Stella M. Chávez | The Texas Newsroom
Investigative ReporterStella M. Chávez is an investigative reporter for The Texas Newsroom, a collaboration between NPR and member stations around the state. She's based at KERA in Dallas and is currently reporting on how state government is working with federal agencies on immigration enforcement and border security.
Throughout her career, Stella's been interested in telling deeply reported and intimate stories about diverse communities. As the daughter of a Mexican immigrant father and a Mexican American mother, Stella strives to gives her audience a greater understanding of immigrants and refugees through her reporting. She’s covered the impact of immigration raids as well as mass shootings in Uvalde and El Paso. Previously, she covered education for KERA and produced several multi-part projects, including Generation One about immigrant students in North Texas and The Race to Save Failing Schools about schools trying to meet state academic standards.
Before working in public radio, Stella spent more than a dozen years in newspapers, reporting for The Dallas Morning News, The South Florida Sun-Sentinel and The Ledger in Lakeland, Florida. She’s received several national and state awards, including one from Investigative Reporters and Editors for the collaborative project “Hot Days: Heat’s Mounting Death Toll on Workers in the US”. Other honors include the Livingston Award for Excellence in National Reporting and Dart Award for Excellence in Reporting on Victims of Violence for “Yolanda’s Crossing,” a seven-part series that reconstructs the journey of a young sexual abuse victim from a village in Oaxaca, Mexico to Dallas. Her reporting was also included in news coverage that received Regional Edward R. Murrow Awards.
In her spare time, Stella enjoys traveling, hiking and writing about her experience as a longtime caregiver. [Copyright 2025 KERA]
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The nonprofit, which houses the Texas Office of Refugees, sued the feds in March over $47 million intended for organizations that work with refugees. -
A federal judge has extended a temporary reprieve on a new cash reporting requirement for a group of Texas businesses suing the federal government. A hearing for a longer reprieve will occur in May. -
The federal government will begin collecting detailed information about who’s making cash transactions of $200 to $10,000 at money exchange businesses in several South Texas counties. The effort is part of the Trump administration’s plan to go after drug cartels and other criminal groups. -
The federal Office for Refugee Resettlement recently announced a policy change that limits who can receive grants. Only states — not nonprofits — can access that money beginning in October. -
The Trump administration recently reinstated the practice of detaining immigrant adults and children together. Two detention facilities in South Texas are at the center of that controversial decision. -
Texas is quickly becoming the epicenter of the Trump administration's deportation promises. A detention center in Dilley, Texas, shuttered during the Biden administration, is reopening soon.
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A nonprofit is suing the federal government for the $36 million it says it’s owed to help refugees with things like buying food and paying rent. -
The state has vowed to assist the president in his efforts to revamp immigration. But the state’s biggest cities and school districts are more reluctant to help. -
Dozens of people were arrested in North Texas alone as part of Donald Trump’s crackdown on people who may be in the country without legal status. -
Presidents from both parties have raided businesses alleged to have hired people who are in the country without legal status. Here’s what we know about how they may work under a second Trump administration. -
The FBI says the man responsible for the attack that killed 14 people was Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran from Houston. He was killed in an exchange of gunfire with police following the attack. -
The suspect in the Jan. 1 attack in New Orleans was reportedly a Muslim from Houston, which has one of the country's largest and most organized Islamic communities.
