Arrests of U.S. citizens hundreds of miles from the border. Claiming drug busts from across the state. Changing statistics. The data that Texas leaders use to boast about Operation Lone Star raise more questions than answers.
Lomi Kriel
Lomi Kriel is a statewide investigative reporter for The Texas Tribune. Previously, she was a founding member of the Tribune’s investigative unit with ProPublica, joining the initiative in 2020 before leaving for the Tribune in November 2025. Before joining ProPublica, Kriel reported on immigration for the Houston Chronicle, often focused on the Texas border. Months before Trump’s first administration announced its family separation policy, Kriel uncovered it in 2017. Kriel is a two-time Pulitzer finalist, in 2018 as part of the Houston Chronicle’s Hurricane Harvey coverage, and in 2024 for the Tribune’s reporting with ProPublica and FRONTLINE PBS on the Uvalde school shooting. She is a George Polk Award winner, National Magazine Award winner, Edward R. Murrow winner, and Emmy nominee, among other accolades. Kriel, who was born and raised in South Africa, immigrated to the United States in 1998. She has worked as a Central American correspondent for Thomson Reuters and a criminal justice reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, among other publications. Kriel is a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin and Columbia University and speaks Afrikaans and Spanish.
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Politics
Russia’s arrest of Brittney Griner, WNBA basketball star from Houston, adds to escalating global conflict
The athlete, who is Black and gay, was detained by Putin’s regime, which has stoked nationalism and homophobia and is admired by some in America’s far right.
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Higher Education
UT begins $6 billion fundraising campaign, biggest ever among Texas universities
About $1 billion will go to support students, as the cost of living in Austin skyrockets.
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Texas Abortion Restrictions
Texas abortion law challenge heads to state’s supreme court, likely adding more delays to case
The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ decision means it could take months before abortion providers’ challenge to the restrictive law returns to a federal court.
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Politics
Biden administration speeds up deportation flights for Haitians in growing Texas migrant camp
The situation in Del Rio spiraled this week as more than 15,000 migrants, many of them from Haiti, arrived at the border in recent days, settling in a makeshift camp as they waited for CBP agents to process their petitions to stay in the U.S.
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Operation Lone Star
Converted Texas prison gets first immigrant detainees as Gov. Greg Abbott’s border security effort ramps up
Border-crossing immigrants are being arrested by Texas troopers on state charges like trespassing, and they’re starting to trickle into a prison emptied to house them.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
How inconsistent policies and enforcement have created false hope for migrants at the border
The Biden administration and the Mexican government have made the situation at the border so confusing that even seasoned experts can’t always determine who is allowed in and who isn’t. That may be contributing to the high number of border crossings.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
The people we left behind: How closing a dangerous border camp adds to inequities
The Biden administration shuttered a migrant tent camp in Mexico that was created under a Trump policy. Immigration advocates praised the move, but the closure adds to growing confusion over which migrants are let in or left out.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
ICE guards “systematically” sexually assault detainees in an El Paso detention center, lawyers say
Allegations include guards attacking victims in camera “blind spots” and telling them that “no one would believe” them in ICE detention centers, which imprison about 50,000 immigrants each year at a taxpayer expense of $2.7 billion.
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Texas 2020 Elections
El Paso Mayor Dee Margo loses reelection bid to Oscar Leeser
Margo told reporters he doubted any other mayor has had to endure the crises he has battled throughout his last term, and was hopeful the community would realize he did “the best I could to lead.”