The Brief

Warning: This story includes graphic images of bodily injury. 

Listen 24:58

Apple

Spotify

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department deputies severely beat Joseph Perez in 2020, then arrested him. His mom Vanessa alleges that she had previously told law enforcement that Perez has a serious mental illness and would need to be placed in a psychiatric facility. Mother and son believe the deputies used unnecessary force on Perez and are the center of an ongoing legal battle, attempting to hold the sheriff’s department accountable for its actions. LAist Mental Health and Wellbeing Reporter Robert Garrova shares more about the case and discusses efforts for transparency around investigations into allegations of excessive use of force.

Deputies severely beat a man struggling with mental health issues. Where are the records?

Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department deputies severely beat Joseph Perez in 2020, then arrested him. His mom Vanessa alleges that she had previously told law enforcement that Perez has a serious mental illness and would need to be placed in a psychiatric facility. Mother and son believe the deputies used unnecessary force on Perez and are the center of an ongoing legal battle, attempting to hold the sheriff’s department accountable for its actions. LAist Mental Health and Wellbeing Reporter Robert Garrova shares more about the case and discusses efforts for transparency around investigations into allegations of excessive use of force.

Subscribe

• Apple
• Spotify

For years, Vanessa Perez has presented pictures of her son's severely bloodied face at gatherings of Los Angeles County officials. At the Board of Supervisors, the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission and sheriff’s community meetings, Perez displays the disturbing images of her son, Joseph Perez, with his battered face on T-shirts, printouts and pictures on her phone.

With these images in hand, Perez continues to call attention to a July night nearly five years ago, when her son was severely beaten by a group of at least five L.A. County Sheriff’s deputies. Perez alleges the beating took place just hours after she informed the department that her son lived with mental illness and needed psychiatric help.

“At the time, I thought they were there to help,” Perez said. “What I know today is totally different."

After the beating, a doctor closed up cuts on Perez’s scalp and face with 17 staples and 19 sutures, medical records show. Deputies alleged Perez was resisting arrest, attacked them and that they too were injured in the scuffle, according to partially redacted Sheriff’s Department records. He was charged with resisting arrest and assaulting deputies, and spent roughly two years incarcerated in L.A. County jail.

Vanessa Perez goes through photos of her son Joseph after his encounter with sheriff’s deputies.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

)

Perez believes that her son was the victim of excessive force at the hands of deputies. The Sheriff’s Department has released some records explaining their actions that night, but more than a dozen pages are fully redacted and do not include any documentation of an internal investigation to determine if the deputies acted appropriately. With the help of a local civil rights attorney, Perez filed a lawsuit in January alleging her son was “violently confronted and unjustifiably detained” by the deputies. The complaint seeks unspecified damages.

Now, Perez’s case is at the center of a legal battle between the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission and the Sheriff’s Department. The commission plans to file a separate lawsuit seeking records relating to Perez and two other cases. The commission wants the full, unredacted use-of-force report and other records, including witness interviews, summaries, exhibits, body camera footage, text messages and photographs or video recordings for all three cases. But so far, the Sheriff’s Department has not supplied the information.

The Perez case shows how people living with severe mental illness can fall through the cracks in systems that are supposed to offer help, leading to criminalization, criminal justice reform advocates told LAist. It also demonstrates the difficulty many families face in seeking law enforcement accountability, especially if they don’t have an attorney. If the commission is successful in its demand for additional records, the Perez case could also have implications for accountability moving forward.

In an emailed statement, the Sheriff’s Department said it “remains committed to working in good faith to support oversight efforts while upholding the legal protections established to ensure the privacy and rights of all individuals involved.”

The department also said its asking a court to decide whether the commission’s interpretation of the law is accurate.

“Should the court agree with the [Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission], the materials will be disclosed,” the department said. “Without judicial guidance or legislative amendment, disclosing confidential peace officer records could expose the Department to serious legal consequences — including potential civil or criminal liability — and, most critically, could erode public trust."

Robert Bonner, outgoing chair of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, told LAist that without being able to review full reports like this, commissioners “cannot provide effective and meaningful oversight of the Sheriff’s Department.”

“The kind of oversight, by the way, that the public, the voters, clearly said they want,” Bonner added.

What happened the night of the beating 

Sheriff’s Department records obtained by LAist tell the partial narrative of an arrest attempt turned violent.

According to sheriff department records, at around 2 a.m. on July 27, 2020, two deputies arrived on scene in the neighborhood of East Valinda, near the City of Industry. They were responding to a call reporting a possible car burglary.

That’s where they allegedly found Joseph Perez tampering with a car and tried to detain him.

Deputies claimed Perez tried to run away. After they tried to detain him, Perez allegedly began kicking and punching one of the deputies. According to a Supervisor’s Use of Force report, the ensuing fight caused one of the deputies to “severely injure his leg.”

