Who has access to ‘package pickup’ parking spaces?

• September 15, 2026

Q: Susan Hedge uses an accessible parking placard to park in and around Riverside and the Lake Matthews area where she lives. Hedge said several stores appear to be changing some of their parking spots designated for those with disabilities and putting signs up that say, “package pickup.” She asked if she may use her accessible parking placard to park in those spaces.

A: The answer is no. The parking spaces our reader inquired about are designated for package pickup, so she can’t park there unless she is picking up a package.

“If she did, the store would have to have her towed since it is on private property. In other words, park at your own risk,” said Sgt. Ryan Hodge of the Riverside Police Department.

215 Freeway lanes

Q: Scott Clay of San Bernardino asked why the California Highway Patrol “allows” semis and vehicles towing and over three axles to drive in the No. 2 lane on the 215 Freeway when there are signs saying trucks must stay in the two right lanes.

A: On the Road gets asked questions like this often. It’s unfortunate and frustrating, but truckers often drive in the wrong lanes across the Inland Empire and elsewhere too, either because the drivers want to, or they are from another state and don’t know California’s lane laws (or pay attention to freeway signs). This isn’t an excuse, just an explanation. The CHP can’t patrol everywhere, all the time, to catch every violator; there will never be enough officers.

We should point out that under California Vehicle Code section 21655, lane restrictions apply only to specific vehicle types, not to vehicle length alone. The requirement to remain in the two right lanes on freeways with four or more lanes heading in one direction applies to trucks with three or more axles and any vehicle towing a trailer, unless otherwise posted by signs. Vehicle size or length by itself does not trigger lane restrictions. Many U-Haul trucks, for example, are two axle vehicles and are not towing trailers so are not legally restricted to the two right lanes.

Commercial vehicle inspection results

Finally, because On the Road does receive complaints like this about the lack of enforcement against big trucks driving around the Inland Empire, we’d like to share the results of a multi-agency commercial vehicle inspection operation last month on Main Street between Alamo Street and Columbia Avenue in Riverside.

Officers from the California Highway Patrol, Riverside County Sheriff’s Department, and city police departments from San Bernardino, Ontario, Rialto, Chino and Garden Grove inspected over 250 commercial vehicles for safety issues on Aug. 5. Multi-agency enforcement operations like this are sometimes how law enforcement proactively enforce rules with regard to commercial trucks that they can’t catch out on the road.

In this case, officers issued 135 citations, took six vehicles out of service, and had six trucks or trailers towed.

The inspection turned up four unlicensed drivers, a driver with a suspended license, and two vehicles with hazardous material-related violations, according to the Riverside Police Department. Other violations included unsafe loads, braking system defects, being too wide, axle restriction violations, speeding and handheld cellphone use, the department said.

Do you commute to work in the Inland Empire? Spend a lot of time in your vehicle? Have questions about driving, freeways, toll roads or parking? If so, write or call On the Road and we’ll try to answer your questions. Please include your question or issue, name, city of residence, phone number and email address. Write ontheroad@scng.com or call 951-368-9995. Note that we may use material from letters or phone calls in future columns.

​ Orange County Register 

NATO jets down drone over Lithuania and Russian ship fires flares at Danish helicopter

• September 15, 2026

By LIUDAS DAPKUS

VILNIUS, Lithuania (AP) — NATO fighter jets shot down a drone that entered Lithuanian airspace overnight, officials said Tuesday, the day after the head of the alliance said strikes close to its territory would only increase its support for Ukraine in the war against Russia’s full-scale invasion.

Military officials in Lithuania, a NATO member, said the incident marked the first time that a drone had been shot down in its airspace. Authorities didn’t comment on the drone’s origin or purpose, saying further investigation was needed, but two senior officials said the device was likely carrying explosives.

Officials in other NATO countries, including Germany, Denmark, the United Kingdom and Poland, have in recent weeks accused Russia of involvement in acts such as drone incursions, sabotage, arson and surveillance of defense facilities and in plans to use a drone carrying explosives to attack an airport.

Separately, Denmark said Tuesday that one of its air force helicopters was fired on with flares as it was carrying out surveillance of a Russian frigate in the Baltic Sea.

Strikes close to NATO territory showed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “desperation and also his desire to sow fear and terror,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said Monday. He spoke after a Russian drone struck a railway line near the Ukraine-Poland border on Sunday shortly after senior visiting officials passed through.

Rutte pledged to bolster the 32-nation alliance’s own defenses along its long eastern border with Russia and with Belarus, a Russian ally.

Ursula von der Leyen, head of the European Commission, said the incidents in Lithuania and Denmark were not isolated but “part of a broader pattern of Russian aggression and provocation against Europe, testing our readiness and our resolve.”

