It's Friday October 9, 2026 and in this morning's issue we're covering: NJ data center emitted staggering amounts of air pollution for nearly a year before regulators intervened, Urban, rural hospitals closing at similar rates, study finds, Faith leaders hold vigil for forthcoming family and children detention facility in Alexandria, Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE, Asylum win caps immigrant’s two-year detention as courts weigh third-country deportations, Struggling with food insecurity in Central NC, Moving goods is one of KC’s biggest industries. Record diesel prices make it hard to keep trucking.

Media outlets and others featured: Floodlight, Stateline, Verite News, MindSite News, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting, Carolina Public Press, The Beacon

REVEALED: NJ data center emitted staggering amounts of air pollution for nearly a year before regulators intervened

Newly obtained public records shed light on emissions caused by DataOne’s unpermitted generator fleet

By: Evan Simon / Floodlight

This story is from Floodlight, a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action, published in partnership with The Guardian. Sign up for Floodlight’s newsletter here.

DataOne, the Microsoft-linked New Jersey datacenter recently hit with a $1 million fine for running unpermitted generators, emitted large amounts of health-harming air pollution for nearly a year before state regulators stepped in, according to public records obtained by Floodlight.

The Vineland facility’s 62 gas-fired generators became public in August after a Floodlight/Guardian visual investigation found them operating without permits. The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection last week fined the company over the fleet but didn’t disclose how long the generators had been operating nor how much air pollution they had released into the surrounding community over the past year.

Floodlight sent technical data about the generators — obtained through public records requests — to two experts to calculate the site’s emissions.

“Our best estimate is that the generators emitted about 140 tons of NOx,” said Xiaomeng Jin, an assistant professor at Rutgers Department of Environmental Sciences.Her analysis would rank DataOne in the state’s top five NOx polluters of 2025, per EPA data.

NOx are a dangerous group of smog-producing gases linked to asthma, heart attacks and even premature death. It’s “the most important air pollutant in the U.S. that affects most people,” Jin said.

Longtime Vineland resident Tiffany Leone-Vespa lives about a mile from the data center and said the noise from the generators sounds like an airplane in the back of her house.

“What health problems might I face in the future? Because I've been exposed to all of that. My kids have been exposed to it,” she said.

The site’s potential NOx emissions are even larger, according to Jin and Bruce Buckheit — a former EPA air enforcement division chief. Both concluded that at full use, DataOne’s fleet could emit more than 1,500 tons of NOx per year. That is nearly twice the amount that the Linden Cogeneration gas-fired power plant, New Jersey’s largest NOx emitter, is allowed to emit.

Operating the generators “results in very high levels of air pollution,” said Buckheit.

New Jersey labels any facility capable of emitting more than 25 tons of NOx per year a “major source” and DataOne’s potential emissions are “well over” that limit, Buckheit said. Obtaining a major source permit requires extensive environmental reviews, best available pollution controls and public comment periods — all before construction can even begin.

That didn’t happen at DataOne, despite the operation being capable of emittingmore than half the NOx put out by New Jersey’s entire power sector.

“That is basically offsetting some of the air quality improvements [regulators] have achieved for decades,” Jin said.

DataOne did not respond to Floodlight’s emissions analysis. Instead, its spokesperson sent the same statement as they did in response to NJDEP's decision to fine them, saying the company is "transitioning to low-emission, quiet fuel cells as part of the site’s permanent power solution and have the necessary approvals in place for this solution.”

The company disagrees with NJDEP’s determination and had argued the generators did not require permits — but plans to apply for them now.

A Microsoft spokesperson wrote that "we expect our suppliers and partners to meet all applicable legal and regulatory obligations” and the company was working with DataOne “to support their completion of the facility's transition to its permanent long-term power solution.”

In press releases, New Jersey regulators said the tractor-trailer-sized generators were detected during a July 29, 2026, site inspection but not during an earlier visit in December. However, the fleet was there to find, according to a letter DataOne later sent to NJDEP.

The letter, obtained by Floodlight through a public records request, notes the generators first began to arrive in July 2025. Sixteen generators started operating in October 2025, with another 16 brought online in early February. By June, all 62 had been fired up.

By the time state inspectors noticed them, the unpermitted fleet had collectively run for more than 46,000 hours in total, according to the letter.

“How did 62 generators get installed and operated and nobody did anything until now? That blows me away,” Leone-Vespa said. “Clearly somebody wasn't doing their job.”

A spokesperson for NJDEP declined to comment.

For many Vineland residents, confirmation that DataOne’s generators have been running for nearly a year is a bittersweet vindication. Locals have reported strange noises emanating from the facility for months, with more than 100 noise complaints submitted to the Cumberland County Department of Health since March, according to records obtained by Floodlight. Many of the complaints list generators as the suspected source.

“They're just running these monster generators. And they think, by right, they have every ability to do so at the expense of anyone else,” said local flower farmer Michael Atkinson.

Atkinson's family has been farming a patch of land beside the data center for more than 70 years. He said DataOne is “one of the richest and worst neighbors that I have ever had to deal with in my entire life.”

During a Vineland town hall meeting in late January, DataOne CEO Charles-Antoine Beyney told residents that his data center would be “polluting less than a farm.”

Born in Bordeaux, Beyney told the crowd, “I’m too French to just kill my lungs, the lungs of your kids and all the community around us.”

