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HOUSTON (AP) —
A Guatemalan woman has pleaded guilty to helping smuggle immigrants from India into Texas via Mexico.
Rosa Astrid Umanzor-Lopez pleaded guilty Friday to conspiracy and human smuggling in federal court in Houston.
The 36-year-old Umanzor-Lopez in April was extradited from Guatemala on charges of human smuggling and conspiracy to smuggle immigrants into the U.S. for profit. Umanzor-Lopez helped run the scheme from 2011 until her arrest last year in Guatemala.
Prosecutors say immigrants from India seeking to enter the U.S. illegally were transported through South America and Central America, then from Mexico into Texas. The immigrants traveled by air, boats and foot to reach the Texas border near McAllen and Laredo.
Three co-defendants were earlier convicted and sentenced. Prosecutors didn't immediately provide penalty information for Umanzor-Lopez, who awaits sentencing.
The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday confirmed that eight Syrian nationals--two families--passed through a border checkpoint in Laredo.
Despite other media reports that the Syrians were "caught" or were "arrested trying to gain entry into the United States," DHS said in a release that the families "presented themselves at a port of entry in Laredo" and "were taken into custody." They were two men, two women and four children, DHS said. They were not trying to sneak into the country.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who recently said he would not permit Syrian refugees in Texas, tweeted the news Wednesday night, writing "THIS is why Texas is vigilant about Syrian refugees."
His office did not immediately respond to requests for clarification Thursday.
Millions of people have fled Syria, and a four-year-old civil war waged between government forces and splintered rebel factions, including ISIS, recently amplified by bombing campaigns from a handful of developed nations.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, 219 Syrians received amnesty in the U.S. in 2014, down from 291 a year prior but up from only 56 in 2010.
According to the United Nations, the conflict has left 13.5 million people, including 6 million children, in need of protection and aid.
It is unclear if the eight Syrians taken into custody at the Texas border were seeking to escape that conflict, however.
But U.S. officials have voiced fear of refugees in recent days, after unsubstantiated reports emerged that Syrians were involved in the Paris massacre that killed more than 130 people Friday night. The claim was based on the discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of an attacker, which the Washington Post reported was not authentic.
DHS said the two women and four children will be sent to a family detention center in Dilley, Texas, while the men are sent to a detention center in Pearsall, Texas.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) —
A Central Texas man accused of killing his girlfriend and calling 911 to report the slaying has been arrested in Mississippi.
Austin police say Kevin Michael Waguespack (WAG'-uh-spak) faces extradition on a murder warrant in the death of Catherine Dyer. Waguespack was arrested Wednesday following a standoff in Adams County, Mississippi.
Austin police on Monday night received a call from a friend of the couple raising concerns about Dyer's welfare. The person reported getting a call from Waguespack indicating he did something bad and was going away.
Police discovered Dyer's body in the couple's home.
Police say a man identifying himself as Waguespack called 911 early Tuesday saying he killed Dyer. No cause of death was immediately released.
Authorities didn't immediately provide attorney information for Waguespack, whose bond was $250,000.
DALLAS (AP)
The man charged in the killings of six people at an East Texas campsite had earlier befriended the group and helped dislodge one of their vehicles from mud, a sheriff said Tuesday.
William Hudson, 33, met the six people, who were part of two families, and spent time speaking with them on Saturday, Anderson County Sheriff Greg Taylor said.
"One of the vehicles became stuck and he pulled them out and they gathered around the camp and hung out together," he said.
He said Hudson returned hours later and killed them all, though authorities have not said how.
Taylor declined to elaborate on the attack or a motive, but said Tuesday that there were "several different crime scenes." The bodies of a man and a woman were found in a travel camper and four bodies, including a child, were later pulled from a pond about a half-mile away. One woman survived and alerted authorities.
"I've been in law enforcement for 31 years and I've never seen anything like this," he said.
One of the victims had purchased undeveloped land adjacent to property owned by Hudson and his family about 100 miles southeast of Dallas, Taylor said.
