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In July 2016, two Guatemalan sisters left their small town and headed to the United States. They were fleeing growing insecurity and were eager to see their mother, who had moved to the US over a decade earlier. After crossing the border, the sisters were detained by two Border Patrol agents and taken to a Customs and Border Protection (CBP) ...

FIJ grant recipient Rob Waters looked at the growing influence of Business Improvement Districts (BIDs) in cities across the country, and how they are used to restrict homeless people from downtown areas. His investigative feature for Next City, No Place Left to Go: Business Districts Keep Homeless Populations on the Move, focused on Denver, where downtown business interests have long influenced development ...

Rina Palta, an FIJ grant recipient and correspondent on the investigative team at KPCC radio, has won a Golden Mike Award for Best Investigative Reporting from the Radio and TV News Association of Southern California. Her story, Rats, roaches, bedbugs, mold: Why thousands of LA’s homeless shelter beds sit empty each night, led the L.A. County Board of Supervisors to ...

Over the last two years, the state of Massachusetts has dismissed 47,000 drug convictions and guilty pleas due to two tampering scandals involving drug lab chemists. Many more convictions are likely to be dismissed, with the total expected to exceed 50,000. While the first scandal received more attention, mainly due to it being first and taking place in Boston, the ...

In 2010, California launched a pilot project to fix one of the most troubled aspects of the state’s foster care system: youth languishing in institutional group homes. They often struggle later in life with mental health issues, lower educational achievement and a higher risk of entering the criminal justice system. Plus, these youth are far more likely to exit foster ...

FIJ is pleased to announce that the Ethics and Excellence in Journalism Foundation, a long-standing supporter, has awarded $75,000 to support its grant-making program for domestic investigations in 2019. This amount includes $25,000 to be awarded if FIJ raises an additional $25,000 in new funding before December 31. Help us reach that matching goal – because, as always, all of it ...