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In two recent polls, a majority of U.S. adults said they use social media to get health information.
July 2025 by KFF, a leading health policy research nonprofit: 55% said they use social media “to find health information and advice” at least occasionally. Less than one in 10 said “most” of the information is trustworthy.
September 2024 by Healthline: 52% said they learned from social media health and wellness tools, resources, trends, or products they tried in the past year. About 77% expressed at least one negative view, such as “there is a lot of conflicting information.”
An April 2024 medical journal article said that over one-third of social media users perceived high levels of health misinformation, and two-thirds reported “high perceived discernment difficulty.”
The University of Wisconsin-Madison is conducting a long-term study to determine how social media affects the physical/mental health of adolescents.
This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.
Do the majority of Americans use social media to get health information? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Craig Stingley had no legal training, no big-name lawyer or civil rights advocate by his side. Yet for 13 years, he refused to accept that the judicial system would hold no one responsible for the killing of his 16-year-old son, Corey.
The quest for justice dominated his life.
He gathered police reports, witness statements and other evidence in the Dec. 14, 2012, fatal incident inside a Milwaukee-area convenience store. The youth had tried to shoplift $12 worth of flavored malt beverages at the shop before abandoning the items and turning to leave. That’s when three men wrestled him to the ground to hold him for the police.
The medical examiner determined that he died of a brain injury from asphyxiation after a “violent struggle with multiple individuals.” The manner of death: homicide.
When prosecutors chose not to charge anyone, Stingley waged a legal campaign of his own that forced the case to be reexamined. A 2023 ProPublica investigation pieced together a detailed timeline of what happened inside the store, recounted what witnesses saw and examined the backgrounds of the three customers involved in the altercation.
Finally, this week, in an extraordinary turn of events, Stingley will see a measure of accountability. On Monday, a criminal complaint filed in Milwaukee County Circuit Court charged the surviving patrons — Robert W. Beringer and Jesse R. Cole — with felony murder. The defendants are set to appear in court on Thursday.
Beringer’s attorney, Tony Cotton, described the broad outlines of a deferred prosecution agreement that can lead to the charges being dismissed after the two men plead guilty or no contest. The men may be required by the court to make a contribution to a charity in honor of Corey Stingley and to perform community service, avoiding prison time, according to Cotton and Craig Stingley.
In Wisconsin, felony murder is a special category for incidents in which the commission of a serious crime — in this case, false imprisonment — causes the death of another person. The prosecutor’s office in Dane County, which is handling the matter, declined to comment. Cole’s attorney said his client had no comment. Previously, the three men have argued that their actions were justified, citing self-defense and their need to respond to an emergency.
For Stingley, a key part of the accountability process already has taken place. Last year, as part of a restorative justice program and under the supervision of a retired judge, Stingley and the two men interacted face to face in separate meetings.
There, inside an office on a Milwaukee college campus, they confronted the traumatic events that led to Corey Stingley’s death and the still-roiling feelings of resentment, sorrow and pain.
Craig Stingley said he felt that, after years of downplaying their role, the men showed regret and a deeper understanding of what had happened. For instance, Stingley said, he and Cole aired out their different perspectives on what occurred and even reviewed store surveillance video together.
“I have never been able to breathe as clearly and as deeply and feel as free as I have after that meeting was over,” Stingley said.
Restorative justice programs bring together survivors and offenders — via meetings or letters or through community panels — to try to deepen understanding, promote healing and discuss how best to make amends for a wide range of harms. The approach has been used by schools and juvenile and criminal justice systems, as well as nations grappling with large-scale atrocities.
Situations where restorative justice and deferred prosecution are employed for such serious charges are rare, Cotton said. But, he said, the whole case is rare — from the prosecution declining to issue charges initially to holding it open for multiple reviews over a decade.
“Our hearts go out to the Stingley family, and we believe that the restorative justice process has allowed all sides to express their feelings openly,” Cotton said. “We are glad that a fair and just outcome has been achieved.”
Milwaukee’s district attorney at the time of Corey Stingley’s death, John Chisholm, announced there would be no charges 13 months later, in January 2014. Cole, Beringer and a third man, Maurio Laumann, now deceased, were not culpable because they did not intend to injure or kill the teen and weren’t trained in proper restraint techniques, Chisholm determined.
Craig Stingley, who is Black, and others in the community protested the decision, claiming the three men — all white — were not good Samaritans but had acted violently to kill a Black youth with impunity. “When a person loses his life at the hands of others, it would seem that a ‘chargeable’ offense has occurred,” the Milwaukee branch of the NAACP said in a statement at the time.
Looking for a way to reopen the case, Stingley reexamined the evidence, including security video. In a painful exercise, he watched the takedown of his son, by his estimation hundreds of times, analyzing who did what, frame by frame. What he saw only reinforced his view that his son’s death was unnecessary and his right to due process denied.
Corey Stingley and his father lived only blocks from VJ’s Food Mart, in West Allis, Wisconsin. That December day, Stingley made his way to the back of the store and stuck six bottles of Smirnoff Ice into his backpack. At the front counter, the teenager provided his debit card to pay for an energy drink, but the clerk demanded the stolen items. Stingley surrendered the backpack, reached toward the cash register to recover his debit card, then turned to exit.
Cole told police he extended his hand to stop Stingley and claimed that the teen punched him in the face, though it is not evident on the video. The three men grabbed the youth. During a struggle, the men pinned Stingley to the floor.
Laumann kept Stingley in a chokehold, several witnesses told investigators. ProPublica later discovered that Laumann had been a Marine. His brother told ProPublica he likely learned how to apply chokeholds as part of his military service decades ago.
Beringer had Stingley by the hair and was pressing on the teen’s head, a witness told authorities. Cole helped to hold Stingley down. Eventually, Stingley stopped resisting. The police report states that Cole thought the teen was “playing limp” to trick them into loosening their grip.
“Get up, you punk!” Laumann told the motionless teen when an officer finally arrived, according to a police report. Stingley was foaming at the mouth and had urinated through his clothes. The officer couldn’t find a pulse. Stingley never regained consciousness, dying at a hospital two weeks later.
Craig Stingley unsuccessfully sought a meeting with Chisholm in 2015 to discuss the lack of charges. “Feel free to seek legal advice in the private sector regarding your Constitutional Rights,” an assistant to Chisholm replied to Stingley in an email. “I extend my deepest sympathy to you and your family!”