Ultimately, six deputies arrived on scene, with five delivering dozens of blows to Perez’s face, head and torso. Deputies alleged they commanded Perez to stop fighting several times.

Perez said he felt like the deputies ganged up on him unnecessarily.

According to the complaint filed by Perez’s attorney, deputies “put him face first on the ground and began to climb on his back.” The complaint further alleges that “at all times during this encounter... [Perez] believed that he was going to die.”

Vanessa Perez goes through video of her son Joseph after his encounter with sheriff’s deputies.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

)

Vanessa Perez said her son was left with facial scars, ongoing pain and has suffered seizures lasting up to two minutes since the incident.

Perez questions why the arrest happened this way, especially since she claims she called the Industry sheriff’s station, where Joseph was being held just two days earlier for being under the influence of methamphetamine. Perez alleges she informed the station that her son lives with a serious mental illness and needed to be hospitalized in a psychiatric facility.

But hours later, Joseph was released anyway.

“There’s no way that those officers did not know who my son was,” Perez said.

Michele Infante, a criminal justice reform advocate formerly with the group Dignity and Power Now, said that after her extensive review of the case, she believes the deputies used excessive force.

She called the deputies' actions “horrific.”

“Everything about this whole case is completely wrong,” said Infante, who now works as a private consultant and has presented the Perez case to the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission. “This case is not just about the Sheriff’s Department beating Joseph terribly the way that they did. It’s about mental health."

Serious mental illness falls through the cracks 

Vanessa Perez said Joseph, now 27, started to show signs of serious mental illness shortly after he was hit by a car when he was 12.

Before the accident, Perez said Joseph had plenty of friends and hung out at a skatepark near their home in West Covina.

After the accident, Perez said he became more and more isolated. Over the years, Perez said Joseph suffered multiple bouts of psychosis, forcing her to call for help from local mental health crisis teams. He was diagnosed with multiple serious mental illnesses, including bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, Perez said.

Once Joseph turned 18, Perez said, the Department of Child and Family Services said that, due to multiple disturbances in the home, Joseph could no longer stay with her and her two minor daughters.

Perez said she had no choice but to file a restraining order on Joseph if she wanted to keep her other two children with her.

“It was the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make... And Joseph ended up on the streets,” Perez told LAist.

She said Joseph, who was unable to care for himself, would come to her home and bang on the doors, asking to come inside.

“And it broke me. It broke me to pieces. Trying to explain to him, ‘you can’t be here,’” she said.

Perez remembers looking for Joseph on the streets every night, trying to make sure he had a meal.

Just two weeks prior to the beating by sheriff’s deputies, Perez said her son was placed in a psychiatric ward. Just days later, he was back on the streets and attempted to light himself on fire, she said.

“I would have gave anything just for them to help me put him in a home,” Perez said.

But instead, he was released without access to supportive services, only to be arrested and incarcerated after the July 2020 incident.

Last year, thanks to the county’s Office of Diversion and Reentry, Joseph was living in supportive housing and trying to get his life back together.

Last September, sitting next to his mom at Magic Johnson Park in Willowbrook, Joseph said he was working toward getting permanent housing, a job and a driver's license.

Vanessa and Joseph Perez.

(

Robert Garrova / LAist

)

As for the incident in 2020, Joseph, a soft spoken man of slight build, said he didn’t think he was treated fairly and hopes the deputies who beat him will be reprimanded.

“Because this is beyond what they should do,” he said. “Basically they just dog piled me and got on top of me and started hitting me on top of my skull... I was bleeding."

'Not set up to help them' 

Criminal justice experts told LAist Perez’s case is indicative not only of the struggles vulnerable people living with mental illness face in getting the proper treatment, but also how difficult it is for families like his to pursue any recourse when they feel like law enforcement uses excessive force.

“People with significant mental health issues are both deeply vulnerable and also incapable, often, of responding to the commands of law enforcement,” said Eric Miller, a law professor at Loyola Law School. “And when they don’t, [law enforcement] then escalate the use of force into physical violence."

Miller also regularly visits the county’s carceral facilities as a member of the Sybil Brand Commission, which is tasked with monitoring jail conditions. He said he checked in on Joseph when he was incarcerated at the request of Perez’s mother.

“If they are treated in this brutal manner and want to gain some measure of justice, the system, especially the oversight system, is not set up to help them,” Miller said.

Oversight bodies, like the Office of Inspector General and Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, aren’t tasked with representing individuals. These oversight groups are typically addressing systemic issues like deputy gangs or jail conditions, Miller said.

Finding an attorney willing to represent someone in Joseph’s situation can prove very difficult, he added.

Joanna Schwartz, a professor of law at UCLA, said that in her research, it's often only through a lawsuit that evidence is truly tested to see who was at fault in cases like this.

