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Houston might as well be considered far west Jackson. 

After moving to the nation’s fourth-largest city in 2021, Jackson native Elizabeth Evans said she’s had an easier time meeting new people because of Houston’s offerings – popular concert tours, Texans NFL games, fitness-driven outdoor functions, Jazzy Sundays in the park. Many of these new Houston friends hail from Jackson State University. 

Evans, 33, is among the thousands of Jacksonians who have left home for other states. A majority of these expats from Hinds County, where Jackson is located, remained in the South – hundreds in Georgia, Tennessee and Louisiana in the last few years.

But from 2017 to 2022, the county saw a whopping 5,500 of its residents move to Texas, according to Internal Revenue Service data analyzed by researcher Jake McGraw at Rethink Mississippi.

“Dallas and Houston are the two biggest recipient locations of people moving out of Mississippi, but very few make the move back east from those places,” McGraw told Mississippi Today.

Evans had never lived outside Mississippi’s capital city, but she’d gotten a remote job in communications for a nonprofit organization and realized she could work from anywhere. 

“I’m a Southern girl to the core, and I didn’t want to immediately leave the South,” Evans said. 

Since 2020, Jackson’s population has declined 8%, by more than 12,000 people, according to the Census Bureau. To be sure, when people leave Hinds County, the two most common destinations are adjoining Madison and Rankin counties, McGraw said, but when they leave the state entirely, Texas is by far the most popular landing spot.

Though Texas is politically similar to Mississippi – Republican state leaders, a six-week abortion ban and growing anti-immigrant sentiment – Evans said she feels like the issues she cares about are amplified in Houston. She has found a community that believes in what she values, such as reproductive justice and voting access. Part of her political awareness began because she grew up in Jackson, a city that she said is plagued with issues of racial inequity and environmental challenges. 

“It’s easier to distract yourself from those things when you are in other places, but I think here (in Jackson), being so deeply connected to people and the landscape of the city, it will certainly radicalize you,” Evans said. 

More than 200 miles away in Dallas, another Jackson native is advancing in a marketing career. Bianca Tatum said Texas has offered her an opportunity to be ambitious with work that Mississippi didn’t. The Mississippi State University graduate lived in Illinois and Alabama before making the journey to Houston, then Dallas.

“Dallas and Houston, I feel like, are safe for Mississippians,” said Tatum, 32. “It’s not so far that you won’t know anybody or you’ll get a culture shock, because Houston and Dallas are a lot like Jackson.”

The similarities are simple – tight-knit neighborhoods, good food and a close circle of friends. But that wasn’t enough to offset the lack of recreation and low salaries for Tatum to justify staying in Mississippi. 

“I think they need to make it more desirable for young people to be there,” she said. “Give us more things to do. Give us more money.”

Tatum said moving around the country opened up her worldview. She’s proud of being from Mississippi, but she said the change of scenery pushed her out of her comfort zone. 

“I’m just grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to develop myself in other ways before taking the route of getting into a serious relationship or becoming a mom,” Tatum said. “I don’t think I would have had the opportunity to meet more of myself before making these big life decisions.” 

The issue of brain drain isn’t new for Jackson. Since the 1980s, when its population crested over 200,000, the number of residents has declined – sometimes slowly, sometimes rapidly. 

Jackson native Charles Miller moved back to his hometown with his wife after graduating law school in 1979. Even at the height of Jackson’s population, the capital city made them restless. They moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in 1982 after Miller found work as an in-house attorney for an energy company.

“I was frustrated,” said Miller, 71. “Everything seemed a little bit slower after my time at Vanderbilt and at Emory. My internal clock had changed. I wasn’t happy in Jackson.”

Since making the journey west, Miller has raised a family, taught business classes at a university and retired. For a brief period, he said he considered moving back to Mississippi. 

“I could not go back to Jackson now. I realized that about 15, 20 years ago,” Miller said. “I go back to visit, but for no other reason. Texas is where I am and who I am.”

Sondra Collins, senior economist with Mississippi’s University Research Center, said in order to combat brain drain, the state has to find ways to attract more young people and prioritize jobs that compensate employees fairly. Mississippi has fewer positions available for people with bachelor’s degrees, Collins said, which means some with a degree may end up taking a pay cut just to remain employed in the state.

“Having a population that doesn’t have as many people with bachelor’s degrees, even some skilled certificates, tends to mean that the jobs that are in the state are going to be jobs that are for people without a bachelor’s degree, without certificates, and those jobs tend to be lower-paid than jobs that require more,” Collins said. 

Data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics show the private average hourly income in Mississippi is $28.10, compared to $34.28 in Texas, which adds up to thousands of dollars per year in earned income potentially left on the table for those remaining in Mississippi 

Collins said while other states also experience brain drain, their populations are replaced by people moving in. For people looking for larger city life, Mississippi doesn’t get consideration.

“We have to land some of those young people from other states who are wanting to explore,” Collins said. “We want them to come explore here in Mississippi. That has to be a bit of a priority.”

Jackson native Adam Luckett moved to San Antonio right after he graduated from the University of Mississippi with his degree in chemical engineering. He and his wife Tera Eichelberger love their neighborhood and its offerings – authentic Hispanic and Asian food, and a diverse community. But they also miss the familiarity of Jackson.

“There was more of a community in Jackson,” Luckett, 31, said. “You feel a lot more connected to the people around you, even if you don’t know them, if it’s a smaller town.”

Eichelberger, 34, said in order to move back to Jackson, she’d like to see more jobs created in the tech field. The city would also need to invest in public transportation and infrastructure. Jackson has long struggled with its water system, from a city-wide outage due to a winter storm in 2021 that left residents without running water, to a federal receivership that led to the system being controlled by a private utility, JXN Water.

“The water situation is something you really can’t stress enough,” Eichelberger said. 

While they’ve grown in their careers since moving, they both agree they would be able to see themselves in Jackson long-term if there were opportunities to earn more money. 

“Your life isn’t going to magically get better because you move to a larger city,” Luckett said.

Since 2010, Mississippi has lost 80,000 more people than it has gained, according to the Census Bureau. Justin Ransburg, who went to college in Texas, is one Jackson native who made the decision to return home. What he anticipated to be a few-month stint ended up capturing his 20s.

“ I’ve always said that I wanted to move outside of Mississippi to see what else is out in the world,” Ransburg said. 

The visual artist and comics teacher attended Texas Southern University, a historically Black university in Houston. He’d only planned to return to Mississippi for six months after graduating in 2012, he said, but once he was home, he didn’t want to leave. He became a part of the local art scene and worked at various galleries. But most importantly to him, he was able to take part in his nieces’ and nephews’ lives. 

