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    Texas’s Eagle Pass voters turned to Trump. A year later, some have doubts

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    Along southern Texas, the Rio Grande forms the US-Mexico border, an arrangement established after the end of the Mexican-American war. Eagle Pass, which had been known as El Paso del Águila, became the first US settlement on the Rio Grande.Swimming across the river has remained treacherous ever since. But migrants never stopped risking their lives to set foot on US soil – and in 2023, those numbers reach record highs as Eagle Pass, the seat of Maverick county, became the epicenter of growing backlash over the Biden administration’s immigration policies.In 2024, for the first time in a century, the Hispanic-majority border county voted for a Republican: Donald Trump. Trump won 14 out of 18 counties along the southern border, gaining the most support there of any Republican in three decades. But he made his biggest gains in Maverick, with 59% of the votes, increasing his support by 14% from 2020.While many supported Trump’s policies on border security, one year later some residents in Eagle Pass are increasingly uncomfortable with the tactics the administration has used across the country in keeping with its mass deportation agenda. Since Trump’s inauguration, federal agents have disrupted communities as they arrest parents who are with their children, show up at schools or daycare facilities, and accidentally sweep up US citizens.The intensity of the national crackdown is jarring for residents like Manuel Mello III who have been on the frontlines of border issues for decades. The chief of the Eagle Pass fire department, Mello explained that border crossings have always been part of the city’s history.Mello said his grandmother would pack food and water for those migrants that passed by. She would give them las bendiciones, or blessings in Spanish, and send them off. But what he saw at the Rio Grande in the last year of the Biden administration was unlike anything he had witnessed in his 33 years in the fire department.“We would get between 30 to 60 emergency calls a day about migrants crossing the river with a lot of injuries, some with broken femurs or this lady who had an emergency childbirth,” Mello said.In all 2024, the Eagle Pass fire department received more than 400 emergency calls and reported eight drownings. This year, the department has responded to fewer than 100 calls and reported only three drownings, according to numbers shared with the Guardian.“Now Eagle Pass has gone back to normal, but this is still a broken system. Because you’re deporting people doesn’t mean that you’re fixing it,” Mello said.A mile away, Ricardo Lopez and a group of friends gathered at a McDonald’s, as they do every week, to discuss some of the challenges facing Eagle Pass, a town in which 28,o00 people live.Not long after ordering coffee, Lopez and his friends, all bilingual men of Mexican descent, realized it has been almost a year since the last elections. They remembered the evolution of what was then an extraordinary series of events: from thousands of migrants swimming across the Rio Grande each day to foreign journalists wandering the town’s streets and Texas national guard troops grabbing lunch at local restaurants.“I think most people that live here can agree that it was the illegal immigration that was causing all the problems and that [Joe] Biden didn’t respond to the needs of the border,” said Lopez, 79, who recently ran for city council in Eagle Pass and lost. “After the last election I asked some of my friends, why did you vote for Trump? And they put it back to me: don’t you see what is happening? Though I don’t like the guy, he fixed the problem.”Just hours after taking office for a second time, Trump signed an order declaring a national emergency that allowed additional US troops to arrive at the southern border. But Trump didn’t only try to cut down on illegal immigration. The administration also terminated a mobile phone app created under Biden known as CBP One, which had allowed tens of thousands of people waiting in Mexico to cross into the US legally and apply for asylum.Since then, residents like Lopez have seen a dramatic change in Eagle Pass.At the height of the spike in migration in December of 2023, the border patrol recorded over 2,300 crossings a day in the Del Rio sector, home to Eagle Pass. In September of this year, it averaged just 30 crossings a day there, government data shows.Joshua Blank, research director of the Texas Politics project, a nonpartisan polling initiative by the University of Texas at Austin, said Maverick county was a reflection of broader political dynamics in the state, where Republicans were seeking to expand their appeal in blue-collar areas, including among Latinos.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Texas is a changing competitive landscape and more diverse than the country as a whole. If you try to appeal to Hispanics based on their Hispanicness, you might be missing the mark. And I think Democrats have probably failed in engaging with this group of people,” Blank said.Shortly after Biden entered the White House, Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, had also launched Operation Lone Star in a bid to deter illegal immigration. The effort quickly raised concerns about its tactics, including the busing of thousands of migrants to Chicago, New York and Washington DC.As part of the initiative, an 80-acre base camp was built in Eagle Pass to house 1,800 Texas national guard soldiers. Troops deployed there by Texas and other Republican-led states have been seen standing on the US side of the border setting up coils of razor wire along the banks of the Rio Grande, ordering migrants to swim back to Mexico.Texas says Operation Lone Star had led to more than 500,000 apprehensions of undocumented people.On a recent afternoon, the Guardian observed armed Texas national guard troops walking and watching over the US-Mexico border atop shipping containers. No migrants were seen crossing the river from Mexico. In Piedras Negras, there wasn’t razor wire preventing access to the Rio Grande.While the migration dynamics have changed at the border, some longtime residents are not just concerned about the impact on people. They’re also worried about the degradation of the environment as a result of Trump and Abbott’s crackdown.Abbott used a natural disaster declaration to install floating buoys separated by saw-blades in the river as a part of Operation Lone Star. Shortly after, Jessie Fuentes, the owner of a kayaking company in Eagle Pass, filed a lawsuit, seeking to stop the installation of floating barriers.“The river was part of my grandfather’s upbringing, my father’s upbringing and mine, more than 200 years of experience as a family, and now it’s been mistreated with this militarization,” said Fuentes.“The river can’t defend itself so I sued the Texas government.” More

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      US army gynecologist accused of secretly filming patients during exams