“Our law enforcement agencies are pretty uniformly miserable at capturing and making publicly available data about what their officers do,” Schwartz, author of the book Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable, told LAist. “When there’s not a lawyer who has taken on the case and not a lawsuit that’s been filed, we have no idea how many people there are in his situation and in his mother’s situation."

But thanks to Perez’s persistence in getting her son’s story in front of officials, a local civil rights attorney has recently taken up Joseph’s case.

Vanessa Perez goes through documents related to the case of her son Joseph’s encounter with sheriff’s deputies.

(

Brian Feinzimer

/

LAist

)

Jamon Hicks, a partner at Douglas Hicks Law and a current member of the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, filed a complaint in January against the county alleging “serious and unreasonable force” at the hands of sheriff’s deputies.

“I’m really curious to know what it is that the police are saying he did to warrant that kind of force being used to where he looks like that,” Hicks said. “It is incredibly painful to look at [the photos of Joseph] and to wonder what could possibly have happened to justify that level of force.”

Hicks added that he will first have to convince a judge to allow the lawsuit to move forward since filing deadlines were missed years ago.

Why the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission plans to sue 

By way of an official subpoena filed in March, the the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission demanded the Sheriff’s Department produce the full, unredacted use-of-force report package, including any body cam footage, witness interviews and text messages related to the Perez case.

The commission has also demanded records in two other incidents.

In the case of Emmett Brock, a teacher who was beaten by a sheriff’s deputy in a 7-Eleven parking lot, the commission is also seeking use-of-force reports, body-worn camera and bystander footage as well as witness statements. According to the subpoena, the deputy pleaded guilty in federal court to using unconstitutional force against Brock during the 2023 incident.

The commission is also seeking investigative reports and witness interviews in the case of Andres Guardado, a 23-year-old killed by a deputy in June 2020.

But so far, the commission has been unsuccessful in getting the additional records it requested.

In an emailed statement, Max Huntsman, L.A. County’s Inspector General who is tasked with promoting transparency and constitutional policing within the Sheriff’s Department, said the department's custodian of records failed to appear in response to the commission’s subpoena, “which mirrored conduct from the Villanueva administration and was deeply troubling as such a failure to appear is not justified by the assertion of privileges as to some items subpoenaed.”

Huntsman added that the Sheriff’s Department “has always been strongly resistant to oversight.”

“I do not think it is likely that will change any time soon,” Huntsman said.

Commission chair is dismissed 

Amid the commission’s efforts to enforce the subpoenas, the outgoing chair, Bonner, told his colleagues at their last meeting that Supervisor Kathryn Barger dismissed him “without so much as a phone call.”

In a letter dated April 18, County Executive Officer Edward Yen stated that Bonner’s term had expired.

“If you are interested in being considered for reappointment to the Sheriff Civilian Oversight Commission, please submit your resume within one week...” the letter states.

In an emailed statement, Barger said she appreciated Bonner’s service and contributions to the commission.

“I'm committed to broadening the diversity of voices and expertise represented on the Commission and believe it is important to provide others with the opportunity to serve," she said. "My decision reflects my desire to continue cultivating public trust in the oversight process by introducing new perspectives that support the Commission’s vital work."

At its most recent meeting, the commission said it still plans to take legal action demanding that the Sheriff’s Department supply in closed session the records it requested in the three cases.

“There are photos taken shortly after the arrest by Sheriff’s Department deputies that show that he was pretty severely beaten in the face,” Bonner, a retired U.S. District Court judge, told LAist in April. “The photos, by the way, are quite bloody. And his mother, who has appeared before us, has asked the commission a number of times — as the body that’s been given oversight over the Sheriff’s Department — to find out why there was no internal investigation."

The commission, Bonner said, thinks it can receive and review the confidential reports in closed session.

“The Office of the County Counsel has fully supported the COC, as an advisory body to the Board, in its efforts to seek the information it needs to play a powerful oversight role on behalf of L.A. County citizens,” L.A. County Counsel said in a statement. “This includes assisting with a declaratory relief action that will hopefully bring judicial clarity to the commission's ability to obtain the information it seeks and also drafting an ordinance to allow the COC to meet in closed session."

Bonner said he believes the commission will eventually get the Perez records.

L.A. County residents, he said, gave the commission this oversight power when voters overwhelmingly passed Measure R in 2020, empowering the body with the authority to directly subpoena the department.

“This power is meaningless unless we can actually get access and review things like use of force reports and death review reports,” Bonner said.

During public comment at the oversight commission’s May 20 meeting, Vanessa Perez thanked commissioners for trying to move forward with the subpoenas.

