OurTupelo

Bullets came flying through the walls of teenager Kamia Feazell’s south Jackson apartment shortly after she moved there with her mother.

The ninth-grader was standing in her bedroom in their second-floor unit early one morning when a bullet whizzed past her neck and through a wooden door, sending splinters into her face.  

She screamed and dropped to the floor, thinking she’d been shot. 

At first, she had trouble sleeping after the incident. But Feazell has since adjusted to routine gunfire at Pine Ridge Gardens, better known as Rebelwood – one of the most troubled apartment complexes in Jackson.

“I’m not scared anymore,” said Feazell, who recently graduated high school. “I hear a shot, ‘Oh, they’re shooting in the back.’ That’s it.”

But she does wish management would patch the other bullet holes in their walls: in the kitchen cabinet next to where they keep cereal boxes, a foot away from their living room window, beside the front door. 

These scars represent just a sliver of the grim housing conditions plaguing some of the more than 400 residents of this federally subsidized complex. Mold and mildew. Electrical problems. Broken windows. Rusty appliances. Water leaks. 

These hazards are not a secret. City, state and federal officials who oversee Rebelwood know the complex is plagued. They’ve documented the issues in police reports and physical inspection forms.

But their oversight has so far failed to result in lasting improvements to the perennially troubled complex – a result, experts say, of low inspection standards and weak enforcement. 

The deficiencies persist even as regulators have required Rebelwood’s owners to make repairs. 

In 2023, Rebelwood passed its most recent routine inspection by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development with a score of 78 out of 100. HUD records show the inspection identified life-threatening issues with the complex, but a spokesperson for the agency would not provide information about the violation. 

“Does it look like a 78?” said Bridgett Simmons, an attorney with the National Housing Law Project.

The complex is also overseen by the Mississippi Home Corporation, a state housing finance authority that awarded affordable housing tax credits to a previous owner of the complex. During Rebelwood’s last routine inspection in 2018, the agency gave the complex three tries and six months to correct the issues, such as a burned floor, broken window panes and roaches. 

Based on the authority’s inspection cycle, Rebelwood should have been reinspected by now. But Scott Spivey, the Mississippi Home Corporation president, said work pauses during the COVID-19 pandemic created a backlog. Two days after Mississippi Today submitted a public records request for inspection and audits, Mississippi Home Corporation scheduled an inspection for later this month. 

Even if the inspection finds problems at Rebelwood, Spivey said his agency lacks the ability to take stronger action for older complexes like Rebelwood because the greatest enforcement capability it has is to ban them from seeking future tax credits – something owners may have no intention of pursuing, anyway.

“Our tools for enforcement, our arsenal, is vastly compromised,” Spivey said.

Jackson is far from the only city to struggle with upkeeping its affordable housing stock. But Simmons said that is no excuse when “people, in particular the tenants at this property, are being harmed.” 

Mayor John Horhn created a housing task force in July, soon after he took office. His action was spurred in part by water shutoffs at complexes where landlords had failed to pay their water bills. 

“No landlord should put a family in harm’s way,” Horhn declared during his State of the City address in October. 

Jennifer Welch, a rental property owner who chairs the task force, said the city intends for its rental registry, created by ordinance in 2022, to help ameliorate some of these problems by using it to track landlords throughout Jackson. The city does not have any active code enforcement cases against Rebelwood, according to a public records request. 

But while the city works to get the registry going, conditions at Rebelwood continue to deteriorate. 

Last year, its previous owner, a New Jersey-based affordable housing behemoth called the Michaels Organization, sold the complex along with 10 others in Mississippi to another New Jersey company. The buyer and current owner, Treetop Companies, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. 

“People just talk about it and keep talking about it and nothing has happened,” Tonia Cowart, a housing navigator with Stewpot Community Services, said about the dire problems at apartment complexes in Jackson. “It kills hope. It makes you feel like well, ain’t nothing ever gonna change.” 

Continued violations

Rebelwood is a collection of brick-and-tan buildings tucked off Terry Road, down a hilly, wooded driveway. On the sunny October day that Cowart visited the complex, no security could be seen. The gate was open, plywood covered several unit windows, and a gray door to the front office was locked. Dogs slept under trees, so still they seemed dead.

It felt as if Rebelwood had no landlord at all. 

As Cowart walked to a courtyard near the front of the complex, looking for tenants to talk to, a tall, sinewy man named Calvin Williams emerged from his apartment and insisted on sharing his story. 

A 63-year-old painter and maintenance worker, Williams said he’s been surrounded by squalor since he moved to Rebelwood two and a half years ago. The outlets in his bedroom don’t work, so he’s had to squish his belongings into his living room and use a MacFyvered system of electrical cords to power his heart monitor. 

In recent weeks, he’s been distracted by a more pressing issue: hot water falling from the light in his kitchen ceiling. 

“It’s hot as hell because it dropped on my shoulder and burned it,” Williams told Cowart. 

Cowart has helped tenants secure units at Rebelwood and hears about problems like this regularly. But her ability to take action as a navigator is often limited to what she can see: Before she places a client in an apartment complex, she will undertake her own inspection to ensure the unit is up to code. 

Rebelwood’s regulators are supposed to catch a fuller picture. 

During Mississippi Home Corporation’s 2018 routine inspection, records show the agency examined 22 out of 160 units, flagging issues at 15. In the unit that would eventually become Williams’, the inspection found that a smoke alarm was “chirping.” 

Mississippi Home Corporation deemed the complex out of compliance, Spivey said. It would take three more inspections before the agency recorded that Michaels had made all the repairs.

Each time the housing agency followed up at Rebelwood and found it noncompliant, though, invoices show they levied a fine against Michaels.

That fine – the agency’s standard fee for noncompliance – was $110. The maximum fine for failing to file annual paperwork on time? $3,000.

