KTBB News, Weather, Talk

GALVESTON (AP) – Recent outbreaks of hantavirus and norovirus on cruise ships are making headlines, but they’re unlikely to dim the growing popularity of vacation cruises, according to industry representatives and travel experts.

In fact, many within the industry still expect a record number of people worldwide to take cruises this year despite three passengers aboard the MV Hondius dying from hantavirus after the ship stopped in Argentina and a recent norovirus outbreak aboard a British ship docked in Bordeaux, France.

“The cruise consumer seems to be somewhat Teflon when it comes to stories like this,” said Rob Kwortnik, an associate professor at Cornell University’s Nolan School of Hotel Administration who closely watches the cruise industry.

In mid-April, an annual forecast by the Cruise Lines International Association, an industry trade group, estimated that 38.3 million people would travel on ocean-going ships this year, 4% more from a record 37.2 million passengers last year.

Industrywide sales figures are closely held. Asked about potential impacts from what happened aboard the MV Hondius, the trade association said it doesn’t comment or speculate on bookings. Several big cruise companies didn’t respond to questions from The Associated Press about customer demand, including Royal Caribbean, Norwegian and Carnival.

Oceanwide Expeditions, the Dutch company that owns the MV Hondius, said it doesn’t foresee any changes to its operations. It has a cruise setting sail from Keflavik, Iceland, on May 29.

Veteran cruisegoers said the outbreak would not affect their plans.

“I have eight cruises booked, and I’ll absolutely be booking another,” said Jenni Fielding, who blogs and posts social media videos about cruise trips under the moniker Cruise Mummy. “Cruising is as safe as any other type of holiday, provided travelers follow sensible health advice and stay aware of official guidance.”

Scott Eddy, a hospitality influencer, is currently on a cruise and docked in Monaco. Fellow passengers have not mentioned the hantavirus outbreak, he said.

“The average traveler understands that this is an isolated health situation and not something unique to cruise travel itself,” Eddy said.

CruiseCompete.com, an online marketplace where consumers making vacation plans can compare offers from travel agents, booked 31.7% more cabins in the first half of May compared to the same period last year, CEO Bob Levinstein said.

“I can categorically say that we have not seen any drop in demand,” Levinstein said.

Levinstein said that norovirus — an extremely contagious stomach bug that thrives in crowded environments — is conflated with cruises in the minds of many Americans because the U.S. Centers for Disease Control requires ships to disclose when 3% or more passengers report symptoms.

On a ship with 5,000 passengers, an illness impacting 3% of them “goes completely unnoticed by the vast majority of vacationers, and experienced cruisers know this,” he said.

Current news cycles rarely impact passengers’ decisions to join a cruise because the trips generally are booked at least 6 months — and often as much as a year – in advance, Kwortnik said.

“People who are booking cruises tomorrow are thinking about the holidays,” he said.

During a conference call Thursday with investors, Switzerland-based cruise line Viking said demand for its river cruises softened briefly during the first three months of this year after the Iran war began but then quickly rebounded.

Viking said 92% of its 2026 cruises and 38% of its 2027 cruises were booked. The company didn’t mention hantavirus or norovirus.

Andrew Coggins, a cruise industry analyst and professor in Pace University’s Lubin School of Business, said even if travelers set to embark on a cruise soon are unnerved by the latest news, they’re unlikely to get a refund.

“I think if there’s any impact on demand, it would be in the long term. If you’re cruising in the next few months, you’re past the point at which you can get your money back,” he said.

Coggins said he thinks the hantavirus story got a lot of attention because it reminded people of the Diamond Princess, which was quarantined off Japan for two weeks in early 2020 after the coronavirus that grew into a global pandemic was detected on board.

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the cruise industry, shutting down many smaller operators. Cruises didn’t see an upswing in passengers again until 2022, Coggins said.

There are still fewer cruise passengers from China and Japan than there were before COVID, according to CLIA. But Coggins said demand elsewhere is booming.