“The people voted for this commission to have subpoena power so it could get to the bottom of cases like Joseph[‘s] and make sure deputies are held accountable for their actions,” Perez said. “I encourage you all to do whatever is necessary to get this information.”

Sunday is the 98th Academy Awards, where many of Hollywood's top talents will walk the red carpet before settling in for a night of triumphs, heartbreaks and abruptly cut-off acceptance speeches.

Most of us just refer to the ceremony as "the Oscars," the longstanding nickname of the gold-plated statuettes that winners in each category take home.

Cedric Gibbons, the art director of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, is credited with designing the iconic statue ahead of the first annual awards banquet of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka "the Academy") in 1929.

He dreamed up the knight (possibly modeled on a Mexican actor of the era) standing on a reel of film, holding a crusader's sword to defend the industry from outside criticism. And Los Angeles-based sculptor George Stanley made the statuette a reality, one that stands 13 1/2 inches tall and weighs 8 1/2 pounds.

Its full legal name is the "Academy Award of Merit." The Academy officially adopted its nickname, Oscar, in 1939.

But where did it come from?

Bruce Davis got that question all the time — in letters and emails from the curious public — during his two-decade tenure as the Academy's executive director, which ended in 2011.

"And what astonished me was that when I would ask around the building, everybody would say, 'Well, we don't exactly know,'" he told NPR. "And so I didn't do anything about it myself until I was retiring."

Davis decided to use his newfound free time to compile a history of the institution, ultimately publishing The Academy and the Award in 2022. One of the questions it explores is the origin of the Oscar nickname.

"As it turned out, that was not an easy thing to find out," Davis said. "It took a lot of running around and doing some actual research, and I did finally come up with something that I'm reasonably confident is the right answer."

There are three enduring — and competing — myths about where the name came from. Davis debunked them all and proposed a fourth.

The debunked claims 

"Oscar" made its first mainstream newspaper appearance as shorthand for an Academy Award in March 1934, when entertainment journalist Sidney Skolsky used it in his Hollywood gossip column.

Davis recounts the apocryphal legend this way: Skolsky was running up against deadline on his awards-night rough draft when he was stopped by the word "statuette."

"He thought it sounded awfully snobby and he didn't know how to spell it," he said. "And he asked a couple of people around in the hall, and I guess no one was helping him spell statuette."

Skolsky later said he thought back to a vaudeville routine where the master of ceremonies would tease an orchestra member by asking, "Oscar, will you have a cigar?" And he claimed he decided to poke fun at the ceremony's pretentiousness by referring to the statuettes as Oscars instead.

Davis sees a few holes in this story, namely that the term appeared in at least one industry publication months before Skolsky's column. But it's not a total loss for Skolsky, who is separately credited with coining or at least popularizing the term "beefcake."

The most famous version of events involves none other than legendary actress Bette Davis. She had long claimed, including in her 1962 biography, that she coined the Oscar's nickname while accepting her first Academy Award some three decades earlier.

"Her story was that she was holding [it] in her hands and just kind of waiting for the ceremonies to move along, and she started looking at the hindquarters of the statuette and she said … the hindquarters of the statuette were the very image of her husband," Davis explained.

But Davis' husband at the time, musician Harmon Oscar Nelson Jr., was primarily known by another nickname, "Ham." And mentions of "Oscar" appeared in print years before Davis won her first one, in 1936. Davis eventually retracted the claim in her 1974 book, telling her biographer: "A sillier controversy never existed."

"I don't feel my fame and fortune came from naming Oscar 'Oscar,'" she said, according to USA Today. "I relinquish once and for all any claim."

The more-likely suspects

Perhaps a more likely source is Margaret Herrick, the Academy's mid-20th century librarian-turned-executive director.

She apparently referred to the statue as such in the 1930s "because it looked like her Uncle Oscar," said Monica Sandler, a film and media historian at Ball State University.

Sandler says Herrick is the most logical choice, given her proximity to the Academy.

Herrick joined her then-husband, executive director Donald Gledhill, at the Academy in the early 1930s as an unpaid volunteer, and became its official librarian in 1936. Herrick took over as interim executive director when he left for the Army in 1943.

She was formally appointed to the role two years later and led the Academy until her retirement in 1971.

"There are very few women with the type of power and control she had over an institution at that time in the industry," Sandler said.

Herrick is credited with building up the Academy's library into one of the world's primary film research centers, as well as negotiating the award show's first television contract — and a major step toward financial independence — in 1953.

Davis says she often took credit, in conversations and media interviews, for jokingly naming the Oscar after her uncle. But he's skeptical of Herrick's claim.

"We're not sure that she was really the first person to use that because she had difficulties over the ensuing years in identifying this Uncle Oscar," he explained.

Davis does, however, think that the most likely originator was someone else on the early staff of the Academy: Eleanore Lilleberg, a secretary and office assistant who apparently oversaw the pre-ceremony handling of the statuettes.

