PHOENIX (AP) — The federal government has stopped paying for English-language courses and legal services at facilities that hold immigrant children around the country, imposing budget cuts it says are necessary at a time when record numbers of unaccompanied children are arriving at the border.

The Health and Human Services department notified shelters around the country last week that it was not going to reimburse them for teachers’ pay or other costs such as legal services or recreational equipment. The move appears to violate a legal settlement known as the Flores agreement that requires the government to provide education and recreational activities to immigrant children in its care.

But the agency says it doesn’t have the funding to provide those services as it deals with a soaring number of children coming to the U.S., largely from Central America.

It’s now up to the various nonprofit and private organizations run facilities for the children to cover the cost of teachers, supplies, legal services and even recreational activities and equipment — if they can, or choose to.

BCFS, a nonprofit provider in several Texas cities, said in a statement that it would continue providing services because not doing so would violate state licensing standards. It said it will use emergency funding from its parent organization.

“The health and well-being of those in our care are of the utmost importance and we hope there is a rapid resolution to this funding issue,” spokeswoman Evy Ramos said.

The government says it currently has 13,200 children in its care, and more are coming. The Border Patrol said Wednesday that 11,500 children crossed the border without a parent just last month. The kids are transferred to the care of Health and Human Services after the Border Patrol processes them. Health and Human Services contracts out their care and housing to nonprofits and private companies.

“As we have said, we have a humanitarian crisis at the border brought on by a broken immigration system that is putting tremendous strain (on the agency),” spokeswoman Evelyn Stauffer said. “Additional resources are urgently required to meet the humanitarian needs created by this influx – to both sustain critical child welfare and release operations and increase capacity.”

Health and Human Services is seeking nearly $3 million in emergency funding to cover more beds and provide basic care.

An official at one of the shelter providers said the government notified them on May 30 that they wouldn’t be reimbursing costs of providing education and other activities. The providers pay for things like teacher salary upfront and are then reimbursed by the government.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter, said his employer was scrambling to figure out how it would cover the cost of teachers. The provider hasn’t laid anyone off, but worries about children who desperately need to learn English and be intellectually stimulated.

Advocates are also worried about the ramifications of cutting recreational activities. Funding cuts may result in physical education coordinators from being let go and in a lack of adults who can supervise children playing outside.

“The kids are inside 23 hours, and the hour they spend outside is a real lifeline for them,” said J.J. Mulligan, an attorney at the Immigration Law Clinic at University of California, Davis, who has visited and spoken to many of the children at the facilities. “Most of them come from Latin American countries where soccer is king, so the ability to play with their friends really brings them joy in dark circumstances.”

In a memo to staff obtained by The Associated Press, Southwest Key interim CEO Joella Brooks said she was working with the government to figure out why the funding had ended and how it can continue to offer the services. Southwest Key is a nonprofit and the largest provider of shelters for immigrant children.

“In the meantime, remember the service, encouragement and compassion you provide to these youth every day matters a great deal. Please continue to stay focused on taking good care of them,” Brooks wrote to her staff.

U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Arizona, was critical of the cuts.

“By eliminating English classes and legal aid that are critical to ensuring children successfully navigate the asylum process, the Trump Administration is essentially condemning children to prison and throwing away the key until their imminent deportation,” Grijalva, who represents a district on the border, said in a statement.

FINNEY COUNTY — Two people died in an accident just before 2p.m. Wednesday in Finney County.

The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2017 GMC Sierra driven by Joe McNally, 50, Memphis, TN., was northbound on Jenny Barker Road.

A 2018 GMC Sierra driven by Christian Victor Westergard, 47, Scott City, was eastbound on Mead Road approaching the intersection to Jenny Barker Road.

Both vehicles entered the uncontrolled intersection at the same time. The 2018 Sierra struck the 2017 Sierra on the driver side between the two axles and it became fully engulfed in flames and overturned.

McNally and a passenger Jimmy Martin Sherlock, 57, Memphis, were pronounced dead at the scene.

Westergard was transported to the hospital in Garden City. All three were properly restrained at the time of the accident, according to the KHP.

HUTCHINSON — A Kansas man has been charged by the state for crimes allegedly involving inappropriate contact with an 11-year-old girl.

On Wednesday, Donavan Roy Hall was charged with aggravated indecent liberties with a child for contact that allegedly occurred March 7 and again on July 21, 2018.

He then asked for a reduction of bond, but the state objected.

Even after the investigation began, he was still attempting to contact the child, according to statements in court.. That led to the family of the 11-year-old to seek a protection from abuse order against Hall. The charge against him is a level three felony with a maximum sentence of over 20 years in prison.

Hall will be back in court on June 26.

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Top Republican legislators on Wednesday blocked nearly $10 million that Kansas corrections officials argue they need to deal with prison overcrowding and said lawmakers might reject Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s choice to be the prison system’s next leader.

The actions by Republican legislative leaders decrease the number of male inmates that the Department of Corrections can transfer for now to private prisons out of state and halt the agency’s plans to move female inmates into empty space at a juvenile detention center in Topeka.

Top Republicans in the GOP-controlled Legislature did agree to release about $18 million, including money for pay raises for corrections officers. They said they’re still addressing the troubled prison system’s most pressing problems, with future discussions of the other spending still possible.

