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BILOXI — More than a year ago, federal cuts to health-related grants threw into uncertainty Mississippi’s only advocacy group devoted to serving the needs of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders statewide, and they are still figuring out how to recover.

In Biloxi, a five-person staff at the nonprofit Boat People SOS helps primarily Vietnamese residents with interpretation and translation, including for medical appointments. With over 4,000 Mississippi Vietnamese on the Gulf Coast, the team said their small size makes it hard to keep up with the community’s needs. Losing nearly $500,000 in federal funds made meeting those needs that much more difficult.

“Overnight, we lost the ability to sustain these positions and the vital support they provided to some of the most underserved families on the Gulf Coast,” said Jane Nguyen, executive director of the branch with offices in Biloxi and Bayou La Batre, Alabama.  

Following efforts by the Trump administration to terminate federal grants, President Donald Trump signed into law the One Big Beautiful Bill Act a year ago. Together, these efforts have resulted in widespread cuts to health funding nationwide that will be felt for years to come, including at the local level.

On the Mississippi Gulf Coast, community health workers are trained to perform medical interpretation training while also managing their clients’ full cases. They schedule doctor appointments, arrange transportation and show up at appointments to interpret in-person. But with limited staff, health worker Lien Nguyen says she can get behind on appointments. 

“Sometimes, we have to turn some people down,” she said.

On any given day at the office, Lien Nguyen might split her time between preparing for a Boat People SOS event like its back-to-school fundraiser, handling a domestic violence case or even going through someone’s mail to see what’s important and what can be thrown away. One colleague spends most of his time on immigration questions, and another goes to court hearings and medical visits. As a team, they are often the first call someone in the community makes when they need help with language access across a wide range of issues. 

Beyond this year, Jane Nguyen said she doesn’t know how this vital work will be funded.  

A major grant came through the former state Office of Preventive Health and Health Equity. That office was later downsized and folded into a different group last year, partially in response to Mississippi State Auditor Shad White’s report of mismanaged funds. Nguyen was forced to rapidly find additional grants or private funding to cover the shortfall. After several months of uncertainty, her efforts and support from the national W.K. Kellogg Foundation allowed the Biloxi office to maintain its staff, while one of the three workers in the Bayou La Batre office went down to part time. 

The most recent cuts come after the program has already shrunk. For three years, the Biloxi staff were supplemented by two rotating Americorps workers who assisted on the administrative side. But in April 2025, the Trump administration cut Americorps funding. 

“We’re in a huge transition period now,” Nguyen said. “Very small office but a lot to do, so we have been struggling with capacity.”

With fewer staff members, it takes longer for patients to get seen, health workers said. When they schedule a patient’s appointment, they commit to being present the full length of time, including unpredictable waiting times and the appointment itself. Tai Nguyen, another community health worker with no relation to Jane or Lien, said he can be booked for as many as 15 interpretation cases a week, the majority of which are health-related. 

Tai Nguyen said he doesn’t know if his position will be funded for next year. If not, he’ll go back to working in the real estate business full time, but he’ll have to leave behind a roster of clients who have come to rely on him and the other staff members. 

Many of their clients don’t have family or friends nearby who have time to handle tasks like going through mail or setting up appointments, Nguyen said.

This is true for one long-time client of the Biloxi office, 73-year-old Thieu Ngo. A Medicare agent recommended he see Boat People SOS for help getting settled in Mississippi shortly after he moved to the Gulf Coast roughly two decades ago.

Ngo, a retired construction and home repair worker, only knows a few phrases in English. He doesn’t have family in Mississippi, and most of the friends he knew here have since moved away. Ngo credits community health workers with helping him apply for Medicare and handling his medical visits, including family doctors and specialists like his lung and heart doctors. 

He prefers to have an in-person interpreter, Ngo said in Vietnamese. When he’s at the hospital without one, providers will turn to a virtual interpreter, but that is not effective for him. 

“The hospital let me hear the machine,” he said. “I hear it, I don’t understand anything.” 

Confronting challenges and meeting needs

The Gulf Coast is home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese individuals in Mississippi. Many families trace their roots to the first waves of refugees who came to the United States in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, drawn to the region’s thriving seafood industry. Families stayed and expanded, some working in a shrimping business that has since struggled to compete with international exports, and others shifting to the casino industry or to open restaurants and bakeries. 

In 2005, Hurricane Katrina tore up the Coast, leveled homes and destroyed the boats many families depended on to maintain their livelihood. Five years later, the BP oil spill hit a community that was still rebuilding. Fishing closures related to the spill resulted in a 60% decrease in shrimp catch in 2010, a Natural Resources Defense Council report said.

In the wake of the hurricane, national organizations like Boat People SOS set up temporary offices to provide direct aid, and then stayed as challenges compounded. At the time, no organizations helped the Vietnamese-speaking community navigate insurance claims, post-disaster unemployment or interpretation in general.

“We came down here during Hurricane Katrina to help the recovery efforts, and ended up finding a huge population of Vietnamese along the Coast and no resources available to them,” Jane Nguyen said. In 2025, that “temporary” office celebrated its 20th anniversary.  

Boat People SOS works with a variety of partners within the local area and throughout the state, including local churches and a few Vietnamese-speaking healthcare providers. 

They often refer residents who speak primarily in Vietnamese to places like the Singing River Health System’s Biloxi clinic for primary care. Nurse practitioner Cynthia Le has worked at Singing River for over 20 years and is now at the Biloxi clinic, while Dr. Andy Doan joined last year. For pediatric care, they may refer people to the Coastal Family Health Center, a Gulf Coast federally qualified health center that operates on a sliding fee scale, charging patients based on their ability to pay. 