He said her name surfaced every now and then, but he didn't have "much hard proof" until after his retirement, when he got wind of the Einar Lilleberg Museum. It's a small community center in California's Green Valley honoring Eleanore's brother, Einar Lilleberg, an artist and craftsman. He booked a visit and immediately happened upon a box of Einar's writings.

"And I thought: 'This is it. Now, this is going to tell the story about the Oscar,'" Davis says. "And he almost did."

He said Einar's correspondence was light on detail, but unmistakably credited the naming to his sister, describing it as: "Yes, she got in the habit of doing that, and the rest of the staff thought it was amusing not to call them the 'Academy Award of Merit,' but just 'Oscar' … and it really did catch on."

So which Oscar did Lilleberg have in mind? Her brother's explanation, which Davis endorses, is that she was thinking back to a Norwegian veteran they had known as children in Chicago, who "was kind of a character in town and famous for standing straight and tall."

Davis wasn't able to track down that particular Oscar. But he says no one has challenged his theory in the years since his book was published, "so I'm sticking with it."

The lingering mystery 

While Davis takes some personal satisfaction in the outcome of his quest, he accepts that the mystery of the Oscar nickname may never be solved conclusively.

"If I had come up empty, I wouldn't be arguing that we need to change the name," he said. "But it's interesting that it became such a tradition. There were no film awards that had a personal name before Oscar gained his, and then … within the next couple of years … everybody started looking for a personal name."

Sandler, the media historian, says that because the Academy Awards were "really the first major pop culture award," many others used it as a template.

The prizes in other countries' most-prestigious award ceremonies have similarly personified names: France's César Awards, Mexico's Ariel Awards, Italy's David's. Plus, there are the Emmy and Tony awards, both products of the mid-20th century.

Davis says he's just satisfied that people are still interested in the Oscars, regardless of who they're named after.

"You feel closer to an award if you're on a first-name basis with it, I guess," he added.

After years of faded storefronts, Inglewood’s Market Street is getting a facelift.

The Inglewood City Council voted 4-0 on Tuesday to move forward with plans to split $8.5 million in state grant money among Market Street businesses for renovation projects. 

Market Street’s shopping area, which runs south from Florence Avenue, has visibly lagged behind other corners of Inglewood during the city’s decade-long building blitz. 

“It’s a ghost town for the most part,” said Jeffrey Psalms, owner of the Cuban Leaf Cigar Lounge. 

The revitalization of Market Street “has always been a priority,” said Bernard McCrumby, the city’s development services director. He said city officials want the street to become a cultural hub that represents the best parts of Inglewood.

City leaders are timing their beautification efforts to coincide with a hopeful boost in foot traffic from the planned Inglewood Transit Connector. The city is currently moving to take over the shopping mall on Market Street and Florence Avenue for the transit station.

A large part of the city’s planning are the business renovation grants — up to $250,000 cash grants that McCrumby said business owners can use for internal or external improvements. McCrumby said the grants are conditional on building owners keeping rents stable for five years. 

The city has been working on the project since early 2025. McCrumby said the first group of awardees were notified this week, with another group coming soon. PCR Business Finance, a development advisory firm, is being paid by the city to run the program. 

Not every business on Market Street will get a grant. The city had more than 80 applicants ask for more than $17 million in grants last summer — well over what the city has available — and won’t be opening up for new applications, McCrumby said. 

Owen Smith, one of the co-owners of The Miracle Theater, said the theater won a $250,000 grant that it will use to repair the theater’s marquee and refresh the outside paint. Smith said the theater is hoping the grants and permits will come through before the FIFA World Cup. 

“It’s a boost,” he said. “We’ll see what it turns into.” 

Psalms, the cigar lounge owner, said he wasn’t able to apply for a grant because he couldn’t track down the owner of his building to sign off on an application. To him, he said, the program was a bust.

Inglewood is aiming to have all of its Market Street beautification efforts done in advance of the Olympics, McCrumby said.

Market Street is going in a different direction from its heyday, official says

Psalms recalled a different level of energy on the street when he was a child visiting the former Fox Theatre, the Big 5 and the Inglewood Marketplace swap meet. He believes there’s still a lot of potential.

“The intention to be better is there. I don’t think we’ve been forgotten about,” Psalms said. 

Where development in other parts of the city has spiked in recent years, Market Street has lagged. Sip & Sonder, a Black-owned coffee shop that held down a flagship spot on Market Street for seven years, closed in December. 

Psalms estimated half of the storefronts around his lounge are vacant. His own business remains stable, he said, thanks to a stream of out-of-town visitors. 

McCrumby said the street is starting to “go in a different direction” from its heyday. More bars and restaurants line the street than before, he said, and city residents should expect more service businesses as residential development continues in Inglewood’s downtown core. 

