Dana Chiueh and Aaron Brezel as AI engineering fellows as part of its participation in the Lenfest Institute’s AI Collaborative and Fellowship program, a nationwide news industry effort supported by Microsoft and OpenAI to explore how artificial intelligence technologies can responsibly contribute to the work of mission-driven newsrooms. The Lenfest AI program selected ProPublica among 10 regional and national news organizations for the two-year fellowships.

The ProPublica fellowships are made possible through funding from both the Lenfest Institute and the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation.

“We’re thrilled to welcome Dana and Aaron as our first AI engineering fellows,” said Ben Werdmuller, ProPublica’s senior director of technology. “Their unique combination of technical expertise and journalism experience positions them perfectly to help us explore how AI can safely enhance investigative reporting while maintaining the rigorous standards, ethical principles and human expertise that define ProPublica’s work.”

Chiueh was most recently a news innovation engineer at the Minnesota Star Tribune, participating in the Lenfest program on the newsroom’s behalf. She was a recipient of a Brown Institute Magic Grant for developing Tipbot, a tool that automates the gathering of missing information from submitted tips, and previously reported for The Dallas Morning News and Los Angeles Times, among others.

Brezel joins ProPublica from the Brown Institute for Media Innovation, where he was lead software engineer. Before that, he was a software engineer at The Washington Post, where, as a founding member of the reporting tools team, he built software for journalists across the newsroom.

About ProPublica ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism in the public interest. With a team of more than 150 dedicated journalists, ProPublica covers a range of topics, focusing on stories with the potential to spur real-world impact. Its reporting has contributed to the passage of new laws; reversals of harmful policies and practices; and accountability for leaders at local, state and national levels. Since it began publishing in 2008, ProPublica has received eight Pulitzer Prizes, five Peabody Awards, eight Emmy Awards and 16 George Polk Awards.

About the Lenfest Institute for Journalism  The Lenfest Institute creates solutions for the next era of local news by investing in sustainable business models at the intersection of local journalism, responsible use of technology and service to community in Philadelphia and nationwide. 

About the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation The Patrick J. McGovern Foundation is a philanthropic organization dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence and data science solutions to create a thriving, equitable and sustainable future for all. PJMF works in partnership with public, private and social institutions to drive progress on our most pressing challenges, including digital health, climate change, broad digital access and data maturity in the social sector.

by Taylor Kate Brown for ProPublica

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Before and after the 2024 election, Elon Musk made it clear he disliked environmental regulations and considered them a barrier to innovation, especially given the quick timelines his companies prefer to operate on.

The billionaire spent more than $250 million to help elect President Donald Trump and, in the first months of Trump’s second term, Musk led the Department of Government Efficiency, making cuts to the federal bureaucracy and regulatory staff, including environmental agencies, before a dramatic falling out with the president.

Musk-controlled companies have also developed influence in Texas, a state already known for a lighter touch on environmental regulation. In addition to his lobbyists’ successful track record in the Texas Legislature, Gov. Greg Abbott cited Musk as inspiration for the state creating its own DOGE-style office.

A new investigation from ProPublica, the Texas Newsroom, the Houston Chronicle and the Texas Tribune has found Musk and a Houston-area member of Congress have pushed Texas and local officials to hire Musk’s Boring Co. for a $760 million flood control project in the city.

Reporters Lauren McGaughy and Yilun Cheng found that Rep. Wesley Hunt helped pitch Boring’s involvement even though the company builds tunnels narrower than the ones extensively studied by flood control experts for the project. An engineering expert warned that the volume of the tunnels the company is proposing may not be sufficient during a flood emergency. Another said that the proposed tunnels, which would be built at shallow depths, could interfere with existing utility lines and bridge foundations.

Boring has described its project in pitches to lawmakers as an “innovative and cost-effective solution.” But experts and some local officials question whether Boring should be awarded the contract. One Democratic county commissioner told the newsrooms that Musk shouldn’t be involved in the Houston project, arguing he has shown “blatant disregard for democratic institutions and environmental protections.”

Hunt, Musk and representatives from Boring did not respond to the newsrooms’ request for comment before publication of the Aug. 28 story. After publication, Hunt and Musk defended the project on X, the social media platform that Musk owns. Musk claimed that the tunnels would cost less than alternatives and that additional tunnels could increase flow, but he provided no further details.

Officials in Houston haven’t decided on a contractor for the tunneling project yet, and it remains to be seen which environmental regulations will come into play.

In the past, Boring has found ways to navigate around environmental rules. A Boring tunnel project in Las Vegas has skirted environmental, building and labor regulations, a previous ProPublica and City Cast Las Vegas investigation found.

Other Musk-owned companies have faced similar criticism. Over the past year, environmental groups have also raised concerns about an xAI supercomputing facility in Memphis, Tennessee. Musk did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

Adam Kron, a senior attorney at the environmental advocacy group Earthjustice, said any company ignoring or avoiding regulations entirely reminds him of the fracking boom in the early 2010s, when companies moved quickly to drill, poisoning some local communities’ groundwater in the process. “There is a gold rush mentality of getting out there [first] and paying the fine later, once you can prove it,” Kron said. “When you have that kind of culture, you do see more of the notorious attempts to not seek the correct permits or not comply with the standards.”

Here’s what to know about Boring and other Musk-affiliated companies’ history of bumping up against environmental regulations.

Boring Co.’s Las Vegas Convention Center Loop Station, where visitors can ride electric vehicles through a 1.7-mile tunnel system connecting the convention center to nearby areas of the city. (Patrick T. Fallon/AFP/Getty Images) Boring Co.

In Las Vegas, a previous ProPublica investigation found Boring was able to skirt building, environmental and labor regulations by structuring a transportation project as a completely private venture and leaning on its local connections.

Boring is constructing a planned 68-mile tunnel system beneath Las Vegas where Teslas ferry passengers underneath the city’s urban core. The project avoided lengthy reviews by building its first section near the convention center under the auspices of the tourism authority. Since then, Boring has received county approval for dozens of more miles of tunnels under obscure holding company names.

Since Boring’s Las Vegas project began, it has been cited or fined for wastewater violations. It also paid retroactive fees for permits after being caught tunneling without them, reporters Daniel Rothberg and Dayvid Figler found. Workers for the company have filed complaints with the state Occupational Safety and Health Administration about “ankle-deep” water in the tunnels, muck spills and severe chemical burns. Nevada OSHA fined the company more than $112,000, after an investigation in 2023, but Boring has disputed the regulator’s allegations and contested the violations.

Boring had already been hit with multiple violations over its management of industrial wastewater at its headquarters in Bastrop, Texas, by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. The company, while generally denying the allegations, was eventually fined more than $9,000 and required to make changes at the site, according to a TCEQ spokesperson. In 2023, the company applied for a permit to dump more than 100,000 gallons per day of industrial wastewater from Boring and SpaceX into a nearby river, but it was met with local resistance. A year later, Boring agreed to transfer wastewater to a new city treatment plant, expected to open in early 2026.

Boring did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

xAI

In June 2024, the Memphis Chamber of Commerce announced xAI, Musk’s artificial intelligence company, was setting up a data center at a former manufacturing site in the southern part of the city. That came as a surprise to some members of the City Council, one of whom told NPR she first heard about it on the local evening news.

Within a few months, Musk said the data center, dubbed Colossus, was online. The facility primarily powers the company’s chatbot and generative image maker, Grok, which is integrated into X.

The electricity needed for the computing power was double what the local utility could immediately provide, so xAI used methane gas generators to bring the data center online, burning fossil fuels without a permit or pollution control technologies for nearly a year.

“It’s an actual gas plant in the middle of a neighborhood, and you don’t need any permitting?” Democratic state Rep. Justin Pearson, who lives 3 miles from the data center, told CNN in May. “Something has failed drastically and significantly with our system of checks and balances.”

In January, amid wider community push back, xAI applied for a permit for 15 generators on site. Opponents have aerial imagery they say shows more than 30 generators appearing to be operational on site as late as April. Company officials have said they wouldn’t install pollution controls on any of the turbines until the permit was approved, which happened in early July.

The company maintained permits weren’t necessary to start because of an exemption for generators on site for less than a year, a rationale Shelby County’s Health Department agreed with. Wendi C. Thomas recently reported for ProPublica and MLK50: Justice Through Journalism on how the city’s Chamber of Commerce went to unusual lengths to promote xAI. Memphis’ mayor has backed and defended the project, saying the city will address pollution concerns with “independent environmental consultants” and “community benefit policies.” Tennessee’s governor has touted the opportunities the facility will bring to the city. The EPA was beginning to look into whether the exemption applied to xAI in October of last year; new EPA head Lee Zeldin recently met with the company.

Community members packed an April hearing on the permits, and state representatives for the area have questioned the mayor’s trust in xAI, especially as the company plans to set up a second data center in Memphis.

Environmental advocates have said that xAI needed permits because of the size of the generators and the scope of the pollution. In early April, the Southern Environmental Law Center estimated the turbines could produce, in a year, between 1,200 and 2,000 tons of nitrogen oxides, a smog-forming pollution associated with poor respiratory health in nearby areas, as well as the carcinogen formaldehyde.

The company’s generators are only a few miles from a historically Black neighborhood already considered a toxic air pollution hot spot because of more than a dozen polluting facilities nearby, including a steel plant, a refinery and power plant. The county has seen consistently low air quality and the highest rate of ER admission for asthma attacks in Tennessee. ProPublica’s air toxics map showed a cancer risk hot spot four times the national average nearby before xAI moved in.

Regulations and permitting are in place because unchecked pollution can have wide-ranging impacts on a nearby community, regardless of industry, said Jennifer Duggan, executive director at the Environmental Integrity Project, a watchdog nonprofit. “The environmental laws on the books are designed to protect public health and our natural resources. If there is no enforcement, when there are violations of those laws, then there is no protection from industrial pollution for those communities.”

While the impact to a community depends on the industry in question, as well as length and seriousness of the pollution, Duggan said, it can mean increased risk of premature mortality, higher health care costs, lost school days, lost productivity for workers, birth defects and even psychological trauma.

Permits generally require facilities to operate safely and install pollution controls, Duggan said. If those controls are not installed — or turned off — “then you’ve got more pollution in the air than the law allows,” which puts people at risk.

The company did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

A SpaceX Starship is being prepared for a flight test on March 3, 2025. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images) SpaceX

While SpaceX regularly launches its Falcon rockets to deliver satellites and astronauts into orbit, Musk’s ultimate goal for the company is much further afield. Starship, SpaceX’s giant combined reusable rocket and launch vehicle, is supposed to eventually help deliver humans and cargo to Mars, and it’s currently part of NASA’s effort to return astronauts to the moon.

But the program has already run into issues here on Earth, including violations of clean water regulations during launch tests and a cross-border investigation into falling debris.

Starship’s launch pad is along the Texas coastline, less than 5 miles from the Mexico border, surrounded by a state park and a national wildlife refuge established to protect the biodiversity of the lower Rio Grande River. Among the animals in this refuge are fragile shorebird populations. When asked about Starship tests in 2018, Musk said at the Texas site “we’ve got a lot of land with nobody around, and so if it blows up, it’s cool,” a comment that angered the residents of a nearby village.

The first Starship launch vaporized part of the launch site and threw debris as far as 6 miles. Then the EPA and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality said Starship launches in 2023 and 2024 violated the Clean Water Act for discharging untreated industrial wastewater. SpaceX applied for a wastewater permit in July 2024 and later said it “fundamentally” disagreed with the allegations from regulators but settled for about $150,000 to “focus our energy on completing the missions.” In February of this year, state regulators granted SpaceX a permit.

Starship’s fast-moving schedule has suffered setbacks this year, with explosions during three launches or tests so far. Mexico has threatened to sue over debris and potential environmental contamination crossing over the border. SpaceX said in response there were “no hazards to the surrounding area.”

But the Federal Aviation Administration recently approved SpaceX for up to 25 Starship launches a year, and the Trump administration has signed an executive order announcing attempts to “eliminate or expedite” environmental review of rocket launches by the FAA, ProPublica’s Heather Vogell and Topher Sanders reported.

SpaceX did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

Tesla

While the popularity of electric vehicles like Tesla in California has led to a notable decline in carbon pollution from cars there, the company’s factory in the state has been repeatedly admonished for releasing toxic air pollution and other toxic chemicals into the surrounding community. Tesla’s Bay Area facility has received more air quality warnings in the past five years than all other companies in California, save one: a Chevron refinery, according to reporting by The Wall Street Journal.

By 2022, the company had been fined by both the local air quality district over health concerns and the EPA for breaking federal air quality laws. In June 2024, the district ordered Tesla to correct ongoing violations of toxic air pollution coming from the factory’s paint shops, allegations the company denied. The company is currently in the process of implementing an abatement plan, according to a spokesperson for the Bay Area Air District.

Separately, dozens of California counties sued Tesla in 2024 over claims of illegally dumping hazardous waste produced at its facility and local service centers. The company settled the lawsuit for $1.5 million, not admitting to wrongdoing but agreeing to five years of mandatory training and independent waste audits.

Musk had already moved Tesla’s headquarters to Texas in 2021, in part over complaints about California regulatory culture. But, as the Journal reported in November 2024, Texas regulators have also cited the company for actions at Tesla’s giant Gigafactory just outside of Austin, including for dumping untreated wastewater, releasing pollution in excess of its permit and then not reporting it.

A former Texas employee sent a whistleblower memo to the EPA in 2024 accusing the company of asking staff to lie to government regulators, the Journal reported, including creating an “elaborate ruse” during an inspection to make sure a troubled furnace passed an emissions test. Both the EPA and Texas environmental regulators opened a “preliminary inquiry” related to the memo in November 2024, according to the Journal. The EPA did not respond to ProPublica’s question about the status of the inquiry and pointed us to the TCEQ. A TCEQ spokesperson said it could not comment “to support the integrity of all criminal investigations conducted by TCEQ.”

Tesla did not respond to the Journal’s request for comment. But a day after the story was published, Musk reposted an X user who mentioned the Journal story, adding the message: “Legacy media is a sewage pipe of lies.”

Tesla did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment.

The people affected by environmental violations are not just the nearby community, Duggan said, but the workers at polluting facilities as well. “They are really on the front line in certain industries,” she said.

by Max Blau

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

The H-2A visa program has long been touted as a way to ensure that farmers can access enough workers without hiring people who are undocumented. But for some migrant farmworkers seeking better-paying jobs in America, their seasonal gigs have morphed into a nightmare.

As a recent ProPublica story revealed, the promises of the H-2A visa program can be undermined by extreme abuses the workers suffer, mostly by labor contractors. Some workers have had their wages stolen and been threatened with deportation if they complain about unsafe work conditions, a federal investigation found. In the worst instances, others have been assaulted or raped or have even died. It’s gotten so bad that, in one of the largest H-2A criminal cases ever, a federal judge described the abuse of these workers as a form of modern-day slavery. And without further changes to the H-2A program, experts told ProPublica, foreign farmworkers may continue to be harmed.

With the U.S. facing a drastic shortage of domestic farmworkers and as the Trump administration deports more undocumented immigrants, experts told ProPublica that H-2A visas are certain to remain in high demand. One agricultural economist forecasts that, by 2030, there could be a need for up to 500,000 H-2A workers — roughly triple the number requested in 2016, the year that President Donald Trump was first elected.

Experts, lawyers and advocates told ProPublica that, unless more is done to protect workers, the instances of abuse and exploitation are likely to increase as well. They suggested a variety of ways to make the H-2A program safer and more humane.

1. Enforce the current rules better

The H-2A program is supposed to provide fair wages, safe working conditions and free housing and transportation to workers. But experts said insufficient oversight has undermined the protections promised to visa holders.

“The expectations are very clear,” said Cesar Escalante, a University of Georgia professor of agricultural and applied economics. “Even if we’re very clear on the regulations, the government has failed on the enforcement.”

The U.S. Department of Labor each year investigates only a tiny fraction of farm employers. The number of investigations is scarce not because of a lack of potential violations. A report from the Government Accountability Office showed that 84% of the investigations conducted by federal regulators found at least one violation of rules designed to protect H-2A workers. Advocates see that high violation rate as an indication that regulators are missing even more abuses in the fields.

Labor experts believe that the limited enforcement is largely due to limited resources. One of the main enforcers of H-2A rules, the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division, last year had one of the lowest levels of investigators since the H-2A program was launched in the 1980s, Rutgers University researchers found. Daniel Costa, an attorney and director of immigration with the think tank the Economic Policy Institute, has called on Congress to boost the division’s funding to allow its regulators to conduct more proactive investigations. Short of that, Costa warned, the H-2A program will continue to be a “breeding ground for abuses.”

If the Trump administration’s proposed budget gets approved, it will make even further cuts to the Wage and Hour Division. That could mean fewer H-2A investigations moving forward.

A Labor Department spokesperson did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment about its enforcement practices and the implications of the budget proposal.

2. Raise the stakes for farmers

There have been calls not just to hold farmers more accountable for H-2A violations, but also to reward the ones who comply with labor laws.

Advocacy groups like Centro de los Derechos del Migrante and United Farm Workers have called on farmers to be held liable for the illegal practices of the third-party recruiters they hire. Right now, there’s a bill proposed by a bipartisan group of lawmakers that would require farmers to stop working with recruiters who charged laborers an illegal fee to obtain an H-2A visa. And it would give regulators the ability to fine farmers for failing to do so.

Since only a tiny fraction of employers who hire H-2A workers face severe consequences, human rights organizations also have urged regulators to suspend or ban more employers from the H-2A program. They say that’s particularly important for employers with a track record of violating workers’ rights.

Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural and resource economics at the University of California, Davis, believes that farmers should be rewarded for following the rules. He said the largest employers of H-2A workers generally are not the ones responsible for the worst violations. He thinks that regulators should create a TSA PreCheck-style program that would let law-abiding employers move through the process of getting approved for H-2A workers more quickly with fewer bureaucratic hurdles. And it could allow overworked regulators to focus on the most pressing problems.

3. Get corporations on board with stopping abuse

There’s a growing movement centered on the idea that the power of consumers can be leveraged to end agricultural abuses.

After years of demanding better pay and protections from individual farmers and buyers, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers — the anti-trafficking organization that uncovered the first examples of abuse in the massive federal case — launched the Fair Food Program in 2010. Under the program, corporate buyers such as supermarkets and fast-food chains sign legally binding agreements to buy ethically sourced crops.

Participating buyers agree to purchase produce from farms that adhere to the program’s stringent set of protections for workers, let workers be informed about their rights by the CIW and allow independent auditors to investigate complaints from their fields. The buyers also agree to pay those growers a small premium that is passed down to their workers. If extreme abuses like forced labor are found on those farms, the buyers commit to suspending produce orders until the issues are addressed.

Some of America’s largest supermarkets (Walmart, Whole Foods) and fast-food chains (McDonald’s, Burger King) participate in the Fair Food Program. The corporations’ participation was originally limited to a select set of crops, such as tomatoes. Some of their commitments since have grown to include more crops. Other big buyers, like Kroger, Publix and Wendy’s, have not participated in the program. Spokespeople for the companies did not respond to ProPublica’s request for comment. Buyers who have not participated in the program have stated that it is the responsibility of their suppliers to ensure that workers are treated fairly.

The Fair Food Program has protected the rights of thousands of H-2A workers each year, according to the independent auditors, but that’s still less than a tenth of the more than 300,000 H-2A workers in the U.S. According to the CIW, the more buyers and growers embrace the program, the more likely it is that abuses of H-2A workers can be prevented.

Susan Marquis, a professor with Princeton University’s School of Public and International Affairs, said the other ideas proposed by experts can help reduce the harms faced in the fields. But they don’t go as far as the Fair Food Program in stopping the kinds of violations that routinely happen in the H-2A program.

“It’s very clear, supported by the data, that nothing works to end forced labor except the Fair Food Program or some other variation of worker-driven social responsibility,” Marquis said.

by Jacob Orledge, North Dakota Monitor

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with the North Dakota Monitor. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

For years, North Dakota’s mineral owners have said state officials have ignored their pleas for help as companies deduct money from their share of income from oil and gas production.

Now, some state lawmakers agree they need to take action. Responding to a recent North Dakota Monitor and ProPublica investigation, more than a half-dozen said a committee should study the issue and propose solutions before the next legislative session in 2027. Others suggested changes to state law, including one proposal to prohibit deductions unless a lease specifically allows them and another that would require companies and royalty owners to renegotiate their contracts every few decades.

The Legislature meets every other year. North Dakota lawmakers rejected proposals to protect private mineral owners in 2021 and 2023, and did not address the issue during this year’s session.

“It will definitely come up in 2027,” said Sen. Chuck Walen, a Republican from New Town. “I don’t know what the outcome will be, but it will definitely be coming up.”

North Dakota officials have taken steps to safeguard state-owned royalties. Since 1979, all state leases with oil and gas companies prohibit deductions. But that protection does not extend to leases that are negotiated by North Dakota’s estimated 300,000 private mineral owners.

“I definitely think something has to be done, especially since the state has protected itself,” said Rep. Patrick Hatlestad, a Republican from Williston. “I think it needs to do something similar for its citizens.”

Some lawmakers also have suggested they may need to make changes to the state’s postproduction royalty oversight program, created in 2023 to address minerals owners’ mounting frustration about postproduction deductions — the money companies withhold to cover the costs of processing and transporting minerals after they are extracted and before they are sold. That program has not alleviated concerns over postproduction deductions and, as of August, had not resolved any cases about that issue, the news organizations found.

Why It Matters

Mineral owners have the rights to oil and gas found underground. They can lease those rights to companies in exchange for a cut of the revenue when oil is produced, called a royalty.

But while the leases have remained the same for decades, the industry has changed. Oil and gas are now sold farther from the well, and companies incur more transportation and other costs to get the products to the point of sale. The companies pass on a portion of those costs to mineral owners, which North Dakota courts have determined is usually legal unless a lease says otherwise.

Most leases signed decades ago don’t explicitly mention postproduction deductions, and leases don’t expire unless oil production lapses.

Deductions began surging in North Dakota about a decade ago. About 20% of royalties are deducted, on average, according to two estimates as well as interviews with royalty owners. That would have amounted to about $1 billion in 2023.