Angelica Trieu is a pediatric nurse practitioner at Coastal Family Health, working down the street from the hospital where she was born. She often sees Vietnamese patients who recently immigrated to the area. 

To communicate with patients who may feel uncomfortable speaking in English, Trieu’s clinic relies on BoostLingo, a service that offers virtual medical interpretation. That platform allows providers to call a language interpreter via tablet or smartphone and choose between a phone or video call. Along with LanguageLine Solutions, used by the Singing River Health System and Ochsner Health, BoostLingo is one of several interpretation services available globally. 

Trieu has heard from some clients that the virtual interpreter’s speech is hard to understand. Other times, connection issues and glitches in the software interrupt important conversations between patients and providers. 

One Chinese patient who communicated with Trieu through BoostLingo told her after the consultation that she understood Trieu’s English better than the interpreter’s Chinese. With her Vietnamese patients, Trieu speaks to them directly. 

“A lot of my other patients that have utilized (BoostLingo) with an in-person translator would say the tablet just doesn’t make sense,” she said. For Trieu, it seemed like the quality of interpretation varied between calls. 

BoostLingo Director of Quality and Compliance Rocío Treviño acknowledged the difficulties of maintaining a large bank of virtual interpreters while outlining its standards. Every medical interpreter has to have three years of experience in medical interpretation in addition to the standard certifications, she said. 

Sometimes, parents ask their children to help them understand what is said during their appointment. With patients who speak Spanish, Chinese or another language, Trieu tries not to rely on children to translate, no matter how old they are. 

As someone who interpreted for her parents in high school, she remembers what it’s like to not know medical terms and doesn’t want misinterpretations to affect her patients. Trieu said she has seen other providers in the clinic use non-medical translation apps, like Google Translate, but that she avoids doing so because she has seen how inaccurate those services can be. 

“I like to treat my patients how I would want my family to be treated,” she said.

Some researchers have found that apps, while convenient, can be worse than having no translation at all. Iris Feinberg is a health literacy and language access researcher at Georgia State University. Her team has conducted research on how the Google Translate app compares to a trained interpreter in clinical conversations, including for Vietnamese patients. Data showed that Google Translate was nearly seven times more likely to make errors than the human interpreter in those settings.

Across the 14 conversations sampled, the interpreter was better at conveying not just what the doctor said but also the clinical significance of the words, Feinberg said. Meanwhile, Google Translate incorrectly translated messages that could create a real problem for someone’s health. 

“The doctor could be saying something that could happen to you if you don’t take your medicine at night. And then it could be translated as ‘don’t take your medicine at night,’” she said. 

Barriers beyond language

Outside of interpretation, one of the biggest challenges in getting patients to the doctor is transportation, several advocates and people who work in healthcare told Mississippi Today. While there is a public bus system through Gulf Coast Transit, coverage of rural areas is limited. Even in the Gulfport-Biloxi metro area, some buses only run once every two hours. 

The majority of Boat People SOS’s clients are on Medicaid or Medicare, said Tai Nguyen. Medicare offers patients a certain number of non-emergency rides a year, which can range from 12 to unlimited, depending on the patient’s plan. The service is free but can be slow, and drivers often don’t speak Vietnamese, which can lead to communication barriers when they pick up the patient. 

Some patients, like Ngo, avoid using the service because they can’t speak with the driver. He has his own car, but after some procedures, he’s not allowed to drive home alone. In these cases, he’ll order a taxi instead because all he needs to do is give the driver an address, he said. 

The Boat People SOS office policy is to not provide rides and instead meet patients at the hospital or clinic due to liability concerns if there is an accident. Tai Nguyen schedules a patient’s ride three days in advance through a transportation broker and interprets if the driver runs into any issues the day of. 

Rules matter, but Tai Nguyen has made an exception for a patient who had no one else to turn to. The patient had run out of Medicare-covered rides but urgently needed to see his eye doctor. He had also just gotten in an accident and didn’t have a vehicle to drive, so he called Nguyen’s cellphone. 

“If I wasn’t there, he would have just missed that appointment, not knowing what can happen to his vision,” Nguyen said. 

Health worker Lien Nguyen also has made an exception to drive a patient. The ride was scheduled for two hours before the transportation service started operation at 7 a.m., and the broker canceled it without informing the patient. When the doctors called Nguyen from the Pascagoula hospital 30 minutes away, she realized her patient wasn’t going to make it to his appointment unless she got him there. 

“I took it upon myself, just went to his house, pick him up, and drove him to hospital, because he’s been waiting for that surgery,” she said. 

Both community health workers said that with more funding, their patients would benefit from a vehicle owned by Boat People SOS they could use to reliably drive patients to their appointments.  

Coi Nguyen, a former Boat People SOS staff member who now works part time in health insurance, independently volunteers to do much of the same work. She drives some of the people she takes to the doctor’s office and interprets their medical visits. First, she makes sure patients who ride with her understand the risks. In 15 years living in the Gulf Coast Vietnamese community, she’s seen transportation be a persistent issue. 

“They said that they cannot come to the appointment, nobody drive them,” she said. “So then now they cannot use the service even though the government pay, you know?”

Boat People SOS after this year

While having a few more staff would be “really, really good,” Tai Nguyen praised the small team’s ability to make the most of what resources they have. 

“That’s sort of the mentality, we’re still going to get the job done regardless of what it takes,” he said. 