By mid-2022, Michaels had racked up $3,330 in fines and begun trying to sell Rebelwood.

That same year, HUD flagged the company for defaulting on the terms of the contract that allows it to draw down federal funding for Rebelwood, according to a lawsuit filed in Hinds County last year. 

“Default means something serious is happening and now you are subject to the enforcement mechanisms,” Simmons said. 

HUD did not answer questions from Mississippi Today about why the company defaulted. But the plaintiff, another out-of-state investment company that was seeking to buy Rebelwood from Michaels, alleged the complex suffered from widespread issues, including fire damage to multiple units, a lack of carbon monoxide detectors and “major housekeeping and infestation problems.”

Within six months, HUD had deemed the property back in compliance, the lawsuit says. The complex would pass its HUD inspection the following year. 

But its new owner, Treetop, is repeating some mistakes of past owners. While Rebelwood is currently in good standing with Mississippi Home Corporation over its physical condition, it is out of compliance after failing to submit its 2025 annual report on time.

Paralyzed by distrust 

Williams has tried his best to make his apartment home, decorating it with posters and a Dallas Cowboys-themed pendant light. But he can’t hide the smell: His unit reeked of mold and bleach, and his kitchen floor was slick with water. Cowart asked if she could get closer to take a video of the ceiling leak.

“It just ain’t no light up in there,” he said. 

When regulators can’t improve a property, Cowart said tenants need to stand up for themselves. It’s a lesson she learned from her mom when they lived at Rebelwood in the 1990s, their first apartment in Jackson. 

“We had to go hard,” she said. “It’s like, you’re being bullied and you finally have to say, ‘OK, what you gonna do?’” 

But the violence at Rebelwood makes it hard for people to trust each other, let alone work together. News articles regularly feature the complex for shootings and killings. A social media creator dedicated an entire Facebook page to videos of fights there.

Williams says he trusts his dog, Peanut Butter, more than any human at the complex. Earlier this year, he said he was sitting on his bed when a man walked past his window, a bag of meat in hand, calling out to see if anyone would help him cook it. Williams said he looked at his red charcoal grill and decided to help. 

“By the time I got the cornbread out, I heard the gunshots,” he said. The man with the meat had been gunned down.

Mississippi Today interviewed the homicide victim’s mother, Henrietta Cooper-Middleton, who said the complex should be shut down.

“I had told him that he needed to be careful about going over there, because I had heard it was dangerous and people were getting killed,” she said. 

Multiple tenants told Mississippi Today that they are withholding rent because the landlord has not made repairs to their units. But this step, a common tool for tenants, lacks force so long as Rebelwood continues to draw down federal funds. The average rent a tenant pays at Rebelwood is just $145, while HUD pays $1,010 per filled unit, according to data from the agency. 

Residents also may not know who to complain to: While some residents across the state take initiative to identify that Mississippi Home Corporation has some oversight and submit complaints, the agency hasn’t recorded any recent complaints from Rebelwood. 

When it feels no one is looking out for them, Cowart said some residents find their time is better spent trying to leave. 

Feazell’s brother, 20-year-old Keymone Feazell, says he goes to work at a steel fabricator and comes home and tries not to talk to anyone. The family, which is from Jackson, moved to Rebelwood after a stint in Texas, they said, because it was the only affordable unit they could find.

“We don’t belong out here,” he said. 

Often perplexed by what they witness at the complex, the siblings are biding their time until work or school takes them elsewhere. Their mom, Latisha Feazell, is on a waiting list for another affordable housing complex, but it’s in Vicksburg, and she doesn’t want to move there. 

Keymone plans to become a truck driver. He wants to get paid to see the country – and to get as far away from Rebelwood as he can. 

Cantrell Keyes is working 90-hour weeks and losing $15,000 a month at the child care center she directs in Jackson.

Nearly half of the 46 families attending Agape Christian Academy World last spring lost access to Child Care Payment Program vouchers, which are essentially coupons that make child care affordable, Keyes said. Ten families left the facility as a result, and another 10 of the remaining families are not paying Keyes the full tuition. Keyes says she will keep serving her families until the day the center’s faltering finances puts her out of business. 

“I have been in the industry for close to 30 years now and never in my wildest dreams did I think that I would be going out like this,” Keyes said with tears in her eyes. 

She worries that day will be soon if the state doesn’t come up with money to plug the hole left by depleted pandemic funds that were enhancing the Child Care Payment Program.

Keyes’ situation is far from unique. Overall, 16,000 Mississippi families are on a waitlist for child care vouchers as a result of expired Covid-era funding, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services. During the pandemic, the federal government gave states $52 billion to enhance vouchers that help working families afford child care. Since the money has dried up, that stability is withering away. Parents are losing their jobs, children are suffering inconsistent care, child care workers are being laid off and providers are going without pay or shuttering their facilities, according to advocates and industry leaders who spoke with Mississippi Today. 

“It’s a huge crisis for child care centers and parents, and we’re hearing from them every day,” said Carol Burnett of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “This one center’s (Agape’s) experience times a thousand is really what’s happening in Mississippi right now.”

The Mississippi Department of Human Services has resumed vetting families coming up for redetermination – an annual review of eligibility, explained Mark Jones, chief communications officer at the agency. If families earn too much to qualify for the vouchers and fall off or leave the program, those families will no longer receive vouchers, and the department will begin working through the waitlist. 

For the first time during the last legislative session, Mississippi lawmakers appropriated $15 million of state funds to the child care voucher program. However, that was less than half of what the department requested. Thousands of families were left on the waitlist. 

Given the need, advocates hoped the Legislature would put more money toward the program this year. But in September’s Legislative Budget Committee hearing, MDHS did not ask lawmakers for money for child care. 