Stingley’s review of the video, however, did bring about another legal opportunity in 2017, after he notified West Allis police that there was footage showing Laumann with his arm around the teen’s throat. (Laumann had denied putting him in a headlock.) A Racine County district attorney was appointed to review the evidence again. She issued no report for three years, until pressed by the court, then concluded that no charges were warranted.
Finally, Stingley discovered an obscure Wisconsin “John Doe” statute. It allows private citizens to petition a judge to consider whether a crime had been committed if a district attorney refuses to issue a criminal complaint.
A former process engineer for an electrical transformer manufacturer, Stingley had no legal training. Still, in November 2020, he filed a 14-page petition with the then-chief judge of the Milwaukee County Circuit Court, Mary Triggiano. It cited legal authority and “material facts,” including excerpts from police reports, witness statements and stills from the surveillance video. Stingley quoted former U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis in the petition and the British statesman William Gladstone: “Justice delayed is justice denied.”
That led to the appointment in July 2022 of Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne to review the case. But that process was slowed by procedural hurdles. Stingley took the delays in stride, saying he trusted that Ozanne and his staff were treating the matter seriously and acting appropriately.
In 2024, Stingley said, Ozanne’s office advised him that they had found sufficient evidence to issue charges against Cole and Beringer but could not guarantee that a jury would deliver a guilty verdict. Stingley, researching the family’s options, said he inquired about the restorative justice process. The DA’s office supported the idea, arranging for him and the two men to meet under the supervision of the Andrew Center for Restorative Justice, part of the law school at Milwaukee’s Marquette University. The program is run by Triggiano, who’d retired from the court.
The concept of restorative justice can be traced back to indigenous cultures, where people sat together to talk through conflict and solve problems. It emerged in the United States in criminal justice systems in the 1970s as a way to provide alternatives to prison and restitution to victims. Elsewhere, it has notably been used to address the aftermath of genocide in Rwanda, where beginning in 2002 truth-telling forums led to forgiveness and reconciliation.
Stingley, who has three remaining grown children and four grandchildren, desperately wanted “balance restored” for his family. He decided the best path forward was to meet with the men he considered responsible for his son’s death.
Stingley brought photos of Corey to the restorative justice meeting with Berringer in April.
The goal: to respectfully share their perspectives on the tragedy and how it impacted each of them personally. What was said was not recorded or transcribed. It was not for use in any court proceeding.
The sessions began with the Stingley family sharing heartfelt stories about Corey as a son, brother, student and friend. They spoke of their great bond, Corey’s love of sports and their struggle to cope with his absence.
When discussion turned to what happened in the store, Stingley said, Berringer described having only faint memories of the fatal encounter. He recalled a brief struggle and grabbing the teen by his jacket, not his hair.
Before departing the meeting, a tearful Beringer told Stingley he was looking for peace, Stingley recalled.
Cotton, Beringer’s attorney, told ProPublica that the incident and the legal steps affected his client in profound ways. “He’s had anxiety really from this from day one,” Cotton said.
The result, he said: “Sleeplessness. Horrible anxiety. Fearful because he has to go to court.”
Does the resolution ease Beringer’s mind? “I don’t know,” Cotton said, adding that the hope is that the Stingley family finds solace in the resolution process.
Cole, in a meeting in May with Stingley and some of his family, brought a gift: a pair of angel wings on a gold chain with a small “C” charm and several clear reflective orbs. With it came a handwritten note, saying: “I hope this sun catcher brings a gentle reflection of the love & light of Corey’s memory and that you feel his presence shining on you each day.”
“I told him I appreciate the gesture,” Stingley said.
Cole, according to Stingley, told him that he felt something other than the altercation — perhaps some health ailment — led to Corey’s demise.
Stingley invited Cole to watch the surveillance video together at a second session. As that day neared, in July, Stingley considered backing out. “It was almost as if I had to drag myself up out of the car,” he said. But he said he realized that he’d been preparing for such an event for 13 years: to come to some honest reckoning with the men involved.
After watching the video, he and Cole reviewed the death certificate, showing the medical examiner’s conclusions. Stingley said Cole stressed that he did not choke Corey but came to realize that what happened in the store caused the teen to lose his life, not any preexisting condition. The acknowledgment eased Stingley’s burden.
“I felt like I was reaching a place where I was finally going to get the justice that I’ve been pursuing,” Stingley said, “and this is one of the steps I had to go through to get that completed.”
Triggiano commended each of the participants for their courage in meeting and the Stingley family for “seeking the humanity of their son as opposed to vengeance.” She said Beringer and Cole “keenly listened, reflected and really acknowledged their connection to the events that led to Corey’s death.”
“The conversations were emotional and difficult but deeply human,” she said.
After the loss of his son, Stingley wanted to see the three men imprisoned. But so many years later, justice now looks different. Now Laumann is dead. Beringer is changed by the experience. And Cole is a father eager to protect his own children.
Now, in Stingley’s eyes, prison is beside the point. Criminal charges will stand instead as a strong signal of accountability, of justice — and of a father’s unyielding love.
ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power.
A father’s quest for justice finds resolution after 13 years is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
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Inside University of Wisconsin-Green Bay’s Christie Theatre, retired judge Mark Warpinski leads a discussion about how judges decide on the sentences they impose. Roughly 50 students nod along, take notes and eagerly wave their hands in the air to debate how they’d sentence someone for a hypothetical crime.
The unusually lively audience betrays that this isn’t a typical sleepy morning lecture — most of Warpinski’s students are over the age of 50.
“We pay attention. We ask questions. We’re not sitting on our cellphones and scrolling … like I guess most college students nowadays do,” said 76-year-old student Norman Schroeder.
Classrooms full of older adults are becoming more common at UWGB.
As Wisconsin’s workforce ages and universities nationwide see fewer traditional college-aged students, UWGB is trying several unorthodox efforts to attract older learners. That includes more short-term certificates that advance workers’ job skills, ungraded courses that keep older students socially engaged and classes in local nursing homes.
University leaders hope these moves will keep the region’s growing retirement-age population sharp and socially engaged — and potentially in the workforce for longer — while also bolstering enrollment.
“We’re not just an 18-year-old campus. We’re not just a campus where you live in the dorms and have a traditional experience,” said Jessica Lambrecht, UWGB’s continuing education and workforce training executive officer. “There’s hundreds of universities you can pick from that offer that type of experience. So how are we gonna stretch and serve more?”