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      Military officials in Texas have suspended a US army gynecologist over allegations he inappropriately touched and secretly filmed dozens of women during appointments at an on-base medical center.A civil lawsuit filed in Bell county on Monday alleges that Blaine McGraw, a doctor and army major at Fort Hood, repeatedly groped a woman during a series of seven or eight consultations, and took intimate videos and photographs of her that were later found on his phone.The 13-page lawsuit, seen by the Guardian, also alleges that senior officers allowed McGraw to continue to work despite receiving complaints of sexual misconduct against him over several years and at another army medical center in Hawaii.“By doing so, the army gave cover to a predator in uniform,” the lawsuit states.“This case exposes a shocking betrayal committed within the walls of a US army hospital. McGraw … used his position of trust to sexually exploit, manipulate, and secretly record women under his care. What should have been a place of healing became a stage for abuse.”Attorney Andrew Cobos, who filed the lawsuit on behalf of the plaintiff, the wife of an active duty service member identified by the pseudonym Jane Doe, said he represented at least another 45 women who came forward with similar allegations.A military official told NBC on condition of anonymity that at least 25 women had contacted the army’s criminal investigation division after the images were found on McGraw’s phone.“Upon information and belief, investigators recovered thousands of photographs and videos from his phone, taken over the course of multiple years, depicting scores of female patients, many of whom remain unidentified,” the lawsuit said.It said the first complaints were filed against him “years earlier” when he worked at the Tripler army medical center in Honolulu, Hawaii, but army leadership “laughed off credible allegations”, which allowed his misconduct to “thrive” in his new job in Texas.McGraw was suspended from his position at Fort Hood’s Carl R Darnall army medical center on 17 October, although an army statement announcing the opening of an investigation did not identify him by name – referring to him only as a “medical provider”.In an updated statement released on Monday, the army provided more details of the timeline of its investigation and said it had identified and attempted to contact all patients the suspended doctor saw during his time at Fort Hood.Among them was the plaintiff, who received a call from investigators asking her to come in for an interview. When she did, the lawsuit states, she learned McGraw recorded “nearly the entirety of her final appointment, including both the breast and pelvic examinations, without her knowledge or consent”.She was shown several screenshots from videos recovered from McGraw’s phone from the appointment three days earlier – images the lawsuit states “unmistakably depicted” her body.After the interview with investigators, after which she said she was handed a generic pamphlet with phone numbers for various army departments, the woman sat in her car and cried.She was “disoriented and disarrayed”, the court papers said, with “her sense of safety shattered”.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionSeveral of McGraw’s alleged victims spoke at a press conference recently outside the gates of Fort Hood, criticizing the army’s response to complaints against him.“It wasn’t the act itself that hurt me, it was the way it was handled afterwards – the indifference, the lack of humanity,” one woman said.Cobos said he also planned to file a separate action under the federal Tort Claims Act to hold the army responsible for what he said was a “culture of silence and indifference” that allowed McGraw to operate.“This lawsuit is the first step in shining a light on this misconduct and restoring justice. The army needs accountability, and that only happens through transparency,” he said.The Guardian contacted Daniel Conway, an attorney representing McGraw, for comment.In a statement to NBC, Conway said his client had been “fully cooperative” with the investigation.“We’ve expressed to the government our concern that plaintiffs’ attorneys are holding press conferences citing inaccurate information apparently learned from government sources,” he said.“At this point it’s best to let the investigation complete before we comment.” More

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      Should Californians vote to redistrict and fight Texas’s fire with fire? | Moira Donegan

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      What, exactly, is Congress for? In the second Trump administration, it can be hard to tell. The power to declare war, long considered a crucial legislative power, has become a murky prerogative of the executive branch in the years since September 11; Trump, in recent months, has claimed even more of that power for himself, conducting strikes on vessels in the Caribbean.The power of the purse seems to have largely been stripped from Congress, too; now, under the office of management and budget director, Russell Vought, much of the power to appropriate federal funds has also defaulted to the presidency, with the White House claiming the ability to abort congressionally authorized expenditures and seeking to redirect the money elsewhere. It’s not like they’re passing any laws, either; virtually all legislation must now be crammed into budget reconciliation bills, massive perennial must-spend omnibus legislation that can circumvent the filibuster. But when those don’t pass – and increasingly, they don’t – the government simply shuts down. At least, that is, big parts of the government do – and it’s not clear how many people notice. Currently, the government has been shut down all month; there are no signs of it reopening anytime soon. But the executive branch keeps on humming along.And so the question of control of Congress can seem somewhat moot. Why should Americans care who holds a majority in a body that has largely abolished itself?And yet Proposition 50, California’s redistricting referendum that could deliver five additional House seats to the Democrats if it is embraced by voters in a special election next month, has captured the political imagination of liberals across the country. In part, it is a belated response to trends happening elsewhere: Republican-controlled states have long embraced dramatic partisan gerrymandering while large Democratic-controlled states such as California, New York and Washington draw their maps via non-partisan independent commissions, an asymmetry that has led to closely divided House control and a longstanding sense, by Democrats, that their party is bringing a knife to a gun fight. The California measure is explicitly intended as a countermove to a mid-decade redistricting that recently passed in Texas, which installed maps that will give Republicans an additional five seats in the state’s congressional delegation next year; similar redistricting moves are under way in states such as Missouri and Indiana. (Democrats in Virginia are also following California’s lead in seeking to redistrict.)The California measure seems likely to pass, as Democratic and liberal voters respond with fear and anger to Trump’s authoritarian consolidation of power and look for ways to check his worst impulses. But Prop 50 is not without controversy. Some critics warn that the move could backfire, with Democratic-controlled states’ efforts to redistrict setting off a retaliatory cycle in which Republican-controlled states do even more to draw their maps so as to foreclose any possibility of Democratic competitiveness. Others have critiqued the measure on more purely ideological pro-democracy grounds: a district that is drawn in such a way that the outcome of the election is never really in doubt, they say, is one that cannot be said to be truly representative: it means, necessarily, that the power of dissenting voices is muted, and that the process of deliberation, argument and persuasion that is supposed to characterize a healthy democratic process will be confined only to primary elections, if it happens at all.It is worth taking each of these objections on their own terms. The first critique, that Prop 50 will spur conservatives to redraw their own maps in retaliation, fails as a causal argument: it does not make sense to say that Republicans will be made to behave in antidemocratic ways by Democrats’ actions when they are already doing so without those actions. The Republican party, I would observe, has not needed any incentive of retaliation or revenge to redraw maps that secure permanent seats for themselves: they have been willing to do this for its own sake, in the total absence of Democratic reciprocation, for years.The second critique, I think, is more substantive, reflecting not just a tactical disagreement about how to confront the Republicans’ anti-democracy turn, but a kind of melancholic desire for a different country than the one that the US has become. It is true that in a better world – in the world that most Democrats, I think, yearn for and aspire to – Prop 50 would be distasteful to our principles, and not mandated by our situation. It is not good to pack and crack disfavored demographics; it is not good for politicians to select their voters, instead of the other way around; it is not good that elections are rendered non-competitive. That these measures have become necessary in order to slow the authoritarian creep of Trump’s power and lessen the amount of suffering he is able to inflict is sad; it is a sign of how far we have fallen from something more like a democracy. But they are necessary. It is only after the battle against Trumpism has been won that we can mourn what fighting it has made us.If Congress does not in practice have lawmaking, war making or appropriations power, what is it, exactly, that Prop 50’s five new Democratic house members will be sent to Washington to do? One thing that Congress still retains is subpoena power, and the power to investigate. Even in our era of sclerotic politics and congressional atrophy, it has made use of that power to great effect. In 2027, if Prop 50 passes and California’s new Democrats are sworn in, they will find themselves a part of a body with the power to investigate Trump, to televise their hearings into his actions and to compel members of his inner circle to testify. It’s not nothing, and more importantly, it’s not anything that any Republican would do.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      How ‘screw Trump’ messaging may help California’s Proposition 50 prevail