“Russia will find our resolve only growing stronger,” she said.

Drone found to be carrying explosives

The drone downed Tuesday in Lithuania fell near the village of Pratkūnai, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of the capital, Vilnius, and near the Kaunas Reservoir, Lithuania’s National Crisis Management Center said Tuesday.

Vilmantas Vitkauskas, head of the crisis center, told Lithuanian public broadcaster LRT that the drone most likely entered from Belarus. It remained in Lithuanian airspace for about 30 minutes and flew along the outskirts of populated areas before being intercepted, he said.

Writing on Facebook on Tuesday, Lithuanian Defense Minister Robertas Kaunas said an explosive device was detected on the drone and neutralized by bomb-disposal experts.

Menacing drones have repeatedly loomed over the skies of Lithuania, which shares borders with Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

In May, residents of Vilnius were told to take shelter, and the president and prime minister were taken to safe locations during an alarm over drone activity near the border with Belarus.

Stray Ukrainian drones have also previously crossed the border into Baltic airspace, including in May, when a NATO fighter jet shot down a Ukrainian drone over southern Estonia.

Meanwhile, Denmark accused Russia of firing flares at one of its air force helicopters in connection with “routine photographic coverage” of a Russian frigate in waters off the port of Gedser in the Baltic Sea.

“This is completely unacceptable,” the Danish Foreign Ministry wrote on X, saying that the Russian ambassador was summoned over the incident.

Russia’s ambassador to Denmark, Vladimir Barbin, said it was “not the first time” that Danish air force helicopters “carried out dangerous maneuvers near Russian warships.”

He said the Danish helicopter conducted “provocative actions against the Russian frigate.”

The Kremlin declined to comment Tuesday, with presidential spokesperson Dmitry Peskov saying that he did not have details.

Kyiv says it’s ‘ready to support de-escalation’

In Ukraine, Russian drone strikes continued across the country following a social media post from U.S. President Donald Trump on Monday that Russia and Ukraine had agreed “not to hit” each other’s energy infrastructure.

Trump didn’t offer details on the purported agreement. Previous efforts to broker even a partial ceasefire have repeatedly fallen apart within hours, with both sides accusing the other of violations.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late Monday that Kyiv was “ready to support de-escalation” if the United States could ensure “Russia is genuinely ready to stop this war.”

But Zelenskyy said Tuesday in a statement that Moscow had continued to attack Ukraine’s energy sector, logistics and critical infrastructure, and that Kyiv responded by striking an oil refinery in Syzran, a city in western Russia.

“There is no alternative to ending this war. And all forms of pressure on Russia must create the right diplomatic conditions,” Zelenskyy said.

The Kremlin said Tuesday that it considered Trump’s proposal for a ceasefire on energy infrastructure to be “a good idea.”

However, it stressed that strikes on Russian oil refineries were not the root cause of global supply issues for gas or diesel.

“The core problem lies in the export of petroleum products to global markets,” Peskov said. He said that countries instead needed to guarantee safe navigation for oil tankers and lift global sanctions on Russian oil.

The Kremlin’s comments contradict those of Trump, who on Sunday called on Zelenskyy to halt strikes on Russian oil refineries and claimed that such attacks had caused a global shortage.

“Mr. Zelenskyy has to do one thing. He has to stop knocking out diesel fuel in Russia,” Trump told reporters, following news on Friday that diesel prices in the U.S. had soared past an average of $6 a gallon.

“We spoke to Mr. Zelenskyy about it. There are plenty of other targets. Don’t hit diesel fuel, because that’s hurting, that’s hurting the world,” he said.

Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said Tuesday that Russian strikes on Kyiv had killed one person and wounded seven other people since the start of the day, with attacks carried out on the capital’s gas stations.

Two more people were killed in separate Russian strikes in the Ukrainian cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the emergency service said.

Elsewhere, Russian forces shot down 222 Ukrainian drones overnight, Russia’s Defense Ministry said Tuesday.

A “massive” Ukrainian drone attack sparked several fires in the Russian city of Taganrog, regional Gov. Yuri Slyusar said. He said on Telegram that two apartment buildings and three private homes had been damaged, as well as an educational institution, agricultural warehouses and a site belonging to Russian e-retailer Ozon.

Zelenskyy said Tuesday that Kyiv’s forces had targeted a drone-production facility in the city.

Ukrainian parliament votes to dismiss prosecutor general

In other developments, Ukraine’s parliament voted to dismiss Ruslan Kravchenko from the post of prosecutor general Tuesday.

Kravchenko submitted his resignation on Sept. 7 amid an investigation into corruption in his office, though no notice of suspicion was issued against him. Zelenskyy had suspended Kravchenko from the post the day before. Kravchenko had served as prosecutor general since June 21, 2025.