The city is also in the middle of planning for streetscape improvements that could include new lighting and landscaping. Last week, the city hosted meetings with business owners and community members to get feedback on designs.

For decades, people applying for Medicaid were told their personal information — including their names, addresses and immigration status — would not be used for immigration enforcement.

But a December court ruling changed that. And that change has sent ripples of fear through families and communities.

"My daughter's life depends on Medicaid," says P., who asked that NPR identify her by her first initial only.

P. and her family have legal immigration status, but she fears that the health insurance keeping her medically fragile daughter alive could also put her family at risk of being detained or deported by immigration authorities.

For decades Medicaid promised eligible immigrants they wouldn't share information with immigration authorities. It was even explicitly written on government websites. Those commitments are no longer on the Medicaid website.

The promise was meant to assure eligible immigrants "to feel comfortable that they can access their care without fear of putting their immigration status into jeopardy," says Cindy Mann, who oversaw Medicaid during the Obama administration and now works at the legal and consulting firm Manatt Health.

Mann calls the change, which the Trump administration began quietly last year, a "180-degree reversal of longstanding policy."

'Anxiety every day'

P.'s 11-year-old daughter has Rett Syndrome, a rare neurological condition that makes it hard for her to eat, breathe, walk and talk.

"She receives in-home support," P. says, along with frequent visits to cardiologists, pulmonologists and other specialists. "She also receives [physical therapy], [occupational therapy], speech, aquatic therapy on a weekly basis."

All this care would cost tens of thousands of dollars without Medicaid — the joint state and federal health insurance program for more than 70 million people with low-incomes or disabilities.

P. says she and her husband are allowed to work in the U.S. legally and have private health insurance through their jobs. They have two children who qualify for Medicaid coverage because of disabilities.

"It brings us an amount of anxiety every day," P. says. She's had friends detained by immigration authorities and she worries about her family's safety. This is the case even though everyone in P.'s family has legal status, including two of their children who are citizens.

Unusual requests 

Twenty-two states have sued to stop federal health agencies from sharing Medicaid data with the Department of Homeland Security, including Arizona, Michigan and New Jersey. At the moment, following the December ruling in federal court in San Francisco, Medicaid can share names, addresses and other identifying information for people who are in the country unlawfully with immigration officials. In the remaining 28 states including Texas, Kentucky and Utah, there are no limits on what Medicaid data can be shared with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other entities.

Some other recent federal actions are raising new alarms.

One former state Medicaid director told NPR they received what they described as a highly unusual request from the federal government in summer 2025 — a list of mostly Latino-looking last names, with instructions to check only immigration status.

The director, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss federal communications, said that's not how these reviews typically work. Usually, states are asked to review all criteria — income, disability and immigration status — to determine eligibility for the program, not single out one factor.

The director says they were floored. After reviewing the cases, they found everyone on the list remained eligible to continue with Medicaid.

Last August, the federal agency that oversees Medicaid, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), started a new initiative to review immigration status of Medicaid enrollees. The agency said in a press release it would start sending monthly enrollment reports with names of people it needed states to verify.

The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to NPR's questions about whether the data has been used for immigration enforcement. In the Federal Register and in a memo issued in October 2025, ICE says that it is rescinding a 2013 policy that said CMS and HHS data would not be used for immigration enforcement. The Associated Press first reported on the Trump administration's change in July 2025.

Choosing between care and fear

At Venice Family Clinic in Los Angeles, staff say patients are increasingly asking whether it's safe to remain on Medicaid.

Pattie Lopez manages the clinic's health insurance department. She says one patient became so worried about the policy change that she dropped her coverage — only to return after struggling without it.

"She found it incredibly hard to go without health coverage," Lopez says. "Now she's here taking a risk because she needs her medication."

Venice Family Clinic is qualified to receive special federal funding to take care of vulnerable communities, and 80% of its 45,000 patients rely on Medicaid. If people drop coverage but still need care, the clinic could face financial strain. It has already frozen hiring and is looking for other ways to cut costs.

Andrew Cohen, an attorney with Health Law Advocates in Massachusetts, said that for people already enrolled in Medicaid or other programs, the federal government likely has their information already.

"So remaining on coverage may be no additional risk," he said. "But there are instances where it may not be safe for everybody."

Some immigrants may be weighing whether to sign up or continue coverage. For P., though, walking away from Medicaid isn't possible.

"We don't have any other option," she says about dropping coverage for her severely disabled daughter. "We will have to risk that."

Without the coverage, she says, it's her daughter's life that would be at risk.

When Kate Morrow gave birth to twins eight years ago, they were very premature, with compromised immune systems.

"We counted on the community to keep our children safe," Morrow says. She trusted that her neighbors were vaccinating their children to protect other vulnerable people in her community — including her twins. But that's no longer the case.