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      There are many ways to characterize Proposition 50, the single ballot initiative that Californians will be voting on this election season.You could say it’s about redrawing congressional district lines outside the regular once-a-decade schedule. You could say, more precisely, that it’s about counterbalancing Republican efforts to engineer congressional seats in their favor in Texas and elsewhere with a gerrymander that favors the Democrats. You could, like the measure’s detractors, call it a partisan power grab that risks undermining 15 years of careful work to make California’s congressional elections as fair and competitive as possible.The way California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, and the Democrats are selling it to voters, though, boils down to something much simpler and more visceral: it’s an invitation to raise a middle finger to Donald Trump, a president fewer than 40% of Californians voted for and many loathe – for reasons that extend far beyond his attempts at election manipulation. For that reason alone, the yes campaign believes it is cruising to an easy victory.“There’s actually a double tease here,” said Garry South, one of California’s most experienced and most outspoken Democratic political consultants who has been cheer-leading the measure. “Trump and Texas, the state Californians love to hate. How can you lose an initiative that’s going to stick it to both?”Proposition 50, also known as the Election Rigging Response Act, proposes amending the California constitution and suspending the work of the state’s independent redistricting commission until 2031 so the Democrats can carve out five additional safe seats. That wouldn’t significantly change the power balance in California, since Democrats already occupy 43 of the state’s 52 House seats.But it would compensate for the five seats that Texas Republicans, acting on Trump’s direct urging, wrested for themselves earlier this year. “Fight fire with fire,” has been Newsom’s mantra, and several influential national figures in the Democratic party – everyone from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the prominent New York congresswoman, to former president Barack Obama – have signed on.Democrats are optimistic they will see a significant vote shift in their favor next year, because Trump’s approval ratings are already underwater in the swing states that he narrowly won last November, and in California he is polling as low as 29%.But that won’t translate into more congressional seats if district boundaries are redrawn in a way that protects vulnerable Republican incumbents and eliminates meaningful competition. According to one estimate by the Brennan Center for Justice, Republicans already have a net 16-seat advantage for themselves in House races, thanks to gerrymandering efforts across the country in the wake of the 2020 census. The Texas move increases that advantage to 21 seats. And similar, smaller-scale moves in Missouri and North Carolina bring it to 23.“Republicans want to steal enough seats in Congress to rig the next election and wield unchecked power for two more years,” Obama charges in a widely aired campaign ad that began circulating last week. “With Prop 50, you can stop Republicans in their tracks.”Polls and focus groups suggest many Californians have mixed feelings about abandoning their state’s non-partisan district maps, but a slim majority say they see the need to do so anyway and plan to vote yes on 4 November.Support for the measure has been rising steadily. Earlier this month, the yes vote was barely cracking 50% in most of the polling, and about 15% of poll respondents said they were undecided. Another 30% indicated that their support for or against was soft.Two surveys published this week, however, showed Proposition 50 passing by at least a 20-point margin and the yes vote is now up in the high 50s or low 60s. Fully three-quarters of those intending to vote yes told a CBS News poll conducted by YouGov that they were doing so to oppose Trump, just as the yes campaign has been urging.Ballot initiatives are not quite like other elections, though, especially in an off-year election likely to result in lower turnout than usual.“The history of [these] campaigns in this state shows that late-deciding voters tend to vote against initiatives,” said Dan Schnur, a former Republican campaign consultant who teaches political communications at Berkeley and the University of Southern California. “They’re expressing an inherent skepticism that arises if voters don’t know a lot about a measure. They want to guard against it making their lives worse.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe latest polling data suggests that such last-minute skepticism may not apply in this case, most likely because Trump is such a polarizing, and motivating factor. Polls consistently show higher support for Proposition 50 among so-called “high propensity” voters – those who show up at the polls time after time – and early mail-in voting returns indicate stronger than usual numbers, with registered Democrats outnumbering registered Republicans by almost a two-to-one margin.The “yes” side has outraised the “no” side and been far more visible in campaign ads and appearances. Kevin McCarthy, the former House speaker who represented a southern California district for 16 years, promised over the summer to raise $100m to defeat Proposition 50 but has managed only a tiny fraction of that – less than $6m, according to the secretary of state’s office. And the big Republican guns who might ordinarily have hit the campaign trail have been conspicuous by their absence – something that suggests to many political observers they think the fight is unwinnable.Overall, the yes campaign has outraised the no campaign by about $138m to $82m.Even the pleas of the no campaign’s most visible advocate, Arnold Schwarzenegger, have proven ineffective. According to an Emerson poll, two-thirds of voters say it makes no difference to them what Schwarzenegger thinks. As a Republican, he lacks credibility with many Democrats, and as a moderate who loathes Trump, he has little traction with the Republican base. More than 20% of voters say his advocacy actually makes them more likely to do the opposite of what he wants.The problem for the no campaign, according to South and others, is that there is no message persuasive enough to counter the visceral appeal of “screw Trump”, particularly at a time when California voters are angry about ICE raids, military deployments in US cities including Los Angeles, federal funding cuts, the destruction of the East Wing of the White House, and more.Some groups, including one led by the billionaire Charles Munger Jr that has ploughed more than $30m into the no campaign, have pushed the argument that Proposition 50 is undemocratic. But national polling has consistently shown that appeals to democracy do little to sway voters because both sides think it is at stake. Calling Proposition 50 a “power grab” merely reminds voters that Republicans in Texas grabbed power first.Other opponents, including Steve Hilton, the leading Republican candidate in next year’s governor’s race, have sought to stir voter discontent with Newsom and cast the initiative as one more distraction cooked up by a governor with national ambitions when he should be focusing on the state’s housing shortage and affordability crisis. Hilton calls Proposition 50 an “illegal and corrupt contribution to [Newsom’s as yet unannounced] presidential campaign”.That works as red meat for the Republican base. But the last time Republicans tried to turn the California electorate against Newsom in a stand-alone ballot initiative – a recall vote in 2021 – Newsom prevailed by a 62-38 margin. And Newsom’s approval numbers have only increased as a result of Proposition 50.“The no side has two problems with its core argument,” South said. “It’s too complicated, and it’s too abstract. The average voter doesn’t have a clue what their congressional lines are. And, in addition to that, they don’t care.“So the choice comes down to: you can screw Trump, or you can pay homage to a redistricting commission that voters approved in 2010 and probably don’t remember. There’s no way this thing loses.” More