Repeated corruption scandals have hurt Zelenskyy’s approval ratings.

Associated Press writer Hanna Arhirova contributed to this report from Kyiv, Ukraine.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

​ Orange County Register 

Qualcomm aims to make everything smart with these new processors

• September 15, 2026

Qualcomm debuted two new processors this month, its latest step toward integrating intelligence into seemingly everything.

The Q-2390 and IQ-2390, which were unveiled Sept. 1, fall under the company’s Internet of Things, or IoT, business — one of Qualcomm’s fastest-growing sectors — building hardware and software that make things like robots, buildings, cameras and doorbells “smart.”

The Q-2390 is aimed at commercial and consumer IoT devices — things like retail kiosks, smart appliances, access control systems, home robots and enterprise terminals.

The IQ-2390 targets industrial applications — machine vision, building automation, energy management and industrial controllers.

Casey Laris, chief technology officer of San Diego robotics company Tactus AI, discussed his company’s demand for this kind of computing power to run its humanoid lab assistant, named Elsie.

“The Dragonwing chips should, in theory, be a nice fit for touch, fingers, joints — humanoid sensing in general, really,” Laris said. “The coming wave of physical AI relies on cost-effective but still reliable ways for the robot software to know what’s happening in the real world.”

That’s Qualcomm’s specialty, as the San Diego chipmaker has made billions of dollars creating low-power processors for smartphones. But after Apple cut ties, Qualcomm has moved to diversify its chipmaking strategy, which notably includes its Dragonwing IoT line.

In the third quarter of 2026, IoT revenue reached $1.83 billion, a 9% increase year-over-year.

“We have tremendous expertise in high performance and low power,” Qualcomm Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer Akash Palkhiwala said at a Goldman Sachs investor summit in San Francisco earlier this week.

​ Orange County Register 

Before Hollywood Bowl show, Gregory Alan Isakov recalls meeting Noah Kahan

• September 15, 2026

There are singer-songwriters and there are farmers, and then there’s Gregory Alan Isakov, who is almost certainly the first-ever Hollywood Bowl headliner to list his occupation as horticulturist/musician.

For Isakov, that unusual journey began when a boy born in South Africa in October 1979, whose family immigrated to Philadelphia in 1986, decided that a Tibetan Buddhist college in Boulder, Colorado was where he’d finish his higher education.

“I came out here for horticulture school, this tiny little college in Boulder called Naropa,” says Isakov, 46, on a phone call from his home and market farm in Boulder County. “It’s a Tibetan Buddhist college.

“I came because I was really into, like, beat poets and the writing program, too,” he says. “They have this Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. In high school I was like, ‘That’s so badass.’”

He laughs at the memory and returns to his tale. After graduation, he worked on a farm in Scotland for a year, before coming back to Colorado where he managed farm in Lyons, Colorado, 40-odd miles northwest of Denver. During the fallow months of winter, he gigged around the northwest with no thought it would lead to anything bigger.

“I would do these little tours and I never thought it would do anything,” Isakov says. “I thought, ‘I want to go camping for free.’ Make enough to pay for the campsite and keep going.”

Then he made his first album, 2003’s “Rust Colored Stones,” on a few pieces of equipment in his bedroom.

“And it did OK,” Isakov says of that album, which was followed by “Songs For October” and “That Sea, the Gambler” in 2005 and 2007. “I thought, ‘Oh, wow, people might want to hear these songs,’ and it scared the [bleep] out of me. I wasn’t built for being on stage or anything like that.

“So I thought, maybe I should probably do this if it scares me this much,” he continues. “I should probably see what it’s about. So I would do that a little bit, come back, work the main season, and then hit the road again in the winter.

“I did that for many, many years, and then I started really getting more out of it than I thought I would.”

Eventually he’d saved enough to buy his own small farm, which today has two acres in production and five people working it, enough that he can book shows even during growing or harvest seasons if he needs to.

It is still, he acknowledges, an unusual path to the Hollywood Bowl or Radio City Music Hall or Wolf Trap and Ravinia, all of which he’s played – along with Red Rocks in his own backyard – on this late summer tour with orchestras backing Isakov and his band.

“I sort of happened really slowly,” Isakov says of the musical side of his working life. “I have kids coming to shows and they’re asking me for advice on the music business. I’m like, ‘You don’t want any from me. I’m maybe the slowest career of all time.’

“I mean, I’m like, ‘Get a really long name that no one can pronounce. Don’t have any choruses in your songs.’

“But then once in a while I’ll meet a kid who is like, ‘Well, I’m really into farming, and I just want to know how you do that with your other job,’” Isakov says. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, I have tons of advice about that.’”