Instead, Bob Anderson, director of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, asked for $15 million to pay for the state’s Supplemental Nutrition Access Program after the so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which Congress passed and President Donald Trump signed into law in July, gutted the program and turned much of the costs over to states. If received, that $15 million that Anderson requested will go toward administrative costs of implementing new federally-mandated bureaucratic requirements for checking if SNAP recipients qualify to receive those benefits. 

In the spring, the Legislature could choose to appropriate money for child care. But in light of Anderson’s request – and his silence on the need for more resources for child care despite ongoing waitlists – experts suggest the need to stop the bleeding after historic federal funding cuts has shifted the state’s priorities when it comes to making child care more affordable.

Meanwhile, nurturing the state’s youngest citizens remains a burden for child care providers like Keyes, who is having a hard time keeping her center financially afloat. 

“I’m just handling it day by day by day by day right now,” she said. “And sometimes I feel like I’m underneath the water and just my face is up with my nose and I’m really trying not to come under because the community needs us.”

‘She grew up here’

Keyes said she has done everything in her power not to have to kick families out. She had to let six of her employees go, reduced four of her staff members from full time to part time and picked up the slack herself by taking on extra responsibilities such as bus driving and preparing lesson plans. She has also stretched resources further and offered discounted tuition to parents who offer work in exchange around the school, such as cutting the grass. She says that’s what community means to her. 

“Putting them out is not going to benefit me because I’m going to just be sitting up here wondering, ‘Where are they?’” Keyes said with a laugh. “What benefits me is knowing they’re in a safe place and then the mom or dad can continue doing what they need to do – working or going to school.”

Many of the children she serves come from households of young, single parents or are being cared for by grandparents. Nearly two-thirds of the school’s families are currently receiving vouchers or have in the past. 

Jazmine Donerson and her sister, Jalan Donerson, both have children who attend Agape and have accrued over $8,000 in unpaid tuition fees after losing their vouchers in June and August, respectively. 

“I recently just lost everything in an apartment fire,” said Jazmine Donerson, a single mom who interns as a medical assistant full time and works an evening shift at Family Dollar. “When I lost the voucher, it was hard for me to make payments. If my daughter wasn’t able to come to this daycare, I wouldn’t have anybody to watch her. I wouldn’t be able to go to school and try to better both our lives.”

She says the debt and the anxiety of getting kicked out or seeing the facility close weigh on her. But mostly, she said she is overwhelmed with gratitude for the consistency in care that Keyes has offered. 

“My baby started here when she was nine months, not walking, not talking. Now she won’t stop walking – or stop talking,” Jazmine Donerson joked. “She grew up here.”

Consistency is critical for young children, explained Biz Harris of the Mississippi Early Learning Alliance, and it’s often the first thing to go when care becomes too expensive. 

“To have to move around and have an uncertain child care situation, it causes anxiety and stress in the parents, and it causes anxiety and stress in the baby – even if you don’t see it, it’s there,” Harris said.

And it’s not just families or child care workers who are affected. Nationwide, the loss of pandemic funding for child care will cost states $10.6 billion in lost economic activity, according to a study conducted by the Century Foundation, an independent think tank in New York. 

Child care is more expensive in the U.S. than any other country explained Elliot Haspel, a nationally recognized child and family policy expert based in Colorado. Haspel said that is because there is no coordinated public child care system like there is for K-12 education.

“We treat child care in this country much more like a private, individual commodity like a gym or a restaurant than we do more of a public or social good like public schools or fire departments or roads or parks,” said Haspel. “So, there’s very little public money in the system, and the economics don’t work without it.”

Keyes has never thought of what she does as babysitting, or anything other than a public good. She views herself as an educator of her youngest charges. Research backs up that perception. The first few years of life are the most critical years for learning and development. 

“At the end of the day, we are an early learning institution,” Keyes said.

Getting creative

As of now, it’s not clear how long Keyes’ child care center will remain open or what approach state leaders will take to ensure funding. 

Advocates have called on the state in recent months to use unspent welfare money to fund the voucher program. But using Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) funds outside of what was allocated for the Child Care Development Fund is prohibited, according to federal guidance. 

The Child Care Development Fund is the federal block grant that primarily funds the voucher program. States can transfer up to 30% of TANF funds to CCDF, and Mississippi transfers the maximum amount. 

Other states, such as Ohio and Texas, have set up direct payment programs to use additional funds carried over from previous years for child care. Jones with Mississippi Department of Human Services said the agency is committed to following official federal guidance regarding conversion of TANF funds to the child care voucher program. 

The agency also has opened a Request for Proposals, Jones said, to use TANF funds for “work support” – programs that help those in low-income jobs remain employed. Proposals include child care, Jones said. The subgrantees will be announced in 2026. 

Meanwhile, Gov. Tate Reeves asked lawmakers to provide $1 million this session to expand child care access for workers across the state. The program, according to his annual Executive Budget Recommendation, would be a public-private “tri-share model” in which employers, employees and the state government share the cost of child care. 

“Any revenue to child care is welcome and wonderful, so that’s that,” said Burnett of the Mississippi Low-Income Child Care Initiative. “But it is a small investment, and the other effort Mississippi has put forward that involved businesses participating was an employer tax credit they could get for investing in child care – and there has been practically no take-up on that.”

Without the promise of help from the state, Keyes plans to start delivering orders for DoorDash in the coming months to earn extra income. Keyes said she doesn’t have the heart to lay anyone off before the holidays, but she doesn’t know how much longer she can hold out. 

Keyes said she hopes that officials will get as creative as she’s had to get to stay open – and that they’ll follow through. She keeps praying because she believes care and education are the foundation to life. 

“It’s not about money for me – I don’t pay myself a salary,” said Keyes. “I do it because I want to see the children grow. When you have a great beginning, you have a great ending. In child care, we’re the beginning for everything. We pour into them what they need.”

Full food stamp benefits are still delayed one week after they were set to resume, according to the Mississippi Department of Human Services. The slowdown is the result of a software system issue, agency spokesperson Mark Jones told Mississippi Today. 