Beyney confirmed during that speech that DataOne was running generators, and he said NJDEP was aware — claiming the agency had been at the site that same morning and was “on us big time.”

While the generators may have evaded state regulators for a year, local officials knew about them for much longer.

A City of Vineland inspection activity report noted that “Phase 1 generators are online” in early February. And in May, a Cumberland County Health Department inspector responding to a noise complaint visited the site and reported that the source of the noise appeared to be two generators, “possibly more.”

The inspector noted that the noise “exceeded a nighttime violation.”

As part of the record fine levied against DataOne, the state is mandating the company apply for and obtain the required permits or cease operations, but is allowing them 45 days to do so, according to a NJDEP spokesperson.

During that time, regulators are allowing the facility to continue running the generators — which are capable of emitting more than four tons of NOx in nearby neighborhoods each day.

“I just don't understand how this is being allowed,” Leone-Vespa said. She hopes independent air monitoring can help protect her community in the future. Until then, she has little faith in New Jersey regulators to watch out for them.

“It's like they don't care about the residents.”

Floodlight is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates the powers stalling climate action.

Urban, rural hospitals closing at similar rates, study finds

By Nada Hassanein (Stateline) Published: October 8, 2026

Urban hospitals are closing at roughly the same rate as rural ones, and the shuttered hospitals are more likely to have served communities with high poverty rates and fewer transportation options, according to a new study published Thursday in the journal JAMA.

Researchers at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health analyzed hospital closures and openings that occurred between 2010 and last year. They found that closures increased by 4% year over year, while new hospital openings decreased 3% year over year.

Breast cancer survival rates higher in Medicaid expansion states, study finds

The study comes as health systems across the nation brace for the effects of the broad tax and spending measure passed by congressional Republicans and signed by President Donald Trump in July 2025. The so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act is projected to cut federal Medicaid spending by an estimated $886.8 billion over the next decade, according to estimates by the Congressional Budget Office.

The law includes $50 billion in rural health grants to be distributed to states over five years, but the funds are for a wide variety of initiatives, with limitations on how much hospitals can benefit.

Public attention has mostly focused on struggling rural hospitals, but the Harvard researchers found that urban hospitals also have been vulnerable: The closure rate was 9.1% for urban hospitals and 8.3% for rural hospitals. Across both rural and urban areas, hospitals that were for-profit, small or safety-net, or served the most vulnerable counties — such as those with higher poverty rates or less access to transportation — were most likely to close.

US hospitals see stark decline of obstetric services, study shows

Overall, 432 hospitals closed between 2010 and 2025 while 216 opened, leading to a net loss of over 24,000 beds. Rural areas were less likely to see a new hospital, as the new facilities were mostly urban, for-profit and small. Rural communities are more likely to have fewer doctors per capita and a lower overall number of patients.

Of the hospitals that closed, about 73% shut down completely, while the remaining retained outpatient care, including rural emergency hospital care.

The Midwest and the South saw the most closures overall, and there were more closures in states that didn’t expand Medicaid eligibility under the Affordable Care Act, according to the study.

Stateline reporter Nada Hassanein can be reached at nhassanein@stateline.org.

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Faith leaders hold vigil for forthcoming family and children detention facility in Alexandria

By Robert Stewart, Verite News New Orleans
October 2, 2026

This article was produced in partnership with Religion News Service.

Local community activists and faith leaders from Louisiana and beyond marched and prayed Thursday (Oct. 1) at the fenced-off barracks and trailers at England Airpark, where federal immigration officials are preparing to open a privately-run facility to hold immigrant families and unaccompanied children awaiting deportation.

The 528-bed facility — which sits next to Alexandria International Airport and is expected to open imminently — will be the second detention facility designated for children and families under President Donald Trump. 

“We lament the childhood moments that detention will interrupt: a familiar bedtime, a classroom full of friends, a meal around a family table, the freedom to play without fear, graduation, a birthday,” said the Rev. Robin Tanner, president of the Unitarian Universalist Ministers Association, who flew in from New Jersey to attend the event and led a prayer in front of the facility. About 40 people attended the vigil. 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) maintains it will be a temporary holding facility where families will stay while awaiting deportation flights or transfers to other detention centers. Those attending the vigil Thursday, many of whom have spent months opposing family and child detention in Louisiana, see the detention center as an alarming acceleration of the administration’s mass deportation campaign. 

The facility would be the “first and only” ICE facility dedicated to detaining and deporting unaccompanied minors, said Setareh Ghandehari, advocacy director at Detention Watch Network, a coalition advocating for the abolishment of the immigration detention system.

According to ICE’s website, the agency only holds unaccompanied children in rare instances. They are usually handled by the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. But ORR is not involved in the Alexandria facility.

ICE did not respond to questions about whether the facility is the first of its kind, when it would open or concerns regarding the facility’s impact on children. Instead, the spokesperson said the facility is not a detention center, but a temporary holding facility where families will stay while awaiting their deportation flight or transfer to another detention facility.  

Pastor Leigh Rachal, the executive director of the Louisiana Interchurch Conference — a multi-denominational, social justice-oriented nonprofit — has been organizing faith leaders to oppose the expansion of detention and deportation infrastructure in Louisiana. Rachal said she put out a call nationally to other faith leaders to join Thursday’s event. 

“This really is, I think, the human struggle to do better, to lift our hearts together (and) to seek the well-being of every neighbor,” Rachal said. 

