JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Advocates are considering whether to put the issue of expanding Medicaid before Missouri voters.

St. Louis resident Heidi Miller recently filed two petitions with the Secretary of State’s office seeking to ask voters to weigh in on expanding Missouri’s Medicaid health care program, the Springfield News-Leader reported .

Miller couldn’t be reached for comment, but expansion advocates said the filings aren’t a symbolic gesture.

“It’s not just another filing,” said Amy Blouin, president and CEO of the Missouri Budget Project. “There’s a lot of people and a lot of organizations that want to do something to fix the issue we have with Medicaid, and the momentum from other states kind of incentivizes Missouri to do something like Medicaid eligibility fixes.”

Blouin said she and other advocates have followed like-minded groups push successful ballot measures in Idaho, Nebraska and Utah.

Blouin and other advocates are still weighing whether to get behind the effort to gather thousands of signatures for a ballot measure. It’s unclear how much support Medicaid expansion would receive in the state.

Progressive initiative petitions last fall indicated that a measure like Medicaid expansion could garner support. Measures such as medical marijuana legalization and an increase in the minimum wage received more than 60 percent of the vote, Blouin said.

“I think that we’ve got good indication that Missourians are willing to support (Medicaid expansion) from those measures,” Blouin said.

The efforts come as Missouri’s Medicaid rolls are dropping faster than in other states, and Gov. Mike Parson called for $50 million less in health care funding because of a drop of more than 71,000 enrollees over the last year.

Opponents have argued that expansion would be too expensive. Many Republicans have expressed concerns with expanding a health care program that is in need of extensive reform.

A draft report commissioned by the state that was released last month found that Missouri could save up to $1 billion a year within the next four years if it overhauls Medicaid. The report didn’t call for tightening eligibility rules, but rather reducing Medicaid costs by altering reimbursement rates for hospitals, doctors and nursing homes.

NORMAN, Okla. (AP) — David Boren’s appointment as president of the University of Oklahoma two decades ago was the capstone of a storied career. Born into a prominent Oklahoma political family, he became a Rhodes scholar, then governor at age 33 and later a U.S. senator respected for his expertise in intelligence.

His arrival on campus marked a heady time for the school, which set out to achieve his vision for a flagship institution.

But now, less than a year after retiring, Boren’s reputation is at risk. The 77-year-old Democrat finds himself ensnared in allegations that he sexually harassed male subordinates, and he’s on the defensive in a red state now solidly controlled by political adversaries.

The university has hired a law firm to investigate the accusations, and state authorities confirmed this week they have opened a similar probe.

Bob Burke, one of Boren’s attorneys, has characterized the inquiry as a “fishing expedition based on vicious rumors.” But at least one former student has come forward and said Boren touched him and kissed him on multiple occasions in 2010 and 2011 after he began working as Boren’s teaching aide.

The allegations by Jess Eddy, now 29, which he detailed in an interview Wednesday with The Associated Press, contradict previous statements Eddy gave to investigators denying inappropriate behavior by Boren. Eddy’s new allegations were first reported on Tuesday by the online news site NonDoc.

Another Boren attorney, Clark Brewster, has dismissed Eddy’s new account, saying Eddy “was carefully examined, asked about anything that he had ever witnessed or had seen or had experienced and not only said that didn’t occur, but he gave specific factual detail as to why it couldn’t have been true.”

Eddy said he was untruthful earlier to protect Boren, but then “started to realize the implications of what I was doing by concealing my truth.”

Boren has denied any inappropriate behavior but declined a request for an interview, citing poor health, Burke said. Boren, who underwent heart surgery two years ago, suffered a minor stroke last year before stepping down.

He has two children from his first marriage and has been married to his second wife, Molly Shi Boren, for more than 40 years.

The sex abuse investigation adds to a tumultuous transition from Boren’s time at the university, during which he won widespread regard as one of the 129-year-old institution’s greatest presidents. During his 24 years at the helm, the university added dozens of new buildings, raised more than $3 billion from private donors and added an honors college and additional degree programs.

But after a new administration took over, he was suddenly accused of making the university financially unstable. His successor, James Gallogly, a retired energy industry executive chosen by a conservative-dominated board of regents, declared that he found the university was $1 billion in debt, and he quickly fired six senior administrators, including the chief financial officer.

He later forced out more after it was revealed that OU tweaked alumni donations data to improve its U.S. News & World Report college ranking.