Morrow and her family moved to Spartanburg County, S.C., in 2019. The area is the epicenter of the biggest measles outbreak in the U.S. in more than three decades, with nearly 1,000 confirmed cases. Measles — one of the world's most contagious diseases — was declared eliminated in the U.S. in 2000, thanks to widespread vaccination and school vaccine requirements.

But with the current resurgence of measles, the country is at risk of losing that elimination status.

In Spartanburg County, school vaccination rates have fallen to just under 89% — well below the 95% threshold needed to prevent community outbreaks.

And it's not just Spartanburg. There are places around the country where vaccination rates have sunk to levels low enough to allow outbreaks to flare, says Michael Osterholm, director of the University of Minnesota's Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy.

"There are a lot more South Carolinas waiting to happen," he says.

Morrow says it's hard for her to understand why so many parents in her community are turning against vaccines.

"How did we get here?" she asks. "How did we get to a place where we don't trust our doctors to do the very best thing for our children? How did we get to a place where vaccinations have become political?"

The answer is a mix of widespread misinformation, lingering resentment over COVID mandates and politicians at the local and national level who are sowing mistrust of vaccines.

'I don't trust anything anymore'

Margarita DeLuca says she didn't give much thought to vaccines until COVID hit. She has three children and lives in neighboring Greenville County. When the COVID vaccine was first rolled out, DeLuca was scared that it had been developed too quickly to be trustworthy, and she was opposed to vaccine mandates.

"I think it should have been a choice. It shouldn't have been shoved down your throat like you have to do it," DeLuca says.

DeLuca is not alone. Resentment over vaccine mandates and other public health measures during the pandemic prompted more parents to question vaccine requirements, says Dr. Martha Edwards, president of the South Carolina chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics.

"COVID hit and people really didn't like the mandates and that was a big boiling point," Edwards says. "And in South Carolina, that really has caused a lot of people to escalate their feelings of 'don't tell me what to do.' "

Still, when DeLuca's eldest child, Nikko, was born in the summer of 2021, she got him his routine shots for the first couple of years of his life.

But about a week after he got his 2-year-old vaccinations, Nikko spiked a fever and experienced a seizure.

"He froze up and then he started convulsing right in my arms — the scariest thing ever," DeLuca recalls.

Nikko recovered. Her pediatrician at the time told her these seizures can happen when toddlers get high fevers, and it's unlikely vaccines played a role. But DeLuca remains dubious.

"He hasn't had any seizures since. But he hasn't had any vaccines either. I'm not saying it's from that, but there is a chance," she says.

So, like a growing number of parents nationwide, DeLuca decided to forgo vaccinations for Nikko, now 4, and his twin infant siblings.

"I'm grateful that I did not vaccinate them right now," she says. "Maybe at 5 years old, their bodies are bigger and they have a higher immune system. They can handle things."

Local pediatrician Stuart Simko with Prisma Health in Greer, S.C., says he hears this from other parents. And he tries to explain why delaying vaccinations is risky.

"This is the time where your child is at a higher risk, the younger they are, for complications from many of the things that we vaccinate against," he says.

For instance, the measles, mumps and rubella, or MMR, vaccine can prevent serious complications from measles like brain swelling and pneumonia, both of which have been documented among children in this outbreak. Vaccines can also prevent immune amnesia, a phenomenon where the virus wipes out parts of the immune system, leaving kids vulnerable to new infections for several years.

And the virus can be deadly. Before the first vaccines were developed in the 1960s measles used to kill hundreds of U.S. children every year.

Simko says he tries not to judge parents but to listen to their fears.

"The parent who's choosing not to vaccinate their child, they're not trying to make a bad medical decision. They want what's best for their child. And we have to understand where they're coming from," he says.

Social media is a big problem. Many of Simko's patients are overwhelmed by information; some of it is good, he says and some is just not backed by science.

DeLuca says she no longer knows what to believe when it comes to online information.

"I don't trust anything anymore. I really don't."

Exemptions rise, vaccination rates fall 

Spartanburg County is a solidly conservative part of South Carolina. Dotted with small towns, its sprawling countryside is home to rural communities, conservative faith groups and a sizable Slavic immigrant population. All of these groups tend to have lower vaccination rates across the U.S.

In the majority of states, parents can apply for nonmedical exemptions to required vaccines for religious, personal or philosophical reasons. In Spartanburg County, the use of religious exemptions has skyrocketed since the pandemic. Today, nearly 10% of students in the county have a religious exemption — up from 3.4% at the start of the 2020-21 school year.

The result is that vaccination rates among school children are dropping. The majority of schools in Spartanburg County now have vaccination rates below the 95% threshold required to prevent measles outbreaks. In one public charter school — which has seen dozens of students quarantined for measles — the vaccination rate is a shockingly low 21%.