In fall 2025, UWGB joined the Age-Friendly University Global Network, an international web of universities that focus on including all ages. The college must follow the network’s 10 principles, which include supporting those pursuing second careers; expanding online education options; and promoting collaboration between older and younger students, among other tasks. Lambrecht hopes this commitment leads more community groups to help UWGB in its pursuit of older learners.
UWGB’s focus on enrolling people outside the typical 18-to-24 age group has helped the college’s enrollment climb over the past decade, at a time when many universities are seeing the opposite trend.
University leaders hope to do even more to cater to retirees and other older adults in coming years, starting with more courses in assisted living facilities and building ways for older people to mentor younger students and workers.
Wisconsin’s aging population has caused ongoing trouble for its workforce.
For years, there haven’t been enough working-age people to fill the jobs left by those retiring. That trend is expected to continue into 2030.
Lambrecht said UWGB leaders are thinking about how they can “encourage and invite that pre-retirement age population to stay engaged in the workforce a little bit longer.”
They think offering more short-term certificates can help.
Perhaps more commonly offered by two-year colleges, short-term certificates show someone completed a handful of courses focused on a skill or topic. An increasing number of people in the U.S. are seeking these credentials, as they’re cheaper and less time-consuming than degrees. They’re also often marketed as a way for workers to gain knowledge that will help them advance in their career and earn more money, though studies and data have indicated a mixed payoff.
UWGB offers 20 short-term certificate options, ranging from topics such as utilizing artificial intelligence to English-to-Spanish translation.
“Your job is going to continuously change, and with the exponential growth of information, how are you going to stay relevant in the workforce?” Lambrecht said. “So that’s really where continuing professional education programs come into play. It’s giving you short-term, bite-sized programming that’s going to help you refine a skill set that you now are faced with.”
University leaders also want to create more opportunities for younger students and employees to learn from people reaching retirement age. Lambrecht said she’s thinking about how they can “marry those two audiences to be of continued value in our workforce.” For example, last summer, they debuted an “intergenerational” program aiming to connect older adults and youth through several educational workshops.
The quest for more older students isn’t just about keeping them working. It also helps keep the region’s aging population mentally sharp and socially engaged.
UWGB’s Lifelong Learning Institute (LLI) is geared toward older adults who want to “enjoy learning for its own sake.” There are no tests, no grades and no prerequisites. The volunteer-led club offers between 150 and 250 courses each semester — the most popular including history, film and documentary classes, guest lectures and tours around the region.
“When I retired, I realized I’ve got to keep doing things. You can’t just sit in the chair,” said Gary Lewins, a 10-year LLI student. Last semester, he took a class that taught him how to digitize all of his old photo albums.
Norman Schroeder began taking LLI classes in 2018. The retired family doctor said it was good for more than just learning — he quickly made several friends. Today he helms LLI’s Board of Directors and tries to get more people to join.
“LLI is not only just the cognitive stimulation, the brain stimulation of the classes and learning — it’s also the social engagement,” Schroeder said. “Those are important elements for good health. Particularly in older patients, there’s a high incidence of depression, and some of that comes from social isolation … I kind of promote LLI as good for your health.”
The institute has over 800 members, who pay $150 for a year of access to classes. University professors often volunteer to teach classes related to their expertise, happy to teach to a highly engaged audience, Schroeder said.
In early 2025, the Rennes Group, which operates assisted living facilities in northern Wisconsin, gave a $300,000 grant to the institute. UWGB has used the money to host classes at Rennes’ nursing homes, upgrade technology to livestream classes to residents living in them and take residents on outings, such as a tour of the Green Bay Correctional Institution.
“Just because you live in an environment that provides maybe some extra help, doesn’t mean … you shouldn’t have access to things like lifelong learning,” Rennes Group President Nicole Schingick said.
UWGB’s focus on older learners comes as the so-called traditional college student, aged 18 to 24 years old, makes up a smaller share of enrollment nationwide.
In September, Chancellor Michael Alexander sent a letter to faculty and staff outlining how the university must “reinvent” to topple trends like these. To do so, he wrote, UWGB leaders must recognize “every person is a potential student over their lifetime, not just at 18 with stellar high school academic credentials.”
In their quest to grow enrollment, college leaders have trained their focus on not just older learners, but younger ones, too.
“(We’re) trying to think about the bookends of the population, knowing that the 18- to 24-year-old is a shrinking demographic,” Lambrecht said. “If we’re going to thrive as a university, we have to think outside the box.”
In 2020, for example, the college launched a program for high schoolers to complete associate degrees through the university for free. High schoolers have comprised a growing share of the university’s student population over the years, from 16% in fall 2018 to more than a third of enrollment today.
In 2024, 12% of UWGB’s students were over the age of 30, though that figure only includes students who are taking classes for credit and does not include students like those involved in the Lifelong Learning Institute.
These approaches have helped UWGB’s total enrollment grow over 3,300 students in the last decade, while nearly every other UW school has seen a net decrease over the same time frame.
It’s common to see people of all ages on the Green Bay campus. In the summer, UWGB rents out its empty dorms as “snowbird housing” to older adults. But college leaders want to do even more in coming years to reach older people — particularly those who can’t come to campus.
“The reality is, some of our members have mobility issues,” Schroeder said. “When you’re an 18- to 20-year-old college student, walking any distance is not a big deal. But if you’re on the campus at UWGB, sometimes it’s a long walk from the parking lot to get into the classrooms.”
UWGB leaders hope to offer more virtual classes for older students who are home-bound or have physical limitations. To assist those with hearing loss, they want to add “hearing loops” to classrooms, which transmit sound from a microphone directly into a hearing aid. Eventually, they want Rennes residents to have access to the full catalog of lifelong learning classes virtually, in real time, Schingick said.
“That would really be able to open the doors globally, if you will, to all of our residents and all of our communities, no matter where they are in the state,” Schingick said.
Miranda Dunlap reports on pathways to success in northeast Wisconsin, working in partnership with Open Campus.
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As Wisconsin ages, UW-Green Bay looks to older adults to boost enrollment — and keep minds sharp is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
When teacher Amanda Glunz started a robotics team at Audubon Technology and Communication High School four years ago, there were just five members.
Now, the program has grown to 32 students and two teams, including the newly formed all-girls team Av414nche. The newest team was designed to give girls an opportunity to break into science, technology, engineering and math, also known as STEM.
“We went with Av414nche at first, because you know how avalanches fall down? It’s like breaking down the barriers,” Audubon junior Lily Sanders said.
The team consists of builders, programmers and a marketing team.