Estimates provided by the North Dakota Petroleum Council suggest companies withhold at least hundreds of millions of dollars in North Dakota every year.

Why Some Lawmakers Are Pushing for Change

Several lawmakers, including Republican Rep. Don Longmuir, said that because the state’s legislative season is a relatively short 80 days, it’s important to have an interim legislative committee conduct a study and propose a solution ahead of the 2027 session.

“We can’t wait until the session starts,” said Longmuir, of Stanley, in the oil-producing region of the state. “That’s something that you know really needs to happen before session starts, so that maybe they can come up with something.”

Assigning a new study to an interim committee would require a directive from Senate Majority Leader David Hogue, chair of the Legislative Management Committee. Hogue, a Republican from Minot, said he “would consider it” and will likely make a decision in the next month or two.

“I really need to do more self-education right now,” Hogue said. The recent series has raised “awareness that there is an issue out there,” he said.

Sen. Dale Patten, who has served as chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee and would likely have influence over any legislation, said he is open to a formal legislative study but said it should be initiated only with input from the full Legislature.

“I would be comfortable with taking a look at it and see if there’s a way to resolve it,” said Patten, a Republican from Watford City.

Some lawmakers are already thinking about ways to address the issue in the next session.

One lawmaker said he may introduce legislation that would limit the length of leases to 30 years. Republican Sen. Jeff Magrum, who represents Hazelton and has supported landowners on other issues, said he hopes limiting leases will give future generations of mineral owners the opportunity to renegotiate contracts and incentivize companies to be more mindful of how they treat North Dakotans.

“I don’t think that’s right for someone that’s not even born yet to have to honor a contract that I signed today. It’s just not fair to them,” Magrum said. “Look at how times have changed. Everything’s changed and they’re stuck in the contract that was written in the 1950s.”

Magrum has introduced 13 bills related to property rights issues in the past two legislative sessions. All but one failed.

Rep. David Richter, a Republican from Williston, said he thinks it would be difficult for the Legislature to modify existing leases in that way, but it could limit the length of future leases.

“Going forward, I think that might be an option worth taking a really hard look at,” Richter said. “But that doesn’t do anything to alleviate the situation of the leases that are already in place.”

For those existing leases, Richter said it is often “unclear” whether deductions are permitted, and some lawmakers said they should pass a state law to address the issue.

Richter said he prefers that companies and mineral owners renegotiate the contracts to specify whether deductions are permitted. But if that doesn’t happen, he said he is open to legislation that would “clarify” how leases that don’t mention deductions should be interpreted by the courts.

Senate Minority Leader Kathy Hogan, a Democrat from Fargo, said lawmakers should pass a law stating that companies can’t take postproduction deductions unless leases explicitly allow them to do so. Sen. Brad Bekkedahl, a Republican from Williston who supports oil development but who also has tried to help mineral owners, proposed such a measure in 2021.

“We could write legislation clarifying this easily,” Hogan said. “But we’ve never been able to get it done.”

Industry, State Officials Respond

Ron Ness, president of the North Dakota Petroleum Council, an organization that lobbies on behalf of more than 550 oil and gas companies, said many of the proposals would be a “substantial infringement” on mineral owners’ property rights.

“We believe direct state involvement/interference in the contractual agreements of hundreds of thousands of private mineral leases is the wrong approach,” Ness wrote in an email. “Suggested actions like this would have a detrimental impact on mineral development in North Dakota.”

Gov. Kelly Armstrong, a Republican who worked for his family’s privately owned oil company earlier in his career, did not respond to a request for comment for this article.

But during an Aug. 18 appearance on a KFGO radio program, the governor said he was open to making tweaks to the royalty oversight program. The program was created by legislators in 2023 and was envisioned as a way to mediate disputes about deductions between mineral owners and companies, but that hasn’t happened.

“If this one isn’t working, we should find out why not and figure out if we can tweak it and make it better,” Armstrong said.

Some lawmakers said they don’t see a need to take any action.

Sen. Kent Weston, a Republican from Sarles, said he’s discussed the issue with colleagues in the Legislature and North Dakota Petroleum Council staff in recent weeks. He said the status quo is “fair” and necessary to ensure the oil and gas industry continues to invest in the state.

House Majority Leader Mike Lefor and Rep. Todd Porter, the longtime chair of the committee overseeing the energy industry in the House, could not be reached for comment.

by Mario Ariza

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up for Dispatches, a newsletter that spotlights wrongdoing around the country, to receive our stories in your inbox every week.

Last October, Peter and Linda Kilfoil returned from an overnight trip and found water pooling in the kitchen of their Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home. The pair couldn’t pinpoint the source of the leak and had a hard time getting a plumber. So Linda Kilfoil called their insurer, Citizens Property Insurance Corp.

The call was the beginning of the Kilfoils’ journey through an alternate legal universe set up by Citizens, a quasi-governmental insurer in Florida, to reduce its staggering legal costs. In this state-sanctioned world, the judges’ salaries are funded by Citizens, the rules followed in Florida’s circuit courts don’t all apply and the insurance company almost always triumphs.

It’s a legal landscape so fraught that a Tampa judge recently paused all its proceedings — twice. But that didn’t come soon enough to help the Kilfoils.

Citizens sent an adjuster to their home the day after they called. He couldn’t pinpoint the source of the leak either but suspected it was coming from a pipe that drained wastewater from the kitchen, he said later in a deposition. He snapped photos of the warped, soggy cabinets. A short while later, Citizens denied their claim, saying that the damage to their cabinets was consistent with a long-term leak, and that their insurance contract excluded coverage of such leaks — unless they were hidden.

Eleven days after the denial, the Kilfoils’ plumber found the leaking pipe in the home’s exterior wall. It had been spilling water into a recess between their kitchen cabinets and slab foundation, records show. The total cost of repair has come close to $40,000, according to Linda Kilfoil and construction estimates provided by her attorney.

The Kilfoils had permanently relocated to Florida from Long Island to enjoy retirement. But with Peter Kilfoil ill with prostate and skin cancer, his wife faced the prospect of handling repairs while tending to his health.

“I am a former physician,” Peter Kilfoil said in an interview from the hospital. “I’m not like some carjacker. They accuse me of letting that leak persist until it destroyed my kitchen.”

Just before Thanksgiving, the Kilfoils sued Citizens. Instead of going to circuit court, as most lawsuits against insurers would, Citizens routed their case to arbitration before the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings.

On the surface, the change of venue — made possible by a provision lawmakers empowered Citizens to insert at the end of most of its policies — didn’t seem like a big deal. Legislators and Citizens executives touted DOAH as advantageous for both consumers and the insurer. Cases in the forum tend to move faster, cost less and are decided by expert administrative law judges rather than juries.

But in practice, homeowners forced by Citizens into DOAH have trouble exercising key rights.

Judge Britney Horton kept the Kilfoils’ lawyer from deposing a Citizens adjuster, siding with the company after it argued it had already made another employee available and produced “all non-privileged facts.” The ruling deprived them of a fair opportunity to investigate the denial, according to their attorney. On at least 20 other occasions, DOAH judges have issued similar rulings during a dispute’s fact-finding phase.

Judge Britney Horton (State of Florida Division of Administrative Hearings)

In addition, some DOAH judges have denied motions requesting that they disclose any potential conflicts they might have as arbitrators. Some plaintiff’s attorneys say that has made it difficult to trust in the impartiality of their decisions.

And the forum’s rules make it impossible for homeowners to drop their lawsuit without Citizens’ approval, unless they withdraw their claim, a move that can lead to court costs and attorney’s fees if not filed early in the process. Some have felt forced to go to final hearings where they lost and ended up owing thousands to Citizens.

“You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out something’s wrong,” said Chip Merlin, president of Merlin Law Group, a firm that represents insurance policyholders.

In a written response to questions about the homeowners’ experiences, Citizens spokesperson Michael Peltier defended the current process.

“We believe the statute authoring the resolution of claims by DOAH provides a well-established, impartial, and efficient process for policyholders, who no longer must wait nearly two years, on average, for a resolution of their claim,” he wrote.

When it comes to depositions, the forum is not “materially different” from Florida’s circuit courts, he added. And he explained that while homeowners are barred from dismissing their cases at DOAH — a move that might allow them to pursue the claim in circuit court — they aren’t blocked from withdrawing their claim, a more terminal maneuver. (Withdrawing, though, grants Citizens an automatic win and exposes homeowners to the risk of fees if it is not done soon after a case is sent to DOAH.) The company declined to comment on individual cases in litigation.

As of July 21, judges sided with Citizens in more than 90% of cases that made it to a final DOAH hearing where both sides presented their case, according to a ProPublica analysis of court records. (The steep odds were first highlighted by the South Florida Sun Sentinel.) In circuit court trials, Citizens has won about 55% of the time over the past five years, according to records released by the company.

Citing a procedural error in the request by the Kilfoils’ lawyers, Horton declined to push back the date of the final hearing after Peter Kilfoil had been hospitalized. She did not respond to a request for comment. Faced with long odds and failing health, the Kilfoils settled their case for the nominal sum of $500 that Citizens was offering, according to their attorney. “I was being a nurse to my husband daily,” Linda Kilfoil said, leaving little time to manage home repairs and fight the insurer. “I couldn’t leave him.”

Peter Kilfoil died at 77 on Aug. 22, 2025.

Of the Citizens cases resolved at DOAH between March 2024 and July 7, 2025, 78% ended in a settlement, according to data released by the insurer. Half of all cases settled for $500 or less to the policyholder, according to that data. An additional 28%, according to Peltier, were settled by Citizens for an average of $30,000.

Citizens’ customers cannot opt out of DOAH. Eventually, the insurer intends to send more than 3,800 cases a year there, according to a funding proposal approved by its governing board last year. Since February 2024, it’s sent over 1,500.

A multitude of public agencies in Florida contract with DOAH, relying on the administrative law judges to resolve disputes. As part of that process, they pay the agency for the salaries of judges who decide their cases, though they don’t play a role in the hiring of them.

But the program will have to survive stiff legal challenges. The most successful so far comes from Tampa, where a circuit court judge in August reaffirmed a statewide injunction pausing DOAH hearings after a Hurricane Milton victim argued the company was violating his rights.

“Specifically, enforcement of the arbitration clause at issue compels insureds into a forum that lacks neutrality, discovery, motion practice, and meaningful judicial review,” Judge Melissa Polo wrote in her order.

Citizens moved to disqualify Polo, arguing that she violated her impartiality as a judge by ruling the DOAH process unconstitutional before arguments could be heard in the case. Polo denied the motion.

“We look forward to making our case on appeal,” Peltier wrote of Polo’s decision to pause DOAH proceedings.

“Everybody in This Room, Everybody in the State of Florida Backstops Citizens”

As Florida’s insurer of last resort, Citizens must take all comers who can’t get affordable insurance through another carrier. It gained the ability to take disputes to DOAH in the spring of 2023, at a moment of great peril for the insurer. Successive hurricanes had gouged a hole in the Sunshine State, leaving several private carriers insolvent — and leaving hundreds of thousands of their customers with no choice but Citizens. By the end of that year, the not-for-profit insurer was serving more than 1.2 million homeowners as another hurricane season loomed. It also had more than 18,000 outstanding lawsuits filed against it.

The company successfully lobbied the Legislature to let it take cases to DOAH in order to buffer it against the crises. The verbiage granting Citizens this power was tucked into HB 799 — a broader Citizens bill that, among other things, allowed it to raise rates faster on some policies — just after its third reading in the Florida House of Representatives Commerce Committee in April 2023.

State Sen. Jonathan Martin, a Republican and one of the bill’s sponsors, said Citizens officials proposed the DOAH provision to him in a meeting in his Tallahassee offices. Former Florida State Supreme Court Justice Ricky Polston, who had just begun what would be a brief stint as the insurer’s general counsel, was present at the meeting, Martin said.

“He and Citizens expressed the risk that they were facing, just like all the other insurance companies out there,” Martin said.

Polston would leave Citizens that June to go into private practice. He now charges Citizens at least $500 an hour to defend it from legal and constitutional challenges, including ones to the DOAH proceedings, records show, and his firm has billed the insurer almost $430,000 this year. Polston did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica.

That amount, according to Peltier, is minuscule compared with the $450 million the organization has spent on legal services under contracts signed in 2021 and 2022. “The figure you mention of $430,000 reflects less than one-tenth of 1%,” he wrote.

Former Florida State Supreme Court Justice Ricky Polston (Florida Supreme Court)

There was little discussion of the DOAH provision in committee or in the well of the house, where the legislation initially passed 115-0. It wasn’t until HB 799 reached the floor of the Florida Senate on May 1, 2023, that two senators started asking questions.

“This very broad language is bad for the Citizens policyholders,” said Republican Sen. Erin Grall as she rose to offer an amendment that would strike the language from the bill. Foremost among her concerns was that Citizens policyholders would be giving up valuable rights, like access to the courts, without getting anything in return (private policyholders get a premium reduction when they agree to arbitration in Florida).

After raising her concerns, she withdrew her amendment, curtailing discussion. A few minutes later, Democratic Sen. Tina Polsky asked Martin, the bill’s sponsor, to address Grall’s concerns.

“In my opinion, Citizens is specially situated,” Martin said. “Everybody in this room, everybody in the state of Florida backstops Citizens,” Martin said, referring to a provision in Florida law that allows Citizens to levy a fee on every insurance policyholder in the state, including those of competitors, should the company ever find itself short of funds.

The company’s finances have stabilized in the intervening two years. It’s aggressively shed more than half a million insurance policies, offloading them to private insurers, and is down to about 12,600 outstanding lawsuits as of this June. And its DOAH program is expanding.

Judicial Economy

Fort Lauderdale homeowners Yvonne Miller and Chaney Darric Keith wanted to stop pursuing their claim against Citizens this year.

Miller and Keith had intitially claimed that their shower pan failed, a leak they said damaged walls, baseboards and floors. Citizens had denied the claim. The pair had sued, but during the course of the litigation, it became clear that at least some of the damage had come from a long-term leak from their showerhead, which would not be eligible for insurance coverage. The pair’s lawyer tried to get the case dismissed. But at DOAH, that can’t happen unless both parties agree.

“I do not want to move forward with this,” said attorney Lourdes Bloomfield at a Feb. 17 DOAH hearing. Bloomfield had already tried two times to withdraw Miller and Keith’s plumbing claim against Citizens, filing motions to voluntarily dismiss the lawsuit and notifying the court of the withdrawal of her clients claim. Judge Terry Slusher had denied both of them, the second for being filed only one business day before the hearing.

“So just so that I can make it clear for myself, Citizens is not willing to permit Ms. Miller and Mr. Keith to withdraw their claim at this time?” the judge asked Citizens’ defense attorney, Holly Miller, a short time later.

“Those are my instructions, yes sir,” Miller replied, according to a transcript of the court proceedings.

Because the pair stated they wanted to withdraw the case and presented no evidence at their final hearing, the judge sided with Citizens and ended up ordering that the homeowners pay $10,677 in court costs.

Mary Ceron is another homeowner who attempted to quit but ended up at a final hearing against her will. As her hearing approached, her attorney said she requested a settlement where each side bore its own costs, but said Citizens did not agree. So Ceron withdrew her claim at her final hearing, and afterward she received a judgment against her for almost $45,000 in costs and fees. Citizens agreed to settle the case without collecting the money after the homeowner appealed, according to Ceron’s attorney.

The company, Peltier said, is looking for finality. Miller and Keith, he wrote, had initially attempted to quit their case in a way where it might be refiled, “and we don’t want that, we want finality.” Anyone who wants to stop their DOAH proceedings can do so, he said, by withdrawing their claim.

Citizens routinely pursues fees and costs against individuals who do not withdraw their claim early in the DOAH process. DOAH judges have granted more than 15 such requests, according to a ProPublica analysis of the agency’s docket. After being presented with a list of these cases, which included that of Ceron, Peltier wrote that the company pursues fees against some individuals who withdraw “to discourage lawyers from pursuing claims that lack merit.” Some 11% of DOAH claims through July 7 had ended in withdrawals or voluntary dismissals, according to data provided by the company.

Experts point out that Florida’s circuit courts allow for voluntary dismissals. “I’m not saying that what they’re doing is technically not in conformity with the rules, but it’s the only time I’ve heard it in a regular general civil case, such as an insurance dispute,” said Jack Tuter, former chief judge of Florida’s 17th Judicial Circuit, who independently reviewed DOAH cases for ProPublica and spoke generally of the forum’s practice of barring voluntary dismissals that aren’t agreed upon by parties.

A ProPublica review of the DOAH docket revealed at least 32 other cases in which homeowner attempts to drop their lawsuits were met with resistance from Citizens, forcing both parties to rack up legal costs.

“I think that’s one of the most vindictive things, in the 14 years I’ve been doing this, I’ve seen an insurance company do,” said Andres Correa, a plaintiff’s attorney who felt forced to go to a final hearing after Citizens refused to agree to a settlement in which each side bore its own costs.

Settling for Less

Jeffrey McShane is a former Navy pilot and nuclear engineer. This March, as a lunar lander carrying a payload he helped design was using X-rays to observe the dance between Earth’s magnetic field and the solar wind, he was troubled by another concern: Was there any way to win against Citizens?

According to an architect’s report, in the course of two weeks in the spring of 2024, a pipe burst under the living room of McShane’s four-bedroom home, and then his roof — which had been replaced four and six years earlier — sprung a leak after a storm. The water shorted his air conditioning unit. Mold bloomed. An insurance adjuster he hired put the bill at just over $200,000.

Citizens said its policy didn’t cover some of the property damaged by the leak and said other damage was due to wear and tear and improper installation. It refused to cover the costs. “We found no evidence to support the homeowner’s claim of water intrusion through the roof’s surface on April 3, 2024,” an engineer hired by the company wrote after visiting the property.

Jeffrey McShane (Courtesy of Jeffrey McShane)

“I did not expect that the technical difficulty of navigating Citizens’ claims process would be far more difficult than getting a spacecraft to the Moon,” McShane wrote in an email to ProPublica.

As his final hearing approached, McShane’s learned that his chances of victory were almost nonexistent. No homeowner, up to that point, had won a DOAH case against Citizens. The insurance company was offering him $5,000 to settle. At the last moment, he decided a final hearing was too risky and took the money.

ProPublica heard from more than two dozen plaintiff’s attorneys who said their DOAH cases settled for less than what a homeowner would have gotten in state court.

Peltier, the Citizens spokesperson, offered a different perspective on settlements at DOAH. On average, cases there settle for about $18,000, compared with about $25,000 in state court. But some of that difference, according to Peltier, is due to older, pre-tort reform cases that carry more liability for the insurer.

Stainton Williams has been similarly befuddled by his interactions with Citizens.

According to his attorney, Michael Citron, a plastic tarp has covered the roof of Williams’ North Miami home for most of the past year. Williams, 92, is a Jamaican immigrant with end-stage kidney disease whose roof, parts of which are nine and 19 years old, began to leak after a period of heavy weather in late September that coincided with the passage of Hurricane Helene. On Oct. 11, 2024, Citizens denied Williams’ claim, writing that “we determined the damage sustained to your client’s property was caused by storm surge resulting from a hurricane.” (Citizens’ policies do not cover storm surge or floods.) Williams’ home is about 3 miles from the ocean, on the opposite side of the state from Hurricane Helene’s main impacts and where no storm surge or coastal flooding were reported by the National Weather Service.

Inconsistently, an engineer hired by Citizens to inspect the property disputed that the roof was damaged by Helene, writing “there was no damage to the roof covering system or exterior envelope from Hurricane Helene.” The insurer’s spokesperson declined an opportunity to clarify this seeming contradiction.

Stainton Williams (Courtesy of Stainton Williams’ daughter)

So Williams and his daughter, who has power of attorney, hired Citron and sued. When Williams’ case was sent to DOAH, Citron filed a motion requesting, among other things, that DOAH Judge Todd Resavage disclose any potential conflicts. The motion cites a state law that requires such disclosure from appointed arbitrators.

“The disclosures were requested in our case as they would be in any arbitration case,” Citron said. “Why that becomes important in this proceeding is because we didn’t choose the arbitrator. We didn’t even choose arbitration. It was all done by Citizens. So because of that, we at least want to know who these people are, who’s overseeing our case,” he added.

Resavage denied the motion for two reasons. First, he ruled the state law Citron cited did not apply because he had not been appointed but rather given his position by law. And even if that state law did apply, Resavage wrote, it wouldn’t require his disclosure unless there were “known facts that a reasonable person would consider likely to affect the arbitrator’s impartiality.” He did not respond to a request for comment from ProPublica. At least two other judges have denied similar motions for disclosure, according to a ProPublica review of the docket.

Asked about his thinking and intentions in regards to conflict of interest disclosures by administrative law judges, Martin, the bill sponsor, responded via text with a question. “Do those judges have to file a Form 6? Like all other judges?” After being informed that DOAH judges file Form 1, a less detailed disclosure, Martin ceased responding to texts and did not answer phone calls.

Agnel Philip contributed data reporting.

by Max Blau, ProPublica, and Zaydee Sanchez for ProPublica, illustrations by Dadu Shin for ProPublica

This story contains descriptions of sexual assaults.

In the darkness before dawn, Javier Sanchez Mendoza Jr. took the last drag of a cigarette and looked out from the staircase of a run-down motel. Underneath the stark floodlights streamed a procession of weary travelers in T-shirts and jeans, reaching into the bottom of a white coach bus for their oversize duffel bags. Mendoza had arranged for them to come on this 1,200-mile journey from northeastern Mexico to a rural stretch of Georgia’s blueberry country. Each of them had a work permit, which Mendoza had helped secure through a visa program called H-2A.

More foreigners than ever before were using the decades-old program, which lets them work for months or even several years on U.S. farms. Farmers and politicians have touted H-2A as an easy answer to a persistent labor problem: Americans are abandoning agriculture jobs and U.S. immigration policies are restricting access to undocumented workers. As recently as last month, President Donald Trump has floated the idea that if undocumented farmworkers returned home, they could come back to the U.S. “with a pass” to “legally” re-enter the country. But over the years, the promises of H-2A — such as humane working conditions, free housing and far better wages than back home — have been undermined by the relative ease of exploiting workers due to scant oversight of the program.