For Ngo, who relies on Lien Nguyen for all his doctor’s appointments, a future without Boat People SOS would be difficult. He said that he would need to find someone else who speaks Vietnamese to help him, but doesn’t know who he would turn to. 

“If he had a choice or was able to make the government change, he would like for it to have funds for us to help people like him,” Ngo said through Nguyen as his interpreter. 

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com. 

SENATOBIA – Nearly three weeks after police fatally shot a 1-year-old boy outside a Mississippi Walmart, state and local law enforcement agencies have offered few details about the incident and refused repeated requests to release public records. 

Kohen Wiley, the toddler, was with his 19-year-old mother and her friend when they were accused of shoplifting a box of diapers, his family said. Senatobia police responded, and Tate County sheriff’s deputies, who were already present at the Walmart, went to assist them. During the resulting confrontation, one of the officers shot into the women’s vehicle as it drove away. 

At a press conference Wednesday, attorneys for the boy’s family said their pleas for body-worn and dashboard camera footage and surveillance video from the Walmart where the shooting took place have been denied. They said authorities told them evidence would be shared after the shooting was investigated, a process that could take months.

On Thursday morning, I visited the Senatobia Police Department to ask for one document in particular – the incident report describing the shooting. 

Incident reports are routinely filed by law enforcement officers to document the basics of situations they responded to. They are unique because Mississippi public information law specifically requires agencies to make those reports public, regardless of any active investigation. 

These reports often include the names of officers who respond to a 911 call, details of who made the call and a description of how the officers responded. So far, authorities have not released any of those details about the Walmart shooting. 

When I arrived at the Senatobia police station, I was introduced to a sergeant who said Hampton was his last name. I asked him if I could read the incident report related to the June 14 shooting. He refused my request, saying he could not “release, show or divulge” anything related to the incident because it was part of an ongoing investigation. 

I tried unsuccessfully for several minutes to explain the law and convince him that he was required to disclose the document. “Well, I’m not gonna stand here and debate with you all day long about public records law,” Hampton said.

I said, “Sir, it is the law.”

“I just told you what is gonna go on,” he said. “If you don’t agree with that, you’re far more than welcome to go, look into your laws. You’re welcome to run it up the chain even further.”

I asked him for his name, so that I could quote him. That led to this exchange:

“Sergeant,” he answered.

That’s your first name?

“Sergeant.”

You’re not willing to share your full name?

“Sergeant.”

Is that your full name?

“Sergeant.”

Could you share your full name, please?

“I just told you my name. Sergeant.”

Your first name is Sergeant?

“Sergeant.”

OK, and what’s your position at the police department?

“Sergeant.”

I have since filed a request with the state’s public safety department, which is investigating the shooting and has the Senatobia police incident report. In the request, I cited the section of the Mississippi Public Records Act that says, “Nothing in this chapter shall be construed to exempt from public disclosure a law enforcement incident report.”

Chad Kincaid is working on a road construction crew – and like many Mississippians, he’s doing what he can to stay cool as a heat dome lingers over the state. He’s taking more breaks, keeping cool drinks on hand and getting shade wherever he can with temperatures in the 90s and humidity that makes it feel even muggier. 

“It was pretty manageable to deal with at first,” Kincaid said Thursday. “Then all of a sudden within a two-week span it just got incredibly hot.”

Kincaid’s coworkers on Jackson’s North State Street agreed, telling Mississippi Today that the crew had to start arriving at the site at 4 a.m. — an hour earlier than their usual start time — in order to finish their 10-hour days before it gets too hot. 

“It affects you mentally,” Kincaid said. “It gets so hot that sometimes you can’t think straight.” 

Mississippi is just one of several states stuck in the heat dome affecting the central, southern and eastern portions of the U.S. — a weather phenomenon where hot air is trapped in the atmosphere due to high pressure. 

Jake Johnson, who works alongside Kincaid, said he prepares “like an athlete” year round to be ready for hazardous conditions that may arise by working out and eating healthy foods. 

“This is a strenuous job,” Johnson said. “So you pretty much want to keep yourself up so that way, when you get to this point of the year, you are really conditioned to handle circumstances that come with this.”

The National Weather Service began to warn Mississippians last week, issuing heat advisories for the incoming weather. Throughout the Fourth of July weekend, temperatures could reach the  mid-90s and the heat index will reach above 110 degrees in some areas of the state.

Some communities have already reacted to the heat. Laurel’s Salvation Army is opening a cooling center over the weekend. Bolivar County Transportation Agency and Community Foundation of Northwest Mississippi partnered with local content creator Pam Chatman to host a “Beat the Heat Event,” providing a cooling center and supplies to people in need.

However, many counties across the state have not addressed the ongoing heat issues.

A report in the Journal of the American Medical Association estimates that 2,300 Americans died from heat-related illness in 2023. This year, nine children across the U.S. have died of heatstroke in a car.

Heat exhaustion has become a concern for many. Heat exhaustion — sometimes known as sun stroke — occurs when a person’s core temperature reaches 101-104 degrees. If left untreated, it can lead to heatstroke, a potentially fatal form of heat exhaustion.

Jim Pollard, public affairs manager for American Medical Response ambulance service, said children and older adults are particularly at risk for heat related illness. 

“As you age, the body’s ability to sense drastic changes in temperature declines,” Pollard said. “The body surface area for kids is greater for their mass compared to adults. They absorb heat faster than adults.”

American Medical Response recommends people stay properly hydrated, wear loose lightweight clothing, and avoid high-energy activities during the heat of the day. It is also recommended that people experiencing heat exhaustion symptoms should move to a cooler area and contact 911 if needed.