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      ‘He didn’t deserve that’: widow speaks out after husband’s violent death at ICE facility

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      A few hours before the Texas sun set, Stephany Gauffeny held her newborn son close to her chest as she started walking in a cemetery. The grave she stopped at had no headstone, but Gauffeny, 32, had written her husband’s name on a red ribbon.She married Miguel García-Hernández in 2016, nearly 10 years before he was shot at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Dallas in late September.“I am trying to cope because that’s what I am supposed to do, but what hurts me the most is to hear my kids ask where daddy is,” said Gauffeny, speaking to the Guardian in her first interview since his death.“My eight-year-old daughter with autism waited for him until the last minute. They would talk over the phone while he was detained, but one day before the funeral, I had to tell her that daddy was in heaven and that he would be watching her and that she wouldn’t see him.”García-Hernández ended up in ICE custody early on 24 September after a short time in jail for a DUI. That same morning, while he was shackled inside a government van, a gunman opened fire outside the ICE field office in Dallas where he was awaiting intake.View image in fullscreenFederal authorities have said the attacker was targeting ICE officials, but only detainees were hurt, including García-Hernández, 31, who was rushed to the hospital in critical condition.“I was coming back from a doctor’s appointment for my pregnancy and I was so excited to tell him about our son, but I got a call saying that my husband was in the hospital,” said Gauffeny, switching between English and Spanish intermittently.“I walked into the [hospital] room and I just started crying. His arms were restrained to the bed and he had handcuffs on his feet.”García-Hernández died on 29 September from his gunshot wounds. His third child with Gauffeny was born three days later. He would have turned 32 on 5 January, the day of their 10th wedding anniversary, Gauffeny said as she stood sorrowfully in front of García-Hernández’s grave.She believes the rising political violence and anti-immigration agenda in the US played a part in her husband’s violent death.The couple had been focusing hard on the new home they bought a few months ago in Arlington, on the outskirts of Dallas. There, they lived with their children, as well as two girls from Gauffeny’s previous relationship whom García-Hernández had helped raise.“He talked about little projects like turning the garage into a room, painting some parts of the house, getting a new fence and doing it all by himself,” said Gauffeny, her voice cracking.“It hurts to look around now, you know? Who is going to do it?”García-Hernández was born in San Luis Potosí, a central state in Mexico, and crossed the US border without papers when he was 14. Though the Obama-era Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (Daca) program has benefited hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants with similar cases since 2012, he arrived just too early to qualify.García-Hernández lived in the Dallas area for nearly two decades, most recently making a living painting and remodeling homes. Gauffeny said he had applied for a Biden administration initiative, dubbed Keeping Families Together, that was designed to allow the undocumented spouses of US citizens to get legal status. However, a federal judge in Texas blocked the policy just a few months after it started.View image in fullscreenMartina Alvarado, a lawyer who tried to help García-Hernández fix his immigration status, said he was awaiting a waiver that, if granted, would effectively erase his illegal entry into the US and allow him to get a green card based on his marriage to an American citizen.Gauffeny said her husband was planning to open his own painting company as soon as his immigration case was resolved, and he had been saving money for the equipment.Since Donald Trump took office for a second time, his administration has aggressively expanded immigration raids across the country, granting deportation agents a broad mandate to target those in the country without proper documents, even if they’re not criminals. The crackdown has spurred massive protests and growing concerns over tactics by federal agents.The contentious climate around immigration under the Trump administration can also be palpable far from the neighborhoods and the streets where federal agents roam. After the shooting and the death of García-Hernández, Gauffeny said she received hateful messages from strangers on social media.“Some comments said they were happy that it happened because he shouldn’t have been here illegally,” said Gauffeny.“He and I never hid the fact he entered illegally, you know, but what I keep saying is that he didn’t deserve that and we’re going to fight this.”Eric Cedillo, a Dallas attorney who has been helping Gauffeny since the shooting, said they are contemplating filing a lawsuit, without specifying details at that time.García-Hernández’s mother, Maria García, was deported to Mexico earlier this year and was initially unable to see her son when he was hospitalized. But she was allowed into the US after the Mexican government intervened. In a statement, Mexico’s foreign ministry said “an extraordinary humanitarian parole was arranged for García-Hernández’s mother to travel to the US”.The statement did not provide information on what, if any, economic assistance has or will be given to Gauffeny to cover expenses related to García-Hernández’s funeral.View image in fullscreenAt the funeral, a Mexican flag was laid next to his grave by the Brown Berets of North Texas, a community defense group that runs an “ICE Watch” in the area. When Stephany visited with newborn Miles Alexander last week, the flag was gone but some roses remained.Gauffeny said that securing the burial site was possible thanks to money donated to a GoFundMe page created by her sister-in-law. There is no headstone on García-Hernández’s grave yet because she cannot afford it.“My biggest concern now is to have a place to live in the future. Our mortgage is very expensive and we were already struggling when he was detained. I am scared for my kids,” Gauffeny said.Before leaving the cemetery in Arlington, Gauffeny recalled that her husband had bought a Bible in Spanish while in the custody of Tarrant county for the DUI. Days after his death, his belongings came in the mail, including the Bible, which he had bookmarked.She said: “It was on a page in Genesis. He wanted to read the Bible from the start to the end but couldn’t continue because he was killed.” More

