By Joan Rosenhauer and Conrado Zepeda Recent actions taken by the Biden Administration to reimplement the Migrant Protection Protocols program, and the decision by a federal appeals court to reinstate the program, are deeply disappointing ...
By Kaleb Clemons The federal infrastructure bill is historic, no doubt, but an opportunity was missed by excluding funding for school infrastructure. The physical condition of schools has a direct impact on student health and ...
By Beto O’Rourke Terrible news came to light last week that four Texas National Guardsmen who’d been activated for Operation Lone Star have committed suicide since October, increasing concerns about the role and treatment of ...
By Linda Corchado Earlier this month, Homeland Security Secretary Alex Mayorkas asked for a private meeting with myself and my client, a mother who was separated from her daughter in 2017 here in El Paso. ...
By Janaé Reneaud Field and Raymundo Aguilar Though El Paso and Ciudad Juárez are two separate cities in different countries, divided by a wall and often shrouded in geopolitical tension, their shared valley and natural ...
By Alan G. Parsons I recently attended a meeting conducted by the City of El Paso’s Capital Improvement Department regarding the Police and Fire Joint Training Facility to learn more about the project, share ideas, ...
By Dr. Chandra Ojha The EB-5 Regional Center Program is used by qualified foreign investors who seek to gain legal, permanent residency in the United States. So long as they invest a certain amount of ...
By Rabbi Levi Greenberg Chanukah is known as the Festival of Lights since the essential observance of the holiday is lighting the menorah (Hebrew for candelabra) for eight nights. Over 2,000 years ago the ancient ...
By Father Pablo Matta The traditional approach to addressing poverty has always felt paternalistic: give people resources and then tell them what they should or can do with said resources. But what would happen if ...
A fundamental tenet of democracy is that governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed,” as stated in the Declaration of Independence. The Freedom of Information Act, passed in 1967, gives the ...
By Hilda Villegas The El Paso Independent School District is selecting a new superintendent, and the community should know that EPISD has never hired a women permanent superintendent. In public education, women are predominantly always ...
By Jay Evans If you farm or ranch for a living, by now, you’ve almost certainly heard the term WOTUS, which stands for Waters of the United States. The subject of regulatory and legal battles ...
Eleven years ago, Yobani Barceñas Rumualdo, an undocumented Mexican man in his early 20s, was charged in South Texas with conspiracy to commit aggravated robbery. He was convicted and sent to Huntsville. After he served ...
By Glenn Hamer There are now almost 10,000 Afghan evacuees at Fort Bliss — all of them crucial allies to the American military during its heroic 20-year fight against the Taliban. In the coming weeks and months, the federal government will ...
By David Marcus On Nov. 2, Texas voters will be asked to vote on Proposition 3, which would prohibit state and local governments from adopting any measures that limit religious services held by a religious ...
By Ray Baca After being rejected by voters in two unsuccessful campaigns for president in 2020 and U.S. Senate in 2018, Beto O’Rourke continues to try to claim moral high ground on policy issues — ...
By Beto O’Rourke What has happened in Del Rio is wrong. It didn’t have to happen. The scores of Haitian immigrants who were living in filth under the city’s bridges, corralled and charged by mounted ...
By Robert Storch The El Paso region is at an inflection point of making a major transportation decision with generational consequences to our future quality of life. Will we triple down on the destructive transportation ...
By Jonna Perrillo and Andrew Newman Holden Caulfield. Cassie Logan. Scout Finch.Many of us can trace our love of reading back to a character who first changed the way we think about ourselves or our ...
By Margarita Velez “Never forget.” How many times have those words been repeated since the attack on America in 2001? We held each other in sorrow, prayed together, wept as bodies were recovered from the ...
By Rabbi Levi Greenberg This time of year, Jews need pomegranates and dear friends of ours always invite my family over to pick plenty of pomegranates from their tree. The kids have a blast finding ...
By Lina-Maria Murillo This past July, Las Brujas del Mar (Witches of the Sea), a feminist group from Veracruz, Mexico, celebrated a major victory for abortion rights in their state. “We thought this day was ...
By The Community First Coalition The Community First Coalition, comprised of civic-minded citizens and organizations plus many other community stakeholders, once again urges the City Council to reconsider the decision to locate the Mexican American Cultural Center within the confines ...
By Jack Loveridge Central El Paso’s Manhattan Heights and Military Heights neighborhoods feature some of the city’s top architectural treasures, but ineffective storm drainage and deadly street flooding are elements of our history that aren’t ...
By Amy O’Rourke and Stephanie Otero Teachers are the backbone of our education system, as they play a key role in driving student outcomes and preparing students for college and careers. If El Paso leaders ...
By Linda Corchado I knew a different border as a child growing up in El Paso in the 1990s. A drive across the Bridge of the Americas to visit my doctor was as fluid as ...
By Beto O’Rourke Two years ago today a Texas man killed 23 people at a Walmart in El Paso. In the manifesto he published shortly before the murders he wrote that he’d come to repel ...
By Rabbi Levi Greenberg In 1913, a Russian Jew named Mendel Beilis was accused of ritual murder in Kiev in the Russian Empire, in a notorious trial known as the “Beilis affair.” Despite lacking any ...
By Alan G. Parsons As information regarding the proposed site for the new combined training facility for the fire and police department has become available to the public, I have some strong opinions and ideas ...
Binational News Partnership
A unique binational news collaboration publishing stories about significant issues facing El Paso and Ciudad Juárez.The Puente News Collaborative is: La Verdad in Ciudad Juárez; and ABC 7, El Paso Inc., El Paso Matters, El Paso Times, Univision 26, KTEP public radio and Borderzine.com as part of the multimedia journalism program at UT El Paso.
Migration at the border: Reporting that covers the complex reasons that people migrate, and how governments respond.
Pandemic at the border: In-depth reporting that looks at how the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as the resulting restrictions on border crossings has affected life in our region this year.
Borderland Coronavirus Updates
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Tips, Submissions
Do you have a story tip you’d like El Paso Matters to pursue? A press release you’d like to share? A commentary you’d like us to publish? Send your ideas or submissions to news@elpasomatters.org.
By Mark Lusk Howard Campbell, an anthropologist at the University of Texas at El Paso, has spent three decades doing field research in the sprawling border city of Juárez, Mexico. No social scientist has a ...