In an interview edited for length and clarity, Isakov talked about working with orchestras over the past decade or so, why streaming services helped build a following, and how shyness onstage inspired him to cover Mazzy Star.

Q: This is your first headlining show at the Hollywood Bowl. Have you been there for anything before?

A: No. I’ve seen it in a movie, a couple of movies. But I’ve never actually been there. We’ve played the Greek and a few other places in L.A. We’ve done the Staples Center; we opened there. But yeah, I’ve heard incredible things about it.

Q: So let’s talk about orchestral shows. You played Walt Disney Concert Hall with the L.A. Phil in 2025. You did a live album with the Colorado Symphony Orchestra in 2016. How do these compare to regular shows with the band?

A: What’s interesting is how the show has evolved. We’ve been traveling with conductor Christopher Dragon for this whole tour, and that’s been a huge advantage because we’ve gotten to change scores along the way and arrangements along the way. Even most of the scores to strings and horns so we could be a little bit more fluid with timing.

It just sort of now feels like an extension of the band, which has been really fun for the last month or so of shows. That’s been really exciting.

Q: How did you first get the chance to play with an orchestra?

A: Honestly, it’s crazy to me. I mean, I was a horticulture major in college, and I was just playing music in my bedroom forever. The thought of even playing a sold-out show with just a band is mind-blowing.

My manager and I, every fall, we write down things that would be sweet to see happen in the next year. I remember one year we were like, oh, it would be so neat to play with an orchestra once. And I think she just asked the director of the Colorado Symphony Orchestra if she thought it would work. We tried it out, and it was so much fun.

I learned so much because at that time we had percussion parts written into the scores. And you know, playing with a band drummer, like a rock drummer, is very different than playing with a symphonic bass drum, snare drum, you know, very straight. So we were like, OK, that doesn’t work.

We’re figuring it out along the way. But there’s just these moments that I live for in any sort of venue that we’re playing, in any sort of environment, like the whole crowd sort of gets lost for a moment and you can kind of feel it happen together.

And I felt like that way almost the entire time with the symphony. It was a really cool experience. And I thought I’d like to feel that way again.

Q: So you’ve done this often over the last decade?

A: We’ve done mostly the band shows in our careers. I’ve done a bit of solo work as well last year through Australia and New Zealand. And then we kept getting offers to play with different national orchestras. They would come in, and we’d instantly say yes because it’s almost spiritual for me. I love it so much.

Q: Because of the need for arrangements, do the sets stay pretty consistent?

A: All of our scores have been written by two friends of ours. Jay Clifford, who has a band called Jump Little Children, and he’s from South Carolina. And Tom Hagerman, who is in a band called DeVotchKa, and he’s local to Denver. So we just write Tom and Jay every now and then and we write new scores to the new record.

So now we have like three records worth of material that we can choose from, which is really fun. And even interludes that we’ve written along with the band, because we do that a lot between songs, so it felt less like, “This song is ending, and now this one begins.”

Q: With those first three records, how did you get them out to audiences beyond your immediate tours?

A: I didn’t have a label or anyone helping me. It was just me and my friend Sarah, who I still work with now. I remember one day I just called. I was like, “Do people just call iTunes? Is that how it’s done? Like, is there a number?” I think there was a number. There was a guy named Nate. He was like, “Oh, OK.” Nate said I could get the banner on the iTunes page back then.

The girl at Pandora answered the phone and was like, “OK, send it to me, and I’ll give it to my boss.” It really sort of happened organically, and ended up doing really well on Pandora. I would sell merch at my shows at the time and I was like, “Why are you guys here? How do you even know about this?”

You know, little tiny places, and people would be like, “I heard you on Pandora.”

Q: I was wondering: Does the physical work on the farm help your other work as a songwriter and singer?

A: Yeah, I think it does tie in quite a lot. I’ve always loved writing and playing because it was something I did before work and after work, and it was this special thing. I think the time away from writing is so good for writing as well.

I think it’s a dangerous place to call yourself an artist. It’s a dangerous place for your art because all of a sudden there’s pressure: “Oh, I’m an artist. I can make art and it has to be good.” [He laughs] Instead of just living your life, going to work and making art out of this place of necessity. For me at least that’s the way it seemed to work the best.

I tried being a full-time musician. I played 250 shows for a few years in a row and I was miserable. I was so depressed. [He laughs] Just seeing the world from a van or bus or airports, and there was nothing to balance me out with actually working. So I went back to work, and I sort of went full throttle on Starling Farm.

Q: Is Starling Farm mostly produce?

A: Yeah, it’s produce and flowers. We do a couple of florists still. We’re always experimenting with other stuff like fruit, but it’s mainly mixed vegetables.

