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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.
The administration has used infection risk to justify expelling thousands of children without legal protections. But it’s only expelling kids who’ve tested negative. Full Story
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Thousands of migrant children have been expelled by the Trump administration since March. Some have been held in hotels without access to lawyers or family. Advocates say many are now “virtually impossible” to find. Full Story
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Democratic congressional leaders expressed alarm at the sudden acceleration and requested the government “cease this practice immediately.” Full Story
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Their father was missing. Their mother was miles away in Houston. Two sisters, ages 8 and 11, were survivors of sexual assault and at risk of deportation. With the nation focused on COVID-19, the U.S. government is rushing the deportations of migrant children. Full Story
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Citing a state medical privacy law, Texas is refusing to release the names of long-term care facilities where residents have died from COVID-19, even as those case numbers soar and families plead for information. Full Story
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Gov. Greg Abbott promised that all those who need a coronavirus test “will get one,” but near the border tests are scarce, and the death toll is beginning to rise. Full Story
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