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Associated Press
DRIPPING SPRING, Texas -- Five people are dead following a two-car crash on a rainy Texas highway on Mother's Day.
The Texas Department of Public Safety tells the Austin American-Statesman it happened Sunday afternoon near the town of Dripping Springs, about 20 miles southwest of Austin.
Officials say a Lincoln was heading east on U.S. 290 when the driver lost control and veered into the westbound lane, where it was hit by a Buick. Authorities say two people in the Buick and three people in the Lincoln were killed.
Austin's KXAN-TV reports one person in each car survived the crash. Both have been hospitalized.
Authorities haven't said what caused the accident.
SAN ANTONIO — A fugitive Salvadoran gang member wanted for violent crimes in his home country was deported Tuesday by officers with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Enforcement and Removal Operations (ERO).
This removal is the latest result of stepped-up collaborative efforts to locate Salvadoran criminal fugitives in the United States and return them to El Salvador to face justice.
Aristides Inoc Juarez-Villalobos, 21, an MS-13 gang member, was the subject of an Interpol Red Notice for various violent crimes ranging from extortion to illegally moving firearms. According to authorities, the weapons allegation resulted when a meeting was scheduled to execute a citizen of Juarez-Villalobos’s hometown area of Chinameca y Lolotique del Departamento de San Miguel.
"U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement continues to focus its resources on removing violent criminals and other high-priority aliens who pose the greatest threat to our communities," said Enrique M. Lucero, field office director of ERO San Antonio. "This latest removal ensures that this individual will face justice for the criminal allegations against him."
Juarez-Villalobos was encountered Jan. 26, 2015, by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) near Carrizo Springs, Texas, after he illegally entered the United States. On Feb. 4, 2015, he was transferred to the South Texas Detention Complex, in Pearsall, Texas, to await his deportation. On Nov. 19, 2015, an immigration judge issued him a final order of removal. On March 8, 2016, the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) dismissed Juarez-Villalobos’s appeal and affirmed the judge’s decision to deport him back to El Salvador.
ERO officers removed Juarez-Villalobos April 12 via an ICE Air charter flight from Laredo, Texas, to San Salvador, El Salvador, where he was turned over to Salvadoran authorities.
This removal was part of ERO’s Security Alliance for Fugitive Enforcement (SAFE) Initiative. The SAFE Initiative is geared toward the identification of foreign fugitives who are wanted abroad and removable under U.S. immigration law.
In just four years, through the SAFE Initiative, ERO has removed more than 630 criminal fugitives to El Salvador. Those removed as part of the SAFE Initiative have been deemed ineligible to remain in the United States and were all wanted by El Salvador’s National Police Force.
SAFE aligns with ERO’s public safety priorities and eliminates the need for formal extradition requests.
Since Oct. 1, 2009, ERO has removed more than 1,150 foreign fugitives from the United States who were sought in their native countries for serious crimes, including kidnapping, rape and murder. ERO works with the ICE Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) Office of International Operations, foreign consular offices in the United States, and Interpol to identify foreign fugitives illegally present in the United States. Members of the public who have information about foreign fugitives are urged to contact ICE by calling the toll-free ICE tip line at 1 (866) 347-2423 or internationally at 001-1802-872-6199. They can also file a tip online by completing ICE’s online tip form.
In fiscal 2015, ICE removed or returned 235,413 individuals. Of this total, 165,935 were apprehended while, or shortly after, attempting to illegally enter the United States. The remaining 69,478 were apprehended in the interior of the United States, and the vast majority of these were convicted criminals who fell within ICE's civil immigration enforcement priorities.
Ninety-eight percent of ICE's fiscal 2015 removals and returns fell into one or more of ICE's civil immigration enforcement priorities, with 86 percent falling in Priority 1 and eight percent in Priority 2. In addition, ICE's interior enforcement activities led to an increase in the percentage of interior removals that were convicted criminals, growing from 82 percent in fiscal 2013 to 91 percent in 2015.
The Texas Tribune-
Members of several Native American tribes say a coal mine operating on a remote stretch of the Texas-Mexico border threatens sacred ancestral ground, and they are joining long-running attempts by environmentalists and local activists to shut the mine down.
Members of Texas’ Lipan Apaches, Pacuache Band of the Cohuiltecan Nation and Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe have teamed with the Comanche Nation of Oklahoma to draw attention to what they allege is the desecration of land being mined by Dos Republicas, owned by Mexican companies partnered in Texas with the Plano-based North American Coal Corporation and its subsidiary Camino Real Fuels.
The protesters hope a planned march this Saturday from the Rio Grande to the coal mine will be part of a larger effort to stop mining which they say threatens ancestral burial grounds.
“This land is sacred and holds ancestral knowledge of the many Native Nations who have shared this living space over thousands of years,” the organizers state on an online petition on Change.org, which has more than 3,500 signatures. The groups allege the tribes were not consulted before permits were issued, and that provisions of the National Historic Preservation Act were not followed.
The tribes are joining a yearslong battle. In 2011, citizens and environmentalists from Eagle Pass and Maverick County tried to stop the Texas Railroad Commission from granting the company a permit to mine low-grade coal from about 6,300 acres of land in Maverick County.
Opponents claimed transporting the low-quality coal would release hazardous particles into the air, and that the discharge from the operations would run off into a creek that ends in the Rio Grande, a main water source.
But the permit was awarded in 2013 and has survived several court challenges. The coal is shipped to Mexico for use there because its low quality makes it unusable in the United States.
The Native American effort is part of a two-pronged strategy that includes legal maneuvering by Maverick County and the city of Eagle Pass, which are filing petitions for review with the Texas Supreme Court in hopes of reversing the 3rd Court of Appeals decision last year that upheld the Railroad Commission's decision to approve the permit.
Dos Republicas spokesman Rudy Rodriguez said the company is fine with letting opponents of the mine speak but insisted the company has provided the impoverished patch of the Texas-Mexico border an economic boost. It has also followed all the state and federal regulations required, he said.
“We respect the free speech of everyone” involved, he said. “But we’ve moved over a million tons of coal by rail, and it’s in a remote area where people don’t really know what’s going on.”
Rodriguez added that since the company began its mining operations, it has hired 180 employees and doles out about $1.3 million in monthly salaries.
Tane Ward, an environmentalist who is helping spearhead the Native American effort, said support for the latest challenge is growing.
“When we started meeting we started alerting more and more allies,” he said, adding that some of the protesters could come from as far away as the Dakotas. He said even though out-of-state Indian nations don’t have a claim to the land on the Texas-Mexico border, they are supporting the Texans as a symbol of solidarity with all Native Americans whose lands have been taken.
And he argues the coal companies might not have followed protocol.
“There wasn’t a proper consultation done,” he said. “They don’t have respect for the ancestors” of the land.