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      ‘You cannot undo a wrongful execution’: push to halt killing of Texas man in ‘shaken baby’ case

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      At 6pm next Thursday, barring a last-minute reprieve, Robert Roberson will become the first person in America to be executed under the theory of “shaken baby syndrome”, a medical diagnosis from the 1970s that is so disputed it is now widely denounced as junk science.Roberson, 58, will enter the death chamber at the Huntsville unit in Texas, where he will be strapped to a gurney and injected with a cocktail of lethal drugs. He will be put to death having been convicted of shaking to death his two-year-old daughter Nikki Curtis in 2002.A coalition of advocates is calling for the execution to be called off, arguing Roberson is innocent of a crime that never even happened. They include several people exonerated from shaken baby syndrome convictions; more than 80 bipartisan Texas lawmakers; the lead detective in Roberson’s original investigation; and members of his trial jury.Roberson’s lawyer, Gretchen Sween, told the Guardian that not only was her client’s life in the balance – so too was justice. “If Robert is executed next week, with all that is known about the profound due-process problems on top of his actual innocence, then Texas would have no legitimate justice system.”She added: “How could you have confidence in a system that cannot fix a case like this, where the science has been so thoroughly discredited?”A year ago, Roberson came within two hours of dying by lethal injection and was only saved by a frenzied late-night intervention by Texas legislators. In an interview with the Guardian from death row shortly before that execution date, he denied having shaken his daughter.“I don’t know what happened to her,” he said. “I wouldn’t want that to be on nobody: to lose a child, especially if you tried to do right and you loved her and tried to get to know her, then to be accused.”Now Sween and Roberson’s legal team are scrambling yet again to prevent him becoming a statistic – as the first person on death row to be judicially killed on the back of disputed shaken baby syndrome.Last week his defense team petitioned the US fifth circuit court of appeals requesting a federal review of new evidence that points to an alternative explanation for Nikki’s death. The petition includes expert testimony from 10 medical pathologists who question the findings of Nikki’s 2002 autopsy.The experts conclude that the child’s brain swelling was not caused by violent shaking, but was the result of serious infection. Nikki had undiagnosed pneumonia at the time she slumped into a coma, according to the experts, exacerbated by improper prescription of dangerous medicines and a short fall from the bed in which she was sleeping.The petition also highlights that a few years ago Roberson was found to have autism, a condition which had gone undiagnosed at the time of his daughter’s death. His lawyers argue that this helps explain how flat and unemotional he appeared when he brought the dying girl into hospital, a demeanor that was used against him at trial as evidence of guilt.A separate petition has been pending for eight months at the state’s top criminal court, the Texas court of criminal appeals. The 163-page document filed by Roberson’s lawyers in February argues that science behind shaken baby syndrome had been so undermined by new evidence that today “no rational juror would find Roberson guilty of capital murder”.A decision from the court is expected any day.Last year, the same criminal appeals court overturned the 35-year sentence of Andrew Roark, who had been found guilty of injuring his girlfriend’s 13-month-old child in 1997. The judges found that key scientific testimony at Roark’s trial had been unreliable, and concluded that if it were presented to a jury today it would “likely yield an acquittal”.There are glaring similarities between the Roark case and Roberson’s conviction. Both men became the subject of shaken baby syndrome accusations on the back of a diagnosis from the same child abuse specialist, Janet Squires, delivered from the same hospital.“The similarities between the cases are overwhelming,” Sween said.The attorney general of Texas, Ken Paxton, continues to stand by Roberson’s death sentence, describing the efforts of the condemned man’s supporters as “11th-hour, one-sided, extra­ju­di­cial stunts that attempt to obscure facts and rewrite his past”.In an unusual move, Paxton secured next week’s execution date while the prisoner’s petition was still pending before the appeals court.Some of Nikki’s other family members are also pressing for the execution to go ahead.Shaken baby syndrome (SBS), which often now goes under the name “abusive head trauma”, was developed in the early 1970s to diagnose children who became severely ill or died from internal brain injuries without necessarily showing outward signs of harm. One of its earliest proponents was the British pediatric neurosurgeon Norman Guthkelch.View image in fullscreenBy the 1980s the theory had hardened into the presumption that a triad of symptoms in children under two years old conclusively indicated abusive shaking. If those three symptoms were indicated – brain swelling, bleeding between the tissues covering the brain, and bleeding behind the eyes – then a crime must have been committed.In the past 15 years medical understanding has grown. It is now widely recognised that other factors can lie behind such brain injuries, including underlying conditions, infections, and even relatively short falls.Studies have also shown that it is physically unlikely that severe brain trauma is caused by shaking alone, without there also being visible injuries to the spine or skull. In Roberson’s case, Nikki displayed no such injuries.Guthkelch himself warned in 2012 that the three symptoms he had identified should not be taken as categoric signs of abuse. “There was not a vestige of proof when the name was suggested that shaking, and nothing else, causes the triad,” he said.In 2023 a group of global experts drawn from many disciplines including pediatrics, pathology, ophthalmology, neurology, physics and biomechanics reviewed the literature on SBS. Their work was published as a book, Shaken Baby Syndrome: Investigating the Abusive Head Trauma Controversy.The book’s co-editor, Keith Findley, said that “we consistently reached the conclusion that the scientific underpinnings for shaken baby syndrome are just not there. This is not to deny that abuse happens. It’s to say that medical findings alone simply cannot be a reliable basis for diagnosing child abuse.”Findley, who is founder of the Center for Integrity in Forensic Sciences, said: “It is absolutely horrifying to think we are days away from killing a man based on scientific assertions that are known to be wrong”.As medical doubts have grown about the reliability of an SBS diagnosis, so too have concerns about its application in criminal cases. Since 1989, 39 parents and caregivers have been exonerated in the US having been convicted largely on the grounds of a faulty SBS hypothesis, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.Two of those exonerations were in Texas, including Roark’s last November.Josh Burns, 49, is an SBS exoneree. In 2014, when he was working as a Delta Air Lines pilot and living in Michigan, his daughter Naomi suffered a bout of vomiting and he was accused of having harmed her by violent shaking.The girl was taken into foster care, and he was convicted of child abuse and spent a year in jail. It took him 10 years to clear his name.An investigation by the state’s conviction integrity unit last year concluded there had been no reliable evidence of harm. Naomi’s symptoms could be explained by dehydration caused by a stomach bug.Burns and his family paid a devastating price for his wrongful conviction. He lost his job as a pilot, and his family was forced to move out of Michigan – ironically, they ended up in Texas, where Roberson is now scheduled to be executed.“I know how gut-wrenching and soul-crushing it is to be accused of harming the person that you love the most,” Burns told the Guardian. He has joined other SBS exonerees to campaign for a reprieve for Roberson, viscerally aware that there is a critical difference between his plight and Roberson’s.“You can undo a wrongful conviction like mine,” he said. “But you cannot undo a wrongful execution.”Audrey Edmunds, 64, has also joined the campaign to save Roberson. She was babysitting a neighbor’s child, Natalie, in Wisconsin in 1995 when the girl fell ill and died.She was convicted a year later of first-degree reckless homicide under the SBS hypothesis. At trial key facts, including that Natalie had visited the doctor 24 times in the 27 weeks before her death, were glossed over.Edmunds served 11 years of an 18-year sentence, before the forensic pathologist in her case recanted his own testimony having taken on board changes in scientific understanding. In 2008 she was released and all charges against her dismissed.“Mr Roberson should never have been put on death row,” Edmunds said. “Executing him would be a crime. He has been through more than enough.”She said that she saw strong parallels between her case and Roberson’s. “They checked into junk science. They went down a one-way road, and didn’t look at all the other factors.”Texas was the first state in the country to allow prisoners to challenge their sentences on grounds of junk science. Since its inception in 2013, the so-called “junk science writ” has been taken up by about 70 death row prisoners.None of their challenges have been successful. More

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      ‘It’s hard to know what day it is’: families tell of grim Ice detention in Texas