Part of the Trump administration’s efforts to expedite deportations, the new facility is situated beside an airport that has become known as the country’s busiest hub for deportation flights. According to the most recent ICE Flight Monitor report, Alexandria saw roughly 340 flights in August alone, including domestic transfer and deportation flights. 

In February, the England Authority Board of Commissioners, the governing body of the former Air Force base known as England Airpark, voted to authorize the executive director of the airpark to sign contracts with the federal government to build the detention center. The executive director also said he signed a contract with the LaSalle Family Foundation to operate and manage the facility on behalf of the airpark. That foundation is the charitable arm of LaSalle Corrections, the private prison company that operates five immigration detention centers in Louisiana. 

Since news of the agreement broke, community members also have been concerned about reports of environmental contamination and the potential trauma associated with detaining children. They have been organizing and speaking out against the facility.

Ralph Hennessy, executive director of England Airpark, did not respond to a request for comment, but he has previously downplayed the carceral aspects of the facility.  

“This is not something where people are kept in shackles and jail cells. The facilities are set up like a traditional dorm room with beds, refrigerators and microwaves,” Hennessy told Verite News in August. 

He has also insisted that the contract with the facility is finalized and has said the facility will open soon, without disclosing a date.

The Rev. Liz Theoharis, the executive director of Kairos Center for Religions, Rights, and Social Justice based in New York City and a Presbyterian pastor, said she felt called to join the vigil and engage in the fight to shut the facility down. 

At the vigil, she led a prayer for the immigrant families who face family separation and whose family members are in detention facilities.

“From Genesis to Revelation, there’s this constant story of God freeing people, of God raising up faith leaders who put children first, who protect kids and families,” she said in an interview after the vigil. 

Tanner said she learned about the vigil from the Free Families coalition, a group of grassroots organizations working to end family detention in the country. 

Tanner refers to immigrant detention centers as “jails” and says, for her, they meet the definition of “concentration camps” — people are separated from their families, concentrated in one place and locked up in facilities such as Delaney Hall in New Jersey and the Dilley Immigration Processing Center in Texas. Until now, Dilley is the only immigrant detention center for families and children. A report by Human Rights First and RAICES alleged “widespread due process violations, inhumane conditions, and lasting physical and psychological harm inflicted on families” at Dilley.  

“There is every reason to believe the same thing will occur here,” Tanner said. 

Walking back from the vigil, Diane Mobley, a Pineville resident who has attended multiple board meetings over the past few months and spoke out against the airpark facility, said that it’s hard not to feel hopeless when thinking about the children who will be detained at the facility. 

“They don’t deserve it. They’re innocent,” she said. 

Mobley, who said she grew up as a Southern Baptist but stopped attending church as she got older, said she appreciates the involvement of the faith leaders who showed up. But she was critical of the religious leaders in and around Alexandria who have remained silent on immigrant children being detained. 

“I’m really disappointed in the faith leaders who are not here. I think there are a lot of them in our community that should be speaking out and they’re not, and that part kind of goes to one reason I left (the church),” she said.

Overall, the administration’s mass deportation efforts have drawn criticism and protests from faith leaders across the country. Earlier this week, Latino faith leaders were among those who signed a letter calling on the Trump administration and Congress to provide legal protection for long-term undocumented immigrants. The Rev. Gabriel Salguero, the president of the National Latino Evangelical Coalition, said that pastors have seen the trauma that detention can inflict on children and families. 

“Jesus said, ‘Let the little children come to me,’” Salguero, who didn’t attend Thursday’s vigil, wrote in an email. “That is not merely a political position. For us, it is a pastoral convocation and a Gospel imperative.” He said he prays that American leadership will strike a balance between security and compassion. 

Like many at Thursday’s vigil, Mobley said she was also thinking about the long battle ahead and how she can help immigrant families and children who are detained in the Alexandria facility when it opens. 

“I feel determined,” she said. “If we can’t stop (the facility,) we’re going to try to help these people as much as we can.”

This article first appeared on Verite News New Orleans and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The Unseen Toll: Depression, Anxiety Plague Black Women a Year After Being Fired by DOGE

by Lottie Joiner, MindSite News
October 7, 2026

Part 1 of a three-part series, FIRED: The DOGE Layoffs Hit Black Women Hard, a collaboration between MindSite News, Capital B, The 19th and The Nation, edited by MindSite News.

Darnese Foster remembers the day she learned she was fired from her federal government job. 

“I was off that Friday, which was Valentine's Day. Then that Monday was the holiday,” said Foster. “I went to log in that Tuesday, I couldn't get in.”

Foster thought her password had expired and needed to be reset. She called the help desk to submit her request. Then someone from the IT department called her back.

“He said, 'You didn't get a phone call from your supervisor?’ I said, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Well, unfortunately, your name was on the list of names that was denied access.’ I didn't know what that meant. I called my supervisor. He said, ‘Well, let me call you back. Let me talk to (the IT) supervisor to see what's going on.’" 

Later that day, they both called back to tell her that she was on a list of employees on probation that were being terminated during the mass firing. 

Foster’s initial reaction was numbness, then panic and dread. She had a child in private school and rent and a car note to pay.

“I would go in a corner and cry,” Foster recalled.