The busload of men and women who arrived that day in September 2018, like the others before and after, came with hopes of creating better lives for themselves and their families. Mendoza, through a network of recruiters in Mexico, had sold them on that hope. The recruiters touted the promises of a visa that, for many of them, would allow them to make more in a day than what they earned for a week of work in Mexico.

From his perch on the staircase, Mendoza was surveying a scene that held great promise for him, too. The arrival of this batch of workers marked the beginning of his first big job as a labor broker and the end of any lingering thoughts that he’d end up like his own mother and father, who’d brought him as a toddler from Mexico. They’d scraped together a living baling pine straw and packing blueberries. Mendoza, now 21, also had spent some time working in the fields. But he went on to attend college, dropping out so that he could focus on what he calculated to be a more lucrative prospect.

Around the time Mendoza was ramping up his business of bringing people over from Mexico, Georgia was more reliant on H-2A workers than any other state. He served as a gatekeeper, choosing which Mexican workers desperate for better pay would go to Georgia farms desperate for more laborers.

Beyond that, though, he had other ambitions related to this work. And he had plans for one worker in particular among this early batch.

Sofi was 24 and a single mother. She had experience working in the fields, having grown up in a close-knit farming family in a small town flanked by rows of corn and squash. But she came across more as a city girl, with her stylish clothes and penchant for pink lipstick. One of Mendoza’s recruiters in Mexico was a neighbor of Sofi’s family and assured him that she was a good worker. That part hardly mattered. The photo attached to her H-2A visa application drew him in.

Mendoza began sending her flirtatious text messages. She brushed them off. He pressed on, telling her he’d waive most of the fee he charged people to apply for the visa.

Sofi thought about it some more. Her father, who she trusted more than any man, had picked up seasonal farm work in the U.S. when she was a child, and she was aware of how much he appreciated the stable housing and steady pay. Though she worried about leaving her toddler son, she began to worry more about what would happen to him if she didn’t leave. The wages Mendoza offered could change her son’s future, or at the very least secure it the way her father had done for her. She owed her boy that much, she told herself. She would go.

About the Sourcing

The description of Sofi’s experience in the H-2A program is detailed in police records, court documents and testimony in federal court. Her name is redacted in federal filings to maintain her anonymity. We are identifying her by a first name she formerly used on social media. Mendoza declined multiple requests for an interview and did not provide comments in response to ProPublica’s letters detailing the case.

But not long after she and the other workers arrived in Monterrey, Mexico, to board one of the buses Mendoza sent for them, she began to have doubts. One of Mendoza’s associates was waiting for them. The associate handed each worker a stack of cash.

The way he explained it, the U.S. would question any large wire transfers from Mexico, so they would need to bring the money to their new boss. He told them not to put the money in their suitcases. U.S. officials were likely to check those. It would have to be on their bodies. He didn’t say much else, just that anyone who got caught would need to claim the cash as their own. So don’t get caught.

The closer her bus crept to the border, the more nervous Sofi grew. She started tallying just how much money was hidden on the people riding the bus. She figured it was almost a quarter of a million dollars.

The Deal With the Farmer

In some regards, the deal Mendoza had struck with a blueberry farmer named Charles King was typical. Mendoza would ensure a steady supply of workers, recruiting them from across Mexico and Guatemala, assisting with their H-2A applications and arranging for their journey to the U.S. The workers could be employed only by King and only for up to 10 months at a time. King would pay a fair wage — just under $11 an hour — and cover the costs of their housing and transportation to his farm.

There was another part of their agreement: Mendoza would oversee King’s workers himself. That meant Mendoza would actually find the housing and pay for it with King’s money. And he would be the one to see that the workers got to and from the fields and the one who handed out their wages. It was a common practice for farm owners to outsource those tasks to labor brokers. It freed farmers like King from the hassles of managing people who don’t speak much English. And it granted brokers like Mendoza immense power.

Like Mendoza, King was fairly new to this business. The longtime train engineer had decided only a few years earlier, in his mid 40s, that he wanted to start a farm on the nearly 40 acres passed down by his late grandfather. Around the time he met Mendoza, his blueberry bushes were about to yield their first fruit. He estimated he needed 150 people to work in his fields.

Mendoza advised King to request twice as many; Mendoza had a plan for the others. King, for his part, stood to get a cut. All King had to do was sign the paperwork. Mendoza would handle much of the rest.

King signed off. And Mendoza, who up until then had only brought over a few smaller batches of workers for other farmers, got to work on sourcing 300 of them for King.

Sofi was among the first groups of people recruited to work for Kings Berry Farm. She initially felt some relief when she stepped off the bus in the parking lot of the dingy motel, after making it past customs and having spent more than 20 hours on the road. But she was taken aback by how she and the others were treated by the people there to meet them: The workers were unloaded like prisoners, their heads bowed so they couldn’t see what was happening.

One of the people who received the workers separated Sofi from the rest. She recalled that she was taken to a motel room. She found another female worker waiting there. Guards were assigned to watch them.

It was in the motel room that she first saw Mendoza. Short and stout with a shaggy chinstrap beard, he spoke with a strong lisp because of a congenital disorder. It could be hard to understand what he was saying, but that day he had no problem making his message clear.

Sofi recalled that the other woman asked Mendoza if she could have her passport back. Mendoza said that if she had it in her mind to leave his operation, she’d have to do so without her passport. She wasn’t getting it back.

He already had Sofi’s.

The Threats

Sofi was not sent out to work in the fields like the others. Mendoza ignored what her contract said. He kept her by his side, and he gave her a different set of responsibilities. One was that she would accept wire transfers on his behalf from Mexico. Another was that she would write the checks to workers. She would not be paid for this work. She would not be paid at all.

Mendoza forced her to live at his house. While she was with him, he talked openly about his business and she paid attention. It was easy to begin piecing together how his operation worked. He was charging some applicants thousands of dollars for the chance to get an H-2A visa. She heard him speak with his contacts in Mexico, describing how he’d bring in more and more workers that the farmers didn’t actually need, just to get those up-front fees. He’d even bring her to meetings with King. It was an effort, she thought, to show off Mendoza’s power over her.

She recalled that Mendoza crammed a couple dozen people — workers and their children — into a trailer. She noticed that a few didn’t have enough money to eat. Sofi believed that the workers were being shorted. She remembered Mendoza occasionally picking up calls in the middle of the night, alerts that people were escaping.

Those calls reinforced for Sofi the feeling that she, on the other hand, couldn’t even try to flee. She didn’t have her passport. She didn’t know a single person she could turn to. She didn’t speak any English. And she was scared.

From the first time he touched her, on her very first day in the U.S., Mendoza made it clear she would have no say. Still, she told him no. It didn’t matter. Month after month, closed up in his house with him, he did what he wanted to her.

Within a few months, Mendoza took her on a drive to a nearby courthouse. By then, Sofi had come to believe that Mendoza considered her a prize — something he had bought. At the courthouse, he told her she needed to sign a piece of paper. If she didn’t, he repeated the thing he always said when he was mad, which was often: I’ll call immigration, she remembered him saying. I’ll have you deported.

Only after she signed did he explain what the document was: a marriage license.

He started introducing her as his wife and telling her that she should bring her son to Georgia. He’d help her. But she worried that he would treat her child no better than the children of the other workers.

One day, she saw a few young Guatemalan children at the field where their parents were picking fruit. They were hungry. Their parents hadn’t been paid.

Sofi took some of Mendoza’s money and the keys to his car and drove the children to a gas station to get them some food. Mendoza caught wind of it and tracked her there. He took the car and made her and the children walk back. And he beat her for what he saw as her defiance.

If he had no problem hitting her, she told herself, imagine what he’d do to her son.

After the first four months, she asked if she could go back to Mexico, just for a visit. Her father was sick with cancer. She recalled Mendoza saying that if he were to let her go and she didn’t come back to him, he’d see that she was never able to return to the U.S., that he’d have her blacklisted from the H-2A program.

With that warning, he let her go.

Once she was home, she thought about staying. Then she looked at her son, who had just turned 3, and realized what she’d be giving up: the chance to provide him with a better life. She believed what Mendoza said about blacklisting her was true. And she believed those months of suffering his abuses would be for nothing if she were kicked out of the program.

If she could just endure Mendoza for a few more months, until she reached the end of her 10-month contract, she would fulfill her obligations. And then she could apply for another H-2A visa. She would find another labor broker, someone honest and decent, and things would be right. The H-2A program would make good on its promise to her. And she would make good on her promise to lift up her son.

Back in Georgia, she knew better than to expect Mendoza to change. But the months ahead wore her down. That summer, after close to a year spent with him, she felt she couldn’t take any more. He climbed on top of her one night, smothering her with his weight, the tattoo on his chest — of La Santa Muerte, a grim reaper in a black hooded robe, known as the lady of death — bearing down on her. He tried to rip her clothes off. She was almost out of breath. She got away. She ran. She found a phone and called the police.

But even from jail, Mendoza figured out how to control her. She had found a place to hide, but he was able to reach her. He sent a peace offering — a bouquet of yellow flowers and a box of chocolates — and also, later, delivered a threat. It wasn’t the same old warning about calling immigration. She recalled him telling her over the phone that if she didn’t stay with him, he would kill her son. She feared that with all his connections in Mexico, it was possible he could. She arranged with her parents for the child to be hidden far away.

Two months after Mendoza’s arrest, he was released after a grand jury chose not to indict him. Around that time, Sofi reached out to someone she’d met only briefly but who she thought could help her. She typed a message into a translation app and texted it to the farmer who she was supposed to be working for. King responded, with concern, that she should go back to Mexico.

Before she could, Mendoza caught up with her.

The Cemetery

On a brisk and rainy Friday in November 2019, a police investigator named Jeremy Stagner picked up the phone to call a federal prosecutor about a scene he hadn’t stopped thinking about for the past four days.

Stagner described how he’d gotten home from a shift with the Glynn County Police Department when his phone buzzed with an emergency alert from work. A young woman had been watching children play outside the house in Brunswick where she had been staying when a silver truck skidded onto the lawn. A man got out, a purple bandana masking his face. She tried to fight him off, but he forced her into the truck at knifepoint.

A neighbor called 911 and helped a police officer find the woman’s backpack, which had her driver’s license inside. The officer’s colleague was able to track the location of her cellphone, so Stagner followed the lead, speeding 30 miles northwest of the city. After cruising down a dirt road, past some mobile homes, he and other officers spotted a stocky man on his cellphone, smoking a cigarette. As they shined flashlights at the face of the suspected kidnapper, one of them shouted his name: “Mendoza!”

When the man looked up, they knew it was him — the hearing aid in his ear matched one in a booking photo. Mendoza turned toward his truck. One of the officers cuffed him. Stagner moved past him and headed inside Mendoza’s trailer.

Stagner had seen a lot of messed-up things in his life, from explosives in Iraq wounding fellow Marines to the gruesome aftermath of shootings in Brunswick. This was one of the most haunting scenes he’d encountered. On a small wooden table, objects were arranged in an offering of sorts: fruit, cigarettes, a bottle of tequila, flickering prayer candles. In the middle was a photo, placed upside down, of the woman who’d been kidnapped. She was holding a bouquet of yellow roses and a box of chocolates. Looming over the photo was a statue of La Santa Muerte, known among law enforcement as a saint invoked to protect criminal acts. There was blood — what he later learned was the victim’s blood — smeared on the statue’s scythe.

First image: A makeshift altar to La Santa Muerte was adorned with prayer candles, cigarettes, alcohol, fruit and flowers. Second image: The white scythe of the La Santa Muerte statue was marked with Sofi’s blood. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Over the next few days, as the investigation continued, Stagner learned that Mendoza had driven the woman from the front yard of the house where she was staying to a remote cemetery. According to evidence police collected, on the way to the cemetery Mendoza sought advice from a colleague in Mexico on what to do, and the colleague said he should kill her, that it wasn’t convenient to leave her alive. Once he arrived, he climbed into the back seat of the truck and began beating her so badly that her blood splattered across the cab.

He then headed to a nearby trailer where he sometimes stayed. He took out a knife and grabbed Sofi’s hair, slicing off strands of it for the shrine. He took blood from her nose and wiped it on La Santa Muerte’s scythe. Then he stepped outside to make a call. That’s when the cops caught up with him. In the doorway, they found Sofi, bloodied but alive.

At a nearby hospital, after a doctor examined her wounds and tested her for a concussion, investigators snapped photos of the bruises on her face. Sitting in a bed under the room’s fluorescent lights, she explained through an interpreter that Mendoza had kidnapped her not only because she had left him. It was also because she knew too much about his business. “They don’t want me to be found,” she said. “They don’t want me to say that he does illegal things.” She told the officers exactly where to look for proof of all he was hoping to hide: One of his phones had extensive info about workers who had paid him illegal fees to get their H-2A visas.

The lead investigator interviewing her had never heard of H-2A before. But Stagner had, from reading the news. Labor trafficking fell outside Stagner’s lane as a county investigator. But he’d spent time on an FBI task force and had worked with a federal prosecutor on a gang case. So he called to ask if the prosecutor might be interested.

As it happened, the prosecutor was working with several federal agents looking to build a case that exposed the trafficking of H-2A workers in Georgia. The agents had been following leads from an anti-trafficking organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, that in 2015 had uncovered the abuses of harvesters at an onion farm near Vidalia. That collaboration enabled the agents to expand their investigation. They questioned farmers about their use of the H-2A program and surveilled labor contractors who seemed to have lied on visa applications.

Now the agents were poised to get data from phones that belonged to Mendoza. And they had a potential witness, one with firsthand knowledge of his alleged labor trafficking and one who could recount how she was held captive and brutalized for a year.

Sofi knew the perils of cooperating with the federal government. Mendoza had already warned her that he was going to have her family killed if she talked to anyone. She wanted to help the other farmworkers, but she was terrified — for her son and for herself.

Out of fear, she wanted to stay silent. But from that same fear came another realization: Only by exposing Mendoza’s operation did she have a shot at saving herself.

Modern-Day Slavery

Sofi sat calmly in the courtroom, trying to stay focused. More than two years had passed since she last saw Mendoza. She’d tried to start over, working at a restaurant. She’d met someone new. They had a baby.

Now, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him again. She thought about what prosecutors had told her as they’d prepared her for today. She’d be helping others, they assured her. Just tell the truth.

While Mendoza was out on bail, federal agents spent nearly a year building the case against him. In that time, according to their investigation, he picked up where he left off, charging workers for the chance to get a visa, holding some against their will and even kidnapping others. Mendoza was indicted in September 2020 for sex trafficking. It was the first big indictment of what was known as Operation Blooming Onion, which exposed widespread abuses of H-2A workers across Georgia.

His charge was followed by a flurry of others — including forced labor and money laundering — against two dozen other participants in what the federal government described as a sprawling, transnational criminal organization. It was one of the largest H-2A trafficking investigations ever.

Federal investigators claimed that Mendoza made more than $25,000 a month by charging workers unlawful fees before he would submit their H-2A applications. They also turned up evidence that he’d inflated the number of workers he needed so he could collect more of those up-front fees and that he’d sold the labor of some of the additional workers to farmers not authorized to participate in the program.

The defendants included crew leaders at the onion farm near Vidalia, a well-connected businesswoman who prepared applications for hundreds of visas, and two farmers — including King, who would plead guilty to the lesser charge of mail fraud and be sentenced to a year and a day. (King, who declined to comment for this story, apologized at his sentencing hearing, saying his “actions were not acceptable.”)

Altogether, prosecutors alleged that defendants filed petitions seeking more than 71,000 H-2A visas, leading to thousands of applicants getting approved when there was no legitimate job for them. They also estimated that the operation raked in more than $200 million in profits by illegally charging workers thousands of dollars to get a visa and by having them work for other, unauthorized employers, not all of them farms, which violates their H-2A contract. One of those workers died of heat stroke after working on a farm where he wasn’t supposed to be.

Federal prosecutors entered as evidence photos of the housing that defendants had provided to H-2A workers. (Obtained by ProPublica.) Federal investigators seized a trove of passports that they say had been confiscated from H-2A workers by the defendants. (Obtained by ProPublica)

Mendoza himself brought over 565 people, with pending visa applications for hundreds more. He wasn’t the biggest player of them all. But a lead investigator testified that he was, unquestionably, the most brutal. He pleaded guilty to conspiracy to engage in forced labor in exchange for dropping the sex-trafficking charge. And he faced a longer sentence than any other defendant in the case.

Sofi had been surviving on the pay from her restaurant shifts, help from her coworkers and the hope that if she fulfilled her obligation to the government she’d be reunited with her son. She had helped agents find Mendoza’s records and decipher them. She also connected investigators to other labor-trafficking victims, ones who’d been afraid to speak up. And her sworn statements corroborated information that turned up in the investigations of other agencies, including the State Department, the Department of Labor and the FBI. And in March 2022, she would testify at Mendoza’s sentencing hearing.

From the witness stand, Sofi locked her eyes on the prosecutor asking questions. She described the work she was forced to do for free, the ways that Mendoza controlled her, the beatings, the deception. She spoke of the Guatemalan children she was punished for trying to feed and the trip to the courthouse where she was tricked into signing a marriage license. As it turned out, Mendoza never finalized the paperwork. It wasn’t until after she escaped that she found out they weren’t married.

She was asked about the first time he touched her, the first time he had sex with her.

“How many times did he rape you?” the prosecutor asked.

“Many,” Sofi said.

“How long were you with him, do you remember?”

“One year.”

“And during that year, did he rape you on a weekly, monthly or daily basis?”

“Whenever he wanted to.”

The prosecutor turned to the day of the kidnapping. It was a day that made Sofi fear she’d never see her son again — or, worse, that she’d see her son killed. If the police hadn’t arrived, Sofi explained, “I probably would be dead.”

After hours of testimony, there was only one significant point Mendoza’s lawyer objected to: that Mendoza forced Sofi to be with him. He said it was his client’s assertion that he and Sofi had had a “consensual relationship.” When Mendoza spoke, briefly, he asked the judge for forgiveness. “I learned from this,” he said. “I will turn away from the past.”

As the hearing drew to a close, Judge Lisa Godbey Wood explained that she had watched Sofi’s body language and studied the tone of her voice as she testified. And she could see how much Sofi had to lose, especially in the face of threats to her and her son. She couldn’t find a single reason not to believe Sofi. “I would find by any standard of proof that she’s telling the truth,” Wood said. “As a result I find that the rapes did occur.”

Wood turned to Mendoza. “People think that there’s no slavery anymore,” she told him, moments before sentencing him to 30 years in prison. “There is, and you were doing it right here in our state.”

But though this case revealed how easy it is to exploit and abuse visaholders, little has changed. Most defendants have pleaded guilty, avoiding the worst charges and ending up suspended from H-2A work for just a few years. The remaining four are expected to go to trial this December. In the years since Mendoza’s sentencing, as in the years before, only a tiny fraction of farms are investigated for potential H-2A violations. The Biden administration increased protections for H-2A workers, but several lawsuits filed by states including Georgia have prevented them from fully going into effect. This past June, the Trump administration went one step further, suspending any enforcement of the new program’s rules until that litigation is resolved.

The number of H-2A visas issued has increased every year since Sofi arrived. The escalation of Trump’s deportation efforts this year has led to arrests of undocumented farmworkers — who account for over 40% of all field laborers — and sparked enough fear to convince others to no longer show up to work. If farmers are squeezed further by the shortage of farmworkers, the H-2A program can fulfill that demand. There’s no limit to how many visas can be issued.

The Reunion

In October 2023, a year after she wrapped up her efforts to expose the dangers of the H-2A program, Sofi got approval to be reunited with her son. He could come here on the same kind of visa she was about to receive, for victims of severe human trafficking and their families. There would be a path to citizenship for both of them.

The life she’d fought for was so close and, yet, just out of reach. Her past was still present. She was reminded of it constantly, by flashbacks to her days in captivity, by fear that seized her when an unfamiliar car cruised her street, by migraines she chalked up to those final blows from Mendoza. And it wasn’t only the memories that were hard. Even now, she struggled to survive.

That winter, she worked at a nursing home. But after she and the father of her toddler split up, she couldn’t stretch her $450-per-week paycheck to cover rent, utilities and car insurance — let alone send any money to Mexico for her older son’s tuition, uniform and shoes. The stress wore her down. She developed facial paralysis, but the nursing home wouldn’t give her time off to address it. Then she slipped and broke her ankle. She couldn’t walk, much less work, until she recovered from surgery. Without health insurance, the bills piled up, roughly $24,000. The one thing that could help her — the more than $16,000 in court-ordered restitution for unpaid H-2A wages — had yet to materialize.

Even if she could afford to send for her son, she told herself, she couldn’t afford to support him.

Her mind drifted back to Mexico. The comfort of home. The chance to see her parents again. But she was jolted out of that dream by the fear she still felt from the threat against her son’s life. She felt they’d never truly be safe in Mexico, not after her testimony against Mendoza. In the U.S., they’d at least have some protections.

It ended up taking more than a year from the time he got his visa, but finally, right around when Trump was elected, Sofi’s son arrived. She hugged him for the first time in five years and introduced him to his 3-year-old brother. Her excitement was clouded just slightly by the fact that she could only buy her oldest a few sets of clothes. The three of them crammed into a single room in a small blue house full of Spanish-speaking laborers. For a week, she tried to make do on a single pack of soup. She ended up skipping meals.

Sofi wants to believe that this country is in fact a land of opportunity. But sometimes her faith wears thin. “Not all of us get to be smiled upon by the United States,” she said.

Sofi hasn’t been able to finish her and her son’s applications for green cards. After paying $1,000 for the required medical exams, she couldn’t come up with the $400 to cover vaccines or a reference letter from an employer. But she still dreams of her son in a military uniform. She can see him as a Marine in the blue pants and dark jacket and white hat.

Not long after he started at his new elementary school in January, he asked what would happen if immigration agents came to the school and confused him with someone who’s undocumented. From that day forward, Sofi sent him to school with a photocopy of his passport and visa in his backpack. She told him not to worry, that maybe, because of everything she’s been through, nothing bad would happen to him.