Today’s column comes with this caveat: I become a soccer or futbol fan once every four years. I find the World Cup fascinating, even when I don’t always understand the intricacies of what I am watching.

That probably put me firmly in the majority among the crowd of roughly 300 who watched the U.S. defeat Bosnia and Herzegovina 2-0 on the 18-foot wide, outdoor TV screen at Fondren Yard in northeast Jackson. We were of all ages, all races, male and female, with one trait in common: We pulled for Team USA. We left happy, sort of. 

That’s because perhaps we had two things in common. The second: We often disagreed with the inconsistent officiating of referee Raphael (no kin to Santa) Claus. We will get to that.

First, the scene: It was festive. Many in the crowd wore red, white and blue. Some of us, especially those of us with little or graying hair, approached the game with equal parts anticipation and trepidation. We were buoyed by the American team’s impressive play in this year’s World Cup group stage, yet we were mightily concerned about our history once we have reached the knockout stage. We had won only once in knockout stage history, 2-0 over Mexico in 2002. (All together now: USA! USA! USA!) Other than that, we were 0-6-1 and had not scored more than one goal in any of those seven matches. Where the World Cup is concerned, we have been like Casey Stengel’s original New York Mets, back when the great Casey plaintively asked, “Can’t anybody here play this game?”

There was also our previous World Cup record against European teams to consider: only three victories and six draws against 15 defeats. Even the original Mets had a better winning percentage.

But those are just stats. We had other numbers on our side. Our population is somewhere around 346 million. Bosnia and Herzegovina, part of the former Yugoslavia, has a population about 3.4 million. Surely, we can find more soccer phenoms out of 346 million than they can out of 3.4 mill. Can’t we?

If not, maybe we can borrow. Actually, we have borrowed. Our coach, Mauricio Roberto Pochettino Trossero, is from Argentina. Our leading scorer, Folarin Balogun, was born to Nigerian parents, in Brooklyn, New York, but grew up in London. He owes his U.S. citizenship to birthright citizenship, something President Donald Trump wants desperately to end. (If a vote on birthright citizenship had been taken at Fondren Yard last night, Trump most assuredly would not like the result.)

Balogun also owes his U.S. citizenship to airline officials in New York, who refused to let his mother fly home when she was seven months pregnant with the child she would name Folarin.

Wednesday night, Balogun was often being grabbed and held by the opposing players who were quite physical in defending him. What Balogun needed was one of those old tear-away jerseys Johnny Musso used to wear when he played football for Alabama. Balogun would have needed at least 20 of those tear-aways against Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Nevertheless, early on, he broke free to score an apparent goal only to have it disallowed for offsides. Later, he scored again to give his team a 1-0 lead, which only seemed to provoke the Bosnian players to increase their relentlessly physical defense of him.

And that’s what made what happened in the match’s 64th minute all the more incomprehensible. Balogun and Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic were battling for the ball when Balogun stepped on Muharemovic’s ankle. After a video review officials ruled that Balogun had done so maliciously and presented him a red card, soccer’s version both disqualification and suspension. Boos rang out both in Santa Clara, where the game was played, and in Fondren Yard.

To these untrained eyes, the foul looked far more inadvertent than malicious. To say the least, the sentence did not fit the crime. Not only was Balogun forced to leave the game and not only will he be ineligible for Team USA’s next match against Belgium, but the U.S. had to play the last 36 minutes of the match with 10 players vs. Bosnia’s 11.

Claus, the referee, would have to have been an accurate mind reader to make such a potentially game-defining call. Otherwise, how could he determine that Balogun’s foul was intentional rather than accidental? Granted, soccer refs need some mind-reading ability in order to differentiate between the almost constant flopping that goes on and real injuries. (It should be noted that Muharemovic kept playing after appearing as if he had been mortally wounded.)

Whatever, the U.S. seemed in some real trouble at that point. I mean, 10 vs. 11 is hardly fair. Somehow – and thanks largely due to German-born Malik Tillman’s remarkable penalty kick in the 82nd minute – our guys prevailed. They were both resilient and valiant and whatever other heroic terms you want to use, and will now continue their World Cup quest Monday night in Seattle against Belgium. 

You should know Belgium easily defeated the U.S. 5-2 in a pre-World Cup match, and the U.S. will be without Balogun. Also, despite Wednesday night’s victory, the U.S. World Cup record – especially against European teams – remains abysmal.

But as Al Michaels said during the most unlikely U.S. sports victory of all-time, the miracle that happened on ice, “Do you believe…?”

In Fondren, for one night, we surely did.

McADAMS — Parents of seven male students are suing the Attala County School District, the county and 13 other defendants, alleging that the boys’ constitutional rights were violated when they were strip-searched at McAdams High School. 

The boys, all McAdams High students, were individually escorted into a room on Feb. 10 and made to strip naked or nearly naked, squat and, in some cases, bend over, for an inspection by a school resource officer and colleagues, according to the federal lawsuit filed on June 15.

Three plaintiffs told Mississippi Today they were told by district officials a bathroom vape detector had triggered the search, but no e-cigarettes or other contraband was found.

“We are here seeking justice for our children,” Arma Cooper, who is suing the district on behalf of her son, said Wednesday. Her son is referred to as B.C. in the lawsuit. “I am deeply saddened by the actions of our educators, our district, to allow such things to happen and violate our men.” 

“My son will never be the same.”

Attorney Keith French, who is representing the plaintiffs, said the incidents violated the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure. He contends the incident also violates the boys’ 14th Amendment rights, which grants freedom from government invasion of their “intimate bodies.” 