Now, more than a year after being fired from her position as a grant management specialist in the Department of Health and Human Services, Foster is struggling, not just financially, but to cope: struggling to stay strong, struggling to keep the faith. The constant strain, she says, has taken a toll on her mental health.

“I thought I would have a job a year later,” Foster, 47, said. “The worry of where I’m going to get the money to do what I need to do and how long will I be out of work, it’s mentally draining.”

Black women bore the brunt of the cuts

When Trump eliminated diversity, equity and inclusion programs by an executive order in January 2025 and empowered Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to gut the federal workforce that February and March, thousands of Black women lost their jobs. But the job cuts did more than just dismantle a longtime pipeline that helped lift DC’s majority-Black community into the middle class; it also gutted the well-being of the Black women who hold up that community.

A recent study by University of Maryland labor economist Brandon Enriquez found that DOGE cuts “disproportionately affected” the federal employment of Black women compared with other demographic groups. The study estimated that while DOGE “did not have statistically significant effects for any other race, gender, education, or age group,” it reduced Black women’s federal employment by 25%. 

“At its lowest point in April 2025, employment was almost 50% reduced for Black women, with little effect for other groups,” Enriquez noted, although there was a partial rebound in subsequent months. Given the overrepresentation of Black workers in the federal government, Enriquez concluded that the layoffs increased racial inequality.

In many of the agencies that were targeted for massive staff reductions, women and people of color made up the majority of the workforce, according to a 2025 report by Sarah Javaid for the National Women’s Law Center. Javaid wrote that “while women made up 46% of the total federal workforce in September 2024, they represented the majority of the workforce” in the departments of Veterans Affairs, Education, Health and Human Services, Treasury, and Housing and Urban Development.  

People of color – including Darnese Foster – made up 46% of probationary workers, according to the report, including 65% of those at the Department of the Treasury, 55% at Housing and Urban Development and at Homeland Security, and 53% at Health and Human Services. 

Like some of her federal colleagues, Foster's probation was for two years. After years of contracting, first with companies in the private sector, then with the State Department, Foster had finally landed a permanent position at Health and Human Services.

A single mother of two, she'd been in her job for a year and seven months when she got the shocking news that she had been laid off. 

“It was always my goal to try to get into the government,” said Foster.  “My parents always said: 'Get with the government, it’s stable. You can grow. You can move up.'”

At its lowest point in April 2025, employment was almost 50% reduced for Black women, with little effect for other groups.

–BRANDON ENRIQUEZ, UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND

Foster had been excited about her new job and working with her new co-workers. And she was proud that despite struggling with a learning disability and adult ADHD, she'd recently gotten a raise in her pay and job grade.  

Her work felt important to her, too. As a grant management specialist, her responsibilities included working with organizations such as hospitals or construction companies seeking government funding. If a hospital wanted new X-ray machines or a therapy facility wanted equipment, she helped them navigate the application process. 

“I had finally gotten my dream job. It was devastating to have it snatched from me,” said Foster. “I had things in my life that I was putting in order, and goals that I wanted to do. This is where I was going to retire from.” 

At the time of her firing, Foster’s oldest daughter was a senior in college and her youngest daughter, who was 9, was in private school and an avid dancer who took part in competitions. Since the firings,  her daughter has continued to dance, but Foster can't afford the cost of  competitions.

“I try not to take too much from her because she's 10,” says Foster. “I did keep her in dance, so she doesn't lose all that she's learned, so she won't feel like, ‘Oh, I can't do anything.’"

Foster says she has not been coping well. She received unemployment benefits for only six months. She lost the items in her storage unit because she couldn't afford the fees, and she has struggled to pay for her daughter’s private school tuition.

She feels like she’s in a “sunken place.”

“I’ll drop my youngest off at school and just sit in the car and cry,” Foster said. “What’s next? Where am I going to get the money to keep a roof over our heads?”

For a 2022 study focused on Black women's gender and race-related stress, epidemiologists Meghan Tipre and Tiffany L. Carson conducted focus groups and found that the top stressors identified by Black women were single parenting, Black children's safety and finances. “Black women report higher levels of psychological stress than White women and carry a disproportionate burden of chronic conditions associated with psychological stress,” the authors wrote in the journal Women's Health Reports.

Grieving more than a paycheck

Dr. Raquel Martin, a licensed clinical psychologist who focuses on Black mental health, says abrupt termination can be both a financial stressor and a traumatic stressor, because it's not just about the loss of income. 

“It's the sudden loss of predictability and control, identity, community, and even future planning,” Martin says. “There's a significant association between unemployment and increased depression, anxiety, and psychological distress, as well as just life satisfaction overall.”

Job loss is more than just about money, Martin points out. 

“When you think about job loss, you often think about money, but psychologically, abrupt termination can create a profound sense of instability, (and) human beings need and thrive off of predictability,” Martin says. “When employment disappears suddenly, people aren't just grieving that aspect of a paycheck, they're grieving a future of a world that they could count on.”

And when demands exceed your resources, Martin adds, the stress can be almost unbearable. 

“When an experience overwhelms your ability to cope, and it leaves this lasting impact on your sense of self, safety, and sense of the world around you, that's trauma,” Martin said. “Trauma is not only what happens to you, it's also what happens inside of you, when you're repeatedly forced to adapt to conditions that threaten your safety or your dignity or your humanity or your ability to thrive.”