“When I actually did come back, a lot of the things that I was looking for that I found in Houston, I found here in Mississippi,” Ransburg said. 

Ransburg said he was searching for more opportunities to create art, try out coffee shops and restaurants and attend events where he could meet like-minded creatives. He found that in the Fondren and Midtown districts, and at one point, he and a friend created a group called the Jackson Drawing Club.

“ I’ve been able to meet people that I wouldn’t have in Houston,” he said. “ As a person, it showed me things that I value more than I realize, and how to care for those things to make sure that they last a long time and also what to let go of.”

People discredit Mississippi’s rich history and focus only on the issues that persist, such as bad infrastructure and homelessness, he said. To him, Mississippi isn’t just the sum of its problems.

“ People need to have their own perception of a place or of people,” Ransburg said, “because if you’re just going by stereotypes or things you’ve heard, it’s like you’re letting the propaganda get to you.”

We talk Tulane-Ole Miss, the Blake Anderson hire at Southern Miss, Coach Larry Ladner’s legacy in Mississippi basketball, and the New Orleans Saints and their new franchise quarterback.

Stream all episodes here.

Mississippi teachers are among the lowest paid in the country. State Auditor Shad White wants state lawmakers to change that next year. 

In a report released Wednesday, White re-ups a request he made last year: The Mississippi Legislature should dedicate half of the state’s K-12 education budget to raising teacher salaries. 

The report underscores that the low pay, an average of $53,704, is unsustainable — something Mississippi teachers have been stressing for years. The average teacher starting salary, $42,492 in Mississippi, is No. 40 in the nation, according to the National Education Association.

In 2022, state lawmakers passed the last meaningful teacher pay raise, an average annual increase of $5,140. But health insurance premium increases and inflation almost immediately started chipping away at the extra pay.

Even when adjusted for cost of living, Mississippi educators are the third-lowest paid in the country, nearly $9,000 less than the national average, according to the auditor’s report. And when their salaries are adjusted for inflation, White’s office says Mississippi teachers are paid less today than they were during the Great Recession from 2007 to 2009. 

White, who is weighing a run for governor, has no power over policy or appropriations as auditor. Still, last year he proposed requiring half of education spending go toward teacher salaries.

White has consistently focused on education spending since he took office in 2018, particularly taking aim at money spent on administration and outside of the classroom. By redirecting those funds to the classroom and mandating that 50% of the state’s K-12 budget goes toward teacher salaries, White’s office says the state could fund a teacher pay raise of at least $8,000. 

Teachers recently told Mississippi Today that they have to keep second jobs and cut corners financially to make ends meet. 

“I think all of us have the same attitude: We love our job but feel we are not making enough compared to other professional occupations,” Carrie Bartlett, a longtime teacher in Long Beach, said in a previous interview. 

And as the state’s public school system continues to bask in national recognition for its academic gains, teachers say they deserve better pay now more than ever. 

“Policymakers have touted the ‘Mississippi Miracle,’” said Kelly Riley, executive director of the Mississippi Professional Educators, in a previous interview. “I want to be clear: It wasn’t a miracle. It was the result of incredibly hard work by our educators and our students.

“If you want to use and tout the results of our students and educators … you should also want to recognize and support those educators with competitive, professional compensation.”

In a survey conducted by Riley’s organization, educators say low pay is driving thousands of vacant teaching positions throughout the state.Those vacancies have consequences on student learning, such as bigger classrooms and less individualized teaching. 

Experts have urged lawmakers in hearings over recent months to address state teacher shortages by raising their pay during the 2026 legislative session to attract quality teachers and incentivize them to stay.

House Speaker Jason White has indicated that education will be the headline issue of the legislative session that kicks off in January, and state leaders including Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann say they’re interested in boosting teacher pay. 

However, it’s likely the House will include all of its education policy, including school choice measures, in an omnibus bill next session, which would entangle educator salary increases with controversial legislation that many public school teachers don’t support. 

A previous report from the auditor’s office this year similarly drew attention to substandard pay for assistant teachers, who are among the lowest paid professionals in Mississippi.

In the harsh and colorless confines of the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, nine men hunkered down over an array of vibrant hues and used pencils, crayons, kindergarten scissors, cloth and milk jugs to create masks and a headdress, pencil drawings and wall hangings, shell necklaces and Gullah dolls. 

Michael Orrell, one of the incarcerated men, in a diary chronicling his art journey, thanked his “big sisters,” instructor Sally Lott McLellan and Kathy Neff of Oxford, a master quilter who joined the class in 2023 to assist with the sewing project.

“They are a God-send, in such a forsaken place due to stigmatization toward prisoners,” Orrell wrote.

“I am a prisoner, but I am free!”

McLellan, who used her art therapy skills as the class instructor, gained an entree into this world through the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative. She and Neff led creative arts class workshops in Unit 30 and Unit 29 from November 2021 until June 2024. 

In a book “Intersections: Seeking Self at Parchman Prison,” published in November by VOX Press, McLellan wrote about how the class and volunteer work was a journey of self-discovery for her students and herself.

“I hope readers will understand the humanity found in volunteerism, the feel of stepping outside of oneself to share time with those who don’t get the attention or interest that those in the free world do. I believe incarcerated people need to be heard, to be acknowledged as fellow human beings,” she wrote in an email. 

“… A little bit of encouragement can go a long way for those who are deprived of it. And one’s gift to the incarcerated doesn’t have to be masterpiece work. It can be simple and still be very rewarding.” 

Studies have found that creative arts can support rehabilitation and better behavior during incarceration. Rehabilitation Through the Arts, which provides visual art, writing, theater, dance and music programs at 10 prisons in New York and one in California, reports that less than 3% of its participants return to prison compared to 60% of people nationwide within three years of release. 

Seeing her students as individuals

McLellan’s book is among several Vox Press has published over a decade, including four collections of writing by those incarcerated at Parchman. 

She has a bachelor’s degree from Millsaps College and qualified for a master’s degree program in art therapy at Mississippi University for Women, studying art and psychology. 

But instead of graduate school, at the age of 50 with her youngest child no longer at home, she joined AmeriCorps and moved to northwest Montana where she spent two years at a tribal college as a community service team leader. 

McLellan said she kept journals after each prison art class she taught, and she realized that it was how she processed “the joys and the accomplishments, the setbacks, the intense emotions, and the glitches within the system.”

She began to learn about  the incarcerated men as individuals, rather than seeing them as a collective. They can be easy to ignore, McLellan said, but  they have parents, children and grandchildren.

“They have to learn to survive in a place that robs them of their individuality,” she said.

She noticed how students in her classes learned skills, including listening and taking direction. Lively conversation came from a positive group setting, McLellan said. 