Gallogly also scaled back several signature Boren initiatives, including tuition waivers and stipends for National Merit scholars and the university’s international studies program named in Boren’s honor.

Since then, the open rancor between the two presidents has reverberated across the state and the university’s large alumni network.

“We don’t know what to think, really,” said Alan Livingston, an OU alum and retired energy industry executive from Houston. “It bothers me very much, because I don’t like to see people that probably have the same goals for the university be on different roads.”

Boren’s political clout declined over the years as Oklahoma’s politics shifted rightward and the GOP came to hold 116 of the Legislature’s 149 seats. In 2016, he infuriated lawmakers by spearheading an unsuccessful 1-cent sales tax initiative for education funding as the Legislature cut higher education appropriations by 16 percent.

“Behind closed doors, it was a total joke in a lot of ways how inefficient higher education had become, but they still had this huge pull on the Legislature,” said former state Rep. Jason Murphey, a Republican critical of how the university’s lobbyists worked to influence his colleagues.

Burke, Boren’s attorney and longtime friend, said he believes much of the ill will stems from an ideological clash.

Boren’s “theories of government and education are … certainly more liberal than that of conservative leaders,” he said.

Disclosure of the sexual abuse allegation provided a reminder of a bizarre episode from Boren’s earlier political career. During his campaign for Senate in 1978, an obscure fringe candidate named Anthony Points publicly accused Boren of being gay. Boren responded with a news conference at the state Capitol where he swore on a family Bible that he was not gay or bisexual.

“I further swear that I have never engaged in any homosexual or bisexual activities, nor do I approve of or condone them,” Boren said at the time.

Boren went on to win the Senate seat. His son, Dan Boren, also served three terms in the U.S. House and was the last Democratic congressman from Oklahoma until Kendra Horn’s upset win last year.

At the university, many now wonder about Boren’s legacy.

Boren “was very much loved by the community,” sophomore Taylor Putman said, “especially by the students,” who appreciated his ambition for the university and flocked to the political science classes he taught.

However, amid the waves of layoffs, “I’d say there’s kind of a demoralized, uncertain, nervous atmosphere on campus,” said Rick Tepker, a longtime professor at OU’s College of Law. “I think there’s a growing awareness that Boren left us in a financial mess, and that makes people nervous.”

DOUGLAS COUNTY — Law enforcement authorities are investigating a Friday shooting in Lawrence that sent two teenagers to the hospital.

Just after 4p.m. police were dispatched to 2700 West 27th Street, Holcom Park Recreation Center in Lawrence in response to a reported shooting, according to a media release.

EMS transported two male victims, ages 16 and 18, from the scene to area hospitals. The 18-year-old victim was reported in critical condition with potentially life-threatening injuries, and the 16-year-old victim in serious condition.

Witnesses at the scene gave officers a description of a possible suspect vehicle. Police located a vehicle matching the witness description shortly afterward and two persons in the vehicle were detained for questioning and then police arrested 17-year-old  Benson J. Edwards Jr. and 17 year-old  Sahavione K. Caraway both of Topeka.   Both were booked into the Juvenile Detention Center on aggravated robbery charges.  Both victims remain hospitalized Saturday, according to police.

By JIM MCLEAN

Grievances generated by policy and personality clashes in a southeast Kansas community have spilled onto the statewide stage in the battle over Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s nominee to head the state Department of Commerce.

David Toland often found himself at odds with Virginia Crossland-Macha when he was the CEO of Thrive Allen County, a community health-improvement and economic development organization based in Iola.

The intensity of the battle has rattled many in the town of approximately 6,000, said John McCrae, a former mayor and current president of Iola Industries, a business development group.

“They’re kind of stunned that Virginia is leading the charge against the hometown boy who has done so much and so well,” McRae said.

They’re also stunned, McRae said, that abortion has now become an issue in the confirmation fight that was already complicated by Toland’s flippant jibes at prominent Republicans.

On Monday, Kansans for Life, the state’s most powerful anti-abortion organization, charged in a letter to senators that Toland was unfit for the commerce post because of his “ties” to the late Wichita abortion provider George Tiller.

“It is unconscionable that anyone wishing to sit in the governor’s Cabinet would be part of honoring the legacy of an individual who took so many innocent lives,” KFL said in the letter.

The connection consists of two small grants Thrive Allen County obtained from a memorial fund established after Tiller’s murder in 2009. Neither paid for abortion services.