The way people respond to trauma varies greatly from irritability to depression to becoming sedentary or changing eating habits. Foster said after her job loss, she sometimes slept all day or sat at her desk and scrolled. She also admitted being “a lot more snappy,” toward family and friends. 

Martin says some people who lose their jobs experience “low pressure tolerance,” which she describes as being really irritable  so that every little thing makes you want to “flip a table.” 

I had finally gotten my dream job. It was devastating to have it snatched from me.

–DARNESE FOSTER

Black women like Foster who are breadwinners and heads of household may be especially stressed since they are overwhelmed with guilt and shame for not being able to provide at their previous levels. Even though the federal firings aren't something that they brought on themselves, the experience left some, like Foster, shattered.

“Mental health is affected by policy decisions, economic instability, and access to health care and employment protection. The solution can’t be only telling Black women to cope better with the trash circumstances that they didn't create in the first place,” Martin explained. 

“We have to ask, what does it mean when the people who are often expected to care for everyone suddenly need to care for themselves?” she said. “What got in the way of them being able to do that in the first place? How can we come together as a community?” 

What helps, and what doesn't

When trying to comfort people who have been fired or experienced traumatic events, Martin suggests avoiding statements like “everything happens for a reason” or “stay positive.” Instead, she suggests, ask how you can be helpful: “How are you doing today and what would be helpful for you right now?” or “You don't have to carry this alone. What are some tangible things I can do?”

But it’s also important, Martin says, that people experiencing this kind of stress let others help. She encourages staying connected to community and leaning into mutual aid. If neighbors want to bring dinner or provide a gift certificate, or if relatives want to take the kids to a park, let them. 

“I know how we feel about the system failing us, but when it comes down to Black people, the system has failed us for such a significant amount of time we have to remember that the goal is for us not to fail each other and still keep it going,” Martin said.

Foster says she’s applied unsuccessfully for more than 100 jobs since her firing last year. In the interim, she braids hair and has worked as a consultant on political campaigns to make ends meet. She meets regularly with a mental health practitioner and tries to stay upbeat through prayer and affirmations.

Nevertheless, Foster feels like she is failing — failing as a mother, failing as a provider, failing at parenting.

“I feel like I’m almost 50 and I’m way behind. I don’t have a life insurance policy to leave my kids. No savings,” Foster says. “It weighs heavy for me as a mother.”

It’s not only the stress of not having the money to do what she needs to do as a parent, but the stress of having to lean on her 23-year-old daughter and mother to help pay the bills. As she continues to look for full-time employment, she says she is drained by the rejections. 

Right now, Foster says, she’s holding it together, taking it one day at a time.

“I do believe in God, but when you’ve been down in life and have had disappointments, it’s kind of hard to keep your faith,” said Foster. “You try to stay strong, but you wonder, when is there going to be light at the end of the tunnel? How long do I have to stay like this?”

Reporting for this story was supported by the Rosalynn Carter Fellowship in Mental Health Journalism.

This article first appeared on MindSite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Asylum win caps immigrant’s two-year detention as courts weigh third-country deportations

by Alexandra Markovich, Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting
October 6, 2026

Weeks after Celestin Dima was shackled on a plane and came within hours of being deported to a country where he had never lived, the Burkina Faso native has been granted asylum.

The decision caps a remarkable reversal for the African immigrant, freeing Dima after more than two years in ICE detention. Reopening his case already wiped away the removal order that allowed the government to try to send him elsewhere.

Dima received protection from deportation to his home country, where he’d been persecuted for being gay. Yet he remained caught in a broader legal limbo AZCIR documented earlier this year, which left him and other immigrants stuck in detention despite having such protections.

Dima was granted asylum Sept. 23 after the rule that had blocked him from seeking it was struck down in May. Attorneys say others affected by the rule have begun winning asylum cases, too, though the Trump administration is seeking to reinstate it.

Meanwhile, a separate legal battle is unfolding over the government’s ability to deport immigrants to third countries, as officials attempted to do with Dima. A federal appeals court imposed new protections against such removals in September, only for the U.S. Supreme Court to suspend them days later while it considers the case.

Dima’s future, however, no longer hinges on either legal fight. Now that he’s been granted asylum, years of uncertainty are finally over.

“That is the first time (since arriving) in the United States—it’s the first time I’m happy,” Dima said after his asylum hearing.

The rule that initially made Dima ineligible for asylum was called Circumvention of Lawful Pathways, or CLP. Under the Biden-era policy, people who illegally entered the United States between ports of entry could not qualify for asylum, funneling people like Dima into lesser forms of protection that left them vulnerable to deportation.

Until recently, it wasn’t clear whether asking judges to reopen asylum cases on the basis of the rule’s reversal would be successful. Proceedings can take months or more.

But at Dima’s late September asylum hearing, the Department of Homeland Security did not contest his claim, according to his attorney, Marlene Berroa Rodriguez of Make the Road NY. The nonprofit provides resources to immigrants and other communities.

“What we've been saying from the beginning—that the record was clear that he only lost asylum because of the CLP—was what ultimately won the case,” Berroa Rodriguez said.

Attorneys representing immigrants previously barred from asylum under CLP have reported similarly uncontested cases, she said, describing it as a departure from the Trump administration’s typical approach.

Anne Peterson, senior counsel at the San Francisco-based Center for Gender & Refugee Studies that helped challenge CLP, has tracked nine cases so far in which immigrants got asylum after previously being denied under the rule. She anticipates the reversal will “give a huge number of people a fair opportunity to apply for asylum,” though that could change if the government succeeds in reviving CLP—an effort now before the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. 