“There are new ships on order out to 2037. The cruise lines are bullish. They see demand growing and they want to offer new bells and whistles, new ports, new destinations,” he said.

One reason for cruising’s growth is broad appeal across generations and income levels. In a recent U.S. survey, Bank of America found that Generation Z respondents and millennials were the most likely to say they planned to cruise over the next 12 months.

The survey also found that cruise spending rose for lower-income households even as those households spent less on airfare and lodging. Cruise lines have been wooing those passengers in recent years with shorter, more affordable itineraries.

Kwortnik said cruising also offers travelers value for their vacation dollars.

“On average, it costs more just to stay at a hotel in Miami than it does to sail on a cruise out of Miami – and the cruise includes lodging, multiple destinations, food, entertainment, and transportation all in the fare,” he said.

WASHINGTON (AP) — China has agreed to ramp up trade for U.S. agricultural products such as beef and poultry, buying at an annualized rate of $17 billion per year for 2026 and at that level for 2027 and 2028, the White House announced Sunday, two days after President Donald Trump returned from a high-stakes summit in Beijing where he sought to ease the impact on American farmers from the trade war he launched last year.

China would restore market access for U.S. beef and resume imports of poultry from U.S. states determined by the U.S. Department of Agriculture to be free of the bird flu, the White House said. The deals are on top of China’s soybean purchase commitments last year.

The agreements offer some hope to American farmers harmed by the trade war as they saw a major export market for soybeans and other products dry up. Farmers also are feeling new pressure from Trump administration policies — the war that the U.S. and Israel launched against Iran has curtailed shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, a vital trade corridor that has restricted global fertilizer supplies and sent those prices soaring.

There was no immediate confirmation of the terms from Beijing.

China’s Ministry of Commerce on Saturday said the two sides would “resolve or make substantial progress toward resolving certain non-tariff barriers and market access issues” regarding agricultural goods.

The U.S. would “actively work” to address China’s concerns regarding detention of its dairy products, seafood, the export of potted bonsai, and the recognition of Shandong province as a bird-flu-free zone, while the Chinese side will “likewise actively work” to address U.S. concerns regarding the registration of beef processing facilities and the export of poultry meat from certain states to China, a ministry spokesperson said.

The two sides also agreed to expand trade, including that of farm goods, through measures such as reciprocal tariff reductions on “a specific range of products,” though the spokesperson did not specify the products.

China, recognizing the link between food security and national security, has diversified its sources of imported soybeans, beef and other farm goods, turning increasingly to Brazil, Argentina and other countries over the U.S.

China sharply cut back US imports during the trade war

Data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture show China’s imports of U.S. agricultural goods peaked in 2022 with $38 billion but fell to $8 billion in 2025. These figures include nearly $18 billion in soybean purchases in 2022 and $3 billion in 2025.

It’s not immediately clear how much more China would buy from American soybean farmers, who were hit especially hard in the trade war. China, traditionally the largest foreign buyer of American soybeans, stopped purchasing them altogether last year after Trump hiked tariffs on Chinese goods.

The latest agreement builds on a trade truce Trump reached with Chinese President Xi Jinping in October in which China agreed to resume buying U.S. soybeans. The White House said then that China committed to buying 12 million metric tons in the current marketing year and 25 million metric tons for each of the next three years.

According to the White House, hundreds of U.S. beef plants, including those run by Tyson and Cargill, also will be able to export again to China, though it’s not immediately clear how much beef American businesses will be selling to China.

China let licenses for hundreds of U.S. beef plants expire last year, and the import value for 2025 fell to less than $500 million, according to USDA figures. China’s purchases of U.S. beef had peaked at $2.14 billion in 2022, the government data shows.

The U.S. export of poultry meats and products to China was $286 million in 2025, down from more than $1 billion in 2022.

