By ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has reached a deal with Boeing that will allow the company to avoid criminal prosecution for allegedly misleading U.S. regulators about the 737 Max jetliner before two of the planes crashed and killed 346 people, according to court papers filed Friday.

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The Justice Department said in a court filing that it had reached an “agreement in principle” that will require the company to pay and invest more than $1.1 billion. In return, the department will dismiss the criminal case against the aircraft manufacturer. The deal still needs to be finalized.

“The Agreement guarantees further accountability and substantial benefits from Boeing immediately, while avoiding the uncertainty and litigation risk presented by proceeding to trial,” Justice Department lawyers wrote in court papers.

Paul Cassell, an attorney for many of the families in the long-running case, had previously said said his clients strongly oppose dropping the criminal case.

“Dismissing the case would dishonor the memories of 346 victims who Boeing killed through its callous lies,” Cassell said in a recent statement.

Many relatives of the passengers who died in the crashes, which took place off the coast of Indonesia and in Ethiopia less than five months apart in 2018 and 2019, have spent years pushing for a public trial, the prosecution of former company officials, and more severe financial punishment for Boeing.

By JONEL ALECCIA, AP Health Writer

The supermarket chain Publix has recalled fruit and vegetable baby food sold in eight states because product testing found elevated levels of lead, according to federal health officials.

Publix recalled 4-ounce Greenwise Pear, Kiwi, Spinach & Pea Baby Food pouches sold at more than 1,400 stores.

The pouches were produced by Bowman Andros, a French company with a manufacturing plant in Mount Jackson, Virginia, according to the company’s website. Publix issued the voluntary recall on May 9, but it wasn’t added to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration recall list until late Thursday.

The potential contamination was flagged by officials in North Carolina, the state that first identified a 2023 lead poisoning outbreak linked to tainted applesauce pouches that sickened more than 500 U.S. children.

Routine sampling of the baby food pouches found lead levels at 13.4 parts per billion, according to North Carolina agriculture officials. That exceeds the FDA’s recommended limit of 10 parts per billion for such products intended for babies and young children.

Publix said all the potentially contaminated products have been removed from store shelves. No illnesses have been reported, the company said. Customers can return the pouches to local stores for full refund.

This is the second baby food pouch recall because of potential lead contamination in two months. In March, Target recalled more than 25,000 packages of its store brand Good & Gather Baby Pea, Zucchini, Kale & Thyme Vegetable Puree because of elevated lead levels.

North Carolina collaborates with the FDA to conduct routine testing of food products, officials said.

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In 2023, state health officials investigated reports of lead poisoning in four children who consumed WanaBana apple cinnamon fruit puree. Those findings led to the detection of a nationwide outbreak linked to the pouches, which were widely sold in Dollar Tree and other stores. Tests showed they contained lead at levels 2,000 times higher than the FDA’s maximum recommended level, as well as chromium.

Federal health officials eventually identified 566 cases of confirmed, probable or suspected cases of lead poisoning tied to the pouches in 44 states.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood lead poisoning program investigated the applesauce outbreak and coordinated state and federal response. However, the program was eliminated in April as part of federal funding cuts under the Trump administration.

CDC officials didn’t say whether or how the agency would respond to a similar outbreak now. A spokesperson said the agency is aware of the Publix baby food recall but hasn’t been asked to assist with any investigation.

There is no safe level of lead exposure, according to CDC. While the heavy metal is toxic to people of all ages, it can be especially harmful to children, causing damage to the brain and nervous system and slow growth and development.

Heavy metals like lead can get into food products from soil, air, water or industrial processes, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

By JACK BROOK, Associated Press/Report for America

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — On days of heavy pollution in Sulphur, a southwest Louisiana town surrounded by more than 16 industrial plants, Cynthia “Cindy” Robertson once flew a red flag outside her home so her community knew they faced health hazards from high levels of soot and other pollutants.

But she stopped flying the flag after Louisiana passed a law last May that threatened fines of up to $1 million for sharing information about air quality that did not meet strict standards.

On Thursday, Robertson’s group Micah 6:8 Mission and other Louisiana environmental organizations sued the state in federal court over the law they say restricts their free speech and undermines their ability to promote public health in heavily industrialized communities.

When neighbors asked where the flags went, “I’d tell them, ’The state of Louisiana says we can’t tell y’all that stuff,’ ” Robertson said.