“Our software systems are old,” he said.

Mississippians who receive their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits between the 14th and the 21st of each month will receive up to 65% of their November benefits on their regularly scheduled date. The remaining November benefits for all recipients will be issued separately “as soon as possible,” the agency’s website said Thursday.

Beneficiaries in Mississippi receive $183 on average in food assistance per month, according to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Partial benefits for the average beneficiary would amount to a loss of at least $65 in aid as Thanksgiving approaches. 

The nation’s largest food assistance program was paused beginning in November after the federal government said it would not use emergency funds to pay for the program, even though benefits have continued to flow to states in past shutdowns. 

Confusion ensued after more than a dozen states sued the Trump administration for its refusal to issue benefits. Mississippi said it would begin issuing partial benefits Nov. 10 in accordance with guidance from the United States Department of Agriculture, the federal agency that administers the program.

The state Department of Human Services announced that food assistance benefits were set to resume as normal on Nov. 13 after the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end. 

About 1 in 8 Mississippians — over 350,000 people — receive food assistance through SNAP. More than 67% of participants are in households with children, and about 41% are in households with older adults or adults with a disability. In four Mississippi counties, over a third of residents rely on the program to purchase food, according to a report from WLBT.

The state Department of Human Services awarded a contract to Deloitte Consulting LLP to improve the agency’s software system in May. Most MDHS eligibility systems were created over 35 years ago, according to the press release announcing the award. 

Jones said the software upgrades are set to be complete in 2027.

Michelle Hodges-Feek hasn’t opened the box in her living room that arrived weeks ago from Mississippi. 

She can’t bring herself to because inside are the cremated remains of her 40-year-old son, Daniel Hollan, who died Sept. 10 at a privately-run prison in the Mississippi Delta, hundreds of miles away. 

She didn’t get an opportunity to say goodbye. Months later, she has an official cause of death and a certificate, but she’s still left with questions: What happened? How or why did this happen? Who is responsible?

“Nobody cares that my son died except me, and all I got is a big box that I don’t have the guts to open yet,” Hodges-Feek, who lives outside of Kansas City, Kansas, said as she began to cry. 

One day she hopes to take a trip to Colorado, where their family previously lived, to have a memorial service for Hollan and spread his ashes. 

He is among at least five people who were from out of state or from outside the county who died in the last 1 1/2 years inside the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, a private prison operated by CoreCivic. Deaths there have left family members, like Hodges-Feek, uncertain about whom to go to for answers and whom to hold accountable. 

Hollan was convicted in Montana in 2017 and spent time in state and privately run prisons there before arriving in Mississippi in January among the first group of Montana prisoners at Tallahatchie Correctional. 

His mother sought answers and details from Mississippi and Montana prison officials, a county coroner and CoreCivic. 

It took a month for her to learn he died from an accidental drug overdose. Hollan had struggled with addiction before, but his mother believes he may have used drugs in prison to self-medicate. He had lived with chronic arthritis that affected his skin and joints and a more recent heart condition. 

To date, CoreCivic has contracted with four states, three counties, one U.S. territory and the U.S. Marshals Service to house people at the 2,672-bed Tallahatchie prison.

CoreCivic also signed a deal in February with Immigration and Customs Enforcement to expand immigration detention, including the use of 252 beds at the Tallahatchie facility. 

The facility houses detainees awaiting trial and the convicted, some serving up to life. CoreCivic confirmed that pretrial detainees are housed separately from prisoners from state or federal agencies, but did not provide numbers of pretrial detainees and state prisoners. 

In the industry of incarceration, CoreCivic is one of the two largest private prison companies in the United States, operating more than 70 facilities. The Tennessee-based company reported quarterly earnings this month of $580.4 million, up from 18.1% from the prior year quarter. Tallahatchie Correctional is located in the small town of Tutwiler with a population of 1,635 – a fraction of the prison’s capacity. 

‘Is nobody responsible for these guys’ care?’

Hollan had never been to Mississippi, and it was not his decision to come. Montana prison officials, grappling with its prison population and needing to make upgrades to its main state facility, made the decision for him and 239 other prisoners when it signed a contract with CoreCivic. The state retained custody of him from hundreds of miles away.

Three years earlier, the Montana Board of Pardons and Parole ruled Hollan was not eligible for early release and needed to take a class. As he learned about his out-of-state transfer in 2025, he heard that the Arizona CoreCivic facility where Montana had already sent people offered the class he hoped to take to become eligible for parole, his mother said. 

By June of this year, Hollan was up for administrative parole review, but the board informed him by letter he was ineligible for early release again because he didn’t fulfill the class requirement. The board holds hearings and reviews for incarcerated people housed in Montana for state-owned facilities, as well as for those held out of state in private facilities like Tallahatchie Correctional. 

Hodges-Feek and her daughter, Rebecca McQuarrie, kept in touch with Hollan through several 5-minute weekly calls provided to prisoners. He shared that he had been trying to access medical care from the prison’s in-house staff for at least four months before his death.

“Is it Montana people who are watching them? Is it Montana people who are the guards?  It’s CoreCivic’s people who are the guards,” Hodges-Feek said.  “How can they pass the buck, is that legal? Is nobody responsible for these guys’ care?” 

In response, a CoreCivic spokesperson Brian Todd said the company is deeply saddened by the death of any person in its care, and that the company is serious about following standards and policies that its government partners expect. 

When someone dies, CoreCivic notifies the deceased’s home state and local law enforcement to conduct an investigation, Todd said. Then someone from Tallahatchie Correctional contacts the emergency contact listed in the prisoner or detainee’s file. 

“Every death is investigated thoroughly and transparently, but it’s important to note that the circumstances of each incident will dictate how the investigation is handled,” he said in a Thursday statement. “Our focus remains on doing everything possible to prevent these events from happening in the first place through training, oversight and continuous improvement in our standard of care.” 