In the book, McLellan wrote about several of her students, most by first name or nicknames, but she singles out two by full name: Michael Orrell and Randy Jackson. 

Orrell, 57, was in the Mississippi Prison Writes Initiative writing class of the nonprofit organization’s executive director, Louis Bourgeois. McLellan said Orrell “doggedly pursued” the concept of an art class. 

Jackson, 52, another former creative writing student, “said from the beginning that he couldn’t produce anything more than stick figures but was willing to explore,” McLellan wrote. 

McLellan wrote that she never asked her students what landed them at Parchman but Jackson volunteered his history and what motivated him.

Jackson, serving life for murder from Madison County since 1999, “is devoted to his family,” she wrote, but won’t let them visit him because he doesn’t want them “to see him in prison surroundings.” Instead, he speaks with them by phone and Zoom only. 

Jackson completed his GED, became a GED tutor and took college courses provided by Mississippi Delta Community College as well as vocational training in auto mechanics and Heating, Ventilation, Air Conditioning, and Refrigeration,. He was active in the prison ministry programming and is in the book club provided by the Mississippi Humanities Council. 

McLellan said she learned a little about Jackon’s life before prison in an essay he wrote for the book club. 

In 1982 when he was 9 years old, a car driven by a white man ran Jackson over while he was walking home  from school. He said “the accident almost took my little life away.”

But by the age 13 he was having sex with an older woman, drinking and smoking marijuana.

By 14, even though he was still active in church, Jackson sold marijuana, was arrested and suspended from school for a year and then started selling cocaine. 

Jackson dropped out of school at 18. But by the time he was 21, he had purchased some land, had a mobile home, a tractor and two trucks for hauling logs. At 25, he was a father of four children.

What changed his life, McLellan wrote, is losing everything. In 1997, Jackson shot someone who assaulted him and received a life sentence. 

In his book club essay, he wrote: ‘My Message to Young Adults, I hope this will enlighten you all to stay away from  trouble and be much better than I was, and not make the same mistakes I have made … Because if God (can) change me from a troubled man I know God can and will change you . . . just believe, have faith, and never give up on your dreams.’” 

Using photographs McLellan had taken from an old cemetery for the students to draw from, Jackson said drawing the tombstone “caused him to think of the life he’d taken.”

‘How they chose to see themselves’

She remembers feeling “a dance of delight” in her head the first time a student said art class felt like therapy. McLellan said she’s gathered materials and come up with ideas to help those in her class relax and feel comfortable.

“Being creative represents a form of freedom,” she said. “One can be unbound and fearless. Happy, even.”

Orrell, who is serving 40 years from Monroe County for aggravated assault and sexual battery, wrote in the book about first being inspired to do art by tops from Coca-Cola plastic bottles and other circular containers he found.

Today he has over 60 different tops that have survived many shakedowns, Orrell wrote in “My Art Journey,” which McLellan includes in her book. 

“These circular objects from the  garbage are the backbone of my colored circle art,” he says. 

“I never dreamed my art would even exist much less be a conversation piece in the homes of others. …  I couldn’t have done it alone. My art has come into existence through hard work and focus. Those two things are just part of it when it’s your passion. In addition, my success came into real-time because of others who believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.”

Using milk jugs cut in half, the class made masks. 

“What developed from that, what grew from all those gaudy and shiny things and those milk jugs was something miraculous,” McLellan wrote. “The students created self-portraits. Maybe they didn’t even recognize that was happening, but I could see it  clearly. … they were creating who they wanted to be, how they chose to see themselves.” 

One student known by the nickname “Twitch,” who is part Native American, wanted to make an Apache ceremonial headdress that required many feathers. McLellan saw how hard the man worked on the mask and fulfilled a personal desire to honor his ancestors. 

In spring 2022, with a grant from the Mississippi  Arts Commission, the group presented a show “Pictures from Parchman . . . We Are Here”. Many of the artworks were sold through an internet auction and the proceeds went to charities of the students’ choice or to their canteen account. 

Another project was tied to slavery.

They created necklaces with shells as the centerpiece, adorned with beads and natural elements as a way to honor “the sacred practice of creating beauty from gifts of nature as done by indigenous people,” McLellan wrote. Those necklaces were strung on a branch they called “Our Branch of Love and Peace.” 

To continue the arts of indigenous people, they made Yaya and Gullah dolls. Yaya dolls originate from Native American culture, while Gullah dolls are examples of the traditional West African dolls made by enslaved people in South Carolina. 

Wall hangings came next. She said the creative arts are liberating and allow the self to emerge, often subtly, because incarcerated people are not always quick to go into self-exploration. Instead, that kind of exploration can lead to a dark place. 

“What wasn’t subtle was how proud they felt with their finished works and even more so when the works were seen by a larger audience than our classes,” McLellan said. “It gave them pride and confidence.”
“Intersections: Seeking Self at Parchman” is available www.voxpress.org, on Amazon and at selected bookstores.

STARKVILLE — Tears well up in Donna Steelman’s eyes as she looks out at her flower garden, wilted from the first November frost, remembering her three closest friends. 

One passed away from cancer two years ago. Another is currently battling a terminal illness. The third is incarcerated in a facility 80 miles away, with an infection she fears could one day kill her, though it is highly curable. Steelman prays her friend — “one of the few I’ve got left alive” — will be released from prison, but worries her homecoming will be bittersweet. 

“I’ll probably have to take care of her, and watch her suffer, too,” Steelman said.

Her friend, Colleen, who asked that her name be changed due to a fear of retaliation from within the state’s prison system, is incarcerated at Delta Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Greenwood. Medical records show that the 56-year old woman has chronic hepatitis C — an infection that can be cured in more than 95% of cases with an eight- to 12-week course of medication — but she has not received the treatment. She was diagnosed nearly two years ago. 

Medical staff told Colleen that her condition is not severe enough to warrant treatment, she said to Mississippi Today. Delaying treatment runs counter to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Most people with hepatitis C do not have symptoms, making the infection difficult to detect and hampering opportunities for early precautions to prevent its spread. The disease progresses slowly and about 1 in 4 people will spontaneously clear the infection without treatment, providing little incentive for prisons to administer treatment — which can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single course — to patients when they are first diagnosed.

But left untreated, hepatitis C can wreak havoc on the immune system, yellowing skin and the whites of eyes from jaundice, bringing blood vessels that resemble a spider’s web to the surface of the skin and causing joint pain that renders some people immobile. Its long-term health consequences, such as liver failure and cancer, are life-threatening.

“It’s curable, but if you don’t offer treatment, for many people, it’s a death sentence,” said Lara Strick, a clinical associate professor at the University of Washington who also oversees the hepatitis C program in Washington’s state prison system.

