Texas

Updates in policy for people with developmental disabilities and serious mental illness could reduce repeated cycling through the carceral system, advocates say

Texas quietly passed two laws this past spring that appear to strengthen the state’s ability to arrest and detain pro-Palestine protesters on U.S. college campuses and name citizens as foreign actors. The 600 bills Gov. Greg Abbott signed into law include a cluster of bills targeting citizens from China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, such as HB 127 and SB 1349, which will both take effect on Sept. 1. 


The bills come as immigration authorities detain students for their involvement in anti-gen...

Tucked in the southwest corner of Houston, between the Sam Houston Tollway, I-69, and West Bellfort, sits Ruffino Hills, a former landfill that closed in the 1980s. The property was later redeveloped into a golf course during the 1990s. It currently sits unused despite very public promises from city officials to turn the property into a regional detention pond. 


On Dec. 7, 2022, the Houston City Council voted to approve the purchase of 73.081 acres of Ruffino Hills from West Houston Place, a...

“No more than ten minutes!” I yelled after my eleven-year-old daughter as she darted out the back door. It was late on an August evening, and the temperature in Houston continued to hover over 100 degrees, refusing to offer even a brief reprieve. Last summer was less of a breaking point and more of a languishing, as persistent triple digits kept our family of four increasingly confined to our home. The sun was so relentless that I often drew the curtains by noon. Right outside our door was a hug...

My dad, an immigrant from Iran, bought our childhood home before he was a citizen of the United States. My parents still own this home where their four kids grew up, and where their grandkids now splash in the pool and ride their bikes around the driveway. When I read the text of SB 147, a xenophobic bill seeking to prohibit the right to own property based on national origin, I immediately thought of that house and everything it took to get there.

The bill, authored by state Senator Lois Kolkho...