The top-ranked Celina High School football team is barrelling toward another state championship this month. Its coach is barred from the field.
Lomi Kriel
Lomi Kriel is a reporter with the ProPublica-Texas Tribune investigative unit. Previously she was a reporter at the Houston Chronicle covering immigration, often focused on the Texas border. Six months before the Trump administration announced its family separation policy, Kriel uncovered how the government was secretly using the prosecution of illegal entry to detain parents until deportation and send children to federal shelters. Her stories resulted in the release of one mother and helped spur a pivotal American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit largely ending the practice. She received the 2019 George Polk Award for national reporting, in part for her continued work on family separations.
Kriel, who was born and raised in South Africa, immigrated to the United States in 1998. She has also worked as a Central American correspondent for Thomson Reuters and a criminal justice reporter for the San Antonio Express-News. She is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University and speaks Afrikaans and Spanish.
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Uvalde school shooting
After local agencies release Uvalde shooting records, calls continue for Texas DPS to follow suit
Local records released this week — after a yearslong lawsuit —affirm previous reporting about law enforcement’s flawed response to Texas’ deadliest school shooting.
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Investigations
Texas lawmakers largely ignored recommendations aimed at helping rural areas like Kerr County prepare for flooding
Texas lawmakers’ inaction on flood prevention often hits rural and economically disadvantaged communities the hardest, experts said.
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Investigations
Texas won’t force private companies to use E-Verify to check workers’ immigration status, despite leaders’ tough talk
Texas’ conservative Legislature has again and again refused to mandate that most private businesses use E-Verify. Experts say that Republican resistance is rooted in how the system could impact the state’s labor supply and economy.
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Investigations
An agency tasked with protecting immigrant children is becoming an enforcement arm, current and former staffers say
The Office of Refugee Resettlement’s welfare mission appears to be undergoing a stark transformation as President Donald Trump seeks to ramp up deportation numbers, current and former officials told The Texas Tribune and ProPublica.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
These soldiers risked their lives serving in Afghanistan. Now they plead with Trump to bring their sister to the U.S.
Trump’s executive orders have blocked entrance to the country for thousands of Afghans, including those who worked with the U.S. military and their relatives. Two brothers hope permission comes quickly for their sister and her husband, who they say are in danger.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
If Trump makes cuts to Medicaid, Texas officials could seize the opportunity to further slash the program
State leaders have shown a decadeslong antipathy toward the health insurance program. If Trump makes severe reductions, it’s unlikely leaders would have the political will to make up any lost federal funds with state money, experts say.
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Uvalde school shooting
Uvalde city officials release missing footage from officers responding to 2022 Robb Elementary shooting
The new videos largely affirm prior reporting and investigations that detailed law enforcement’s failures to confront the gunman who killed 19 children and two teachers.
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Investigations
Despite warnings, Texas rushed to remove millions from Medicaid. Eligible residents lost care.
Texas officials acknowledged some errors after they stripped Medicaid coverage from more than 2 million people, most of them children. A ProPublica and Texas Tribune review of records shows that these mistakes and others were preventable.
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Uvalde school shooting
Uvalde police failed to turn over some video footage from Robb Elementary shooting, department says
Chief Homer Delgado said the department has turned over the footage to the district attorney’s office and ordered an investigation into how the error occurred.