Trump and Xi used summit to find areas of economic cooperation

During the summit last week, Trump and Xi discussed ways to enhance economic cooperation, including expanding market access for American businesses in China and increasing Chinese investment into U.S. industries, the White House had said. The two leaders agreed to set up separate boards of trade and investment — though offered few details on the proposals or how they would differ from existing trade dialogues.

The Board of Trade will allow the two governments to manage trade of “non-sensitive goods,” and the Board of Investments would provide a venue for the two sides to discuss investment-related issues, according to the White House.

China’s Ministry of Commerce said the two bodies would address respective concerns regarding trade and investment. The Board of Trade, the ministry spokesperson said, would allow the two sides to discuss issues such as tariff reductions on specific products. “In principle, the two sides agreed to reduce tariff on products of respective concern at equivalent scale,” the spokesperson said.

Xi said last week that China’s door of opportunity will open wider when he met with U.S. business leaders joining Trump on the trip. Among those who traveled to Beijing was Brian Sikes, CEO of the agricultural giant Cargill.

Soybeans, which are used for livestock feed and biofuels in China, are among the top U.S. agricultural exports. Soybean exports to China in the past had accounted for about half of U.S. exports of agricultural goods to the Asian nation.

USDA data shows the U.S. exported 10.9 million metric tons of soybeans to China as of May 7, putting China on track to fulfill its previous commitment by the end of the marketing year on Aug. 31. This is well below the 25 million to 30 million metric tons that China purchased in past years.

Before Trump’s initial planned trip to Beijing in late March — which was postponed by the Iran war — the American Soybean Association urged him to prioritize soybeans in the trade talks with Xi.

Scott Metzger, president of the association, said Thursday the group would like to see “additional soybean purchases this marketing year, as well as continued progress toward fulfilling future purchase commitments.”

“Greater certainty and consistency in the marketplace help provide farmers with the confidence they need as they make decisions for the year ahead,” he said.

SAN AUGUSTINE (KETK) – The San Augustine Police Department has arrested a juvenile after a shooting happened at a Texaco convenience store on Sunday afternoon.

San Augustine PD said officers were sent out to the Texaco Convenience store on MLK Drive in San Augustine in the early afternoon on Sunday after two people reportedly pulled up to the store and started shooting at each other.

After interviewing witnesses at the scene, the officers were able to determine who the two shooters might have been. One of the suspected shooters is a juvenile and has been arrested on a warrant unrelated to Sunday’s shooting.

San Augustine PD said there’s no ongoing threat to the the public and they’re continuing to investigate what exactly led to the shooting. No injuries have been reported in connection to Sunday’s shooting.

Anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call San Augustine PD at 936-275-2384.

WASHINGTON (THE TEXAS TRIBUNE) – U.S. Customs and Border Protection awarded a $1.7 billion federal contract listed for border wall construction in the Big Bend region, fueling public confusion over the project after a previous assurance from a top agency official that no barriers would be built at the region’s national park.

The contract, awarded Monday, is designated “for border wall in Big Bend Texas” in its description. The $1.7 billion allocated in the contract is the single-highest amount awarded for a contract in Texas related to the border wall, according to listings on usaspending.gov, the U.S. government’s official public spending database.

A second contract for $4.5 million was awarded on Thursday for “resource monitoring support” of border wall construction in a separate area of the Big Bend region.

The new awards come a week after CBP Commissioner Rodney Scott told the Washington Examiner there would be no border wall built at Big Bend National Park because of pushback from local residents. Scott’s statements to the Examiner and a statement from CBP last week to The Texas Tribune indicated the agency would instead pave roads along the border in the national park and use digital surveillance equipment.

CBP did not respond to an immediate request for comment about the $1.7 billion award.

Opponents of wall construction in the region have seen their frustrations with the project mount as communication from the Trump administration about the project has been limited, and there have been few formal announcements about plans in the area.

“We obviously, at this point, don’t trust anything, but it’s like a roller coaster,” said Lico Miller, a business owner in Terlingua, a small, rural town a few miles west of Big Bend National Park.