The first, a $9,380 award received in 2015, went mainly to fund a campaign to reduce the smoking rate among pregnant women in Allen County. The grant application pegged that rate at the time at “an astounding 26.1 percent.”

The second was a $10,000 grant awarded in 2018 that Thrive immediately transferred to the SEK Multi-County Health Department based in Iola.

“It arrived one day and exited the next,” said Lisse Regehr, Thrive’s incoming CEO.

The money funded a health department program to curb the incidence of premature and low-birth-weight babies.

She said that using those grants to the organization to connect Toland to abortion politics shows that Crossland-Macha and Republican legislative leaders are “desperate” to “take him down.”

“It’s a personal vendetta,” she said. “It’s despicable.”

Crossland-Macha didn’t return multiple calls or texts seeking comment. But she said in a recent email to McRae, a longtime friend, that she opposes Toland’s politics and his attempts to punish her and other Iola business owners who spoke out against Thrive initiatives.

Thrive’s successful campaign to raise the legal age for purchasing tobacco products in the city from 18 to 21 was among the examples of recrimination cited by Crossland-Macha in the letter. She said the truck stop that she and her husband, Larry, own lost $100,000 in sales during the first month of the new policy.

“This was my punishment from David,” Crossland-Macha wrote. “What a great way to silence … a critic.”

At one point, a harassment campaign directed at Toland prompted him to call the Iola police. They questioned a handful of people who Toland suspected were producing and distributing leaflets attacking him and his family. The investigation didn’t result in any charges but it did stop the harassment, according to the report.

McRae, a lifelong Republican who served 12 years as mayor, said he believes most Iola residents who know something about the battle are backing Toland because his of work to transform the community. Under his leadership, McRae said, Thrive facilitated public-private partnerships to develop a new apartment complex, recruit a new grocery store and build miles of hiking and biking trails.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation noticed and awarded Allen County its Culture of Health Prize in 2017.

“It’s been absolutely remarkable,” McRae said.

Crossland-Macha has a different view.

“Mr. Toland’s version of economic development has displaced local small businesses and jobs in Iola,” she told The Topeka Capital-Journal.

Crossland-Macha and various companies under the Crossland Construction umbrella contributed $52,000 to the political action committee of the Kansas Chamber shortly after Kelly was elected governor. The Chamber mostly backs Republican candidates.

McRae said politics are at the root of the battle over Toland’s nomination.

“David is an incredibly talented young man,” he said. “And I think he’s probably seen as a future legislator, a future governor and part of the motivation is to cut him off at the ankles.”

In addition, McRae said he believes GOP leaders are “trying to slap Governor Kelly in the face.”

“As a Kansan who supports whoever our governor is, I’m sick of it,” he said.

Some of Toland’s problems with Republicans also come down to political missteps. In a 2018 social media post intended to draw attention to a sleep study, Toland joked that former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback and sitting GOP Sen. Caryn Tyson kept him up at night.

“He said I’m one of his biggest nightmares,” Tyson said in an interview, “so it was a personal attack.”

Even so, Tyson said, other factors will determine her vote on whether to confirm Toland to Kelly’s cabinet.

“It would be nice to have some representation from southeast Kansas,” she said, emphasizing that she hasn’t yet made a decision.

Sen. Dennis Pyle, a Republican from Hiawatha, said if the vote had occurred Monday, he would have voted for Toland’s confirmation. Then came objections from anti-abortion activists.

“Now,” Pyle said, “I don’t think I can.”

Meanwhile, Kelly’s office orchestrated letters of support for Toland from across the state.

In a joint letter, the directors of the chambers of commerce in Manhattan, Emporia, Topeka and Lawrence said Toland’s experience in both urban and rural settings “make him the ideal candidate to take Kansas’ business development to the next level.”

Before returning to his native Iola to take the helm at Thrive Allen County in 2008, Toland directed planning for the mayor of Washington, D.C., and later headed development and planning for a real estate firm that specialized in transforming blighted areas of the city.

By all accounts, the vote on his confirmation, expected next Monday, will be close.

“Very close,” Tyson said.

Jim McLean is the senior correspondent for the Kansas News Service. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks. 

CRAIG, Mo. (AP) — In the late 1800s, the first members of the Drewes clan came to northwest Missouri and found a land that looked like their own back in Germany.

They put down seed on a plot of land 3.5 miles south of Craig in Holt County.

Nearly 140 years later, their descendants are struggling to keep the fruit of their hard work alive.