The teams give students an outlet to build confidence and skills in STEM, receive mentorship and improve social skills, Glunz said.
Several steps go into turning a concept from paper into a moving and functioning robot, said Jorja, an eighth grader at Audubon and member of Av414nche.
It all starts with a sketch.
“Then we started to actively use Legos,” she said. “Eventually we switched from Legos to Onshape (a computer-aided design (CAD) software program), and then once we had the Onshape model down, we just decided to go from there.”
After building the robot, the team uses trial and error to get it to function as best as possible.
For the team’s upcoming qualifier competitions, robots need to shoot balls into a goal. Audubon students compete against other schools across the state in several robotics competitions.
Sanders is part of the team that helps to build the robot. For their most recent competition, she tested out different wheels for their robot to see which ones launched the balls best.
“Really just figuring out what will work and what will not work,” Sanders said. “It’s really just a lot of trial and error.”
The robot is named Ava, which is short for Av414nche.
Jorja, a programmer on the team, works to make the robots move.
“The robot does not know anything until we tell it,” she said. “It wouldn’t just do it by itself.”
She said programmers first worked on the code that operates the wheels to make the robot move, then they code the wheel that makes the ball shoot.
When they aren’t working on the team’s social media, the marketing team looks for mentors who can introduce students to the fields of technology and engineering.
Most mentors are students from local universities including Milwaukee School of Engineering and Marquette University. The marketing team also has its own mentor who works in graphic design.
Some students like Davin Dacio, an Audubon junior who takes a dual enrollment course at Milwaukee Area Technical College, get college-level programming experience that is used on Audubon’s co-ed robotics team, DreaMKEepers.
Jaida Campbell, a junior on the marketing team, said they are trying to recruit younger students to the team.
Middle and high school students at Audubon share a campus. Middle schoolers begin robotics at the school by participating in the FIRST LEGO League. League members work with coaches and teammates to build Lego-based robots for engineering competitions.
Though Jorja is only in eighth grade, this is her first year on the high school robotics team.
She started as a fifth grader in the FIRST LEGO League, and by the seventh grade, she and Glunz worked on a coding project in the Fiserv Future Techies program, where they made it to nationals.
“It really inspired me, the fifth grade LEGO League,” Jorja said. “I love Legos and I was good with technology so I was like, OK, why not join my favorite things?”
Alex Klaus is the education solutions reporter for the Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service and a corps member of Report for America, a national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities. Report for America plays no role in editorial decisions in the NNS newsroom.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Milwaukee high school’s robotics teams help students break down barriers and build skills — and confidence is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.
A railroad crossing in Superior is notorious for putting shock absorbers to the test. Drivers posting on social media say they’ve complained to various entities to no avail, and aren’t sure who exactly is responsible.
The post A bone-jarring rail crossing in Superior — and who to call to fix it appeared first on WPR.
The Food Security and Wisconsin Products Grant Program will receive $10 million over the state's 2025-2027 biennial budget.
The post After federal cuts, Wisconsin will fund effort to get local food into food banks appeared first on WPR.
Only half of Wisconsin high school students feel like they belong in the classroom, according to a recent report from the Wisconsin Office of Children’s Mental Health.
The post Fewer Wisconsin students feel ‘sense of belonging’ at school appeared first on WPR.
The Midwest electric grid operator selected a pair of out of state companies to build two major transmission line projects in Wisconsin.
The post Midwest grid operator selects out of state firms to build Wisconsin transmission projects appeared first on WPR.
Activists packed a hearing room at the state Capitol Wednesday as state lawmakers took testimony on three proposed bills that would restrict transgender students’ participation in school sports and prohibit minors from accessing gender-affirming health care.
The post Bills to restrict transgender rights spark emotional testimony at Wisconsin Capitol appeared first on WPR.
Republican lawmakers are moving forward with a plan to cut state taxes on tips in Wisconsin, mirroring a similar change at the federal level.
The post Wisconsin Assembly to debate state ‘no tax on tips’ bill appeared first on WPR.
Milwaukee police are warning residents about a "surge" of recent robberies involving online dating apps.
The post Milwaukee police urge caution after rise in ‘bait and switch’ robberies involving dating apps appeared first on WPR.
Elite ski jumper Estella Hassrick started skiing in Madison when she was 4 years old. Now, she’s waiting to see if she will get a chance to compete for Olympic gold.
The post 19-year-old Wisconsin ski jumper vying for her shot at the Olympics appeared first on WPR.
UW-Milwaukee. (Photo | Isiah Holmes)
The Joint Finance Committee unanimously approved the release of $53 million for the University of Wisconsin system to support campuses struggling with declining enrollment.
The UW system will have $26.5 million in the 2025-26 fiscal year and $26.5 million in the 2026-27 fiscal year that can be used for grants to campuses. The funds were initially set aside for the system in the recent state budget.
In each year, $15.25 million will be distributed to campuses with declining enrollment over the last two years and $11.25 million will be distributed through a formula dependent on the number of credit hours undergraduates complete.
In 2025, enrollment across the system’s 13 campuses remained stable with about 700 more students enrolled in the fall when compared to 2024. The slight increase represents the third consecutive year of increased enrollment.
UW President Jay Rothman thanked lawmakers and Evers in a social media post and said the release of the funds “affirms our shared commitment to student success and Wisconsin’s workforce.”
“Together, we’ll keep more talented graduates in Wisconsin and ensure our universities are delivering the education students deserve and parents expect,” Rothman said.
At the time of the budget process in June, committee co-chair Sen. Howard Marklein (R-Spring Green) said the funds would “put the thumb on the scale” to help campuses with declining enrollment over the last decade including UW Platteville, which is in his district.
Lawmakers did not debate the release of the funds, though Sen. Eric Wimberger (R-Oconto), who voted to release the money, noted that the system has had a growing number of staff members even as enrollment has declined.
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U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., talks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol on Saturday, June 28, 2025. (Photo by Ashley Murray/States Newsroom)
WASHINGTON — Vice President JD Vance broke a tied Senate vote to block advancement of a war powers resolution that would have stopped President Donald Trump from taking further military action against Venezuela without congressional authorization.
Senate Republicans used a procedural maneuver Wednesday night to halt debate on the Vietnam War-era statute that gives Congress a check on the president’s deployments abroad.
Sens. Todd Young of Indiana and Josh Hawley of Missouri flipped on their previous votes to advance the resolution, splitting support at 50-50 — and delivering a victory to Trump, who had strongly criticized Republican senators who earlier defected from the administration.
Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky voted to keep the effort alive in the Senate. Paul is the only Republican co-sponsor of the bill. Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia was the leading Democratic co-sponsor.
Young said while he “strongly” believes Congress must be involved in any decisions about the commitment of U.S. troops, administration officials assured him that is not the state of play in Venezuela.
“After numerous conversations with senior national security officials, I have received assurances that there are no American troops in Venezuela. I’ve also received a commitment that if President Trump were to determine American forces are needed in major military operations in Venezuela, the Administration will come to Congress in advance to ask for an authorization of force,” Young said in a written statement after he cast his vote.
The vote came less than a week after Young and Hawley were among the five Senate Republicans who broke with party ranks to move the resolution across an initial procedural hurdle — a rare rebuke of Trump from some in his own party.
Trump pointedly attacked the five GOP senators after they voted, writing on his Truth Social platform that the lawmakers “should never be elected to office again.”
Senate Republicans argued a resolution to rein in Trump’s military actions against Venezuela is not relevant because “there’s no troops there, there is nothing to terminate,” as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Jim Risch said on the floor ahead of the vote.
“Now, I know some of my colleagues will argue that a vote for this resolution is a prospective statement about limiting future action in Venezuela. That’s not what it says. They argue, ‘we still have ships in the Caribbean, and clearly the president is ready to invade again,’ they say. But again, that is not what the resolution says. … No language in this resolution addresses future action,” said Risch, R-Idaho, who moved to table the measure.
The vote came 11 days after U.S. special forces apprehended Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, and his wife, Cilia Flores, from their bedroom during a surprise overnight raid. The couple was wanted by U.S. authorities on federal drug and conspiracy charges.
The vote also comes after a monthslong bombing campaign on small boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean in which U.S. strikes killed more than 115 alleged “narco-terrorists,” according to U.S. Southern Command.
Within an hour before senators voted to block any advancement of the war powers resolution, Trump posted on social media that he “had a very good call” Thursday morning with Venezuela’s interim President Delcy Rodríguez.
“We are making tremendous progress, as we help Venezuela stabilize and recover. Many topics were discussed, including Oil, Minerals, Trade and, of course, National Security. This partnership between the United States of America and Venezuela will be a spectacular one FOR ALL. Venezuela will soon be great and prosperous again, perhaps more so than ever before!” Trump wrote on his own platform, Truth Social.
Trump hosted oil executives at the White House Friday for a meeting on potential investment in Venezuela’s oil industry. Prior to the meeting, the president announced the South American nation had already agreed to give the U.S. between 30 million and 50 million barrels of oil. Trump said he would control the money made from the sale.
Paul and Democratic sponsors of the war powers resolution vehemently disagreed with the GOP statements about the U.S. presence in and around Venezuela.
“You don’t have to be a great expert in military affairs to know that we are heavily engaged,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, a New York Democrat, ahead of the vote.
“Donald Trump says we’re not engaged in hostilities? Tell that to the 16,000 U.S. service members currently deployed in the Caribbean. Tell that to our service members on the Ford carrier strike force. Look at the Marine expeditionary unit operating in the region,” Schumer said. “Donald Trump is turning the Caribbean into a dangerous powder keg — and Congress must rein him in before one mistake ignites a larger, more unstable conflict.”
Kaine likened the Republicans’ procedural move to “a parliamentary gag rule on discussion of this military operation.”
“If this cause and if this legal basis were so righteous and so lawful, the administration and its supporters would not be so afraid to have this debate before the public and the United States Senate,” Kaine said on the floor ahead of the vote.
Paul said the administration’s claim that Venezuela is not an official war is “an absurdity.”
“The invasion of another country, blockading of a country and removing another country’s leader, to my mind, clearly, is war,” Paul said on the floor ahead of the vote.
U.S. Southern Command declined to confirm Wednesday the exact number of troops and warships present in the region.
Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said more than 100 were killed in the raid, according to numerous media outlets that posted a video of his statement. The Cuban government announced on Facebook 32 of its citizens were among the dead.
Seven U.S. troops were injured in the incursion, according to the Pentagon. Five returned to work within days after the attack, while two were still recovering as of Jan. 8. Pentagon officials declined to comment further on their conditions Wednesday.
(Darwin Brandis | iStock Getty Images Plus)
Nonprofits that address housing, addiction, mental health and other human service needs were notified this week that they will lose up to $2 billion in federal grant money, in a wave of termination letters issued to programs across the country.
The cuts will make it more difficult for frontline groups to provide treatment and harm reduction care that has been crucial to combating overdose deaths, and breaking the cycles of addiction and housing insecurity. Resources like Narcan medication used to save lives by reversing overdoses, peer support, and treatment access could dry up, just as communities nationwide began to see reductions in overdose deaths.
The U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), which issued the letters, hasn’t yet commented on the cuts. There are 30 SAMHSA-funded opioid treatment programs scattered across Wisconsin including in Appleton; Beloit, Eau Claire, Fond Du Lac, Green Bay, Madison, Milwaukee, Oshkosh, Kenosha, and others, according to the agency’s website. One of those programs, Vin Baker Recovery, is named after a Milwaukee Bucks basketball team player and assistant coach.
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley condemned the sudden funding cuts. “The Trump administration’s cuts are not just numbers on a budget sheet; they are threats to the wellbeing of real people — our neighbors, our families, and our loved ones,” Crowley said in a statement. “While I will continue fighting for funding and resources to deliver results for our most vulnerable communities, the federal government must recognize the urgent need to preserve these vital services. These cuts cannot stand, because the lives of Wisconsinites depend on it.”
A Milwaukee County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) spokesperson said that so far, no termination letters have been sent to the county. DHHS received $13.9 million in direct SAMHSA funds, with $6.2 million remaining as of December. The county also receives another $15.3 million in state mental health and substance use disorder grants which partially consist of federal funding through SAMHSA.
In an emailed statement the spokesperson said that “any termination of SAMHSA funding would result in immediate termination of mental health and substance use services in Milwaukee County.” Wisconsin’s most populous county has no other funding alternatives, and the loss of federal grant money would lead to more hospitalizations and higher incarceration rates, the spokesperson warned.
Elizabeth Goodsitt, a spokesperson for Wisconsin’s Department of Health Services (DHS) wrote in an email statement Wednesday that the department was “notified late yesterday that effective January 13, the Tribes of Wisconsin Prescription Drugs/Opioid Overdose-Related Deaths Prevention Program (PDO) grant has been terminated by the federal government.” Goodsitt described this as “part of a much larger set of cancellations across the country for federally funded projects that provided life-saving mental health and substance use disorder services.”