Colleen is one of hundreds of people incarcerated in Mississippi diagnosed with hepatitis C who have not received treatment. A Mississippi Today report published earlier this year showed that only a fraction of over 800 people with documented hepatitis C diagnoses — less than 6% — received treatment between January and March of this year. 

House Corrections Committee Chairwoman Rep. Becky Currie, who has spent the past year pushing for reforms to health care in Mississippi prisons, previously called the prevalence of untreated hepatitis C in carceral facilities “a public health crisis.” 

At Delta Correctional Facility, there were 72 people with documented diagnoses of a total population of about 450 people — or 1 in 6 people — during that three-month period, according to public records. Across the entire state prison system, only 48 people received treatment out of about 19,000 people incarcerated by the state.

And in private, officials have sometimes cited a much higher caseload than public records show — as many as 5,000 prisoners and staff living with hepatitis C. Records from early 2025 show 845 people living with the disease, suggesting that documents may reveal only a sliver of a more widespread hepatitis C problem in Mississippi’s prisons. 

The Mississippi Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment for this article. But spokesperson Kate Head previously told Mississippi Today that the company the agency contracts for medical services “is responsible for providing appropriate medical treatment to inmates with all medical conditions, including Hep C.” 

Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, LLC, the company that holds a three-year, $357 million contract to provide medical care to Mississippi prisoners, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Colleen said she does not know when, or if, her condition will merit treatment. 

“I just don’t want it to be too late,” she said. “I don’t want to die in here.” 

Left in the dark

Steelman and Colleen became fast friends when they were just 19. They spent their days smoking marijuana and riding around town together, according to Steelman, a routine that came to a halt when she graduated from a radiography technology program and moved to Jackson to work at a hospital. Colleen stayed in Starkville, and the friends lost touch. 

The women reconnected in their 30s when Steelman moved home. In the years leading up to Colleen’s prison sentence, they were inseparable. 

“She’s one of those people when you see her, it’s like you were with her yesterday,” said Steelman. “It’s not like it’s been a couple years or something.” 

But their time together was cut short. Colleen went to prison in 2023 after receiving a 20-year prison sentence for selling drugs. About four months into her sentence, she was diagnosed with hepatitis C. 

Hepatitis C abounds in state prisons in the United States, where its prevalence is about nine times greater than the general population. This is due in part to the fact that risk factors for the infection, like injecting drugs, are the same as those that make people more likely to face incarceration, Dr. Anne Spaulding, an associate professor of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health who studies hepatitis C in prisons, previously told Mississippi Today. 

Colleen said she does not know how much damage the infection has caused to her liver. Medical staff do not share information about the disease’s progression, she said, leaving her largely in the dark about her condition. She receives “chronic care” check-ups every three months. 

In a year, she lost over a fifth of her body weight — a dramatic decline documented in her medical records — falling to 120 pounds in July. Colleen said her weight loss has continued since the summer.

“What are they going to do when I get down to 98?” she asked.

Weight loss is a possible symptom of hepatitis C, but it can be caused by a number of other factors. The only way to determine if a symptom like significant weight loss is connected to hepatitis C is to treat the infection, Strick said. 

The Department of Corrections’ hepatitis management policy obtained by Mississippi Today says it will provide treatment for people with hepatitis C diagnoses “when indicated.” But the Mississippi Department of Corrections has repeatedly declined to share information about how it determines which cases are worthy of treatment.

The limited information medical staff have shared with Colleen’s condition may be due in part to physicians’ own limitations on assessing the disease’s progression. 

It is difficult for doctors to determine the degree of damage hepatitis C has caused to a patient’s liver based on laboratory results until the disease is advanced, which is one reason it is best practice to treat the infection immediately, Strick said. By the time the test results clearly show liver scarring, the disease can have a higher risk of progressing to liver cancer or failure. 

“At that point, the harm is already done,” Strick said.

With little information about her own health, Colleen said she relies on Steelman, who has worked to obtain a copy of her medical records, researched her condition and contacted lawmakers to tell Colleen’s story in the hopes they might enact policy to help her. 

“She’s like my sister,” Colleen said. “Since I’ve been in here, she’s been my voice out there.” 

A ‘missed opportunity’

Colleen said the burden the infection has had on her mental health has been significant. 

“It makes me feel depressed,” she said. “Because, I mean, if I was at home, I could be treated.”

Untreated illness can also have severe mental health consequences for patients, Strick said, spurring “mental anguish” tied to not knowing what is causing one’s symptoms.

Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said at a Sept. 24 legislative budget hearing that medical care is an important aspect of ensuring stability for people incarcerated in state prisons. 

“We have to doctor all the people that’s sick,” he said. “We stay on top of them about it because it’s also a stability thing for prison. If inmates are not seeing the doctor, then they’re complaining and griping and they’re upset and their families are, too. So it destabilizes us.” 

But Mississippi Today’s Behind Bars, Beyond Care series has uncovered alleged recurring instances of denied health care in Mississippi prisons, such as an untreated broken arm that resulted in amputation and delayed cancer screenings one woman said led to a terminal diagnosis. 

Incarcerated people also have a constitutional right to health care under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” But in Mississippi, prisoners have fought for years for access to the highly effective antiviral medication — a “miraculous” treatment, in Strick’s words — for hepatitis C. 

Not treating illnesses also has consequences after incarceration, spurring more instability for patients when they come home, experts said. 

Dr. Shira Shavit, a clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California in San Francisco and the executive director of the Transitions Clinic Network, said failure to treat patients for diseases like hepatitis C while they are in prison is a “missed opportunity” that can help infectious disease spread and undermine a successful reentry process. 

“If people are sick or have medical issues that haven’t been addressed, it really upends their ability to successfully reintegrate into the community,” she said. 

And not treating a highly contagious infection leads to further spread of the disease inside and outside of the prison. At least 95% of people incarcerated in state prisons will one day be released. 

“From a public health perspective, what we don’t want is diseases that may be concentrated with the incarcerated population spilling out into the general population as people come home,” State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney said in a presentation to the state Legislature on prison health care in January. 

‘You lose your humanity’

Steelman misses Colleen, who she has not seen in over two years. It’s hard to be so far away from one another, but she said she believes Colleen should be held accountable for what she did. 

“I know it’s wrong. And I had no problem — of course I didn’t want it — but I had no problem with them arresting her and sending her to the pen, because it was against the law, she knew it was and she did it.”

But just as Colleen should be held accountable for her actions, Steelman said she believes Mississippi must uphold its constitutional responsibility to provide Colleen with medical care. 