With every passing day of school, every new word of English he picks up, she gains more hope. He’s one more step away from a life of picking fruit.

Mollie Simon of ProPublica contributed research. Abraham Kenmore contributed reporting. Design and development by Zisiga Mukulu of ProPublica. Visual editing and art direction by Shoshana Gordon of ProPublica.

by Yilun Cheng, Houston Chronicle

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This article is co-published with the Houston Chronicle and The Texas Newsroom as part of an initiative to report on how power is wielded in Texas.

Billionaire Elon Musk is taking issue with a recent investigation by the Houston Chronicle and The Texas Newsroom that raised questions about a flood tunnel project he’s pitching to address Houston’s chronic flooding woes. But experts said his response, which he did not explain to the newsrooms, isn’t supported by facts or data.

Last month, the newsrooms reported that Musk’s tunneling company, The Boring Co., has been lobbying elected officials for months to allow it to build tunnels under Houston for flood mitigation. Boring has proposed digging two 12-foot-wide tunnels beneath Buffalo Bayou — the main waterway running through central Houston — to carry stormwater out of neighborhoods and toward the Gulf of Mexico during major storms. Experts say, however, that larger tunnels, closer to 30 to 40 feet in diameter, could carry far more water and be more effective.

Musk and representatives with Boring did not respond to interview requests or answer questions the newsrooms sent in advance of last month’s story about whether Boring’s smaller tunnels would be able to handle the scale of floodwater Houston is likely to encounter in the future.

Instead, Musk waited until hours after the story published to post a response on X, the social media company he’s owned since 2022.

“Boring Company tunnels will work and cost <10% of alternatives,” his Aug. 28 post read. “If more flow is needed, additional tunnels can be built and furthermore they can be route water from many parts of the city, not just one.”

The post was written in response to a post on X from U.S. Rep. Wesley Hunt, a Houston Republican who helped arrange private meetings with government officials in Harris County and across the state to sell them on Boring’s flood tunnel plan. Hunt also did not respond to questions from the newsrooms ahead of publication of the original story, but he weighed in on X after the story was published.

“A lifelong Houstonian and Texas Congressman spoke to the smartest man on planet earth about solving a generational flooding issue in our city that no one else will fix,” Hunt wrote.

Musk’s post offered no data or engineering explanation to back up his assertions. So the newsrooms examined his statements, comparing them against flood studies, and interviewed engineering experts, some of whom pointed out key technical and logistical challenges with the Boring plan.

One of Musk’s claims is likely false, and the others are not yet possible to verify with certainty, according to the newsrooms’ examination.

Again, when the newsrooms pressed Musk and Boring representatives to explain the tech billionaire’s claims, they did not respond. Nor did Hunt.

Houston’s Buffalo Bayou Park is visible from the roof of The Allen, a nearby condominium, in 2023. The bayou is the main waterway running through central Houston. (Kirk Sides/Houston Chronicle) Would Boring’s tunnels cost less than 10% of alternatives?

Musk’s proposal carries a lower price tag than the estimated cost of the larger system the flood control district has spent years and millions of dollars studying. But that’s partly because the two are strikingly different proposals.

Hunt’s team has said Boring’s Buffalo Bayou project would cost $760 million, according to internal communications obtained by the newsrooms through public records requests.

The county’s flood control district, on the other hand, proposed in 2022 tunnels of 30 to 40 feet in diameter for that segment of the system at a price of about $4.6 billion.

Since the project is still in the research phase, the county numbers are preliminary. But based on the figures available, Boring’s proposal would cost closer to one-sixth of the county’s estimate — not less than 10%, as Musk’s post suggested. So Musk seems to be exaggerating how much cheaper his system would be.

Flood control experts also maintained that the reduced price is somewhat proportional to the reduced capacity of Boring’s narrower tunnels. Two 12-foot tunnels would provide less than one-fifth of the volume that a single 40-foot tunnel offers.

That means they would divert less water from vulnerable areas than one large tunnel.

Jim Blackburn, a Houston environmental lawyer and flood policy expert, said while Musk’s company deserves a fair hearing, cheaper does not automatically mean better.

“If it’s a smaller tunnel, then I would expect it to cost less,” Blackburn said. “You’ve got to look at how much flood mitigation you get for the dollars you spend.”

Emily Woodell, a spokesperson for the Harris County Flood Control District, said the agency needs more information before it can weigh in on any of Musk’s claims.

“We’d have to do a lot of study before anything could even potentially move forward, so I wouldn’t want to speculate,” she said. “Until we have a project or another study, we’d point people to our website for the reports and data we’ve compiled to date.”

Can additional tunnels be built for more water flow?

Musk’s post said if more floodwater needs to be moved, more tunnels can be added. Engineers said it is not that simple.

Larry Dunbar, a veteran water resources engineer who has advised Houston-area governmental agencies on drainage issues, said based on size alone, it would take about 11 of Boring’s tunnels to carry the same amount of water as one large tunnel. Lined up side by side, with enough room between them to keep the ground stable, the full system could span hundreds of feet. That would require securing rights to more land and building more access points for maintenance, he said.

And each new phase of construction might bring another round of reviews and mobilization costs, Dunbar said, undercutting the speed and affordability that Boring has touted as key advantages of its proposal.

“The issues start to just get more and more complicated,” Dunbar said. “Not that it can’t be done, but just to kind of throw out there — ‘Oh, if we need more, we’ll just do more’ — well, there’s a lot more to it than that.”

Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey, who has an engineering background, agreed. More tunnels would also mean more equipment to maintain, which could drive up long-term costs, Ramsey said.

He added that the county would need to decide on the full plan at the outset so all system elements like pumps, drains and outfalls can be designed properly.

“It would not be simple to just add additional tunnels later,” Ramsey said.

John Blount, a former Harris County engineer who retired after more than three decades with the county, similarly dismissed Musk’s suggestion that Boring could just build more tunnels if the initial plan falls short.

While working on other infrastructure projects, Blount said, he has come across a number of contractors capable of building tunnels large enough to handle the job properly the first time.

“You don’t start small and figure it out later,” he said. “This whole concept of putting in 20% of what you need to see if it’s enough makes zero sense.”

Buffalo Bayou, which runs through the heart of Houston, floods after Hurricane Beryl made landfall on July 8, 2024. (Raquel Natalicchio/Houston Chronicle) Can Boring’s tunnels move water from other parts of the city, and will the tunnels work?

Musk argued that Boring’s tunnels could be used in different parts of the city, not just along Buffalo Bayou.

Some local officials agreed that Musk’s tunnels might actually work better for smaller watersheds that do not take on as much water as Buffalo Bayou.

Ramsey said he supports exploring smaller tunnels for areas like Hunting and Halls bayous, which run through other parts of the city and also need resources to strengthen their flood protection. The county commissioner publicly called for a closer look at narrower tunnels during a commissioners court meeting in April, after Hunt had pitched him on Boring’s proposal in February.

“It’s another tool in our toolbox to help mitigate flooding. And certainly with what’s happening in the Hill Country,” Ramsey said, referring to recent deadly floods in Central Texas, “and what continues to happen in Harris County, we need as many tools as we can possibly get.”

Woodell, with the flood control district, told the newsrooms in August that the agency initially focused on large-diameter tunnels because engineering studies identified them as the most effective option for a countywide system.

However, she said smaller tunnels could be a viable solution in certain areas. Since that idea had not been a focus of research, she added, more study would be needed before any such project could move forward.

Colleen Gilbert, executive director of the Greens Bayou Coalition — a nonprofit that works to protect neighborhoods near Greens Bayou, in northeast Houston — said communities in her watershed are desperate for relief as well. They would welcome the massive storm tunnel once proposed by Harris County, she said, but even smaller tunnels would be better than nothing.

“We would be thrilled to have any and all possibilities looked at,” Gilbert said. “If Congressman Hunt and The Boring Co. are looking at this, we are delighted to hear it.”

Experts and officials the newsrooms interviewed, however, still took issue with Musk’s sweeping statement that “Boring Company tunnels will work” because it doesn’t take into account complexities of the project or that success largely depends on what kind of system the county ultimately wants.

In a two-page memo Boring sent to Hunt’s team in February and that was circulated among local officials in the county, the company framed the pitch as an “innovative, cost-effective solution” to Houston’s chronic flooding.

“We are confident in our ability to execute this project successfully,” wrote Jim Fitzgerald, Boring’s global head of business development.

But Dunbar said the only way to evaluate Musk’s claim is to focus on the purpose of the stormwater tunnels.

If the goal is to build as large a project as possible for the lowest price, Dunbar said, Boring’s proposal might fit the bill. But if the goal is to shield lives and property from another Hurricane Harvey-level flooding event, he believes the smaller-scale project simply does not measure up.

“You have to have some underlying reason why you build this tunnel, what you’re trying to accomplish,” Dunbar said. “And I have not heard that Elon has given that answer.”

Rock Owens, retired Harris County attorney for environmental affairs who represented agencies including the flood control district, said he has seen local officials repeatedly greenlighting massive projects that were not well thought out and led to costly legal battles.

He pointed, for instance, to flood control issues along White Oak Bayou in northwest Houston. In a lengthy legal battle that began in 1999, about 400 homeowners in the area blamed the county for approving upstream development without adequate flood control, which they said caused repeated flooding of their homes.

The Texas Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favor of the county in 2016. But Owens said even unsuccessful lawsuits are costly and the kind of challenge that could have exposed the county to a substantial damages award.

Musk’s ethos of moving fast and worrying about consequences later, Owens said, only heightens the risk.

“That works fine in the private sector, but not the public sector,” he said. “We’re not looking at Mr. Musk’s personal fortune; we’re looking at the livelihood and lifelong investments of people who live here.”

Yilun Cheng is an investigative reporter with the Houston Chronicle. Reach her at yilun.cheng@houstonchronicle.com.

Lauren McGaughy of The Texas Newsroom contributed reporting.

by Willoughby Mariano, WBUR, with additional reporting by Todd Wallack, WBUR

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with WBUR. Sign up for Dispatches to get ProPublica’s stories in your inbox every week. To keep up with the latest Boston news, sign up for WBUR’s morning newsletter.

Seventeen years had passed by the time Boston police knocked on Louise’s door to say they had identified the man who allegedly raped and stabbed her in October 2005.

The suspect was now a father of two, a possible serial rapist and likely beyond the reach of the law, investigators told her. Police had taken so long to identify him that they missed the state’s deadline to prosecute her case.

In Massachusetts, the law says prosecutors have only 15 years to file charges after an alleged rape. Past that statute of limitations, it’s nearly impossible to bring charges. Still, prosecutors thought they might be able to move this particular case forward on a technicality.

Louise was afraid. She had spent years reliving the terror of that night and battling drug use that spun out of control after the attack. At times she failed out of rehab programs or stayed in homeless shelters. (WBUR does not identify victims of sexual assault without their permission and agreed to identify Louise only by her middle name.)

By 2022, she was 42, sober, living in her own apartment and raising two school-age sons. She could not slip back into her old ways.

But, as the daughter of a Marine veteran, Louise believed she needed to fight: She felt her community would not be safe until her rapist was in prison.

“You’ve got to stand for something,” Louise said.

Past the 15-year deadline in Massachusetts, no DNA match, eyewitness testimony or even confession can give a rape victim a chance at facing an attacker in court.

This statute of limitations places Massachusetts behind almost every other state in the country.

A review of criminal codes by WBUR and ProPublica found that as many as 47 states allow more time to charge rapes or similar assaults of adults than Massachusetts. For example, Vermont and Maryland are among a number of states that have no deadline to file charges for rape. Other states like Montana and Texas extend their deadlines when there’s DNA evidence.

In many states, Louise’s case could be decided in court on the strength of its evidence. But here, evidence would not matter. The case would be almost impossible to win.

Lost Chances

(Isabel Seliger for ProPublica)

Law enforcement and rape crisis workers across Massachusetts said in interviews that they routinely encounter cases where no charges were filed before the state’s strict deadline. How often rape suspects avoid prosecution as a result is unclear.

Massachusetts is unusual in that state victim privacy laws bar police from releasing incident reports of rape to the public. Unless a suspect is charged in court, it’s often difficult to find any official records about a rape. And even when someone is charged, police can still withhold information about what they did — or did not do — to identify and capture a suspected rapist.

This makes it all but impossible for anyone outside law enforcement to scrutinize rapes that are past the deadline to prosecute.

In order to understand the extent of cases lost to the statute of limitations, WBUR and ProPublica spoke to researchers, prosecutors and lawmakers.

Rape crisis center leaders say survivors of sexual assaults that happened many years ago regularly ask whether the criminal legal system can help them. The Suffolk County district attorney’s office, one of the most populous jurisdictions in the state, is based in Boston and prosecuted Louise’s case. A longtime sex crimes prosecutor there said his office reviews several cases each year that it cannot pursue because of the statute of limitations.

About two years ago, the Bristol County district attorney’s office identified 21 rapes that it could have prosecuted were it not for the statute of limitations. They came to light when the agency used a federal grant to analyze DNA evidence in rape cases that had not been fully tested when it was first collected.

Bristol County District Attorney Thomas Quinn is one of the state’s few prosecutors who has spoken in favor of allowing charges after the deadline in cases with DNA evidence.

“This is to rectify a wrong, if you will, or a process that didn’t work,” Quinn told WBUR. “These are serious charges. Women are being raped.”

Details of Louise’s case only became public because Suffolk County prosecutors took the unusual step of filing charges even though they had missed the state’s charging deadline. This led to the release of some records about the rape that would otherwise have been shielded by the state’s privacy laws.

Those records show that years before the deadline passed in Louise’s alleged rape, police had already gathered many of the clues they would later use to identify a suspect, but did not solve the case.

Louise: His Name Is Ivan

(Isabel Seliger for ProPublica)

When she was 25, Louise’s life was starting to fall apart. She worked as a waitress and switchboard operator, and she was experimenting with drugs.

In the overnight hours of Oct. 22, 2005, a man she had been friends with demanded payment for drugs he had given her, according to a court record, then coerced her into having sex with a stranger at a hotel to pay off the debt.

After 2 a.m., the friend dropped her off in downtown Boston.

If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, you can contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 800-656-4673 or rainn.org.

It was raining hard, the trains had stopped running and she wanted a ride to a friend’s house. That’s when she thought she saw a friendly face.

The man who drove up to her in a Lexus SUV introduced himself as Ivan and said he knew her from UMass Boston, where she had taken classes, she recalled. He said he was on a study break, and he looked the part. He had a young face and wore a baseball cap with a college name on it.

She said the man offered to pay for sex and she refused, court records show. He drove her to a secluded area in Everett, just north of the city, and raped and stabbed her, she told police. When Louise escaped his car, he chased her down with a knife and she fell.

“He kept stabbing me,” she said in an interview. “I remember my head jerking back because the knife was in my head.”

The man fled to his car after the struggle. Louise sought help at a nearby house.

At the hospital, it took more than 100 stitches to close the stab wounds that covered her body. Doctors told her the knife barely missed her major organs.

Louise let a specialist swab her body for the man’s DNA. While she said she did not disclose at the time that she had been coerced into sex work earlier that night, she told investigators everything else she knew: Police records said she gave the name her attacker used, his race, which she said was either white or Asian, and a description of his car. At the time, she told police that he said he had attended UMass Boston and was now at Tufts. She hoped this information would lead to an arrest.

Had police checked with UMass Boston, they would have discovered that 18 men named Ivan attended the school in the years surrounding the attack, according to student records reviewed by WBUR. The man who police ultimately connected to DNA evidence in Louise’s case was among them.

Everett police interviewed Louise several times and reviewed surveillance camera footage, she said, but the calls and visits from police waned over the coming months.

Louise stopped calling the police to check on her case as the years went by. She said she had moved on from using painkillers to relying on heroin, cocaine and other drugs to make it through the day. She feared that her rapist would return to kill her, and the drugs were her way of coping with severe depression and post-traumatic stress disorder, she said.

In 2008, Boston police received new evidence suggesting that whoever attacked Louise could be a serial rapist, a detective later said in court records. The department’s crime lab found that DNA from her case matched an unsolved 2006 attack. That victim was picked up in Boston’s North End, then stabbed and raped in suburban Wellesley.

It’s unclear how police responded to this new information. With the help of WBUR and ProPublica, Louise used an exception for survivors in the state’s privacy law to obtain her Everett police report. But the two-page record details nothing of the investigation beyond the first 24 hours after the attack.

Everett police declined to comment on the case. The Middlesex County district attorney’s office, which had jurisdiction at the time of the attack, did not comment. The Suffolk County district attorney’s office, which took over the case after Boston detectives in its jurisdiction identified a suspect, said it did not have details about how prior agencies handled the case. Boston police did not provide a response to multiple requests for an interview.

Louise said she does not recall whether police or prosecutors told her that DNA tests showed her unknown assailant may have attacked another woman.

Years later, when police finally identified a suspect, it would be too late to hold anyone accountable. The deadline to charge a suspect with attempted murder in Louise’s case had passed after 10 years and the deadline for rape had passed at 15 years.

Extending the Statute of Limitations

Currently, the only states that have shorter deadlines than Massachusetts and don’t make exceptions for DNA evidence are North Dakota and New Hampshire, a WBUR and ProPublica review of state laws found. The most restrictive is New Hampshire’s six-year deadline.

Decades of research into how rape is reported and investigated has driven lawmakers outside of Massachusetts to extend their statutes of limitations.

During the 2000s, several states passed exceptions for cases with DNA as it became clear that this kind of forensic evidence could help solve even very old cases.

Other states followed as police departments began to disclose in the 2010s that they systemically failed to test DNA evidence in rape cases. Meanwhile, a growing body of research found that police regularly performed inadequate rape investigations, deciding reports were unfounded before interviewing witnesses, collecting evidence or testing DNA. Across the country, most reports of rape do not result in prosecution, research shows.

 ”They judge the victim,” said Michigan State University professor Rebecca Campbell, who has authored multiple studies on how police conduct rape investigations. “That’s what I found in my research, and it’s been replicated by other research teams and other jurisdictions throughout the United States.”

The widespread problems prompted national reforms. In 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice launched its National Sexual Assault Kit Initiative to devote hundreds of millions of dollars to testing previously ignored DNA. This effort produced enough evidence to finally bring charges in some of these cases, and lawmakers in other states revised their deadlines so prosecutions could move forward.

The move to extend the deadline has been a bipartisan cause in many states. Just last year in Oklahoma, former state Sen. Jessica Garvin, a Republican, led a successful effort to eliminate the state’s statute of limitations in cases where there is a confession or DNA evidence. The bill passed unanimously.

“ We were able to accomplish that last session with really very little, if any, pushback,” Garvin said. “It’s not a Republican issue. It’s not a Democratic issue.”

In Massachusetts, legislation that would extend the deadline has been introduced during every session since at least 2011. But every time, it has failed to gain steam.

Defense attorneys have opposed any changes, saying that making the deadline longer risks violating the rights of the accused.

Witnesses, surveillance footage and other evidence that may clear a suspect becomes more difficult to find as time passes, said Shira Diner, a board member of the Massachusetts Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

“The further and further you get away from the alleged commission of the crime, the harder it is for someone to ever mount a defense,” she said.

The last time state lawmakers changed the statute was in 1996 after victims came forward to say they had delayed reporting their rapes because of community backlash or poor treatment by police. Legislators lengthened the state’s deadline to prosecute rapes of adults from 10 to 15 years.

Connecting the Dots

(Isabel Seliger for ProPublica)

In late 2021, the Department of Justice initiative awarded Boston $2.5 million to reexamine up to 100 of the city’s most serious unsolved rapes. The funds paid a small group of investigators to comb through old case files to search for clues.

The new team revisited Louise’s rape within months. This time they determined that her case and the North End rape were similar to earlier attacks, court records show.

Most were unsolved, but a man named Ivan Cheung was arrested in one of them. Boston University police took him into custody in 2003 after they found him in possession of a knife and the belongings of a woman who was allegedly raped at knifepoint. The Boston Police Department, which took over the case, said in court records that they suspected the victim was covering up her ties to the sex work industry. Prosecutors dropped the charges several weeks later.

When the new team of investigators revisited this case in 2022, they noticed that Cheung resembled the assailant Louise described in her attack: a man named Ivan who had attended UMass Boston. At the time of the rape, he owned a Lexus SUV.

This focus on Cheung led to a breakthrough. That June, undercover officers tailed him to a mall parking lot in Dorchester, where they watched him smoke and toss away a cigarette.

DNA from that cigarette matched two assaults: Louise’s rape and the North End attack.

By September, police had arrested Cheung for Louise’s attack, the North End rape and two other open cases involving teenage girls. He was living in the Boston area and working as a financial services executive.

The arrest was possible because investigators received the time and resources to take a fresh look at old cases, said Suffolk County Assistant District Attorney Ian Polumbaum, who prosecuted the case.

A detective showed Cheung a photo of Louise and asked if he had raped her and others.

Cheung told police that he did not recognize the women and that there was no way his DNA could have been found on any of them, court records show.

“I’m telling you no fucking way. I don’t even know her name. I don’t even know her face,” he said during the recorded interview with police. Cheung and his attorney declined an interview with WBUR.

The only way Suffolk County prosecutors could move forward with Louise’s case and the North End attack was on a technicality: A state law suspends the deadline if a suspect lives out of state. Prosecutors said Cheung traveled frequently, but they couldn’t prove he had relocated. In October 2023, charges against Cheung for the attacks on Louise and the North End victim were dropped.

With her case over, Louise said she pinned her hopes on the two remaining cases connected to the suspect. Police said in court records the alleged victims were 13 and 14 and being trafficked for sex at the time of their attacks. Because they were so young, the state’s statute of limitations did not block their cases from moving forward, and there was a chance a judge would allow Louise to testify if they went to trial.

But those two cases had other problems: They had no DNA evidence, and prosecutors acknowledged that the evidence tying those cases to Cheung was not as strong. In one of the cases, Boston police had not interviewed the alleged victim until nearly two decades after her attack, and she was unwilling to testify, court filings show. In the other, a judge noted in a ruling that police conducted no forensic medical exam of the victim and appeared to make no attempt at locating a crime scene.