Wisconsin had received nearly $1 million to operate the PDO until August 2026. The program was in the third year of a five-year grant. “The goal of the PDO is to save lives,” said Goodsitt. “The funding supports training first responders and other key community sectors on overdose prevention strategies, and it supports the purchase and distribution of naloxone, the overdose reversal medication for opioids.”
For now the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, the Lac Courte Oreilles Band of Lake Superior Chippewa, Menominee Indian Tribe of Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin Board of Regents have not received termination letters regarding SAMHSA funding. Native American communities are disproportionately affected by overdose deaths in Wisconsin at a rate of 75.4 people per 100,000 in 2023, as compared to a rate of 20 people per 100,000 for white Wisconsin residents.
“We are assessing all avenues possible to ensure the federal government is following all requirements in these existing funding agreements,” said Goodsitt. “While there continues to be much uncertainty about this evolving situation, we will keep working to serve Wisconsinites and support their behavioral health needs. We will continue to closely monitor this situation and will share more information as it becomes available.”
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CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA - NOVEMBER 19: A person is detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents inside a fast food restaurant that is under construction on November 19, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. The man sustained injuries to his face while agents wrestled him to the ground after he tried to run. Federal Agents are carrying out "Operation Charlotte's Web," an ongoing immigration enforcement surge across the Charlotte region.(Photo by Ryan Murphy/Getty Images)
This story was originally published by ProPublica.
Immigration agents have put civilians’ lives at risk using more than their guns.
An agent in Houston put a teenage citizen into a chokehold, wrapping his arm around the boy’s neck, choking him so hard that his neck had red welts hours later. A black-masked agent in Los Angeles pressed his knee into a woman’s neck while she was handcuffed; she then appeared to pass out. An agent in Massachusetts jabbed his finger and thumb into the neck and arteries of a young father who refused to be separated from his wife and 1-year-old daughter. The man’s eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.
After George Floyd’s murder by a police officer six years ago in Minneapolis — less than a mile from where an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Renee Good last week — police departments and federal agencies banned chokeholds and other moves that can restrict breathing or blood flow.
But those tactics are back, now at the hands of agents conducting President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign.
Examples are scattered across social media. ProPublica found more than 40 cases over the past year of immigration agents using these life-threatening maneuvers on immigrants, citizens and protesters. The agents are usually masked, their identities secret. The government won’t say if any of them have been punished.
In nearly 20 cases, agents appeared to use chokeholds and other neck restraints that the Department of Homeland Security prohibits “unless deadly force is authorized.”
About two dozen videos show officers kneeling on people’s necks or backs or keeping them face down on the ground while already handcuffed. Such tactics are not prohibited outright but are often discouraged, including by federal trainers, in part because using them for a prolonged time risks asphyxiation.
We reviewed footage with a panel of eight former police officers and law enforcement experts. They were appalled.
This is what bad policing looks like, they said. And it puts everyone at risk.
“I arrested dozens upon dozens of drug traffickers, human smugglers, child molesters — some of them will resist,” said Eric Balliet, who spent more than two decades working at Homeland Security Investigations and Border Patrol, including in the first Trump administration. “I don’t remember putting anybody in a chokehold. Period.”
“If this was one of my officers, he or she would be facing discipline,” said Gil Kerlikowske, a longtime police chief in Seattle who also served as Customs and Border Protection commissioner under President Barack Obama. “You have these guys running around in fatigues, with masks, with ‘Police’ on their uniform,” but they aren’t acting like professional police.
Over the past week, the conduct of agents has come under intense scrutiny after an ICE officer in Minneapolis killed Good, a mother of three. The next day, a Border Patrol agent in Portland, Oregon, shot a man and woman in a hospital parking lot.
Top administration officials rushed to defend the officers. Speaking about the agent who shot Good, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said, “This is an experienced officer who followed his training.”
Officials said the same thing to us after we showed them footage of officers using prohibited chokeholds. Federal agents have “followed their training to use the least amount of force necessary,” department spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.
“Officers act heroically to enforce the law and protect American communities,” White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.
Both DHS and the White House lauded the “utmost professionalism” of their agents.
Our compilation of incidents is far from complete. Just as the government does not count how often it detains citizens or smashes through vehicle windows during immigration arrests, it does not publicly track how many times agents have choked civilians or otherwise inhibited their breathing or blood flow. We gathered cases by searching legal filings, social media posts and local press reports in English and Spanish.
Given the lack of any count over time, it’s impossible to know for certain how agents’ current use of the banned and dangerous tactics compares with earlier periods.
But former immigration officials told us they rarely heard of such incidents during their long tenures. They also recalled little pushback when DHS formally banned chokeholds and other tactics in 2023; it was merely codifying the norm.
That norm has now been broken.
Tenth grader Arnoldo Bazan and his father were getting McDonald’s before school when their car was pulled over by unmarked vehicles. Masked immigration agents started banging on their windows. As Arnoldo’s undocumented father, Arnulfo Bazan Carrillo, drove off, the terrified teenager began filming on his phone. The video shows the agents repeatedly ramming the Bazans’ car during a slow chase through the city.
Bazan Carrillo eventually parked and ran into a restaurant supply store. When Arnoldo saw agents taking his father violently to the ground, Arnoldo went inside too, yelling at the agents to stop.
One agent put Arnoldo in a chokehold while another pressed a knee into his father’s neck. “I was going to school!” the boy pleaded. He said later that when he told the agent he was a citizen and a minor, the agent didn’t stop.
“I started screaming with everything I had, because I couldn’t even breathe,” Arnoldo told ProPublica, showing where the agent’s hands had closed around his throat. “I felt like I was going to pass out and die.”
DHS’ McLaughlin accused Arnoldo’s dad of ramming his car “into a federal law enforcement vehicle,” but he was never charged for that, and the videos we reviewed do not support this claim. Our examination of his criminal history — separate from any immigration violations — found only that Bazan Carrillo pleaded guilty a decade ago to misdemeanor driving while intoxicated.
McLaughlin also said the younger Bazan elbowed an officer in the face as he was detained, which the teen denies. She said that Arnoldo was taken into custody to confirm his identity and make sure he didn’t have any weapons. McLaughlin did not answer whether the agent’s conduct was justified.
Experts who reviewed video of the Bazans’ arrests could make no sense of the agents’ actions.