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      At the South Texas Family Residential Center, guards allegedly refer to detained immigrant families as “inmates”, spouses aren’t allowed to hold hands, and children don’t know where they can kick around a ball without getting in trouble, according to a stark court filing.Yet those are minor indignities compared with accounts given to outside monitors of a lack of clean drinking water, sleep, healthy food, privacy, hygiene supplies and appropriate healthcare. Alongside government admissions of what attorneys called “prolonged unexplained detention” at the facility in the remote town of Dilley, Texas anxiety levels for detainees are high.“It is hard to know what day it is because we have been at Dilley for so long,” one 35-year-old parent told watchdogs who had been sent in to assess the conditions.Legal experts made a barrage of allegations about illegal deprivations, violations of basic detention standards and humanitarian concerns at the only known Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) center in the US currently holding immigrant families, as initially detailed in part one of the Guardian’s report.“My main question is: when can I get out of here?” asked an 11-year-old child who had already been detained at Dilley for 53 days, far longer than the general 20-day legal limit for immigrant children in unlicensed facilities, according to the filing in federal court in Los Angeles.The detainees’ accounts were published earlier this month by attorneys acting as outside monitors for standards of child detention, who visited Dilley four times since it reopened as a family detention facility after Donald Trump returned to the White House with his mass deportation agenda.The center is run for Ice by the private corrections and detention company CoreCivic, which declined requests for comment on conditions at Dilley and referred the Guardian to Ice, which then referred on to its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), from which the Guardian also requested comment but none was forthcoming.However, CoreCivic, in response to similar allegations made by detainees at a different facility, in California, company spokesperson Brian Todd said that all its facilities “operate with a significant amount of oversight and accountability, including being monitored by federal officials on a daily basis, to ensure an appropriate standard of living and care for every individual”.Families held at Dilley gave accounts of their experiences, with their names and countries of origin redacted in the publicly available court documents. Some described a “prison-like” environment, even though immigration proceedings are civil matters in the US, not criminal. Detainees spoke of the many rules they endure under lock and key.“I got in trouble for touching my mom,” one 13-year-old said. “The lady [staff member] said: ‘You can’t touch her.’ And I said: ‘But she’s my mom.’ And she said: ‘You can’t touch her.’”The Dilley center is surrounded by a metal perimeter fence.Within, families live in “isolated, cell-like trailers”.“I tried to sit outside to look at the moon and stars one time, but they wouldn’t let me,” the 13-year-old said.Adults lamented the struggle to parent and comfort their children without autonomy over their lives, unable to fulfill a kid’s simple requests, like going to a playground to break the monotony, or providing a banana to eat.
      “It feels so hard to be a good mother here, where there is so much stress and we have so little control over what happens to us,” said one parent, adding: “I am doing all I can to be strong for my children and take care of them. They do not understand why we have to be in this prison. It is impossible to be a good parent in this place.”Detainees described a lack of potable water, even when it’s supposedly filtered.“We just don’t trust that the water is cleanly dispensed and sometimes the water really smells bad. Maybe that is why so many people here are sick,” said one parent.The paid commissary sells bottled water, but its cost – over a dollar per bottle – is out of reach for many of the families. One parent, who had been detained at Dilley for 42 days, said the available free water “has a strong smell of bleach”. The parent bought bottled water for their toddler but could not afford more for personal consumption. “The staff here will not drink the water, but we do not have any other choice,” the parent told the visiting attorneys, according to the court filing.The 11-year-old who had been detained for 53 days and asked when they could get out, described the food as “the same, the same, the same”. Another family said they “eat just enough to survive”.“I don’t eat a lot here and I’ve lost weight since being at this center. I usually do not want to eat because I feel so much anxiety,” a 16-year-old said.Similarly, a 14-year-old already detained for 54 days with their seven-year-old brother said “the chicken tastes like plastic” and “if I don’t like the food that day, I usually just have bread and water and that’s it”. Their brother had stopped eating, they said, and “my parents had to almost beg the medical staff to give him PediaSure”, a nutritional drink for children.“Being here has affected my little brother a lot,” the 14-year-old added. “He doesn’t sleep well. He cries all night. Yesterday he had an attack where he would not stop crying from 7pm to 9pm, and he was outside the room crying that he didn’t want to go back in, and he wanted to be free.”Several families described their children falling behind on their education and development. The onsite school consists mainly of coloring, drawing, painting and doing basic worksheets, with only one hour a day of class for each age group, they said. Many of the children got so bored they stopped attending.