The Brief

The Trump administration is sending all pregnant unaccompanied minors apprehended by immigration enforcement to a single group shelter in South Texas. The decision was made over urgent objections from the government’s own health and child welfare officials, who say both the facility and the region lack the specialized care the girls need.

That’s according to seven sources who work at the Office of Refugee Resettlement within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which handles the custody and care of children who cross the border without a parent or legal guardian, or are separated from family by immigration authorities. All of the sources declined to be named for fear of retaliation.

Since late July, more than a dozen pregnant minors have been placed at the Texas facility, which is located in the small border city of San Benito. Some were as young as 13, and at least half of those taken in so far became pregnant as a result of rape, sources said. Their pregnancies are considered high risk by definition, particularly for the youngest girls.

“This group of kids is clearly recognized as our most vulnerable,” one of the sources said. Rank-and-file staff, the source said, are “losing sleep over it, wondering if kids are going to be placed in programs where they’re not going to have access to the care they need.”

The move marks a sharp departure from longstanding federal practice, which placed pregnant, unaccompanied migrant children in ORR shelters or foster homes around the country that are equipped to handle high-risk pregnancies. ORR sources, along with more than a dozen former government officials, health care professionals, migrant advocates and civil rights attorneys, said they worry the Trump administration is putting children in danger at the San Benito shelter to advance an ideological goal: denying them access to abortion by placing them in a state where it’s virtually banned.

A Global X plane sits on a runway near Valley International Airport in Harlington, Texas, on Nov. 4, 2025. The Charter airline operates most deportation flights for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, transporting migrants across the country and abroad.

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“This is 100% and exclusively about abortion,” said Jonathan White, a longtime federal health official who ran ORR’s unaccompanied children program for part of President Donald Trump’s first term. White, who recently retired from the government, said the administration tried and failed to restrict abortion access for unaccompanied minors in 2017. “Now they casually roll out what they brutally fought to accomplish last time and didn’t.”

Asked via email why the administration is sending pregnant children to San Benito, an HHS spokesperson who asked not to be named wrote that “ORR’s placement decisions are guided by child welfare best practices and are designed to ensure each child is housed in the safest, most developmentally appropriate setting, including for children who are pregnant or parenting.”

But several of the ORR officials took issue with the agency’s statement. “ORR is supposed to be a child welfare organization,” one of them said. “Putting pregnant kids in San Benito is not a decision you make when you care about children’s safety.”

ORR’s acting director, Angie Salazar, instructed agency staff to send “any pregnant children” to San Benito beginning July 22, 2025, according to an internal email obtained as part of a six-month investigation by The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom, public media collaboratives that worked together to produce this story.

A screenshot of a July 22, 2025, email notifying ORR supervisors of a directive to send pregnant unaccompanied minors to a single shelter in San Benito, Texas, despite objections from the government’s own health and child welfare officials.

Several sources said a handful of pregnant girls have mistakenly been placed in other shelters because immigration authorities didn’t know they were pregnant when they were transferred to ORR custody.

Since the July order, none of the pregnant girls at the San Benito facility have experienced major medical problems, according to ORR sources and Aimee Korolev, deputy director of ProBAR, an organization that provides legal services to children there. They said several of the girls have given birth and are detained with their infants.

But officials interviewed for this story said they worry the shelter is only one high-risk pregnancy away from catastrophe.

“I feel like we’re just waiting for something terrible to happen,” one of the ORR sources said.

‘Blown away by the level of risk’

There are dozens of ORR shelters or foster homes across the country that are designated to care for pregnant unaccompanied children, according to ORR officials, with 14 in California alone. None of the officials could recall a time when all of the pregnant minors in the agency’s custody were concentrated in one shelter.

Detaining them in San Benito, Texas, doctors and public health experts said, is a dangerous gambit.

Parked white vans inside a gated building at Urban Strategies, a facility that holds unaccompanied minor immigrants under contract with the US Office of Refugee Resettlement, in San Benito, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2025. Refugio San Benito is a facility operated by the group Urban Strategies.

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“It’s not good to be a pregnant person in Texas, no matter who you are,” said Annie Leone, a nurse midwife who recently spent five years caring for pregnant and postpartum migrant women and girls at a large family shelter not far from San Benito. “So, to put pregnant migrant kids in Texas, and then in one of the worst health care regions of Texas, is not good at all.”