“Why are you in the middle of a store trying to grab somebody?” said Marc Brown, a former police officer turned instructor who taught ICE and Border Patrol officers at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers. “Your arm underneath the neck, like a choking motion? No! The knee on the neck? Absolutely not.”
DHS revamped its training curriculum after George Floyd’s murder to underscore those tactics were out of bounds, Brown said. “DHS specifically was very big on no choking,” he said. “We don’t teach that. They were, like, hardcore against it. They didn’t want to see anything with the word ‘choke.’”
In early November, ICE agents in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, stopped a young father, Carlos Sebastian Zapata Rivera, as he drove with his family. They had come for his undocumented wife, whom they targeted after she was charged with assault for allegedly stabbing a co-worker in the hand with scissors.
Body camera footage from the local police, obtained by ProPublica, captured much of what happened. The couple’s 1-year-old daughter began crying. Agents surrounded the car, looking in through open doors.
According to the footage, an agent told Zapata Rivera that if his wife wouldn’t come out, they would have to arrest him, too — and their daughter would be sent into the foster system. The agent recounted the conversation to a local cop: “Technically, I can arrest both of you,” he said. “If you no longer have a child, because the child is now in state custody, you’re both gonna be arrested. Do you want to give your child to the state?”
Zapata Rivera, who has a pending asylum claim, clung to his family. His wife kept saying she wouldn’t go anywhere without her daughter, whom she said was still breastfeeding. Zapata Rivera wouldn’t let go of either of them.
Federal agents seemed conflicted on how to proceed. “I refuse to have us videotaped throwing someone to the ground while they have a child in their hands,” one ICE agent told a police officer at the scene.
But after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed.
The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death.
“Even milliseconds or seconds of interrupted blood flow to the brain can have serious consequences,” Dr. Altaf Saadi, a neurologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, told us. Saadi said she couldn’t comment on specific cases, “but there is no amount of training or method of applying pressure on the neck that is foolproof in terms of avoiding neurologic damage.”
In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him.
“Carotid restraints are prohibited unless deadly force is authorized,” DHS’ use-of-force policy states. Deadly force is authorized only when an officer believes there’s an “imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury” and there is “no alternative.”
In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.
“These statements were lies,” Zapata Rivera alleges in an ongoing civil rights lawsuit he filed against the ICE agent who used the carotid restraint. His lawyer told ProPublica that Zapata Rivera was disoriented after regaining consciousness; the lawsuit says he was denied medical attention. (Representatives for Zapata Rivera declined our requests for an interview with him. His wife has been released on bond, and her assault case awaits trial.)
A police report and bodycam footage from Fitchburg officers at the scene, obtained via a public records request, back up Zapata Rivera’s account of being denied assistance. “He’s fine,” an agent told paramedics, according to footage. The police report says Zapata Rivera wanted medical attention but “agents continued without stopping.”
Saadi, the Harvard neurologist, said that as a general matter, determining whether someone had a seizure is “not something even neurologists can do accurately just by looking at it.”
When DHS issued restrictions on chokeholds and carotid restraints, it stated that the moves “must not be used as a means to control non-compliant subjects or persons resisting arrest.” Deadly force “shall not be used solely to prevent the escape of a fleeing subject.”
But videos reviewed by ProPublica show that agents have been using these restraints to do just that.
In Los Angeles in June, masked officers from ICE, Border Patrol and other federal agencies pepper-sprayed and then tackled another citizen, Luis Hipolito. As Hipolito struggled to get away, one of the agents put him in a chokehold. Another pointed a Taser at bystanders filming.
Then Hipolito’s body began to convulse — a possible seizure. An onlooker warned the agents, “You gonna let him die.”
When officers make a mistake in the heat of the moment, said Danny Murphy, a former deputy commissioner of the Baltimore Police Department, they need to “correct it as quickly as possible.”
That didn’t happen in Hipolito’s case. The footage shows the immigration agent not only wrapping his arm around Hipolito’s neck as he takes him down but also sticking with the chokehold after Hipolito is pinned on the ground.
The agent’s actions are “dangerous and unreasonable,” Murphy said.
Asked about the case, McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said that Hipolito was arrested for assaulting an ICE officer. Hipolito’s lawyers did not respond to ProPublica’s requests for comment.
According to the Los Angeles Times, Hipolito limped into court days after the incident. Another citizen who was with him the day of the incident was also charged, but her case was dropped. Hipolito pleaded not guilty and goes to trial in February.
A video from Los Angeles shows a Colombian-born TikTokker who often filmed ICE apparently passed out after officers pulled her from her Tesla and knelt on her neck. Another video shows a DoorDash driver in Portland, Oregon, screaming for air as four officers pin him face down in the street. “Aire, aire, aire,” he says. “No puedo respirar” — I can’t breathe. Then: “Estoy muriendo” — I’m dying. A third video, from Chicago, shows an agent straddling a citizen and repeatedly pressing his face into the asphalt. Onlookers yell that the man can’t breathe.
Placing a knee on a prone subject’s neck or weight on their back isn’t banned under DHS’ use-of-force policy, but it can be dangerous — and the longer it goes on, the higher the risk that the person won’t be able to breathe.
“You really don’t want to spend that amount of time just trying to get somebody handcuffed,” said Kerlikowske, the former CPB commissioner, of the video of the arrest in Portland.
Brown, the former federal instructor and now a lead police trainer at the University of South Carolina, echoed that. “Once you get them handcuffed, you get them up, get them out of there,” he said. “If they’re saying they can’t breathe, hurry up.”
Taking a person down to the ground and restraining them there can be an appropriate way to get them in handcuffs, said Seth Stoughton, a former police officer turned law professor who also works at the University of South Carolina. But officers have long known to make it quick. By the mid-1990s, the federal government was advising officers against keeping people prolongedly in a prone position.
When a federal agent kneeled on the neck of an intensive care nurse in August, she said she understood the danger she was in and tried to scream.
“I knew that the amount of pressure being placed on the back of my neck could definitely hurt me,” said Amanda Trebach, a citizen and activist who was arrested in Los Angeles while monitoring immigration agents. “I was having a hard time breathing because my chest was on the ground.”
McLaughlin, the DHS spokesperson, said Trebach impeded agents’ vehicles and struck them with her signs and fists.
Trebach denies this. She was released without any charges.
In the fall, a protester in Chicago refused to stand back after a federal agent told him to do so. Suddenly, the agent grabbed the man by the throat and slammed him to the ground.
