Melissa Sanchez

Venezuelan immigrants signed up for a Trump-promoted app called CBP Home, which promised a safe and easy way to leave the country, and prepared to leave on their given departure dates. Those dates have come and gone. They’re still stuck here.

Albert Jesús Rodríguez Parra was one of more than 230 Venezuelan immigrants the Trump administration sent to a maximum-security prison in El Salvador. After his release, he says he wants the world to know what happened to him.

Years after deputies in Dane County, Wisconsin, mistakenly blamed an immigrant worker for his son’s death on a dairy farm, the sheriff’s office has agreed to reforms meant to ensure that residents who speak limited English can get needed services.

ProPublica reporter Melissa Sanchez reflects on what led her to investigate the many dangers and inequities faced by the immigrant workers without whom America’s dairy farms wouldn’t function.

Wisconsin’s exemption for small farms is one of many federal and state carve-outs that have historically left farm workers — and dairy workers in particular — with fewer rights and protections than others.

Wisconsin’s dairy industry would almost certainly collapse without the immigrants who do the dirty, dangerous work that farmers across the state say U.S. citizens won’t. But when these workers get hurt, the laws are stacked against them.

A system intended to protect young immigrants while they wait for new homes has instead been overused, experts say, leading to prolonged stays in federal custody.

Nearly 200 Afghan children brought here without family by the U.S. government during the haphazard military pullout are languishing in federal custody.

In 2018, ProPublica reported on how vehicle tickets in Chicago disproportionately harm low-income, Black residents. This latest set of reforms proposes lowering ticket costs and providing debt relief for low-income residents.

After ProPublica’s report that Afghan children at a Chicago shelter were hurting themselves, Sen. Dick Durbin asked federal officials to investigate. In the meantime, Heartland Alliance, the facility’s operator, now has interpreters in its shelters.