Cindy Gonzalez, Nebraska Examiner

OMAHA — Josh Wigginton and his wife each went to work Friday. One dropped off daughter Nayeli at their childcare center, which transports the 7-year-old to school and back. The other parent picked her up after the work day.

It’s a longtime routine that nearly collapsed earlier in the week due to what Wigginton said was an unusually long delay by the state to reauthorize the family’s annual childcare subsidy.

“We’ve never had this problem before,” Wigginton said Tuesday, the day before they had to pay out of pocket or lose their spot at a Millard area childcare center. “An email to our caseworker came back undeliverable. I’ve been calling. I get hung up on. … I’m nervous.”

The parents said they started the reauthorization process more than two months ago and were perplexed at the wait and complications because a subsidy was built in as part of their arrangement years ago when they adopted their then-foster child Nayeli. He said the couple eventually sent a second submission as a backup, and at one point his wife went in person to seek clarification at a state office and was referred to someone else.

After the Nebraska Examiner inquired to the state Department of Health and Human Services Tuesday, the Wiggintons hours later got a call that their situation was resolved. That spared them from alternatives, which included a parent taking time off their job or calling on a grandparent to help.

But Nebraska advocates and service providers said other families statewide also have faced increased delays and communication barriers when seeking approval or reapproval for a childcare subsidy. It comes at a time when businesses, government leaders and policymakers are shining more light on rising childcare costs and inadequate access to quality and affordable services that help keep parents in the workforce.

“All of a sudden everything just kind of got backlogged,” said Shannon Burks, who owns Creative Corner Child Care in Grand Island. “I have some very frustrated parents.”

‘Big, beautiful’

The DHHS website states that approval of a subsidy for eligible families “may take up to six weeks to complete.” The full cost may be covered. Depending on income, some may owe a monthly fee paid directly to a qualified provider. The provider bills DHHS for the remainder.

A DHHS spokesman acknowledged a “temporary” increase in processing times for programs including childcare subsidy approvals — and said it stems partly from stepped-up eligibility restrictions called for in President Donald Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” which Congress approved in July 2025.

Spokesman Jeff Powell said some resources that previously went to childcare subsidy applications have shifted to satisfy more stringent verification processes in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. SNAP now mandates all states to keep their error rate below 6% (Nebraska’s is at 5.9%) or face paying a greater share of the public benefits.

Powell noted a focus on preventing fraud, protecting taxpayer dollars and ensuring benefits go to those who “truly need them.”

“The move away from the honor system to verification for certain eligibility criteria is requiring more staff time to process,” he said.

Powell said DHHS, however, is “aggressively recruiting and hiring additional staff, which will soon alleviate workloads and improve processing times.” He said the agency has that green light, despite a hiring freeze that Gov. Jim Pillen requested of agencies to address a state budget deficit,

Addressing the Wigginton case specifically, Powell said his team was reviewing the circumstances “and identifying any opportunities to improve communication and response times.” He said privacy requirements prohibit the state from discussing specifics, but a DHHS representative reached out to the family directly on Tuesday after the Examiner’s query.

Wigginton said he learned at that time that the family’s caseworker was no longer employed with the state, and that he has a new liaison.

“It’s a big pressure off of me,” the Omaha dad said afterward. He works in Fremont in a human relations role. His wife, Amanda, is a teacher. They have other kids and the childcare subsidy helps the family’s financial equation. “I feel bad for people who don’t know the process.”

Advocates at First Five Nebraska, which focuses on improving early childhood care through policy, said the most prevalent frustrations they’ve heard from service providers in the past several weeks are application processing times of 45 days to two months, sometimes longer, and phone calls with state representatives that have taken a couple of hours.

The First Five advocates said they recognize the complexities in verifying employment and other details. They cited one central Nebraska daycare facility and another in Omaha that each had about a third of their families awaiting subsidy approval at a given time.