Q: I recently saw Noah Kahan play the Rose Bowl. And you’re opening some shows for Brandi Carlile and Zach Bryan this year.

A: I love Noah.

Q: You’ve done some work together, I think?

A: Yeah.

Q: I guess what struck me was the music you write, the music Noah and Brandi and Zach write, it’s got a human sound to it. It’s not all electronics like a lot of stuff. So I want to ask how you understand the appeal of this indie folk, indie country today.

A: I’ve wondered the same thing. And for me, it’s just like something [bleepin’] magical about seeing somebody take words and mix them with an acoustic instrument, or electric instrument, played with your hands, and make someone feel something. I think there’s just nothing like it.

If you can do that I think that’s [bleepin’] magic. And when someone sees someone and goes, “Oh, well, I could do that too,” that’s inspiring. That is really the magic in any art. Just understanding like, “Oh, that’s in me. I could do that.” It’s not out of reach, you know?

Q: There’s a humanness to it that’s special.

A: Yeah, there is. I first met Noah, my manager called and said “There’s a songwriter that wants to come visit you. Is it OK if I give him your address? He’s in town.” I said, “What’s his name?” She said, “Noah Kahan,” and I’d never heard of him.

We were packing CSA boxes. It was a Tuesday; we do our deliveries on Tuesdays. And this guy walked in and said, “Hey, I’m Noah. I just wanted to check out your studio and talk to you and say hi.” He offered to help and so he helped load CSA boxes into our van.

I was like, “This is where I record in the barn,” and I was showing him my little setup. I said, “Where are you playing? Maybe I can make your show?” He’s like, “Oh, I’ve got three nights at Red Rocks,” and I was like, “Oh, I’m so sorry I haven’t heard of you! [He laughs] Don’t take it personally, I haven’t heard of anything.” And then I listened to his record on a flight that week and I thought it was so cool.

Q: Which record was it?

A: It was “Stick Season.”

Q: The last thing I want to ask you is about your new cover of Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” with Sylvan Esso’s Amelia Meath singing with you. How’d that come about?

A: I was ready an article about Mazzy Star. I think because her partner [David Roback] passed away. I’ve always loved them. And they talked about this moment in Australia. They were playing the Sydney Opera House and she [Hope Sandoval] played the whole show in the dark, and the crowd was so pissed off.

I was like, I was made for this woman. [He laughs] She’s my absolute hero.

I just tracked it in about an hour, really bare bones, and worked on it for fun. A few months later, I called Amelia and was like, ‘What this needs is your voice.’ She took a few months and then sent it back when she was home, and then we mixed it over winter.

And then it just got into “Practical Magic II.” I’m about to go check out the movie tonight. So Amelia is texting me last week, “Did you hear about ‘Practical Magic II’? She’s like, “I read all the books. This is my favorite thing ever.” We were just so excited.

​ Orange County Register 

Black Caucus launches effort to boost voting among Black, rural and young voters in midterms

• September 15, 2026

By MATT BROWN

WASHINGTON (AP) — A nonprofit run by Black federal lawmakers launched a multimillion-dollar effort Tuesday to engage lower-propensity voters in key districts in the midterm elections, following years of dissatisfaction over traditional efforts to reach such voters.

The Congressional Black Caucus Institute’s “SO VOTE” campaign will seek to register and mobilize young voters, as well as voters in majority-Black and rural communities, across the South, Midwest and West. The campaign involves partnerships with dozens of local organizations, the institute said, with in-person and online outreach to voters often sidestepped by major political campaigns.

“For decades, as far as I can remember, there are those of us who have always complained about the fact that neither party spends the significant and requisite time with Black and brown and poor and rural communities,” said Marcia Fudge, a former Democratic congresswoman from Ohio who served as the secretary of Housing and Urban Development during the Biden administration.

“So we finally decided to take it upon ourselves to do something that we didn’t think anybody else in the industry was doing,” said Fudge, who is spearheading the new effort alongside former Black Caucus colleagues.

Effort blends old tactics with new technologies to boost turnout

Voter engagement efforts will cover outreach across Georgia and Mississippi, as well as target voters in 16 congressional districts that are likely to determine control of the House.

Instead of traditional television advertising, the campaign will convene local civic groups and houses of worship, as well as fraternities and sororities. The effort will also use some now-widespread techniques in political campaigns, such as geotargeting online ads and partnerships with local content creators for audiences who mainly receive their news online.

While the voter engagement efforts are officially nonpartisan, the Black Caucus’ targeted races are in many regions where Black voter turnout could prove key to whether a Democratic candidate prevails in closely divided House districts. Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana Democratic congressman who served as a senior adviser to President Joe Biden, said the effort would focus on repeatedly engaging voters in rural communities who feel alienated from Democratic campaigns.