The specialized obstetric care that exists in Texas is mostly available in its larger cities, hours from San Benito. And several factors, including the high number of uninsured patients, have eroded the availability of health care across the state.

Furthermore, Texas’ near-ban on abortion has been especially devastating to obstetric care. The law allows an exception in cases where the mother’s life is in danger or one of her bodily functions is at risk, but doctors have been confused as to what that means.

Many doctors have left to practice elsewhere, and those who’ve stayed are often scared to perform procedures they worry could come with criminal charges. While Texas passed a law clarifying the exceptions last year, experts have said it may not be enough to assuage doctors’ fears.

Several maternal health experts described a sobering list of dangers for the girls at the San Benito shelter: If one of them develops an ectopic pregnancy (where the fertilized egg implants outside the uterus), if she miscarries or if her water breaks too early and she gets an infection, the emergency care she needs could be delayed or denied by doctors wary of the abortion ban.

Getting the care that is available could take too long to save her life or the baby’s, they added.

Adolescents are also more likely to give birth early, which can be life-threatening for both mother and baby. The youngest face complications during labor and delivery because their pelvises aren’t fully developed, said Dr. Anne-Marie Amies Oelschlager, an obstetrician in Washington state who specializes in adolescent pregnancy.

“These are young adolescents who are still going through puberty,” she said. “Their bodies are still changing.”

Pregnant girls who recently endured the often harrowing journey to the U.S. face even more risk, obstetrics experts said. Many have been raped along the way and have sexually transmitted infections that can be dangerous during pregnancy. Add to that little to no access to prenatal care or proper nourishment, and then the trauma of being detained.

“You couldn’t set up a worse scenario,” said Dr. Blair Cushing, who runs a women’s health clinic in McAllen, about 45 minutes from San Benito. “I’m kind of blown away by the level of risk that they’re concentrating in this facility.”

A history of problems

The San Benito shelter is owned and operated by Urban Strategies, a for-profit company that has contracted with the federal government to care for unaccompanied children for more than a decade, according to USAspending.gov.

The main building, an old tan brick Baptist Church, occupies a city block in downtown San Benito, a quiet town of about 25,000. The church was converted to a migrant shelter in 2015 and was managed by two other contractors before Urban Strategies took it over in 2021.

On a fall day last year, there were no signs of activity at the facility, though children’s lawn toys and playground equipment were visible behind a wooden fence. A guard was stationed at one of the entrances.

Meliza Fonseca lives across the street from the San Benito shelter. She said she occasionally sees children in the yard on weekends, “but for the most part, you don’t see them.”

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“It’s pretty quiet, just like it is today,” said Meliza Fonseca, who lives nearby. “That’s the way it is every day.”

She said she occasionally sees kids playing in the yard on weekends, “but for the most part, you don’t see them.”

Reached by email, the founder and president of Urban Strategies, Lisa Cummins, wrote that the company is “deeply committed to the care and well-being of the children we serve,” but directed any questions about ORR-contracted shelters to the federal agency.

When asked about the San Benito facility, the ORR spokesperson wrote that “Urban Strategies has a long-standing record of delivering high-quality care to pregnant unaccompanied minors, with a consistently low staff turnover.”

A gated building at Urban Strategies, a facility that holds unaccompanied minor immigrants under contract with the U.S. Office of Refugee Resettlement, in San Benito, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2025.

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But agency sources who spoke with the newsrooms said that as recently as 2024, staff members at the shelter failed to arrange timely medical appointments for pregnant girls or immediately share critical health information with the federal agency and discharged them without arrangements to continue their medical care.

ORR temporarily barred the shelter from receiving pregnant girls while Urban Strategies implemented a remediation plan, but the plan did not add staff or enhance their qualifications, the sources said.

Several sources inside the agency said its leadership was provided with a list of shelters that are better prepared to handle children with high-risk pregnancies. All of those shelters are located outside of Texas, in regions where the full range of necessary medical care is available. Yet the directive to place them at San Benito remains.

“It’s cruel, it’s just cruel,” one of the officials said. “They don’t care about any of these kids. They’re playing politics with children’s health.”

‘A dress rehearsal’

Jonathan White, who ran ORR’s unaccompanied children program from January 2017 to March 2018, said he wasn’t surprised to learn the new administration is moving pregnant unaccompanied children to Texas.

