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REGULATIONS
PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATES
New 2016 laws
Hopefuls weigh in on wall
States diverge on guns, voting and health care By GEOFF MULVIHILL ASSOCIATED PRESS
TRENTON, N.J. — Laws taking effect at the start of the new year show states diverging on some hot-button issues. Restrictions on carrying guns eased in Texas, for example, but got tighter in California. It is easier to register to vote in Oregon, but there is another step to take at the polls in North Carolina. The opposing directions in the states reflect a nation with increasingly polarized politics. In the debate over gun control, both sides say their arguments are strengthened by a string of mass shootings this year. That includes the December attack at a county health department gathering in San Bernardino, California, when a couple who investigators say
Photos by Eric Gay | AP file
In this 2015 file photo, a demonstrator helps hold a large "Come and Take It" banner at a rally in support of open carry gun laws at the Capitol. pledged allegiance to the leader of the Islamic State group killed 14 people. Everytown for Gun Safety, a
group backed by billionaire former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, is seeking to be a counterweight to the
National Rifle Association’s lobbying of state lawmakers. Both groups are expected to be active in legislatures in the coming year. Whether to raise the minimum wage has become another hot topic in states and cities, with the issue getting no traction in the Republican-led Congress. New voting laws, meanwhile, could help shape the outcomes in state and federal elections in the coming year. Democrats and others who want to boost voter participation have been pushing to expand access to the polls, while conservatives have pushed for measures aimed at preventing election fraud. Each side says the other is using legislation to help their favored party in elections.
See LAWS PAGE 11A
Candidates differ on controversial border wall ASSOCIATED PRESS
Several candidates for the presidency in 2016 have proposed building more border wall along the nearly 2,000 mile frontier with Mexico to keep people from crossing into the U.S. illegally. Here is what they have to say about a border wall.
DONALD TRUMP Trump has been the most outspoken about building a wall, and insists he’ll make Mexico pay for it. “We’re going to do a wall. We’re going
See CANDIDATES
PAGE 11A
U.S.—MEXICAN BORDER
BORDER WALL: A DAUNTING TASK Completing construction proving costly By SETH ROBBINS ASSOCIATED PRESS
BROWNSVILLE, Texas — Close to the southern tip of Texas a border wall suddenly ends. Its final post sits in a dry cornfield half a mile from the nearest bend in the Rio Grande river, the actual border with Mexico. It would be easy to walk around it. Tires left by the border patrol rest nearby. Agents drag them behind trucks to smooth the cracked earth and check for footprints. Unlike other famous barriers in history such as the Berlin Wall or the Great Wall of China, the U.S. version is not much of a wall. What stands in Texas is fragmented series of fencing, composed of enormous steel bars embedded in concrete close together. The rust-colored thick bars that must reach a height of 18 feet loom over the landscape, forming teeth-like slats that split farmland, slice through backyards, and sever parks and nature preserves. There are miles of gaps between Photo by Eric Gay | AP segments and openings in the fence In this Thursday, Sept. 17, 2015, photo, Pamela Taylor, whose home is on the south side of the border fence, stands near a sign she erected, in Brownsville, Texas. itself. As a result of the Secure Fence The staggered fence or wall, costing $6.5 million per mile, runs along 54 miles of Texas 1,254-mile border with Mexico. She still leaves coolers of water for thirsty migrants, though she wishes more of them would come to the United States legally, the way she emigrated from England. See WALL PAGE 11A
IMMIGRATION
Child migrants on rise Influx of teen migrants leads US government to open shelters across Colorado, Florida and New Mexico By COLLEEN SLEVIN ASSOCIATED PRESS
DENVER — The U.S. government plans to open three new shelters in three states to house unaccompanied migrant children as officials brace for another influx of young Central American immigrants crossing the border. The temporary shelters in Colorado, Florida and
New Mexico, all located on federal property, are in addition to shelters that opened outside Dallas earlier this month to deal with the growing number of immigrants expected in the spring and summer of 2016. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services plans to house up to 1,000 children in a renovated warehouse in the
sprawling Federal Center complex in the Denver suburb of Lakewood. Another 800 will be housed at a Job Corps site in Homestead, Florida, and 400 more at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico, Mark Weber, a spokesman for HHS, which is responsible for overseeing the children’s care, said Thursday. The new planned shel-
ters, combined with the camps opened in Rockwall and Ellis counties in Texas this month, represent a 42 percent increase over the 8,400 permanent shelter beds the agency previously relied on in 12 states mainly along the Mexican border. Children in the shelters, most of them between ag-
See MIGRANTS PAGE 11A
Photo by Eric Gay | AP file
In this June 20, 2014 file photo, a sign stands outside Southwest Key-Nueva Esperanza, in Brownsville, Texas, a facility that shelters unaccompanied immigrant children.