Montana prisons spokesperson Alexandria Klapmeier wrote in an email that the Tutwiler Police Department investigated Hollan’s death and the Tallahatchie County Coroner’s Office was responsible for the death investigation.

Anthony Hawkins, the Tallahatchie coroner, confirmed he handles death investigations from the private prison, including that of Hollan and others sent from out of state or other Mississippi counties. After initially agreeing to speak, he has been unavailable for comment. 

Tutwiler Police Chief Carlos Thompson was unavailable for comment about the status of the prison-death investigations. 

Hodges-Feek was told Hollan was found in his cell, blue in the face in the morning, multiple hours after he was last seen or heard from the previous day. She wonders if his cellmate or others had seen anything. 

She also submitted a public records request with the Montana Department of Corrections seeking copies of Hollan’s medical requests and related grievances. As of November, she is still waiting to receive those records. 

The Montana prison official who informed Hodges-Feek and his sister about Hollan’s death said it didn’t appear to be suicide, the women said. McQuarrie wanted confirmation because the youngest of her three brothers died from suicide in 2017 and she didn’t think her mother could handle losing another child that way. 

The state where a suspicious death occurs in a correctional facility outside Montana handles the investigation following that state’s legal processes and laws, Klapmeier said. Once the coroner finishes a death investigation, that official shares the information with the contract prison department and medical and investigation staff, she said.

Mississippi’s State Medical Examiner’s Office conducts the autopsies, as required by law for people who die in public or privately run prisons, jails or correctional facilities. The examination is used to help complete a death certificate, which is issued by the state Department of Health. 

That office completed Hollan’s autopsy and those of the Vermont prisoners and Hinds County detainees, said Bailey Martin, spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety, which oversees the medical examiner’s office.

Mitzi Magleby is an advocate who has worked with incarcerated people and their families in Mississippi’s state- and privately run prisons. Whenever anyone dies in prison, she said the priority should be informing families and guiding them through processes. 

“To me it’s a communication breakdown,” she said. “There’s not enough communication with these families. They’re in the dark.”

For out-of-state families like Hodges-Feek, Magleby said having to seek information from two state prison agencies and a private company is even more red tape to navigate. 

Klapmeier, the Montana prison spokesperson, said the state pays to bring the body of the deceased to their family’s choice of funeral home in the state or transport their cremation remains to the family. 

This was not made clear to Hodges-Feek. She said as her family considered the cost of bringing Hollan’s body home, her daughter and son-in-law considered taking out a loan to pay for it, but Hodges-Feek said she didn’t want them to take on that financial burden. Instead, she approved Hollan’s cremation in Mississippi.

Cremation felt like the only option to get her son home because it wasn’t clear where he would have been buried – Montana or Mississippi – if she pursued that option. 

‘The safest and most dignified option’

Two men from Vermont, which also contracts with CoreCivic, also died in the Tallahatchie facility.

At the end of February 2024, 71-year-old Alfred Brochu, who was serving life for murder, was found unresponsive in his cell and taken to a hospital where he died. He had been at Tallahatchie Correctional since 2011, Vermont media reported. 

Two weeks later in March, 43-year-old Sean Osterhout died. He came to Mississippi in 2019 and was serving up to a 30-year sentence for two charges of lewd and lascivious conduct with a child.

The Vermont Department of Corrections handled the death investigations and found that the deaths were not suspicious, said Haley Sommer, a department spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Corrections.

When a death of one of its people occurs at Tallahatchie Correctional, Vermont prison staff travel to the facility to look at circumstances that lead to the death and to consult with the medical team in Vermont about medical records, she said. From there, Vermont’s Defender General’s office has discretion of whether to conduct an investigation into a prison death.

Vermont has faced a challenge with space in its correctional facilities, and the state’s preference has been to send people out of state to reduce overcrowding at home, Sommer said.  

The state has contracted with CoreCivic since 2018, and Vermont has found that contracts with private companies like CoreCivic to be useful because the state is able to maintain custody, which includes making decisions about inmates’ medical care. 

“It is the safest and most dignified option,” Sommer said about sending inmates out of state to Mississippi and other prison facilities. 

Months before Hollan’s death, Hinds County detainees Ulysses Nelson III and Christian Dyre, both 24, died within days of each other in the Tallahatchie facility. 

Dyre had been at Tallahatchie Correctional since October 2023 and was facing a murder charge, and Nelson had been at the prison since January awaiting trial for aggravated assault, domestic violence and rape, Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said. 

Jones said their deaths were believed to be drug-related because there were reports of contraband in the zone where they both were housed. He said at the time that Tutwiler police would investigate and the State Medical Examiner’s Office would conduct an autopsy and toxicology reports. 

Todd, the CoreCivic spokesman, said there is a zero-tolerance policy for anyone to introduce contraband into its facilities. The company seeks to prevent contraband from coming through such measures as searches, patrols, monitoring systems and mail checks, he said. 

Tallahatchie Correctional medical staff immediately respond to emergency calls and are equipped to provide lifesaving care such as the administration of naloxone, which is an opioid-overdose reversing drug, he said. 

Mississippi Today requested records about the men’s cause of death, but the information was not available by publication. 

In an October interview, Jones would not comment about the sheriff’s office’s working relationship with operators of the Tallahatchie facility, citing ongoing litigation around the Hinds County Detention Center. 

In 2023, the county signed a two-year contract with CoreCivic to send detainees to the private prison due to limited staff and conditions of a housing pod that has been closed down.

‘Nobody cares about these boys once they get locked up’

In the weeks after his death, Hodges-Feeks joined a Facebook group with other family members with loved ones in CoreCivic facilities in Mississippi and Arizona, including those who died there. She now knows she is not alone. 