“The police response was severely deficient,” Suffolk Superior Court Judge Christopher Belezos wrote in the December 2024 ruling.

The district attorney told the judge they needed Louise’s testimony to show the rapes were so similar that Cheung was the only possible assailant. But Belezos barred Louise from testifying, saying her case was too different: The attacks had happened in different locations and their descriptions of their assailants’ race and cars did not match.

Prosecutors dropped Cheung’s remaining charges in January.

“ It was frustrating, but at that point, legally we had no choice,” said Polumbaum. In court records, Cheung also denied any involvement in these alleged attacks.

Now that the court battle is over, Louise is fighting to keep her peace of mind. She crowds her spare hours with therapy and support groups, and she fills her apartment walls with symbols of renewal, change and faith. A pink foil decal with the word “Believe” hangs among prints of butterflies, dragonflies and birds.

When WBUR interviewed Louise, it was the first time she had discussed her rape publicly. She said those interviews, and the failure to convict Cheung, helped her realize she wanted to do more.

In June she testified before the state Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary to urge them to pass House Bill 1987, which is pending. It would allow prosecutors to charge suspects after the deadline in some rape cases with DNA evidence.

“ It really needs to be changed for the safety of all, for the public at large,” she testified. “That’s why I’m speaking.”

Patrick Madden of WBUR contributed reporting, and Jesús Marrero Suárez of WBUR contributed research.

by Jodi S. Cohen and Jennifer Smith Richards

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The U.S. Department of Education has pulled funding for programs in eight states aimed at supporting students who have both hearing and vision loss, a move that could affect some of the country’s most vulnerable students.

The programs are considered vital in those states but represent only a little over $1 million a year in federal money. Nonetheless, they got caught in the Trump administration’s attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion, with an Education Department spokesperson citing concerns about “divisive concepts” and “fairness” in acknowledging the decision to withhold the funding.

The funding, which was expected to continue through September 2028, will stop at the end of the month, according to letters from the Education Department to local officials that were obtained by ProPublica. The government gave the programs seven days to ask officials to reconsider the decision.

The programs, part of a national network of organizations for every state, provide training and resources to help families and educators support students who are deaf and blind, a condition known as deafblindness that affects the ability to process both auditory and visual information. Those students often have significant communication challenges and need specialized services and schooling. (Education Week first reported that the department had canceled grants related to special education.)

Nationally, there are about 10,000 children and young adults, from infants to 21-year-olds, who are deafblind and more than 1,000 in the eight affected states, according to the National Center on Deafblindness. The programs targeted by the Education Department are in Wisconsin, Oregon and Washington, as well as in New England, which is served by a consortium for Massachusetts, Maine, Connecticut, New Hampshire and Vermont.

“How low can you go?” said Maurice Belote, co-chair of the National DeafBlind Coalition, which advocates for legislation that supports deafblind children and young adults. “How can you do this to children?”

In Oregon, the 2023 grant application for the deafblind program there included a statement about its commitment to address “inequities, racism, bias” and the marginalization of disability groups. It also attached the strategic plan for Portland Public Schools, where the Oregon DeafBlind Project is headquartered, that mentioned the establishment of a Center for Black Student Excellence — which is unrelated to the deafblind project. The Education Department’s letter said that those initiatives were “in conflict with agency policy and priorities.”

The director of the Wisconsin Deafblind Technical Assistance Project received a similar letter from the Education Department that said its work was at odds with the federal government’s new focus on “merit.” The letter noted that the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction, which oversees the project, had a policy of ensuring that women, minorities and disabled veterans would be included in the hiring process.

The Education Department also was concerned about other words in the application, said Adrian Klenz, who works with deafblind adults in the state. He said he has talked with state officials about the discontinuation of the grant.

“I was told that apparently the administration is going through past grants and two words were flagged: One was transition and one was privilege,” Klenz said. “Transition — transitioning from childhood to adulthood. Privilege came up because a parent wrote a glowing review of staff that said what a privilege it was to work with them.” ProPublica obtained a copy of the grant application and confirmed that those words were included.

In a statement, Education Department Press Secretary Savannah Newhouse told ProPublica that the administration “is no longer allowing taxpayer dollars to go out the door on autopilot — we are evaluating every federal grant to ensure they are in line with the Administration’s policy of prioritizing merit, fairness, and excellence in education.”

Newhouse said the Education Department renewed more than 500 special education grants that fund services under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. She said the agency decided not to renew fewer than 35.

“Many of these use overt race preferences or perpetuate divisive concepts and stereotypes, which no student should be exposed to,” she said, adding that the funds will be put toward other programs.

The department started funding state-level programs to help deafblind students more than 40 years ago in response to the rubella epidemic in the late 1960s. While the population is small, it is among the most complex to serve; educators rely on the deafblindness programs for support and training.

Deafblind programs help educators learn the most effective ways to teach reading and connect families with state and local resources. The programs also tally the number of students across the country who are affected by deafblindness.

Disability advocates, who promote inclusion for people in their communities with disabilities, said they are struggling to reconcile how they can now be under attack for language about inclusion.

What’s more, under Joe Biden, who was president when the grant applications were submitted, language about diversity and inclusion efforts was required. The department at the time noted that “deafBlind children have complex needs and are among the most diverse groups of learners served” using federal special-education funds.

“We were required by the Biden administration to write a statement around equity,” said Lisa McConachie, of the Oregon DeafBlind Project, which serves 114 students in the state.

She said the Trump administration’s view of DEI is different from how inclusion is thought of by disability advocates. “Our passion and our mission is around advocacy for inclusion for kids with disabilities,” she said. “Students in special education are often marginalized in their schools. Students in special education are often excluded.”

Lanya Elsa, who lives in Washington and has two sons served by the state’s deafblind program, said the organization has provided strategies for her son’s educators over the years and has helped her connect with other families. She also is the former director of the Idaho program.

Elsa said that while the funding loss may seem small, “those vulnerable students have nothing else. It is devastating.”

The Education Department notified Wisconsin on Friday that funding for its deafblind program as well as a separate federal grant to recruit special-education teachers was being discontinued. Officials there plan to appeal, according to the Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction.

About 170 deafblind students in Wisconsin are served by that grant, which funds assistive technology tools, coaching, family support and professional training across the state. And the recruitment of special-education teachers was begun to address a severe shortage.

“Make no mistake, losing these funds will directly impact our ability to serve some of our most vulnerable kids,” Wisconsin Superintendent of Public Instruction Jill Underly said in a written statement. “Losing these dollars at this point in the year will be devastating for the kids who need these supports the most.”

In Oregon, the impact will be felt soon. McConachie said about 20 families had signed up for a parent retreat next month to swap medical equipment, share resources and learn about services to help students when they get older.

“Gathering those families together is a lifeline for them,” she said. “These families are vulnerable and so are the kids.”

Without funding, the weekend will now be canceled. “The impact can’t be undone,” she said. “The disruption will be harmful for many years to come.”

by Duaa Eldeib, photography by Sarah Blesener for ProPublica

This story contains graphic descriptions of suicide attempts.

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The email took Dr. Neal Goldenberg by surprise in a way that few things still do.

As a psychiatrist, he had grown accustomed to seeing patients in their darkest moments. As someone who reviewed insurance denials, he was also well-versed in the arguments that hospitals make to try to overturn an insurer’s decision not to pay for treatment.

But as soon as he opened the review last October, he knew something was different. It was personal and forceful and meticulous — and it would lead him to do something he had never done before.

“Based on the indisputable medical facts, we are unsure why anyone would assert that any part of the insured’s inpatient behavioral health treatment was ‘not medically necessary,’” the appeal letter argued.

The battle playing out on the pages before him began in March of 2024. Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield had refused to pay for a North Carolina man’s monthlong treatment at a psychiatric hospital. The man had been suffering escalating mental health issues, culminating in back-to-back suicide attempts. But using a designation insurers commonly employ when denying coverage, doctors working for Highmark determined the care was not “medically necessary.”

Insurance companies deny hundreds of millions of claims a year, and only a tiny percentage of people appeal them. Even fewer take the process to the very end, appealing to a third-party, or external, reviewer like Goldenberg. A recent report found that, on average, less than 1 out of every 10,000 people eligible for an external review actually requested one.

Goldenberg, who is based in Cleveland, had initially picked up the extra job a few years ago to help pay down the massive student debt he and his wife, a family doctor, had accumulated during medical school.

External reviewers like Dr. Neal Goldenberg have the power to overrule an insurer’s decision to deny coverage for patient care and to force insurance companies to pay for treatment.

In that role, he has the power to overrule an insurer’s decision to deny a patient coverage and force the company to pay for treatment. Few things anger him as much as patients being denied the care they needed, which compelled him to continue doing the reviews even after the student loans were paid off.

Attached to the appeal letter were nearly 200 pages of records organized by headings and numbers. There was even a glossary of diagnosis codes that are used for billing.

Goldenberg’s first thought was that a lawyer had put together the appeal. But the name on the bottom of the letter didn’t belong to a law firm.

He spent the next hour and a half reading the file: records from eight separate medical providers; research on suicidal ideation; letters from two psychiatrists supporting the appeal, including one that described the patient’s depression and stress as causing “psychological suffering and functional impact.”

Then he did something he hadn’t done in the six years he’s been reviewing cases. He called the name at the bottom of the letter: Teressa Sutton-Schulman.

The line rang several times before going to voicemail.

“Hello. My name is Neal Goldenberg. I am reviewing an insurance claim for your husband,” he began.

Teressa Sutton-Schulman and her husband on their wedding day

Sutton-Schulman’s husband, who ProPublica is identifying by his middle initial “L,” had always been anxious and more than a little obsessive. As an adult, financial matters, especially, threw him into a panic and eventually sent him to therapy.

By January of last year, after deciding that the therapy wasn’t working, he made an appointment with his primary care doctor, who prescribed him an antidepressant and antianxiety medication. After a few days, L called the doctor to say he felt worse. A panic attack landed him in the emergency room about a week later.

Right before Valentine’s Day, he met with a psychiatrist.

The way his mind had begun to shuffle through worst-case scenarios was something Sutton-Schulman hadn’t witnessed before.

They met at Georgia Tech. L had noticed her at a party. When he walked up to her, she told him she was waiting for someone.

“I could be someone,” he responded without missing a beat.

She was drawn to his humor and charm. As an introvert, Sutton-Schulman marveled at the way his presence filled a room, floating between people and the things they talked about with ease. He considered her his rock, his best friend, the person he loved most in this world.

They shared a mutual admiration for each other’s intellect and drive. He skewed nerdy, playing Dungeons & Dragons in his downtime. Not that he had much. As a rising star in the world of software engineering, work consumed him. He craved success the same way he pushed the boundaries of technology — relentlessly.

They decided not to have kids; they had each other and their work. In the early 2000s, they built a software consulting company together. Although Sutton-Schulman trained as a chemist, she went back to school to become a paralegal and the company’s in-house legal expert.

More than 20 years into their marriage, they still held hands like it was their first date. When they entered their 50s and faced the prospect of growing old in their three-story house, they decided to buy a ranch home in the same small North Carolina town outside of Raleigh that they had lived in for more than two decades.

That decision would forever alter their lives.

After more than 20 years of marriage, Sutton-Schulman and L bought a ranch home outside of Raleigh, North Carolina.

The pandemic’s housing market, with its skyrocketing prices and houses that sold before they even went on the market, exacerbated his stress. The couple put offers on half a dozen houses. They lost $25,000 in earnest money after backing out of the only two offers that were accepted. The hit hurt, but thanks to L’s job, they had more than enough in the bank.

Finally, in the summer of 2023, they found their house, though it needed some work. They decided to rent out their old house, but that, too, required some fixing up before they could put it on the market. L was determined to get a renter in quickly, and they poured money into both houses simultaneously.

L’s anxiety grew with every expense. They argued about money, about his insistence on undertaking everything at once, about his unwillingness to get treatment, about their five cats. She begged him to get help. He assured her he had it all under control.

After two months, they moved into the new house.

L grew more irrational each day. All he could do was fixate on the finances. On top of it all, they weren’t sleeping. To help with the cats’ transition to the new house, Sutton-Schulman had talked to L about getting them an enclosed space on their patio. But L, who was overseeing the remodeling, didn’t prioritize it. The cats kept them up each night with their incessant whining and scratching at their doors.

She knew that all of his concerns were symptoms of a larger problem, but neglecting to take care of the cats was the final straw. As hard as it was for her to leave him, she felt like she had no other choice. Two weeks after moving in, she packed her bags and her SUV and moved back into their old house.

It took her leaving for him to see a therapist and agree to couple’s counseling.

Buying the house, he told his wife, was a mistake.

If you or someone you know needs help, here are a few resources:

• Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988

• Text the Crisis Text Line from anywhere in the U.S. to reach a crisis counselor: 741741

“I started catastrophizing every day,” L said at his appointment with his psychiatrist right before Valentine’s Day, medical records show.

L told him that he regularly woke up at 2:30 a.m. in the throes of a nightmare. His heart raced. His legs felt weak. He contemplated ending his life.

The psychiatrist tried to determine how serious his suicidal thoughts were. L admitted he felt anxious and hopeless, but he said he was afraid to die.

“I’m a fucking coward and I can’t do it,” L told the psychiatrist, according to his medical records. “I don’t know how to kill myself.”

Two days later, he swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills and chased them down with bourbon. He slid into the driver’s seat of his Mercedes parked in the garage, turned on the ignition and closed his eyes.

L finally agreed to go to counseling after Sutton-Schulman moved out, but his condition continued to deteriorate.

Goldenberg’s path to medicine began at a young age. He excelled in science in school. He grew up with a dad who was a dentist and a belief that doctors could heal.

But 2003, his first year of medical school, was difficult. He didn’t fit in with some of his classmates who were focused on which speciality would yield the biggest salary.

Stumbling upon a book by Dr. Hunter “Patch” Adams, the doctor who devoted himself to infusing humor and compassion in medicine, provided the inspiration he needed. Adams’ name became the title of a movie starring Robin Williams, which made the red clown nose he popped on when visiting sick children famous.

Goldenberg reached out to Adams’ nonprofit Gesundheit Institute, which allowed him to volunteer. He soon embarked on a 300-mile bike ride from Ohio to West Virginia to spend the summer after his first year of medical school surrounded by people who, like him, were frustrated by the health care system. They yearned for an approach that focused not just on the illness of one patient, but on the health of a community.

When he got back, he volunteered at a free clinic in Columbus. The experience deepened his appreciation for caring for the sick as well as his disillusionment with a health care system he viewed as farming out the medical treatment of certain patients to trainees.

The next turning point came when he attended a conference of the American Medical Student Association, which encourages doctors to advocate for affordable health care. Seeing so many of his fellow medical students with the same values energized him.

“Vast swaths of our population were uninsured,” he recalled. “I just couldn’t get over how unfair that was and wanted to be part of the good guys fighting to change that.”

“Vast swaths of our population were uninsured,” recalled Goldenberg. “I just couldn’t get over how unfair that was and wanted to be part of the good guys fighting to change that.”

Goldenberg met his wife at the conference; together they pledged to improve how medicine is practiced. They both pursued family medicine. But during his residency at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he fell in love with psychiatry. He found satisfaction in building relationships with patients struggling with mental illness and helping them through it.

Madison had pioneered a team-based model in the 1970s that treated patients with severe mental illness in their homes and communities, rather than at institutions and hospitals. He was so struck by this approach that he specialized in community psychiatry. Later, he became medical director of a nonprofit organization that treated the homeless.

The job reviewing health insurance denials came about after he spotted an online job posting.

With more than 15 years’ experience treating patients at clinics and in hospitals, he was flush with knowledge and a desire to make a greater impact. He told himself that he could walk away at any point if he felt he wasn’t living up to the ethical standards he set for himself. He was determined not to be a rubber stamp for anyone — not for the insurance companies and not for the hospitals.

Perhaps surprisingly, he estimates that he sided with insurance companies about half the time. Some hospitals, he said, admitted patients when they didn’t need to, and some doctors wrote that they had ordered treatments that made little sense given the patient’s diagnosis.

The bulk of his cases are reviews involving the major Medicaid plans in Ohio. The third-party company he worked for approached him in 2023 with another opportunity: to do more in-depth external reviews for commercial insurers. He agreed, but his priority remained his main psychiatry job and the patients he treated there.

The third-party review company that Goldenberg works for declined to comment.

State and federal regulations designed external reviews as an attempt to level the playing field between behemoth insurance companies and individual patients. The idea is to provide an added measure that prevents insurers from having the final say in deciding whether they will pay for a claim they had already denied. The Affordable Care Act in 2010 expanded access to the reviews, but barriers regularly get in the way of the process serving as a true check on insurers.

Most people haven’t heard of external reviews, and most denials are not eligible for one. Those that are eligible typically involve medical judgment, surprise medical bills, or an insurer deciding to retroactively cancel or discontinue coverage or determining that a treatment was experimental. Even then, insurers can argue that a denial is ineligible for an external review.

Only after the internal appeals with the insurer are exhausted is an external review an option for some denials. Requests have to be filed within a certain time frame, depending on whether they’re filed under state or federal laws. That distinction can also determine if insurance plans get to pick the company that does the external review.

In addition, it’s nearly impossible to know how effective they are. Insurance companies almost never release data around denials in general. That’s especially true about external reviews.

A recent KFF report looking at federal insurance marketplace plans found that fewer than 1% of of the system’s tens of millions of denials were appealed internally. Of that 1%, about 3% of all upheld internal appeals — only about 5,000 enrollees — went on to file external reviews, though there wasn’t enough data to calculate the rate at which external appeals were upheld.

After L’s suicide attempt last February, a judge ordered him to be committed to a mental health center about 40 minutes south of Raleigh. There, staff took away his phone, shoes and anything that could be a safety hazard. Doctors increased the dosage of his new antidepressant and, while they waited for the medicine to take effect, L spent his days coloring, making bracelets and watching a documentary about meditation.

The court rescinded the involuntary commitment order about a week later, but did so under two conditions: that L be released to his wife’s care and that he see a therapist and a psychiatrist. Sutton-Schulman heeded the judge’s orders and agreed to have him move back in with her.

When she picked him up, they both cried.

“I never want to do anything ever to go back to a place like that again,” he said as he climbed into her car.

At the house, she didn’t let her emotions show through the reassuring facade she maintained for him. Secretly, she was terrified he would try to kill himself again.

Four days later, she woke up to a quiet house. She assumed he’d gone for a walk, as he usually did.

After L’s first suicide attempt, he moved back in with Sutton-Schulman, who agreed to help care for him as a condition of his release from a mental health facility.

She heard the front door open and went to greet him. Her eyes immediately found him leaning over the kitchen sink. As she got closer, she glimpsed a knife in the sink covered in blood. Then she saw blood pouring out of his neck, spilling from his wrists, soaking his sweater.

She grabbed a towel to put pressure on the gash on his neck.

“Did you do this to yourself?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

For the second time in 11 days, she called 911.

“Just let me die,” he said over and over.

Paramedics rushed him to the hospital. This time, police taped off the house and questioned Sutton-Schulman for two hours until a detective got a call from the hospital confirming that L had attempted suicide in the woods behind the house.

By the time she arrived at the hospital, the bleeding was under control. After the doctor stitched up L’s neck and bandaged his wrists, he agreed to accept treatment. Police drove him to Triangle Springs, a residential treatment facility in nearby Raleigh.

But instead of improving, L’s mental health deteriorated. He began displaying signs of psychosis. He told the doctors that “the coke machine was fuzzy and he could hear just random voices,” his medical records show. During a call with Sutton-Schulman, he told her that he believed the other patients had been planted at the facility by the FBI and authorities were trying to frame him for murder.

“Patient is not considered safe to be discharged,” his doctors wrote in his medical notes on four separate occasions.

Desperate, Sutton-Schulman called a friend who is a social worker in psychiatric hospitals. He’s getting worse, she told her. Where else can I take him?

Of the three facilities her friend recommended, The Menninger Clinic in Houston was the only one that returned her call.

She wasn’t sure she could get him there in his condition, but she knew she had to try. She booked an early-morning flight for the two of them. At one point, he dropped to the airport floor. “I can’t do it anymore,” he told her.

“You have to,” she told him.

She was relieved when they arrived at Menninger. The staff did genetic testing that revealed he could have an adverse reaction to the antidepressant his doctor had put him on. Learning that, she said, felt like the missing piece of a puzzle.

Sutton-Schulman got L settled in, met with his doctors and, for the first time in months, felt some hope.

Goldenberg approached his side job with caution.

When he’d started, a part of him feared he would be pressured to side with insurers regardless of the medical evidence. But that didn’t happen. He soon embraced the job as a way to hold everyone accountable because it wasn’t just insurance companies that tried to game the system.

“Doing these chart reviews has also opened my eyes to the way doctors and hospitals cheat the system, even Medicaid,” he said. “And I don’t like that either.”

Over the years, he said, he’s done hundreds of Medicaid reviews and about a dozen external reviews. He knows more than most that no one is immune to having a mental health episode.

“We all have vulnerabilities, and we all have genetic predispositions, sensitivities to certain kinds of stress,” he said. “Someone who’s been able to handle stuff all their life, if they have just too many things going on, it can push you past your breaking point.”

It’s a bit like how a healthy person can be diagnosed with cancer or get into a car accident. People pay for insurance, he said, so it’s not financially disastrous when that happens.

“I’m working within a system that I know is broken, but doing my best to change it from the inside,” he said.

A part of him wonders if Patch Adams would consider him a sellout for not living up to the radical ideologies of his youth. But his goals haven’t changed. They’re evident in the practice philosophy he spotlights at the top of his CV: “Increase quality of life for those suffering from mental illness in an atmosphere of respect, understanding, and collaboration.”

The spirit of his work, which earned him a humanism in medicine scholarship in medical school, is what prompted him to call Sutton-Schulman.

“I see how opaque the system can be,” Goldenberg said, “how frustrating it is when you feel like no one hears you.”

Sutton-Schulman with the records she kept from her husband’s case

On March 19, just a week after her husband was admitted to Menninger, Sutton-Schulman received the first denial from Highmark.