“My parents are so worried for me that we are not studying or able to do anything to support our future here,” said a 13-year-old.In terms of health, families described inadequate care and medical staff who downplayed illnesses or even disabilities, according to the filing. One nine-year-old with autism was so sensitive to cleaning chemicals and other odors in the bathrooms that he would vomit when he entered.“Because he would not want to go in there, he would hold it and hold it, and then eventually he would pee his pants. Some days, I would need to change his clothes five or six times,” his parent said, describing the ordeal as “heartbreaking”. The boy started soiling himself and “was in the bathroom crying and yelling and hitting himself”. They had to resort to diapers for the first time since he was two, the court document said.Meanwhile sleep was chronically elusive for many. One family described frequent checks by guards.“They come in and out of the room without knocking. Some are polite, but others barge in without warning … They do not turn off the lights at night. It is difficult for my son to sleep because of the lights and … the staff talk on very loud walkie-talkies throughout the night.”When they did sleep, some families also reported that children suffered from nightmares, but when they went to see the resident mental health staff, they were just told to pray, do breathing exercises and participate in activities.“The psychologist did not ask what the nightmares were about,” said a parent, whose sons aged eight and 10 were having “so many” bad dreams. “She didn’t check if the boys were thinking about hurting themselves or if they had thoughts about wanting to die. She just said nightmares are normal.” More

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      FBI arrest man who allegedly threatened to shoot people at Texas Pride parade

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      Federal authorities in Texas have arrested a man for allegedly threatening to shoot people at a pro-LGBTQ+ parade, to avenge the murder of Charlie Kirk.According to court documents viewed by the Guardian, on 18 September, the FBI’s field office in Dallas was notified by Abilene, Texas, police about online threats from a local resident.The resident, identified as Joshua Cole, allegedly used a Facebook account under the name “Jay Dubya” where he “threatened to commit a shooting” at a Pride parade in Abilene on 20 September.“Fk their parade, I say we lock and load and pay them back for taking out Charlie Kirk,” Cole allegedly wrote, referring to the rightwing political activist, in one comment.Kirk was shot to death on 10 September at Utah Valley University (UVU).Citing investigators’ interviews with people close to the suspect in the case, Utah prosecutors have alleged Tyler Robinson killed Kirk after becoming sick of what he perceived to be Kirk’s “hatred”. Investigators reported being told by his family that Robinson had become “more pro-gay and trans rights oriented” in the year prior to Kirk’s killing.Another comment Cole allegedly posted about the Abilene Pride parade read: “Theres only like 30 of em we can send a clear message to the rest of them.” Invoking an insult used to demean LGBTQ+ people, Cole also allegedly wrote: “come on bro let’s go hunting fairies.”In a sworn affidavit, FBI special agent Sam Venuti wrote that investigators confirmed the “Jay Dubya” account belonged to Cole.Venuti said that he had attempted to contact Cole at his place of work, where he had been employed for the past year. But the employer said that Cole had “just quit” and had “stormed out of the facility in anger”, Venuti said.Co-workers reportedly described him as a “hot head”, according to Venuti’s affidavit.Not long after, local police, with Venuti present, conducted a traffic stop on Cole.When the agent told Cole that he wanted “to talk to him about his online activity”, Venuti wrote that “Cole then sighed and his body posture indicated that [he] knew the reason for our discussion”.Venuti’s affidavit added that Cole “did not appear surprised”.Cole was then detained. According to the FBI, Cole waived his rights against self-incrimination and – during questioning – reportedly admitted to owning a firearm, to operating the “Jay Dubya” Facebook account and to making the threatening posts.The affidavit states that Cole reportedly agreed that “a reasonable person could interpret his comments as a threat”. He also said he did “not believe that the gay pride event should be allowed” though denied “that he was going to take action or shoot parade participants”.Venuti concluded in the affidavit that Cole’s “threats were not conditional”.“The threats were specific,” Venuti wrote. “The threats were also specific to a particular set of victims: people participating in the gay pride parade.”Based on the evidence, the FBI agent wrote, he believed that there was probable cause to arrest Cole for violating a federal law that prohibits threatening communications.Cole could face up to five years in prison if convicted, according to the Cornell University law school’s Legal Information Institute.After being jailed, Cole appeared briefly at a preliminary hearing, where a judge ordered him to remain in custody pending further proceedings.An attorney listed for Cole did not immediately respond to a request for comment.On 26 September, the Abilene Pride Alliance issued a public statement about the incident.“We want to reassure our community that the safety of everyone at Pride has always been, and will continue to be our top priority,” they wrote. “The swift action and continued diligence of [authorities] reflect their commitment to protecting our city and ensuring that Pride remains a safe, inclusive and celebratory space for all.”The Trump administration – which has threatened to crack down on leftwing groups who opposed Kirk’s views – did not announce and has not commented publicly on Cole’s arrest. More

