The Brief

A California project that provides legal advocacy for unaccompanied child immigrants will end in September unless backers can convince lawmakers to renew funding by next month.

The Children’s Holistic Immigration Representation Project was funded through a one-time allocation in 2022 and not renewed when Gov. Gavin Newsom signed California’s $298 billion budget last month.

There were 64,173 unaccompanied children released in California between January 2015 and May 2023, according to a CalMatters analysis of federal data obtained by the New York Times.

The project’s clients include A.L., who lives with his aunt in Northern California. When A.L. was in the first or second grade, a motorcycle chase ended in the courtyard of his elementary school. He said that he and other young children from San Pedro Sula, Honduras, watched in horror as a group of men surrounded another man, kicked him, beat him, and dragged him all around the school. He never knew why.

“I froze,” said A.L., a 17-year-old who came to the United States as an unaccompanied minor when he was 14. “That’s an example of the violence we live with in my country.”

Honduras has a homicide rate five times higher than the United States, according to the Migration and Asylum Lab, which provides expertise about conditions in Latin American countries for use in asylum applications. San Pedro Sula, the capital where A.L. lived, is called “the world’s murder capital.”

CalMatters is only identifying A.L. by his initials because he fears for his safety and his family’s well-being back in Honduras. We interviewed him with the permission of his sponsor, his aunt, and other advocates.

Without CHIRP, the free legal representation and the social services program A.L. says saved his life, “I’d probably be back in my country,” he told CalMatters.

Rather than providing kids just with legal services, social workers under the project also help children find mental health services, enroll in school, get vaccines, and get work authorization, an approach known as “trauma-informed intervention.”

Unaccompanied children are a particularly vulnerable group. They can be exploited in full-time, dangerous jobs that violate labor laws, advocates and government officials say.

CHIRP was funded as a pilot program with $15.3 million in fiscal year 2022—enough to carry it through this coming September.

Newsom has not met with anyone to discuss the termination of the project, advocates say. His budget sought to close a huge deficit with $16 billion in cuts and delays.

Newsom’s office declined an interview request about overall cuts to immigration services, but a spokesperson said the governor’s budget maintains nearly $60 million for immigration-related legal services provided to Californians, including students, workers, and unaccompanied minors.

“We don’t find any joy in this – but we’ve got to do it, we have to be responsible. We have to be accountable. We have to balance the budget,” Newsom said previously about general budget reductions amid the funding shortfall.

Time is running out, but not all hope is lost.

“The legislature remains active on CHIRP and [is] exploring possible solutions to ensure its survival,” said Hamid Yazdan Panah, advocacy director of Immigrant Defense Advocates. “We are cautiously optimistic that there will be a path to continue the program, especially given there is no clear alternative for the vulnerable population that it serves.”

The legal advocacy project is in jeopardy just as new federal shifts in immigration policy might prompt an increase in the number of unaccompanied minors being released into California.

In June, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that limits asylum processing after encounters with migrants between ports of entry reach 2,500 per day. The new policy exempts unaccompanied minors, in the same way that such children were eventually exempted from a 2020 order that turned away migrants in the name of stopping the spread of COVID-19. Advocates worry the exemption may prompt parents from dangerous countries to make the hard decision to send their children across the border alone.

“We don’t think that will happen,” said Tom Perez, a senior advisor to the president and director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, during a press call in June.

But several years ago, that is the decision A.L.’s parents had to make.

By the time A.L. was 14, gangs in Honduras waited outside his school nearly every single day, threatening him, harassing him, and trying to recruit him, he said. He and his family decided he should flee for the United States.

During the 23-day journey by himself on foot and bus to the U.S.-Mexico border, A.L. said he was robbed by Mexican police. He crossed near the Rio Grande, and U.S. border authorities sent him to live in a center for unaccompanied children in San Antonio, Texas. There, he said, he often didn’t have enough food to eat, and he was not allowed to make phone calls to his family or to find an attorney.

When he was finally released to his family in California at age 15, he was given a long list of attorneys’ names that he was expected to call on his own to secure legal representation for his pending immigration case.