“I’ve been expecting this since Trump returned to office,” White said in an interview.

He said he views the San Benito order as a continuation of an anti-abortion policy shift that began in 2017, which “ultimately proved to be a dress rehearsal for the current administration.”

The Rio Grande is seen near the Old Hidalgo Pumphouse Museum in Hidalgo, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2025. Migrants often cross the river en route to the United States.

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Scott Lloyd, the agency’s director at the time, denied girls in ORR custody permission to end their pregnancies, court records show. Lloyd also required the girls to get counseling about the benefits of motherhood and the harms of abortion and personally pleaded with some of them to reconsider.

“I worked to treat all of the children in ORR care with dignity, including the unborn children,” Lloyd told the newsrooms in an email.

In the fall of 2017, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action lawsuit against Lloyd and the Trump administration on behalf of pregnant girls in ORR custody. The ACLU argued that denying the girls abortions violated their constitutional rights, established by the Supreme Court in its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

Not long after the lawsuit was filed, White said he received a late-night phone call from Lloyd, who had a request. He wanted White to transfer an unaccompanied pregnant girl who was seeking an abortion to a migrant shelter in Texas, where, under state law, it would have been too late for her to terminate her pregnancy.

White believed following the order would have been unlawful because it might have denied the girl access to legal relief under the lawsuit, so he refused. The girl was not transferred.

Lloyd, who has since left the government, told the newsrooms he didn’t believe his request was illegal.

The class action lawsuit was settled in 2020; the first Trump administration agreed not to interfere with abortion access for migrant youth in federal custody going forward. Four years later, the Biden administration cemented the deal in official regulations: If a child who wanted to terminate her pregnancy was detained in a state where it was not legal, ORR had to move them to a state where it was.

That rule remains in place, and the agency appears to be following it; ORR has transferred two pregnant girls out of Texas since July, though agency sources said one of them chose not to terminate her pregnancy.

But now that Trump is back in office, his administration is working to kill the policy.

‘Elegant and simple’

Even before Trump won reelection, policymakers in his circle were planning a renewed attempt to restrict abortion rights for unaccompanied minors.

Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for a politically conservative overhaul of the federal government, called for ORR to stop facilitating abortions for children in its care. The plan advised the government not to detain unaccompanied children in states where abortion is available.

Such a change is now possible, Project 2025 argued, because Roe v. Wade is no longer an obstacle. Since the Supreme Court overturned the landmark decision in 2022, there is no longer a federal right to abortion.

Abortion rights activists rally outside of the U.S. Supreme Court after the overturning of Roe Vs. Wade, in Washington, D.C., on June 24, 2022.

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Upon returning to office, Trump signed an executive order “to end the forced use of federal taxpayer dollars to fund or promote elective abortion.”

Then, in early July, the Department of Justice reconsidered a longstanding federal law governing the use of taxpayer money for abortion. The DOJ concluded that the government cannot pay to transport detainees from one state to another to facilitate abortion access, except in cases of rape or incest or to save the life of the mother.

And now, ORR is working to rescind the Biden-era requirement that pregnant girls requesting an abortion be moved to states where it’s available. On Jan. 23, the agency submitted the proposed change for government approval, though it has not yet published the details.

Several of the ORR officials who spoke with the newsrooms said it’s unclear whether children in the agency’s custody who have been raped or need emergency medical care will still be allowed to get abortions.

“HHS does not comment on pending or pre-decisional rulemaking,” the agency’s spokesperson wrote when asked for details of the regulatory change. “ORR will continue to comply with all applicable federal laws, including requirements for providing necessary medical care to children in ORR custody.”

But the day the change was submitted, an unnamed Health and Human Services spokesperson told The Daily Signal, a conservative news site, “Our goal is to save lives both for these young children that are coming across the border that are pregnant and to save the lives of their unborn babies.”

Like other experts who spoke with the newsrooms, White, the former head of ORR’s unaccompanied children program, said he thinks the San Benito directive and the anti-abortion rule change are meant to work hand in hand: Once pregnant children are placed at the San Benito shelter, the new regulations could mean they cannot be moved out of Texas to get abortions — even if keeping them there puts them at risk.

“It’s so elegant and simple,” White said. “All they have to do is send them to Texas.”

