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TEXAS CAPITOL
NORTH TEXAS
New border bill Senate measure differs on National Guard presence By JULIÁN AGUILAR TEXAS TRIBUNE
The Texas Senate on Monday passed its own sweeping border security bill, choosing to send its own version to the House rather than taking up the House’s measure, which the lower chamber passed last month. Senate Bill 3 by state Sen. Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury, is the upper chamber’s companion legislation for House Bill 11 by state Rep. Dennis Bonnen, R-Angleton. Both measures would beef up the number of Texas Department of Public Safety officers on the border; create a Rio Grande Valley intelligence center to analyze border crime information; establish a team of retired DPS officers to assist with
Marjorie Kamys Cotera | Texas Tribune
Sen. Brian Birdwell R-Granbury listens during debate of his campus carry bill SB 11 on March 18. background investigations and sex offender compliance; and increase penalties for human smuggling.
But the Senate’s bill would keep the Texas Army National Guard on the border until the DPS is considered to be fully
staffed in the region. "Now that the Texas Senate has overwhelmingly passed its state budget, funding border security at historic levels [$811 million], it was the appropriate time to pass SB 3," Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick said in a statement. The Senate approved SB 3 in a 26-4 vote, with Sens. Sylvia Garcia, D-Houston; José Rodríguez, D-El Paso; Rodney Ellis, D-Houston; and José Menéndez, D-San Antonio, voting in opposition. The bill now goes to the House for consideration. "I’m extremely proud of the bipartisan support for SB 3, which will help the Department of Public Safety sustain and appropriately expand their successful efforts to tackle these problems statewide,"
See BILL PAGE 11A
Photo by Hillsman Stuart Jackson/SMU | AP
Remi Oldham, an SMU geophysics graduate student, runs a seismometer in Willow Park, Texas.
Cause of quakes studied By JIM MALEWITZ TEXAS TRIBUNE
ZAPATA COUNTY CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
FISHING TOURNAMENT
The Zapata Times file
In this 2011 file photo, anglers prepare to check in for a fishing tournament at Falcon Lake. The Skeeter Bass Champs Fishing Tournament is scheduled to take place this Saturday. Morning take-off is at 6:50 a.m. at the Zapata County Public Boat Ramp and weigh-in is at 3 p.m.
Gas industry activity “most likely” triggered a series of earthquakes that shook two North Texas towns from late 2013 through early 2014, new peer-reviewed research shows. More than two-dozen small earthquakes during that period rattled residents near Reno and Azle, towns atop the gas-rich Barnett Shale, and put pressure on Texas oil and gas regulators to address concerns about man-made temblors. A combination of industry activities likely caused the phenomenon, according to a study published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications. More specifically, according to the research, operators’ withdrawal of brine – naturally salty water removed during oil and gas drilling – and the high-pressure injection of huge volumes of wastewater from gas wells were to blame. Mapping two intersecting faults in the area, scientists from Southern Methodist University, the U.S. Geological Survey and the University of Texas at Austin found that the interplay of those gas activities likely altered fluid pressure underground, unleashing the quakes. “What we refer to as induced seismicity – earthquakes caused by something other than strictly natural forces – is often associated with subsurface pressure changes,” Heather DeShon, associate professor of geophysics at SMU, said in a statement. “We can rule out stress changes induced by local water table changes. While some uncertainties remain, it is unlikely that natural increases to tectonic stresses led to these events.” State Seismologist Craig Pearson, hired by the Texas Railroad Commission last year in response to the wave of quakes, told the researchers in a letter Tuesday that the research “raises interesting points along with many questions” and asked them for a briefing. “The commission takes very seriously
See QUAKES PAGE 11A
MEXICO
Police capture leader of Juárez Cartel By ELISABETH MALKIN NEW YORK TIMES
MEXICO CITY — Mexican officials said Sunday that they had captured a leader of the Juárez Cartel, Jesús Salas Aguayo, the man in charge of the gang’s operations in Ciudad Juárez, in the Mexican state of Chihuahua, during a convulsion of violence that made the city one of the world’s most murderous. Salas, 38, was arrested Friday in the town of Villa Ahumada, about 80 miles south of the Texas border, Mexico’s national security
commissioner told reporters Sunday. Salas took over the cartel’s leadership this year after the arrests of its boss, Vicente Carrillo Fuentes, last October and his replacement, David Aaron Espinoza Haro, in January, the commissioner said. The arrest occurred the same day that security forces captured the leader of the Gulf Cartel, José Tiburcio Hernández Fuentes, in the city of Reynosa. That arrest set off hours of street fighting Friday, as about 60 of Hernández’s gunmen seized buses and
set fire to them to block roads and shot at government buildings in a failed effort to prevent his transfer to Mexico City, said the security commissioner, Monte Alejandro Rubido, on Saturday. Both the Juárez and Gulf cartels have lost much of the influence they once exercised over drug trafficking along the Texas border, under the combined pressure of arrests and battles against rival gangs. President Enrique Peña Nieto has continued the policy of his predecessor in targeting kingpins. The
government’s success leaves only a couple of the top leaders of the Sinaloa drug organization at large. Many of the other organizations have splintered into smaller groups with shifting alliances. "The fracturing of Mexico’s traditional organizations" has become "a basic fact of Mexico’s security climate, and there is no reason to expect the phenomenon to slow," Patrick Corcoran, an analyst for the research group Insight Crime, wrote last week. But he warned that in such an environment, "tar-
geting the biggest bad guy is of limited value from the standpoint of altering the reality on the ground." While violence has fallen in several areas of Mexico, particularly Ciudad Juárez, other areas remain in the grip of these battling criminal gangs, including much of the northeastern state of Tamaulipas, where Reynosa is. New gangs have emerged in the last couple of years and rapidly gained strength. One of the most dangerous is the Jalisco Cartel — New Generation, which officials say am-
bushed a Jalisco state police convoy on April 6 and killed 15 agents. Salas, who is on the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration’s Most Wanted list, is suspected in the 2009 killing of a protected witness in El Paso, Texas. Salas first came to the attention of Mexican authorities in 2008, Rubido said, and he rose quickly in the cartel’s ranks. He is suspected in a 2010 car bombing there that killed two federal police agents and a 2012 bar shooting that killed 15 people.