An interactive “Smart Wall” map on the CBP website shows the agency planned to install roads and “virtual wall” technology that would alert Border Patrol agents when people cross the border in the “Big Bend 4” region. The $1.7 billion award is intended for a Big Bend “segment identified as BBT-4,” according to its description. CBP officials took down the Smart Wall map in late April, but later added it once more with changes in mid-May. The map currently states that no is wall planned around the national or state park despite the awarded contract.

“They have made it a mission to obfuscate and make this as confusing of a process as possible,” said Laiken Jordahl, National Public Lands Advocate at the Center for Biological Diversity. “From constantly changing the online smart wall map — I mean, they’ve made dozens and dozens of changes to that thing without announcing any of them — to taking it down entirely.”

Jordahl said that even paved roads along the border would likely be harmful to wildlife in the region and could make border crossings easier in areas where terrain would otherwise be difficult to traverse. He also said roads would inevitably make barrier installation easier in the future if CBP changed its mind later on.
The Best of the Tribune in your Inbox

On Thursday, the Trump administration waived environmental protections in the Big Bend region in preparation for construction, according to a federal notice first reported by Marfa Public Radio. The notice described Border Patrol’s 517-mile Big Bend sector as “an area of high illegal entry.” The sector is the least busy of the nine sectors, with agency apprehensions in the region accounting for 1.3% of more than 237,000 across the U.S.-Mexico border in fiscal year 2025.

Residents point to the infrequency of border crossings in the area as only adding to the confusion and frustration.

“We’re 1.3% of the problem. What is this billions of dollars stuff when we are not an issue?” another Terlingua business owner Cynta de Narvaez said.

Thursday’s waivers follow similar action in February, when Trump administration officials waived over two dozen environmental laws to clear the way for a 150-mile-long border barrier through West Texas that initially included Big Bend National Park.

Advocacy groups in the region filed a lawsuit against the Trump administration in mid-April arguing it had illegally waived those environmental laws and need Congress to sign off.

FORNEY (KETK) – The Forney Police Department has confirmed that three people were injured when their plane crashed during an emergency landing on Saturday morning.

According to Forney PD, Forney police officers and Forney Fire Department firefighters responded to the area of Sage Hill Parkway and Helms Trail at just after midnight on Saturday after a single-engine aircraft crashed in a field while attempting to make an emergency landing.

Three people were on the plane and two of them had to be taken to a local hospital for treatment, while the third person was treated for their injuries at the crash scene. Forney PD said they’re working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Texas Department of Public Safety to investigate the crash.

The FAA identified the crashed aircraft as a Bellanca Downer 14-19-3 single-engine plane. The Dallas Police Association Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 716 said the three passengers were all off-duty police officers traveling together in the plane while returning a personal trip.

The lodge said two of the officers received minor injuries while one officer has significant injuries that they are still being treated for.

TYLER – A new lithium mining project planned in Northeast Texas has received the green light from the Trump Administration.

“What’s exciting about East Texas in particular is the lithium grade there,” CEO of Standard Lithium, Jesse Edmondson, said.

According to our news partner KETK, parts of the East Texas region will be home to Standard Lithium’s second commercial project to extract the precious mineral from saltwater thousands of feet underground.

” We see most of the growth of our company over the next decade will be in East Texas,” Edmondson said.

The Canada-based company went through a federal permitting review process in the U.S., which determined a very minimal environmental impact to our water, air, and landscape.

“You’re talking about on the order of a dozen to two dozen well pads, each one of which can have multiple wells drilled off of them. Then the surface disturbance is really limited to those well pads themselves and then the central processing facility,” Edmondson said.

The company’s flagship projects in the U.S. are located in what’s called the ” Smackover Formation.” It focuses on the areas in Franklin County and parts of Hopkins and Titus counties.

The average grade for our Franklin project is just over 600 milligrams per liter, but we’ve actually drilled a hole in that project area that was as high as is 800 milligrams per liter, so these are truly globally significant world class numbers and it’s really exciting for the company, we think for East Texas and for our country that we’re currently reliant on China for lithium and for lithium chemicals, so which are critical for modern battery technology,” Edmondson said.