Highmark had sent her a letter in late February confirming pre-authorization for his treatment at Triangle Springs, where L was first treated after his initial suicide attempt. “This approval means that we confirm that the requested services or supplies are medically necessary and appropriate.”

And again a few days later, it sent her another: “We approved the request to extend an inpatient admission for the patient.”

But on that day in mid-March, Highmark showed a balance of $30,599.69.

The reason? The Triangle Springs treatment was not being covered after all; it had been deemed not medically necessary.

The pre-authorization letters included a line saying payment was not guaranteed, but Sutton-Schulman didn’t think much of it. And with good reason. At the top of the letter, in bold, were the words: “We approved your inpatient admission request.” She felt like Highmark was reversing itself.

Sutton-Schulman watched as her husband — one of the smartest men she knew — continued to unravel. When a person is gravely ill, they’re often forced to fight two battles, one against their sickness and the other against the insurance company. As L focused on his health, Sutton-Schulman mobilized against Highmark.

She was no stranger to taking on powerful companies. She was part of the army of women who took on the pharmaceutical giant Bayer after they blamed the company’s permanently implanted birth control device for serious health complications. They filed reports with the Food and Drug Administration over adverse reactions, they organized protests, and many of them sued Bayer, though Sutton-Schulman did not.

At the end of 2018, Bayer stopped selling the device, despite insisting it was safe.

In her fight with Highmark, Sutton-Schulman leaned on her paralegal skills, beginning with reading the company’s coverage booklet from start to finish. That’s where she learned of the possibility of the external review. Then she began tracking and documenting everything — the calls with Highmark, its promises, denial letters, bills and appeal requests — and developing her own filing system of labeled manila folders and document boxes. She even started recording her phone calls with the company.

Just as she started to get going, a call from Menninger stopped her in her tracks.

Her husband had passed out in the bathroom and hit his head. Menninger took him to a nearby hospital, where he was treated for a severe colon infection, likely brought on by his long-term use of antibiotics to treat the neck wound.

Once doctors cleared out the infection, an ambulance took him back to Menninger to complete his treatment.

Meanwhile, Highmark sent Sutton-Schulman a succession of denials.

Sutton-Schulman continued to fight Highmark to cover her husband’s care, even as he was hospitalized.

Highmark refused to pay for the emergency medical treatment for the colon infection. In a bizarre twist, that denial letter listed her husband as the patient but made reference to the care of a newborn, not that of a 52-year-old man having a mental health crisis.

“It was determined,” the letter said, “that your newborn does not meet the criteria for coverage of an inpatient hospital admission.”

“This is when I really start to think they’re just denying,” she recalled. “They’re not even looking. They’re just ‘deny, deny, deny.’”

A denial letter from Highmark relating to L’s stay in a Texas hospital with a colon infection described the 52-year-old man as a newborn, stating “it was determined that your newborn does not meet the criteria for coverage of an inpatient hospital admission.” (Obtained and highlighted by ProPublica)

Before she could appeal it, she was hit with another denial. The company denied her husband’s first week of care at Menninger.

Then the fourth denial arrived, this one for the rest of the treatment at Menninger.

Doctors at the hospital where her husband was treated for the colon infection had persuaded Highmark to pay for the medical care, but she was responsible for the remainder of the appeals. She soon found herself raging at what she came to believe was “weaponized incompetence.”

Fax numbers were wrong. Key records that included the billing codes and denial reasons that she needed for her appeals were no longer available online. The insurer wouldn’t even give her access to her husband’s medical records, though he had signed a release granting her permission.

“At this time,” she wrote to the insurer, “I can only interpret Highmark’s refusal to respond to appeal requests in a timely manner or provide information as an ongoing, purposeful effort to erect insurmountable obstacles to this process.”

On her 18th call to Highmark, she bristled at the notion that a critical letter from the insurer was lost in the mail.

“I never got a letter,” Sutton-Schulman shot back from her kitchen table.

Listen to One of Sutton-Schulman’s Calls With Highmark

Sutton-Schulman: So it’s up to me to do the appeal, to handle the appeal. Which it’s very hard for me to do when there are roadblocks being purposefully erected for me, such as not being notified that I have a case number and that I’m supposed to send stuff in and I’m on a deadline. Because I absolutely would have sent that stuff in. I have it.

Highmark representative: Mm-hmm.

Sutton-Schulman: I am very curious under what scenario exactly a person who has tried to kill himself twice within the span of a week is denied an inpatient behavioral health treatment when every doctor that saw him said he needs to be in a residential treatment program. I am infinitely curious what credentialed individual made that decision that that is not medically necessary.

Highmark representative: Yeah, I definitely understand. That’s very frustrating.

Appalled, she filed two complaints with the state insurance department in Pennsylvania, where Highmark is based. The first, in June 2024, explained the multiple roadblocks she experienced and wrote that Highmark denied claims as medically unnecessary and impeded her ability to appeal them. The department wrote back and incorrectly stated that the denial was not eligible for an external review because it did not involve medical judgment or rescission of coverage.

Six months later, Sutton-Schulman filed a second complaint with the agency highlighting a litany of additional problems and asking for an investigation into Highmark. After both complaints were closed, Sutton-Schulman wrote the agency again, reasserting the “weaponized incompetence” claim and adding that she believed the company’s goal “seems to be not paying claims or to delay payments as long as possible.”

“Frankly,” she concluded, “I don’t even know why they are allowed to continue operating like this without sanctions or fines.”

A spokesperson for the insurance department did not answer ProPublica’s questions, saying that state law prohibits the department from disclosing details of individual consumer complaints or ongoing investigations.

In a statement, the department said every complaint is “carefully reviewed and informs our broader oversight. When we find systemic issues, we have not hesitated to act, including imposing fines, ordering corrective actions, and requiring restitution to Pennsylvanians.”

The Pennsylvania agency and the Delaware Department of Insurance have fined Highmark and its health insurance subsidiaries at least four times in the past 10 years, including as recently as 2024 and 2023. The fines were levied for denying and failing to pay claims on time, including those for mental-health-related treatment. Just last year, Delaware fined Highmark $329,000 for violating mental health parity laws, which aim to ensure that mental health and physical health insurance claims are treated equally. Highmark said in response that it evaluated its practices and ensured that the same standards are used for mental health as physical health. In addition, it said at the time that it would review and revise its procedures where necessary to ensure compliance with state and federal requirements.

L provided Highmark two signed releases authorizing the company to respond to ProPublica, which the company said were necessary for it to answer questions. He also called the company to ask it to respond. Still, Highmark would not discuss L’s case in any detail, citing patient privacy.

Instead, the company provided a statement acknowledging “small errors made by physicians and/or members can lead to delays and initial denials,” but said those are corrected on appeals. The statement said company officials “recognize and sincerely regret” when prior authorization and claims processing are “challenging and frustrating,” and added that the issues raised by L’s case were “resolved at least a year ago.”

The statement said prior authorization requests are reviewed by licensed physicians and completed based on widely accepted national guidelines. The decision to deny or uphold an appeal, the statement said, is based on the same national guidelines. Highmark said it is working to improve its prior authorization process, including reducing “denials when errors are made, regardless of who or how the errors are made because we are passionate about providing appropriate and timely care to our members.”

“Highmark is dedicated to full compliance with all applicable state and federal Mental Health Parity laws regarding coverage for behavioral health services for our members,” the statement said.

In the end, Sutton-Schulman won the Triangle Springs appeal, but Highmark classified L’s treatment at Menninger as two separate admissions. She eventually was able to get Highmark to pay for the first week at Menninger — more than $20,000 — but the company wouldn’t budge on the $70,000-plus for the other four weeks of treatment.

Her final shot was an external review, but getting Highmark to agree to one wasn’t easy — though Sutton-Schulman believed they were eligible. When she finally convinced the company, it gave her less than two hours to file a request before a 5 p.m. deadline. She pressed send on the email at 4:34 p.m.

By the time Sutton-Schulman’s letter landed in Goldenberg’s inbox, he had done enough reviews to know what to expect. But the details of L’s case were striking.

“This is the high-risk case that psychiatrists have nightmares about,” he recalls thinking.

It was also the first time he had received an appeal from a family member, not a hospital. He wondered if he should call Sutton-Schulman. He decided that for a doctor who believes so adamantly in humanism in medicine, this was a chance to be human.

She wasn’t sure what to make of his voicemail. A part of her was relieved, but a bigger part didn’t trust it. After all the denials and broken promises, she couldn’t believe that it could all be resolved in a single phone call.

A little while later, Goldenberg called her again. This time she answered.

He asked how her husband was doing. Did he survive?

He’s back home, she said, seeing a local psychiatrist. “I think they finally have his medication correct and stabilized.”

“I just want you to know that there was a human in this whole process that actually took a look at all this stuff, that actually read it,” he told her. “It probably just felt like that has not been the case for most of it.”

“We all have vulnerabilities, and we all have genetic predispositions, sensitivities to certain kinds of stress,” said Goldenberg. “Someone who’s been able to handle stuff all their life, if they have just too many things going on, it can push you past your breaking point.”

He acknowledged that he probably shouldn’t be talking to her.

“Part of the reason I do this job is to make sure that people get what they need,” he said, “and bad doctors get punished, and shitty insurance companies don’t get to do this kind of stuff to people.”

In response to Highmark’s denial, Goldenberg wrote that the insurer did not understand L’s “complex psychiatric and medical situation.” His treatment was interrupted by a medical emergency — he didn’t leave the facility because he had completed treatment, as the company suggested. After doctors tended to the infection, his “psychosis and depression were still severe.” The resumed treatment, he wrote, was “denied unfairly.”

In total, L’s treatment cost more than $220,000, which includes claims that Highmark approved when they were initially filed. But Sutton-Schulman and L had to pay more than $95,000 out of pocket, burning through their savings in hopes that Highmark would reconsider their denials. Many people don’t have the money to pay for care if their insurance won’t cover it. Highmark ended up reimbursing them more than $70,000. Considering out-of-network and other charges, Sutton-Schulman was content with that amount.

With their struggles against Highmark behind them, Sutton-Schulman and L are still putting their lives back together. In July, they returned to couple’s counseling; the therapist told Sutton-Schulman she needed to process the trauma of what happened.

“I’m just now starting to do that,” she said, “because I finally feel like I don’t have any insurance to fight.”

She’s also dealing with her own guilt, wondering if moving out pushed her husband over the edge.

L turned to look at her. “You shouldn’t blame yourself.”

“I know,” she said, her voice breaking. “But the reality of knowing that intellectually to be true, and then emotionally, those are two very different things.”

He has tried to assure his wife that he’s better. He’s returned to work, though colleagues don’t know what happened, other than that a medical emergency kept him away. He logs onto meetings from his laptop and travels for business trips. His voice is exuberant, especially when cracking jokes.

“When your mind shatters like this, it’s hard to explain,” he said. “Nothing makes sense, and you just want it to be over.“

Things feel normal until he catches sight of the scar on his neck. It’s small and could pass as a nick from a razor. But every time he looks in the mirror, he is transported back to that moment in the woods. He’s not sure he can handle the world knowing what happened.

The couple still live in separate houses but eat dinner together most nights. On a recent evening, they sat at the round kitchen table where Sutton-Schulman had done so much of the work fighting with Highmark. He chatted about work. She talked about needing to take one of the cats to the vet. As he got up to leave, she walked him to the door and wrapped her arms around him before saying goodbye.

They recognize how lucky they were that their case was assigned to Goldenberg.

The praise makes Goldenberg uncomfortable.

“It shouldn’t even be a big deal,” he said. “It should have happened multiple steps before it got to me.”

Since the review, Goldenberg has gone back to the residents he teaches. As doctors, he tells them, they have the power to make patients feel seen, to spend an extra few minutes filling out paperwork to help someone with a request for time off work, to support an appeal if they believe an insurer wrongly denied coverage.

“Sometimes,” he said, “there’s an opportunity to reach out and connect in a way that adds a little bit of humanity to the world.”

L has recovered and he and Sutton-Schulman continue to process the trauma of his experience.

How We Did This:

Last September, Teressa Sutton-Schulman reached out to ProPublica to share this story. She was frustrated by Highmark’s denials and unsure if her last resort, the external appeal, would yield results. Reporter Duaa Eldeib interviewed Sutton-Schulman and L multiple times and traveled to North Carolina for additional reporting. To verify the details of their story, Eldeib examined thousands of pages of medical records, billing statements, state agency reports and insurance documents. She also reviewed 911 records, text messages and audio from dozens of recordings Sutton-Schulman made of calls with Highmark and of a voicemail from and a conversation with Dr. Neal Goldenberg. Eldeib made multiple trips to Ohio to interview Goldenberg. She sent Highmark a detailed list of questions, which the company did not answer. In a statement, Highmark said it is “dedicated to full compliance with all applicable state and federal Mental Health Parity laws regarding coverage for behavioral health services for our members.”

Mariam Elba contributed research. Photo editing by Andrea Wise

by Ellis Simani, ProPublica and Lexi Churchill, ProPublica and The Texas Tribune

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This article is co-published with The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan local newsroom that informs and engages with Texans. Sign up for The Brief Weekly to get up to speed on their essential coverage of Texas issues.

Three charter school superintendents who are among the highest paid in Texas are overseeing some of the lowest-performing districts in the state, newly released records show. One of them is at risk of closure by school year’s end.

An investigation by ProPublica and The Texas Tribune previously revealed that board members at Valere Public Schools had paid Superintendent Salvador Cavazos up to $870,000 annually in recent years, roughly triple what it reported publicly to the state and on its website. Two other districts the newsrooms covered, Faith Family Academy and Gateway Charter Academy, also substantially underreported the compensation paid to their top leaders.

The state determined that all three of those districts have had failing or near-failing levels of performance in recent years. The ratings, released last month by the Texas Education Agency, also show that charter schools make up the majority of the districts that have repeatedly had “unacceptable” performance, though they account for a small portion of public schools across Texas. The agency published two years’ worth of accountability ratings for the state’s public and charter schools that were previously undisclosed due to litigation.

Faith Family Academy, a Dallas-area district with two campuses, was one of eight charter school districts that are now on track to be shut down at the end of the school year after receiving a third consecutive “F” rating. Board members paid superintendent Mollie Purcell Mozley a peak annual compensation of $560,000 in recent years to run the district, which has about 3,000 students.

Education experts said they were troubled that the underperforming charter networks the newsrooms identified would invest so heavily in superintendent compensation instead of areas with a more direct impact on student achievement.

“I don’t know what metrics the board’s reviewing to say that this is performance that would warrant this amount of pay,” said Toni Templeton, a research scientist at the University of Houston. “What we know from academic literature is when you put resources closest to the students, the students benefit the most. And the superintendent’s position is important, but it’s pretty far from the kids.”

The state’s “three strikes” law mandates that the state education agency automatically shut down a charter school district that has repeatedly failed to meet performance standards.

School leaders have a 30-day window to contest the ratings with the state education agency if they believe there were errors. The state will then release final scores in December that will determine whether failing campuses will be forced to close.

Keri Bickerstaff has sent four of her five children to school at Faith Family Academy but pulled most of them out after prekindergarten. She said she was shocked and saddened when she learned about the district’s payments to Purcell Mozley from ProPublica and the Tribune. At her children’s school in Waxahachie, south of Dallas, Bickerstaff observed crowded classrooms and felt that the teachers lacked experience and left the school at high rates. She was surprised that the superintendent had been paid so highly.

“I was under the impression that funding was an issue,” Bickerstaff said in an interview.

Purcell Mozley and Faith Family Academy did not respond to repeated requests for comment, but in an Aug. 14 letter to parents and staff posted on the school’s website, she stated that the district planned to appeal the state’s rating. “While this rating is disappointing on its face,” Purcell Mozley wrote, “we want our community to know that we have conducted a thorough review of our performance data — and we strongly believe that our true score for 2025 reflects a solid C rating.”

Another small charter district in Dallas, Gateway Charter Academy, has two strikes against it after receiving a combination of “F” and “D” ratings over the last three school years. If the district receives another low score next year, it too will be forced to shutter its two campuses that serve around 600 students.

State education records show Gateway has been plagued by teacher turnover, with as many as 62% of its instructors leaving the district in recent years. The district has paid teachers about $10,000 less than the statewide average while paying superintendent Robbie Moore more than $426,000 in 2023, according to tax records — nearly double his base salary of $215,000.

Gateway and Moore did not respond to requests for comment. After it was originally contacted by the newsrooms about the previously undisclosed compensation, the district posted a new document on its website that lists an undated $75,000 bonus for Moore.

While there are no state regulations limiting how much school districts can pay their superintendents, state lawmakers have tried to change that for years. Lawmakers filed at least eight proposals during the most recent regular legislative session that would have constrained administrators’ pay and severance packages at public and charter schools, but none passed. That included a bill authored by Sen. Adam Hinojosa, a Republican from Corpus Christi, that would have capped a superintendent’s income to twice that of the highest-paid teacher in the district.

Hinojosa filed another bill during a special session that began in July that would have allowed superintendents to earn up to three times as much as the top-paid teachers when their district scored an “A” rating. But if a district earned a “D” or “F” rating, a superintendent’s income could not exceed that of the top-paid instructors. The measure failed to reach a committee for discussion.

“If teachers are held accountable for student performance, administrators should be too,” Hinojosa said in a statement.

Although Valere received a “D” rating for the past two years, its board has compensated Cavazos hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on top of his base salary, making him among the highest-paid public school leaders in the country, the ProPublica and Tribune investigation found.

In the weeks after the newsrooms published their findings, state lawmakers and an advocacy group that represents charter schools strongly criticized Cavazos’ compensation, calling on the district to lower his pay and tie it to specific metrics. The state education agency opened investigations into each of the three charter schools mentioned in the story, which are “open and ongoing,” an agency spokesperson said.

In a written response to questions for this story, Valere Public Schools said that it did not intend to appeal the district’s latest rating and continued to defend Cavazos’ high pay, stating it was justified by his “experience, performance, and involvement in fundraising.”

The board said it didn’t feel that Cavazos’ compensation was interfering with other district priorities and disagreed that Valere was among the lowest-performing districts in the state. Its response cited graduation rates, which are slightly higher than the state average, but did not address the low test scores that drove the district’s “D” ratings.

The board members did not say whether Cavazos’ pay would remain at the same level in the future but pointed to his employment contract for the current school year that lists a base salary of $285,887, plus a “retention stipend” of $20,000 per month, after taxes, which likely doubles his base salary. The stipend, which the newsrooms revealed earlier this year, had not previously appeared in Cavazos’ annual employment letters.

Holding Charter Schools Accountable

Texas’ A-F rating system was established in 2017 and uses metrics such as standardized test scores to grade each district and campus on student achievement, school progress and success with closing socioeconomic achievement gaps.

The new ratings come after a lengthy legal battle between Texas public school districts and the TEA over changes to the education agency’s ratings system. Districts twice sued Mike Morath, the TEA commissioner, to stop the release of the scores after the agency announced plans to revamp the system in 2023. The lawsuits successfully kept the scores from public view until this spring, when a state appeals court overturned a ruling in favor of the districts, setting the stage for the release of performance ratings for the 2022-23 school year in April, and ratings for the two most recent school years in August after a separate decision by the same appeals court.

The ratings affect charter schools and traditional public schools in different ways. A traditional public school district can potentially face state intervention after one of its campuses receives five years of failing ratings. The new TEA records show that there are five such districts at risk. By comparison, the state is required to automatically shut down an entire charter district that receives three years of failing scores.

Supporters often point to the “three strikes” law as evidence that charter schools are held to a higher level of performance standards than public schools.

The regulation, which was introduced in 2013, is one of many guardrails that has been put in place since charter schools were authorized in the 1990s with far less state oversight than public schools. Charter schools, for example, were originally shielded from the state’s nepotism and conflict-of-interest laws until reports of leaders engaging in self-dealing and profiteering gradually prompted lawmakers to act.

Brian Whitley, a spokesperson for the Texas Public Charter Schools Association, said that Texas holds charter schools “more accountable, more quickly” when they don’t meet performance expectations, including through automatic closures.

Private schools are set to receive a similar level of protection from the laws that govern how traditional public schools spend their money: Under a landmark school voucher bill the Legislature passed this spring, the state plans to direct at least $1 billion public dollars to private education in the coming years. Earlier this month, an investigation by ProPublica and the Tribune revealed more than 60 instances of nepotism, self-dealing and conflicts of interest at Texas private schools that likely would have violated state laws had the schools been public.

These sorts of conflicts of interest and familial business entanglements have been common among at least two of the three charter districts that have made outsize payments to their leaders.

Records show that Gateway Charter Academy has hired employees related to administrators, including Moore. According to Gateway’s 2017 financial audit, Moore also married an “instructional coach” in the district that year. Records show that the coach’s compensation increased from $75,000 to $221,000 during the 2022-23 school year, after she was promoted to director of curriculum development. She did not respond to requests for comment.

At Faith Family Academy, Gene Lewis, one of the founding board members who hired Purcell Mozley and reviews her performance, is also her uncle, according to bond documents. Lewis’ wife also sits on the board of a separate entity that oversees the district, according to Faith Family Academy’s tax filings.

Lewis and his wife did not respond to requests for comment.

Whitley told the newsrooms that his group had supported a range of legislation to implement greater accountability for charters.

“We strongly believe that all public schools, including public charter schools, must be transparent and good stewards of taxpayer dollars,” he said in a statement.

Help ProPublica and The Texas Tribune Report on Education

by Dave Altimari and Ginny Monk, The Connecticut Mirror

This article was produced for ProPublica’s Local Reporting Network in partnership with The Connecticut Mirror. Sign up for Dispatches to get our stories in your inbox every week.

A Connecticut Department of Motor Vehicles working group will examine portions of the state’s towing law, potentially leading to more extensive reforms than those passed by the legislature last session.

The 10-member committee, which met for the first time Monday, must report its recommendations to lawmakers by February. It was originally tasked with examining a more narrow piece of the Connecticut law that requires proceeds from sales of towed cars to be remitted to the state, but members said they also want to study the way vehicles are valued by towing companies and other aspects of the sales process.