Mose Buchele with The Texas Newsroom contributed reporting.

This story was produced by The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom. The California Newsroom is a collaboration of public media outlets that includes NPR, CalMatters, KQED (San Francisco), LAist and KCRW (Los Angeles), KPBS (San Diego) and other stations across the state. The Texas Newsroom is a public radio journalism collaboration that includes NPR, KERA (North Texas), Houston Public Media, KUT (Austin), Texas Public Radio (San Antonio) and other stations across the state.

The immigration detention center closest to Los Angeles has placed dozens of people in solitary confinement each month since June, according to the most recent data from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In May 2025, the Adelanto ICE Processing Center had 14 people in isolation. When the Trump administration’s mass deportation effort revved up in June 2025, the number of detainees in solitary confinement there more than tripled. By July, it was 73; by August, 105.

The most recent data available shows that number went down slightly in January, to 74 people.

Ranked by percentage of the detainee population in “segregation,” as it is called at immigrant detention centers, Adelanto is among the U.S.’s top 10 facilities as of January, according to an LAist analysis of the most recent ICE data.

The data shows that of 229 ICE facilities that reported holding people since October 2024, between 50 and 60 usually reported putting at least one person in segregation in a given month. Out of the facilities that did place people in solitary confinement, Adelanto tended to do so less often than others until June 2025. (The facility held just a few people from October 2024 into January 2025.) When ICE’s presence increased in L.A. in June, the number of people sent to isolation in the facility also shot up — three to five times as many people have been isolated in Adelanto compared to the average facility that used any solitary confinement.

Since June, only two facilities have sent people to solitary confinement more times than Adelanto: one southwest of San Antonio, the other in central Pennsylvania.

Both of those facilities held twice the number of detainees as Adelanto on average from October 2024 through September 2025; but the number of people held in Adelanto since then has tripled, growing larger than either of the other facilities to hold an average of 1,800 people a day since October.

More on solitary confinement  

According to ICE, detainees may be placed in segregation for “disciplinary reasons,” or because of:

• “Serious mental or medical illness.”
• Conducting a hunger strike.
• Suicide watch.

The agency also says it might place detainees “who may be susceptible to harm [if left among the] general population due in part to how others interpret or assume their sexual orientation, or sexual presentation or expression.”

Not only is ICE holding more people in solitary confinement, but the agency's data also shows that detainees across the country are being isolated for longer periods of time. Detainees ICE considers part of the "vulnerable & special population" spent an average of about two weeks in solitary confinement each time they were isolated in 2022, when ICE first made the data available. By the end of 2025, the average stay in isolation had risen to more than seven weeks straight.

The GEO Group Inc., a private company that operates the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, has not responded to requests for comment.

How isolation can affect immigrant detainees  

UN human rights experts consider solitary confinement placements that last 15 days or more to be torture, though the U.S. Supreme Court has held that isolation doesn’t violate the Constitution.

The UN also maintains that solitary confinement should be prohibited for people “with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”

In January, a coalition of immigrant rights groups filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of current detainees, calling for conditions at Adelanto to be improved. In addition to an unsanitary environment and a lack of healthy food and clean drinking water, detainees say solitary confinement is frequently used to punish those who speak out about conditions at the facility.

People held in immigrant detention centers are technically in “civil detention,” meaning that they are being detained to ensure their presence at hearings and compliance with immigration orders — not to serve criminal sentences.

According to the immigrant rights groups’ complaint, one detainee was placed in solitary confinement after complaining about the showers being broken. Another detainee said that, after asking a guard to “use more respectful language toward him, he was ridiculed, written up and given the middle finger by a guard who shouted, ‘Who the f--- do you think you are?’” Then, the detainee was placed in solitary confinement for 25 days.

Alvaro Huerta, the director of litigation and advocacy at the Immigrant Defenders Law Center who is representing detainees at Adelanto, told LAist that when people are placed in isolation at the facility, they’re typically in the same cell for 23 hours per day, unable to receive visits from their families.

For clients who are experiencing mental health challenges — especially those with suicidal thoughts — being placed in solitary confinement “can really exacerbate their condition,” he added.

In multiple statements to the media, ICE has said that the agency “is committed to ensuring that all those in custody reside in safe, secure and humane environments.” The agency has also said that detainees receive “comprehensive medical care” and that all detainees “receive medical, dental, and mental health intake screenings within 12 hours of arriving at each detention facility.”

