conditions

LAREDO, Texas — A month after ICE agents sent the young Ecuadoran mother and her 7-year-old daughter to a sprawling detention center 1,300 miles from their Minnesota home, they were finally free.

But when the bus pulled up to a migrant shelter in the Texas border city of Laredo, dropping off a half-dozen families lugging bags stuffed with belongings, the stress of recent weeks tracked mother and daughter like the long shadows on that mid-February afternoon.

Night after night inside south Texas’ Dilley Immigration Processing Center with hundreds of other families, the grade-schooler wept and pleaded to know why they were being held.

“She would tell me, ‘Mom, what crime did I commit to be a prisoner?’ I didn’t know what to tell her,” said the 29-year-old, who spoke on condition of anonymity for fear being identified could negatively affect their immigration case. Her husband was deported to Ecuador soon after they were taken into custody.

Many Americans were alarmed last month when photos circulated showing U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Minneapolis detaining a 5-year-old boy wearing a bunny hat and carrying a Spider-Man backpack. The concern followed Liam Conejo Ramos and his father when they were sent to Dilley, surrounded by chain-link fences on a dusty plain about 75 miles south of San Antonio.

But Liam was hardly an outlier. ICE has been holding hundreds of children at Dilley — many for months.

“We are all Liam,” Christian Hinojosa, an immigrant from Mexico, said by phone from Dilley, where she and her 13-year-old son were held for more than four months. They were released this month and allowed to return home to San Antonio, where she works as a health aide.

She noted that Liam and his father were released from Dilley after 10 days, after members of Congress and a judge intervened.

“My son says, ‘That’s unfair, Mama. What’s the difference between him and us?’”

Ramping up family detentions

When the Obama administration opened Dilley in 2014, nearly all families detained there had recently crossed the border from Mexico. Detentions at the facility were scaled back by the Biden administration in 2021, before it was closed three years later.

Since being reopened by President Trump’s administration last spring, life inside Dilley — a compound of trailers and other prefabricated buildings — has been shaped by three decisive changes.

The number of detained families has risen sharply since last fall. The government is holding many children well beyond the 20-day limit set by long-standing court order. And many detainees have lived in the U.S. for several years, with roots in neighborhoods, workplaces and schools, according to lawyers and other observers.

“Just imagine that you’re a child and you’re taken out of your surroundings,” said Philip Schrag, a Georgetown University law professor and author of “Baby Jails: The Fight to End the Incarceration of Refugee Children in America.”

Suddenly you’re in “a completely strange environment with the doors locked and guards in uniform roaming around,” said Schrag, who counseled Dilley detainees as a volunteer lawyer during the Obama administration.

ICE booked more than 3,800 children into detention during the first nine months of the new Trump administration, according to an Associated Press analysis of data from UC Berkeley’s Deportation Data Project. On an average day, more than 220 children were held, with most of those detained longer than 24 hours sent to Dilley. More than half of Dilley detainees during that period were children.

Nearly two-thirds of children detained by ICE were eventually deported, and almost 1 in 10 left the country when their parents accepted voluntary departure, according to an AP analysis of the latest comprehensive data. About a quarter were released in the U.S., requiring their parents to check in regularly with ICE as their legal cases proceed.

The number of detainees at Dilley has risen sharply since the period covered by the data, nearly tripling between fall and late January to more than 1,300, according to Relevant Research, which analyzes immigration enforcement data.

“We’ve started to use 100 days as a benchmark for prioritizing cases because so many children are exceeding 20 days,” said Leecia Welch, the chief legal director at Children’s Rights, who visits Dilley regularly to ensure compliance. In a visit this month, Welch said she counted more than 30 children who had been held for over 100 days.

The increased detention of children comes as the Trump administration has gutted a Department of Homeland Security office responsible for oversight of conditions inside Dilley and other facilities.

“It’s a particular concern that family detention is being increased,” said Dr. Pamela McPherson, a child and adolescent psychiatrist contracted by Homeland Security from 2014 until last year to inspect and investigate conditions at Dilley and other ICE facilities holding children. “Just who’s providing that check and balance now?”

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), who represents the congressional district where Dilley is located, said multiple visits have convinced him criticism of the center is unfair.

He said he’d been impressed by Dilley’s facilities and the professionalism and dedication of staff. “They’re not doing policy. They’re just fulfilling a duty,” Gonzales said.