Edmondson said the project is different from Lithium-ion battery storage facilities and focuses on extraction.

Most recently, a storage project was halted by a district judge in Van Zandt County.

“We don’t have the capacity to fight those kinds of fires, so if they don’t comply with the fire code, they should be redesigned,” Van Zandt Co. Precinct 2 Commissioner Cliff Williams said.

Williams hopes the new mining project will comply with state and national codes and not kick people out of their homes.

“That [mining project] is done in such a way that it respects the property ownership of those owners that live out there next door to where these operations are going to be taking place,” Williams said.

The extraction project is still in the early stages, and construction wouldn’t begin until at least 2030. Standard Lithium said this massive project will bring hundreds of jobs to the area.

AUSTIN (AP) — The small plane that crashed while carrying four pickleball players to a tournament near Austin last month had problems with freezing instruments before it broke apart midair, according to a preliminary federal investigation report released Friday.

The Cessna 421C took off from Amarillo on April 30 at 9:10 p.m. and crashed at about 11 p.m. in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Austin. Pilot Justin Appling and passengers Hayden Dillard, Brooke Skypala, Stacy Hedrick and Seren Wilson died.

The National Transportation Safety Board report said that during the flight, the pilot reported problems with the plane’s anti-icing system that protects onboard instruments.

He later reported an instrument that measures airspeed had “iced up” and that he was using backup gauges. He was cleared to descend to 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) and told air controllers he wanted to get to a lower altitude to try to “warm back up.”

Over the last 15 minutes before the crash, the plane flew at altitudes where temperatures hovered just below freezing, according to the report.

The pilot’s last radio transmission with air controllers was made at 10:59 p.m. The plane then made a series of descending left and right turns before crashing to the ground.

Investigators found pieces of the plane over a 1.25-mile (2-kilometer) debris field, distribution consistent with an “inflight breakup,” the report said.

It was mostly cloudy in the area shortly before the crash, and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.

A second plane traveling with the group landed safely in New Braunfels.

EAST TEXAS (KETK) — Attorney General Ken Paxton has notified more than 130 Texas cities on Thursday that they are barred from raising property taxes above the no?new?revenue rate after his office determined they failed to meet state audit and transparency requirements under a new law.

According to the Attorney General’s Office, more than 1,000 Texas municipalities were asked to provide documents showing whether they complied with SB 1851, which requires every city to complete annual financial audits and meet state transparency standards. After reviewing those submissions, investigators identified more than 130 cities that allegedly failed to meet the required benchmarks for the upcoming fiscal year.
Thirteen East Texas cities appear on the AG’s list:

* Berryville
* Chireno
* Corrigan
* Elkhart
* Eustace
* Huntington
* Livingston
* Mount Enterprise
* Red Lick
* Redwater
* Rusk
* Tool
* Yantis

Letters sent by the state warn those municipalities that they may face enforcement actions and penalties under SB 1851 and cannot legally approve property tax increases beyond the no-new-revenue rate until compliance issues are resolved.

The Attorney General’s Office said the list of cities currently identified as non-compliant is preliminary and that additional municipalities could face similar restrictions as the investigation continues.

Paxton said the effort is intended to protect Texas taxpayers from unlawful tax increases and ensure local governments follow state law. State officials indicated that further enforcement actions may follow if additional cities are found to be out of compliance with the financial reporting requirements outlined in SB 1851.

“Cities cannot ignore state audit and transparency requirements without consequences,” Paxton said in a statement. “My office will continue enforcing the law to protect taxpayers across Texas.”

Statements from East Texas cities:

City of Tool

“We respect and understand the Attorney General’s determination regarding the City of Tool’s current audit status. To date, the City of Tool is completing its 2024 audit and have already corresponded with our third-party auditors in regards to our 2025 fiscal year audit, expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal year. We are committed to being fiscally responsible and strive to not only be in compliance with state law, but to continue to provide a level of transparency and commitment with taxpayers’ money.”