The move comes after a yearlong investigation by The Connecticut Mirror and ProPublica found that the state’s laws favored towing companies at the expense of low-income residents.

The committee, which is chaired by DMV Commissioner Tony Guerrera, includes three towing company owners, two consumer advocates and other DMV officials. The group discussed several issues still plaguing the towing industry and vehicle owners after the legislature overhauled the state’s more than 100-year-old law in May.

That legislation, which passed with bipartisan support and takes effect Oct. 1, makes it harder to tow vehicles from private property and easier for drivers to retrieve their vehicles after a tow. The law also constrains practices that had allowed towing companies to start the sales process for some vehicles after 15 days.

The bill also created the DMV working group to study how towers handle profits from sales of towed cars. Under the law, towing companies can sell a vehicle if the owner doesn’t reclaim it, but they are required to hold onto the proceeds for a year so the vehicle owner can claim the money. If the owner never comes forward, companies are required to turn over the proceeds to the state after subtracting their fees.

This year, Guerrera told lawmakers the DMV never set up a system for this process and wasn’t aware of any money being remitted to the state by towers. He said that the DMV has been reviewing the issue and that the committee would be prepared to address it in the report.

Guerrera said Monday that the working group should expand its mission to study broader changes that make it easier for low-income residents to get their cars back.

“There’s got to be a way, too, to make sure that people know what’s going on when their car gets towed,” Guerrera said. “That’s important because that $1,000 vehicle is a lifeline for them, and they need to get it back. So how can we get it back in a way that doesn’t keep accumulating more fees?”

Committee members discussed creating a new way to monitor who owns a vehicle by having the DMV require the owner to submit a record of sale. Currently, towers try to reach the last registered owner of the vehicle, but several people told CT Mirror and ProPublica that they were never informed their car would be sold because they had just bought it and weren’t required to register it yet. The new legislation does allow the vehicle owner to submit a title or bill of sale instead of registration documents to get their car back.

“A huge part of the problem is the fact that we can’t get ahold of the owner of the vehicle,” said Sal Sena, owner of Sena Brothers and Cross Country Automotive in Hartford. “People are buying a car, they don’t register them, it gets towed, and everything’s going back to the last person that owned it a few years ago.”

The committee also tackled several other issues, such as developing a standardized process to determine the value of a car that has been towed. If a towing company deems a vehicle worth $1,500 or less, it can sell it more quickly.

Guerrera questioned how towers come up with their estimated values. “If you’ve got a car that’s three grand or four grand, next thing you know, it’s valued under $1,500, how did that happen?” he asked.

Connecticut Legal Services attorney Rafie Podolsky said how towers value cars has long been an issue for consumers.

“I’m hopeful that either the department or the industry will have data that will allow us to kind of make some comparisons between the presumed value of the car and the dollar amount that comes in on a resale,” he said.

Towing industry representatives said another priority should be modernizing the DMV’s process for getting permission to sell someone’s vehicle. Eileen Colonese of Farmington Motor Sports said towers spend weeks sending paperwork back and forth through the mail to the DMV and vehicle owners.

“There’s portals out there for all kinds of things. Why is there not a portal for this?” Colonese said. “Everyone can submit everything electronically and have access to a more standardized and modernized system.”

The working group must submit a report to the legislature’s Transportation Committee by February, and Guerrera said it’s important to produce something that all members support.

“If we go to the legislature with a piece of information that says we have met with the industry on both sides, and this is what we’ve come up with, we’re in good shape,” Guerrera said. “If we bog down now again, you know, now it’s in the hands of the legislature and we don’t know what could happen.”

by Hannah Allam

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published.

In the weeks leading up to July 9, Ayman Soliman told friends he was terrified of losing the sanctuary he’d found after fleeing Egypt in 2014 and building a new life as a Muslim chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital.

Soliman, 51, was to show up at 9 a.m. on that date for his first check-in with Immigration and Customs Enforcement since losing his asylum status. He’d been granted the protections in 2018 under the first Trump administration. Then, in the last month of the Biden presidency, immigration authorities moved to revoke them based on sharply disputed claims of fraud and aid to a terrorist group. Once President Donald Trump returned to office weeks later, court records show, immigration officials bumped up the terrorism claims and formalized the asylum termination June 3.

By the time of Soliman’s ICE appointment, friends said, he was distraught over the prospect of being returned to the regime that had jailed him for documenting protests as a journalist. He arrived at the agency’s field office in Blue Ash, Ohio, accompanied by fellow clergy and a couple of Democratic state lawmakers.

“I didn’t come to America seeking a better life. I was escaping death,” he said in a video filmed just before he entered.

Inside, Soliman’s attorneys said, he was shocked to find FBI agents waiting for him. They interrogated him for three hours about his charity work more than a decade ago in Egypt, the basis for the Department of Homeland Security accusations of illegal aid, or “material support,” to Islamist militants.

His lawyer eventually emerged from the ICE office holding a belt and a wallet. Soliman had been swept into custody, joining a record 61,000 people now in ICE detention. As he awaits an immigration court trial Sept. 25, he is being held in a county jail run by a sheriff who posted a sign outside reading, “Illegal Aliens Here.”

Legal observers are watching the chaplain’s case as a bellwether of the Trump administration’s ability to merge the vast federal powers of immigration and counterterrorism. The case is also a reminder, they say, of sweeping post-9/11 statutes that both Republican and Democratic administrations have been accused of abusing, especially in cases involving Muslims.

Material support laws ban almost any type of aid to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist groups, extending far beyond the basics of weapons, personnel and money. Prosecutors describe the laws as an invaluable tool against would-be attackers, but civil liberties groups have long complained of overreach.

Over the years, successive administrations have faced legal challenges over how they wield the power; a milestone Supreme Court decision during the Obama administration upheld the laws as constitutional. Now, however, there are particular fears about the material support “sledgehammer,” as one legal scholar put it, in the hands of Trump, who has been openly hostile toward Muslims and determined to deport a million people who are in the United States without permission.

“These statutes are written extraordinarily broadly with the unstated premise that discretion will be exercised responsibly. And one thing this administration has shown is that it doesn’t understand what it means to exercise discretion responsibly,” said David Cole, a Georgetown Law professor who argued high-profile material support cases and served as national legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union.

At issue are DHS allegations that Soliman’s involvement with an Islamic charity provided material support to the Muslim Brotherhood. But neither the charity nor the Brotherhood is a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, and an Egyptian court found no official ties between the groups.

The Biden-era DHS, which first flagged the issue, said it would revoke Soliman’s asylum if “a preponderance of the evidence supports termination” after a hearing, according to the December notice. At the time, court records show, the material support allegation was listed as a secondary concern after more common asylum questions about the veracity of official documents and his claims of persecution in Egypt.

Once Trump came to power weeks later, Soliman’s attorneys said, the material support claims metastasized, with U.S. authorities declaring the Muslim Brotherhood a Tier III, or undesignated, terrorist group and adding new arguments about ties to Hamas. The Brotherhood, a nearly century-old Islamist political movement, renounced violence in the 1970s, though Hamas and other spinoffs are on the U.S. blacklist. In addition to the Egypt-related concerns, DHS filings about Soliman had noted warrants for “murder and terrorism” in Iraq — a country Soliman says he’s never visited.

By elevating the national security argument, Soliman’s lawyers said, DHS was able to bypass an immigration judge and order the chaplain held without bond as “potentially dangerous.” An established terrorism nexus means less transparency for immigrants — and more power for the authorities.

“DHS is judge, jury and executioner,” said Robert Ratliff, one of Soliman’s attorneys.

The idea of Soliman as a secret militant has outraged residents who know him locally as “the interfaith imam” and the first Muslim on the pastoral care team at Cincinnati Children’s, a top-ranked pediatric hospital. Colleagues described a popular chaplain with nicknames for the tiny patients and soothing words for their bleary-eyed parents.

Judy Ragsdale, the former pastoral care director who hired Soliman in 2021 shortly before retiring, said she wrote a letter to hospital leaders imploring them to speak out against the allegations that could return him to certain persecution in Egypt. He lost authorization to work in June, when his asylum was terminated.

“This is a ‘Schindler’s List’ moment,” Ragsdale said she told hospital leaders. “And if you don’t stand up for Ayman, you’re complicit in what’s happening to him.”

Ayman Soliman, center, talking to children at a Cincinnati mosque. Soliman is in ICE detention and facing deportation to Egypt. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica. Faces blurred by ProPublica.)

Some fear DHS is parlaying the scope and secrecy of counterterrorism laws into a weapon to boost the president’s mass-deportation mission.

Immigrant rights groups say a sped-up campaign with fewer guardrails for due process is already leading to removals based on evidence that hasn’t been fully vetted. If DHS is successful in test cases like Soliman’s, they say, material support claims could be more easily applied to immigration cases with even tenuous links to militant factions, including newly designated cartels.

The White House referred questions to Homeland Security, which routed a request for comment to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services; a spokesperson there said in a statement that the agency generally “does not discuss the details of individual immigration cases and adjudication decisions.”

“An alien — even with a pending application or lawful status — is not shielded from immigration enforcement action,” the statement said. The FBI declined to comment.

Jeffrey Breinholt, an architect of the material support statutes who spent three decades as a federal terrorism prosecutor, defends the laws as crucial to closing loopholes that were exploited by foreign militant groups and their domestic sympathizers.

Breinholt, who retired in 2024, said he has no concerns about the widening scope as it converges with Trump’s deportation push. The designation of cartels, he said, “is a natural outgrowth of the success we have had with ‘material support’ crime.”

To Cole and other critics, however, the Soliman case could be “the canary in the coal mine.”

More Than a Chaplain

Within a few hours of Soliman’s detention, dozens showed up for an impromptu rally and news conference in the ICE center parking lot. That backup has since grown into a hundreds-strong campaign to refute the DHS allegations, which supporters call a resurgence of anti-Muslim fearmongering that has persisted across party lines since the 9/11 attacks 24 years ago this month.

“Any time you have a brown man or a Muslim man and you use the words ‘FBI’ and ‘red flag,’ you don’t have to say any more,” said Tala Ali, a friend of Soliman’s who heads the board of a Cincinnati mosque where he sometimes led prayers.

Tala Ali, a close friend of Soliman and board chair of the Clifton Mosque where he sometimes led prayers (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)

Voices calling for Soliman’s release include parents who met him in the hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit. The families are in disbelief that the chaplain they’d grown close to is now jailed in a high-stakes international case. They knew he’d fled Egypt but said they were learning details of his ordeal through the campaign to free him.

“It would be very easy to be resentful and be angry with the world when you have to live through that kind of trauma, and he’s not like that at all. He’s taking on other peoples’ trauma,” said Heather Barrow, whose infant daughter, Mya, died in the NICU last year.

She said Soliman stepped in to spare her grieving family the heartache of making funeral arrangements for a 5-month-old. He attended Mya’s celebration of life and, later, a butterfly release on June 7, which would’ve been her first birthday. A month later, he was in an ICE cell.

“I was like, how is this happening? He was just at our house,” Barrow said.

Another couple, Taylor and Bryan McClain, also came to rely on Soliman when their newborn, Violette, arrived at Cincinnati Children’s last year with life-threatening complications. The chaplain steadied them during their 271 days in the NICU, which Taylor said felt like “a roller coaster in a tornado and it’s on fire.” The McClains call him “family.”

“I say with full confidence: Violette is alive because of the advocacy that Ayman gave us,” Taylor said one recent afternoon as she held her daughter, now just over a year old.

Bryan and Taylor McClain with their daughter, Violette. Soliman was their chaplain in the neonatal intensive care unit at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Letters to Soliman from children at Clifton Mosque (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)

Clergy members make up another bloc of support — so many that they built a spreadsheet to divide visiting hours among imams, rabbis and pastors. Immigration advocates and Ohio civil rights leaders have added their names to petitions. So have University of Cincinnati student groups including the Ornithology Club and the Harry Potter Appreciation Club.

More than a dozen people faced criminal charges stemming from a melee after a rally in Soliman’s support; demonstrators and police blame each other for the violence July 17.

Two of Soliman’s fellow chaplains at Cincinnati Children’s, Adam Allen and Elizabeth Diop, said they lost their jobs for refusing to keep quiet about their jailed colleague. Meanwhile, the hospital, a cherished local institution, is taking heat for its silence. Soliman’s supporters launched a letter-writing campaign demanding a response from the hospital, which has said it does not discuss personnel issues.

Signs appeared outside the hospital. “Missing Chaplain,” they said. “Abducted By ICE.”

Adam Allen, a former chaplain at Cincinnati Children’s, says he lost his job for refusing to keep quiet about Soliman. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital did not return messages seeking comment. In an internal memo published by The Cincinnati Enquirer, hospital CEO Dr. Steve Davis told employees that the lack of response “should not be mistaken for a lack of caring or action.” As a nonprofit, Davis stressed, the hospital has strict rules about “activities that could be characterized as political.”

Soliman’s supporters press on. One recent Sunday evening, about 200 filled a Cincinnati church where preachers from several faith backgrounds urged them to demand his freedom.

“The trial that Imam Ayman is going through is our trial,” Abdulhakim Mohamed, head of the North American Imams Fellowship, told the crowd. “His justice is ours to own. The injustice is also ours to bear.”

Scenes from an interfaith service in support of Soliman (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Escape From Egypt

Soliman’s entanglement with the Egyptian security apparatus began in 2000 when he joined fellow college students to protest repressive laws, he said in asylum papers.

He was periodically locked up and intimidated after that, he said. The persecution worsened more than a decade ago during uprisings that remade the Middle East by toppling dictators — including Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak — but in some places spiraled into civil war.

Soliman worked as a freelance journalist covering pro-democracy revolts in Egypt and neighboring Libya. Friends say he was also studying to become an imam and served on the board of a local chapter of the Islamic charity Al-Gameya al-Shareya, which is known for its network of hospitals and orphan programs throughout Egypt.

The charity, whose name has multiple English spellings, launched in 1912 and is often described as “one of the most established national Islamic organizations.” Scholars have written that early leaders came from the Muslim Brotherhood, archenemy of Egypt’s current military leadership, but that ties ended around 1990 under government pressure.

In the years since, researchers found, the group maintained smooth relations with the government as its more than 1,000 chapters nationwide encompass Egyptians of all political leanings. That delicate balance faltered briefly in 2013 when a military-led counterrevolution quashed the nascent democratic movement and deposed elected leaders who were part of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Egypt’s military rulers declared the Brotherhood a terrorist organization and shuttered any organization it suspected of ties. Al-Gameya Al-Shareya was among more than 1,000 civil society groups blacklisted in the crackdown, court filings say, and chapters suspected of helping the Brotherhood during elections were dissolved. The group resumed operations the next year, when an Egyptian court lifted the ban, ruling that the charity “has no ties to the Muslim Brotherhood,” according to news reports.

Egypt’s return to zero tolerance for dissidents made Soliman’s activism dangerous, he said in court papers. As a journalist and Islamic scholar, he represented two fields the Egyptian government views as existential threats: a free press and religious organizing.

Soliman fled to the United States in 2014 on a visitor visa and later filed a petition for asylum, describing how security forces over the years had locked him up on false charges and tortured him with electrical shocks. In one incident, his attorney said, Egyptian forces with machine guns stormed into an apartment where Soliman was asleep with his wife and young child. (Through attorneys, Soliman asked to withhold details about his family because they remain in Egypt.)

“For me, it’s life or death,” Soliman later told a U.S. immigration officer of his need to escape.

Officials in Cairo referred questions to the Egyptian Embassy in Washington, which did not respond to requests for comment.

The asylum application asked whether Soliman had belonged to political parties or other associations in his home country. Ratliff, the attorney, said Soliman marked “yes” and attached a statement that mentioned Al-Gameya Al-Shareya and his role in fundraising for the local chapter.

Friends said Soliman rejoiced when he was granted asylum in 2018, under the first Trump administration, and sought permanent residency as the next step toward reuniting with his family. But the process stalled. “Bureaucratic hurdle after bureaucratic hurdle,” Ratliff said.

Then came a more serious snag. In 2021, Soliman learned he was on a federal watchlist when a background check for a chaplain job at an Oregon prison showed that the FBI had flagged him, court papers show.

His attorneys said they have no idea why. It could’ve been about a specific piece of intelligence. It could’ve been a misspelling or mistaken identity, simple errors that have landed ordinary Muslims on opaque “war on terror” watchlists that are nearly impossible to get off.

Soliman, friends say, insisted on trying to clear his name. With the help of the Muslim Legal Fund of America, he sued government agencies including the FBI and the Transportation Security Administration. That route led to open-ended legal battles that yielded no clear answers and no green card.

Instead, his place in the country became more vulnerable. In December, the final stretch of the Biden administration, Soliman received notice that the government intended to terminate his asylum based on “inconsistencies” in his claims of persecution and concern that his charity work made him inadmissible based on “possible membership in a terrorist organization.”

Some of his friends are convinced it was payback for the lawsuits, but attorneys say there’s no telling what triggered a review.

“What Ayman has experienced is something that, post-9/11, has been the reality of Muslims in this country,” said Ali, his friend and advocate. “All he did was try to get answers and accountability for what he’d been put through.”

ICE parking spots outside of the Butler County Jail (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) Big Claims, Little Transparency

Contested asylum cases like Soliman’s were prime targets when Trump took office the next month and supercharged deportations, a top campaign pledge. Since his return to office, ICE arrests have doubled.

Soliman was called to an asylum hearing in February, a month into the new administration, for a last shot at defending his eligibility. A DHS officer asked about claims in the Biden-era notice alleging “discrepancies in date and number of times he suffered harm” and raising doubts about a handwritten Egyptian police report and letters authenticating his journalistic work.

A transcript shows Soliman explaining that he sometimes got confused when describing traumatic incidents from years ago in English, his second language. He said the police report was a rough translation included by mistake and submitted statements verifying his journalism.

Then the DHS officer’s questioning took a turn: “When did you start supporting Al-Jameya Al-Shareya?”

For the rest of the meeting, the transcript shows, the officer drilled down on Soliman’s knowledge of the charity: fundraising, chapter size, support for violence and whether he had been aware of a Brotherhood link.

Another of Soliman’s attorneys interrupted when the immigration officer said the Brotherhood had been a Tier III group since 2012. That’s not how it works, the attorney countered — only top-tier terrorist organizations like al-Qaida or the Islamic State are given dates of designation. Tier III, she said, is for undesignated groups and is determined on a case-by-case basis, with the burden of proof on the government.

“Counsel, I’ll give you an opportunity at the end to make a closing,” the DHS officer said.

“I understand,” the attorney replied, “but we’re talking about something factual.”

The next time Soliman heard from DHS was the official termination of his asylum, effective June 3. This time, there was no hedging in language that declared he was ineligible based on “evidence that indicated you provided material support to a Tier III terrorist organization.” A few weeks later, he was taken into custody and notified of his pending removal.

Soliman’s legal team sued, arguing that he was stripped of asylum on illegal grounds because the designations had been made “without proper findings” and based on no new evidence.

Court filings show DHS attorneys introducing, then withdrawing or amending, materials to build a case linking Soliman to the Brotherhood through the charity.

“It looked like, ‘What can we put here to get to there?’” said Ratliff, a former immigration judge.

Among the supporting evidence filed by the government are three academic reports by scholars with deep knowledge of Islamic charities in Egypt. Soliman’s legal team filed statements from all three balking at how DHS had cherry-picked their research.

Steven Brooke at the University of Wisconsin-Madison detailed “important mistakes of fact and interpretation.” Neil Russell, an academic in Scotland, called the U.S. conclusions “a mischaracterization of my findings.” Marie Vannetzel, a French scholar who has conducted field research with Al-Gameya Al-Shareya, rebutted what she called “a dishonest manipulation of my text and my work.”

Vannetzel wrote that she rejects the idea that Soliman, “simply by virtue of his activity in the association, could be accused of providing material support to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Observers of Cairo’s unsparing campaign to uproot Islamist opposition say the matter is clear-cut: If the charity survived the scrutiny of Egyptian intelligence, then it’s not Muslim Brotherhood. “It’s really striking that this group is not proscribed,” said Michael Hanna, an Egypt specialist and U.S. program director of the nonprofit International Crisis Group.

Soliman’s attorneys also criticized the government’s assertion in court filings that he, as a board member of one local branch, would’ve been aware of any Brotherhood affiliation of chapters nationwide. “If a Rotarian in Seattle commits murder, we don’t go charging Rotarians in Des Moines with conspiracy,” Ratliff said.

Separate from U.S. attempts to tie Soliman to the Brotherhood was a puzzling footnote about Iraq that appeared in a later filing. Without detail, DHS attorneys alluded to warrants for “murder and terrorism activities.” Ratliff said a DHS attorney later confirmed to him in a phone call that it wasn’t about Soliman, but didn’t explain why it was there.

The error remained uncorrected in filings until Sept. 3, when DHS attorney Cheryl Gutridge acknowledged in court that it was an “inadvertent” reference to another case, Ohio news outlets reported. The original wording suggesting that Soliman faced murder charges in Iraq had been included in the government’s successful argument for keeping him in custody.

DHS did not address questions about the Iraq reference.

A close friend, Ahmed Elkady, said Soliman told him on a jail visit he was stunned to be linked to Iraq, a place he’s never been: “He said, ‘How can I become a virtual terrorist?”

Ahmed Elkady said Soliman told him on a jail visit he was stunned to be linked to Iraq, a place he’s never been. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica) A Sheriff’s ICE Fiefdom

As he awaits trial in immigration court, Soliman is in custody at the Butler County Jail, about 30 miles outside of Cincinnati, past cornfields and a German social club and the Town and Country Mobile Home Park.

For more than 20 years, this outpost has been the domain of Sheriff Richard Jones, a cowboy hat-wearing firebrand who keeps a framed photo of Trump in his office. In the run-up to the 2024 election, Jones mused that a Trump victory might put him “back in the deportation business.”

From 2003 to 2021, the jail had been contracted to house immigration detainees until the arrangement dissolved in the Biden era. As predicted, the county entered into a new agreement with ICE in February, after Trump returned to power, to hold around 400 detainees: $68 a day per person, plus $36 an hour for the sheriff’s office toward transportation.