French also alleges school employees violated the Mississippi Torts Act, which protects residents from “offensive touching or invasion,” among other violating behavior.

The lawsuit accuses school resource officer Leroy Wise, who is also a sheriff’s deputy, and colleagues of apprehending students near the bathroom without sufficient explanation or consent. Principal Dietrich Harmon, who is also a defendant, allegedly monitored the detained students while the searches were underway. 

Other defendants include Superintendent Rhyne Thompson and 10 unnamed staffers.

Mississippi Today reached out to the Attala County School District multiple times for comment.

“Right now, we can’t discuss anything that’s in litigation,” said April Jones, who serves as the assistant business manager for the district and answered a call routed to the superintendent’s office. Nicholas McClain, the district’s attorney, did not respond to a request for comment. 

District officials acknowledged the incident broke school policy, according to the lawsuit.

The Attala County school board mandates that employees “take reasonable and conventional measures to maintain control and discipline students.” Those measures may include “force, restraints, and ‘on-the-spot’ correction,” the district’s personnel handbook states.

French, the attorney representing the students, said the strip searches were “grossly disproportionate to any legitimate school-safety need” and “sexually invasive.”

The lawsuit contends that students did not consent to the searches and were threatened with suspension if they did not comply. The students were released to their classes after the searches.

“When we send our children to school, we give the school our trust. We do not give them dominion over our bodies,” French said. “And if the response is denial, delay, minimization or damage control, as (the Attala County School District) seems to be doing, then what they’re really saying is your child’s pain is inconvenient and the institution matters more than they do.”

Some of the students reported anxiety, violent behavior, sleep disruptions and social withdrawal after the incident, the lawsuit states. Some have sought counseling and medical care as a result. Three parents told Mississippi Today their sons quit their athletic teams soon after the strip searches because the SRO also patrols school sporting events.

‘I was told there was nothing to worry about’

Penny Ellington could tell something traumatic had happened before her son talked about the search. While driving her son, referred to as K.H. in the lawsuit, and his younger cousin home from school, Ellington heard the boys having a tense conversation about something that happened earlier that day. She thought there may have been a fight.

As she merged onto the main road home, her son began to describe being strip-searched by the school resource officer. 

His story spurred tears she struggled to suppress as she drove, Ellington said. She didn’t want her son to see her cry. 

She recalled her experience being assaulted as a child. Then, she said, she thought about how she couldn’t save her son from danger at his school.

Over subsequent weeks and months, Ellington said, she noticed K.H. withdraw from friends, activities he used to enjoy and other hobbies. He would lie in bed under the covers in the dark.

“And you don’t know whether to trust somebody grown or not because you don’t know if they got your interests at heart,” she said. “I didn’t want for my child to be assaulted, but he was assaulted.”

Chitina Johnson’s son, referred to as D.L. in the lawsuit, didn’t go to classes for the rest of the week after the searches. He said he felt sick each morning, and Johnson wanted him to rest. Now, he goes home to use the bathroom during the school day, she said.

Three parents told Mississippi Today that district officials reached out to them about “an incident” on Feb. 10 but assured them their children were cleared of wrongdoing. They said they got the runaround when they reached back out after their children described the graphic details of the searches. Three parents received apologies, others didn’t.  

“I was told there was nothing to worry about, that it was handled. He was trying to rush me off the phone almost,” Tiffany Greer, whose son is referred to as A.G. in the lawsuit, said of a conversation with Attala County schools Superintendent Rhyne Thompson. 

“My child was really going to the bathroom and he had to be treated like a prisoner,” she said she kept thinking afterwards. She said she was particularly angry when she heard that her son was threatened with suspension if he did not expose his genitals for an officer to search.

“If there’s no changes, my child wants to move districts,” Johnson said. “I’m looking to see if there are changes in the district, too.”

“The personnel changes should have happened immediately anyway”

Six of the plaintiffs told Mississippi Today they are hoping for accountability and for district officials to explain why the strip search happened. They said they still don’t understand how a vape detector siren set off a chain of events that led to the alleged violation of their children’s constitutional rights.

“It makes it hard to just be comfortable and okay with sending your child to school knowing that it has taken place,” Greer said. “Because then you have all kinds of questions like, ‘Has this happened before or will this happen again?’”

Mississippi Today reporter Devna Bose contributed to this report.

Mississippi’s kindergarten vaccination rates declined during the most recent academic year, continuing a downward trend that began after the state started granting religious exemptions for school vaccine requirements.

During the 2025-2026 school year, vaccination rates for required kindergarten immunizations fell nearly half a percentage point to 97.2% coverage, according to data from the Mississippi State Health Department. This rate, which depicts students who received all of the vaccines required for school entry, is down from 97.6% during the previous year. Children entering a Mississippi school for the first time are required to receive vaccines that prevent chickenpox, diphtheria, hepatitis, measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, whooping cough and polio.

This coverage rate is high, along with the overall vaccination rate for school-aged children up to 12th grade, at 99%, data shows. But health officials say the statewide averages mask growing pockets of lower immunization levels. 

Eight counties have fallen below a 95% kindergarten vaccine coverage rate, the threshold needed to prevent outbreaks of measles, a highly contagious and life-threatening virus. These counties include Franklin, George, Jackson, Lincoln, Pontotoc, Tate, Tishomingo and Webster. State Health Officer Dr. Dan Edney said this is an issue of growing concern for the agency. 

“I do think a recurrence of measles cases is inevitable as we are seeing the vaccination rates declining in certain areas of the states,” Edney told Mississippi Today.

