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MEXICO
IMMIGRATION OVERLOAD
Police arrest three, rescue 165 hostages
$3.7B ‘too much’ Dems, GOP battle over aid to immigrants By ERICA WERNER
THE ZAPATA TIMES
Tamaulipas state authorities announced Wednesday the rescue of 165 hostages in three operations in two cities. Authorities said the hostages were immigrants. Police arrested three suspects who they said were members of a kidnapping gang. The sus-
pects are also accused of killing three immigrants. One of the operations took place in Reynosa, Tamaulipas, where members of the Accredited State Police and Federal Police rescued seven Honduran immigrants, two of whom were minors, according to a press release. “(The immigrants) had
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ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — A key Republican said Friday that President Barack Obama’s multibillion-dollar emergency request for the border is too big to get through the House, as a growing number of Democrats rejected policy changes Republicans are demanding as their price for approving any money.
The developments indicated that Obama faces an uphill climb as he pushes Congress to approve $3.7 billion to deal with tens of thousands of unaccompanied kids who’ve been arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border from poor and gang-ridden Central American nations. And they suggested that even as the children keep coming, any final resolution is likely weeks away on Capitol
Hill. As House members gathered Friday morning to finish up legislative business for the week, Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, chairman of the Appropriations Committee that controls spending, told reporters: “It’s too much money. We don’t need it.” Rogers, who’d previously sounded open to the spending request for more immigration judges, State
Department programs and other items, said that Obama’s request includes some spending to meet immediate needs, and his committee is working to sort that out. But he said other aspects can be handled through Congress’ regular spending bills, though no final action is likely on those until after the No-
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IMMIGRATION OVERLOAD
BENGHAZI
DISTRIBUTING CHILDREN
No info hampered rescue try By DONNA CASSATA AND BRADLEY KLAPPER ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by William Luther | San Antonio Express-News
Young immigrants stand Wednesday, July 2, in the housing area on Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, where they are being kept while they wait for their legal status to be resolved.
Planes aid in housing immigrants By LYNN BREZOSKY AND WILLIAM LUTHER SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
SAN ANTONIO — One by one, some striding in flipflops, others walking with shoulders hunched and fists in pockets — and one or two in what appeared to be handcuffs — the youths stepped out of the rear of an MD-82 that had landed at Port San Antonio’s Kelly Field. Directed by casually uniformed officials, the youths headed for waiting buses with darkened windows. The officials then got back on the
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PAGE 10A
Photo by William Luther | San Antonio Express-News
Adults direct young immigrants Tuesday, July 1, to buses as they get off an airplane at Port San Antonio’s Kelly Field in San Antonio. The plane, operated by Orange Air, LLC, arrived in San Antonio from Phoenix.
WASHINGTON — Two of the four U.S. deaths in Benghazi might have been prevented, military leaders say, if commanders had known more about the intensity of the sporadic gunfire directed at the CIA facility where Americans had taken refuge and had pressed to get a rescue team there faster. Senior military leaders have told Congress in closed-door testimony that after the first attack on the main U.S. diplomatic compound on Sept. 11, 2012, they thought the fighting had subsided and the Americans who had fled to the CIA base about a mile away were safe. In fact, they were facing intermittent small arms fire and rocket-propelled grenades around midnight and had returned fire. Then the attackers dispersed. Hours later, at first light, an 11-minute mortar and rocket-propelled grenade attack slammed into the CIA annex, killing security contractors Tyrone Woods and Glen Doherty. In hindsight, retired Gen. Carter Ham, then head of the U.S. military command in Africa, said he would have pressed Libyan contacts in the defense ministry and other officials to help speed up the evacuation of Americans from Benghazi. Also, a special operations team that had been dispatched from Croatia to Sicily after the first attack might have made it to Benghazi, if a host of variables were ideal — a quick departure, wind direction and speed, and an unobstructed runway to land a U.S. aircraft. Ham said “in a perfect world, with no other disruptions or distractions,” it could have happened. As it turned out, a six-man security team, including Special Forces personnel that arrived at Benghazi airport at 1:30 a.m., was held up there for hours by Libyan militia.
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