The Homeland Security Department did not respond to detailed questions about Dilley submitted by the AP. But both Homeland Security and ICE objected to allegations of poor care and conditions there.

“The Dilley facility is a family residential center designed specifically to house family units in a safe, structured and appropriate environment,” ICE Director Todd M. Lyons said in a statement this week. Services include medical screenings, infant care packages and classrooms and recreational spaces, he noted.

But concerns about Dilley are personal for Kheilin Valero Marcano, a Venezuelan immigrant detained with her husband and 1-year-old daughter, Amalia, in December and held for nearly two months.

When the child got a high fever, Valero Marcano said Dilley staff told her it was just a virus. Two weeks later, Amalia started vomiting, then losing weight. Valero Marcano said she took her to the Dilley doctor’s office at least eight times, and was offered only Tylenol and ibuprofen.

The baby was eventually sent to two hospitals, where doctors diagnosed COVID-19, bronchitis, pneumonia and stomach virus, she said.

ICE disputed Valero Marcano’s account, saying in a statement the baby “immediately received proper medical care” at Dilley before being sent to the hospital. Back in Dilley, “she was in the medical unit and received proper treatment and prescribed medicines,” it said.

The family’s return to Dilley coincided with a measles outbreak there. They were released earlier this month after their lawyers petitioned the court.

“I’m so worried for all the families who are still inside,” Valero Marcano said.

A teen in distress

After more than two months in a cramped room at Dilley with three other families, the 13-year-old girl’s depression turned increasingly dark.

The eighth-grader stopped eating after finding a worm in her food, family members said. Staff sometimes withheld medications she’d long been prescribed to keep her anxiety in check and help her sleep.

When a total lockdown was imposed, a guard blocked the teen from leaving the crowded room to join her mother and sister in the bathroom. She spiraled into crisis, and used a plastic knife from the cafeteria to cut her wrist.

“She said she didn’t want to live anymore because she preferred to die rather than having to keep living in confinement,” her mother, Andrea Armero, told the AP in a video call from Colombia, where the family was deported this month. The AP generally avoids identifying people who attempt or die by suicide.

The girl’s struggles began before she arrived at Dilley. Soon after starting middle school in Colombia, she learned a family member had sexually abused her younger sister. Armero said she saw no option but to leave, and in early 2024 she and her daughters traveled to the U.S.-Mexico border and applied for asylum.

Living with family in Florida, the 13-year-old was doing well in school but sometimes experienced panic attacks about being sent back to Colombia. Under a psychiatrist’s care, she was prescribed anti-anxiety and anti-depression medications and regularly saw a therapist. Then, in December, ICE agents detained Armero and her daughters during a routine check-in.

At Dilley, the 13-year-old calmed herself by drawing, producing haunting pictures of a girl locked inside gates. But when she and other detainees took part in a protest after 5-year-old Liam and his father got to Dilley, guards took away drawing materials and ordered everyone to stay inside.

The teen’s mental health collapsed. She tried to harm herself with the plastic knife, Armero said, and repeatedly hit her head. The family was put into isolation without seeing a doctor, then deported to Colombia on Feb. 11 after a judge ordered them removed, she said.

Dilley discharge documents described “active problems,” including a “suicide attempt by cutting of wrist” and “self-harm,” in addition to a “history of post-traumatic stress disorder” and “history of anxiety.” AP also spoke with detainees and attorneys who independently described the girl’s suicide attempt.

Responding to questions from AP, a Department of Homeland Security official acknowledged there had been “a case of self-harm” inside the facility, but did not specify what had happened, or how staff handled the incident. When AP asked for details, the department did not respond to follow-up questions.

“No child at Dilley … has been denied medical treatment or experienced a delayed medical assessment,” said Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, the for-profit prison company that operates the facility under contract with ICE. Gustin declined to answer specific questions about the 13-year-old girl, citing privacy rules.

Detention weighs on children

On a phone call from inside Dilley, 13-year-old Gustavo Santino-Josa introduced himself to a reporter by name and the nine-digit identification number ICE assigned him when he was taken into custody with his mother.

“Until today I don’t know what we did wrong to get detained,” Gustavo said. “I’ve seen my mom cry almost daily, and I ask God that we can go out and go home soon.”

He worried they might never be released.

