Mexican Border Police Chief Gunned Down
The police chief in the border city across the Rio Grande from Laredo was killed late Wednesday, less than five weeks after taking office. Full Story
The latest border news from The Texas Tribune.
The police chief in the border city across the Rio Grande from Laredo was killed late Wednesday, less than five weeks after taking office. Full Story
In case you were planning any trips to violence-ridden Mexico, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety says don't — again. Full Story
The Trib staff on the sweeping cuts in the proposed House budget, Grissom on what's lost and not found at the Department of Public Safety, Galbraith on the wind power conundrum, Hamilton on higher ed's pessimistic budget outlook, Stiles and Swicegood debut an incredibly useful bill tracker app, Ramsey interviews Rick Perry on the cusp of his second decade as governor, Aguilar on a Mexican journalist's quest for asylum in the U.S., Ramshaw on life expectancy along the border, M. Smith on the obstacles school districts face in laying off teachers and yours truly talks gambling and the Rainy Day Fund with state Rep. Jim Pitts: The best of our best from January 17 to 21, 2011. Full Story
The asylum hearing for Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez ended Friday afternoon in El Paso without a ruling from a U.S. immigration judge. Gutiérrez has been seeking asylum since June 2008, when he fled the small Chihuahua town of Ascensión after receiving death threats for his reporting on alleged corruption in the Mexican military. The hearing is scheduled to resume Feb. 4. Full Story
There are two paths to asylum in the United States. Mexican journalist Emilio Gutiérrez, whose life was threatened by the Mexican military, may have taken the wrong one. Full Story
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott accused the federal government of putting U.S. citizens' lives at risk following a reported cross-border shooting Thursday in Hudspeth County. During the incident, first reported by the El Paso Times, at least one Mexican gunman allegedly shot toward Hudspeth County workers in rural West Texas who were doing maintenance on a desolate road. Full Story
The New Mexico State University librarian and professor on why she painstakingly keeps a daily tally of the killings in Juárez, which surpassed 3,100 in 2010. Full Story
As 2010 drew to a close, the death toll in Juárez surpassed an astonishing 3,100 for the year. Since 2008, New Mexico State University librarian and professor Molly Molloy has been painstakingly keeping a daily tally of each one of the drug war killings that has made the city across the Rio Grande from El Paso one of the most dangerous in the world. Full Story
The Democratic congressman from El Paso on what life will be like with the Republicans in control of the U.S. House, why the information released by WikiLeaks shouldn't be public, whether we should be sending troops to Mexico and why Gov. Rick Perry talks so much about spillover violence. Full Story
U.S. Rep. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, who survived the GOP rout last November, didn’t mince words Wednesday when asked if he’d considering throwing in with the other guys. Full Story
Alan Bersin, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol commissioner, will be headed to Big Bend National Park on Thursday for an announcement that might please residents of that remote area of the border. Bersin is set to meet with National Park Services staff to discuss the opening of a border crossing in Boquillas Canyon. Full Story
The Webb County Sheriff's Department has released the names and photographs of 151 inmates who escaped from a Mexican state prison on the border this month. So far, he says, there is no evidence the convicts have fled to Texas. Full Story
The asylum case of a Mexican family whose matriarch was assassinated during a political protest could “define the politics of refugee detention” and shape how the U.S. weighs future cases of those wishing to flee political persecution in Mexico, an El Paso-based immigration attorney said Tuesday. Full Story
As he sat in traffic last Saturday on the final stretch of I-35 in Laredo in a truck loaded with U.S. goods, Higinio Navarrette was a microcosm of the holiday season on the border: an area where the local economy is as affected by security and cartel-related violence as it is by the nationwide economic slowdown. Full Story
Should Texas gun sellers be required to notify the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives when they sell two or more semi-automatic rifles to one person within a five-day period? The feds, desperate to stem the flow of weapons into Mexico, say yes. Gun rights advocates like Gov. Rick Perry say such a policy would be misguided. Full Story
The inmates who escaped from a prison in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas, which sits across from Laredo, are likely part of a plan to bolster the ranks of the Zetas cartel, says Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar. Full Story
At least 140 prisoners escaped from a Nuevo Laredo prison today, though that number is believed to be a conservative estimate. Mexican media outlet El Universal reported this morning that the number of escapees could exceed 190. Full Story
A month after cartel warfare forced residents of the Mexican city of Ciudad Mier to abandon their homes and seek refuge on the Texas side of the border, they have tentatively started to make their way back, buoyed by the presence of three military battalions. What happens when the soldiers leave is anyone's guess. Full Story
So much for the economic impact of headline-making violence. Despite being on track to exceed 3,000 homicides this year, Juárez has seen its manufacturing sector flourish, regaining since July 2009 a quarter of the jobs lost during the height of the recession. More than $42 billion in trade value moved through the ports that the city shares with El Paso last year, and that number should be higher in 2010. And the amount of of tractor-trailer traffic hauling goods through the region was 22 percent greater in the first six months of this year than it was in the same period last year. Full Story
The U.S. Border Patrol is restarting its controversial Alien Transfer and Exit Program, in which illegal border-crossers caught in Arizona are transported to Texas and deported to Mexico. Texas officials say the plan makes as little sense to them now as it did last year. Full Story