City of Huntington

We were notified by the Attorney General’s office yesterday afternoon that we were in violation of the provisions of SB 1851, which will effectively prevent the city from adopting a tax rate that exceeds the no-new-revenue rate for 2026.

As you are surely aware, the effective date on those provisions was September 1, 2025. The City’s 2026 fiscal year budget and 2025 tax rate had already been adopted by ordinance before that effective date, so the provisions did not apply for the setting of the 2025 tax rate.

Public hearings were published and held in accordance with the Public Meetings Act prior to those ordinances being adopted.

Our financial records have been in the hands of Mr. David Godwin and his capable staff since February 2026, but the audit was not completed by the required deadline of March 30, 2026. We are still awaiting the completed audit and expect that to be submitted for Council review in the near future. City officials are absolutely aware of the provisions that will restrict this year’s tax rate and plan to abide by the letter of the law.

As far as transparency is concerned, the City’s 2026 fiscal year budget and the audit for fiscal year 2024 are on the City’s website – http://www.cityofhuntington.org – under the Finance Department tab. As soon as the audit is completed and received by our office, it will be posted on the website posthaste.

City of Rusk

The City of Rusk has received notice from the Texas Office of the Attorney General regarding the City’s compliance with Local Government Code Chapter 103 and related requirements f fiscal year 2025.

The City understands that, based on the Office of the Attorney General’s determination, the City has been found not to have complied with the audit and financial statement requirements applicable under state law and is therefore subject to the enforcement provisions set out in Local Government Code 103.055(c).

The City has been diligently working to resolve the issue and recently completed its 2024 audit.
The City remains committed to transparency, fiscal responsibility and full compliance with Texas law.

Under the applicable statute, the City may not adopt an ad valorem tax rate that exceeds its no-new-revenue tax rate until compliance is achieved. The City intends to be in compliance as soon as possible.

The City will continue working diligently to address this matter.

KETK News has contacted additional East Texas cities for comment and is awaiting their responses.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to capture and prosecution of a former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist who defected to Iran in 2013 and was later charged with revealing classified information to the Tehran government.

Monica Elfriede Witt, 47, was indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2019 on charges of espionage, including transmitting national defense information to the government of Iran. She remains at large.

Witt “allegedly betrayed her oath to the Constitution more than a decade ago by defecting to Iran and providing the Iranian regime National Defense Information and likely continues to support their nefarious activities,” Daniel Wierzbicki, special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence and Cyber Division, said in a news release Wednesday.

“The FBI has not forgotten and believes that during this critical moment in Iran’s history, there is someone who knows something about her whereabouts.”

It wasn’t immediately known why the FBI was bringing attention to Witt’s case. The United States and Iran have been at war since Feb. 28.

Witt served in the Air Force between 1997 and 2008, where she was trained in the Farsi language and was deployed overseas on classified counterintelligence missions, including to the Middle East. She later found work as a Defense Department contractor.

The Texas native defected to Iran in 2013 after being invited to two all-expense-paid conferences in the country that the Justice Department says promoted anti-Western propaganda and condemned American moral standards.

Before that, Witt had been warned by the FBI about her activities, but told agents that she would not provide sensitive information about her work if she returned to Iran, prosecutors said.

According to the indictment, Witt placed at risk “sensitive and classified U.S. national defense information and programs,” the news release said.

“Witt allegedly intentionally provided information endangering U.S personnel and their families stationed abroad. She also allegedly conducted research on behalf of the Iranian regime to allow them to target her former colleagues in the U.S. government,” it said.

PORT ISABEL (AP) — Until recently, young children ran in and out of their public housing homes in this Gulf Coast town, playing on sun-dappled lawns as mothers looked over their shoulders for the school bus to drop off their older kids. Suddenly, couches, dressers and refrigerators started appearing curbside for movers or garbage collectors.