Huerta called that “laughable.”

“We have countless examples of people who have said that this is not true, that they're not getting the medication that they're requesting, that they're not being seen for chronic conditions and emergency conditions,” he added. “And we know it's not true because 14 people have died in ICE custody this year alone.”

Lori Rovner of Manhattan Beach is a big sports fan, so there was no question that when tickets for the Olympic Games went on sale, she'd be signing up.

She scored a slot in the first ticket drop, which launched Thursday, and logged on right at 10 a.m., hoping to score tickets to the Opening Ceremonies and some finals too. After battling her computer to get through "access denied" screens and a lost shopping cart due to a 30-minute time limit, she bought 16 tickets.

It was only when she was about to purchase that she noticed the service fees, which were around 24% of each ticket. One $2,100 ticket had a $505 service fee, bringing the total cost to $2,604.63.

"It's insane," she said of the fee. "I don't understand what the service is."

As the locals-only sale kicks off and Southern Californians have their first chance to buy tickets to the Olympic Games, some fans are wide-eyed at the high fees on all tickets and the prices in general, which start at $28 but go up to more than $5,500 a pop. Opening Ceremony tickets start at $328.68

The service fees aren't a surprise add-on. The price fans see when browsing the site is the total cost, including the fee. Still, some who bought in the first phase of sales were surprised when they saw the fees add up.

One user on Reddit of shared their cart of 10 tickets, which added up to $11,264. That included $1,038 in fees alone. Commenters responded in shock and awe.

Service fees are standard in ticket sales, but the percentage they charge can vary widely. High fees have been a source of ire for music and sports fans for years. A 2018 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the average fees on a primary ticket market were 27%.

LA28 did not respond to LAist's requests for details on the service fee, like what it pays for or why it's a percentage rather than a flat rate.

Not everyone seemed bothered by the prices. Some people LAist spoke with opted for only $28 or similarly priced tickets, even if it meant missing some of the biggest Olympic events. One user on Reddit said they purchased 18 tickets for around $550.

"I went with all $28 tickets," they wrote in the online forum about the Olympics. "I got women’s soccer, gymnastics, beach and regular volleyball, track and field, baseball and a few others."

For some, the ticket process, the prices and the dense web of events to choose from made it too hard to pull the trigger.

Jeff Bartow of Sierra Madre made a spreadsheet with some competitions he was interested in seeing before he logged on to buy tickets Friday.

"So many times, so many schedules, so many events," Bartow said. "I think I initially thought I was going to go to a bunch, but thinking about how crazy it's going to be … I might be a little more limited."

This is just the first ticket drop. There will be more opportunities to buy tickets in the months to come — and on a resale market that launches in 2027.

Some ticket-buyers told LAist they already were contemplating which tickets they'd keep and which ones they'd re-sell, just minutes after buying them.

In the more than two months since the Department of Justice released its latest batch of files on the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, prosecutors have not brought any new charges based on the documents, despite federal lawmakers on both sides of the aisle continuing to demand accountability.

The more than 3 million pages of documents include accusations by alleged victims of Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's abuse and thousands of emails and photos showing Epstein associated with prominent figures. The files indicate that many of these people maintained contact with the disgraced financier long after he pleaded guilty in 2008 to sex crimes that involved minors. Appearing in the files is not necessarily an indication of criminal wrongdoing.

The release of the Epstein files came after Congress passed the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which forced the Justice Department to make public all documents it held related to Epstein.

Epstein died in prison about a month after a 2019 arrest on sex-trafficking charges. Maxwell was convicted on sex-trafficking charges in 2021 and is serving a 20-year sentence. Since the release of the files in 2025 and 2026, there have been no related arrests in the U.S. However, the disclosures have led to some resignations and other reputational repercussions for some high-ranking Americans.

The lack of arrests in the U.S. contrasts to the fallout in the U.K., where investigators have pursued charges related to corruption, not sexual abuse, in their dealings with Epstein. Two former government officials — former Prince Andrew and ex-ambassador Peter Mandelson — were arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor, as he is now known, has denied wrongdoing and has not been formally charged. Mandelson has also not been charged, and lawyers for Mandelson have said that the arrest was prompted by a "baseless suggestion."

