TEXAS ‘STRONG’
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HEALTHY SOUTH TEXAS 2025
IMMIGRATION OVERLOAD
Reducing preventable diseases
1,000 troops
Texas A&M taking on initiative, will take place in 26 counties By CESAR ESCALANTE HEARST NEWSPAPERS
Texas A&M University will try to reduce preventable diseases by 25 percent in South Texas by 2025. The “Healthy South Texas 2025” effort will take place in 26 counties and will be led by the newly created Texas A&M Institute for Public Health Improvement. Other parts of the Texas A&M system will work alongside the IPHI, including the Health Science Center and the AgriLife Extension Service. The initiative is asking for $7.5 million from the Legislature to prevent prominent diseases in the region, including asthma, diabetes, and infectious diseases, through education and assistance programs. AgriLife Extension, which provides educational outreach programs and services to Texas citizens, will lend a hand as well by counseling ranchers and farmers on how to keep livestock healthy. According to the Perryman Group, a Texas-based economic and financial analysis firm, direct costs of health disparities in 2013 reached $1.3 billion in the 26-county region. The Healthy Texas Initiative would aim to save the state $2.5 billion in health care costs over the 10-year period, according to John Sharp, Texas A&M chancellor. “(AgriLife personnel) will take the research that’s being done ... directly to the farmers and tell them ‘here’s how you grow better cattle — here’s how you keep livestock healthy,’” said Sharp. “A&M is uniquely positioned to do the same thing with people through the Health Science Center. We will utilize everything (within the Health Science Center) and couple it with the extension service, and we will be able to do things in a much
more thorough fashion than any other organization the federal government has to offer.” South Texas has an estimated 11.6 percent of adults affected by diabetes — more than 20 percent higher than the reset of the state — and also higher than the 9.3 percent national average. The South Texas Health Status Review found that South Texas also leads the state in infectious-disease cases, like tuberculosis and dengue fever. In combating these preventable diseases, the initiative seeks to reduce health care costs for the state, payers and employers. The initiative would also aim to reduce emergency-room visits related to preventable diseases, reduce diabetic complications, and reduce costs and lost productivity related to uncontrolled asthma. Brett Giroir, CEO of the Texas A&M HSC, believes hitting the 25 percent reduction goal will be a major challenge, but he’s confident that the program will make a difference to thousands, and perhaps even “millions, and bend the health curve.” “It will take an extremely broad and nontraditional team to achieve our specific goals,” Giroir said. “And everyone — from health providers, to teachers, to legislators, to media — will have an essential role in this initiative as we continue to prove that Texas is the shining example of what diverse people can achieve when we roll up our sleeves and get to work together.” State Sen. Juan “Chuy” Hinojosa, D-McAllen, firmly believes in the effort’s potential. “This initiative will engage families and enhance education to promote behavior change so that we can reduce preventable diseases,” said Hinojosa. “I will continue pushing to make this a reality.”
Perry sending National Guard to border By CHRISTOPHER SHERMAN AND WILL WEISSERT ASSOCIATED PRESS
AUSTIN — Gov. Rick Perry is deploying up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the Texas-Mexico border over the next month to combat what he said Monday were criminals exploiting a surge of children pouring into the U.S. illegally. Perry, a vocal critic of the White House’s response to the border crisis who is himself mulling a second presidential run, said the state has a responsibility to act after “lip service and
PERRY
empty promises” from Washington. “I will not stand idly by while our citizens are under
assault and little children from Central America are detained in squalor,” the governor said. The deployment of National Guard troops, which may act in a law enforcement capacity under state authority, will cost Texas an estimated $12 million per month. They will simply be “referring and deterring” immigrants and not detaining people, Texas Adjutant General John Nichols said. But he added that the National Guard could take people into custody if need be. “We think they’ll come to us and say, ‘Please take us
to a Border Patrol station,’” Nichols said. Messages seeking comment were left with the U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Perry bristled at suggestions from some Democratic state lawmakers and business groups that his move means Texas is militarizing is southern border. Still, Cameron County Sheriff Omar Lucio said he didn’t know if troops would be coming to his part of the border and questioned what good they would do if they
See BORDER PAGE 7A
SHARELUNKER PROGRAM
REELING IN THE BASS
Photo courtesy of La Perla Ranch
La Perla Lake, owned by Texas oral surgeon Dr. Gary Schwarz, is shown. Schwarz and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are working on reeling in the big one, literally, in a partnership to bring the world record for largemouth bass to Texas.
Partnership aims for world-record fish By JOE COOK SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
A Texas oral surgeon and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department are working on reeling in the big one, literally, in a partnership to bring the world record for largemouth bass to Texas. The effort is part of the state’s ShareLunker pro-
gram, which encourages anglers to lend or donate any largemouth bass weighing more than 13 pounds to the state for spawning purposes. Dr. Gary Schwarz signed a 15-year contract with the Parks and Wildlife Department that will allow the state to use his new private
See BASS PAGE 7A
File photo by Shannon Tompkins/Houston Chronicle
A largemouth bass leaps out of the water. An oral surgeon and the state have teamed up to bring world-record fish to Texas.
MIGRANT CHILDREN
Report: Warning was given about influx Editor’s note: This is part one of a three-part series on warnings of an influx of immigrant children into the United States.
By DAVID NAKAMURA, JERRY MARKON AND MANUEL ROIG-FRANZIA THE WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON — Nearly a year before President Barack Obama declared a humanitarian crisis on the border, a team of experts arrived at the Fort Brown patrol station in Brownsville, Texas, and discovered a makeshift transportation depot for a deluge of foreign children. Thirty Border Patrol agents were assigned in August 2013 to drive the children to off-site
showers, wash their clothes and make them sandwiches. As soon as those children were placed in temporary shelters, more arrived. An average of 66 were apprehended each day on the border and more than 24,000 cycled through Texas patrol stations in 2013. In a 41-page report to the Department of Homeland Security, the team from the University of Texas at El Paso raised alarms about the federal government’s capacity to manage a situation that was expected to grow worse. The researchers’ observations were among the warning signs conveyed to the Obama administration over the past two years as a surge of Central American minors has crossed into South Tex-
as illegally. More than 57,000 have entered the United States this year, swamping federal resources and catching the government unprepared. The administration did too little to heed those warnings, according to interviews with former government officials, outside experts and immigrant advocates, leading to an inadequate response that contributed to this summer’s escalating crisis. Federal officials viewed the situation as a “local problem,” said Victor Manjarrez Jr., a former Border Patrol station chief who led the UTEP study. The research, conducted last year, was funded by the Department of Homeland Security and published in March.
A broader crisis was “not on anyx one’s radar,” Manjarrez added, even though “it was pretty clear this number of kids was going to be the new baseline.” Cecilia Muñoz, Obama’s domestic policy adviser, said the administration and key agencies had made adjustments over time to deal with the influx of children but then responded with urgency once federal officials realized in May that the numbers would far exceed internal projections of 60,000 minors crossing the border in 2014. Revised Border Patrol estimates now suggest the number could reach 90,000 by the end of September. Last month, Obama ordered an
emergency response overseen by the National Security Council and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and he asked Congress to approve $3.7 billion in emergency funds. “What happened this year was ... off-the-charts different,” Muñoz said. “It was not the same pattern. We assumed a significant increase, but this was not the same kind of trend line. “This trend was more like a hockey stick, going up and up and up,” Muñoz added. “Nobody could have predicted the scale of the increase we saw this year. The minute we saw it, we responded in an aggressive way.”
See INFLUX PAGE 9A