Investigative Journalism

When Tammy Boarman first contacted oil regulators, she was hopeful state officials would find the source of the pollution and clean it up. For the next two years, the state repeatedly tested the Boarmans’ water for contaminants and found salt concentrations that made the water undrinkable and, at one point, toxic metals at levels high enough to endanger human health — strong signs of oil field wastewater pollution, according to agency testing.

But regulators repeatedly delayed or failed to conduct other tests recommended by the agency’s own employees to locate the pollution source, according to internal agency documents obtained by The Frontier and ProPublica through public records requests.

Some had crossed into the country from Mexico many months earlier without prior approval from US immigration authorities, then applied for asylum. Though traditionally considered legal under international and US immigration law, the Trump administration had announced that most people who entered this way in the past two years could no longer get asylum and could be arrested in courthouses. The move shocked, confused and angered advocates for immigrants’ rights. It gave the agents license to grab even more people, and to send them to detention and deportation. By late June, when I saw Rodriguez, this was happening routinely.

The judge asked Rodriguez if two of the immigrants who had made the Mexico-to-US crossing were now banned from further pursuing their asylum claims. “It appears that they are,” Rodriguez said in a flat voice.

Dilley, run by private prison firm CoreCivic, is located some 72 miles south of San Antonio and nearly 2,000 miles away from Ariana’s home. It is a sprawling collection of trailers and dormitories, almost the same color as the dusty landscape, surrounded by a tall fence. It first opened during the Obama administration to hold an influx of families crossing the border. Former President Joe Biden stopped holding families there in 2021, arguing America shouldn’t be in the business of detaining children.

But quickly after returning to office, President Donald Trump resumed family detentions as part of his mass deportation campaign. Federal courts and overwhelming public outrage had put an end to Trump’s first-term policy of separating children from parents when immigrant families were detained crossing the border. Trump officials said Dilley was a place where immigrant families would be detained together.

Former immigration judge Charles Neil Floyd has served as “interim” U.S. attorney for Western Washington since October. But facing a crucial deadline this week, the Justice Department changed his title to "First Assistant U.S. Attorney" — as it has done for Pete Serrano in Eastern Washington. The change keeps Floyd as the leader of the Seattle office, for now, since the position above him is technically vacant.

“While my title has changed, what has not changed is my leadership of the men and women of the U.S. Attorney’s Office," Floyd said in a statement to KUOW. "It is an honor to lead the experienced litigators and professional staff who work every day to do justice in our community.”

He added, “My background in immigration law has been very useful as we respond to department priorities around immigration enforcement.”

In almost every instance, President Donald Trump’s administration blamed the injured and dead for the shooting within hours of the incident, raising questions about whether federal officials can fairly and objectively investigate their own. Legal experts and advocates for immigrants say this apparent lack of accountability demands that local authorities step up and exercise their power to investigate and prosecute federal agents who break state laws — from battery to murder.

“Local police and the state have gotten a free pass,” said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and the co-founder and director of its Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. “Residents have every right and should be demanding that, ‘Hey, state authorities, police, local police: Protect us. Arrest people who kill us, who batter us, who point guns at us and threaten and assault us without legal cause to do so.’”

The ICE facility is where the most-photographed protests in Portland took place last year — this is where DHS attempted to pepper spray the Frog and where Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem paraded on the roof to menace a man in a chicken suit. Right before the tear gassing, the unions — including the nurses’ union and teachers’ union — had just met up in nearby Caruthers Park, merging with a protest bike ride that had come from across the river.

When a reporter for The Oregonian/OregonLive visited the country and interviewed roughly 100 workers from more than 10 factories that supply Nike, none said they made anywhere near twice the minimum wage.

“Bullshit,” a union official said, in English, while sitting on a makeshift couch on the porch of his office near Jakarta, the Indonesian capital. (Like most workers currently employed by Nike suppliers, the official did not wish to be named because of fears of retaliation, including fines and termination.)

One worker from a factory in West Java asked a reporter where on the company’s website Nike makes the wage claim.

“No, no, no,” he said, through a translator. “It’s not true.”

In a disclaimer included in the letter, she said her statements about Liz and Dick Uihlein, the company’s founders and owners, were based on her own opinion, and that all claims about their political relationships and donations are alleged. She urged people to Google their record.

“The most insidious form of evil is that which hides behind outward decorum, concealing the violence of its intent behind written policy, monetary donations, and old-fashioned principle. It’s easy to see the evil of those who are outwardly violent, tactless, and crude, but it’s harder to see the evil of the frail old man and his wife, who comes around once a year to rearrange our paintings,” she wrote.