“No, no!” one bystander exclaims. “He’s not doing anything!”
DHS’ McLaughlin did not respond to questions about the incident.
Along with two similar choking incidents at protests outside of ICE facilities, this is one of the few videos in which the run-up to the violence is clear. And the experts were aghast.
“Without anything I could see as even remotely a deadly force threat, he immediately goes for the throat,” said Ashley Heiberger, a retired police captain from Pennsylvania who frequently testifies in use-of-force cases. Balliet, the former immigration official, said the agent turned the scene into a “pissing contest” that was “explicitly out of control.”
“It’s so clearly excessive and ridiculous,” Murphy said. “That’s the kind of action which should get you fired.”
“How big a threat did you think he was?” Brown said, noting that the officer slung his rifle around his back before grabbing and body-slamming the protester. “You can’t go grab someone just because they say, ‘F the police.’”
In November, Border Patrol agents rushed into the construction site of a future Panda Express in Charlotte, North Carolina, to check workers’ papers. When one man tried to run, an officer put him in a chokehold and later marched him out, bloodied, to a waiting SUV.
The Charlotte operation was one of Border Patrol’s many forays into American cities, as agents led by commander-at-large Gregory Bovino claimed to target “criminal illegal aliens” but frequently chased down landscapers, construction workers and U.S. citizens in roving patrols through predominantly immigrant or Latino communities.
Freelance photographer Ryan Murphy, who had been following Border Patrol’s convoys around Charlotte, documented the Panda Express arrest.
“Their tactics are less sophisticated than you would think,” he told ProPublica. “They sort of drive along the streets, and if they see somebody who looks to them like they could potentially be undocumented, they pull over.”
Experts told ProPublica that if officers are targeting a specific individual, they can minimize risks by deciding when, where and how to take them into custody. But when they don’t know their target in advance, chaos — and abuse — can follow.
“They are encountering people they don’t know anything about,” said Scott Shuchart, a former assistant director at ICE.
“The stuff that I’ve been seeing in the videos,” Kerlikowske said, “has been just ragtag, random.”
There may be other factors, too, our experts said, including quotas and a lack of consequences amid gutted oversight. With officers wearing masks, Shuchart said, “even if they punch grandma in the face, they won’t be identified.”
As they sweep into American cities, immigration officers are unconstrained — and, the experts said, unprepared. Even well-trained officers may not be trained for the environments where they now operate. Patrolling a little-populated border region takes one set of skills. Working in urban areas, where citizens — and protesters — abound, takes another.
DHS and Bovino did not respond to questions about their agents’ preparation or about the chokehold in Charlotte.
Back in Houston, immigration officers dropped 16-year-old Arnoldo off at the doorstep of his family home a few hours after the arrest. His neck was bruised, and his new shirt was shredded. Videos taken by his older sisters show the soccer star struggling to speak through sobs.
Uncertain what exactly had happened to him, his sister Maria Bazan took him to Texas Children’s Hospital, where staff identified signs of the chokehold and moved him to the trauma unit. Hospital records show he was given morphine for pain and that doctors ordered a dozen CT scans and X-rays, including of his neck, spine and head.
From the hospital, Maria called the Houston Police Department and tried to file a report, the family said. After several unsuccessful attempts, she took Arnoldo to the department in person, where she says officers were skeptical of the account and their own ability to investigate federal agents.
Arnoldo had filmed much of the incident, but agents had taken his phone. He used Find My to locate the phone — at a vending machine for used electronics miles away, close to an ICE detention center. The footage, which ProPublica has reviewed, backed the family’s account of the chase.
The family says Houston police still haven’t interviewed them. A department spokesperson told ProPublica it was not investigating the case, referring questions to DHS. But the police have also not released bodycam footage and case files aside from a top sheet, citing an open investigation.
“We can’t do anything,” Maria said one officer told her. “What can HPD do to federal agents?”
Elsewhere in the country, some officials are trying to hold federal immigration officers to account.
In California, the state Legislature passed bills prohibiting immigration officers from wearing masks and requiring them to display identification during operations.
In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker signed a law that allows residents to sue any officer who violates state or federal constitutional rights. (The Trump administration quickly filed legal challenges against California and Illinois, claiming their new laws are unconstitutional.)
In Colorado, Durango’s police chief saw a recent video of an immigration officer using a chokehold on a protester and reported it to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, which announced it was looking into the incident.
In Minnesota, state and local leaders are collecting evidence in Renee Good’s killing even as the federal government cut the state out of its investigation.
Arnoldo is still waiting for Houston authorities to help him, still terrified that a masked agent will come first. Amid soccer practice and making up schoolwork he missed while recovering, he watches and rewatches the videos from that day. The car chase, the chokehold, his own screams at the officers to leave his dad alone. His father in the driver’s seat, calmly handing Arnoldo his wallet and phone while stopping mid-chase for red lights.
The Bazan family said agents threatened to charge Arnoldo if his dad didn’t agree to be deported. DHS spokesperson McLaughlin did not respond when asked about the alleged threat. Arnoldo’s dad is now in Mexico.
Asked why an officer choked Arnoldo, McLaughlin pointed to the boy’s alleged assault with his elbow, adding, “The federal law enforcement officer graciously chose not to press charges.”
Mariam Elba contributed research. Joanna Shan, Haley Clark and Cengiz Yar contributed reporting.
Nicole Foy is ProPublica’s Ancil Payne Fellow, reporting on immigration and labor. journalists Nicole Foy, McKenzie Funk, Joanna Shan, Haley Clark and Cengiz Yar gathered videos via Spanish and English social media posts, local press reports and court records. We then sent a selection of these videos to eight police experts and former immigration officials, along with as much information as we could gather about the lead-up to and context of each incident. The experts analyzed the videos with us, explaining when and how officers used dangerous tactics that appeared to go against their training or that have been banned under the Department of Homeland Security’s use-of-force policy.
We also tried to contact every person we could identify being choked or kneeled on. In some cases, we also reached out to bystanders.
Research reporter Mariam Elba conducted criminal record searches of every person we featured in this story. She also attempted to fact-check the allegations that DHS made about the civilians and their arrests. Our findings are not comprehensive because there is no universal criminal record database.
We also sent every video cited in this story to the White House, DHS, CBP, ICE, border czar Tom Homan and Border Patrol’s Gregory Bovino. DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin provided a statement responding to some of the incidents we found but she did not explain why agents used banned tactics or whether any of the agents have been disciplined for doing so.
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