Watching Colleen suffer — physically and mentally — from the dearth of care she has received has been heartbreaking, Steelman said. It has changed her perspective on law enforcement and the prison system, in spite of her background growing up in a law enforcement family and her deep patriotism. 

“I don’t see what I used to see,” Steelman said. “And I don’t like feeling that way … I did not know that they knew people were suffering. And they didn’t care.”

Steelman has one son and five grandsons. Ever since they were little, she said, she taught them to own up to their mistakes and bear the consequences of their actions. Colleen’s experience in the prison system — which Steelman sees as devoid of grace or forgiveness — has changed that. 

“I don’t tell them that no more,” Steelman said. “Because I know if they go (to prison) and they need even basic medical care, they’ll never get it. Cause you lose your humanity. The whole state, everybody in it, doesn’t even see you as a human being anymore.”

Even with Colleen far away, Steelman thinks of her often. 

She stores a dozen porcelain heirloom “Gone with the Wind” dolls in a closet in her bedroom. They are one of the few possessions Colleen has lugged from house to house — “and trust me … she didn’t stay nowhere long,” Steelman said — to remember her mother, who also suffered from severe liver scarring.

Two years ago, Colleen asked Steelman to sell the dolls and put the money from the sale into her commissary account so she could afford to make phone calls to her family and friends. 

“I just couldn’t sell those dolls. I just couldn’t do it,” said Steelman, who said she knew how much they meant to Colleen.

Steelman, who lives on a limited income, said she sent Colleen $200 — her grocery money — and went to the food bank. 

“When she gets out of prison, I’m going to be there with her doll collection,” she said. 

But Steelman anticipates that day could come with more sorrow. 

Colleen “will be the only long-time friend I have left,” she said. “And I’ll probably have to take care of her and watch her suffer, too. And that’s not right. And then, here she is. Could be fixed. It’s not cancer, it’s something that could be healed.” 

Evan Turnage worked for years as a top aide for some of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. Now, the Yale-educated attorney from Jackson is launching a primary challenge aimed at ousting one of the body’s most long-entrenched members.  

Turnage, 33, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Senate Conference Vice Chair Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, will challenge U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. Thompson has represented the 2nd Congressional District covering Jackson and the Delta since 1993. Thompson, a civil rights leader and former chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol attack, is a towering figure in state and national politics. 

The intraparty contest between a millennial first-time candidate with a polished resume and a baby boomer who is one of the longest-serving members of the U.S. House could reveal generational and policy debates simmering among Democrats as the party aims to reclaim a House majority in 2026.  

Turnage has positioned himself as a generational challenger focused on affordability, economic power and what he calls a “come home agenda” centered on reversing Mississippi’s brain drain problem. 

“This is the poorest district in the poorest state in the country,” Turnage said in an interview. “It was that way when I was 1-year old, when Congressman Thompson was first elected, and it remains that way today. We need real plans for real change.”

In a statement to Mississippi Today, Thompson said his record speaks for itself.

“Elections were created to give people the ability to make a choice,” Thompson said. “I am confident that my record on behalf of the people of Mississippi’s Second Congressional District will speak for itself. I will continue to run my campaign the way I always have. I trust the voters of the district to make their choice.”

Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District stretches from the Delta through much of Jackson and along the Mississippi River. It is majority Black and has been reliably Democratic for decades, a product of both demographics and court-ordered redistricting under the Voting Rights Act, a key provision of which is now before the Supreme Court. If federal law changes, some leading Republicans have suggested that Mississippi should redraw the lines of Thompson’s district in an effort to remove him from office. 

Turnage lived briefly in Cleveland as a child before returning to Jackson, attending Murrah High School in the Jackson Public Schools system. His parents, Ellis and Ellie Turnage, are both attorneys. His father spent much of his early career litigating Voting Rights Act cases in Mississippi, Turnage said, while his mother now serves as general counsel for Jackson Public Schools.

Turnage described a family story shaped by his parents’ experience as children during the first wave of school integration in Mississippi. His parents both drew from those memories to pursue careers in public service. His father went on to work on judicial redistricting in the 1980s, which helped elect more Black judges in Mississippi who had been disadvantaged due to unfair maps, Turnage said. His mother went on to work for Jackson Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the state.

But Turnage did not have grand designs on a political career from an early age. 

Initially planning a career in science, majoring in physics at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he ultimately chose law school. His decision to enter law school at Yale and the political worldview he adopted while in school were sharpened amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

While the movement focused squarely on policing and criminal justice, Turnage said he became increasingly concerned with what felt like an element of the story that had been overlooked: the economic conditions underlying inequality.

“I was equally enraged that a Black man in America felt he had to sell loose cigarettes,” Turnage said, referencing the 2014 death of Eric Garner in New York. “Missing from the conversation was economic rights.”

At Yale, Turnage was also a classmate of Lina Kahn, who would go on to become former President Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair. Turnage’s proximity to Kahn offers a window into his policy background and the way he might try to frame his agenda on the campaign trail. 

Kahn is credited with ushering in a resurgent interest in antitrust and the way corporate concentration leads to unfairness in the economy, particularly amid the ever-growing power of American technology giants such as Amazon and Google. 

She is perhaps the leading intellectual architect behind the “Neo-Brandeisianists,” a group of legal scholars, think tanks and activists jockeying for influence within the Democratic Party. Drawing inspiration from the anti-monopolist work of 20th-century U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, these Democrats see increasing corporate concentration in the economy as a threat to democracy and individual freedom. Bringing corporations to heel through stronger antitrust enforcement and redistributive tax policy is at the center of this approach.

Another central figure close to this faction is Sen. Warren of Massachusetts. After law school, Turnage worked for Warren, helping her draft legislation aimed at curbing corporate power, including the Price Gouging Prevention Act. He later served as a top lawyer for Sen. Schumer of New York, working on Democratic leadership priorities.

Turnage currently leads the Southern Justice Project at the Open Markets Institute, an antitrust-focused think tank that also counts Kahn among its former employees.

Turnage places himself firmly in the wing of the Democratic Party pushing for aggressive antitrust enforcement and consumer protections, arguing that corporate concentration is driving high prices and public distrust.

“Affordability is at the top of mind for people,” he said. “It’s not enough anymore to just say you’re a Democrat or you’re not Donald Trump. People want real plans.”

That perspective, Turnage said, informs his “come home agenda,” aimed at stemming Mississippi’s long-running brain drain. He hopes to win economic incentives for young people to stay in or return to the state. He has also pledged to refuse corporate PAC money, support a ban on stock trading by members of Congress and push for tighter campaign-finance rules.

Turnage pointed to Thompson’s vote against the For the People Act, a sweeping Biden-era Democratic voting rights and ethics bill. Thompson was the lone Democratic “no” vote against the legislation in March of 2021. Thompson, who has long been a defender of voting rights, said he worried that the independent redistricting provisions in the bill might threaten majority-minority districts. 