The political activities of the Uihleins, who recently hosted a speech by Vice-President JD Vance in their Allentown, Pennsylvania, facility, are well known.

There was no company name or logo on the Boeing 767, but she soon learned the airline was called Omni Air International. She’d never heard of it, nor of Stonepeak, the private equity firm that purchased Omni in April 2025, nor of its billionaire CEO, who was an immigrant himself. She had no idea that Omni’s ICE work had quadrupled since the sale or that its flights were getting longer and, because of that, crueler.

There were 10 female deportees clustered in coach, with about 180 men seated behind. Tran noted a variety of accents and ethnicities and wondered how many stops were planned and how long she’d be shackled. When an ICE-contracted guard walked by, she asked about their flight time.

“Where are you from?” he responded. Vietnam, she said—though she hadn’t been there since her family fled when she was 10. The Maryland mother of four had long put a 2001 theft conviction behind her, becoming a health care worker and small-business owner, but at an ICE check-in three days earlier, she was arrested and flown to detention in Alexandria, Louisiana.

0:00 - Introduction 3:00 - Joseph Cox and Radley Balko Join 5:27 - DHS Surveillance Shopping Spree 9:44 - ICE's Shift in Priorities: Targeting Migrants over "Worst of the Worst" 13:04 - Dehumanization of Immigrants through Data and "Targets" 21:57 - The Intersection Between State Power & Corporate Power 27:05 - Is there Dissent Within Palantir? 35:34 - Incompetence vs. Nefarious Intent in Law Enforcement 37:47 - Erosion of Constitutional Guardrails by Conservatives 48:00 - An Arms Race on Our Streets 54:57 - Is Europe More Proactive at Regulating Privacy Abuses? 1:09:00 - The Most Dangerous Weapon to a Regime Built on Lies 1:14:27 - Where this Military Industrial/Tech Complex is Headed 1:17:24 - Breaking Down the Discussion

The people patrolling the streets of the Twin Cities for Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents call themselves “commuters.” That just about captures the minute-to-minute experience of being with them. I rode along with these commuters for a day, and the story that no one sees is that it was really no more exciting than any drive to and fro in a medium-size city on an endless kaleidoscoping loop of surface streets. The differences between their old daily routines and their new ones only make these drives more stultifying, not less.

There’s an audio Signal chat happening in the background: alternating silence with strong Minnesota accents calling in the license plate numbers of SUVs. You can’t talk. You can’t listen to music. One veteran commuter tells me the experience is hell on his ADHD. “I can’t even listen to podcasts.”

In 2020, a foster care supervisor in Montcalm County, Michigan, messaged her boss with concerns about drug testing. A father who was working to reunite with his children had tested positive for methamphetamine with the lab the state had a contract with, Averhealth, and the results contradicted tests ordered by other law enforcement agencies, she wrote.

“Judge indicated on the record that the issue of Averhealth’s testing results was a state-wide issue and that probate court judges all over the state were having similar problems.”

Months later, another official with Michigan’s Department of Health and Human Services wrote to colleagues about similar worries. “We are struggling to do casework with Averhealth and don’t trust them,” supervisor Sara Winter wrote. “We are making BIG decisions, including having parents leave home or removal, and that’s scary to do when you don’t trust who you’re getting services from.”

As the Trump administration’s deportation campaign continues to bring fear and upheaval to Minneapolis, more immigrants are sharing their stories of detainment and harsh treatment when being apprehended at their homes, while driving, and at work. Tensions continue to rise as federal immigration agents target people who they claim are in the country without legal status, as well as protestors filling the streets to demand accountability for Homeland Security’s often violent tactics, including ICE agent Jonathan Ross’ killing of Renée Good in her car.

This week, according to reporting from the Minnesota Star Tribune, federal agents detained three workers from a family-owned Mexican restaurant hours after the agents themselves dined at the establishment. The agents reportedly followed the workers after the workers closed up for the night and took them into custody. That was not the first time ICE agents have gone to a local business as customers before arresting someone who works there.

Wednesday’s arguments center on President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook, a member of the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors, in August 2025. The lower courts have thwarted his efforts to do so thus far, but the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to put those rulings on hold while Cook’s challenge to her firing continues. Here’s a brief explainer on the case, Trump v. Cook, and its background.

What is the Federal Reserve?

The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States. Its responsibilities include conducting U.S. monetary policy – that is, taking steps to achieve big-picture economic objectives, such as “price stability, full employment, and stable economic growth.”

The Fed is also an independent government agency. Unlike most agencies, it is funded primarily through interest earned on securities that it owns, rather than through the normal congressional appropriations process.