While the state has argued the law ensures that accurate data is shared with the public, environmental groups like Micah 6:8 Mission believed it was intended to censor them with “onerous restrictions” and violates their free speech rights, according to the lawsuit.

Despite having received Environmental Protection Agency funding to monitor Sulphur’s pollution using high quality air monitors for several years, Michah 6:8 Mission stopped posting data on the group’s social media after the law was signed last May, Robertson said.

Residents living near plants seek data

While federal law requires publicly disclosed monitoring of major pollutants, fence-line communities in Louisiana have long sought data on their exposure to hazardous and likely carcinogenic chemicals like chloroprene and ethylene oxide, which were not subject to these same regulations.

Under the Biden administration, the EPA tightened regulations for these pollutants, though the Trump administration has committed to rolling them back.

The Biden administration’s EPA also injected funding to support community-based air monitoring, especially in neighborhoods on the “fence-line” with industrial plants that emitted pollutants that they were not required to publicly monitor under federal law. Some groups say they lack confidence in the data the state does provide and embraced the chance to monitor the air themselves with federal funding.

“These programs help detect pollution levels in areas of the country not well served by traditional and costly air monitoring systems,” the lawsuit stated.

In response to the influx of grassroots air monitoring, Louisiana’s Legislature passed the Community Air Monitoring Reliability Act, or CAMRA, which requires that community groups that monitor pollutants “for the purpose of alleging violations or noncompliance” of federal law must follow EPA standards, including approved equipment that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

David Cresson, president and CEO of the Louisiana Chemical Association, said that the law is intended to clarify that “regulatory and legal decisions” should be made with “scientifically validated methods that meet established EPA standards.”

David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, which represents the plaintiffs, disagreed.

“You can’t talk about air quality unless you’re using the equipment that they want you to use,” said He added there was no need for community groups to purchase such expensive equipment when cheaper technology could provide “perfectly adequate results … to be able to tell your community, your family, whether or not the air they’re breathing is safe.”

While Cresson said community groups could still monitor air with equipment “not certified for regulatory use” to raise awareness, environmental groups say the law makes any monitoring efforts vulnerable to litigation.

Community groups sharing information based on cheaper air monitoring equipment that did not meet these requirements could face penalties of $32,500 a day and up to $1 million for intentional violations, according to analysis from the Environmental Integrity Project.

Community groups fear a chilling effect from law

“We’re a small nonprofit, we couldn’t afford to pay one day’s worth of that,” Robertson said. “And the way the law is written, it’s so ambiguous, you don’t really know what you can and can’t do.”

There is no known instance in which the state has pursued these penalties, but community groups say the law has a chilling effect on their work.

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“The purpose of this was very clear: to silence the science, preventing people from doing anything with it, sharing it in any form,” said Caitlion Hunter, director of research and policy for Rise St. James, one of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit.

“I’m not sure how regulating community air monitoring programs ‘violates their constitutional rights’,” Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill countered in a written statement.

“The goal of this law is not to silence community voices, but to ensure that regulatory action is based on high-quality, validated science,” Cresson said. “Community members are fully free to raise concerns, publish findings, and engage with the public or agencies to promote awareness.”

Industry groups are excluded from the law’s requirements, the lawsuit notes.

The law presumes “that air monitoring information lacks accuracy if disseminated by community air monitoring groups, but not by industry participants or the state,” the complaint states.

The Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency declined to comment, citing pending litigation.

Brook is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

By VALERIE GONZALEZ and ELLIOT SPAGAT

McALLEN, Texas (AP) — The Trump administration has continued releasing people charged with being in the country illegally to nongovernmental shelters along the U.S.-Mexico border after telling those organizations that providing migrants with temporary housing and other aid may violate a law used to prosecute smugglers.

Border shelters, which have long provided lodging, meals and transportation to the nearest bus station or airport, were rattled by a letter from the Federal Emergency Management Agency that raised “significant concerns” about potentially illegal activity and demanded detailed information in a wide-ranging investigation. FEMA suggested shelters may have committed felony offenses against bringing people across the border illegally or transporting them within the United States.

“It was pretty scary. I’m not going to lie,” said Rebecca Solloa, executive director of Catholic Charities Diocese of Laredo.

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continued to ask shelters in Texas and Arizona to house people even after the March 11 letter, putting them in the awkward position of doing something that FEMA appeared to say might be illegal. Both agencies are part of the Department of Homeland Security.