“A.L.,” (far left) an unaccompanied minor from Honduras visits the state Capitol in March of 2024 to advocate for funding for the CHIRP program, which helps protect migrant children alone in the U.S. from deportation.

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Community Justice Alliance

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“I tried to call and call and call many lawyers. Some of them never answered me, and others said they were already too busy. In the end, no one was able to help me. From that long list of attorneys, none of them could help me,” A.L. told CalMatters. Soon, he received a deportation order.

Kristina McKibben, the executive director of Community Justice Alliance, the nonprofit that administers the legal advocacy project, said unaccompanied minors are often expected to navigate the complicated immigration court system without any representation.

“And so, they’re expected to just figure it out,” said McKibben, who said clients as young as third graders can be left to navigate the court system on their own. “I think we all know that it’s ridiculous.”

In 2023, only 56% of unaccompanied migrant children defending their cases in U.S immigration court had attorneys representing them, according to data from the Justice Department. The immigration court system does not guarantee a right to counsel, even for parentless children.

The stakes are high. Between October 2017 and March 31, 2021, 90% of minors without legal representation were ordered removed from the country by federal authorities, according to data provided in a 2021 Congressional Research Service report.

A.L.’s pending deportation order weighed so heavily on him that he couldn’t concentrate or make friends at school.

“I was so lonely because all my classmates were talking about what their daily life was like, or you know, ‘I remember when this happened to me,’ and they were sharing their experiences. And I was always just quiet, listening, … because I was afraid to share my story,” said A.L.

Assemblymember Blanca Rubio, a Democrat from Baldwin Park, said most unaccompanied children who arrive in California are forced to flee their home countries because of violence and abandonment. She is advocating to keep the program because she says it goes beyond just legal representation for minors.

“The program is centered on an understanding that these children have faced trauma, both before coming to the U.S. and within the immigration system itself,” she said in a written statement. “These unaccompanied children are a symbol of resilience and a testament that a better life and future are possible. California should stand with them and invest in a shared future.”

One of A.L.’s teachers frantically started making calls and finally connected him to the advocacy project, which helped him get his deportation order lifted. He’s now living in a legal limbo called deferred action, which means the Department of Homeland Security has agreed not to deport him, but he does not have any official or permanent legal status. One of his advocates said it will be an approximate five-year wait before he can apply to become a lawful permanent resident, or to receive what is commonly referred to as a green card.

A.L. said he’s not afraid to share his story anymore. He recently traveled to the state Capitol to try to convince lawmakers to maintain funding for other children like him.

“Now I feel more confident because I know that I have support,” he said.

Data journalist Erica Yee contributed to this report. 

This story was reported through a fellowship on U.S. immigration policy in El Paso organized by Poynter with funding from the Catena Foundation.

The U.S. Department of Transportation is launching what it's calling a "civility campaign" to promote good behavior on flights and at airports, as the busy holiday travel season gets underway. The department is naming the campaign "The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You" and announced the effort in a press release last week.

The DOT shared a minute-and-a-half video that begins with images of airline travelers of decades past, set to Frank Sinatra's "Come Fly With Me." The video then shifts abruptly to tense music and video clips of bare feet swiping on an in-flight monitor and then a series of brawls on flights.

Secretary Sean Duffy then poses five questions he says every air traveler should ask themselves this holiday season. The questions include: Are you helping a pregnant woman put her bag in the overhead bin; are you dressing with respect; and are you saying thank you to your flight attendants and pilots.

"The campaign is intended to jumpstart a nationwide conversation around how we can all restore courtesy and class to air travel," the press release reads. "This won't just make the travel experience better for the flying public — it will ensure the safety of passengers, gate workers, flight attendants, and pilots."

The DOT cites a rise in bad behavior on board. The agency says there have been 13,800 incidents involving unruly passengers since 2021. Since 2019, the Federal Aviation Administration has seen a 400% increase in in-flight outbursts, according to the Transportation Department.

In 2023, the FAA reported nearly 2,000 incidents, which was a sharp decline from the height of the pandemic when mask mandates fueled many disputes.