Within weeks, the neighborhood was a ghost town and the playground was empty.

What prompted the mass exodus was a bungled message from the housing authority in Port Isabel, a South Texas community of 5,000 people, many of whom are immigrants working at hotels and restaurants on the beaches of nearby South Padre Island. The Port Isabel Housing Authority indicated a Trump administration proposal was about to take effect that would end housing assistance to families with at least one member in the country illegally. The events that followed provided a glimpse of what could happen in communities across the U.S. if the proposed rule is actually finalized.

“The impact was not limited to undocumented immigrants, but really to immigrants who are here legally as well as people within their families who are citizens,” Marie Claire Tran-Leung, senior staff attorney at National Housing Law Project, said.

For decades, families with at least one legal or eligible resident have been allowed to live in public housing provided those who are here illegally or are otherwise ineligible due to their immigration status pay a full, unsubsidized share of rent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to reverse that.

Advocates estimate up to 80,000 people would be kicked out of their homes nationwide under the measure that is part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. They include U.S. citizens, many of them children born in this country but whose parents were not.
A message from the Port Isabel Housing Authority

On Feb. 3, the Port Isabel Housing Authority sent residents a letter saying that the Trump administration wanted every household member to prove legal status within 30 days or face eviction. Three weeks later, the agency sent a note of “clarification” that no such proof was required.

It was already too late.

Half of residents living in Port Isabel public housing left within a month of receiving the first letter. The occupancy rate plunged from 91% in January to 43% in May, far below the national average of 94%.

The proposed rule from HUD still has not taken effect.

The housing authority gave no explanation for the initial misunderstanding and officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Rumors and panic

Fears about eviction and rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might get involved prompted panic among some residents.

“My kids and I spoke and wondered what we were going to do, but then we said it’s better to leave and avoid any retaliation,” a single mother from Mexico raising two teenagers who are U.S. citizens told The Associated Press. She, like other former residents, spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears of being deported.

She turned to legal service organizations that told her and others they could stay in public housing. But she and her children decided it was too risky and left their home of nearly a decade, finding an apartment within the same school district that costs about $500 more per month.

The move also added about 10 minutes to the commute to the island, where both the mother and her daughter work. The 18-year-old gets home from school at 4:30 p.m. and grabs a quick dinner before her mom drives her to a job that starts at 5 p.m. The daughter is a top student in her senior class and plans to go to college in the fall with help from scholarship offers, but she worries how her family will make ends meet. Her brother was laid off, and their mom underwent cancer treatment last year, depleting her energy and straining their finances.

Other families face even greater challenges.

A mother of three said she moved her family into a one-bedroom trailer home illegally parked between two other trailer homes. Her oldest son sleeps in the living room.

Another family of three sold beds and other furniture so they could squeeze into a small trailer home, only to find out the landlord wouldn’t let them use the mailing address, affecting her children’s school and health insurance.

“Since we got the letter, everything changed from one day to the next. It wasn’t the same anymore. Before the letter, the kids were happy, playing outside,” the mother of two said.
A preview of a Trump administration proposal

The Trump administration proposed in February that any household with one ineligible resident would disqualify an entire family, estimating that 24,000 recipients were ineligible in 20,000 households.

“We have zero tolerance for pushing aside hardworking U.S. citizens while enabling others to exploit decades-old loopholes,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said at the time.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income families, estimates that 79,600 people could be forced to leave their homes, with a disproportionate impact on children and Latinos.

The rule drew more than 16,000 public comments, many of them critical, including from city leaders across the U.S.

For example, the New York City Council told HUD that an estimated 12% of city of households have at least one member who lacks legal status. Some 240,000 children are in those homes.

“This proposed rule will unequivocally lead to increased displacement, homelessness, poverty, and decreased educational and health outcomes,” the council wrote.

HUD is expected to publish a final version of the rule after considering public comments.

It is almost certain to face legal challenges.