Air Force veteran Brian Kolfage faces more than five years in prison after pleading guilty to defrauding donors to the private wall effort.
Investigations
The Texas Tribune’s investigative journalism dives deep into the policy and political decisions that matter most to Texans. Read the latest — and most ambitious — work from our newsroom and the investigative team we share with ProPublica.
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Operation Lone Star
Texas soldier who drowned trying to help migrants wasn’t equipped with flotation device
Spc. Bishop Evans died after jumping into the Rio Grande to save migrants. He and other members of Operation Lone Star were not provided safety equipment. Texas Military Department said an order for buoys and ropes was made but has not been fulfilled.
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The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
Texas has spent billions of dollars on border security. But what taxpayers got in return is a mystery.
Since 2005, Texas Govs. Rick Perry and Greg Abbott have launched a multitude of widely publicized and costly border initiatives, which usually kicked off during their reelection campaigns or while they were considering bids for higher office.
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Operation Lone Star
Texas’ border operation is meant to stop cartels and smugglers. More often, it arrests migrants for misdemeanor trespassing.
The largest share of Operation Lone Star arrests were of people accused only of trespassing on private property. Many spend months in prison, but the strategy does not appear to have slowed immigration.
Posted in
The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
North Texas superintendent orders books removed from schools, targeting titles about transgender people
The Granbury superintendent’s comments, made on a leaked recording, raise constitutional concerns, legal experts said.
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Operation Lone Star
Gov. Greg Abbott brags about his border initiative. The evidence doesn’t back him up.
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.
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Operation Lone Star
National Guard troops were dispatched to famous Texas ranches with private security as part of border mission
The dispatching of troops to the sprawling private ranches, far from the border, raises questions about the use of National Guard troops, who have widely decried the mission as aimless, political and oversized, as the cost of the effort has already ballooned to $2 billion a year.
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Investigations
A Texas State bone marrow registry program became a national model. Now, its leader is under investigation for diverting money to support an affair.
The university has declined to say much about the questionable spending, documented in records provided to The Texas Tribune. The Texas State University System is investigating the matter.
Posted in
Operation Lone Star
Deplorable conditions, unclear mission: Texas National Guard troops call Abbott’s rushed border operation a disaster
The governor has sent waves of troops to the border as Guard officials scramble to execute a massive mobilization that would normally take months to plan. Some Guard members say the operation has set back their income, education and well-being.
Posted in
The Texas Tribune-ProPublica Investigative Unit
A Laredo plant that sterilizes medical equipment spews cancer-causing pollution on schoolchildren
Nobody told Yaneli Ortiz’s family that the factory they lived near emitted ethylene oxide. Not when the EPA found it causes cancer. Not when she was diagnosed with leukemia. And not when Texas moved to allow polluters to emit more of the chemical.