Thompson has built his influence through decades-long seniority. He chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and later led the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, making him the most visible Mississippi politician in national Democratic politics.

Turnage acknowledged Thompson’s stature but said incumbency would not deter him from mounting a challenge. 

“Nobody’s entitled to this seat,” he said. “It belongs to the district, and they decide every two years who gets to hold it.”

Another candidate in the race, Bennie Foster, originally filed paperwork to run as a Democrat. He has since changed and is running as independent.

On the Republican side, Adams County Supervisor Kevin Wilson announced last week that he plans to challenge Ron Eller, who is running again for the GOP nomination after losing to Thompson by nearly 25 points in 2024.

Correction: Bennie Foster since his original filing to run for office has switched to run as independent. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated his party affiliation.

Missisisppi’s appeals court on Tuesday rejected the state attorney general’s office request to vacate its decision to free a man, who later received clemency, for spending five more years in prison than the maximum for his crime. 

On Dec. 11, a day after Gov. Tate Reeves commuted the sentence of Marcus Taylor, the attorney general’s office asked the Court of Appeals to vacate its Nov. 18 opinion and dismiss Taylor’s post-conviction appeal, arguing clemency rendered them moot.

Taylor was convicted in 2015 for a drug sale charge that was meant to have a five-year maximum sentence. Instead, he received 15 years. 

The 43-year-old father of two was released from prison last week, according to his attorney, Joe Hemleben. 

On Tuesday, Hemleben said the court’s decision could create a path to relief for those in prison serving illegal sentences, even while there is a time limit to filing post-conviction relief claims. 

In court filings opposing the attorney general’s motion, he argued that dismissing Taylor’s case would have left Reeves’ clemency order without legal basis. Reeves cited the appeals court decision in granting Taylor’s clemency.

“The State’s motion effectively asks this Court to subordinate the Judicial Branch to post-decision action by the Executive Branch,” the response in opposition states. “That position is incompatible with fundamental separation-of-powers principles. Executive clemency does not divest the judiciary of its authority to decide cases, issue opinions, or preserve precedent.” 

A dismissal could have also prevented Taylor from being able to seek compensation for his wrongful sentencing, his attorney argued. 

The attorney general’s office has 14 days to file an appeal of the Tuesday decision with the Mississippi Supreme Court.  

State lawmakers and leaders of Mississippi’s public colleges and universities are examining ways to increase the number of adults who complete some form of education after high school, land a job and earn a living wage. 

The initial conversations, held Wednesday and Thursday during a joint meeting of the state House and Senate committees on universities and colleges, will likely continue during the 2026 legislative session. 

Here are four key takeaways from the committee meetings. 

Some lawmakers want to tie state funding to public universities based on post-graduation student success 

The goal is to get a better value for taxpayers to ensure college students are getting the best benefit of their education and the state is getting a return on investment for them to enter the workforce, said Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and the Senate committee chair.

Higher education systems in some states, such as Texas, Tennessee and Florida, use a performance-based funding model. Their models reward institutions for graduating students, placing them in jobs with median wage earnings,  and helping high need populations succeed. 

“Effective funding formulas focus on success within a six-month period of graduation,” Nathan Oakley, senior policy director for ExcelinEd, a national nonprofit think tank, said during a presentation to legislators. The means of success include “whether a student has found employment, enlisted in the military or enrolled at another post-secondary intuition or program.” 

Legislators acknowledge that Mississippi’s eight public universities operate under a broken funding formula. The amount of state funding awarded to the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning has decreased from 35% to 26% in the past decade, said LeAnn Robinson, director of the Legislative Budget Office. Those colleges and universities now rely heavily on tuition to generate revenue. 

The IHL Board of Trustees is working with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems to review and define metrics of success for each of its public universities, Commissioner Al Rankins said. IHL’s current funding is based on a broad approach that allows universities to receive equal funding regardless of enrollment growth or post-graduation success.  

With a recommendation from the center, IHL is considering a few formulas including one based on enrollment and tuition revenue in anticipation of an “enrollment cliff,” a decline in the number of high school students applying to state universities, Rankins said. 

Public university enrollment increases overall, but some institutions have seen declines

Overall, the state’s public universities saw a 2.7% increase in student enrollment with more than 81,961 students on campuses this fall compared to 79,817 students enrolled in fall 2024, according to an annual report by the IHL board. 

But there’s been a general decline in enrollment for the past decade at  Delta State, Mississippi University for Women, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State, Rankins said. 

Some of the state’s research institutions, including University of Southern Mississippi and Jackson State, have also seen a slight decline in enrollment in the past 10 years, Rankins said. 

Mississippi State University and University of Mississippi, the state’s flagship institutions, are the only two institutions that have seen a growth in enrollment in the past decade. Public universities have to be more intentional with the impending challenges of the enrollment cliff in the next few years, Rankins said. 

Legislators are considering offering financial aid to nontraditional students

Jennifer Rodgers, executive director of the state’s financial aid office, suggested a way to meet the state’s education attainment goals, boost its financial aid system and create job opportunities for working-age adults: creating the Mississippi Workforce Promise Program. 

Boyd and other lawmakers plan to propose legislation in January for an adult workforce grant program, which would be piloted at a few community colleges.

The program would involve providing grants for nontraditional students, including those older than 24 and not enrolled in school full time, who are pursuing a degree or credential.

The state does not offer financial aid to nontraditional students, but they make up a large portion of the state’s post-secondary population, Rodgers said. 

In recent years, the state has also redefined its educational attainment and workforce goals to get more college graduates to stay in Mississippi and contribute to its labor force and economy. In 2022, the state Chamber of Commerce and AccelerateMS, the workforce development office, launched Ascent to 55%, an initiative to get more than half of Mississippi’s workforce college educated by 2030, on par with the national rate. As of January, 48.7% of Mississippians ages 25 to 64 have a degree, credential or industry certification beyond high school.

The state has also outlined a number of job shortages in high-wage, high-demand fields such as nursing and health care technicians, IT and cyber security specialists, welders, electricians and plumbers and manufacturing trades, according to AccelerateMS. By 2035, the state would need to produce an additional 19,000 skilled workers for these in-demand fields. 

The Mississippi Workforce Promise Program could be a chance to tap into a group of students to educate or offer job opportunities or training, Boyd said. Other states such as Tennessee and Michigan have used similar grant programs to expand their workforce and lower barriers for students to get their degrees, training or credentials, Rodgers said. 

Adults who complete the program are students who would likely stay in the state, especially if they’ve established families or work in Mississippi, Rodgers said. 

