The Marshall Project news digest

Donate Edited by Maurice Chammah View in browser 2026 2026 Community Survey Will you help shape our future reporting and strategies? Give your feedback and help make The Marshall Project better → TAKE THE SURVEY NOW Pick of the News ICE child arrests are up. In the first seven months of this year, ICE arrested twice as many children as it did in all of 2025. In those statistics are countless stories of infants and teens alike who were ripped away from their families, schools and friends. One mother described being trapped with her two children in a hotel room hundreds of miles from home, with guards who did not allow the family to look out a window. The Marshall Project Fifteen children enter ICE detention, on average, every day, and more than half of those released are then deported. Learn more in our new dashboard that tracks the latest effects of Trump’s immigration policies on children. The Marshall Project Related: How ICE tactics target kids. The Marshall Project Hunger strikes are the latest act of resistance in ICE facilities. More than 1,600 detained immigrants refused to eat between 2015 and 2020, and the tactic seems to be returning, with at least a dozen hunger strikes in ICE detention camps this year. Many go unreported, and they can have long-term health consequences. TMP’s Lauren Villagran reports on one such hunger strike in South Texas, where several immigrants are demanding to be moved to different states, in hopes they may have more success fighting their detention in court. The Marshall Project Death without dignity. Some prisons donate the bodies of people who have died inside to medical research without prior consent. Others cremate the deceased without asking next of kin, which can lead to violations of peoples’ religious beliefs. TMP’s Ilica Mahajan reports on the “maze of regulations” families face after their loved one dies in a prison, jail or immigrant detention camp, documented in a new report. Most states do not even require public reporting of deaths in custody, “making it difficult for journalists, advocates and lawmakers to identify patterns that would prevent future deaths.” The Marshall Project Christa Pike is conscious. On Monday night, the Tennessee woman’s lawyers believed she was brain dead, after surviving two doses of lethal injection drugs last week. “But on Tuesday, to the shock of everyone … Christa woke up and began talking,” her lawyer Randy Spivey said at a press conference on Wednesday. She is reportedly angry, confused, and shackled to her hospital bed with pneumonia and a litany of other medical issues. Her lawyers are fighting in court to force the state to preserve evidence, ahead of an expected legal fight over whether the state can attempt to execute her again. The New York Times More: Before the head of Tennessee prisons oversaw this botched execution, he oversaw others in Arizona. NPR More: Lots of states have the same risk factors behind the Pike story, from undertrained executioners to secrecy laws that make it hard to know where the drugs are coming from and whether they’re effective. ProPublica Funding the police with opioid settlement money. Several years ago, numerous companies that were making and selling opioids agreed to pay roughly $50 billion, settling claims across scores of lawsuits that they fueled a nationwide epidemic of drug abuse. Instead of going to affected families, the money was funneled to states. While some of the funds went to recovery centers and other public health initiatives, much of it has flowed into law enforcement budgets, and paid for at least one shooting range. The New Yorker N/S/E/W Texas executed Jamaal Howard on Wednesday evening, in the first lethal injection in the country after the botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee last week. The Associated Press Howard’s lawyers had asked multiple courts to stop the execution, arguing Texas’ refusal to divulge information about its own lethal injection drugs might put thei