Berroa Rodriguez also cautioned that the work required in Dima’s case could make his victory difficult to reproduce broadly.

“It shows how impossible this process is, and how labor-intensive it is,” she said. “How much can we actually replicate that at the pace that the government is going? I don't know that that's possible.”

The Trump administration has carried out third-country deportations at a scale previously unseen, removing more than 25,000 people since January 2025.

To accelerate those removals, DHS relied on diplomatic assurances from countries that immigrants sent there wouldn’t face persecution or torture. This allowed U.S. officials to bypass giving immigrants an opportunity to raise those fears before deportation.

Under the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Sept. 18 ruling, immigrants with final deportation orders became entitled to challenging such removals, including by applying for protection under the Convention Against Torture. Had those safeguards been in place just two months earlier, they might have saved Dima from being put on the deportation flight.

But the new protections lasted less than two weeks. On Sept. 29, the Supreme Court granted the government’s emergency request to continue third-country deportations under existing policy while it reviews the appeals court ruling, with oral arguments scheduled for December.

For Dima, the pending decision no longer carries the same stakes. 

His asylum status generally protects him from deportation to a third country and makes him eligible to work in the U.S. In about a year, he can apply for a green card, the first step on a path to citizenship.

It is a stark change from just weeks ago, when Dima was still locked in a Brooklyn detention center after more than two years in immigration custody.

For the first time since arriving in the United States, Dima can begin looking ahead.

Before fleeing Burkina Faso, he worked as a car mechanic. He hopes to do that again.

This article first appeared on Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Struggling with food insecurity in Central NC

by Lucas Thomae, Carolina Public Press
October 5, 2026

For those seeking food assistance in Chatham County, visiting a CORA food pantry feels more akin to shopping at a grocery store than rummaging through a warehouse.

CORA, which is an acronym for Chatham Outreach Alliance, operates two choice pantries in Pittsboro and Siler City. A choice pantry means that visitors are able to select what they want, rather than receiving a pre-packaged bundle of food.

After filling out an intake form and receiving a membership card, visitors get a shopping cart and are assisted by volunteers who guide them through the pantry. Fresh produce is stacked on display tables. Refrigerators are stocked with high-demand commodities like meat and eggs. Ready-to-eat foods like bagged salads and bakery and deli items are also available, having been donated by local retailers.

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In the lobby, next to a kids play area, recipe cards in both English and Spanish offer suggestions for how to use in-season produce. Currently on the menu is a collard green coleslaw, sweet potato wedges and lentil tacos.

According to CORA executive director Melissa Beard, more people are using the food pantry than ever before. This summer, CORA served 1,695 children through its program which feeds students while school is out of session. That was a 17% increase compared to last year, Beard said.

In addition, the number of new families who received food from CORA grew from 922 to 1,636 during the most recent fiscal year. Part of that growth was expected since CORA opened its second location in Siler City at the end of 2025.

But the severity of that spike, combined with the increased utilization of its summer food program, pointed to a more worrying trend of growing hunger in the county. And the trend isn’t just localized to Chatham. Food pantry leaders told Carolina Public Press that food insecurity is becoming more common statewide due to rising prices, not just at the grocery store but in all areas of life.

“We're seeing a lot of people make very hard decisions around making sure their kids have food, and they may not eat as a result of that, or having to pay for medicine, and therefore they can't afford food, or having to choose between transportation and food,” Beard said.

“And it's just the economy and inflation that's driving so much of it.”

Development and communications director Rebecca Hankins said many of the people she speaks with at the food bank are increasingly anxious about their finances, particularly seniors.

One woman told Hankins that she was “devastated” about how little her money lasts in the grocery store these days.

“It used to be that if she had $60 for the week, she could manage,” Hankins said.

“But now, $60, if you buy meat a third of your budget is gone.”

Hunger a growing problem in NC, food banks say

Jason Kanawati Stephany, a vice president at the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, didn’t mince words when describing the current state of hunger in the areas served by the food bank.

“Our communities are facing the worst hunger crisis that we've seen in at least a generation,” he said.

The Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina is one of the largest hunger relief networks in the nation, with partners in 34 counties in North Carolina, including Chatham. Last year, the food bank distributed 96 million meals across its service area.

According to Kanawati Stephany, currently 180,000 more people are facing hunger in Central and Eastern North Carolina than did so during the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The reasons for the increase are layered, and many families have unique reasons why they are struggling to put food on the table. It could be that one or more adults in the home are out of work, or that despite working their incomes aren’t matching the rising costs of groceries, housing and healthcare. Some in rural communities lack the transportation necessary to consistently access food.

“All of these factors are different depending on the community, but the throughline is that people are doing everything that they can to make ends meet, and the math just isn't working,” Kanawati Stephany said.

Prices aren’t just affecting people at home, but straining food bank budgets as well.

Rising diesel prices brought about by the War in Iran have made it more difficult to fuel the fleet of trucks operated by the Food Bank of Central & Eastern North Carolina. And when an outbreak of avian flu sent egg prices to record highs, they simply disappeared from the shelves of many food pantries.

Cuts to federal programs meant to address food insecurity have also exacerbated the problem, Kanawati Stephany said.