In the U.S., top Justice Department officials have said that they found no evidence compelling enough to pursue further charges related to Epstein, and that the public can make their own assessments based on the disclosed documents.

In a statement to NPR, Justice Department spokesperson Katie Kenlein said that "there have not been additional prosecutions beyond Epstein and Maxwell because there has not been credible evidence that their activities extended to Epstein's network. However, if prosecutable evidence comes forward, the Department of Justice will of course act on it as we do every day in sexual trafficking and assault cases across the count[r]y."

On Thursday, President Trump announced that Attorney General Pam Bondi is out of the top job at the Justice Department, following bipartisan criticism over her handling of the Epstein files.

NPR asked four former prosecutors and one former law enforcement officer why there may not have been enough evidence to levy additional charges. Here's what they said.

Prosecutors must prove guilt "beyond a reasonable doubt"

Prosecutors must prove to a jury that a person committed a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt," according to Barbara McQuade, a professor at the University of Michigan Law School.

"One of the biggest misconceptions people have is how difficult it is to charge and convict somebody for a criminal case," said McQuade, who served as the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan.

A prosecutor's ethical responsibility is to charge cases only if they believe there is enough evidence for a conviction, McQuade said. Documents, including emails, jokes, and even plane itineraries, can be a place to start, but, alone, they are not enough to prove guilt, McQuade said.

"What you would need [is] rock solid evidence," McQuade said. "You can't charge someone for a crime without sufficient evidence, and I have yet to see evidence of a crime involving an Epstein associate that has gone uncharged."

Based on his understanding of the case, Paul Butler, a professor at Georgetown Law, said he agreed that prosecutors who investigated Epstein's alleged associates "may have believed that they couldn't persuade a jury beyond a reasonable doubt." He said problems with witness credibility or certain forensic evidence can prevent a case from moving forward.

The U.K. cases are focused on corruption 

In the U.K., the two people arrested are being investigated on suspicion of "misconduct in public office." McQuade said the U.S. does not have a single equivalent federal law. Instead, the U.S. prosecutes public corruption through statutes that focus specifically on crimes such as bribery and extortion.

After the release of the latest files, British police began investigating Andrew's correspondence with Epstein when Andrew was a U.K. trade envoy. At that time, Andrew allegedly shared government itineraries, investment plans and notes from official foreign trips with Epstein. The information may have been covered by the United Kingdom's Official Secrets Act.

Similarly, Mandelson has been accused of passing confidential government information to the late sex offender when Mandelson was a U.K. Cabinet minister.

Meeting the burden of proof is especially challenging for sex crime cases

Victim statements are essential for establishing basic elements, such as the timeframe of events, required to build sexual assault cases, said Diane Goldstein, a retired police lieutenant from California and the executive director of the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. But a victim may be reluctant to come forward because of a fear of retaliation, not believing the police can help, believing it is a personal matter, or not wanting to get the perpetrator in trouble.

McQuade noted that in some sex trafficking cases, especially those in which a perpetrator is in a position of power, victims may experience intimidation or threats that prevent them from speaking out.

Victims also may be hesitant to move forward with allegations because they fear having to testify at trials where defense attorneys may attempt to poke holes in their allegations, McQuade said.

Goldstein said that for sex crime cases to advance, investigators need to follow certain policies and procedures. "If you don't have a legitimate police investigation to start, you're not going to get any type of criminal filing," Goldstein said.

Other potential charges are also a difficult path

Prosecutors may have considered pursuing charges of criminal conspiracy related to sex trafficking against people associated with Epstein, said Jessica Roth, a professor at Cardozo School of Law. FBI documents in the files relating to its investigation into Epstein's crimes identify certain people as "co-conspirators."

But Ankush Khardori, a senior writer and columnist at Politico magazine who worked as a federal prosecutor on financial fraud cases, told NPR those identifiers are not "formal accusation[s]" and are simply part of "interim documents."

"The FBI does not determine who is a co-conspirator," Khardori said. "That is a legal judgment that prosecutors make."

But for those conspiracy cases, "criminal intent," in particular, is difficult to establish, said Roth, who worked as a federal prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office for the Southern District of New York for seven years. Criminal conspiracy charges "would require knowledge and intent on the part of each individual who was charged," Roth said. If a person who communicated with Epstein had some suspicion that he was engaged in illegal activity, that alone would not be sufficient evidence to press charges, she said.