With questions still unanswered about her son’s death, Hodges-Feek and Hollan’s sister try to remember him as a person who put others first and had a good work ethic. When tornado sirens went off, Hollan was often the first to react and tell his family to get to a safe place. As a child, he saved his own money to buy a video game console. 

But Hollan also had a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. This, his mother said, paired with the death of his younger brother led him to turn to drugs and alcohol, and actions stemming from their use led to prison time, his mother said. 

After completing an earlier sentence, Hollan tried to get a fresh start in Montana. Instead, he began to use drugs again, which Hodges-Feek said contributed to another prison charge. Hollan was convicted in 2017 of prostitution and received a 99-year sentence with 75 years suspended, according to court records. 

Hodges-Feek kept in contact with her son over the years as he was moved to state-owned and private prisons in Montana. 

In Mississippi, Hollan used his free weekly calls to tell his mother and sister what he was experiencing: How January rain caused flooding in the prison and the summer passed without air conditioning.

Hodges-Feek has seen how her older son, who also served time in prison, was able to turn his life around. She wonders what could have happened if Hollan had received a similar chance. 

“(Daniel) never got the opportunity,” she said. “Nobody cares about those boys once they get locked up.”

Amazon announced on Thursday that it plans to build a $3-billion data center in Warren County near the new Port of Vicksburg.

This is the fourth large data center planned for Mississippi, with a combined $29 billion in investments. There are already two Amazon data centers being built in Madison County. 

With the current artificial-intelligence boom, companies are building data centers across the country. Many are being built in the Deep South because of its abundant land and water resources, less environmental regulations and relatively cheap energy for the power-hungry centers.

The center planned for Warren County will create at least 200 full-time jobs according to a statement from Amazon and Gov. Tate Reeves’ office. Reeves said it would be the largest private investment in Warren County’s history. Construction is expected to start in 2026.

The new data center will fall under the 2024 Mississippi Major Economic Impact Authority legislation for Amazon’s Madison data centers. According to a representative from the Mississippi Development Authority, the state’s economic development agency, the Vicksburg center will not require additional state funds. In the original agreement, the state spent $44 million in taxpayer dollars, gave a loan of $215 million, and provided additional tax breaks.

Amazon also announced it would commit $150,000 to a new Amazon Warren County Community Program that will provide grants to local organizations.

While data centers promise jobs and tax revenue, critics have pointed out that they create very few jobs relative to the size of the investment and footprint. They have raised concerns over environmental impact, energy consumption and prices for consumers and lack of public transparency about their development or operations. 

READ MORE: Brandon residents want answers, guarantees about data center

While companies invest hundreds of billions of dollars in ramping up their AI infrastructure, Amazon has shown some signs it is lagging behind its competitors. However, in early November Amazon signed a $38 billion agreement to give OpenAI access to some of its computing power.

The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday advanced President Donald Trump’s nominations for federal judgeships and U.S. attorney positions for Mississippi, after the nominations had been held up by a North Carolina senator over a dispute over federal recognition of an indigenous group as a tribe.

Republican Sen. Thom Tillis had recently said he was blocking a committee vote on the four Mississippi nominations over negotiations with Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi on the Lumbee people being officially recognized as a Native American tribe. Wicker is chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which has sway over legislation in which proponents wanted the Lumbee recognized.

The nominations now advance to the full Senate.

Wicker in a statement on Thursday said he’s pleased the nominations moved forward and that he looks forward to voting for their confirmations on the Senate floor. He has declined comment on the issue with Tillis and the holdup of the nominations.

“Justices Chamberlin and Maxwell and Messrs. Kruger and Leary are highly qualified individuals,” Wicker said. “They will uphold the law, defend the Constitution and serve Mississippi well.”

The Lumbee is a group of indigenous people in North Carolina that has been seeking federal recognition as a tribe for over a century. But other federally recognized tribes have opposed this effort.

Language granting federal recognition of the tribe had been added to the House version of the Pentagon’s annual spending bill, but was not included in the Senate’s version, which Wicker oversees.

Earlier this month, the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs held a hearing on the Lumbee Fairness Act, legislation now being pushed by Tillis and other North Carolina lawmakers. President Trump has also endorsed recognition of the Lumbee as a tribe.

In a recent press release Tillis said: “This issue has come before Congress many times over the decades, but never with this level of unity and support. These days, it’s rare to see Republicans and Democrats come together on anything. But when it comes to Lumbee recognition, the support is overwhelming and it’s bipartisan … Here in the Senate, nearly two dozen members from both parties have co-sponsored the Lumbee Fairness Act…”

Two newly discovered videos taken inside the Rankin County jail show officers mocking and laughing at an intellectually disabled inmate, the same man guards had filmed days earlier being shocked in an electrified vest after he asked for a Coke.

Former department employees said the videos, recorded in 2018, were shared widely on an encrypted WhatsApp group chat. The footage provides a deeper look into the culture of the jail, where a recent investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times revealed that guards and jail administrators routinely beat inmates.

In one video, Larry Buckhalter stands before the camera in his prison jumpsuit and a party hat and sings “Happy Birthday” to “Barry,” an apparent reference to Barry Vaughn, the former head of the jail who is now undersheriff.

In the second video, someone off camera instructs Buckhalter to “tell him you love him.” 

“I love you, Barry!” he says, and gleefully announces it is his last day in jail. 

As he speaks, a man in uniform standing behind him slams a plastic sign to the floor. Startled, Buckhalter jumps and screams as people off camera laugh.

The videos were created days after Buckhalter had asked jail guards for a Coke in October 2018. Shortly after his request, the guards strapped him into an electrified vest, intended to keep violent inmates under control. Then they filmed him screaming and convulsing while they shocked him.  

“Now you get a Coke!” a female guard says at the end of the video. “It’s all over! I’m so proud of you, Larry!”

In an email, department attorney Jason Dare said that Buckhalter, who died in 2021, had a crack cocaine problem, but was “never found to be mentally incompetent by a court or health care professional.” 