Mississippi has not yet reported a case of measles, though over 2,100 cases of the respiratory illness have been confirmed across the U.S. this year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Measles was deemed eradicated nationwide in 2000.

Dr. Nathan Lo, a physician-scientist and assistant professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University, has studied county-level vaccination rates across the U.S. He said analyzing data at the county level is useful because outbreaks typically start when an infection is introduced into a community of people susceptible to a disease. In many cases, the initial introduction occurs within a smaller area, like a school or a grocery store, than an entire county. 

“When you look at the state-level data, and to some extent, even the county data, perhaps you don’t fully appreciate the degree of risk, because there are these pockets of under-vaccination,” he said. 

Edney said the health department, which processes requests for vaccine exemptions, is paying close attention to the counties that have dropped below a 95% vaccination rate and is working with the state Department of Education and school nurses to warn them of the risks and encourage them to prepare isolation protocols. 

For years, Mississippi permitted only medical vaccine exemptions authorized by a doctor for school entry and boasted the highest childhood vaccination rates in the nation. That began to change in 2023 when a federal judge ruled that parents can opt out of vaccinating their children due to religious beliefs. 

In Mississippi, the number of religious vaccine exemptions during the most recent school year increased by more than 60%, according to health department data. During the 2025-2026 school year, over 3,000 Mississippi students were approved for religious exemptions, compared to roughly 1,880 during the previous school year. The number of medical exemptions has remained relatively steady over the past three years, though it has grown over the last decade.

This trend mirrors patterns seen nationwide. The share of kindergarten children up to date on their vaccinations has declined across the U.S. since the COVID-19 pandemic, as vaccine exemptions have increased. 

When more people are exempt from vaccines, rates of vaccination tend to decline, Lo said. And when vaccination rates drop, communities are more likely to experience disease outbreaks. 

In 2025, Mississippi experienced a steep rise in whooping cough cases — reaching 141 total cases — and officials reported the first death related to the illness in 13 years. Confirmed infections have declined this year, with 32 cases reported in Mississippi as of June 20, according to CDC data. 

Edney said he worries about the resurgence of other vaccine preventable illnesses that have largely been eradicated in the U.S., like tetanus, polio and diphtheria, as more parents choose not to vaccinate their children against these potentially fatal illnesses.

“We’ve got to protect our children from these diseases that will definitely kill them,” he said.  

Lo said Mississippi’s historically high vaccination rates are likely to help protect the state from large, prolonged disease outbreaks. However, he warned that this security could weaken over time if more parents choose not to vaccinate their children.

“Over time, if vaccine coverage is low and stays low for many years, you have a build up of susceptible children such that you’ll start to have outbreaks,” Lo said. 

In Mississippi, kindergarten vaccination rates are lowest among private schools. According to health department data, 95.2% of kindergarten students at private schools are vaccinated, compared with 97.2% of public school children and 98.1% of children attending church schools. 

The highest coverage rates are in the Delta region, where 98.9% of kindergarten students and 99.7% of all K-12 students are vaccinated. 

Dr. Patricia Tibbs is a pediatrician in Ellisville and has worked with families for over three decades. She also serves as the president of the Mississippi chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics. 

Increasingly over the past three years, Tibbs said parents have expressed skepticism about vaccinating their children during appointments. During those conversations, Tibbs said she emphasizes that choosing not to vaccinate can put not only their own children at risk but also others in the community, including infants too young to be vaccinated and people who can not be vaccinated for medical reasons. These people generally have a diagnosed condition that heightens the risks of vaccines, like people who have a weakened immune system because they are receiving chemotherapy or who have a serious allergy to a vaccine component. 

“I cannot stress enough that the community of people who are immunizing their children is protecting all of us, all of our children right now,” she said. 

Edney said about a third of children with approved religious exemptions ultimately choose to become partially or fully vaccinated, oftentimes after parents discuss their options with pediatricians. He said the health department encourages providers to have nonjudgemental discussions with parents about the benefits of vaccines.  

“We’re believers that parents know their children best, and asking questions is what good parents do,” Edney said. “And then, our job is to thoughtfully answer these questions based on the evidence, and then ask them to consult their individual physicians and providers to help make the right decision.”

This article was produced by the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The New York Times. Learn more about our work here.

After Mississippi’s child protection system was thrown into chaos by a law change that took effect Wednesday, the state Supreme Court issued an order Thursday that officials said will allow youth court business to proceed as usual. At least for now.

The change in law prohibits state agencies from disclosing records involving children without exceptions.

The Supreme Court order provides a temporary fix by defining the exceptions to confidentiality in the Uniform Rules of Youth Court Practice, which the state court enacted. The order also suspends penalties for violating confidentiality. The court order remains in effect until July 24. 

State officials have said the uncertainty threatened to thwart the functions of several government entities, such as the child protection agency and the courts that oversee the cases of abused or neglected youth. 

Sgt. Jonathan Blakeney, who works in Pascagoula Police Department’s criminal investigations division, had told Mississippi Today that he learned Wednesday morning that the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services would no longer refer reports about child abuse or neglect to his department.

However, the agency told Mississippi Today Thursday that this was not accurate and that workers have been instructed to continue cooperating with law enforcement. 

“Our mission remains unchanged: to protect children, support families, and encourage lasting family connections,” CPS said in a statement late Thursday. “We remain committed to carrying out that mission through collaboration, transparency, and a shared commitment to the safety of Mississippi’s children.”

Blakeney estimated his office typically receives around five such reports a week, which it investigates to determine whether charges are warranted.