The victims' names won't be released until the autopsies are complete, possibly by Thursday, Taylor said.
Hudson is charged with one count of murder, and more are pending. It was not clear whether Hudson, who's being held on $2.5 million bond, had an attorney who could comment on the allegations.
Hudson was apprehended at his mother's house, next door to his own home.
Taylor said Hudson was picked up several weeks ago for a separate assault.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) —
Texas education officials may vote this week to have outside experts check for factual errors in textbooks used in its public schools, a small but key concession that could soften longstanding ideological fights over how history, science and religion are taught across America's second-largest state.
The proposed tweak to Board of Education rules follows a Houston mother complaining last month that a geography book used by her 15-year-old son referred to slaves as "workers." The publisher, McGraw-Hill Education, subsequently apologized and moved to make immediate modifications.
Texas has more than 5 million students, a market so large that publishers making edits to meet the state's curriculum can affect what's prepared for other states.
But controversies have erupted in recent years when conservative board members backed deemphasizing climate change and the theory of evolution in science textbooks, while seeking to approve history and social studies materials that critics said overstated Moses' importance on America's Founding Fathers.
The board — currently 10 Republicans and five Democrats — begins meeting Wednesday, the same day Republican member Thomas Ratliff said he plans to propose that university academics check board-sanctioned books to avoid future mistakes.
Approved books currently are scrutinized by citizen review panels whose members are nominated by board members.
"The problem is you get some political ideologues, like some of my colleagues like to appoint, instead of people who can think for themselves and not be told what to think," said Ratliff, from Mount Pleasant in East Texas.
If the measure passes Wednesday, final approve would come in a potentially less contentious vote Friday.
Ratliff said his proposal wouldn't alter the content of the books, only seek to prevent factual errors. But that still could be a major change because some board members have long been reticent of having university professors check books whose approval is up to the board.
"I typically always suspect (Ratliff's) motives given his difficult relationship with the conservative membership on the board," said David Bradley, a Republican member from the Gulf Coast city of Beaumont.
Ratliff said the changes should win approval: "I wouldn't be setting myself up to bring a knife to a Howitzer fight," he said.
The Board of Education also sets curriculum standards for Texas classrooms. In years past, its social conservatives united to approve social studies curriculums in which children learned that the words "separation of church and state" were not in the Constitution and were asked to evaluate whether the United Nations undermines U.S. sovereignty.
The curriculum process wouldn't change under Ratliff's proposal. Still, Bradley said even tweaking textbook reviews won't be easy.
"We're always going to be bitterly divided on what constitutes an expert," Bradley said. "There are members on the board that would define Bernie Sanders as a foreign policy expert and there are those of us who would vehemently oppose that."
DALLAS (AP) —
Hillary Rodham Clinton's campaign is launching a new offensive on taxes, saying Bernie Sanders' health care plan would require middle-class workers to pay higher taxes.
Clinton campaign spokesman Brian Fallon says in a statement that a 2013 proposal by Sanders in the Senate to create a single-payer health care system showed middle-class families would face higher taxes. He says "simple math" shows Sanders would need to tax workers more to pay for his agenda.
Sanders campaign spokesman Michael Briggs says their "Medicare for all" plan would save taxpayers money in the long run because it would eliminate wasteful health spending. He says Clinton supports a system that "props up private insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies" which have given money to her campaign.
Clinton was holding a rally Tuesday in Dallas.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) —
With Google's self-driving cars slowed in a gridlock of California regulation, Texas is offering a fast lane.
Officials in Austin have embraced the technology, a welcome so warm that the mayor used talking points written by a Google lobbyist when the tech titan began testing prototypes on their streets over the summer.
That embrace came as state transportation and safety policymakers are struggling with whether they share Google's vision of — sooner than later — getting the public access to cars that have neither a steering wheel nor pedals.
For now, Google's test cars have an employee in the driver's seat, ready to grab the wheel should the onboard sensors and computers get in trouble. Four retrofitted Lexus cars and four bubble-shaped cars Google commissioned are rolling around Austin, the hub of tech innovation in Texas and the first area Google has done extended testing outside its Silicon Valley base.
