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MEXICO
SUPREME COURT
Traveling north Migrants to cross border
Photo by Chuck Burton | AP file
Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, speaks during the presidential debate at the North Charleston Coliseum. A veteran attorney in Houston has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the senator’s eligibility to be president.
By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN AND MARIA VERZA ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Nearly 200 Cuban migrants who recently arrived in southern Mexico after being stranded several months in Costa Rica began making plans on Thursday to travel to the border with the United States. Migrant Manuel Rivero Oliva, reached by telephone early Thursday at a hotel in the southern city of Tapachula, said he and his cousin Alexei Oliva were headed to the airport there to buy plane tickets, hopefully for Friday, to the border city of Matamoros across from Brownsville, Texas. Rivero, a 27-year-old trying to reach Orlando, Florida, said Wednesday’s travel had gone smoothly and that
Photo by Enrique Martinez | AP
A Cuban migrant carries a bucket of water at a temporary shelter in La Cruz, Costa Rica, Tuesday. After more than three months of being stranded in Costa Rica, 180 of the 8,000 Cuban migrants trapped here are finally expected to get their long-awaited trip north, toward the U.S. border. in about an hour they received the paperwork needed to transit Mexico. “It was all really fast. They (Mexican immigration officials) were well prepared with a team there waiting for us. It’s a blessing,” Rivero said. “It was a beautiful thing to know there are so many people supporting us.” His cousin, Alexei Oliva, 28, who planned to travel to
Michigan once they reach the U.S., said most of their countrymen had spent the night in shelters in Tapachula and planned to continue north by bus. Oliva said he left Cuba on Oct. 27, flying first to Ecuador where he worked for a time to save money to continue. On Wednesday, the 180 Cubans descended one by one from chartered buses and were processed by
Mexican authorities, who issued transit visas granting them 20 days to leave the country. Sergei Acosta, a 35-yearold farmer, was the first of the Cubans to set foot on Mexican soil. He said he was elated despite a long night of travel by plane from Costa Rica to El Salvador, and from there by
See MIGRANTS PAGE 10A
US CRUDE
OIL PATCH WOES
Lawyer files ‘birther’ suit against Cruz ASSOCIATED PRESS
HOUSTON — A veteran attorney in Ted Cruz’s hometown of Houston has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the Canadian-born senator’s eligibility to be president. In a 28-page complaint Thursday, Newton Schwartz asked the Supreme Court to decide if Cruz’s birth to an American mother and Cuban father while they lived in Calgary violates the Constitution’s “natural born citizen” requirement.
Cruz argues that because his mother is American, he became a U.S. citizen at birth. But the Supreme Court hasn’t previously considered the eligibility question. Presidential rival Donald Trump has repeatedly questioned Cruz’s presidential eligibility. The pair squared off during Thursday night’s Republican debate. When Trump again raised the issue, Cruz shot back that though the Constitution hasn’t changed recently, his polling numbers have.
‘60 MINUTES’ INTERVIEW
Photo by CBS News/60 Minutes | AP
This image released by CBS News/60 Minutes shows Charlie Rose, left, with actor Sean Penn during an interview in Santa Monica, Calif., about Penn’s meeting with "El Chapo" Guzman.
Penn: ‘El Chapo’ mission ‘failed’ By FRAZIER MOORE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Jerry Lara/San Antonio Express-News | AP
In this Nov. 11, 2015 photo, mudlogger Kelly Leininger, 36, left, gets help with her equipment from drilling crew workers, Joe Garcia, 24, center, and Alejandro Villarreal, 27, at a Price Drilling rig on a ranch owned by Richard Collier in Zavala County, Texas. The area is in the edge of the Eagle Ford Shale which has seen a decrease in activity due to the low oil prices.
Bust taking hold of the oil and gas industry By JENNIFER HILLER SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
BATESVILLE, Texas — It was a slow day selling oil field pipe — nothing new there — when Richard Collier had handed his son a select list of customers. Call them, he said. But there were no buyers. “That list of people I gave him is the ones that don’t pay their bills,” Collier told the San Antonio ExpressNews. “And they won’t even buy anything.” To Collier, who owns a small pipe business based out of Concan and a ranch in Zavala County, it’s start-
ing to look a lot like 1984, when the last great Texas oil boom shuddered to an end. “Anybody who played in this game and didn’t take care of their finances really well? They’re gone,” Collier said. “You’re looking at living out of your back pocket for three years. I do believe there are people out there who are broke and just don’t know it yet.” The drumbeat of low crude oil prices has taken hold in the oil and gas industry, from Collier’s South Texas business to Wall Street. Companies are slashing capital budgets by the bil-
lions. Investment research firm Morningstar expects the downturn to last all of 2016, and said last week that near-term prices could be “ugly.” “It’s just the cycle of things,” said oil and gas attorney David Roth of Elder Bray. “It was bound to arrive.” The army of roughnecks, RVs and heavy trucks that washed across South Texas a few years ago is in retreat, battered by crude oil prices that have tumbled from above $100 to below $40. Alongside oil, other things are crashing — the number of working drilling rigs, the “hiring” signs
tacked up on the bulletin boards at South Texas restaurants, the number of people calling Collier, who has been in the pipe business for 40 years. There were 840 active rigs in Texas last January, a number cut to 321 now. In the Eagle Ford Shale, the field that arcs across South Texas in a half smile, the number of active rigs has tumbled from 200 to 76. Idle rigs are stacked, folded up like umbrellas, in a field east of San Antonio. “Something was going to cause the Eagle Ford to go bust,” Roth said. “One thing
See OIL PAGE 10A
NEW YORK — Sean Penn says his article on Mexican drug lord Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman “failed” in its mission. Speaking to CBS’ “60 Minutes,” the actor said his intention in tracking down the escaped drug kingpin and writing about him for “Rolling Stone” was to kick-start a discussion of the U.S. government’s policy on the War on Drugs. But the public’s attention has instead been focused on the fact that Penn found and met with Guzman for seven hours in a mountain hideout last October while he was still evading Mexican officials. He was apprehended only last week after six months on the run. Excerpts from the interview with Penn were released Friday. The interview airs on “60 Minutes” Sunday. Penn has been drawn into a controversy over
whether he may have assisted in the recapture effort, or, conversely, may have prolonged the search by keeping silent until the article was published last week. Penn said the Mexican government was “clearly very humiliated” but insisted he had played no role in Guzman’s eventual recapture. “We had met with him many weeks earlier,” he says. “On October 2nd, in a place nowhere near where he was captured.” Guzman’s reason for agreeing to meet with the Hollywood star was first explained as resulting from his interest in having a movie made about him. Then it seemed his interest was in a face-toface encounter not with Penn, but with the contact who was bringing them together: Mexican actress Kate del Castillo, with whom Guzman openly flirted in recently published text messages.
See PENN PAGE 10A