Fernando D., a 35-year-old father of two has crossed the border from Juárez to El Paso to donate blood plasma twice a week, every week, for two years straight. He has a dark scar on both arms where the needle pricks, but he considers it a small price to pay for the $400 a month […]
Lauren Villagran
Lauren has covered the financial and energy markets in New York, the drug war in Mexico and immigration and border security in New Mexico. Formerly the Albuquerque Journal's border correspondent, she has also reported for the Associated Press, Dallas Morning News and Christian Science Monitor, among other national media. She is a graduate of Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism and is based in southern New Mexico for Searchlight NM.
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In hot water: The dangerous side of a renewable energy project
From the outset, local residents had questioned Cyrq’s assertion that it could pump geothermal water from thousands of feet down and reinject it at similar depths without tainting the shallow, freshwater aquifer. Like many places in New Mexico, the health of the local farm and ranch economy is rooted to the water. So are the lives of the scattered people who live in the Animas Basin.
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Borders without doctors
Medical services are hard to come by in the sparsely settled Bootheel region, where more and more migrants are arriving in need of care.
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Answering the call
Lonnie Briseño is a deacon in the Catholic Diocese of Las Cruces and organizer of Project Oak Tree, a three-year-old effort that unites faith-based organizations to aid migrants in southern New Mexico.
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Open doors and open arms
As migrants seeking asylum are released from ICE facilities, they are finding temporary shelter in southern New Mexico churches.
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Fever pitch
Bitter competition between Presbyterian and UNM has meant kids who need specialized care are getting sent out of state — instead of to the competitor. Now the hospitals are finally talking about a partnership.
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Governor-driven understaffing keeps N.M.’s kids at risk
Ushered into office on a conservative wave that swept statehouses around the country, Martinez espoused classic Republican views on small government and fiscal conservatism. Eight years on, she can truthfully say she has kept state government lean.
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Foreign teachers pay dearly to fill jobs in New Mexico
More than 200 foreign teachers are risking their financial security for an opportunity to work in public schools.
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College-focused charter network eyes New Mexico
EL PASO, Texas – The kindergarteners of IDEA Edgemere walked quietly single-file down the hall, their uniforms embroidered with the school logo, left hands behind their backs, right fingers over their lips. Shh. Emblazoned on the wall above their heads, a sign read: “We do whatever it takes.”
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New Mexico lawyer faces death threat over work for immigrants
What happened to Allegra Love and her colleagues, experts say, is a terrifying example of the open threats and unrelenting hostility that immigrant advocates have begun to face nationwide.