Abbott signed a proclamation declaring Tren de Aragua a foreign terrorist organization and directed Texas DPS to create strike teams targeting the gang.

County officials issued a disaster declaration Tuesday, saying the state’s mass arrests at the border have cost the county millions of dollars and overwhelmed its criminal justice system.

Guaranteed income programs let participants use funds however they see fit. Critics argue they're not a good use of taxpayer dollars.

Child care centers are struggling to make ends meet, and a new voter-approved tax credit is a first step toward boosting the flagging system, advocates say.

Across this border city, which sees some of the state’s lowest voter turnout, many residents either didn’t know there was an election in March or had reasons for avoiding the polls.

Thousands of low-income, Latino residents in Texas still do not have safe drinking water. In one El Paso colonia, some residents are using solar distillation to generate water from the air.

An estimated 500,000 people live in thousands of colonias along the Texas-Mexico border. Largely built between the 1950s and 1980s, these communities have been promised water — but it has never come.

A survey was commissioned by the nonprofit organization Texas Water Trade and included responses from households in both rural border communities and in urban areas across Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth.

With Title 42 ending Wednesday, El Paso officials expect the number of migrants crossing the border could double. Declaring a state of emergency should open more options to provide migrants shelter from below-freezing temperatures.

A Nicaraguan fisherman planned to spend the night in a parking garage with other migrants, then a good Samaritan offered him a place to sleep. The city is struggling to handle a sudden influx of migrants that has overwhelmed local resources.

The Colorado Springs gay nightclub shooter had charges dropped in a 2021 bomb threat case after family members who were terrorized in the incident refused to cooperate.

The suspect accused of entering a Colorado Springs gay nightclub and killing five people and wounding 17 others was formally charged with 305 criminal counts including hate crimes and murder.

The first-term DA was under fire for the office’s mishandling of criminal cases and for potentially jeopardizing the prosecution of the man charged in the 2019 Walmart massacre.

El Paso County District Attorney Yvonne Rosales has been accused of bungling cases and is ensnared in controversy surrounding prosecution of the alleged gunman in the 2019 Walmart massacre.

A grand jury in El Paso County has indicted a woman for allegedly stealing from an animal rescue organization.

A state district judge in El Paso said Tuesday that he’ll wait to see what federal prosecutors decide in their case before moving ahead with a state trial for the man accused of killing 23 shoppers in 2019.

Mistakes and backbiting have engulfed the El Paso County district attorney’s office. Some question whether she is competent to handle one of the most high-profile death penalty cases in recent Texas history.

Construction began in July to bring water to Cochran, one of several colonias along the border not served by public water systems. The project is expected to be completed by October.

Speaking out for the first time, an El Paso mom recounts the moments from a bank inside the Walmart where 23 people were fatally shot and dozens more were injured in 2019.

The ruling doesn’t expand the kinds of games tribes can offer on their lands but reaffirms their autonomy to regulate gambling activities that aren’t prohibited in Texas, regardless of the state’s rules.

During a Texas Tribune event, Democratic state Reps. Joe Moody and Claudia Ordaz Perez and state Sen. César Blanco said the Uvalde school shooting and the overturning of Roe v. Wade demand action in the Texas Legislature.

El Pasoans who have followed O’Rourke’s political career are excited about his run for governor. But his critics still remember his support of a development plan that could have displaced Mexican American residents from one of the city’s oldest barrios.

A Colorado day care owner convicted of keeping 26 children hidden in the basement of her business in 2019 has received a six-year prison sentence.

High vaccination rates, geography and a sense of community in the wake of 2019’s Walmart shootings help keep El Paso’s delta numbers low, experts and locals say.

“If people die again, blood will be on your hands,” U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, D-El Paso, wrote in a tweet.

Holzer, now 28, was sentenced to nearly 20 years in prison on Friday, Feb. 26, 2021, for plotting to bomb the Colorado synagogue last year, by a judge who described the case as "dripping with Nazism and supremacy." They also said that Holzer no longer held the supremacist-like beliefs that led him to plan the bombing at Temple Emanuel Synagogue in Pueblo. AdThe Temple Emanuel plot was one of 61 anti-semitic harassment and vandalism cases that the Anti-Defamation League Mountain States Region tracked in 2019. AdHolzer was arrested Nov. 1, 2019, after receiving two phony pipe bombs and 14 sticks of dynamite from undercover FBI agents that he planned to use at the Temple Emanuel. Temple Emanuel is the second oldest synagogue in Colorado.

