News from rural America.

Residents in Southwest Colorado communities are pushing back against ICE arrests, rural towns hit by catastrophic weather events are sharing recovery advice and maternity care is getting harder to find in rural America.

TRANSCRIPT

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, this is the news from rural America.

Residents of Southwest Colorado are resisting immigration enforcement.

20 people in La Plata County have been detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the past month.

But the Colorado Rapid Response Network stopped the impoundment of a man's work truck after ICE seized it without a warrant.

Latino citizens and legal residents say the sweeps are threatening them, as well as the undocumented.

Beatriz Garcia Waddell is with the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition.

We still have rights.

They have been violated again, but we have to still defend it.

Around 12 percent of the county's residents are Hispanic, but many are afraid to leave the house, even to run errands or attend local events like the county fair.

Cortez resident and activist Marina Stump is leading informational sessions to make sure Latinos know their rights.

So it is important to educate the community and a lot of them, they don't know what to do when a situation like that comes.

Rural communities are often hardest hit by natural disasters, but those that recover can blaze a path.

Anya Sepian has more.

In 2007, a tornado wiped out 95 percent of Greensburg, Kansas.

Mayor Matt Christensen says recovery came in stages, starting with temporary fixes and building towards long-term solutions.

To this day, we're not complete. we're still working on stuff.

Wanna continue to work on improvements and never stay where you're at, always aim for better.

Swannanoa, North Carolina, looked to Greensburg for recovery advice after catastrophic flooding from last year's Hurricane Helene.

Resident Jerry Pope leads efforts to build recovery systems that will last into the future.

He says it starts with community conversations.

We're here and we're here not just for the weekend, but for a year or two.

We wanna get to know you, we wanna get to know your problems.

I'm Anya Slepyan.

Finding a place to have a baby is getting harder.

Studies show fewer US hospitals, rural and urban, offer obstetric care.

Dr. Eileen Throer with Frontier Nursing University notes 2018 legislation passed by Congress was meant to keep maternity units open in rural areas, but hasn't helped much.

She says those care deserts endanger both the baby and the mother.

In rural settings, folks are less likely to be able to receive adequate prenatal care.

They're also then traveling further for birth, so there's more risk.

A University of Minnesota study found rural areas in states like North Dakota, Iowa, and Oklahoma had the most obstetric closures.

Thorwer says some patients have turned to midwives, but most of those professionals still want a hospital to be available.

The problem is if a hospital or a labor and delivery unit has closed, midwives don't tend to be able to stay there.

For the Daily Yonder and Public News Service, I'm Roz Brown.

For more rural stories, visit dailyyonder.com.