‘Hold my breath’

Tasha McNeil, director of Brilliant Brains Learning Center in Omaha, said she recently stepped in to help one of her daycare workers deal with her own family’s subsidy and was on the phone call for three hours and 41 minutes providing and verifying information to the state representative. The worker ultimately was reauthorized, but had to submit even more documentation.

“They’re probably short-staffed,” McNeil said of the state. “But a lot of us are. That doesn’t stop us from having to do what we have to do.”

Burks, the Grand Island childcare operator, said she’s noticed more of “a mess” and longer processing times in the last six months, which she said can put providers in a bind.

Quick turnarounds are important to struggling families, advocates and providers said, noting that a lengthy wait for a subsidy approval could mean the difference between a parent taking a job or not.

Burks noted one father whose subsidy was up for renewal. She said he had just started a new job.

“He has two full-time kids here,” Burks said. “He has to pay (out of his own pocket) or I have to hold my breath and hope he gets covered.”

Justin Shapland, manager at the Wiggintons’ childcare center, said he appreciates the family but had to ask for private pay if the state didn’t approve the subsidy renewal by a certain date.

“I feel like everything is getting slow,” he said of state processing, including background checks for new hires. “I’d love to know what to do to make this go faster.”

Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Joan von Kampen for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com.

OMAHA — Ever since she can remember, Mariana Juarez wanted to fly.

A commercial pilot’s license seemed a distant dream, though, when family hardships in her home in Guerrero, Mexico, drove her out of school at age 14.

Two years later, she and her mom fled to the United States without authorization. They were allowed to stay while the federal government weighed their cases. But shortly afterward, Juarez said, depression gripped her mom and she returned to Mexico, leaving her daughter with relatives in Omaha.

With the help of a cousin, Juarez enrolled in high school, won a full-ride private scholarship and this year graduated from the University of Nebraska at Omaha with honors and an aviation degree. Along the way she worked full time, obtained a private pilot’s license and, at age 24, was in the process of achieving certification as a commercial pilot.

But her plan has been thwarted by immigration legal problems. When she was a teen, unbeknownst to her until later, an immigration judge had ordered her removed from the country.

Despite the weight of a well-known legal team — and intervention from a Republican congressman — Homeland Security officials have declined to reverse course and allow her to stay legally.

Juarez plans a September return to the homeland she hasn’t seen in eight years. She chose to buy a one-way ticket out rather than risk detention amid President Donald Trump’s mass deportation push, which he argues protects U.S. jobs, public resources and public safety.

Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska’s Omaha-heavy 2nd District said he met Juarez and went to the top seeking a different outcome, twice speaking to Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin. He said he was told — most recently this past week — there’d be no exception.

“It’s an unchristian policy we’re seeing here,” Bacon said in an interview with the Examiner. “I get it, we wanted to secure the borders. I think we’ve done that. We don’t want dangerous people here, I get it. But what’s going on here is a terrible overreach, a terrible injustice.”

Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general wrapping up his fifth term, said he’s armed with examples of other constituents, and is calling on Republican colleagues to support immigration reform that “makes sense.”

Teen steered her own path in foreign land

Juarez launched her U.S. education in 2018, in the halls of the largest high school in Nebraska’s most populated city.

By the time she enrolled in Martha Omar’s senior English class at Omaha Central High, the teen had learned a second language and had become a “bridge” helping other immigrant students adjust.

“She was a student that struck me as someone navigating high school by herself,” said Omar, a teacher of 20 years. “She was getting herself to school and home on her own, and was always working a job during high school.”

Omar said Juarez impressed her to the point that after her 2022 graduation, she hired her former student to tutor her two sons in Spanish. Years later, Juarez remains a close family friend, picking the boys up sometimes for adventures such as Sky Zone. Omar called the predicament heartbreaking.

“As a teacher we pour into our students and our dream is they go on to thrive in our community,” she said. “When you have kids like Mariana that have this incredible talent and bravery and drive … what’s better to have in a community than that?”

While at Central, Juarez knew she wanted to go to college, the first in her family to do so, and dived into research.