The FAA expects this Thanksgiving holiday to be the busiest for air travel in 15 years, with Tuesday seeing the most air travelers. AAA projects 6 million people will be flying in the U.S. for the Thanksgiving holiday.
Copyright 2025 NPR

It was Friday, June 6, and the rent was due. As soon as she finished an errand, Imelda Carreto planned on joining her family as they gathered scrap metal to earn a little extra cash. Her fiancé, Julio Matias, and 15-year-old nephew, Carlos, had set out early, hitching a trailer to the back of their beat-up gray truck.

Shortly after 8 a.m., Carreto’s phone rang. It was Carlos, telling her an officer with the Florida Highway Patrol had pulled over the truck on Interstate 4 near Tampa. The stated reason: cracks in their windshield. But Carreto was worried. She knew Florida police were collaborating with federal immigration authorities. Her fiancé was undocumented. She says she rushed to the scene and made it there just before the immigration officers.

As she feared, Matias had been detained. But to her surprise, so had Carlos. He was just a kid. (ProPublica is only identifying Carlos by his first name because he is a minor.) Carlos was in high school. He’d been living in the United States for over two years and was working toward applying for legal status to stay long term. The government had given her, a legal resident, custody of him. Now he was in handcuffs. Why would they take him too?

Carreto didn’t carry any proof that she had custody of the boy. She had left it in another car in her rush. She recalls officers saying her nephew would likely be released to her in a few days once she presented the proper documents. Before they drove him away, Carlos started to tear up. Carreto told him, “Don’t cry. I don’t know how, but I’ll get you back. Understand?”

A cracked windshield, a waiting officer, a forgotten document: The new family separations often start in the most mundane ways.

Seven years ago, during the first administration of President Donald Trump, children were taken from their families the moment they crossed the border into the United States. Under a policy of zero tolerance for illegal crossing, Customs and Border Protection officers detained adults while children were sent into the federal shelter system. The aim: to deter other families from following. But after widespread public outcry and a lawsuit, the administration ended it.

Today, family separations are back, only now they are happening all across the country. The lawsuit against the zero tolerance policy resulted in a 2023 settlement that limits separations at the border, but it does not address those that occur inside the country after encounters with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE. Advocates fear the administration is conducting the new separations for the same reasons as before: to deter new immigrants from coming and to terrify those who are here into leaving.

Since the start of this year, some 600 immigrant children have been placed in government shelters by ICE, according to government data. That figure, which has not been previously reported, is already higher than the tally for the previous four years combined. And it is the highest number since recordkeeping began a decade ago.

ProPublica pieced together additional information for around 400 children sent to shelters by examining state and federal records and conducting dozens of interviews with current and former government officials, advocates, attorneys and immigrant families.

Around 160 of the cases that we learned about involved child welfare concerns, which current and former officials say is typical of the children ICE has sent to shelters in the past. These cases include instances of kids who were encountered alone inside the country or were considered potential victims of domestic abuse or trafficking, or instances where minors or the adults they were with had been accused of committing a crime.

But in a majority of the cases we examined, kids ended up in shelters in ways government officials say they never would have in the past: after routine immigration court hearings or appointments, or because they were at a home or a business when immigration authorities showed up to arrest someone else.

In South Carolina, a Colombian family of five went to a government office for a fingerprinting appointment, only to have the parents detained while the children — ages 5, 11 and 15 — were sent into the shelter system for four months. In South Florida, a 17-year-old from Guatemala was taken into custody because officers couldn’t make contact with his dad after a traffic stop; his dad is deaf. In Maryland, a 17-year-old from Mexico ended up in a shelter after making a wrong turn onto military property.

In around 150 cases, children were taken into federal custody after traffic stops. The trend is especially noticeable in states like Florida, where thousands of state and local police, including highway patrol, have been deputized to enforce immigration laws.

“What’s happening to kids now is like many small zero tolerances,” said Marion “Mickey” Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at the Los Angeles-based Immigrant Defenders Law Center. This and other changes affecting immigrant children are “adding up to a huge trauma.”