Empowering Mississippians with financial literacy resources can help the state’s future economy 

Combined with Mississippi’s low median income of $56,820, the average federal student loan debt — $37,552 — creates the worst debt-to-income burden in the nation, said Apryll Washington, deputy director of the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid. 

More resources and support are needed to educate college students on financial literacy, said Jean Massey, executive director of Ascent to 55%. 

Mississippi requires high school students to complete a college and career readiness course with a financial literacy component to graduate. The course covers topics including budgeting, saving, credit and completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

But after high school, many students are then saddled with debt such as rent, credit card and loan payments, Massey said. Requiring first-year students to take a money management course at universities and colleges could be a strategy to improve graduates’ financial future and help Mississippi’s economy. 

“I think we have to empower our students,” Massey said. “We can partner with local credit unions, banks and nonprofits to provide expertise and mentorship. We can give students access to digital tools for how to track, monitor and spend their money.”  

State institutions including the University of Mississippi, Jackson State, University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi College offer financial literary courses or coaching for students. But state higher education leaders must examine ways to ensure students are set up for success, Massey said. 

“We need to give choices and opportunities for students to move forward,” Massey said. 

Editor’s note: A dedication worship service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday for the restored Christ Church, located in the Church Hill Community north of Natchez in Jefferson  County. The public is invited.

Since I was a child, I’ve always loved old things.

About a dozen years ago, I was in southwest Mississippi especially to look at Wyolah, an 1830s house that was for sale.

On my way to Wyolah, I turned a curve on Mississippi Highway 553 and saw something that grabbed my heart.

It was Christ Episcopal Church — down on its heels, but still elegant and classic.

Soon after that, my partner, John Norris, and I bought, restored and moved into Wyolah. Every time I drove by the church, it called out to me for help.

John and I soon became active members of the historic and beautiful church. It has pure Gothic Revival architecture, the congregation dates back to 1820, making it the oldest Episcopal congregation in Mississippi, and we loved being part of that community of faith.

Everyone agreed with us that the church deserved to be saved. But who would take charge?

By then I had completed work on the films, “The Help,” “Get On Up” and “The Girl on the Train” and had some free time. I volunteered to help.

I knew I could refer to experiences and contacts I made after college, when I worked several years as a building contractor.

Christ Church leaders gave me the go-ahead.

Two things kicked off my work. My friend and neighbor, the late Jinny Patterson, said she wanted more than anything to see the original cross put back on top of the church. To do that, we had to replace the leaking roof.

All that happened in 2019, just in time for the church’s bicentennial celebration in 2020.

Another close friend, The Rev. Ken Ritter, Christ Church’s vicar, was miserable on hot summer Sundays when he had to wear heavy clerical vestments. Of course, there was no air-conditioning. We had to have a climate control system. It was soon installed.

Many of the original windows were badly damaged. We found the source of the original stained glass and etched glass in Germany. Experts at Pearl River Glass Studio in Jackson made the windows look like new.

Other successes followed, including masonry and plaster repairs on the interior walls and ceiling. That work was done by Curtis Anderson of Natchez and Jose Ramirez of Ridgeland and their talented crews. Once again, the walls look like they are made of marble blocks.

Jose scraped the ceiling one day and found the original color of paint from 1856.

Also exciting was seeing the date of 1856 hand-written under a pew. Tom Vigil of Natchez found that when all the pews were removed from the church so that he could repair and paint them.

In fact, Tom had to re-create several pews because they were totally unusable.

The last major project was the church floor, which had been painted decades ago. We found the original color of the floor and put it back.

Other newly completed work includes a specially designed handrail up the front steps, a handicapped ramp, a larger organ, upholstery on the kneelers and the placement of the font and its pedestal at its original location near the church entrance.

Thanks to the generosity of dozens and dozens of people, all the beautiful work at Christ Church has been totally donated or paid for.

To commemorate the restoration, a rededication Eucharistic worship service will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday.

It will be led by The Right Rev. Dr. Dorothy Sanders Wells, the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Mississippi.

We invite everyone to attend the service and the free reception afterward. 

The church is located 12 miles north of Natchez at the intersection of Mississippi Highway 553 and Church Hill Road.

Christ Church has worship services conducted by The Rev. Samuel B. Godfrey at 2 p.m. on second and fourth Sundays and is growing as a congregation. We welcome new members.

Bishop Wells perfectly captured the purpose of the restoration when she said, “May God grant this worshipping community many, many more years to shine the light of Christ from this hill.”

Tate Taylor, an award-winning movie actor, screenwriter, director and producer, was born in Jackson. After graduating from the University of Mississippi, he worked in Memphis where he was fascinated by the filming of “The Firm.” That led to a career in film making, first as a production assistant in 1996 on the set of “A Time to Kill.” Later he directed “The Help” in 2011, based on a novel by his childhood friend, Kathryn Stockett. The film, nominated for three Academy Awards, won the Best Supporting Actress Award for its star, Octavia Spencer. Other successful films are “Get on Up” in 2014, “The Girl on the Train” in 2016, “Ma” in 2019 and “Breaking News in Yuba County” in 2021. With a love for filming on location, Taylor is dedicated to bringing film making to Mississippi. His companies include Crooked Letter Picture Company and Sandbox Stages in Natchez, near his historic home in Church Hill.

As immigrants in southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi braced for this month’s U.S. Homeland Security operation, Cristiane Rosales-Fajardo received a panicked phone call from a friend.

The friend’s Guatemalan tenant, who didn’t know she was pregnant, had just delivered a premature baby in the New Orleans house. The parents lacked legal residency, and the mother refused to go to a hospital for fear of being detained by federal immigration officers.

“There’s blood everywhere, and the baby’s dead,” Rosales-Fajardo recalled her friend saying. Rosales-Fajardo put on her sandals, grabbed surgical gloves, and rushed to the house.

Rosales-Fajardo, herself an immigrant from Brazil, is a grassroots organizer and advocate in the New Orleans East community, where many immigrants live. She has no formal medical training, but she has experience with delivering babies.

She scanned the room when she arrived. A 3-year-old child stood to one side while the mother sat on the edge of the bed. The father held their swaddled newborn son, who wasn’t breathing and was wrapped in blood-soaked towels.

“The baby was completely gray,” Rosales-Fajardo later said.

Rosales-Fajardo wiped fluid away from his small mouth and rubbed his back before performing tiny chest compressions and breathing air into his lungs.

She told the parents she had to call 911 to get the mother and newborn to a hospital for care. The baby was out, but the delivery wasn’t over.

“I assured her. I promised her that she was going to be safe,” Rosales-Fajardo said.

