InvestigateWest

Washington was the first to enact “Don’t Pass the Trash” legislation two decades ago, but gaps remain. Experts say these reforms could help hold more teachers accountable for sexual abuse.

Idaho’s rapid rise in incarceration rates has left the state with more prisoners than space to house them -- and those already incarcerated say they’re unfairly being punished for it. Five women told us they were sent to segregated housing units - small cells usually reserved for punishment - where they were confined for 23 hours a day.

As the Trump administration has escalated immigration arrests, immigrant Portlanders are increasingly worried about how license plate readers and other surveillance technologies are helping federal immigration agents track their movements — in many cases, leading to their arrests without a warrant or reasonable suspicion.

At the Voz Worker Center in Southeast Portland, one worker, Nemorio, recalls all the license plate readers he's seen in parking lots across Portland - at Lowe's, grocery stores like WinCo and Fred Meyer, and even a Latino grocery store in Gresham. Any one of those cameras could have led to an encounter last October when an ICE vehicle followed his truck after he left a work site. Nemorio says he was lucky, because the agents eventually split off to follow a different car instead.

This happened to him despite living in a sanctuary city, within a sanctuary county and state. As Feet in 2 Worlds reporter Narimes Parakul found, the federal government has been able to buy access to private databases and leverage other public data to track immigrants and ultimately circumvent sanctuary laws.

Illustration by Dabin Han.