Most of the cases we found involve teenagers, and many of them had been in the United States for years. In those cases, being sent to a shelter can mean separation not only from their families but from schools, friends, churches, doctors and daily routines.

Once children are in shelters, the government is making it harder and harder for relatives or other adults who act as sponsors to get them back. The average length of stay has grown to nearly six months, up from one month during the presidency of Joe Biden, public data shows.

White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a written statement that the Biden administration released immigrant kids to sponsors too quickly and without proper vetting, sometimes into unsafe situations. “The Trump Administration is ensuring that unaccompanied minors do not fall victim to the same dangerous conditions,” Jackson said.

Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin, speaking for ICE, said the agency “does not separate families” and instead offers parents the choice to have their children deported with them or to leave the children in the care of another safe adult, consistent with past practices.

Asked about Carlos’ detention in Florida, McLaughlin said that traffic stops by officers trained to partner with ICE have prevented abuse of immigrant children and “resulted in arrests of human traffickers, abusers, and other criminals.”

ProPublica found no evidence of Carreto or Matias, her fiancé, being accused or convicted of serious crimes. Carreto had been found guilty of driving without a license at least twice and had gotten a speeding ticket. Matias pleaded guilty to a 2011 taillight infraction. He now has an ongoing case for driving without a license from the traffic stop with Carlos, and he has been returned to Guatemala.

Shelter network turned on its head

What is happening now is not what the system was set up for.

The nation’s network of roughly 170 federal shelters for “unaccompanied” immigrant children is run by the Office of Refugee Resettlement, part of the Department of Health and Human Services. The office is tasked with temporarily housing vulnerable children who cross the border alone, holding them in the least restrictive setting possible until they can be released to a sponsor in the United States. Typically that means placing kids with a parent or other family member. The office finds and vets the sponsors and is required to release children to them without delay. Once kids are out, they can apply to remain here permanently.

Under Biden, when border crossings surged to record highs, around 470,000 children were released to sponsors after going through the shelter system. Republicans said the releases incentivized smugglers to endanger kids on the long journey north and encouraged parents to send their children across the border alone.

The White House called the previous administration’s sponsor-vetting process “abysmal,” and said that many records pertaining to minors released under Biden “were either fraudulent or never existed to begin with.”

Biden officials deny these claims. But some kids have indeed ended up working in dangerous jobs.

The Trump administration has placed former ICE officials in charge of the refugee resettlement office and has made it a priority to locate children who were released from custody in previous years. To facilitate the effort, ICE plans to open a national, 24-hour call center meant to help state and local officials find them. The government says it says it has already checked on more than 24,400 children in person, and it cited more than a dozen examples of sponsors and immigrant minors arrested for crimes ranging from murder to drug trafficking, rape and assault. One of the cases the White House highlighted was of a 15-year-old Guatemalan girl the government says was released in 2023 to a man who falsely claimed to be her brother and allegedly went on to sexually abuse her.

Under Trump, the government has introduced new vetting requirements, including expanded DNA checks, fingerprinting for everyone in the sponsor’s household and heightened scrutiny of family finances.

In response to questions from ProPublica, the refugee resettlement office said it was legally required to care for all unaccompanied kids who came through its doors and defended the new vetting process. “The enhanced sponsorship requirements of this administration help keep unaccompanied alien children safe from traffickers and other bad, dangerous people,” a spokesperson said.

Because so many children are now being sent into shelters in ways they hadn’t been before, though, lawyers and advocates worry the administration’s efforts have another motive: to more broadly target and deport immigrant kids and their families. They also say the new requirements are creating so much fear that some undocumented family members are hesitant to come forward as sponsors.

Around half of the kids that ICE sent into the shelter system this year have been there before. When they arrived years ago, after crossing the border alone, they were released as soon as possible. This time, back in the system, they’re languishing.

“I think that they’re using a clearly vulnerable, clearly sympathetic population in a way that sends a powerful message to literally every other population,” said Jen Smyers, who was an official at the Office of Refugee Resettlement during the Biden administration. “If they’re going to go after these kids who have protections and say we care about them, and then treat them like this, that shows everyone that no one is safe.”