Four months into Google's test drives here, Texas transportation officials appear unsure how to oversee their safe operation. Unlike California, where regulators have been drafting regulatory rules to give the public safe access to the cars, Texas has no obvious restrictions on self-driving vehicles.
And Google wants to keep it that way. The tech titan believes vehicles with just a button to start and stop — and no other way for passengers to maneuver them — would be legal without any change to Texas law.
State officials would not comment on their take, but one legal scholar said Google's read of state law was not farfetched. "A reasonable interpretation is that an autonomous vehicle would be legal" in Texas, said Bryant Walker Smith, a law professor at the University of South Carolina.
Officials with Google's self-driving car project say that while they are frustrated California's Department of Motor Vehicles is nearly a year late in writing rules for early-adopters in the public to get the technology, the company expanded testing to Austin to challenge the cars in a new environment where drivers and pedestrians are unaccustomed to seeing them.
"Austin has always been enthusiastic about innovation," said Chris Urmson, who has led Google's self-driving car project for several years. "The people there have been incredibly welcoming."
When Mayor Steve Adler said at an August press conference that the cars potentially carry "enormous" benefits to society, he was reading verbatim from a list of talking points drafted by a Google lobbyist in Texas, Gerardo Interiano, according to records obtained by The Associated Press.
A July press release announcing that Google had picked Austin also attributed a quote to Adler that was first drafted by Google, then approved by Adler's office with only slight tweaks.
"Austin is special in part because we welcome new technologies that could help improve our daily lives, and we can easily see the potential self-driving cars have to reduce accident rates and congestion, and to provide mobility for people who can't get around easily," Adler was quoted as saying.
Jason Stanford, a spokesman for Adler, said the mayor was not aware that Google wrote the material sent to his aides. He said Adler and Google "share this vision" of cars that are never driven by drunk or distracted drivers.
A Google spokesman declined to comment on the emails.
Cars without steering wheels and pedals are not close to being commonplace. Google wants to begin introducing them through a small pilot project, hinting last year that could happen as early as 2016. More recently, Google has refused to discuss a firm timetable.
In the meantime, Texas transportation leaders are reluctant to discuss the technology publicly.
The state Department of Motor Vehicles referred questions to the Department of Public Safety, where a spokesman would only say the agency is working with other states without elaborating. Texas Department of Transportation spokeswoman Veronica Beyer said the agency is waiting on the guidance of lawmakers — but the Texas Legislature doesn't meet again until 2017.
This spring, Google opposed ultimately unsuccessful legislation that would have set minimum self-driving car safety laws. At a legislative hearing, state transportation officials acknowledged there are no existing restrictions, but one Republican lawmaker did voice some concern.
"I'm not sure the state of Texas needs to be providing, become the test tube for developing this," state Sen. Troy Fraser said at the April hearing. "The companies are going to have to figure that out, and then once they figure it out, then they come to us and get authorization."
A signature California company like Google getting cozy with Texas carries an implicit threat: Several companies with high-profile California connections have moved to Texas in recent years, delighting Texans eager to bash California as an overregulated burden to innovative business.
Google said it approached several cities before deciding on Austin. It won't say which ones, though it appears none was in Nevada — the state where in 2011 Google persuaded the Legislature to create the nation's first public road testing framework for self-driving cars. At that time, Google's goal was to get its home state to act. California lawmakers, who worried that Nevada would become a road-testing destination, formally legalized prototype testing in 2012.
Since then, Google hasn't tested much in Nevada.
The leader of the self-driving issues at the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles said he sees shades of Google's Nevada play in its decision to test in Texas.
"Let's see what politically we can strong arm or influence" in terms of Texas policy, said Jude Hurin. "It's almost the same pattern."
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) —
Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz on Friday vowed to suspend a program that gives work visas to highly skilled immigrants, reversing his position on the program as part of an aggressive immigration plan designed to appeal to the GOP's most conservative wing.