Two of those are the Emergency Food Assistance Program (EFAP), which distributes food to families who meet income eligibility requirements, and the Local Food Purchase Assistance Cooperative Agreement Program (LFPA), which issues grants to schools and food banks to purchase produce from local farms.

Kanawati Stephany recalled that in April of 2025, the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled 90 truckloads of food supplies destined for North Carolina in response to the cuts. Federal support has trickled back over the course of the past year and a half, but shipments of food supplies originating from those programs have become “incredibly unpredictable,” he said.

Gap between haves and have-nots in Chatham

Chatham County, in many ways, is a microcosm of how food insecurity is playing out statewide.

By per capita income, Chatham is the wealthiest of all 100 North Carolina counties, and parts of it are growing quickly, particularly in the east. In 2023, The Walt Disney Company announced plans to build a 4,000-home residential living community in Pittsboro, touting its proximity to the Research Triangle.

That growth focused in eastern Chatham isn’t reaching all parts of the county, however. The western parts of the county are more rural with significant pockets of poverty. Unsurprisingly, these areas are also the epicenter of Chatham’s hunger crisis.

“It blows my mind when I meet with people who are like ‘I didn't realize that hunger was an issue in Chatham County,’” Hankins said.

“All you need to do is drive around.”

Despite being based in Pittsboro, which is in the eastern part of the county, the staff at CORA knew that many of the people visiting the food pantry were coming from out west. Last year, they seized on an opportunity to merge with another hunger relief organization based in Siler City and open a new choice pantry there.

“We knew it was the right thing to do and the right time to do it, because the need in the western part of the county really dictated that,” Beard said.

CORA works alongside, and often collaborates with, a network of other hunger relief organizations. One of those is the Chatham Chuckwagon, which distributes fully cooked, frozen meals in Pittsboro and Siler City weekly. So far, the organization has given out 29,000 meals this year, a spokesperson said.

Another is Feed-Well Fridges, an operation which stocks strategically located refrigerators across the county with surplus food donated from grocery stores, restaurants and caterers. These fridges are available to anybody and it's not uncommon for them to empty within an hour after each daily restock, co-founder Susan White said.

Feed-Well Fridges placed an emphasis on serving western Chatham, with locations in Siler City and Goldston.

“A community can be a relatively short drive from tremendous growth and prosperity and still have families struggling every day to put nutritious food on the table,” White said.

In its three years of existence, White said Feed-Well Fridges has distributed 350,000 pounds of surplus food and more than 91,000 individual meals.

But for all the good that these organizations are doing, they say they can never be a replacement for government assistance. The thought of having to sustain operations with increased demand, higher costs and fewer federal dollars is what keeps many food pantry leaders up at night, according to Kanawati Stephany.

“We cannot replace the federal government's role forever,” he added.

Hankins framed the issue by comparing CORA’s operations to the amount of food assistance distributed via the county’s Department of Social Services, which is about $7 million per year.

“CORA absolutely cannot make up $7 million or even $1 million,” she said. “None of us could.”

This article first appeared on Carolina Public Press and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Moving goods is one of KC’s biggest industries. Record diesel prices make it hard to keep trucking

by Thomas White, Beacon: Kansas City
October 6, 2026

Ryan Schmuhl started his trucking business — Schmuhl Brothers Inc., based in Kansas City, Kansas — in 1995 with his brother Ty and two big rigs. In 2000, he estimates, a 360-mile round trip cost about $90 in diesel. He said that the same trip, on the same lanes, costs about $490 today.

“I used to take $500 bucks cash, and I had that in my pocket, and that’s what I spent for the whole week,” Schmuhl told The Beacon. “It’d be pretty hard to put something like $6,000 cash in my pocket to get fuel done for the week.”

A gallon of diesel averaged $6.53 the week of Sept. 28 in the Midwest, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That price is nearly double from the first week of January 2026, when a gallon of diesel averaged $3.39.

Takeaways

1. Higher diesel costs are likely to show up in consumer prices.
2. Midwest diesel averaged $6.52 a gallon the week of Sept. 28, nearly double the $3.39 average in the first week of January.
3. Small trucking businesses often work load to load and can’t raise rates quickly when fuel jumps.
4. Heavy-truck drivers in the area average $61,850 a year, making it one of the better-paying jobs that don’t require a degree.
5. High diesel prices are delaying some drivers' plans to go into business for themselves.

That price shock most immediately hits anyone paying for diesel fuel. In Kansas City, that affects a lot of people and one of the area’s core industries.

Nearly one out of every 10 workers in the Kansas City area works in transportation and material moving jobs, according to the most recent employment and wage report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. 

That includes the area’s 26,250 light- and heavy-truck drivers, a profession that often is viewed as one of the better-paying jobs in the region. The average salary is $61,850 for heavy-truck drivers, and it doesn’t require a degree. That is on top of the nearly 4,000 single-employee trucking businesses in the area. 

The record prices at the pump have risen so sharply that a viral online video promised a nationwide trucker strike starting Oct. 1, though no union or trade group backed the idea and it doesn’t seem to have happened.

However, sustained higher diesel costs have other consequences. They could mean added inflation or fewer drivers buying a truck to get into business for themselves, as Schmuhl did over 30 years ago before building a company that supports 75 employees today.

“You’d obviously have to have more cash flow to get started,” Schmuhl said, pointing to higher costs and other hindrances. “So I wouldn’t suggest just anybody to get into it today.”