GOP leaders said they have reservations about the department’s plans to house 600 inmates outside Kansas and worry about conditions in private prisons generally. They questioned whether the juvenile correction project was legal and complained repeatedly that Kelly’s administration waited until late April to fully outline its plans.

But recently retired Interim Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz said, “I think it’s going to make things more dangerous.”

Legislators provided nearly $36 million in additional funds for prisons in the next state budget. However, Republicans worried enough about how it might be spent to require Kelly to convene a meeting of eight top legislative leaders, six of them Republicans, and have them sign off on releasing the bulk of it.

Their meeting Wednesday came with Republican leaders and Kelly increasingly at odds, following her vetoes of two GOP tax relief plans and top Senate Republicans thwarting Medicaid expansion.

It also came less than two weeks after Kelly announced her appointment of Jefferey Zmuda, the deputy director of Idaho’s prisons system, as the next Kansas corrections secretary. He plans to take over in July.

But Senate President Susan Wagle, a conservative Wichita Republican, told Kelly publicly Wednesday that she is not sure Zmuda can win Senate confirmation. A state-court-judge in Idaho criticized Zmuda in a March ruling, saying he had given “disingenuous” testimony in a lawsuit over access to that state’s execution records.

Wagle said she is concerned about transparency issues with Zmuda planning to take over the Department of Corrections. Lawmakers are out of session until January, but Zmuda would be forced to step down if the Senate won’t confirm his appointment.

“He would not be confirmed if we voted today,” Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning, a conservative Kansas City-area Republican, told reporters.

Kelly firmly stood by Zmuda’s appointment. The governor said she and her staff knew about the Idaho judge’s comments and discussed them with Zmuda, and he acknowledged that issues related to the lawsuit were not handled as well as they could have been. She said once lawmakers meet him they will see that he is “eminently qualified.”

“He knows what the problems are here in the state of Kansas and he is up for the challenge,” Kelly told reporters.

The Kansas prison system has been plagued with staffing shortages even as its inmate population has continued to grow. The prison system had multiple riots in 2017 and 2018. Extra funding released by legislative leaders Wednesday will 15.9% pay raises for uniformed corrections officers across the prison system.

Werholtz told legislative leaders Wednesday that since an emergency was declared in February at the state’s maximum-security prison outside El Dorado, about 30 miles (48 kilometers) east of Wichita, employees there have worked more than 2,000 16-hour shifts.

The state has about 10,000 inmates in its custody and the official capacity of its prisons is about 9,900 — after boosting the capacity figures in 2017 by declaring that inmates could be housed two-to-a-cell in much of the system, despite some officials’ past misgivings.

The next state budget included $16.4 million to allow the department to house up to 600 male inmates in county jails or out-of-state prisons. The department is pursuing a contract with a private prison in Arizona that its officials declined to name Wednesday.

But top Republicans on Wednesday blocked $6.6 million of the funds as some of them said they dislike using private prisons. Kelly said it’s not ideal but, “I just don’t think we have much of a choice.”

The department also wanted to move 120 inmates from the state’s prison for women in Topeka to the juvenile corrections center there. Lawmakers set aside $3 million.

The budget says the money was for “renovations.” Department officials said the need for renovations at the juvenile center is minimal and wanted instead to spend the funds on staff and programs. GOP legislative leaders concluded that the budget law wouldn’t allow it and blocked the funds, stopping the project altogether.

___

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — Missouri utility regulators have approved the acquisition of a large wind energy project by a Chicago firm.

The decision Wednesday by the state Public Service Commission was a necessary step for Invenergy to buy the rights to construct the proposed Grain Belt Express power line.

The project initiated by Houston-based Clean Line Energy Partners would carry Kansas wind energy on a 780-mile path across Missouri and Illinois before hooking into an electric grid in Indiana that serves eastern states.

Missouri regulators earlier this year reversed their previous denials and gave the green light to the project. Missouri legislators then tried but failed to prohibit eminent domain for the project.

But the project still needs regulatory approval in Illinois, where an appeals court last year overturned the state’s previous approval.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A Montana man dubbed the AK-47 bandit and accused of holding up banks in several states over a five-year period has been sentenced in a Nebraska federal court to 35 years in prison.

Richard Gathercole, of Roundup, Montana, received the maximum sentence Wednesday after pleading guilty in March to bank robbery. The 41-year-old Gathercole admitted during that plea hearing to using an AK-47 while robbing a Nebraska City bank in 2014. Gathercole also pleaded guilty to the 2017 carjacking of a farmer in Kansas that led to his arrest in Lexington, Nebraska.

As part of his plea deal, Gathercole won’t be prosecuted by other jurisdictions for other violent crimes, including shooting at a Kansas state trooper in 2017 and bank robberies in California, Idaho, Iowa and Washington state from 2012 to 2017.

Some of the crimes had passed the five-year federal statute of limitations.

RILEY COUNTY —One person died in an accident just after 10a.m. Wednesday in Riley County.

A 2018 Ford Escape driven by a 56-year-old man was traveling on Tuttle Creek Boulevard near mile marker 33, according to a media release from Riley County Police.

The vehicle traveled off the road and struck a pole. The was transported to Via Christi in Manhattan where he died.

The cause of the crash is under investigation. According to the Riley County Police Department, the driver may have suffered a medical episode while driving.

The RCPD did not release the man’s name.