“My mom says that as long as there is hope it is worth fighting for,” Gustavo said before handing the phone to his mother, Christian Hinojosa, the healthcare aide originally from Mexico.

“All his friends have left already,” his mother said. “Some were deported. Some got released recently. And it hurts. It hurts to see people leaving and you’re staying here.”

Dilley was built to hold 2,400 people, housed in clusters ICE calls “neighborhoods.” Bunk beds are arranged side-by-side for up to four families, frequently putting parents with young children in close quarters.

Once in full operation, Dilley is expected to generate about $180 million in annual revenue for CoreCivic, according to the company’s recent filing with securities regulators.

In a video on its website, CoreCivic says Dilley’s “open campus layout allows residents to move freely and unescorted throughout the day.”

It does not mention that parents and their children are locked inside.

In response to questions from the AP, CoreCivic’s Gustin said the staff at Dilley includes a pediatrician, pediatric nurse practitioner and other trained medical professionals and mental health services workers to “meet the needs of children and families in our care.”

In talks with parents of children held at Dilley, however, the same problems come up repeatedly, said Welch, the children’s rights lawyer.

Kids cry often and don’t get enough sleep, in part because lights are on around the clock, she said. The water tastes terrible and causes stomachaches and rashes, so some families stick to what they can buy in the commissary.

Their children don’t eat enough and have lost weight, Welch said. There are classrooms, but instruction is limited to an hour daily, mostly filling out worksheets.

A 14-year-old girl, identified in court papers by the initials NVSM, reported there were tensions with up to 12 people sharing their room. At night when she and her mother tried to sleep, others insisted on turning up the TV.

“I feel very sad and stressed to be here,” the teen said in an account filed with the court that oversees a binding settlement governing detention and release of children. “My nerves are so high. I don’t know what is happening. My muscles will twitch because I’m so nervous and on edge.”

Concerns about oversight

As the government’s detention of parents and their children came under scrutiny in 2014, an ICE official claimed that family detention centers, equipped with basketball courts and medical clinics, were “more like a summer camp.”

The characterization irritated McPherson, the child psychiatrist who, along with another physician, was retained in 2014 by Homeland Security to inspect family detention centers. Their contracts were not renewed by the Trump administration last year after Homeland Security announced sweeping staff reductions.

“Having a clean place to sleep, having food, that’s not the same thing as having family and community,” McPherson said.

The doctors’ investigations of family detention centers exposed consistently inadequate staffing and disregard by administrators for the trauma caused by detention, concerns they reported in 2018 to a Senate caucus set up to hear from whistleblowers.

At Dilley, the doctors noted a persistent shortage of pediatricians and the inability to hire a child psychiatrist from the time they began their inspections until they alerted senators.

Employees unsure how to deal with 2-year-olds biting and hitting one another placed the children and their parents in medical isolation for days, McPherson and her colleague told senators. Without supervision, a nurse at Dilley gave adult-strength hepatitis A shots to about 250 children in 2015, the American Immigration Lawyers Assn. reported.

Homeland Security responded to many of the findings by making changes before a special committee recommended in late 2016 that the government discontinue family detention except in rare cases. The first Trump administration increased family detention before the Biden administration began phasing it out in 2021.

That the Trump administration is again holding families at Dilley after so many warnings feels “dystopian,” McPherson said.

“The decision to knowingly traumatize children and subject them to chronic stress, I just have no words for it,” she said.

Worries even after release

Huddled around picnic tables at the Laredo migrant shelter, parents released from Dilley searched anxiously for flights back to the homes they left behind. They called relatives, friends, teachers, anyone who might help with money to get there.

The young Ecuadoran mom talked of returning to Minneapolis, where her 2-year-old daughter, born in the U.S., was staying with a friend. With her husband deported, parenting will be entirely her responsibility.

That means getting her 7-year-old back in school. Then the woman, who had a work permit and a job in a Minneapolis restaurant before being detained, needs to keep her children fed.

“Let’s go home, Mom, but don’t go back to work because ICE is going to pick you up again,” the little girl said. Her mother tried to reassure her.

That won’t happen, she said, because now they have a special paper telling ICE to leave them alone.

She hopes that’s a promise she can keep.

Burke, Geller and Gonzalez write for the Associated Press. AP data reporter Aaron Kessler in Washington contributed to this report.

Feb. 22 (UPI) — New York City, Long Island, Delaware and New Jersey are under a blizzard warning ahead of a massive winter storm.