This month, attorneys suing the government over its treatment of children in the shelter system recovered a government document being provided to unaccompanied minors who cross the border. It warns them that if they do not choose to leave the country within 72 hours they will “be detained in the custody of the United States Government, for a prolonged period of time.” The document also warned that if the person who sought to sponsor the minors was undocumented, they would be “subject to arrest and removal” or to criminal penalties for “aiding your illegal entry.”

Customs and Border Protection told ProPublica that the document is used to ensure immigrant children “understand their rights and options.”

There have already been cases of prospective sponsors who have shown up at government offices for in-person interviews and been detained for being in the country illegally, said Marie Silver, a managing attorney at the National Immigrant Justice Center in Chicago.

“They are using the kids as bait, and then the kids are stuck,” Silver said. “They are creating unaccompanied children this way.”

Separation in the Sunshine State

In Florida, we found two dozen kids arrested in traffic stops who went on to spend weeks or months in federal shelters. Some are still there.

Gov. Ron DeSantis and the state’s Republican majority have spent years crafting policies that allow local police officers to seamlessly operate as federal immigration enforcers. They aim to be a model for how states can help the Trump administration “reclaim America’s sovereignty.”

Across Florida, almost 5,000 officers — even those from its Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission — are empowered to detain people over their immigration status and to call in federal authorities to come pick them up. ProPublica obtained state data revealing that Florida police have arrested at least 47 children on federal immigration charges since late April, with the Florida Highway Patrol leading the tally.

In cases like that of Carlos, children were sent to a federal shelter despite having a parent or legal custodian caring for them. Five current and former federal officials said this could be a violation of ICE’s own policy. The policy dictates that officers should let primary caregivers like Carreto take them home or find a safe place to send them. (It does not clearly require caregivers to show any documentation.) If they can’t find a safe place, or if there are signs the child is in danger, officers are supposed to alert local law enforcement or child-welfare officials and wait for them to arrive.

Florida has its own laws governing how state and local officers should interact with children. If a kid is found alone or in danger, state police must call a hotline run by Florida’s Department of Children and Families. The call is supposed to trigger a process in which state judges review any decision to place a child in the care of someone other than their family within 24 hours.

It’s not clear if Florida officers are calling the state hotline when encountering immigrant children. But it is clear that this year they have often called ICE.

State police contacted immigration officials directly about Carlos, Florida records show. Carlos went into federal custody without a state shelter hearing, according to his attorney, who said the same thing has happened to three other clients following traffic stops.

State Rep. Lawrence McClure, the Republican who introduced legislation this January that supercharged Florida’s cooperation with ICE, promised during debate on the bill that nothing would change about how the state treated immigrant children. McClure did not respond directly to questions from ProPublica about the transfers to ICE.

Boundaries between state and federal policy “are being blurred” in an “unprecedented way,” said Bernard Perlmutter, co-director of the University of Miami’s Children and Youth Law Clinic.

The collaboration with local police in Florida and elsewhere comes as ICE has worked increasingly with other federal agencies that may have their own policies for handling encounters with kids.

In response to detailed questions from ProPublica, DeSantis’ press secretary emailed a list of more than a dozen links from the video platform Rumble in which the governor speaks about immigration enforcement, writing: “Governor DeSantis has made immigration enforcement a top priority to keep Florida communities safe.”

Other state officials, including from the Florida Highway Patrol and Department of Children and Families, either did not respond or declined our requests for comment on the state’s partnership with ICE and its impact on immigrant children.

It was Florida’s cooperation with federal authorities that landed Carlos in the federal shelter system this June — his second time there.

In December 2022, Carlos, then 13 years old, came to the United States from Guatemala, where his single mother made him work or beg for money, according to court records. He thought he would be better off in the U.S. with her sister, according to records provided by his attorney. He made the journey without his parents, the documents say.