The Fed’s main governing body is its seven-member board of governors.

Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns.

An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out. An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.

After George Floyd’s murder by a police officer six years ago in Minneapolis — less than a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good last week — police departments and federal agencies banned chokeholds and other moves that can restrict breathing or blood flow.

But those tactics are back, now at the hands of agents conducting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.

While none of the planes were damaged by the debris, such emergency maneuvering can be risky.

The airspace remained closed for 86 minutes, during which time flight patterns show dozens of other planes likely had to change course — making pilots and passengers unwitting participants in SpaceX’s test of the most powerful rocket ever built.

The FAA, which also oversees commercial space launches, predicted the impact to the national airspace would be “minor or minimal,” akin to a weather event, the agency’s 2022 approval shows. No airport would need to close and no airplane would be denied access for “an extended period of time.”

But the reality has been far different. Last year, three of Starship’s five launches exploded at unexpected points on their flight paths, twice raining flaming debris over congested commercial airways and disrupting flights. And while no aircraft collided with rocket parts, pilots were forced to scramble for safety.

NPR's Jan. 6 archive brings together reporting, video, documents and testimony to show what really happened during the Capitol riot. Explore the timeline, cases and evidence behind the attack.

There’s a good case to be made that the single biggest winner in this whole situation is a person named Karen Budd-Falen, the No. 3 official at the Interior Department, the same agency she served in during Trump’s first term.

Her family owns a ranch in Nevada. Nearby, a company wanted to build a huge lithium mine. But it turns out lithium mines take a ton of water. So in 2018, Budd-Falen’s husband sold the water rights from their ranch to the mining company for $3.5 million.

After a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, it appeared the attack would result in a rare moment of reckoning in American politics — at least for a moment. Even hardline GOP politicians had distanced themselves from Trump, then President Joe Biden was in charge and Congress and the Department of Justice were investigating both the attack and the plot to overturn the 2020 election behind it.

Five years later, any accountability, political or legal, that Trump and his allies faced has been erased.

One of Trump’s first acts after assuming office in his second term was to pardon the nearly 1,600 people who had either already been convicted or were awaiting trial for crimes related to Jan. 6. Many of these people had prior criminal records including sexual assault and domestic violence, many were part of far-right organizations like the Proud Boys and many have been charged with additional, unrelated crimes following their release. None of them, however, will have to serve their sentences for storming the Capitol in an attempt to overturn the election results and allow Trump to cling to power.

Albany, Georgia's lone hospital is supposed to treat people regardless of ability to pay. Residents turn elsewhere

The Samaritan Clinic is a small, free clinic serving people without health insurance in Albany, Georgia. It was created in 2008 to provide care for people who couldn’t afford medical treatment. More than 15 years later, the need has changed little. Today, Albany has one of the highest poverty rates in the state. About 16% of residents are uninsured, nearly double the national average. And people here pay some of the highest commercial health insurance rates in the country.

Not far from the Samaritan Clinic is Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Southwest Georgia’s largest hospital — a nonprofit founded on the principle that patients should be treated regardless of their ability to pay.

So why do some residents turn to a free clinic for care?

This short documentary is part of “Sick in a Hospital Town,” a five-part series about why people in Albany are so sick when the main institution is a hospital. You can read and listen to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia9pWMK9fDQ

Annie Farmer, who spoke with the Herald this week, questioned why the DOJ was looking at her flights in 2019 — 20 years after she was sexually abused by Epstein and Maxwell. She told the Herald she was confused, but not surprised, since the Epstein files rolled out by the DOJ have often lacked context and are heavily redacted.

The July 2019 flight information also includes itineraries for Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s accomplice and ex-girlfriend. Maxwell is now serving a 20-year prison sentence for recruiting and grooming girls for Epstein to abuse and, in at least one instance, participating in the abuse herself. Annie Farmer was one of four women who testified against Maxwell at her 2021 trial.

USAID has been ubiquitous in Kakuma for so long that it’s a literal building block in the camp; millions of old cans of cooking oil bearing the agency’s letters have been flattened and repurposed as lattice fencing.

When the Trump administration froze thousands of USAID programs during a putative review of the agency’s operations in January, Rubio insisted food programs would be spared.

• Diverted Funds: Christopher Dawson won hundreds of millions in federal contracts by promising to help Native Hawaiians. Instead, prosecutors say, he bought luxury homes.

• Poor Oversight: The Small Business Administration failed to police its business development program despite audits showing years of abuse.

• Few Changes: Even after federal agents raided the company and the SBA threatened to terminate it from the program, Dawson’s firms continued to win massive contracts.