“This is likely to be the worst storm we have seen since 1996. It is a serious storm. Please take it seriously. Stay inside. Don’t travel tonight,” said New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill, who has also issued a state of emergency.

“This storm is too serious to have people and workers out on public transit in the worst of it,” Sherrill said.

Commercial vehicles are currently banned all highways but the New Jersey Turnpike, and buses will stop running at 6 p.m. Trains are also expected to shut down.

New Jersey residents living on the coast could also experience flooding, officials said.

“Remember, if you see a roadway that may be flooded: turn around, don’t drown,” said New Jersey State Police acting superintendent David Sierotowicz.

New York City has also declared a state of emergency, with some 24 inches of snow expected.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has placed a ban on travel beginning at 9 p.m., while Governor Kathy Hochul has issued a travel ban for Westchester and Long Island.

To be considered a blizzard, a storm must dump at least 13 inches of snow and include winds up to 55 miles per hour, NBC New York reported.

New York, Connecticut and Delaware are also in a state of emergency.

“I’m declaring a state of emergency and activating every available state resource to ensure Delawareans are protected as this blizzard blankets our communities, including increased risks for coastal flooding. Prepare now, please stay off the roads once the storm begins, and look out for your neighbors,” said Delaware Governor Matthew Meyer in a statement.

“We will continue working around the clock to keep every Delawarean safe,” he said.

Some 2,900 flights were canceled Sunday, Axios reported.

The cancelations coincided with confusion about whether TSA PreCheck would be closed amid the partial government shutdown.

PreCheck remains operational despite earlier Department of Homeland Security reports that it would be shut down, the outlet reportedal despite earlier Department of Homeland Security reports that it would be shut down, officials said.

The U.S. and Canadian hockey teams returning from the Olympic Games were due to fly in to New York, but were rerouted to Miami ahead of the Nor’easter.

Feb. 21 (UPI) — Blizzard conditions are anticipated across a dozen states, from the Mid-Atlantic to New England, with coastal areas especially vulnerable amid a severe weather outlook.

Communities situated near the Atlantic Ocean’s shoreline are most vulnerable to severe winter weather. Some of the nation’s largest cities, including Philadelphia, New York and Boston, are located well within areas that could experience major winter storm conditions.

Those conditions include a blizzard caused by a powerful offshore low-pressure system that is producing high winds and heavy snowfall near its outer edges while centered off the Eastern Seaboard.

Blizzard warnings are in effect into Monday along coastal areas, from New Jersey and Delaware to the southern New England states.

New York City is subject to its first blizzard warning since 2017, and the city’s iconic Central Park could see its first snowfall total of more than 12 inches in at least five years.

Locations situated east of Interstate 95 and between Philadelphia and New York City are expected to see the most snowfall, which would make road travel dangerous.

Forecasters said at least a foot of snow could cover the ground in Philadelphia, New York City and Boston, along with other communities, and affect flights at airports in those locales and others that lie within the winter storm’s path.

Baltimore and other cities in the Mid-Atlantic are predicted to get several inches of snow, and a high potential for power outages exists anywhere affected by the winter storm system that packs winds capable of gusting to 40 mph and more.

The nor-easter’s strong winds also will increase the storm surge that could cause localized flooding in coastal areas from Delaware and New Jersey to southern New England throughout Sunday and into early Monday morning.

The low-pressure system was located off the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday afternoon and is projected to move to the northeast through Sunday, leaving heavy, wet snow and high winds in its wake.

Those who have flights scheduled should pay close attention to likely delays and cancellations that might affect their respective travel schedules.

The Rafah crossing between Gaza and Egypt has finally partially opened this week after two years of Israeli-mandated closure. The news offers relief for many – particularly those Palestinians in urgent need of treatment abroad.

But for many elderly Palestinians in Gaza, staying in the enclave is an act of survival, resistance, and historical memory. Rafah may be open, but they are not planning to go anywhere.

In Kefaya al-Assar’s mind, that decision to stay is an effort to correct what she perceives to have been a historical mistake made by her parents – fleeing their village of Julis, which was depopulated in the 1948 Nakba, and is now within Israel.

“We blamed [our parents] a lot for leaving our home there,” said the 73-year-old Kefaya.