What she didn’t know until it was too late, said her attorney Roxana Cortes-Mills, was that in the fall of 2018 an immigration court had sent notice of a hearing to a residence she had shared with her mom.

Cortes-Mills said she found the notice in Juarez’s official immigration file marked as undeliverable and “return to sender.”

Juarez did not show up at the hearing, and an Omaha immigration judge on Oct. 24, 2018, ordered her removed from the country.

“She was 17 years old,” a minor under Nebraska and federal law, said Cortes-Mills, legal director for the Center for Immigrant and Refugee Advancement. “That hearing happened. She didn’t attend. She didn’t know.”

No lawful status, no pilot’s license

As Mariana explored her dream career, she said she learned she could not obtain a U.S. pilot’s license without a lawful status.

In 2022, she sought assistance from CIRA (formerly known as Immigrant Legal Center) and the nonprofit’s legal experts explained consequences of the removal order. They said she was beyond eligibility for special immigrant juvenile status for minors deemed by a court to have been abused or abandoned by a parent.

A subsequent effort to reopen Juarez’s case due to not receiving the hearing notice was denied April 24, 2024, according to Board of Immigration Appeals records. Cortes-Mills said the legal team did not pursue a further challenge based upon a new high court ruling that at the time seemed to rule out a chance.

That year, federal officials did offer a form of relief to Juarez — a temporary stay of removal, which she said allowed her to obtain work authorization while in college and cleared the way for a private pilot license in 2025. She said a private license is a step toward her commercial license.

This summer, however, immigration officials denied Juarez another extension for a third year on the stay of removal.

Homeland Security officials, in response to a request for comment, offered a three-paragraph statement that pointed to the immigration court’s 2018 removal order. A spokesperson’s email said Juarez and her mother had applied for admission through the San Ysidro Port of Entry and that neither had legal documents to enter the U.S.

The department, which oversees Immigration and Customs Enforcement, in January claimed “an estimated 2.2 million self-deportations and more than 675,000 deportations” in the first year since Trump returned as president in 2025. Homeland Security said the crackdown set the stage to break more records and save taxpayer dollars.

Juarez — faced with a U.S. future without a work permit, driver’s license and risk of detention — said her $400 Mexico-bound ticket is set for early September.

Tearing up, the UNO grad who had started working at CIRA greeting clients, said leaving is not her preference but that she knew each renewal of a stay of removal was uncertain. She said she appreciates the friends she’s made and her U.S. education.

Her UNO degree reflects a concentration in air transport administration, and she hopes while in Mexico to validate her training thus far and resume her quest to be a professional commercial pilot.

Juarez, whose roots are in the southwest Mexican state of Guerrero, recalls visiting an airport as a child and seeing the joy on people’s faces as a plane connected them to family or adventure.

“Since I was a kid, I didn’t see myself being anything else,” she said. “I wanted to be in the sky.”

Sitting in university aviation classes dominated by males strengthened her resolve. Juarez said she became more motivated.

One “extreme” to the next?

Bacon — who has been in the national spotlight as one of a small number of Republicans in Congress critical of the president, but who also said he has learned to pick his battles — said he sees “no goodness” in ousting Juarez. Bacon said his staff worked many hours on her case.

He cited a recent Gallup poll, which showed that 73% of Americans believe immigration is a “good thing” for the country. That share slipped from a record high of 79% last year, but remains above the 25-year trend average of 67%, the pollster in July said of its June telephone survey.

Bacon said the “real issue” is an outdated system of immigration laws and policies. He said “we went from one extreme” under Joe Biden to “another extreme” under Donald Trump.

Bacon believes the current extreme will hurt his party in the midterms.

A backer of the stalled Dignity Act of 2025, Bacon wants Congress to create a path for contributing and working migrants to legally stay. That bipartisan bill, championed by Rep. Elvira Salazar, a Florida Republican, and Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, drew support from across party lines and multiple states, offering border protections, asylum and immigration reforms but no amnesty or citizenship to those who entered illegally.