Almost all of the 3,000 acres of the Drewes farm is awash in the Missouri River, which crested last week at more than 28 feet near Rulo Bridge, the Kansas City Star reported. The flood stage for the area is 17 feet.

But it was the worst.

“The worst since Noah floated through here,” David, 51, said.

Like the water, the devastation from the flood has seeped into every part of their family’s life.

On the farm, the struggle to keep livestock, equipment, grain bins and the well house away from the water that has filled the Drewes family’s days. Their kids, wives and mother Rita Drewes sleep away from their homes, which are located on the drowned farmstead.

Half the family stays in Mound City in the home of their sister, Sheri Sharp. Though her house is not flooded, Sharp is the chief financial officer of a nearby 40-employee ethanol plant surrounded by water, with no way for trucks or trains to come in or out with corn.

Even with the river crested and some of the water receded, their frantic efforts to preserve what they have left continue.

The days leading up to when the river crested were a blur, the brothers said.

During the 2011 flood, predictions by the National Atmospheric Oceanic Administration (NOAA) gave the Drewes family two weeks of lead time.

This year, predictions of major flooding came only a few days before, they said.

On March 15, a nearby farmer alerted Eddie, 52, and others through Snapchat that the water was getting high at a levee two miles south of the Drewes property. Eddie Drewes said he and two other farmers brought excavators and spent until midnight piling up dirt.

In the meantime, David and his two adult sons, Wyatt and Trevor, began the arduous process of moving their 150 head of cattle to higher ground. A tractor, with the tread needed to pull through the muddy ground, tugged each trailer of cows miles away and then returned for more.

“It was our No. 1 priority,” David Drewes said.

Their second priority was to protect the grain bins full of thousands of bushels of corn and soybeans.

Like many farmers in the Midwest, Eddie Drewes said, they were waiting for better soybean prices. He couldn’t offload them because tariffs spurred by President Donald Trump’s trade policy led to a lack of Chinese buyers. (Eddie said he supports Trump’s trade agenda.)

Plus, a drought last year had yielded a historically bad crop, the brothers said.

“Some fields of corn produced about less than one-sixth of what it normally would do,” Eddie Drewes said. “That’s some of the worst corn we had.”

Though the farmers were federally subsidized in some ways and insured in others, payments on equipment and rent for farming land added up.

If the last year’s crop was “a hurt on top of a hurt,” as Eddie called it, the floods were positioned to bring another hurt. If soybeans get wet, not only do they spoil but they expand and the bins burst. Eddie set to building 3- to 4-foot levees around the bins.

Based on predictions, the brothers thought they would have more time to get their equipment out and build levees around the grain bins that remained on their property.

But the predictions kept changing.

“They said the river would crest, like, six times,” David Drewes said.

And that meant their calculations — how tall the levees would need to be, who could stay on the farm, how high up the equipment needed to be — kept changing.

On Saturday, March 16, David knew the water was at the farm before he could see it. He smelled the mix of sulfur and trash.

“I told my wife look outside and you’ll see the water,” David said. “She looked outside and it was everywhere.”

On Sunday, March 17, as the water inched upward, Eddie and his wife Theresa decided it was time for her to take their two children, Faith and Logan, out of the house, which was about a half-mile away from David’s.

“It’s like a slow-moving tsunami,’” Faith, 13, said, of the flood’s nature.

The only way out through the water was in a single-person sprayer. Theresa stuck to close to Eddie’s side in the cab, while Faith and Logan stood outside above the wheels while holding the back.

“It was fun!” Faith said, with face-splitting grin.

“They don’t normally get to do that,” Eddie later added.

Eddie couldn’t leave with them.

Once he hopped in the excavator to build the levees, only he knew where he dug, he said. The job was his.

The job extended into the night, when he would wake periodically to dip the excavator in the well house and try to keep the contaminated flood water out of the farm’s drinking water. (He was ultimately unsuccessful.)

Even though he said he wasn’t afraid to be alone at night on top of a tall tractor with swirling water lapping at feet, he had admitted the wrong move could mean disastrous consequences.

“If the (excavator) had tipped toward the cab, I would have been dead and drowned,” Eddie said.

Progress seemed to be coming along until March 20.

“After that, it was all rushing chaos,” Eddie said.

It’s hard for the Drewes to forget March 20. It was the day the Missouri River at Rulo Bridge was found to discharge more than 328,000 cubic feet per second.

“The day when the water rose a foot between noon and 6:30 p.m., 7 p.m. — that’s the day I knew,” David said. “I knew it was over then.”