Kefaya has faced displacement during Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza five times. Originally from Jabalia in northern Gaza, she now shelters in a classroom at a school in central Gaza’s Nuseirat.

Widowed in early 2023 and without children, she said displacement revives the trauma she inherited from her parents.

“History repeats itself now,” she said. “My parents lost all their money when they were forced to flee. We also used to have money, but now we are displaced and have lost everything.”

When Kefaya was a child, her family lived in tents in Gaza’s refugee camps, before they became more permanent structures in later decades. Now, she says that she is reliving that same fate.

“I don’t want to repeat history, I want to die in my own country,” she said. “Even here, being in Nuseirat, I feel like a stranger. I wish I could go back to Jabalia.”

Her home in Jabalia was destroyed during the war, meaning that, for now, she is staying in Nuseirat. But she is still adamant that it will not mean her departure from Gaza.

“I will not leave for medical treatment outside … I choose to die on my own land rather than be treated outside,” she said.

That’s despite her own medical issues – Kefaya suffers from high blood pressure, and has not been able to receive adequate medical care because of the war.

Hidden crisis

The Rafah crossing partially opened on Monday after being largely closed by Israel since May 2024.

The opening of the crossing is part of the second phase of the Gaza “ceasefire”, even as Israel continues to violate the agreement by regularly attacking the Palestinian enclave, killing hundreds.

Only a few dozen Palestinians have been allowed to leave so far, all patients needing treatments accompanied by family members.

Other Palestinians have also put their names on the list, some hoping to go abroad for education or simply to escape life in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 70,000 since the war began, and destroyed the majority of buildings, meaning reconstruction will likely be a years-long process, even if Israel cooperates.

“Israel is creating unlivable conditions in Gaza, denying Palestinians all essentials of life,” said Talal Abu Rukba, a political science professor at al-Azhar University in Gaza. “When people resist and stay in their homeland, they ruin the Israeli project of creating an Israeli state on a land ‘without a people’”.

Members of the Israeli right-wing, including members of the government, have repeatedly called for illegal settlements to be established in Gaza, and for Palestinians to be forced out.

The desire to stay in Gaza on the part of elderly Palestinians is despite a largely overlooked humanitarian crisis facing the demographic.

Research by Amnesty International and HelpAge International found that Israel’s blockade of aid and medicines to Gaza had contributed to a “physical and mental health crisis”.

“During armed conflict, older people’s needs are often overlooked. In Gaza, older people are enduring an unprecedented physical and mental health collapse as a direct result of Israel’s deliberate infliction of conditions of life calculated to bring about the physical destruction of Palestinians in Gaza,” Erika Guevara-Rosas, Amnesty International’s senior director of research, advocacy, policy and campaigns, said after the publication of the report.

The two organisations found that 76 percent of the elderly people interviewed live in tents, with 84 percent saying that their living conditions harmed their health and privacy. In addition, 68 percent of respondents had been forced to stop or reduce medication because of a lack of availability. Nearly half reported skipping meals so that others could eat.

Many are also suffering from mental health problems, with 77 percent reporting that sadness, anxiety, loneliness, or insomnia had reduced their appetite and impacted their wellbeing.

Tired and lonely

Nazmeya Radwan, 85, is one of those struggling.

Ill, underweight and unable to access medication, she still refuses to leave Gaza.

Nazmeya has her own previous experience of displacement at the hands of Israel – like Kefaya’s parents, she was forced to flee her home in the 1948 Nakba, along with about 750,000 other Palestinians.

Originally from Jerusalem, her family was displaced to Deir el-Balah, in central Gaza, after 1948.

“All my life was displacement and wars since the Nakba,” Nazmeya said. “I am 85, and tired, lonely, ill and displaced, but I would never leave Gaza. I would live as a beggar and homeless and never leave Gaza.”

Food security experts say famine thresholds for acute malnutrition exceeded in Darfur’s Um Baru and Kernoi.

Acute malnutrition has reached famine levels in two more areas of western Sudan’s Darfur region, United Nations-backed experts warn, as a civil war between the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF) and the Sudanese army has caused widespread hunger.

In an alert issued on Thursday by the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), global food security experts said famine thresholds for acute malnutrition had been surpassed in North Darfur State’s contested areas of Um Baru and Kernoi.

The IPC alert is not a ‍formal famine classification, but it highlights alarming levels of hunger based on the latest data.