The pandemic, though, is a nightmare -- one that has now claimed 300,000 lives in the U.S. and counting. It just represents a moral failing.”The U.S. accounts for nearly 1 out of 5 confirmed virus deaths worldwide, far more than any other country despite its wealth and medical resources. While the pandemic’s toll continues to soar, much has changed since the U.S. surpassed 200,000 deaths in late September. If a second vaccine is authorized soon, as expected, 20 million people could be vaccinated by month’s end. “I’m sorry, it still gets me,” a distraught Williams said Friday, hours before the first vaccine won approval.

(AP Photo/Oded Balilty)NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee’s governor says that once coronavirus vaccines become available, they will be optional in the state’s K-12 public schools. It’s just going nowhere,” Dr. Thomas Dobbs, Mississippi’s state health officer, said Monday during a meeting with members of the Mississippi Senate. State health officials said fatality updates on Tuesday are typically higher because of lag in reporting from the weekends. That includes more than 1,000 on intensive care units and more than 570 on ventilators, according to state Health Department data. —-MADRID — Spain is reporting a new daily record of 537 coronavirus deaths since the resurgence of the pandemic.

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — Texas surpassed 8,000 hospitalized coronavirus patients Friday for the first time since a deadly summer surge as doctors amplified pleas to keep Thanksgiving gatherings small. The worsening surge of cases has El Paso County — where the pandemic is blamed for more than 300 deaths since October — now searching for prospective morgue workers. Texas reported more than 11,700 new cases Friday, the second-highest daily total of the pandemic. More than 8,100 virus patients are hospitalized, the most since early August. Greg Abbott has ruled out another shutdown and accused local leaders of not enforcing restrictions already in place.

While the work these inmates do in the community typically goes unpaid, Chris Acosta, a spokesperson for the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office, said “trustees refused to work unless they were compensated.” They’re making $2 per hour. Images and video show the trustees moving bodies to the eight, soon-to-be 10, mobile morgues set up outside the medical examiner’s office. El Paso County detention inmates, also known as “trustees” (low level inmates) help move bodies to mobile morgue units outside the Medical Examiner's Office on Nov. 14, 2020. Due to the recent COVID-19 surge of positive cases and deaths in recent weeks in El Paso, the Medical Examiner's Office has asked the jail for help. El Paso County recorded a total of 45 new deaths Thursday and Friday caused by the virus.

Inmates from the El Paso County jail are assisting the county medical examiner’s office as it manages a recent spike in coronavirus-related deaths. The inmates were seen at the Medical Examiner’s office in full PPE gear on Friday, working near the mobile morgues and inside the building, KTSM-TV reported. The television station posted photos of inmates in black-and-gray striped jumpsuits outside the medical examiner’s office. The prisoners were “helping them there,” KTSM-TV quoted an El Paso County Sheriff’s department spokesperson as saying. El Paso County Detention Center inmates are now tasked with helping move bodies at the El Paso Medical Examiner's Office.

People wait outside an El Paso restaurant to pick up their food orders after the county judge ordered a shutdown of nonessential businesses. Credit: Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The Texas TribuneEL PASO — A state appeals court late Friday again halted El Paso County’s shutdown of nonessential businesses that was scheduled to last until Dec. 1. El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego issued the shutdown order Oct. 29 in an effort to slow the latest outbreak of COVID-19 here, where total cases since the pandemic began surpassed 70,000 Friday. “If activities are prohibited by the Governor’s order, the County cannot allow them.”The decision Friday comes as El Paso County recorded 1,488 new coronavirus cases. Samaniego’s shutdown caused a rift between him and El Paso Mayor Dee Margo, who said Thursday he hasn’t been consulted about countywide restrictions for weeks.

AUSTIN, Texas – Texas became America's first state Wednesday with more than 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, as sporting events were canceled and the border city of El Paso added mobile morgues in anticipation of virus deaths overwhelming hospitals for weeks. Only Illinois has averaged more new cases than Texas over the past two weeks. Texas recently surpassed California, the most populous state, in recording the highest number of positive coronavirus tests. El Paso County officials this week announced plans to add four additional morgue trailers, bringing the total number there to 10. In Lubbock County, home of Texas Tech University, health officials reported a surge of nearly 3,400 new cases last week.