“If you’re not happy with the way things are going, then voting is part of the solution, but it takes constant communication,” Richmond said.

The Black Caucus’ institute has raised about $1 million for the campaign, primarily from individual donors, and plans to spend at least $4.5 million in the midterm election cycle.

Campaign responds to GOP redistricting and disappointing turnout in the past

The new outreach effort follows years of disappointment and frustration among some in the Black Caucus at the broader Democratic Party’s efforts to court Black, rural and younger voters.

Rep. Jim Clyburn, an influential South Carolina Democrat who decried the lackluster voter turnout in the 2024 election, said the campaign “allows us to put to practice that which we have been proposing, and we have never had the resources to do it. But this year we do.”

The effort is also a response to Republican-led redistricting efforts in multiple states, said Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat.

“These Southern states are trying to minimize Black political participation and ultimately Black political strength,” he said. “So what we have to do is take that low-propensity voter and elevate their participation so they become an additional voice to be reckoned with.”

​ Orange County Register 

Parents are giving up green card fights to get their kids out of immigrant jail

• September 15, 2026

By Lauren Villagran for The Marshall Project

Editor’s Note: Hours after this story was originally published on Aug. 18, U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee made public her order appointing an independent monitor to oversee conditions for children in immigration detention, noting numerous violations by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection under the Trump administration. She cited, among other violations, the prolonged time in detention and inadequate access to medical care at the Dilley lock-up, where the Kikabidze family and many others have been held. The story has been updated to note Gee’s order.

Ana Kikabidze braced herself for the immigration judge’s verdict. She and her children — 11-year-old Lizi and 14-year-old Nikoloz — had spent the better part of their first summer as U.S. residents in an immigrant detention camp in South Texas.

In a hearing piped in by video call, immigration Judge Saul Greenstein ordered Kikabidze and her children to be deported to their native country of Georgia, according to audio of the hearing obtained by The Marshall Project. He cautioned her that appealing his decision could take months.

Kikabidze knew enough English to understand the implication: She and her kids could appeal the deportation order and stay in detention for the duration, or give up and go home.

The Trump administration has aggressively expanded detention, requiring that immigrants remain locked up while waiting for an immigration judge to decide their case. As a result, more than 66,000 parents and children have been detained and deported since Trump took office last year, according to an analysis of federal data by Austin Kocher, president of Relevant Research, which tracks how many people the government is holding in immigrant camps.

Congress has never passed a law governing the detention of children. But a decades-old case known as the Flores Settlement forbids the government from detaining children for longer than five days, or 20 days during a migration “surge,” without providing an individual justification. Court documents show, and a federal judge agrees, that the Trump administration has been repeatedly violating the settlement agreement, locking up many children well beyond the settlement’s limit.

This summer, while Kikabidze and her kids languished in the lockup in Dilley, Texas, a fight over the settlement’s terms was heating up in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles.

U.S. District Judge Dolly Gee warned Trump administration attorneys in June that she was displeased with the prolonged detention of kids at Dilley, according to a transcript of the hearing. She noted cases of minors confined for 50 days, 91 days or even 323 days. In mid-August, Gee, who oversees the settlement, appointed an independent monitor to conduct unannounced visits and track compliance at Dilley and border detention cells for at least a year, paid for by the government.

In her order, Gee wrote that children have been detained for more than 20 days on average for five consecutive months.

“Defendants cannot claim amnesia as to the history of the case and circumvent the extended 20-day time period,” she wrote, adding, “Defendants do not provide any detailed basis for why 20 days is insufficient to expeditiously process” children through the detention system.

Independent monitoring is considered an extraordinary measure: The last time Gee ordered it was during the first Trump administration, after six children died in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection and another died after being detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

In calls from the immigrant camp this summer, Kikabidze told The Marshall Project that she believed she had a strong case to show her family’s residency documents were valid. She wanted to appeal. But the children had already been detained 38 days, and their despair was growing. Lizi would wake up sobbing, fearing they would lose their green cards. Nikoloz was showing flares of anger. Their days were marked by boredom, constant hunger and lights-out at 8 p.m.

The Department of Homeland Security told The Marshall Project that detained families receive due process. In practice, immigration advocates say parents face enormous pressure to give up their claims to remain in the United States in order to get their children out of jail.

In July, more than half the children at Dilley had been held there longer than 20 days, according to court records.

“When families get to Dilley, there is no timeline,” said Leecia Welch, chief legal counsel for the nonprofit Children’s Rights and an attorney representing detained children in the Flores litigation. Their parents “can’t answer their children’s most basic questions,” she said. “‘Why are we here? When can we go home? What is going to happen to us?’ It’s profoundly traumatic for children.”