In Um Baru, the rate of acutely malnourished children aged under five was ​nearly double the famine threshold with 53 percent affected, the report said.

Nearly a third of children in Kernoi suffered from acute malnutrition, it added.

“These alarming rates suggest an increased risk of excess mortality and raise concern that nearby areas may be experiencing similar catastrophic conditions,” the report said.

Thursday’s alert, based on data available up to February, comes nearly three months after the IPC confirmed famine conditions in el-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, about 800km (500 miles) to the east.

El-Fasher, long the Sudanese army’s final stronghold in the Darfur region, fell to the RSF in October after 18 months of bombardment and starvation.

Um Baru and Kernoi are near the border with Chad and have received some of the tens of thousands of displaced people who fled el-Fasher when it fell to the RSF. Fighting subsequently has been reported in both locations.

Since April 2023, Sudan has been engulfed in a devastating war between the army and the RSF, which has killed tens of thousands of people, displaced nearly 11 million and driven multiple regions into famine and hunger.

The IPC said 20 more areas in Darfur and neighbouring Kordofan were at risk of famine.

People who fled attacks by the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces in Sudan are enduring tough conditions at a displacement camp in the north where funding cuts are making life harder for its new residents. Al Jazeera’s Hiba Morgan is there.

Crans-Montana event was cancelled after Linsey Vonn was third of first six skiers to crash, but race was deemed safe.

Lindsey Vonn crashed out of a World Cup downhill on Friday that was hazardous to her Olympic medal hopes, though judged safe by race officials and team coaches.

Safe, it was agreed, at the place and exact time that Vonn lost control when landing a jump and spun into an awkward slide into the safety nets, injuring her left knee.

“It was probably good light in the spot where she completely missed the line and did the mistake,” World Cup race director Peter Gerdol said.

Gerdol spoke after the late-afternoon meeting of race and team leaders to debrief the day and detail the next morning’s schedule.

At the meeting in Crans-Montana – starting minutes after Vonn posted on social media her Olympic downhill dream next weekend was alive – a broad agreement was that the race had been safe. Some objected to it being cancelled at all.

About 25 minutes after Vonn crashed as the No 6 starter, with the race still paused, Gerdol and the race jury called it off for safety reasons.

“I feel for those guys, they have a tough job,” United States head coach Paul Kristofic said.

By 10:50am local time on an overcast day in the Swiss Alps, the light had dimmed since the 10am start and was forecast to get worse. It did.

The race may have seemed unsafe because three of the six starters failed to finish, and even leader Jacqueline Wiles barely made a tight final turn that caused one crash.

Still, the Austria coach said his racer Nina Ortlieb’s exit as the first starter, at the same spot as Vonn, was caused by a poor racing line, not poor light.

Roland Assinger later said racing had been much safer than two weeks ago at Tarvisio, Italy, where the women went “110 kilometres an hour (70 miles per hour) through the fog where you can see nothing”.

Assinger’s view echoed the view of Vonn’s teammate, Breezy Johnson, who was caught swearing on a television hot mic while chatting with racers in the warmup area when the cancellation news came.

World champion Johnson recalled the “(expletive) rain in Tarvisio” and added: “Then they are like ‘This is too bad a visibility.’ Like, what the …” Johnson later apologised for her choice of words in a social media post.

Swiss TV commentator Patrice Morisod, who had chuckled on air hearing Johnson’s words live, later said: “If we cancel such a race then we don’t have ski sport.”

What Gerdol and Morisod agreed on was disliking the tight turns into the finish line that sent Norwegian racer Marte Monsen into the fences and almost tricked Wiles.

“It’s not downhill,” Morisod said. “For me, that’s a big mistake for the FIS.”

Gerdol told the coaches’ meeting that the course design will be reviewed before the two-week world championships Crans-Montana will stage in one year.

“In view of the championships next year, we will definitely work on this,” the race director acknowledged.

The 2027 world seems far away when the Milan Cortina Olympics open next Friday, and the marquee women’s downhill is scheduled two days later.

Vonn faces a race to be fully fit for the Olympics she targeted in her remarkable comeback as the fastest 40-something in women’s ski race history.

She might even return on Saturday to start in a super-G on the same hill. “The coach just said he left her on the start list,” Gerdol said, “because he thinks that it could be (possible). Some of the athletes always want to race; this is clear, it is their job.”