“We can put a little common sense and humanity into the equation,” Bacon said.

Bryan Slone, former chief executive of the statewide Nebraska Chamber of Commerce & Industry who currently is a pilot trainee, continues to work on workforce issues and touts an overhaul of the immigration system as a way to help the state’s labor shortage.

A registered nonpartisan, Slone considers talented yet undocumented migrants schooled in Nebraska a smart recruitment and retention pool, and he urges bipartisan solutions.

“We still have the ‘brain drain’ issue and we still have the declining birth rate issue that we’ve been talking about for four or five years,” he said.

Ariel Ruiz Soto, senior policy analyst at the Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., nonpartisan think-tank, said part of the conversation often missing is what happens to migrants after they return or are removed to their homeland.

He said brain drain, or exodus of young educated talent, can be viewed as “brain gain” for the other side.

Ruiz Soto said the Mexican government, for example, has tried to “make the most of this brain gain.” Among reintegration resources it offers is the “Mexico te abraza” (Mexico embraces you) program. Returning or deported nationals at various reentry points can access support ranging from food to employment assistance.

Juarez said she hopes her journey will inspire young immigrants with U.S. voting power to speak out on issues facing their community.

With her eye on a flight program in Mexico, she said she will “keep chasing my dreams,” albeit in a country other than the U.S.

This story was published in partnership with Creative Commons. Read the original here.

OMAHA — The mayor and police chief of Nebraska’s biggest city signaled Monday that City of Omaha law enforcement officers will not “seek out” individuals to check on immigration status.

Omaha Mayor Jean Stothert speaks at City-County Building. (Cindy Gonzalez/Nebraska Examiner)

A city spokesperson said the Omaha Police Department’s stance is the same as stated in a 2017 letter to community members. That is, local police officers don’t and won’t seek out individuals to check their legal status, but a person committing a crime can be subject to the policies of federal agencies.

“In those instances, the Omaha Police Department will cooperate with our federal partners, only as outlined in our policies,” stated the letter signed by Mayor Jean Stothert and Police Chief Todd Schmaderer.

Stothert and Schmaderer have called a news conference for Tuesday to discuss immigration enforcement and OPD policy. The news conference was scheduled in the wake of Donald Trump’s inauguration as the country’s 47th president.

The new president Monday declared a national emergency at the southern border and has promised an immediate ramp-up of immigration enforcement.

Trump officials outline planned immigration crackdown

Trump representatives have said the biggest city in the Midwest, Chicago, will be “ground zero” for the mass deportations he made a key campaign theme.

Administration sources also have said the president plans a move to end asylum as well as birthright citizenship (for children of undocumented immigrants who were born in the U.S.), which is guaranteed in the 14th Amendment and affirmed in an 1898 U.S. Supreme Court case.

The alert from the Mayor’s Office calling for the Tuesday news conference said the city’s stance remains the same as when it issued the 2017 statement.

In that, the mayor and police chief said they had become aware of concerns in the community about federal immigration and deportation policies and the role of local law enforcement agencies.

They said they wanted to “assure” Omahans that it was not the mission or duty of local police to check legal status, and noted a department policy: “It is not within the jurisdiction of the OPD to determine whether an individual is an undocumented individual.”

The 2017 statement said, “Whether you are a victim of a crime or a witness to a crime, you can be confident you can seek help from our police department without fear. However, when any person commits a crime, he or she can be subject to the policies of federal agencies.”

The statement said public safety was top priority.

“We value our relationship with all community members as we make Omaha a safe place to live.”

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Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Aaron Sanderford for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com.

OMAHA — It was not a walk that participants in the annual Indigenous Peoples Summit wanted to take on an 86-degree afternoon.

But they did — on principle, and to underscore a key reason that brought some 125 leaders of tribal governments, Indigenous groups and others together in the first place: a quest to reclaim cultural power and traditions.