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      Texas Ice facility shooting: Republicans blame ‘radical left’ as Democrats focus on victims and gun control

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      A deadly shooting at a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) field office in Dallas has been met with markedly different reactions from the political right and left.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) confirmed shortly after the news broke that detainees were the victims of the sniper attack on the facility and that no federal agents had been injured. The president and his allies, however, were quick to frame the shooting as an attack on Ice and place blame on the “radical left”.The department previously said two detainees were killed, but later issued a clarifying statement saying the shooting killed one detainee. It said two other detainees were shot and are in critical condition.Official statements have lacked focus on the victims having been detainees, and at a press conference officials said the identities of the victims would not be released at this time. Figures on the left have centered on the victims’ families, pushed for greater gun control and urged a rejection of anti-immigrant sentiment.Donald Trump rushed to politicize the incident, blaming the violence squarely on “Radical Left Terrorists” and the Democratic party. “This violence is the result of the Radical Left Democrats constantly demonizing Law Enforcement, calling for ICE to be demolished, and comparing ICE Officers to “Nazis,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.JD Vance called the shooting an “obsessive attack on law enforcement” that “must stop”. The vice-president claimed it was carried out by “a violent left-wing extremist” who was “politically motivated to go after law enforcement”.Homeland security secretary Kristi Noem also said: “This shooting must serve as a wake-up call to the far-left that their rhetoric about Ice has consequences. Comparing Ice Day-in and day-out to the Nazi Gestapo, the Secret Police, and slave patrols has consequences.”The FBI said authorities recovered shell casings with “anti-Ice messaging” near the shooter, but officials said the investigation was continuing and have neither confirmed the motive behind the attack, nor corroborated claims about the shooter’s ideological background.The FBI is investigating the incident as an act of targeted violence. The DHS said the shooter “fired indiscriminately” at the Ice facility, “including at a van in the sallyport where the victims were shot”. The attacker died from a self-inflicted gun wound.Greg Abbott, the Republican Texas governor and staunch Trump ally, called the attack an “assassination” and said that “Texas supports Ice”. He wrote on X: “This assassination will NOT slow our arrest, detention, & deportation of illegal immigrants. We will work with ICE & the Dallas Police Dept. to get to the bottom of the assassin’s motive.”Texas senator Ted Cruz also invoked the killing of rightwing commentator Charlie Kirk as he told reporters that political violence “must stop” and rebuked politicians who have been critical of Ice. “Your political opponents are not Nazis,” Cruz raged at Democrats, who he accused of “demonizing” Ice. “This has very real consequences,” he said.Later, after a reporter brought up reports that the victims were detainees, Cruz acknowledged that the motive of the shooter was not known.The attack comes amid fears the Trump administration plans a crackdown on leftwing organizations and amid the censorship of critical or nuanced commentary in the aftermath of Kirk’s killing, targeting people from visa holders to late-night talkshow host Jimmy Kimmel.Marc Veasey, a Democratic representative for Texas who represents the area where the shooting took place, told the Notus website that political “gamesmanship” was spiraling out of control, and said he was “sickened” by officials’ focus on law enforcement and lack of acknowledgement that the victims were detainees.He added that he lacked trust in the FBI, which had become “overly political” under Trump, and said smears against Democrats were not helpful, citing that the GOP also routinely call colleagues on the left “Marxists”.“We have to start condemning this rhetoric from both sides,” Veasey said. “I was hoping that after the assassination of Charlie Kirk that we would have learned lessons and that we realize that this is not about gamesmanship. This is not about one-upsmanship … This is about public safety.”Former Arizona congresswoman Gabby Giffords, who leads the gun violence prevention group Giffords, said her heart broke for the victims’ families and urged leaders to take action against the “gun crime crisis” gripping the country.Congresswoman Summer Lee of Pennsylvania, wrote on X: “Leave it to this administration to use a shooting against immigrant detainees to score political points and further provoke violence. We have to get guns off our streets and reject xenophobic and anti-immigrant sentiment that makes all of us less safe.”Pennsylvania state representative Malcolm Kenyatta said: “Kristi Noem couldn’t get to Twitter fast enough to use the Dallas Ice shooting for political points. But local news now says it was detainees who were shot – not Ice agents.” More