Reporting Texas
News and features from UT-Austin's School of Journalism
byGabrielle Caumon
A Guatemalan immigrant was driving home from work in San Antonio when he came upon a checkpoint manned by U.S. immigration authorities. They detained him — and then went to his home in Austin the next day to seize his wife and children.
Their deportations came as Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities conducted a 10-day crackdown in Texas, announced by Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin.
Lawyer Elizabeth Coleman said the Guatemalan family detained in Austin and San Antonio were among those swept up in the crackdown.
“The fact that the children were gone — the fact that they picked up this guy and then went after his family 60 miles away was crazy,” Coleman said.
byVikram Sundaram
The day after Bo French lost his bid for Texas Railroad Commission to Democrat Jon Rosenthal, French attempted to spin his widely condemned social post targeting South Asian students at a Texas Longhorns football game — one of many flashpoints this election season that turned Texas blue.
French may be playing coy now, but South Austin candidates running for office certainly felt like he was taking aim at their communities.
byPaul Holm
Nearly five years after an escaped prescribed burn forced residents to evacuate, Bastrop State Park is preparing to bring fire back to its forest, with rewritten burn plans, additional safety checks and efforts to rebuild public trust.
The return follows a pause that began after the 2022 Rolling Pines Fire, leaving staff to manage vegetation with chainsaws, machinery and herbicides while waiting for suitable burning conditions.
byGabrielle Caumon
Rafael, a former Austin middle school theater teacher, heard last year that some of his students from first-generation immigrant families had seen Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids at their apartment complex.
Fear, Rafael told them, should not stand in the way of their future. So he shared his story.
Rafael, 33, told the students that he is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipient who came to Texas from Mexico at age 6. But Rafael, like other DACA recipients and immigration lawyers, is fearful in the current immigration climate. Recipients are navigating a precarious legal status in the U.S. immigration system as court rulings reshape the legal landscape and deepen uncertainty.