After receiving the letter, Catholic Charities received eight to 10 people a day from ICE until financial losses forced it to close its shelter in the Texas border city on April 25, Solloa said.

The Holding Institute Community, also in Laredo, has been taking about 20 families a week from ICE’s family detention centers in Dilley and Karnes City, Texas, Executive Director Michael Smith said. They come from Russia, Turkey, Iran, Iraq, Papua New Guinea and China.

Annunciation House in El Paso, Texas, has been receiving five to 10 people day from ICE, including from Honduras and Venezuela, said Ruben Garcia, its executive director.

International Rescue Committee didn’t get a letter but continues receiving people from ICE in Phoenix, according to a person briefed on the matter who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss information that has not been made public. The releases include people who had been held at ICE’s Krome Detention Center in Miami, the site of severe overcrowding.

FILE – Law officials escort a suspect from an apartment to a waiting utility vehicle for transport during a raid Wednesday, Feb. 5, 2025, in east Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski, File)

Working around conflicting issues

ICE’s requests struck Solloa as a “little bit of a contradiction,” but Catholic Charities agreed. She said some guests had been in ICE detention centers two to four weeks after getting arrested in the nation’s interior and ordered released by an immigration judge while their challenges to deportations wound through the courts. Others had been flown from San Diego after crossing the border illegally.

Those released were from India, China, Pakistan, Turkey, and Central and South America, Solloa said.

Smith, a Methodist pastor, said that the FEMA letter was alarming and that agreeing to continue caring for people released by ICE was “probably not a good idea.” Still, it was an easy choice.

“There’s some things that are just right to do,” he said.

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Tricia McLaughlin, spokeswoman for the Homeland Security Department, drew a distinction with large-scale releases under Trump’s predecessor, Joe Biden. The Biden administration worked closely with shelters but, during its busiest times, released migrants at bus stops or other public locations.

“Under under the Biden administration, when ICE has aliens in its custody who are ordered released, ICE does not simply release them onto the streets of a community — ICE works to verify a sponsor for the illegal alien, typically family members or friends but occasionally a non-governmental-organization,” McLaughlin said.

The government has struggled to quickly deport people from some countries because of diplomatic, financial and logistic challenges. Those hurdles have prompted ICE to deport people to countries other than their own, including El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama and — this week — South Sudan. If those options aren’t available, ICE may be forced to release people in the United States.

People can challenge deportations in immigration court, though their options are much more limited when stopped at the border. If a judge orders their release, ICE is generally left with no choice but to release them.

Families pose another challenge. ICE is generally prohibited from holding families with children under 18 for more than 20 days under a long-standing court agreement that the Trump administration said Thursday it would try to end.

The Trump administration has boasted that it virtually ended the practice of releasing people who cross the border illegally with notices to appear in immigration court. The Border Patrol released only seven people from February through April, down from 130,368 the same period a year earlier under President Joe Biden. But those figures do not include ICE, whose data is not publicly available

Close ties between shelters and federal authorities

FEMA awarded $641 million to dozens of state and local governments and organizations across the country in the 2024 fiscal year to help them deal with large numbers of migrants who crossed the border from Mexico.

FEMA has suspended payments during its review, which required shelters to provide “a detailed and descriptive list of specific services provided.” Executive officers must sign sworn statements that they have no knowledge or suspicions of anyone in their organizations violating the smuggling law.

The releases show how border shelters have often maintained close, if cordial, relations with federal immigration authorities at the ground level, even when senior officials publicly criticize them.

“We have a good working relationship with our federal partners. We always have,” Solloa said. “They asked us to help, then we will continue to help, but at some point we have to say, ‘Yikes I don’t have any more money for this. Our agency is hurting and I’m sorry, we can’t do this anymore.’”

Catholic Charities hosted at least 120,000 people at its Laredo shelter since opening in 2021 and housed 600 to 700 people on its busiest nights in 2023, Solloa said. It was counting on up to $7 million from FEMA. The shelter closed with loss of nearly $1 million, after not receiving any FEMA money.

Holding Institute, part of United Women in Faith, has cut paid staff and volunteers to seven from 45 amid the absence of federal funding, Smith said. To save money, it delivers most meals without protein. Language differences have been challenging.

The International Rescue Committee said in a statement that it intends to continue providing support services to released people in Phoenix.

“As the scale and scope of these needs evolve, the IRC remains committed to ensuring individuals have access to essential humanitarian services, including food, water, hygiene supplies and information,” it said.

Spagat reported from San Diego.