“Larry celebrated countless birthdays and life achievements at the Rankin County Jail,” Dare wrote. “He never went hungry and was never brutalized, both of which he claimed were regular occurrences in the free world.”

Dare continued: “Although Larry could not give his side of the story for your article, these videos perfectly show his genuine affection for the RCSD. The fact you try to spin it as mockery is shameful.”

Laquanda Anderson and Derrick Shoto, Buckhalter’s niece and nephew, reviewed the videos and Dare’s response. They said their uncle lived with an obvious intellectual disability.

“Everybody knew he had a mental issue,” Anderson said. “And when people find that out, they take advantage of it.”

Buckhalter never mentioned these incidents, they said, but he told them he was afraid to return to the jail, saying that guards there called him “Crying Larry.” 

“He hated it at the jail,” Shoto said, adding that in the videos, “they’re clearly treating him like a puppet.”

Last week, Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, called the video of Buckhalter being shocked “appalling and utterly unacceptable.”

Mississippi Bureau of Investigation agents have been assigned to investigate the incident, he said.

Last week, The New York Times and Mississippi Today revealed that for years, jail officials had beaten and whipped inmates who broke jail rules or inconvenienced guards. 

More than 70 former inmates, along with former deputies and jail guards, described experiencing, witnessing or participating in the violence. Their allegations were supported by medical records, photos of injuries and department reports along with the cellphone recording of guards shocking Buckhalter.

After seeing the video of Buckhalter that accompanied the original investigation, two former deputies told reporters that additional videos of guards mocking Buckhalter had circulated over encrypted group messages. 

“They made the rounds,” said one of the two former deputies, Christian Dedmon.

Dedmon was one of five former Rankin County deputies and a local police officer — some of whom were part of a patrol shift called the “Goon Squad”— who were sentenced to federal prison last year for torturing three men. 

A 2023 investigation by Mississippi Today and The Times revealed that nearly two dozen residents experienced similar brutality from deputies during drug raids over nearly two decades.

Last year, reporters also uncovered an encrypted WhatsApp group chat where members of the Goon Squad shift traded pictures of rotting corpses and joked about rape and shocking people with Tasers.

One former Rankin deputy, who requested to remain anonymous because they feared retaliation from the department, shared the two new recordings of Buckhalter with reporters.

That former deputy, along with two former guards, said the video showing Buckhalter being shocked and the video of him singing Happy Birthday were both filmed in the office of Amanda Thompson, who was a jail lieutenant at the time and still works at the department. 

The former employees also said the third video was filmed in the office of Kristi Pennington, Sheriff Bailey’s wife, who also works at the department.

“ When you have authority over people, you have a responsibility to take care of them,” Derrek Shoto, Buckhalter’s nephew, said. “No matter who you’re over, you’ve got to treat them with respect.”

NEW ORLEANS — Around 250 federal border agents are set to descend on New Orleans in the coming weeks for a two-month immigration crackdown dubbed “Swamp Sweep” that aims to arrest roughly 5,000 people across southeast Louisiana and into Mississippi, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and three people familiar with the operation.

The deployment, which is expected to begin in earnest on Dec. 1, marks the latest escalation in a series of rapid-fire immigration crackdowns unfolding nationwide — from Chicago to Los Angeles to Charlotte, North Carolina — as the Trump administration moves aggressively to fulfill the president’s campaign promise of mass deportations.

In Louisiana, the operation is unfolding on the home turf of Republican Gov. Jeff Landry, a close Trump ally who has moved to align state policy with the White House’s enforcement agenda. But, as seen in other blue cities situated in Republican-led states, increased federal enforcement presence could set up a collision with officials in liberal New Orleans who have long resisted federal sweeps.

Gregory Bovino, the Border Patrol commander tapped to run the Louisiana sweep, has become the administration’s go-to architect for large-scale immigration crackdowns — and a magnet for criticism over the tactics used in them. His selection to oversee “Swamp Sweep” signals that the administration views Louisiana as a major enforcement priority for the Trump administration.

The Department of Homeland Security declined to comment on the operation. “For the safety and security of law enforcement we’re not going to telegraph potential operations,” spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said.

In Chicago, Bovino drew a rare public rebuke from a federal judge who said he misled the court about the threats posed by protesters and deployed tear gas and pepper balls without justification during a chaotic confrontation downtown. His teams also oversaw aggressive arrest operations in Los Angeles and more recently in Charlotte, where Border Patrol officials have touted dozens of arrests across North Carolina this week after a surging immigration crackdown that has included federal agents scouring churches, grocery stores and apartment complexes.

Planning documents reviewed by the AP show Border Patrol teams preparing to fan out across neighborhoods and commercial hubs throughout southeast Louisiana, stretching from New Orleans through Jefferson, St. Bernard and St. Tammany parishes and as far north as Baton Rouge, with additional activity planned in southeastern Mississippi.

Agents are expected to arrive in New Orleans on Friday to begin staging equipment and vehicles before the Thanksgiving holiday, according to the people familiar with the operation. They are scheduled to return toward the end of the month, with the full sweep beginning in early December. The people familiar with the matter could not publicly discuss details of the operation and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

To support an operation of that scale, federal officials are securing a network of staging sites: A portion of the FBI’s New Orleans field office has been designated as a command post, while a naval base five miles south of the city will store vehicles, equipment and thousands of pounds of “less lethal” munitions like tear gas and pepper balls, the people said. Homeland Security has also asked to use the Naval Air Station Joint Reserve Base New Orleans for up to 90 days beginning this weekend, according to documents reviewed by the AP.

Once “Swamp Sweep” begins, Louisiana will become a major testing ground for the administration’s expanding deportation strategy, and a focal point in the widening rift between federal authorities intent on carrying out large-scale arrests and city officials who have long resisted them.