After he crossed near Donna, Texas, he was picked up by border agents and spent three weeks in a federal shelter before being released to his aunt. Carreto said she had no idea Carlos was making the journey until she received a 2 a.m. phone call from immigration authorities. She welcomed the boy into her sprawling Guatemalan American family and insisted that he go to school.

Two and a half years into his stay with Carreto came the traffic stop.

Carlos was first taken across the state to the Broward Transitional Center, a for-profit detention facility operated by the GEO Group, an ICE contractor. He was transferred later in the day to an Office of Refugee Resettlement shelter in Tampa run by Urban Strategies, another government contractor, records show. The GEO Group declined to comment and referred ProPublica to ICE. Lisa Cummins, president of Urban Strategies, wrote in an email: “We remain deeply committed to the care and well-being of the children we serve.”

Carreto launched into weeks of confusing phone calls and paperwork to get her nephew back. She had to send in a 10-page application. She turned over information about her finances, her adult son’s finances, her lack of criminal history. She submitted samples of her DNA. She sent photos of the smoke alarms in her house.

Shortly after Carlos was detained, Carreto said, immigration officers paid an unannounced visit to her home. Her son Ereson, who is 18, says federal agents came onto the property without permission and asked if any immigrants were living there. The visit scared the family.

Carreto’s daughters eventually managed to pinpoint Carlos’ location by asking him over the phone to name landmarks he could see, then searching for them on Google. In video calls home, Carreto said, Carlos was visibly sad. She said he sometimes skipped meals. “Why are they keeping me here?” she recalled him asking, “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

Carreto visited the offices of Homeland Security Investigations in Tampa with three of her children. She said agents asked how much she paid to have Carlos smuggled across the border and how much she was getting paid to try to get him out of detention. They threatened her with federal charges if she didn’t tell the truth, she said.

“I told them that nobody is paying me,” she said. “I’m doing this because he’s my nephew. He’s like a son to me.”

Carlos was released after two and a half months.

He was one of the lucky ones: His aunt was a legal resident who had custody of him, and the family had the resources and determination to fight for him.

The government this year has moved to slash legal services for children and offered cash to kids who give up their cases and go home. (The Office of Refugee Resettlement’s statement to ProPublica said it is fully complying with a court order requiring that minors be provided with legal representation.) Attorneys who represent children said they have seen a spike in cases of self-harm and behavioral problems as kids lose hope of being released.

Of the kids that ProPublica learned about, around 140 were still stuck in federal shelters as of last month. Close to 100 were ordered to be deported or had signed papers agreeing to leave the country.

Here's something to be thankful for: The price of turkey and stuffing is down from this time last year.

That's welcome news to Kayla Jenkins, who's hosting 10 people for dinner on Thursday.

"Only 10," she says with a laugh. "I'm the oldest out of eight, so it's expected to have at least seven. At least."

Jenkins was pleasantly surprised by the prices she found at a Giant supermarket outside Washington D.C.

"They're not bad, honestly," she said. "It's inflation, but it's not terrible compared to how it was earlier."

Grocery prices soared during the pandemic and the years that followed. And they're still climbing faster than many people would like — up 2.7% for the 12 months ending in September.

But a survey by the American Farm Bureau Federation found the average price of food for a Thanksgiving feast is about 5% lower this year than last, largely thanks to a steep drop in the price of turkey.

"We have a mega surplus of food"

Turkey is typically the most expensive item on the Thanksgiving table, but the Farm Bureau found the cost of whole frozen turkeys was down 16% from last year.

"What that tells us is that we have a mega surplus of food in this country," says food economist Michael Swanson of Wells Fargo. "We're just done harvesting the largest corn and soybean crop ever." Low grain prices make it cheaper to feed turkeys.

Wells Fargo's own forecast of Thanksgiving food prices also highlighted savings this year, although not as large as those in the Farm Bureau survey.

There was some fear of a spike in turkey costs after an outbreak of avian flu caused wholesale prices to jump this fall. But Swanson says major grocery chains lock in their prices with turkey producers far in advance. And many stores sell Thanksgiving turkeys at a deep discount to get shoppers in the door.

