Venezuelan immigrants signed up for a Trump-promoted app that promised a safe and easy way to leave the country. They’re still stuck here.
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The Big Story

October 10, 2025 · View in browser

In today’s newsletter: Venezuelan immigrants who tried to self-deport through a Trump-promoted app are stuck in America; the EPA hasn’t released a completed toxicity report on a forever chemical; and more from our newsroom. 

“I Don’t Want to Be Here Anymore”: They Tried to Self-Deport, Then Got Stranded in Trump’s America

Venezuelan immigrants signed up for a Trump-promoted app called CBP Home, which promised a safe and easy way to leave the country, and prepared to leave on their given departure dates. Those dates have come and gone. They’re still stuck here.

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In 2016, the Mississippi River broke through a levee in Alexander County, Illinois, and wiped out 1,200 acres of Steve Williams’ farmland. He signed up for a federal program in 2019 to retire the damaged fields. But instead of help, he and his daughter, Brandy Renshaw, spent years farming the unfarmable, because that’s what the system required to survive.

 

Listen to Renshaw explain how she and her dad dealt with not just the devastation of their farmlands and a buyout process that dragged on for years, but also the loss of a legacy and generations of memories. You can also read our full investigation, co-published with Capitol News Illinois, about why some farmers are stuck raising crops that no longer thrive here. 

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“Scientifically, it was done.”

 

— A scientist familiar with a completed yet unreleased EPA report on the toxicity of “forever chemical” PFNA told reporter Sharon Lerner. EPA scientists linked PFNA, which is in the drinking water systems serving some 26 million people, with developmental, liver and reproductive harms. Their final report was ready in mid-April, according to an internal document reviewed by ProPublica. But for months, the report has sat in limbo, raising concerns among some scientists and environmentalists that the Trump administration might change it or not release it at all.

The EPA told ProPublica that the report would be published when it was finalized, but the press office did not answer questions about what still needed to be done or when that would likely happen.

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More from the newsroom

 

Elon Musk’s Boring Co. Accused of Nearly 800 Environmental Violations on Las Vegas Project

Five Ways the Department of Education Is Upending Public Schools

The Complicated Case of Jorge Ruiz

Scientists Completed a Toxicity Report on This Forever Chemical. The EPA Hasn’t Released It.

Oregon Fast-Tracks Renewable Energy Projects as Trump Bill Ends Tax Incentives

 
 
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