How an Algorithm Kicks Small Businesses Out of the Food Stamps Program on Dubious Fraud Charges

Summary: In Washington Heights, a hilly neighborhood at the northern tip of Manhattan, 128 P&L Deli Grocery is the busiest hub on the block. Outside, neighbors lounge in lawn chairs and pass around a hookah hose. Inside, customers watch baseball on an iPhone mounted behind the counter and sip tamarind juice through straws. Yucca, plantains, and bagged heads of lettuce loiter by the entrance. Porfirio Mejia, the Dominican-born New Yorker who has owned this grocery for six years, seems to know everyone.