“I cannot tell you how many hours a week I spend on the phone exchanging valuable information with CPS workers for the sole purpose of keeping children safe, and now that ability to work together has been taken away,” Blakeney said Wednesday.

At issue is a state law that places blanket confidentiality on youth courts across the state. A separate provision that provides exceptions to that secrecy – which allow judicial officers, the child protection agency, providers and lawyers to communicate information – was removed from state law Wednesday. Without the exceptions, the laws left in place make it a misdemeanor to share any records involving children with anybody.  

This change was due to a repealer that lawmakers added to the law two years ago as it contemplated broad reforms to the state’s youth court structure. When a repealer is included in a state law, the law goes away on a specified date unless the Legislature passes a bill to reenact it. The Legislature’s intent in including the repealer was to force lawmakers to  introduce a new court structure or maintain the status quo. 

Blakeney, the police investigator in Pascagoula, said there was nothing broken about the specific law they killed. “It seems like an uninformed gamble,” he said, describing the Legislature’s strategy. 

Instead of handling the repealer during the 2026 session, lawmakers went home. While the Senate was taking up the youth court bill on the floor in the last days of the session, senators learned the House had adjourned before passing the bill, causing its demise and thrusting the youth court world into tumult.

To circumvent the problem, several youth court judges issued standing orders allowing for the limited disclosure of these records –  such as investigative reports, court filings, medical and educational records – to judicial officers, lawyers, law enforcement and service providers.

READ MORE: State court office will follow judge orders on youth court access, while legal conundrum around secrecy remains

On Tuesday, CPS filed an emergency motion with the Mississippi Supreme Court to prevent these orders from taking effect. 

No one, including CPS, publicly supported the law change that occurred Wednesday. It is regarded as a legislative blunder. The agency specifically asked Gov. Tate Reeves to call a special legislative session to rectify it. 

But still, CPS has moved to block the judicial workaround, arguing it is not the proper fix. CPS claims the patchwork of orders by local judges are unlawful and would force state employees to break the law. 

This is especially concerning, the agency contends, considering the hardship its workers already endure under contradictory legal constraints and a climate in which “youth court judges exert extreme control and direction of agency employees.”

“Historically, Mississippi youth courts have a reputation for being punitive and abusive to MDCPS employees who are subjected to conflicting verbal and written orders,” the motion states. 

It warned against possible sanctions, retribution and contempt proceedings against child protection workers.

The Office of the State Public Defender is also sounding the alarm about the effect of blanket confidentiality on the due process rights of parents and children who find themselves in youth court and face barriers accessing their own court records. The defense lawyers have filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the Administrative Office of the Courts, the custodian of the statewide youth court case management system.

Blakeney’s department has urged hospitals and schools in his area to call the police about crimes against children, in addition to reporting to CPS.

Update, 7/2/2026: This article has been updated to show that the Mississippi Supreme Court has issued an order that affects the child protection system and to show that the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services said its position on making reports to law enforcement had not changed in light of the July 1 law change.

Mukta Joshi is an investigative reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow examining immigration and criminal justice issues. She can be reached at mukta.joshi@nytimes.com. Joseph Cranney is a reporter with the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The New York Times. Learn more about the center’s work here.

SENATOBIA — The 1-year-old boy shot by police outside a Mississippi Walmart was killed by a bullet that entered through the vehicle’s front passenger door window – not the windshield, a lawyer for the victim’s family said at a news conference Wednesday.

Ben Crump, the high-profile civil rights lawyer, said those were the conclusions of Dr. Robert Mitchell, a forensic pathologist who examined Kohen Wiley’s wounds on behalf of the family. Kohen was with his mother and her friend when he was shot, during a confrontation over alleged shoplifting by one of the women.

Senatobia Police officers had responded to a shoplifting call, “which led to officers discharging their firearms,” the department said in a brief statement. The Tate County Sheriff’s Office, which was also on the scene, said that an unnamed officer fired at an “oncoming vehicle.”

Video of the June 14 shooting has not been released, but Crump shared a photo showing the front passenger door window blown out from the sedan. Crump said that was evidence that police fired even though officers were not in the path of the vehicle.

Phone footage captured by a witness, Desirae Smith, shows three law enforcement officers present as the car drives away, with the passenger door window already shattered.

“You can’t get that shot from the front. Why would you shoot into a vehicle from the side when you’re clearly not in harm’s way?” Crump said Wednesday, flanked by Kohen’s grandparents and a crowd of supporters who chanted, “Baby Kohen’s life mattered!” The group gathered at the Senatobia Church of Christ, a mile away from the Walmart on U.S. Highway 51.

Kohen, who was in his mother’s arms in the passenger seat of the car, was struck at least once in his right torso and had an exit wound along his left side, Crump said during the news conference, pointing at a photograph of the autopsy. The pattern of abrasions wasn’t consistent with a shot from point blank range, meaning the shots were likely fired from at least an intermediate distance, he said.

The news conference followed two weeks of unrest in the small town about 40 miles south of Memphis. Protestors have demanded police release footage of the incident from officers’ body cameras, with one activist Wednesday calling the shooting “our generation’s Emmett Till moment.” 

Senatobia police also haven’t shown that footage to Kohen’s family, claiming the investigation would take as long as nine months, Crump said Wednesday. 

Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, addressed the public three days after the shooting and indicated evidence would be presented to the public when the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, a division of his department, concludes its probe.

The Senatobia Police Department and the Tate County Sheriff’s Office have not responded to requests by Mississippi Today for video footage, including any captured by body-worn police cameras. Neither has the state Department of Public Safety.

