Vanessa Romo
Vanessa Romo is a reporter for NPR's News Desk. She covers breaking news on a wide range of topics, weighing in daily on everything from immigration and the treatment of migrant children, to a war-crimes trial where a witness claimed he was the actual killer, to an alleged sex cult. She has also covered the occasional cat-clinging-to-the-hood-of-a-car story.
Before her stint on the News Desk, Romo spent the early months of the Trump Administration on the Washington Desk covering stories about culture and politics – the voting habits of the post-millennial generation, the rise of Maxine Waters as a septuagenarian pop culture icon and DACA quinceañeras as Trump protests.
In 2016, she was at the core of the team that launched and produced The New York Times' first political podcast, The Run-Up with Michael Barbaro. Prior to that, Romo was a Spencer Education Fellow at Columbia University's School of Journalism where she began working on a radio documentary about a pilot program in Los Angeles teaching black and Latino students to code switch.
Romo has also traveled extensively through the Member station world in California and Washington. As the education reporter at Southern California Public Radio, she covered the region's K-12 school districts and higher education institutions and won the Education Writers Association first place award as well as a Regional Edward R. Murrow for Hard News Reporting.
Before that, she covered business and labor for Member station KNKX, keeping an eye on global companies including Amazon, Boeing, Starbucks and Microsoft.
A Los Angeles native, she is a graduate of Loyola Marymount University, where she received a degree in history. She also earned a master's degree in Journalism from NYU. She loves all things camaron-based.
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Officials offered a timeline of the deadly events that left nine people dead and 27 injured in less than a minute early Sunday morning. -
The U.S. attorney for the Western District of Texas, John Bash, said the investigation into the deadly attack is proceeding with a "view towards bringing federal hate crime charges." -
Officials named those killed in the attack on Sunday morning; their ages range from 22 to 57. Among them is the suspect's sister. It was the second major mass shooting in the U.S. in under 24 hours. -
More than two dozen were also injured in the shooting, according to state and local officials. A white man was taken into custody without incident. -
NYPD Officer Daniel Pantaleo was found guilty of using a banned chokehold but not guilty of intentionally restricting Garner's breathing in 2014. The department says he has now been suspended. -
"Because TMT construction is not imminent, I am withdrawing the emergency proclamation effective immediately," Ige said on Tuesday following a decision to allow an extra two years for construction. -
"After much analysis, and taking into account the best interests of our people, I have selected Pedro Pierluisi Urrutia to fill the vacancy of Secretary of State," Rosselló tweeted Wednesday morning. -
The traveler, who said he is an active member of the U.S. military, told authorities the Griffin rocket launcher was a memento from Kuwait, according to the Transportation Security Administration. -
"He said the conditions were horrible, inhumane. And he was about to sign a deportation order ... even though he was born here," Francisco Galicia's lawyer told NPR. -
Just hours earlier, another judge ruled that the change could take effect because it was "in the greater public interest to allow the administration to carry out its immigration policy." -
The changes will allow ICE officials to deport undocumented immigrants who can't prove they have been in the U.S. for more than two years, without a hearing before a judge. It takes effect Tuesday. -
Harold Martin committed the massive theft of government documents over decades, storing files in his car and Maryland home. "My methods were wrong, illegal and highly questionable," Martin said.