Jones celebrated the restored partnership by posting a fake image showing inflatable gators outside the jail, a nod to ICE’s “Alligator Alcatraz” detention center in Florida. A Black Lives Matter group in Dayton issued a statement calling the sheriff’s post an “egregious act of cruelty and historical mockery.”

As it returns to deportation work, the jail still faces a federal civil rights lawsuit filed in 2020 by two ICE prisoners who said they endured beatings and discrimination. One plaintiff, a Muslim, said a jailer called him a “fucking terrorist” and threatened to throw his prayer rug in the toilet. Jones has disputed the claims.

Imams Mutazz Alabd and Ihab Alsaghier visit the Butler County Jail in hopes of seeing Soliman. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)

The sheriff is in the news again because of Soliman. In court filings, the Muslim chaplain says he was denied access to a space where he could lead communal prayers and then placed in “isolation” for nearly a week with only an hour of phone access between midnight and 1 a.m.

Soliman’s attorneys say in court papers that the episode was related to “targeted harassment” over his religion. The sheriff’s office told local outlets that it respects religious freedom and said Soliman was placed in isolation because he was “argumentative” and “threatening.”

After agreeing to an interview with ProPublica, Jones later decided he was “no longer interested,” the sheriff’s spokesperson, Deputy Kim Peters, wrote in a text message.

As he languishes in jail, Soliman’s empty apartment in Cincinnati has become a way station for an inner circle of supporters, who said they felt like “intruders” when they first gathered there. Soliman is known as an elegant dresser, but his apartment was in bachelor-pad disarray, a reflection of his long hours at the hospital and the abruptness of his detention, said his friends, also clerics. The imams laughed when one confessed that he first thought the FBI had ransacked the place.

Soliman’s apartment has become a way station for supporters. (Maddie McGarvey for ProPublica)

Over water bottles and energy drinks scavenged from Soliman’s fridge, they talked about the deportation threat. In Egypt, pro-government news outlets already have trumpeted the case as proof that Soliman was leading a secret Brotherhood cell in America.

Despite Soliman’s predicament, they said, being in limbo here is preferable to the alternative.

“You think I’m afraid of being here in jail?” Soliman told fellow imam Ihab Alsaghier during a recent visit. “Every moment I’m alone, I imagine I’m on a flight back to Egypt.”

by Mila Koumpilova, Chalkbeat, and Jennifer Smith Richards, ProPublica

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This summer, worried parents called the principal at Chalmers Elementary on Chicago’s West Side to ask if the district had shuttered the school. They had noticed second-floor windows boarded up.

But despite years of declining enrollment, the school wasn’t closing. It was undergoing major renovations.

Students returning to Chalmers last month found an expansive new engineering space, computer lab and arts studio. The teachers who greeted them had received special training. A cache of new technology — 3D printers, computers and bee-shaped robots to teach students basic coding — offered fresh possibilities.

The influx of dollars and attention has lifted hopes at Chalmers, with officials at Chicago Public Schools and City Hall testing the idea that investing in high-poverty schools can reverse enrollment losses.

But it could take years and millions of dollars to see if it works.

Chalmers, in the historic North Lawndale neighborhood, served about 210 students last year in a building with capacity for 600. Just around the corner, about 210 students populated Johnson Elementary on a campus meant for 480. The local high school, Collins Academy, was down to 200 students. The schools serve mostly Black and low-income students.

The enrollment slide at the three schools and others in the area was partly the result of decisions by previous mayors and public school administrations who labeled North Lawndale’s schools as failing and opened new ones — many run by private entities — that drew families away. About a decade ago, the district closed and overhauled Collins and fired educators at Chalmers and Johnson who had built relationships with families and temporarily handed the schools over to a private operator to try to turn them around academically.

All the while, families have been leaving the neighborhood or having fewer babies, creating demographic challenges outside school officials’ control. Across the district, overall enrollment dropped by 70,000 in the past decade. That decline meant some schools in North Lawndale and elsewhere became tiny, costly to run and unable to offer a rich student experience.

Three of every 10 Chicago schools sit at least half-empty, and closing or merging them remains a political third rail. Chicago officials, faced with pressure from the teachers union and community groups, have not confronted this challenge. And, as Chalkbeat and ProPublica reported in June, for years the district has largely left chronically underenrolled schools to struggle.

Now, CPS and the city — under new leadership — are backing a different, community-led approach: spending at least $40 million to transform Chalmers, Johnson and Collins into science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM, academies. The money is covering building upgrades, professional development, new educator positions and technology in the initiative’s first two years.

After years spent promoting better-resourced selective and magnet schools and opening up charters en masse, CPS is hoping to draw families back to the neighborhood schools that many of them abandoned.

The district has held up the North Lawndale initiative as an example of working closely with local communities to find solutions to under-enrollment — and as a model for other Chicago neighborhoods that have experienced disinvestment and student losses.

“When we are successful in having high-quality programs, what we know from history is that more children will want to come,” former CEO Pedro Martinez said at a press event at Collins last school year.

Education experts say the North Lawndale experiment is promising, and locally, the project has drawn a lot of cheerleaders, roughly $1 million in philanthropic backing and no vocal opposition. But solving the city’s enrollment challenge by trying to attract families to neighborhood schools is a daunting and uncertain task. New science and technology programs the district launched in other neighborhoods in recent years have not always brought a surge of students.

Chicago still maintains a robust system of school choice, and the school-age population continues to shrink. Without an influx of new students from outside of North Lawndale, growing the three schools could mean siphoning students from other schools with their own enrollment woes.

Preliminary data a few weeks into the school year shows flat enrollment, but the project’s supporters say word about it is just getting out. A key challenge is ensuring the cash-strapped district keeps funding the new positions, staff training and facility upgrades after money for the first two years runs out.

Ralph Martire, the executive director of the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability, which has criticized the district’s spending in the past, says it’s tough to argue against programs that could boost student outcomes in high-poverty schools.

“There’s never a good reason not to invest in the education of kids who’ve been traditionally underserved,” he said. “The impact on enrollment — that’s really hard to predict. I don’t know that we have the data to give a definitive answer.”

In any case, given that the initiative took seven years to launch and that it came with a high price tag, it’s likely not a solution the Chicago school district can readily replicate in other neighborhoods grappling with underenrollment.

“The question is how the district is supporting innovative models at scale, not how they’re supporting one-off alternatives alone,” said Carrie Hahnel, a school finance researcher with the nonprofit Bellwether.

“Districts are trying all kinds of things — work-based learning, dual enrollment, themed academies, small schools within schools — and yet we still see these declines,” Hahnel said. “The education sector is really struggling right now to figure out what it takes to attract families.”

Chalmers is one of three Chicago Public Schools in North Lawndale shifting to STEAM programming, which adds the arts and social studies to the traditional STEM focus of science, technology, engineering and math. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica) How Past Policies Drove Students Away

In the name of school reform in the 2000s, Chicago officials under Mayor Richard M. Daley and later Mayor Rahm Emanuel enacted a series of policies that contributed to the shrinking of neighborhood schools, like those in North Lawndale.

After the federal No Child Left Behind Act passed in 2001 and schools in some high-poverty areas did not perform well on annual standardized tests, many were labeled failing and in need of drastic reforms. Chicago’s schools CEO at the time, Arne Duncan — who under President Barack Obama led the U.S. Department of Education — embraced opening independently operated, publicly funded charter schools.

His administration maintained that was the fastest way to give vulnerable students a better experience and spur traditional public campuses to improve. In North Lawndale, families eager for higher-performing, better-resourced options have embraced the new schools — or sent their children to CPS magnet or selective enrollment schools farther from home.

In the 2005-06 school year, there were about 5,000 students living within the boundaries of North Lawndale’s 12 schools, and about 70% went to their assigned neighborhood school, according to a ProPublica-Chalkbeat analysis of district data. There were three charter schools open in the neighborhood.

The most recent data, from last school year, shows there are roughly 4,000 students living within the boundaries of the 10 remaining neighborhood schools in North Lawndale, but only about 30% attend their assigned school. Meanwhile, the neighborhood is now home to seven charter schools — among the highest concentration of them in Chicago — and they enroll 2,800 students.

Duncan declined to speak with ProPublica and Chalkbeat about Chicago’s enrollment troubles.

Betty Allen-Green, a retired Chicago principal, watched all of this happening and said she grew alarmed by the emptying out of the neighborhood’s public schools and outraged by the dearth of specialized programs they offered.

By 2018, Allen-Green and a small group of other longtime North Lawndale residents and former educators had tackled an ambitious goal: give local families a high-quality neighborhood school they’d be eager to choose. Among these advocates was Areulia Davis, whose kindergarten class had met on the auditorium stage in an overcrowded Pope elementary in the 1960s. In 2013, she’d seen a diminished Pope become one of 50 campuses shuttered in the country’s largest mass school closures.

The group felt their mission was key to a broader Quality of Life Plan that North Lawndale leaders unveiled in 2018, which also included goals to increase affordable housing, improve safety and create more jobs.

“We wanted to bring the children of North Lawndale back to the schools of North Lawndale,” Allen-Green said.

Betty Allen-Green, a retired Chicago principal, has worked to revitalize schools in North Lawndale and pushed for the STEAM program. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica)

Allen-Green and the other former educators pitched a plan to build a new state-of-the-art STEAM school. They say district officials urged them to include the consolidation of three underenrolled schools alongside the proposed $65 million construction project. The idea echoed what the district had just done in Englewood on the South Side at the time: closing several small high schools and replacing them with a state-of-the-art high school focused on science and technology.

The North Lawndale group lined up almost two dozen high-profile partners, from the city’s science museum to universities, to help with teacher training, field trips and other services.

But their plan met with intense opposition from the Chicago Teachers Union and families at the three schools that would be targeted for closure. Shuttering schools would be especially disruptive to families amid the pandemic, and especially painful in a neighborhood still reeling from earlier closures, the union said.

Allen-Green countered that she and other project backers had been on the front lines of opposing school closures in 2013. But, she argued, with unabated enrollment losses in the following years, it made sense to combine the resources of several tiny schools.

Still, Allen-Green’s group backed off and began formulating other plans without any closures. One finally stuck: give three existing schools — Johnson, Chalmers and Collins — a STEAM makeover.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teachers union employee and staunch opponent of closures who has promised to improve housing and draw families to places like North Lawndale, became a proponent once he took office. (Johnson’s office did not respond to requests for comment about Chicago’s efforts to address small schools.)

By 2024, City Hall pitched in $10 million toward the $41 million project from a city pool of tax dollars for economic development.

And when Johnson selected where he’d ring the bell to mark the first day of school, the mayor chose Chalmers in North Lawndale.

Chalmers Principal Romian Crockett said families are excited about the STEAM revamp. (Jamie Kelter Davis for ProPublica) Doing “Right by the Kids We’ve Already Got”

Like other parents dropping off their children at Chalmers on the first day of school in August, Angela Dixon said she knew little about the school’s transformation into a STEAM campus. She likes the school because of its proximity to her home and the supportive small school feel, which has helped her third grade son thrive.

School leaders on the STEAM campuses say the overhaul, including a more student-led approach to teaching, is already generating positive buzz. Chalmers Principal Romian Crockett says he’d like to see more students enroll, especially in the early grades. Still, Crockett, who gives himself two days at the start of the year to learn each student’s name, thinks the project will help even if it doesn’t significantly boost enrollment.

“I don’t quantify achievement by the number of bodies,” he said. “I want to do right by the kids we’ve already got.”

But for Allen-Green and other community members supporting the project, a major preoccupation this year remains selling the three schools to more families in the neighborhood. They are pushing the district to hang new banners promoting the campuses, polish their websites and pay for new school marquees.

They hope Johnson and Chalmers will draw some students from outside the neighborhood. District officials say they’ll be leaning on the three schools’ principals to drive these marketing efforts.

But across the city, efforts to bolster neighborhood schools have run headlong into trends and attitudes unleashed by the district itself when it endorsed magnets, selectives and charters as stronger options.

First image: A view of the skyline from a classroom at Johnson Elementary. Second image: Students wait in line to enter a classroom at Johnson. (Taylor Glascock for ProPublica)

In December 2023, the school board passed a resolution vowing to rethink school choice and prioritize neighborhood schools, nodding to their role as vital community hubs. It drew pushback and alarm, including from Black and Latino families on the district’s South and West sides wary of CPS limiting their options. The district backed off from any moves that might be seen as undermining its magnet or selective enrollment programs. Still, the district’s new five-year strategic plan includes a goal to “increase the percentage of students attending schools within their neighborhood or community area.”

Some areas with underenrolled schools still have robust numbers of CPS students living in them. Martinez has held up the neighborhood of Austin as an example of an area that has enough students to fill bustling campuses, but many families instead choose schools elsewhere.

“If every student went to school in Austin that lives there, we’d be overcrowded,” he said at a City Club Chicago speech in June. (Martinez was fired after a clash with the mayor over the district’s budget.)

More than 1,500 potential students live within the boundaries of Austin’s local high school, but only 114 enrolled last year.

An experiment in Englewood on the city’s South Side, where population was dropping, sought to create an attractive new neighborhood high school while closing four small ones. The district built an $85 million modern STEM high school, and enrollment grew initially. But last year it slipped to about 630 from its peak of about 830 three years earlier. It had an attendance rate of roughly 65% and a graduation rate of about 62% for the 2023-24 school year, both significantly below the district average.

Mistrust of neighborhood schools can run deep, said Blaire Flowers, a West Side mother of five. Families remain wary of high educator turnover, few engaging programs and lackluster graduation and other student metrics — or they simply want the rich course offerings and extracurricular activities of schools elsewhere. After her own negative experiences as a student in the neighborhood, she has largely chosen North Lawndale charter schools for her children over the years.

She thinks the STEAM initiative could be a game changer for local schools: “Right now there are no programs in these high schools and elementaries that make students want to go there.”

But Flowers said she and other parents will wait for solid evidence that the makeovers are paying off in stronger student outcomes before considering these schools.

Corey Morrison, executive director of the district’s STEM Department, said CPS has brought coveted programs to dozens of its neighborhood schools in recent years. Some, like Peck Elementary on the city’s Southwest Side, have earned recognition as exemplary STEM schools. But they haven’t shifted the demographic trajectories of their neighborhoods.

Still, Morrison is hopeful about the prospects in North Lawndale.

“I just don’t see how this doesn’t draw the community because it came from the community,” he said. “They’re telling us what they need and want, and we’re designing the very best version of that we can provide.”

by Jake Pearson

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Last month, when President Donald Trump signed an executive order “guaranteeing fair banking for all Americans,” he served notice of a coming federal crackdown.

Banks who have denied customers access to accounts, loans or credit cards “on the basis of political or religious beliefs or lawful business activities,” he said, would now feel the full force of government regulators. Violators could find themselves facing fines, consent decrees or “other disciplinary measures” in an effort to stamp out “politicized or unlawful debanking.”

The cause hits close to home for the president, whose family business sued Capital One earlier this year, alleging, without providing evidence, that hundreds of its accounts were closed in the summer of 2021 “as a result of political discrimination.”

Even so, the administration may find it difficult to enforce the president’s order for one simple reason: Seven months of aggressive cost-cutting and government downsizing has left the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of the primary regulators that Trump tasked with carrying out his banking directive, a shell of an agency.

In fact, CFPB leaders appointed by the president are awaiting final court approval to fire the majority of the bureau’s remaining staffers, a move that would leave just a skeleton crew in place and likely end dozens of investigations into alleged corporate malfeasance. Since February, most staffers have been under a stop-work order that has effectively stalled the bulk of its probes — including ones into debanking.

Among them are investigations into why JPMorgan Chase and Citibank freeze and close bank accounts, respectively, according to people familiar with the matters. Work was also suspended on inquiries into whether two little-known companies that banks use to screen prospective customers have wrongly flagged some as too risky to serve, said the people, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss sensitive matters.

Court records show that one of those firms, Regulatory DataCorp, provides reports on customers to Capital One — the very financial institution that Trump’s family business has accused of debanking. (A Capital One spokesperson declined to comment, but the bank has disputed the Trump business’s claims of political discrimination and moved to dismiss its lawsuit, writing in court papers that it was “false” that the bank closed Trump accounts because it disagreed with the president’s views.)

In dismantling the CFPB, the Trump administration has portrayed the agency as an industry antagonist and an example of government overreach. But Luke Herrine, a consumer law expert at the University of Alabama School of Law, said that Trump officials, in their haste to shrink the federal bureaucracy, “didn’t really consider whether there were some aspects of the CFPB that might be useful for their projects and what they might have to do to preserve them.”

In fact, days before he was sacked by the Trump administration, then-CFPB head Rohit Chopra told a gathering of the conservative Federalist Society that the government needed to do more on debanking and advocated for due process rights for customers as well as more “real, clear, bright-line prohibitions” on what information banks can use in deciding to freeze or close accounts.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

To be sure, Trump’s executive order directs a host of regulatory agencies to take action, and some of them, such as the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation and Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, have already begun making changes to their bank examination processes to address the president’s concerns. But the CFPB is the only one that is specifically charged with protecting consumers, hundreds of whom file complaints each month alleging they’ve been denied access to the financial system.

A spokesperson for the CFPB didn’t respond to an email and call seeking comment. But a recent decision by the agency sheds some light on how bureau officials may be interpreting Trump’s order.

Last month, the CFPB cited the order as it dropped a Biden-era probe into a company that provided loans for customers to buy firearms and pets, saying the investigation was politically motivated; the services were marketed to conservatives and Donald Trump Jr. was a board member of the firm’s parent company. Though the company had previously reached deals with regulators in California and Massachusetts over its lending practices, the CFPB’s chief legal officer wrote in a recent letter that the case “represents precisely the kind of unconstitutional targeting” barred by Trump’s debanking directive.

Banks make decisions about who to serve based on a number of factors, including the financial and reputational risks of doing business. They also must follow laws and rules requiring them to know their customers and prevent money laundering.

But leaders in both political parties agree that Americans are sometimes unfairly denied credit or accounts by big financial institutions. The issue became something of a cause celebre in Republican circles after former President Barack Obama’s Department of Justice launched a crackdown on unscrupulous payday lenders and other high-risk businesses, in part by urging the payment processors and banks that provide those enterprises access to the financial system to be more diligent in looking for signs of fraud.

The former president of the American Bankers Association asserted that the program was “compelling banks to deny service to unpopular but perfectly legal industries by threatening penalties,” a message that Republicans amplified as an example of Obama-era government overreach. Their argument gained steam when the firearms industry discovered its retailers had been listed as a high-risk merchant in an obscure FDIC newsletter, according to Dru Stevenson, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, who has written that the whole affair has taken on “symbolic and mythic proportions in partisan discourse about regulation.”

Many conservative activists and party leaders now claim that some Republicans are being rejected as customers because of their politics — and even at the behest of government regulators. No evidence has emerged to support the claim and indeed, as Reuters recently reported, just 35 of the 8,361 detailed complaints filed with the CFPB about closed bank accounts since 2012 included terms such as “politics,” “conservative” or “Christian.”

Complaints of discrimination are also increasingly leveled by cryptocurrency entrepreneurs, many of whom backed Trump’s presidential campaign. Their narrative gained traction in 2023 when regulators warned banks about the risks associated with digital assets, an act some in the crypto industry billed as a revival of the Obama-era crackdown.

Getting a sense of the scope of debanking was in part what the CFPB was exploring in its inquiries when Trump took office in January, the people familiar with them said. At JPMorgan, for example, about a million customers’ accounts are frozen each year, they said, though the justification for doing so varies and in many cases it’s done in response to fraud.

The CFPB investigations into Regulatory DataCorp and another screening company, LSEG World-Check, were looking in part into whether customers had been denied accounts or had seen their accounts closed after the companies wrongly flagged them as problematic, generating false positives or outright mistakes in dossiers compiled by analyzing vast news and public records databases, the people said.

The CFPB had issued subpoenas in its inquiries, which were still in the early stages, said the people familiar with the probes.

A company spokesperson for World-Check said “we have not understood World Check to be under review by any agency for potential denial of credit.” A spokesperson for Moody’s, which acquired Regulatory DataCorp in 2020, didn’t return a call and email.

A JPMorgan spokesperson said the bank wasn’t aware “of the CFPB investigating so-called politicized debanking, as it is discussed in the recent Executive Order” and Citibank declined to comment. In a statement released after Trump issued his executive order, a coalition of bank industry groups said the directive would “ensure all consumers and businesses are treated fairly, a goal the nation’s banks share with the Administration” but one that hasn’t been met because “regulatory overreach, supervisory discretion and a maze of obscure rules have stood in the way.”

Part of the problem is that the whole debanking process is cloaked in secrecy, since financial institutions are subject to a constellation of regulations and laws — including one called the Bank Secrecy Act — that require them to refer potentially suspicious activity to the Treasury Department in confidential reports they can’t talk about. That can be frustrating for customers who are not told why they’re being cut off — and it provides an opportunity for outsiders to offer their own conclusions, experts said.

What’s more, international best practices counsel financial institutions to give people in high-profile positions, who are called “politically exposed persons,” along with their immediate family members and associates, an extra due-diligence scrub since they are deemed more susceptible to bribery or corruption.

A 2023 New York Times series exploring debanking documented various instances in which banks flagged what turned out to be benign transactions as unusual, freezing accounts for fear of not complying with various rules that bar financial institutions from facilitating money laundering, terrorism or fraud.

Banks have expressed a desire for more clarity from their regulators on when they should boot customers and whether they can provide more information about the reasoning behind their decision.

As it stands, banks tell affected customers little to nothing. In that vacuum, Republicans have often ascribed political bias as the motivation without providing concrete evidence to back it up, said Stevenson, the debanking expert.

Ironically, the Trump administration quashed an effort that could have shed more light on debanking when it abandoned a legal case earlier this year.

Under former President Joe Biden, the CFPB had sought to amend its exam manual to give its bank examiners more leeway to scrutinize financial institutions for potentially discriminatory practices, court records show. The Chamber of Commerce and other industry groups sued and a district court blocked the agency from doing so, arguing the bureau had exceeded its authority. The Biden-era CFPB appealed that ruling, but the Trump administration dropped the case before it was decided.