Fear hung over the room. Still, she made the call and continued performing CPR. Finally, the newborn revived and squirmed in Rosales-Fajardo’s arms. When the ambulance arrived, the mother tried to keep her husband from riding with her, terrified they would both be arrested.

He went, anyway.

“These are hard-working people,” Rosales-Fajardo said. “All they do is work to provide for their family. But they were almost at risk of losing their child rather than call 911.”

Putting Safety Over Health

Nearly two weeks into the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Catahoula Crunch, which launched Dec. 3, health professionals and community advocates in Louisiana and Mississippi report that a significantly higher-than-usual number of immigrant patients have skipped health care appointments and experienced heightened stress levels.

According to a press release, DHS said it had arrested more than 250 people as of Dec. 11. Though federal officials say they’re targeting criminals, The Associated Press reported that most of the 38 people arrested in the first two days of the New Orleans operation had no criminal record.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, immigrant families nationwide have become more likely to skip or delay health care, due in part to concerns about their legal status, according to a recent survey by KFF and The New York Times.

The survey found that nearly 8 in 10 immigrants likely to be living in the U.S. without legal permission say they’ve experienced negative health impacts this year, from increased anxiety to sleeping problems to worsened health conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes. The federal immigration raids in California, Illinois, North Carolina, and now Louisiana and Mississippi add to the health care barriers that these families already face, including access to services, language barriers, lack of insurance, and high costs. That hesitancy to receive even emergency care appears justified amid the ongoing raids.

Hospitals and health facilities generally must allow federal agents in areas where the public is allowed, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In California this year, federal agents have staked out hospital lobbies, shown up at community clinics, and guarded detainees in hospital rooms. Even driving to and from appointments poses a risk, as traffic stops are a popular place for immigration agents to make arrests.

University Medical Center nurse Terry Mogilles said that immigrants typically make up at least half the patients in her orthopedic trauma clinic in New Orleans, many of them with construction-related, bone crushing injuries that require surgery. But now, Mogilles said, many of those patients aren’t coming in for follow-up appointments, despite the risk of infection.

“When we call, we can’t get through,” Mogilles said. “It is so upsetting because we have no idea what’s happening to them post-op.”

A Chill Spreads in the South

Federal officials said the Catahoula Crunch operation extends to southern Mississippi, though the bulk of the initial arrests have occurred in the Greater New Orleans area. Immigrant families throughout Mississippi are hunkering down in anticipation.

Michael Oropeza, the executive director of El Pueblo, a nonprofit serving low-income immigrant communities in Biloxi and Forest, said the organization has witnessed families delay care, cancel children’s checkups, and go without refilling medication.

“It’s not because they don’t value their health; it’s because they don’t feel safe,” Oropeza said. “When hospitals and clinics are no longer that safe place, people withdraw trust that took years to build up. It can disappear overnight.”

Maria, a Biloxi resident from Honduras, said, in Spanish, she and her two children have missed routine doctors’ appointments because they are “terrified” to leave the house amid an increased presence of federal immigration officers. Her husband, who is authorized to work in the U.S., was detained for two months this year.

Her children are U.S. citizens. They previously qualified for Medicaid, but Maria opted to disenroll them three years ago out of concern that using public benefits would jeopardize her family’s residency applications, she said. The family now pays for their children’s care out-of-pocket.

When it feels safe to attend doctors’ appointments again, Maria said, her priority will be seeking mental health care to address the stress her family has endured.

“I definitely need to see a doctor to get checked out, because I don’t feel well,” she said, describing her anxiety, depression, and insomnia.

In Louisiana, Marcela Hernandez of Familias Unidas en Acción, a nonprofit that provides direct aid to immigrants, said many of the families she works with live paycheck to paycheck. Sheltering at home and missing work only adds to the stress. Hernandez said she received 800 calls for food in two days from families afraid to leave home.

The federal operation in Louisiana and Mississippi could last more than two months, according to the AP. The longer it goes on, Hernandez said, the more she worries evictions will come next as people can’t pay rent, further traumatizing a community whose members often had to make difficult and dangerous journeys to flee hardships in their countries of origin to reach the U.S.

“You don’t leave your country knowing that you’re gonna get raped on the way just simply because you wanna come and meet Mickey Mouse,” she said.

Rosales-Fajardo, who runs a nonprofit called El Pueblo NOLA, said families tell her how children have started urinating on themselves due to stress and fear. Nationally, immigrants who are likely to lack legal status report that some of their children have had problems sleeping and that they’ve seen changes in school performance or behavior, according to the KFF and New York Times survey.

Community groups said they hope people step up locally to deliver food and hygiene products to immigrant homes, and that health care professionals provide more at-home or telehealth visits.

Like at other hospitals, UMC’s waiting rooms are considered public spaces, Mogilles noted. But the nurses union is calling for the hospital to create safe spaces for patients that federal agents can’t access and clearer policies to protect health care workers who shield patients. Post-op appointments can’t be done virtually, so patients need to feel safe enough to come in, Mogilles said.

Prenatal and postnatal care is also challenging to provide virtually, leaving the health of new and expecting mothers vulnerable, said Latona Giwa, the executive director of Repro TLC, a national sexual and reproductive health training nonprofit.

Since the Chicago immigration sweeps began in September, Giwa said, the clinics and health providers her organization works with have reported that 30% of patients had missed appointments. She said pharmacies saw a 40% drop in medication pickups.

“What we know about management of chronic conditions, especially in pregnancy, but in general, is that even missing one appointment can impact the trajectory of that condition and worsen a patient’s outcomes,” Giwa said.

In Louisiana, which already has poor maternal health outcomes, the fear of arrest could exacerbate the crisis worsened by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and threaten lives. She’s especially concerned about families with preterm babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.

“Imagine your child is in the hospital, and so vulnerable, and you are terrified to go visit and care for your newborn infant because you’re worried about being deported,” Giwa said, noting that a newborn’s health partly relies on parental visits.

That’s the position the Guatemalan family in New Orleans is navigating.

On a recent day in December, Rosales-Fajardo acted as the family’s translator and advocate on their first visit to see their son in the NICU at a hospital on Lake Pontchartrain’s Northshore. Hospital staffers told the parents they would need to make the long and risky trip to the hospital repeatedly for at least a month to provide skin-to-skin contact and breast milk.

Rosales-Fajardo drove the parents, who were afraid to travel alone out of fear of being pulled over and arrested on a bridge. She said she’ll keep driving them as long as she needs to.

“Whenever they see a Hispanic driving or anything like that, that’s suspicious to them,” she said of federal agents.

But the baby is safe and healthy. And the parents have named Rosales-Fajardo his godmother.

Gwen Dilworth of Mississippi Today and Christiana Botic of Verite News contributed to this report.