Detention has serious consequences for children’s physical and mental health, as The Marshall Project has previously reported. The Biden administration shut down the immigrant camp in Dilley and halted family detention altogether, opting instead to allow families to pursue legal status to stay in the country while living in the United States. Many were given alternatives to detention that included GPS monitoring or ICE check-ins.

Trump reopened Dilley last year to further his mass deportation goals.

The nation’s immigration law says immigrants should only be detained if they represent a flight risk, a national security risk or pose a danger to the community. But last year, the Trump administration reinterpreted the law to let ICE keep a broad swath of noncitizens in detention — even those pursuing lawful immigration status. Before their final hearing, the Kikabidze family was denied release on bond; Greenstein said they were “arriving aliens” and therefore were ineligible for release.

“It’s a legal strategy to detain someone so they abandon or withdraw their case,” said Jeremiah Johnson, a former immigration judge.

In 2013, Kikabidze won a U.S. immigration lottery. Out of some 20 million applicants each year, before Trump suspended the program, the State Department would randomly select 55,000 people to receive an immigrant visa that could be parlayed into legal permanent residency, often known as a green card. Winners were required to relocate to the United States.

Kikabidze and her husband had a good, middle-class life in Georgia, where she worked as an interior designer, and he was a manager at a bank. But Kikabidze had always dreamed of a life in America and was overjoyed at her luck. She and her husband and their 1-year-old son, Nikoloz, all obtained green cards and moved to New York City. They lived there for six months, until her father fell ill with cancer, and they returned to Georgia to care for him. Then she became pregnant with Lizi, COVID-19 got in the way and the years passed.

When life finally settled down, Kikabidze went through the arduous process of explaining her circumstances to the U.S. government. It took three years for her to recover her green card status and line up her children’s documentation, as well — a process that she estimates cost more than $18,000. In January, the State Department denied her husband a new travel visa, indicating that Kikabidze needed to file a separate immigration petition for him as her spouse.

Kikabidze had hoped to keep her family together. She postponed their move to let her children finish their school year; then they would relocate without her husband. Close friends in a suburb of Birmingham, Alabama, offered to host them while they got settled.

The law required Kikabidze to spend at least half the year in the United States. She did not meet that condition in the lead-up to her family’s planned move, but she had reason to believe it wouldn’t derail them: Since 2024, she had traveled between Georgia and the United States three times without a problem, according to her account and Department of Homeland Security records. In fact, the visits were required by the U.S. government: She had to fly to New York and Birmingham, Alabama, so that the government could take fingerprints from her and Nikoloz and run FBI background checks. She flew to Los Angeles to activate Lizi’s residency after she received an immigrant visa.

But by the time she and the kids landed at Chicago O’Hare International Airport in May, they had been out of the country for 229 days — about six weeks longer than permitted.

“Whenever I watched videos of ICE arresting people, I always thought it would never happen to me,” Kikabidze said.

A Homeland Security spokesperson said in an emailed response to The Marshall Project that the family was “detained for not having valid documents.”

Kikabidze “failed to maintain her permanent residence status in the United States due to prolonged absence from the country and was placed into removal proceedings,” the spokesperson said.

In past presidential administrations, experts say, the Kikabidze family might have gotten their green cards revoked and been turned back, or they might have been released with a notice to explain the delay to an immigration judge, said Elora Mukherjee, director of the Immigrants’ Rights Clinic at Columbia Law School.

“Before January 2025,” she said, “this family would never have been arrested.”

ICE arrested Kikabidze, Lizi and Nikoloz and transferred them to the immigrant camp in Dilley on May 17.

The sprawling detention campus sits on an isolated plain, surrounded by high fencing. That its manufactured housing units are named for colorful animals — red parrot, brown bear, blue butterfly — belies its purpose, advocates say. U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Texas Democrat whose district includes Dilley, has dubbed the facility a “trailer prison.”

Their days in detention bled into a mind-numbing sameness, Kikabidze said.

They lived alone in a room with white walls and bunk beds. They weren’t allowed to roam; they could only go to designated areas, the bathroom or a playroom. They had a two-hour window for each meal: breakfast at 6 a.m., lunch at 11 a.m. and dinner at 4 p.m. There was library time in the afternoon, Kikabidze said, but there were few books or games to interest her tween daughter and teenage son. Phone calls were expensive, video calls unavailable. The children were hungry every night and tired of the snacks available, mostly juice boxes and packaged cookies. Kikabidze didn’t want to complain, she said, knowing that some people around the world have no food at all, but her daughter had become uncharacteristically quiet and unhappy; her son was often angry.