Republican state Sen. Josh Kimbrell, a lifelong Spartanburg resident, says he understands why parents have grown more skeptical of vaccines in the wake of what he calls the government's "overbearing" response to COVID. But he says the distrust has gotten "out of control."

The exemptions have become easy to obtain — parents can download a form and they don't have to state their religious reasoning. All they have to do is get it notarized.

"I know people who haven't set foot in a church in five years who suddenly decide it's a religious liberty exemption and don't have a religious reason," Kimbrell says. "They just don't want to do it. And that's fine but just say that."

Public health researchers say eliminating nonmedical exemptions to vaccine requirements could help raise falling vaccination rates. But in South Carolina, where opposition to government mandates is firmly entrenched, that's unlikely to happen. Last week, the state legislature shot down a bill that would have kept unvaccinated children out of schools.

And it's not just South Carolina. A recent study found the rate of nonmedical exemptions to vaccines has risen steadily in the majority of U.S. counties, and this trend has accelerated since the pandemic.

Parents changing their minds

Gene Zakharov is one of those Spartanburg parents who got religious exemptions for his children. He owns a cafe, 121 Coffee, in sight of Emmanuel Church where he's an active member of the leadership team.

Zakharov is part of the large Slavic community drawn to Spartanburg by its conservative politics and sunshine. He says many people from the former Soviet Union who settled here "don't believe in vaccines."

"People who lived there have a big distrust in the government, to say the least," he says.

He and his wife didn't vaccinate their two youngest children. They worried about potential side effects from vaccines. But they changed their minds after their 13-year-old daughter was exposed to measles at a friend's house and spent time in quarantine.

"It doesn't hit you until you actually come in contact with something like this. You're like, well, thank God my kid is all right. But you know, what if she wasn't?"

Zakharov is not the only parent questioning earlier decisions. As the measles outbreak exploded in January, pediatrician Stuart Simko says his phone started ringing.

"I've had several patients who've said no to vaccinations in the past who've said, 'Hey, what do you think of the MMR?' " he says. "What do you think about measles? It's in our backyard."

He explains how dangerous the measles virus can be. And "a lot of people are changing their minds," Simko says.

Combatting myths and fears

Tracy Hobbs changed her mind recently.

Last month Hobbs brought her 5-year-old twins, Joseph and Alice, to a mobile vaccine clinic to get their first dose of the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine. The twins should have gotten their first shots around 12 months of age, but Hobbs decided against it at the time. That's because her oldest child, now 7, was diagnosed with autism shortly after he got his first measles vaccine.

Hobbs says she saw conflicting information about whether the vaccines were to blame.

"We were afraid that if we had gotten the kids the vaccines, that it might actually cause autism," Hobbs says. "And that's really messed us up because what are you supposed to believe?"

Claims linking the vaccine to autism stem from a 1998 study that has been thoroughly debunked by a large body of research, but this misinformation still circulates widely. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has long promoted the discredited claim and he recently directed the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to change its website to say the link can not be ruled out. Hobbs says all the conflicting information out there is confusing.

"You have one person saying, hey, this could cause the kid to get autism. And then you have somebody saying, no. I've gotten conflicting information since the day they were born," she says.

But when her twins were also diagnosed with autism, even though they weren't vaccinated, Hobbs changed her mind. With measles spreading rapidly around her, she decided to get them the shot. "The measles aren't really something to play with," Hobbs says.

'Not an outlier'

Spartanburg mom Kate Morrow says it pains her to know this kind of misinformation about vaccines and autism still circulates. One of her twins has autism. Both are fully vaccinated.

She wants to encourage parents to trust the science and to speak openly with their pediatrician about their fears.

She feels so strongly about this that she's helping a pro-vaccine advocacy group called South Carolina Families for Vaccines get off the ground. "I'm rooting for the mom in the middle that's feeling lost and scared and doesn't really know what to do," Morrow says.

There's some evidence that outreach efforts are working. State epidemiologist Linda Bell says vaccination rates in Spartanburg County were up by 133% in February compared to the previous year. And new measles cases have slowed significantly.

But the danger hasn't disappeared altogether, says Scott Thorpe, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Public Health Leadership.

"I think what keeps me up at night more than anything else is that Spartanburg is not an outlier," he says. He notes that just across the border in western North Carolina, there are lots of counties with lower vaccination rates. "And we've already started to see some cases there."

Across the U.S., there have been 12 new measles outbreaks so far this year, and more than 1,280 confirmed cases, according to the CDC.

"It's just kind of percolating in all these places," Thorpe says. "And eventually it's going to catch on and turn into a big outbreak, just like Spartanburg. And it's just going to keep on happening as vaccination rates get lower."