“We never dreamed (the water) would get this deep,” Eddie said.

Ridden with a case of the shingles, the family matriarch, Rita, 76, had planned to stay in her home, which never lost electricity and was fewer than 250 yards from Eddie’s. During the 2011 flood, she had spent from June to September in her daughter Sheri’s home.

By the afternoon, with the well house breached and no drinking water, she changed her mind.

David, who had earlier in the day waded through chest-deep water to move equipment, fetched the Missouri Water Patrol.

Rita sat in the patrol’s boat with her tan Bichon Poodle mix, Annie, in her lap and garbage bag of clothes at her side.

“This makes me sick,” she thought.

It took hours to navigate through the detritus of cornstalks and sandbags to reach dry ground at the Craig exit of Interstate-29.

″(The news) said they rescued up ‘an elderly woman and a dog!’” Rita later said, sitting in Sheri’s basement. “Elderly! That doesn’t make me sound too good.”

Back on the farm, Eddie continued to circle the levees, building them higher and higher.

It was Logan’s 10th birthday on March 20. He, his mother and his sister went to St. Joseph to celebrate with Chinese food.

“That’s not something I wanted to miss,” Eddie said, his voice strained. “But (Logan) saw the water, so he understands. He knows.”

The water has begun to inch down, though it hasn’t left. The Drewes still use a Jon boat to get near the property.

On March 22, Eddie was able to see his family and take a shower for the first time in five days, at Sheri’s house in Mound City.

Expecting more floods and extended family stays, Sheri built on to the house after the 2011 flood. Much of the Drewes clan, many of whom were staying at the house, gathered for a meal of grilled meat and macaroni and cheese.

Unlike the expensive farm equipment and two airplanes that have sustained damage, the Drewes have left behind several things that can’t be replaced. The brothers collected antique tractors, including the first one their grandfather bought in 1936 and their father purchased in 1954.

Rita’s sewing room full of fabric is mostly likely covered in mold, she said. Upon each marriage and college graduation, Rita makes and gifts quilts to each of her grandchildren. She left a quilt she was holding for her grandson behind, she said.

“We’re still alive so we are blessed, I guess,” Rita said, with tears in her eyes.

The real damage will only be apparent once the water lifts.

When the Missouri River surged through their fields in 2011, it left a two-acre long gash in the ground. It scattered the farm’s gravel roads. Oftentimes, sand bags leave behind their guts on the fields.

“Ever try to grow something on a beach? It’s like that,” Eddie said.

The farm has lost the money they put into the fertilizer that was on the ground when the flood came and the seed for a planting season that most likely will not happen, according to David.

“No one is going to invest until there’s containment on the Missouri River,” David said, adding that the breached levees needed to be fixed.

The Drewes are part of a contingent of Missouri River basin farmers who think the Army Corps of Engineers is managing the river poorly. Eddie was one of the plaintiffs in a federal lawsuit that sought damages from the Corps after the 2011 flood.

Remaining vigilant about keeping the electricity on and the sump pumps going is the plan for the immediate future.

Though the floods can be maddening and are “happening way too often,” the family plans on rebuilding, David said.

“You get sad … mad,” David said. “Then it’s, ‘Let’s try it again.’”

“Feeding the world” is part of a calling, Eddie said. Faith, who plans on taking over Drewes Farms once she’s an adult, said farming is part of her blood.

And farming near Craig is part of their heritage, David Drewes said.

“I grew up on the farm,” he said. “It’s in our soul. It’s what we are.”

___

GEARY COUNTY –The Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) arrested  Anthony J. “Tony” Wolf, 44, the Geary County Sheriff, just after 2 p.m. Friday at the Geary County Sheriff’s Office, 826 N. Franklin St. in Junction City.

According to a KBI media release, Wolf was arrested for two new counts of felony theft. The charge alleges Wolf used county funds to purchase items that were then sold for personal profit, or maintained for personal use.

On Friday he appeared at a pre-trial conference regarding the charges he was previously arrested for on Oct. 18 that accuse Wolf of giving a county-owned firearm as a gift to a third party, and for misuse of public funds. The misuse of public funds allegation asserts Wolf used public dollars in a manner not authorized by law.

 Wolf was booked into the Geary County Jail. Dickinson County Attorney Andrea Purvis has been appointed as special prosecutor for this case.

LAWRENCE, Kan. (AP) — Kansas running back Pooka Williams has agreed to diversion terms for a misdemeanor domestic battery charge.

