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SOUTH TEXAS FOOD BANK
CBP
First female director
Man pleads to pay theft
Boubel will manage 8-county organization By JUDITH RAYO THE ZAPATA TIMES
Courtesy photo
Alma Boubel, first female executive director at the South Texas Food Bank, is pictured at her desk. “I want to make the South Texas Food Bank the best food bank in South Texas,” Boubel said.
The South Texas Food Bank named its first female executive director at an employees’ meeting earlier this month. Alma Boubel, who joined the South Texas Food Bank in December as an accountant, will now lead the nonprofit organization, which helps feed thousands of families and children each month. Her position was effective July 1. She will be responsible for the overall management of the food bank. “It’s a wonderful oppor-
tunity,” Boubel said. “I love challenges and want to make the South Texas Food Bank the best food bank in South Texas.” South Texas Food Bank board President Anna Benavides Galo said Boubel has the attributes necessary to lead the South Texas Food Bank. “Our mission of feeding the hungry continues under a new dynamic executive director,” she said. Boubel, a native Laredoan, has an accounting degree from the University of Texas in Austin and a master’s degree from
See FOOD BANK PAGE 12A
OPERATION IDENTIFICATION FOR THE REUNITING FAMILIES
NAMES FOR THE MISSING
By PHILIP BALLI THE ZAPATA TIMES
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection employee arrested in mid-May for allegedly wrongfully collecting more than $40,000 in government pay for hours he did not work pleaded guilty last week in federal court in Laredo. A grand jury indicted Jesus Javier Garcia Jr. May 12 on the charge of public money, property or records, which is punishable by up to 10 years in prison. The charge also carries a possible $250,000 fine or twice the gross gain to the defendant or the gross loss to any person other than the defendant. Garcia entered a plea of not guilty May 19 during his arraignment before U.S. Magistrate Judge J. Scott Hacker. He accepted a plea agreement July 2 and pleaded guilty to the charge during a final pretrial conference before Hacker. The charge stems from an investigation beginning Dec. 5, 2013 into Garcia conducted by the CBP-Office of Internal Affairs and the FBI-Border Corruption Task Force. “The investigation uncovered a scheme by which
See THEFT PAGE 12A
REYNOSA, MEXICO
Photo by Gabe Hernandez/Corpus Christi Caller-Times | AP
Amy Szen from Binghamton University prepares to hang pants from a migrant that was pulled out from the Brooks County Cemetery June 17 at the Texas State University forensics lab in San Marcos. Student volunteers from Indianapolis, New York and Ohio cleaned clothes medication and shoes and other belongings that were found with the bodies of migrants at Brooks County Cemetery.
Volunteers return immigrants’ bodies to loved ones By NADIA TAMEZ-ROBLEDO CORPUS CHRISTI CALLER-TIMES
SAN MARCOS — Kate Spradley was scrolling through the national database of missing people when she noticed a report contained a small detail, the color of a shirt, that made her pause. A man Spradley calls Oscar, from El Salvador, was reported missing by a family member in Houston. He and a group of undocumented migrants circumvented the Border Patrol checkpoint in
Falfurrias by trekking through sandy, rugged terrain. When Oscar was injured, another migrant tied a brown plaid shirt his leg to help him
walk. Spradley knew
there was a body in
the Forensic Anthropology Center at Texas State University, one of dozens of unidentified migrants exhumed from Brooks County’s Sacred Heart Cemetery, that had been buried with a brown plaid shirt. It’s the type of clue Spradley, an associate professor of anthropology, and a community of volunteers spend hours painstakingly documenting in hopes of identifying people who died crossing rural Brooks County to destinations north. While exhuming the bodies during the past two summers gives the de-
See MISSING PAGE 11A
Cartel kills five Gunmen attack family at border ASSOCIATED PRESS
MEXICO CITY — Gunmen believed to belong to a local drug cartel killed five members of a family near the Mexican border city of Reynosa, across from McAllen, authorities said Thursday. The assailants arrived at the family’s home and forced the inhabitants outside, then killed a grandfather, his son and three of his grandchildren, aged 10 to 19, Tamaulipas state’s government said. The killings took place late Wednesday. The gunmen reportedly questioned the family about a rival gang, and then shot them to death and ransacked the home on a road between Reynosa and the neighboring city of Matamoros. Earlier Thursday, jour-
See GUNMEN PAGE 12A