What pushed conferees on Friday to walk the quarter-mile from a University of Nebraska at Omaha auditorium to Elmwood Park for lunch — many in jingle dresses and other traditional regalia — was that they were not permitted to bring food from a preferred culturally-sensitive caterer onto UNO grounds.

UNO has an exclusive contract with Sodexo, a global food services company. Efforts by summit organizers to find a work-around were rejected, so they took their lunch hour off campus.

“We were put into a place where we would have had to compromise our dignity and traditions,” Sheelah Bearfoot of the Chiricahau Apache Nation told the Nebraska Examiner.

More at stake than lunch

Choosing to walk to the park was inconvenient, particularly for the elders who were offered rides. But Bearfoot, an environmental justice advocate, and other planners of the event said there was more at stake than lunch.

Friday’s gathering was about empowerment, rebuilding Native Nations, reaching economic sovereignty, climate justice, sacred sites and traditional ecological knowledge.

The group sought to strengthen partnerships, create opportunities, to learn and to share successes. Expert speakers represented an array of tribes and academia from as far away as Zimbabwe, where Aya Khourshid, a climate and social researcher joined virtually to talk about rethinking economies.

After morning workshops, waiting for the group at the Elmwood Park pavilion was a colorful spread prepared by Anthony Warrior, a Nebraska-based chef specializing in Indigenous-inspired cuisine, including braised bison with Umoⁿhoⁿ Nation corn medley, white earth wind rice and patty pan squash.

The group walked back to UNO’s Milo Bail Student Center for afternoon programs.

Speakers included State Sen. John Cavanaugh of Omaha, who welcomed the group to his district and offered to help with legislative efforts, and State Sen. Terrell McKinney of North Omaha, who has battled for Native American issues including a law that protects public school students from discrimination based on cultural hairstyles, tribal regalia and headdress and funding for a Chief Standing Bear museum.

‘No solution is too far’

McKinney, in response to a question on how to craft state policy, said that any legislative initiative should keep top of mind the “core of who you are.”

“But be as creative, as bold as you can be … no solution is too far,” McKinney said.

During the same panel on economic sovereignty, Luis Marcos, co-founder of Comunidad Maya Pixim, noted the significance of the luncheon dilemma.

He said Indigenous and tribal governments want to be respected and treated as sovereign nations.

Victoria Kohout, chief of external relations for UNO, said Sodexo is the exclusive caterer for all main campus buildings except the Thompson Alumni Center. She said it’s a setup that’s common practice for universities.

“When will this stop?” Marcos said, amplifying his voice to conferees. He referred to an earlier conference discussion that delved into ways to rebuild sovereignty and authority stolen from Indigenous people.

“When will we be recognized as sovereign nations?”

Missty Slater, chief of staff for the Iowa Tribe of Kansas and Nebraska, said it’s unlikely anyone will be able to “codify culture” or make culture a law or a business.

But she said leaders can “push the needle” to incorporate more cultural values into policy. Band together and shun industries and businesses causing harm to Native communities and goals, she said. “Hurt their bottom dollar.”

For Indigenous people, Slater said, money is more of a “medium goal.” The larger goal of economic development is creating a positive impact on a collective community.

National model

Panelist Perry Worden of Bridgepoint Investment Banking, who also is vice president of Comunidad Maya Pixan Ixim, told the summit that Nebraska-based Ho-Chunk Inc. has become a national model for self-empowerment.

Ho-Chunk Inc., for example, has WarHorse Casino, farmland, housing, and companies that manufacture and distribute Native American tobacco products.

The ancestral name for the Winnebago Tribe is Hochungra, often truncated as Ho-Chunk. Worden said the tribe’s holding company ventures have been able to help create generational wealth, which leads to economic independence.

Friday’s summit continued an annual gathering of pan-Indigenous communities. Last year’s event took place over two days in various Omaha area locations including a sacred water ceremony on the banks of the Missouri River.

Nebraska Examiner is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Nebraska Examiner maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Cate Folsom for questions: info@nebraskaexaminer.com. Follow Nebraska Examiner on Facebook and X.