WMC-TV Action News 5 first reported that Sgt. Hunter Foster was one of the Senatobia officers present during the shooting, citing records obtained through a public records request. It’s unclear if he was the officer who fired his weapon.

A statement posted on Facebook by the Tate County Sheriff’s Office said its deputies were at the Walmart on an unrelated call when their assistance was requested, though it does not specify who made the request. “The suspects fled the parking lot in their vehicle after an officer fired at the oncoming vehicle,” the statement says. 

Kohen’s mother said she was holding him in the front seat next to her adult friend, who someone had accused of stealing diapers from the Walmart. The friend was also shot, but her name has not been released by Kohen’s family or law enforcement officials.

“We’re not talking about no strong arm robbery, we ain’t talking about nobody being shot, we ain’t talking about no hostage situation,” Crump said. “We’re talking about a box of diapers. This baby is dead, and it was an alleged shoplifting of a box of diapers.”

Vellesiya Wiley, the boy’s 19-year-old mother, said she had lifted her son up to show officers a baby was in the car. By the time she sat him down, officers had fired three or four shots, one of which hit the baby in his rib cage, Wiley said in a video Crump posted to his X account.

Senatobia’s Board of Aldermen placed an unnamed officer on administrative leave after the shooting, Mississippi Today previously reported. A representative of the Senatobia Police Department wouldn’t address Foster’s status with the department Wednesday, saying the matter was under investigation. The public safety department also declined to provide any disciplinary records for Foster that might exist, saying they were exempt from public record disclosure requirements. 

Neither the police nor the sheriff’s office have not announced any charges against Wiley.

Joseph Cranney contributed to this report from New Orleans.

Closing arguments in a decade-long case between the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority and the state of Mississippi wrapped Wednesday. 

The case started in 2016 over a new law passed by the Legislature and signed by then-Gov. Phil Bryant to abolish the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority and replace it with a regional authority. 

The parties squared off for the last week-and-a-half in a federal bench trial, meaning no jury, before U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves. Reeves said that he will accept post trial findings from both sides over the next 60 days before making a ruling.

The city of Jackson and the municipal authority that currently oversees the airport argued that the legislation was racially discriminatory and unfairly targeted the state’s largest city, which is majority Black, in violation of the U.S. and state constitutions.

LaToya Merritt, an attorney representing the Jackson airport authority, said the bill was an “unconstitutional effort” to take control of the airport.

The state says that the law was not racially motivated and that the new board would bring more economic development to the airport and help it contend with new business challenges.  

Senate Bill 2162, authored by Sen. Josh Harkins, a Republican from Flowood, would dissolve the current five-person board of commissioners appointed by the city and create a nine-person board largely appointed by state and county entities. 

The Mississippi National Guard, the Mississippi Development Authority, the lieutenant governor, Madison County and Rankin County would each appoint one member while the city of Jackson and the governor would each appoint two. The governor and lieutenant governor’s appointees would have to be from Jackson. 

Jackson City Attorney Drew Martin argued that the law is part of a larger pattern of the state taking away power and property from the majority-Black city. He pointed to testimony from Jackson Mayor John Horhn, Rep. Robert Johnson and Byron Orey, a political science professor at Jackson State University, who all said the legislation was racially motivated. 

Martin added that taking power of appointment away from the city, which is 80% Black, would effectively dilute the voice and vote of Jacksonians.

Assistant Attorney General Justin Matheny said the law was passed based on “legitimate, non-racial” reasons and went through the proper legislative process. He pointed to legislative debates at the time where lawmakers said rising fares and the need to grow economic development around the airport necessitated the board change. 

As to why the law does not include other airports, such as in Gulfport-Biloxi or the Golden Triangle, Matheny argued that the Jackson airport, which has the most commercial passengers, is not like other airports due to its size and economic and military importance.

The airport land is owned by Jackson but is located in Rankin County. Last year Jackson reached an agreement with two Rankin County cities over land surrounding the airport. Under the agreement, Flowood and Pearl can annex unincorporated Jackson land with the goal of attracting economic development to the area. 

Judge Reeves thanked both sides for a “spirited debate.” He closed by saying that the case has been back and forth on appeals and he was “pretty sure that whatever decision this court makes will be reviewed.”

President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced on social media the approval of $11 million for recovery from tornadoes and severe weather that hit south Mississippi on May 6 and 7. The news came in response to Gov. Tate Reeves’ request on May 19 for a federal disaster declaration.

The storms destroyed 88 homes, damaged 425 others, and injured 26 people in Franklin, Lamar, Lawrence, Lincoln and Wilkinson counties. The National Weather Service reported seven tornadoes hit the state on May 6. One, an EF3, stretched over a mile wide at one point and remained on the ground for nearly 70 miles.

Just halfway through 2026, the year has already delivered several bouts of destructive weather to Mississippi. Tuesday’s announcement marks the second major disaster declaration the state has received this year after Winter Storm Fern in January.

Then, less than two weeks ago, flooding and severe weather from Tropical Storm Arthur damaged 565 homes, Reeves announced in an update Monday. Totals from that storm now include 150 destroyed homes and 152 with major damage.

Major disaster declarations are reserved for large events where damages exceed a state’s response capacity. Neither the Federal Emergency Management Agency nor the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency had announced the declaration as of Wednesday afternoon. MEMA told Mississippi Today it was still waiting for details on what kind of assistance would be available to affected areas. Reeves requested funding through both the Public and Individual Assistance programs.

Shortly after the governor’s request, all six members of Mississippi’s congressional delegation echoed the call to support struggling local governments dealing with the tornadoes’ aftermath.