Posts

More Than 100,000 American Kids Have Had a Parent Detained in Immigration Sweeps, Report Estimates

Image
Volunteers escort a 2-year-old American boy to be reunited with his mother, who awaited deportation in February. Christopher Lee for ProPublica Far more American children have likely been separated from their parents during immigration sweeps than previously understood, according to a report by the Washington, D.C.-based think tank Brookings. The report published Monday estimates more than 100,000 U.S. citizen children have had a parent detained since President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign began last year. The analysis cites reporting from ProPublica on the detention of parents, which can often lead to family separations. During Trump’s first administration, a policy of family separation at the U.S.-Mexico border ended after widespread outrage. Now, the breakup of families is happening amid sweeps by immigration agents across the country. About 400,000 people have been detained by immigration agents since Trump returned to office, Brookings noted. But i...
Post a Comment
Read more

ProPublica Selects 11 Journalists for Investigative Editor Training

Image
From left to right, top row: Aaron Sankin, Deblina Chakraborty, Josh McGhee, Rosalie Chan, Padma Rama. Middle row: Karen Chávez, Kynala Phillips, Yoohyun Jung, Margaret Ho, Kevin Uhrmacher. Bottom row: Thy Vo. Collage by ProPublica. Source images: Courtesy of the journalists. Eleven journalists from across the country join the ProPublica Investigative Editor Training Program, which seeks to expand the ranks of editors in newsrooms across the country whose work is aimed at accountability and impact.   Established in 2023, the program has trained more than 31 journalists to date. It begins with a five-day intensive editing boot camp in New York, with courses and panel discussions led by ProPublica’s senior editors. After the boot camp, participants will gather virtually throughout the course of the year for continuing development seminars and be assigned a ProPublica senior editor as a mentor for advice on their work and careers.  Alumni continue to work in t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oily Sludge Is Flooding Their Dream Home. Oklahoma Regulators Say They Can’t Help.

Image
The Meredith family, from left: Lakely, Fletcher, Mitch, Kara and Tennessee Katie Campbell/ProPublica It was their dream home, a newly built, 2,500-square-foot modern farmhouse with a playroom that Mitch and Kara Meredith had saved for 12 years to buy for their growing family. During construction, family members had written their favorite Bible verses on studs throughout the house. For four idyllic years on Darlene Lane, the couple hosted birthday parties for their two young daughters, who became fast friends with the other children in the recently built subdivision in Fort Gibson. Film Screening Join The Frontier and ProPublica in Tulsa on May 20 for a public screening of a documentary film featuring the Meredith family. Then one evening last summer, five weeks after the couple’s third child was born, their bathroom flooded. When their 7-year-old ran into the garage to report that water was all over the floor, Mitch assumed a pipe had burst, or perhaps t...
Post a Comment
Read more

Tiny Footprints, a Blue Blanket: What I Can’t Forget About the Babies Who Died of Vitamin K Deficiency

Image
Footprints of an infant in an autopsy report from Arizona Obtained and redacted for privacy by ProPublica I recently wrote about babies dying from a rare but fatal condition called vitamin K deficiency bleeding . To report the story, I analyzed hundreds of rows of data, contacted more than 50 hospitals and birthing centers, and filed nearly 90 public records requests. But autopsy reports — one record of how these babies died — painted the clearest picture of these tragedies. I’m sharing some of the most critical lessons I learned from the autopsy reports in hopes of creating a greater awareness of this condition and highlighting what decades of research and interviews with dozens of doctors found: In almost every case, the deaths could have been prevented with a simple shot of vitamin K at birth. ProPublica is not sharing the babies’ names, the dates or years of death, or the locations within a state to protect the families’ privacy. Read More ...
Post a Comment
Read more

In a Private Meeting, Colorado Marijuana Regulators Acknowledge the Extent of Illegal Hemp Sales

Image
Despite regulators’ concerns, Colorado lawmakers abandoned a bill that would have let voters decide whether to overhaul how marijuana products are tested for contaminants. Raymond Boyd/Getty Images A top regulator for Colorado’s Marijuana Enforcement Division acknowledged in a private meeting with industry representatives that the amount of chemically converted hemp being illegally sold as marijuana is far greater than the agency has publicly disclosed. The remarks confirmed testing by The Denver Gazette and ProPublica , which found signs of hemp in marijuana vapes sold at dispensaries, as well as reporting that regulators have discovered that some hemp-derived vapes were contaminated with a toxic chemical. The virtual meeting, an audio recording of which was reviewed by the news organizations, was convened by members of Colorado Leads, a marijuana industry trade group, in March to discuss a problem they said had “metastasized” and now posed an “existential threat” to t...
Post a Comment
Read more

At 17, He Was Tear-Gassed at Selma. At 78, He’s Watching Kids Tear-Gassed During Trump’s Deportation Campaign.

Image
Charles Mauldin was near the front of the line to march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, on March 7, 1965, a day that became known as “Bloody Sunday” after police brutally beat demonstrators. Charity Rachelle for ProPublica Charles Mauldin remembers that his lungs felt like they were imploding when he breathed in tear gas more than 60 years ago. It was Sunday, March 7, 1965, when Mauldin, who was 17, joined hundreds of other demonstrators in a march from Selma, Alabama, to the state Capitol in Montgomery to demand voting rights for Black Americans. Mauldin stood near the front of the line — just two rows behind John Lewis, who would go on to become a civil rights icon and U.S. representative — when the march attempted to cross Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge. Law enforcement officers waited on the other side. They ordered the group to disperse. After about a minute and half, Mauldin said, police began to attack the demonstrators with billy clubs. They also lau...
Post a Comment
Read more