Investigators may have considered charges related to criminal tax violations, McQuade said. But the statute of limitations has likely ended on those cases, she said, meaning that prosecutors can no longer bring charges.

The current evidence lacks context

Legal experts say the haphazard way the documents were released and redacted makes it difficult for the public to understand why no additional charges have been filed.

Roth, the Cardozo law professor, said the information is in "isolation," without the appropriate context. "We'll see an individual photograph that looks perhaps incriminating. We'll see an email that looks incriminating, but we don't necessarily have everything that was said before and after that email and that exchange," Roth said.

One document that could explain why no charges were pursued, according to Butler, is a heavily redacted DOJ memo naming "potential co-conspirators" of Epstein. "The parts that should indicate why the department declined prosecution on any alleged co-conspirators other than Ghislaine Maxwell [are] redacted," said Butler, the Georgetown law professor and a former federal prosecutor.

Butler said those redactions are "unusual" because they do not appear to follow the permissible reasons for redactions in the Epstein documents. Those reasons include confidentiality for Epstein's alleged victims, or anything that would compromise an ongoing investigation, Butler said.

"When the Justice Department grudgingly releases information when pressed by politics or forced by Congress, it also creates the impression that they have something to hide," Butler said. "That there is some cover-up going on."
Copyright 2026 NPR

Nearly 30% more students in Los Angeles County experienced homelessness from 2022-23 to 2023-24, making it the county’s highest rate in the past five years and far outpacing the rate of homelessness across the state in the same timeframe, as the resources to identify and support this student population have decreased.

The UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools published two reports on Wednesday on the state of student homelessness in the county: “Rising Numbers, Fading Resources: Students Experiencing Homelessness in Los Angeles County” and “Hidden in Plain Sight: Fear, Underidentification, and Funding Gaps for Housing-Insecure Students in Los Angeles County.”

Researchers found that Norwalk-La Mirada Elementary Unified School District had the highest rate of student homelessness in the county — 1 in 3 students, meaning that over 4,700 students were identified as experiencing homelessness during the 2023-24 school year out of a total cumulative enrollment of about 15,600.

The city of Norwalk, where the district is located in the eastern region of the county, was sued by the state in 2024 for banning emergency shelters and other support services for people experiencing homelessness. Last year, the state reached a settlement with the city, which was forced to overturn the ban and put $250,000 toward building affordable housing.

Student homelessness is defined differently under the McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act, a federal law that requires every public school to count the number of students who are living on the street, in shelters, in motels, in cars, doubled up with other families, or moving between friends’ and relatives’ homes.

As a result of this expanded definition, McKinney-Vento includes doubled-up students in the count of homelessness. Doubled-up is a term used to describe children and youth ages 21 and under living in shared housing, such as with another family or friends, due to various crises.

There were a few other patterns seen in the L.A. County data analyzed by the UCLA researchers:

• Latino students were disproportionately more likely to experience homelessness: they represent 65% of the county’s student population, but 75.5% of student homelessness
• A third of homeless students were in high school
• Many districts with the highest rates of homelessness had higher school instability but lower dropout rates

While McKinney-Vento has an expanded definition that includes more types of homelessness than several other definitions, identifying students remains difficult.

The second report from the UCLA Center for the Transformation of Schools focuses on the lack of dedicated funding for school staff to identify and support homeless students. Students and families facing homelessness do not always self-identify, whether due to fear, shame or being unaware that their housing situation is considered homelessness under McKinney-Vento.

“A lot of these young people are dealing with a lot of trauma, so they don’t want to be identified. They don’t want to be pointed out; sometimes it’s scary for them, because they think we’re going to report them to the Department of Children and Family Services,” said L.A. County Office of Education staff interviewed for this report.

School staff, known as homeless liaisons, who work with homeless students received a historic influx of federal funds during the Covid-19 pandemic — $98.76 million for California, out of $800 million nationwide, from the American Rescue Plan-Homeless Children and Youth.

That funding has since ended, and there is no other dedicated, ongoing state funding set aside solely for the rising number of homeless students. This has led districts in California to “heavily depend on highly competitive and unstable federal streams,” the UCLA researchers wrote. Those federal streams have become increasingly precarious as the federal administration last year sought policy changes that would shift how they are structured.