Nikoloz asked her, “‘Why are we here? Why? I love this country. Why are we here if this country is good?’” she told The Marshall Project during a call from Dilley. “I don’t know how to explain.”

Had they been released after their encounter with customs officers at the airport, Kikabidze said, she would have had a chance to enroll her children in school and secure an apartment. From detention, all she could submit were emails showing her intentions to integrate into the community: correspondence with the school district and apartment managers; notes to a local Humane Society about Lizi volunteering and with a Catholic youth ministry for her son.

She met with her lawyer by telephone only once, she said, on the day before her court date. After hearing the judge’s warning, Kikabdidze decided not to appeal his deportation order.

Later, she told The Marshall Project, “It felt as though the decision to deny us had already been made in advance, and that nothing I said would have changed the outcome.”

She and her children spent another 20 days at Dilley — 58 days in total — with no information or idea about when they would be put on a plane.

At dawn on July 13, three ICE contractors from MVM Inc. escorted them on the first leg of a two-day deportation ordeal that included an overnight stay at the Crowne Plaza hotel near Washington’s Dulles International Airport. The contractors, two women and one man, took turns staying inside the room with Kikabidze and her children. In the morning, Kikabidze said, she woke up to find the male contractor sleeping on the floor beside her bed.

When she finally arrived back home at the family apartment in Tbilisi, Georgia’s capital, Kikabidze went through the pile of documents ICE had returned to her.

Her son’s passport with the shiny immigrant visa pasted in. The judge’s removal orders. A document banning their return to the United States for 10 years. And though ICE would normally confiscate them, there were two green, plastic residency cards belonging to Kikabidze and Lizi, not set to expire till the 2030s.

“They gave us our green cards,” Kikabidze said. “I still have them.”

This story was produced by The Marshall Project and reviewed and distributed by Stacker.

​ Orange County Register 

H. pylori linked to 1 in 5 bowel cancer cases, study finds

• September 15, 2026

A new report found that Helicobacter pylori, the bacterium best known for causing stomach ulcers, may be associated with one in five cases of bowel cancer worldwide.

Although H. pylori infects nearly half of adults, the authors cautioned that their findings do not prove the bacterium causes bowel cancer. Also known as colorectal cancer, the disease develops in the colon or rectum and affects about 1.9 million people worldwide each year, according to the American Cancer Society.

H. pylori is already known to cause stomach cancer. The National Institutes of Health identifies the bacterium as the leading cause of gastric cancer.

The authors published their findings last week in the journal eGastroenterology. They said the report adds to evidence that eliminating H. pylori infections should be a global public health priority.

Gastric cancer is the third most common cancer worldwide, with H. pylori identified as the major cause, according to the National Institutes of Health.

A 2024 study of U.S. veterans found a small but statistically significant increase in bowel cancer risk among people with untreated, active H. pylori infections.

Other risk factors for bowel cancer include age, genetic predisposition, smoking, obesity and diets high in processed meats such as hot dogs, sausage and bacon.

The authors called for high-quality, long-term studies to determine whether eliminating H. pylori infections could reduce bowel cancer rates.

Have a news tip? Contact Karl Hille at 443-900-7891 or khille@baltsun.com.

​ Orange County Register 

FBI chief Kash Patel is set to face off with Democrats critical of his leadership at Senate hearing

• September 15, 2026

By ERIC TUCKER

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel is set to return to Capitol Hill on Tuesday for an oversight hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Republican-led panel is likely to try to keep the focus on Patel’s efforts to combat violent crime, counter drug trafficking and pursue the Trump administration’s agenda from his perch at the nation’s premier federal law enforcement agency.

But Democrats will almost certainly seize on the tumult inside the bureau over the last year, including sweeping firings of agents who participated in investigations into President Donald Trump, efforts by the bureau to investigate Trump’s perceived political adversaries and Patel’s travel schedule that has blended private leisure with professional responsibilities.

Patel has made multiple appearances before Congress while serving as director, including to testify about the FBI’s budget, but this will be his first time since last September before the Senate committee that has principal oversight jurisdiction over the bureau.

That hearing featured feisty and personal exchanges with Democrats, with Patel at one point shouting over Sen. Adam Schiff of California as he called him an “utter disgrace” and a “coward.”

“You can make an internet troll the FBI director, but he will always be an internet troll,” Schiff shot back.

Tuesday’s hearing is expected to be no less contentious given Democrats’ fierce criticism of his leadership and conduct. The panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, called for Patel to be replaced as director in April following an article by The Atlantic magazine that raised allegations of excessive drinking.

Patel later filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit, calling the article false and a “malicious hit piece.” The Atlantic said it stood by its reporting and would vigorously defend against the “meritless lawsuit.”

​ Orange County Register