United States of America
For nearly 20 years, I have been an award-winning, bilingual reporter in Texas, Mexico and California.
A former foreign correspondent turned investigative reporter, my stories have led to Congressional probes of dysfunctional VA research programs, legislative calls for stricter inspections of farmworker housing in Texas, state charges against shady veterans charities and more.
Members of Abilene's Latino community say it is time for the school district to abandon its at-large system and embrace a single-member district voting system as a way to bring more diversity to its school board.
Investigations
How Texas fails farmworkers Texas spends next to nothing to ensure decent housing for the farmworkers who help power an $8 billion industry Skip interactive " Since taking over the migrant farmworker housing inspection program a decade ago, the Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs has conducted more than 300 inspections of a mostly stable group of housing providers.
Sept. 7, 2014 On the morning of July 1, 2008, Department of Veterans Affairs officials gathered to unveil a state-of-the-art brain scanner they predicted would help revolutionize the understanding of traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder in combat veterans. The timing, and location, seemed perfect.
They served the U.S. during wartime. Now they can never return.
Jaime Zaldaña was driving to work on Interstate 35 through the San Antonio suburb of Schertz on a winter morning in 2010 when his red pickup passed a U.S. Border Patrol unit on the side of the highway. He was 150 miles from the nearest border crossing, in Eagle Pass.
A little-known private defense contractor from Virginia has quietly received about $20 million under a series of no-bid contracts with the State of Texas to develop its border security strategies, an effort that included shaping the state's public message on the increasingly controversial nature and extent of violence spilling into Texas from Mexico.
War stories
The father, a warrior since his childhood in American Samoa, was the top enlisted soldier in a brigade of battle-hardened paratroopers.
Last year, the Pentagon spent more on pills, injections and vaccines than it did on Black Hawk helicopters, Abrams tanks, Hercules C-130 cargo planes and Patriot missiles - combined.
Just before dawn, Andrew O’Brien flipped his laptop open, turned on his webcam and prepared to tell the world the most personal story of his life. On the first try, the lump in his throat caught his voice and tears welled in his eyes. He tried again, he said, but the words kept jumbling together.
Bell County, home to Fort Hood and one of the largest populations of veterans in the state, is poised to comply with state law and hire a veterans county service officer, officials said Tuesday.
Investigative reporters Brenda Bell, Eric Dexheimer, Dave Harmon, Tony Plohetski and Jeremy Schwartz; database editor Christian McDonald; and visual reporters Jay Janner and Kelly West spent six months reporting and writing the stories in this series. Our "Uncounted Casualties" investigation began with a simple question: What caused the deaths of hundreds of Texas veterans who had fought in Iraq and Afghanistan?
Since the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan began, roughly twice as many Texas Army National Guard soldiers have died of suicide as in combat, an American-Statesman investigation has found. Records on the Guard soldiers' cause of death also identified vehicle crashes as their top killer, claiming the lives of 54 since 2001, or 32 percent of all fatalities among Texas National Guard soldiers .
mexico
Some are drawn by a desire to return home after achieving their financial goals; many more are being pushed by the faltering U.S. economy and tough local laws aimed at illegal immigrants. [...] experts say the burden falls most heavily on the children, who spent their formative years in American schools, watching American TV, wearing American clothes and listening to American music.
Mexico Drug Violence Escalates Jeremy Schwartz - Cox News Service In an attempt to halt the bloodshed in a war between rival drug cartels, Mexican police have begun random vehicle inspections on the beach at Acapulco.
Mexican Wrestling Students Have Big Dreams Jeremy Schwartz - Statesman.com go to original Although many people try, only a few wrestlers make it to the pros. Last year, about 100 wrestlers earned their licenses from the Mexico City Professional Lucha Libre Commission.
Delicate balls of snowy thread, twisting cones topped with graceful pink flowers, spiky lemon-lime colored orbs until recently dotted the central Mexican desert. Cactus poaching is booming in Mexico, helping to make wildlife species trafficking the third-largest smuggling industry in Mexico behind drugs and guns.