Cruz, the son of a Cuban immigrant, wants to dramatically increase deportations, add hundreds of miles to the wall on the Mexican border and reverse every immigration order signed by President Barack Obama — including one that defers enforcement for many children of immigrants in the country illegally.
"A steady flow of illegal immigrants coming in, driving down wages, impacts the wages of just about every person here," Cruz told hundreds of cheering supporters gathered in an Orlando megachurch Friday afternoon. Aside from the economic impact of illegal immigration, Cruz warned that a porous southern border makes the nation vulnerable to Islamic State fighters and deadly diseases like Ebola.
The release of Cruz's immigration plan comes as he intensifies his play for the GOP's most conservative voters, a group that has so far favored businessman Donald Trump and retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. The outsider candidates have a huge lead in the race with voting set to begin in less than three months.
The issue also allows Cruz to distinguish himself from pragmatic-minded Republican rivals such as Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, two Florida-based candidates who support a pathway to citizenship for immigrants in the country illegally.
Without naming them, Cruz said each of his Republican opponents in the previous debate "composed an epic poem in support of amnesty, explaining how compassionate and loving it is."
"There is nothing compassionate about a politician saying, 'I'm so compassionate I'm willing to give away your job,'" Cruz charged.
Cruz's position on high-skilled visas represents a complete about-face on one of his long-held immigration stances.
During the Senate immigration debate two years ago, the Texas senator was an outspoken advocate for increasing legal immigration, particularly for highly skilled immigrants. He called legal immigration "a pillar of our nation's heritage and strength" and introduced amendments to double the cap on legal immigration and increase the number of high-skilled immigrant visas by 500 percent.
On Friday, he promised to suspend the H1-B program for 180 days to investigate — and prosecute — potential abuse. He said he changed his position after learning that some companies, including nearby Disney World, might be abusing the program.
Such visas are largely used for high-tech firms and so-called STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — jobs. Many Republican lawmakers have complained that U.S. companies use the visa program to hire foreign workers at lower wages than a U.S. citizen would be entitled to.
Cruz announced his immigration plan ahead of a possible Senate vote next week on an immigration bill he's been pushing to boost penalties for immigrants who illegally re-enter the country after getting deported. The bill, Kate's Law, is named for a woman shot in San Francisco by an immigrant in the country illegally.
Senate Democratic aides said they'd been alerted by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's office of possible floor action on the legislation as early as next week, though McConnell's spokesman said no decisions on timing had been made.
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) —
A much-troubled Southeast Texas school district will disband at the end of the school year.
In a letter Thursday, Texas Education Commissioner Michael Williams advised La Marque Independent School District administrators and its board of trustees that the Texas Education Agency is shutting it down effective July 1 and assigning a conservator.
The letter didn't reveal what district will absorb the 2,300-student La Marque district.
In February, the TEA revoked the district's accreditation, citing unacceptable academic ratings and poor finances. In September, Williams said he'd replace the La Marque school board with a board of managers. Last month, Superintendent Terri Watkins announced she'd resign Dec. 18.
The bay-front district is bounded on the mainland by the Texas City, Dickinson and Hitchcock districts. The Galveston school district lies across West Bay.
McALLEN, Texas (AP) —
Two South Texas school board members and another man have been indicted in a public corruption case linked to educational services.
An indictment unsealed Friday in McAllen names 53-year-old Eloy Infante and 45-year-old Elpidio Yanez Jr., plus 50-year-old Adrian Guerrero.
Federal prosecutors say the men from Donna are charged with conspiracy, attempted extortion and federal programs bribery.
The suspects, who surrendered Friday, allegedly attempted to extort bribes from another person whose company provided services to the Donna Independent School District.
The Oct. 27 indictment says the businessman was told he must pay $10,000 each to Infante and Yanez to retain district contracts. Guerrero allegedly served as middleman.
Prosecutors didn't immediately provide information on attorneys for the men. Messages left for Infante and Yanez weren't immediately returned Friday.