AUSTIN, Texas – Texas became America's first state Wednesday with more than 1 million confirmed COVID-19 cases, as sporting events were canceled and the border city of El Paso added mobile morgues in anticipation of virus deaths overwhelming hospitals for weeks. Only Illinois has averaged more new cases than Texas over the past two weeks. Texas recently surpassed California, the most populous state, in recording the highest number of positive coronavirus tests. El Paso County officials this week announced plans to add four additional morgue trailers, bringing the total number there to 10. In Lubbock County, home of Texas Tech University, health officials reported a surge of nearly 3,400 new cases last week.

(AP Photo/Rajesh Kumar Singh)ANCHORAGE, Alaska -- Alaska on Saturday reported hitting a daily record in new coronavirus cases. ———MILAN – Italy registered a record 39,811 daily confirmed coronavirus cases on Saturday. — Nebraska reported a record 2,681 coronavirus cases and a record 748 people in the hospital. The world reached 400,000 daily confirmed cases on Oct. 15; 500,000 on Oct. 26, and 600,000 on Friday. The global death toll hit a daily record of 11,024 confirmed deaths on Wednesday.

EL PASO, Texas – Five trailers from the Federal Emergency Management Administration have been brought to El Paso to help accommodate the surge of COVID-19 fatalities in the border city, officials said Thursday. Three of the trailers were staged at the El Paso County Medical Examiner's Office while two were being held in reserve, said Jorge Rodriguez, the city's emergency management coordinator. Twenty-two more COVID-19 deaths were reported Thursday in El Paso County, bringing the county's death toll for the eight-month pandemic to 639. They will not end the pandemic of this virus, but they will curtail the spread,” Margo said. Of those, an estimated 116,225 cases were active, the most since Aug. 23, with 5,954 COVID-19 cases requiring hospitalization, the most since Aug. 19.

As coronavirus cases continue surging in El Paso County, officials have ordered nonessential businesses to close. EL PASO — El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego on Thursday ordered a two-week shutdown of nonessential businesses in this border area to help curb the record-breaking rise of COVID-19 cases that have overwhelmed hospitals. Greg Abbott’s statewide executive order allowing some nonessential businesses to reopen to 75% capacity. For several days, El Paso has seen daily case counts that exceed 1,000 new infections, forcing the judge to install a curfew for residents from 10 pm to 5 am. “The hard truth is that the people that are dying are in El Paso.

EL PASO, Texas – El Paso County officials ordered a two-week shutdown of non-essential activities Thursday after the area's medical resources were overwhelmed by the illness caused by the novel coronavirus. Grocery and drug stores, funeral homes, health care services and government activities were among the activities deemed essential. Yet each day for the past week, more than 1,000 new cases were confirmed in the westernmost Texas county. America’s largest state prison system reported more 332 active COVID-19 cases and 8 units in precautionary lockdown across Texas, including one in El Paso as of Wednesday. The 119 newly reported COVID-19 fatalities raised the Texas death toll to 17,819 since the pandemic first struck at the start of March.

Megan Hicks for The Texas TribuneWhat you need to know Monday:No consensus on whether El Paso is ready to reopenGov. Greg Abbott had given El Paso County and the Amarillo area two of the state's biggest recent COVID-19 hot spots a temporary reprieve from implementing Texas' next phase of reopening. While Abbott said the Amarillo area had "turned a corner," the picture in the El Paso area wasn't as clear. El Paso Mayor Dee Margo, on the other hand, said the situation in El Paso is more manageable now. Texas reported 1,949 more cases of the new coronavirus Sunday the highest increase since the state began reporting coronavirus case counts.

PASO Shuttered store fronts in downtown El Paso during the the coronavirus pandemic. On May 1, when some state restrictions were lifted, El Paso County had 961 positive coronavirus cases. Abbott granted the county a one-week delay, and sent several state response teams comprised of National Guard members to increase testing in El Paso. Margo said the situation in El Paso is more manageable now and he's encouraged that the county's positivity rate has dropped to 8 percent. "The people of El Paso and the workers on the front lines should be incredibly proud of these results.Dr. Hector Ocaranza, El Paso's City/County Local Health Authority, urged caution as El Paso expands business operations.