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Associated Press journalists Elliot Spagat and Mike Balsamo contributed to this report.

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Correction 11/19/2025: The headline has been updated to show southeastern Mississippi.

A quiet, rural area in central Mississippi with a large Latino population, traumatized by massive federal raids in 2019, is now living in fear again as immigration agents set up around town and detain people. 

They’ve lingered outside a laundromat leaving people afraid to leave a nearby church. Vested agents and unmarked cars went to a tortilla bake shop and then a grocery store. 

For two weekends in a row, and the second time in seven years, they shattered the calm in what one Forest resident said has always been “a peaceful place full of Hispanic people.”

Starting Nov. 2, residents saw Immigrations and Customs Enforcement officers wearing lettered vests stating “Police ICE” and “ERO” – Enforcement and Removal Operations. Unmarked cars accompanied them, and at least two ICE officers were present, according to photos taken of the agents that were circulated within the community through social media. 

Zully Lopez, who has lived in Forest for three years and grew up in nearby Morton, first became aware of ICE’s presence while she was at church Nov. 2. Members were talking about photos circulating of a sighting of agents near a laundromat on Hill Street. 

Then Lopez heard from a family member at Iglesia El Buen Pastor, a church on Pine Street whose parking lot entrance and exit are located near the laundromat. Over the phone, the family member said some people didn’t feel safe leaving, so they waited inside for an hour. Church officials could not be reached for comment.

Immigration agents detained a person from the laundromat, and then their van pulled into the church parking lot, blocking it for a few minutes. Later, Lopez said she and other members of the community learned that ICE went to a tortilla bake shop on Hill Street and detained a woman there. 

“Why stop there? Were you trying to intimidate?” asked Lopez, who is an American citizen. “That’s what you were trying to do, trying to intimidate good Christians of Missisisppi of that church and people who were trying to wash their clothes.” 

The next week, ICE officers returned. Residents reported seeing them on U.S. 80 where they stopped a truck and talked to the driver. Lopez said the area is near a Guatemalan grocery store. That Sunday, Enforcement and Removal Operations officers parked outside a Mexican grocery store, La Moreliana. It’s not clear whether anyone was detained. 

A spokesperson from the Department of Homeland Security was not available for comment Tuesday or Wednesday about the presence of ICE officers and detention of people in Forest. 

Nationally, as of mid September, nearly 60,000 people have been detained by ICE and Customs and Border Protection, according to Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse immigration data by Syracuse University. 

The Associated Press reported Tuesday that the Department of Homeland Security is preparing to deploy roughly 250 federal border agents to Louisiana and Mississippi in an initiative dubbed “Swamp Sweep” aimed at arresting nearly 5,000 people in the two states. Citing internal documents and people familiar with the operation, AP reported the initiative would heavily focus on southeastern Louisiana with additional enforcement in southeastern Mississippi.

Lopez said the immigrants in Forest have done nothing but work hard and came to the United States to pursue a better future for their children, which is what her parents did for her. 

Jeremy Litton, an immigration attorney who represents people from around the state, said guidance from the agency and a Board of Immigration Appeals decision have created a situation where people are being detained indefinitely without options for bond. 

Even though she is an American citizen, Lopez said she feels targeted in Forest because of her skin color. 

A couple of weeks ago, Mississippi Highway Patrol stopped her family at a roadblock. Her husband was driving and she was in the backseat with their baby. They are Latino and have brown skin. 

A trooper asked if they have legal immigration status and if they were from there. Yes, Lopez’s husband replied. Then the trooper asked for his Social Security number, but before Lopez’s husband could provide it, the other said he didn’t have to because he spoke English well enough. 

The troopers let them go, but Lopez said she doesn’t feel safe anymore. 

A spokesperson from the Department of Public Safety, which oversees the highway patrol, did not respond to a request for comment Wednesday. 

In September, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled federal immigration officers can stop people without reasonable suspicion based on their apparent race or ethnicity, if they speak in Spanish or accented English, if they are in a place where immigrants are known to gather and if they work in specific jobs that immigrants are known to work. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who is Latina, wrote in her dissent that such a decision has enabled the Trump administration to declare all Latinos, regardless of U.S. citizenship, as “fair game to be seized at any time” if they fit the criteria. 

Lopez lived through the 2019 raids across poultry plants in central Mississippi. 

That morning in August 2019 was the first day of her sophomore year at Morton High School. Then came a call from her father saying immigration agents were at PH Food where her mother worked. Lopez remembers going to the principal to say that students needed to be informed because some of their parents worked at the plant. 

Lopez headed to PH Food while her father picked up her younger siblings from school. At the plant, she saw the buses loading people up and others handcuffed. Her mother was on one of the buses, and Lopez said that was when she realized immigration officers could take her, even though she had work authorization. Her mother was let go once ICE determined she had a Social Security number. 

She remembers seeing classmates distraught about their parents and some children who had to spend time at churches because their parents had been taken away. Lopez said she helped take a group of children to a church and heard a young girl ask if her mother was gone because she was working overtime. 

Since the raid, her mother was able to obtain legal permanent residency, commonly known as a green card. But her father, who entered the country without authorization decades ago, was deported to Mexico in August. He will have to wait 10 years before he can come to the United States because of his prior entry. 

That 2019 experience also changed the trajectory of Lopez’s life. She had worked at a bank and saw herself becoming a certified public accountant. But she felt called to help people navigate immigration matters. 

Lopez connected with an immigration nonprofit organization and went on to receive a bachelor’s degree in paralegal studies at Mississippi College. She now works at Litton’s law firm.

“This way is a powerful way to help,” Lopez said about her job. 

The Clevelands discuss the Lane Kiffin situation, Southern Miss’s crash to earth and how an underappreciated kid from the southwest Mississippi community of Oma has entered the national college football spotlight with a 300-yard rushing performance against Mississippi State.

Stream all episodes here.