Given the thin profit margins of trucking companies — 1% to 5%, Schmuhl estimated — the added fuel costs that aren’t absorbed are likely to make their way through the supply chain and show up on store shelves.

Diesel prices hit the trucking career ladder differently

The Beacon spoke to truck drivers filling up at three different Kansas City area truck stops in recent days. The conversations revealed that how the price hits depends largely on who owns the truck and who’s ultimately responsible for buying the fuel.

Generally, there are four different truck driving career types.

• Company drivers: Truck drivers who are W-2 employees and are generally paid by the hour or mile. Insurance, fuel, maintenance and overhead are paid by the company. 
• Independent and leased-on owner-operators: These drivers own or finance the truck independently and pay for all equipment and associated costs. Often this looks like a single-employee trucking business, and drivers can make more money but also assume more risk.  
• Lease-purchase drivers: These drivers rent a truck from a company with the option to buy it, gaining equity while working. This arrangement is akin to a hybrid of the company driver and owner-operator models. In most cases the driver is affiliated with a carrier and splits payment from shippers by percentage with the carrier. Most lease-purchase drivers also pay for fuel and overhead costs not covered by the truck’s warranty. 
• Fleet owners: Own multiple trucks and hire drivers. Depending on scale, fleet owners may spend more time managing the business rather than driving full time. 

Each type is hit by elevated diesel costs differently.

One regional owner-operator, who asked to be identified only as Mike G., told The Beacon that he’s been driving for 25 years and he’s never seen anything like this. 

Since he owns his truck and covers all costs, he said he now buys only enough diesel to get as far as he’s driving on an individual run.

To fill his two 100-gallon fuel tanks from empty, it could cost more than $1,300 at current prices. He said his truck gets about 7 miles to the gallon and his price at the pump for a 900-mile drive came to $763 on Wednesday morning.

“It doesn’t look good,” said Mike G. “But everybody’s got to eat, so you do what you’ve got to do.” 

He’s not the only trucking entrepreneur to feel the costs hit his pocket book.

The Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association — a trade group representing over 150,000 owner-operators and small-fleet owners from its national headquarters in Grain Valley, Missouri — told The Beacon that fuel is one of the biggest operational costs for the truckers they represent. 

In an emailed statement, association Executive Vice President Lewie Pugh said that small-business truckers make up more than 90% of trucking companies in America and that they are the first to feel increases at the pump. 

“Our members often work load-to-load and can’t simply raise their rates when fuel spikes the way their larger competitors can,” said Pugh. “While big oil companies have seen their profits nearly double this year, the sharp increase in diesel cost has quickly eaten up what little margin mom-and-pop trucking businesses have left.”

Several company drivers told The Beacon that they are less concerned about diesel prices because they do not personally take on the cost of gas. However, Jerry Wood, president of Teamsters Local 955, said employee drivers could feel the effect in the future.

“If we end up in negotiations with companies with drivers, I’m sure (fuel costs) will be part of their (arguments) to say they can’t afford to pay more wages,” Wood said. “I’ve not heard it yet, but I’m sure I will.”

Schmuhl said that diesel prices complicate his company’s cash flow. His business has a fuel surcharge attached to shipping costs that it adjusts weekly. But diesel costs have been changing daily, meaning his company has to eat the cost while waiting to be paid by invoice 30 to 45 days later.  

Deterring business

The rising cost of diesel could discourage or delay truckers from getting into business for themselves.

Brandon Jamison is a company driver from North Carolina who was passing through Kansas City last week and filling up before shutting down for the night. He told The Beacon that he wants to own a truck and be an owner-operator — just a few weeks prior he put the business to paper — but current prices mean he needs to take it in steps. 

“I plan on starting my own business soon, so diesel prices are gonna affect me,” said Jamison. “I’m trying to wait for prices to go down first, because if I do it right now, I’d be screwed.”

Jamison said in the coming months he intends to rent a truck, then shift to leasing to own before he hopes to ultimately own the truck and work independently. But from the lease-to-own phase onward, he has to take on the cost of diesel himself. 

So for now, he’s waiting.

“I need to have enough money for the truck (payment) because that would come out no matter what,” Jamison said. “With truck prices (combined with) diesel prices, you can’t make no money right now.”

Hitting store shelves

Diesel costs don’t just hit truckers.

Farming, construction and transportation equipment all run on diesel. If sustained, the higher cost could lead to broader inflation.

Gregory D. DeYong, an associate professor of operations management at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, told the Springfield Herald News in Illinois that retailers and consumers are already seeing higher prices for meat and produce because of the high cost of diesel. 

“Because so much of transportation utilizes diesel, higher prices for fuel translate to higher consumer prices fairly quickly,” DeYong told the Herald News, noting that diesel prices could continue to climb without geopolitical change. 

In April, The Beacon reported that spiking diesel has affected the local food supply chain, including for the community food network Harvesters. Diesel is now roughly $1 a gallon more expensive and KCUR reported that the record fuel prices are raising the costs of feeding Kansas City.  

Schmuhl agreed that increased fuel costs will get passed on and could affect prices broadly.  

“Trucking companies just don’t have a margin to go ingest hundreds of dollars per load — it’s just not there,” Schmuhl said. “The end user ends up having to pay for this.”

This article first appeared on Beacon: Kansas City and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.