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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Texas spent nearly $4 million to buy land for immigrant enforcement. Where is it and what exactly will it be used for? -
Texas has spent billions of dollars on its own immigration enforcement and border security, making them the ideal partner to the new Trump administration. -
Trump tried to end the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program before. Since then, it’s been caught up in legal challenges and is likely headed for the Supreme Court. -
Hailing from places like Venezuela and South Asia, voters told us political unrest at home taught them the value of a democratic process. -
The Department of Public Safety and the Department of State Health Services are no longer following court orders to update someone's sex on driver's licenses and birth certificates. Transgender Texans and advocates say this could put their community at greater risk of being denied certain services and threaten their safety. -
The majority of people who died due to Hurricane Beryl were seniors. Advocates say the death toll raises questions about what state and local leaders have done to protect the safety and comfort of elderly Texans. -
Energy experts and local leaders say Houstonians need to start looking at every storm like it might be the big one. -
Devastating power outages and destruction in Houston left by Hurricane Beryl again underscored the city’s inability to sufficiently fortify itself against extreme weather events worsened by climate change. This was the lowest level hurricane, a Category One, and yet it knocked out power to millions and left the nation’s fourth largest city reeling. Past horrific hurricanes, including Ike in 2008 and Harvey in 2017, made crystal clear that the city needed to bolster its infrastructure including expanding flood-plain protections, burying more power lines underground, and hardening its power grid. But those city, state and corporate efforts have repeatedly fallen short.
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Longtime noncitizens married to a U.S. citizen could be eligible to apply for parole that would grant protections. UNT college student Oscar Silva says he plans to apply. -
“A shameful attempt to incite fear and score political points.” Criticism and condemnation came quickly from immigrant rights organizations – and Texas lawmakers on both sides of the aisle – after President Biden issued an executive order Tuesday that would limit asylum claims. -
North Texans who waited hours to vote in Mexico's election are angry they couldn't cast their ballotThousands of North Texans weren't able to vote in Mexico's historic election of its first female president due to high turnout and because many didn't pre-register. -
A bipartisan group says President Biden should use executive authority to grant longtime undocumented immigrants temporary protection from deportation and work permits.