Court records filed Thursday show the agreement requires him to complete 40 hours of community service by Nov. 30. He also must submit to domestic violence offender assessment. If that assessment doesn’t result in any recommendations, Williams must take an anger management course.

If he successfully completes the diversion, the allegation would be dropped from his record.

Williams was charged in December after an 18-year-old Kansas student he was dating accused him of punching her in the stomach and grabbing her throat.

He was suspended by the football program Dec. 7.

Williams was the Big 12 offensive freshman of the year and a first-team all-Big 12 selection as running back and kick returner last season.

___

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of migrant families and children entering the U.S. from Mexico is so high that Border Patrol is immediately releasing them instead of transferring them to the agency responsible for their release, forcing local governments to help coordinate their housing, meals and travel.

“We need to work toward a clean sweep,” Border Patrol Deputy Chief of Operations Richard Hudson said in a letter obtained by The Associated Press sent to sector chiefs Thursday. “This should be our daily battle rhythm.”

Agents are still doing medical screenings and criminal checks, but the decision means thousands of families will be released without first going through U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement, which manages their deportation cases.

The Del Rio and Rio Grande Valley sectors in Texas and the Yuma, Arizona, sector earlier announced that agents would begin to release families on their own recognizance. A Border Patrol official not authorized to speak on the matter said Wednesday that El Paso and San Diego planned on doing the same. Some sectors were not part of the change, including Tucson, Arizona and El Centro, California.

Families are typically released with notices to appear in immigration court due to legal restrictions on detaining them and lack of holding space. Until now, Customs and Border Protection has detained them briefly before turning them over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement, generally within 72 hours, to be released pending the outcome of their immigration cases.

The move came as Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen wrote to Congress asking for emergency funding for humanitarian and operational needs, and the ability to detain families together as long as necessary to deport people faster.

“The volume of ‘vulnerable populations’ is unsustainable. Our system has been able to cope with high numbers in the past, but the composition of today’s flows makes them virtually unmanageable,” she wrote.

Arrests all along the southern border have skyrocketed in recent months. Border agents are on track to make 100,000 arrests and denials of entry at the southern border this month, over half of which are families with children. To manage the crush, U.S. Customs and Border Protection is reassigning 750 border inspectors from their usual duties at the ports of entry to help Border Patrol keep pace with arrivals in between ports of entry. The head of the agency held a press conference in El Paso on Wednesday to say the breaking point had arrived.

But federal lawmakers have fought over whether there is a “crisis” at the border, particularly amid President Donald Trump’s push for a border wall that he claimed will solve all the immigration problems. Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee, said Thursday the evidence shows the immigration system is cracking under the strain.

“The sad reality is that we now have a virtual open border for any migrant who crosses with a minor, and our border security enforcement has been reduced to a mere speed bump for migrants on their path to long-term occupancy in the United States,” he said, adding border officers are being asked to perform an impossible task with no help from Congress.

And along the border, officials were working to manage the families that had been suddenly released. Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls said was city is working with various non-governmental organizations to make sure families released by the Border Patrol have temporary housing, food, medical care and help with traveling to their intended destinations.

Most immigrant families coming to the U.S. don’t plan on staying in the border towns they cross through, but rather to meet up with family throughout the country.

“Focusing on the humanitarian effort is the most important focus for the city, Nicholls.

The Yuma Sector has over the last two years seen an extraordinary spike in the number of immigrant families who turn themselves in. Yuma Deputy Chief Patrol Agent Carl E. Landrum said Thursday that agents have arrested 30,000 people in the relatively small sector since October 1.

The facility in Yuma has the capacity to temporarily hold 410 people. Until Thursday, ICE had been picking all of these families up and taking them to Phoenix and Tucson to be processed. But the numbers have swelled so much now that ICE doesn’t have enough resources to pick everybody up, so Border Patrol agents themselves are releasing families in Yuma.

“It is overwhelming us locally, as well as overwhelming the system nationally,” Landrum said.

“The sheer volume of family units crossing the border has overwhelmed ICE’s limited transportation resources; combined with a requirement to detain these individuals for no more than 20 days, the agency has no option but to expeditiously arrange for their release,” ICE spokeswoman Sarah Rodriguez said in a statement.

The agency makes “every attempt to coordinate the release of these individuals with NGOs that provide assistance with basic needs, but the heavy influx in recent months has inundated these organizations as well,” Rodriguez said.