The Giant store where Jenkins was shopping advertised frozen birds for 27 cents a pound, so long as customers also buy a cartful of other items. The Wells Fargo economist was surprised.

"Wow!" Swanson said. "Absolutely wow! It costs a lot more than 27 cents a pound to get that bird in the freezer."

Costs are down for stuffing, dinner rolls and pie crust. Not the sweet potatoes, though

Falling wheat prices have also led to lower costs for stuffing, dinner rolls, and pie crust for the Thanksgiving spread.

The sweet potatoes to fill that pie are likely to be more expensive this year, due in part to hurricane damage in North Carolina, a big sweet-potato producer. Fresh vegetable prices are also up in the Farm Bureau's tally, but cranberry prices are down.

Shoppers can often save money by choosing store-brand products instead of big national brands. But that price gap has narrowed in recent years, as customers have become more cost-conscious and the big brands want to be competitive.

"The national brands are feeling the heat," Swanson says. "It's really, really hard to convince people these days that the national brand is worth the premium."

Cynthia Pearson, another shopper at Giant, chose store brands for some items on her shopping list. She's hosting dinner for five on Thursday.

"I could go store brand, because I'm usually going to doctor it up somehow," she says. "Put my own little touch and taste on it."

While the price of some Thanksgiving staples has fallen in the last year, they're still higher than they were before the pandemic. Pearson said she hopes to stretch any savings as far as possible.

"We're going to eat Thursday, Friday, it should all be gone by Sunday," she said. "You can't waste anything. This is not a year for that."

Just be thankful our national holiday is not built around beef, where prices have jumped nearly 15% this year.

"Just for our own interest, we prepared a prime rib menu to ballpark it," said Wells Fargo's Swenson. "That's an expensive menu."
Copyright 2025 NPR

A federal judge on Monday dismissed the Justice Department's criminal cases against former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James, finding that the acting U.S. attorney who secured the indictments against the two prominent critics of President Trump was unlawfully appointed.

The decision from U.S. District Judge Cameron McGowan Currie on the appointment of Lindsey Halligan as the top prosecutor in the Eastern District of Virginia marks a significant setback to efforts to go after the president's perceived political enemies.

In dual rulings, Judge Currie said "all actions flowing from Ms. Halligan's defective appointment," including the indictments against Comey and James, "were unlawful exercises of executive power and are hereby set aside."

The cases were dismissed without prejudice, meaning the Justice Department may be able to bring those cases again.

Abbe Lowell, an attorney for James, said they would continue to fight any further charges against her.

"The President went to extreme measures to substitute one of his allies to bring these baseless charges after career prosecutors refused," Lowell said in a statement. "This case was not about justice or the law; it was about targeting Attorney General James for what she stood for and who she challenged."

Former lawyer for Trump

Trump tapped Halligan to serve as acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia after he pushed out the previous top prosecutor, who had expressed doubts about bringing charges against both Comey and James.

Halligan is a former insurance attorney who once served as Trump's personal lawyer before his return to office, when she joined his administration as a White House aide.

Halligan, who has no previous prosecutorial experience, was sworn in as acting U.S. attorney on Sept. 22. Three days later, she secured a two-count criminal indictment against Comey—just days before the statute of limitations expired. He has pleaded not guilty.

Two weeks later, Halligan secured an indictment against James on charges of bank fraud and false statements to a financial institution. James, too, has pleaded not guilty.

"I remain fearless in the face of these baseless charges as I continue fighting for New Yorkers every single day," James said in a statement.

In both cases, Halligan was the only prosecutor to present before the grand jury, the government has said in court papers.

Days before she was sworn into the role, Trump in a social media post called on Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Justice Department to prosecute Comey, James and California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff.

Schiff is not facing charges but federal prosecutors are investigating him on allegations of mortgage fraud.

The Justice Department has defended her appointment and said it followed all proper procedures.

In their separate cases, Comey and James had both sought to have the cases against them dismissed.

—NPR's Carrie Johnson contributed to this report.
Copyright 2025 NPR