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Oilfield families offered assistance Organization opens new South Texas Chapter SPECIAL TO THE TIMES
Oilfield Helping Hands, a nonprofit organization that has given more than $3.3 million to oilfield families in need, has established a new South Texas Chapter, based in San Antonio. This is the sixth chapter for the organization and covers the Eagle Ford and other South Texas oilfield areas, including Zapata County. Officers of the new chapter are President Stephanie Blankenship, Halli-
The money that is raised is given … to members of the oilfield family who … are in a financial crisis. burton; Vice President Lynette Deihl, EFS Logistics; Secretary/Treasurer Derek Easterling, MSC Industrial Supply; and Chapter Liaison Taylor Wynn, Russell & Stott. “As the leaders of the new South Texas Chapter,
it is with pride that my team and I get to join this amazing organization,” Blankenship said. "During this economic downturn we feel privileged at the prospect of being able to give back to a community that supports many of our
livelihoods and families.” The chapter is beginning to organize its 2016 monthly meetings and fundraising events. For information about joining or supporting the South Texas chapter, contact Blankenship at SouthTexasOHH@Outlook.com. The nonprofit organization was organized in 2003 in Houston, with a small sporting clays tournament to benefit an oilfield services company employee whose savings had been
Photo by Gregorio Borgia | AP
Pope Francis talks to faithful inside the Cathedral in Morelia, Mexico, Tuesday. Francis arrived in the heart of Mexico’s drugtrafficking country to offer words of encouragement to clergy trying to minister to a people tormented by the violence and gang warfare of the drug trade.
Pope travels to drug IMMIGRATION ISSUES trade hotbed SHERIFFS ON FRONT LINE See OILFIELD PAGE 7A
Francis urges priests to not be resigned to status quo
By JACOBO GARCIA, NICOLE WINFIELD AND PETER ORSI ASSOCIATED PRESS
MORELIA, Mexico — Pope Francis urged Mexico’s priests on Tuesday to
fight injustice and not resign themselves to the drug-fueled violence and corruption around them, issuing a set of marching
See POPE PAGE 7A
JUSTICE ANTONIN SCALIA
Photo by Martin do Nascimento | Texas Tribune Photo by Jim Mone | AP file
The badge of Captain Jaime Magaña is shown at the Webb County Jail in Laredo on Nov. 5, 2015.
In this Oct. 20, 2015 file photo, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia speaks at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Local law enforcement often assisting ICE By MORGAN SMITH AND TERRI LANGFORD TEXAS TRIBUNE
With a $6 billion budget and more than 20,000 employees, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement stands poised to seize and deport immigrants — undocumented or not — who commit serious crimes in the United States. Provided someone else catches them. The behemoth agency at the center of the nation’s immigration enforcement efforts has no proactive way — watch lists, data mining or the like — to systematically search for dangerous undocumented immigrants,
including those who have returned to the United States after being deported for committing crimes. Instead, if an immigrant criminal is caught and thrown out of the country, the process most likely begins when a local police officer or sheriff’s deputy pulls them over for a traffic stop or arrests them as part of a criminal investigation. The success of federal deportation policy in Texas and nationwide depends for the most part on a heads up from county sheriffs. They run the jails where people are taken when arrested and where the culling of criminal immigrants begins.
Being at the bottom of the enforcement pyramid places tremendous pressure on them — political, legal and otherwise — sheriffs say, and with federal policy increasingly targeting serious, repeat criminal offenders, their role in the process has grown. “When some of these sheriffs talk about bringing in an undocumented, it may be one a month,” said Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez. “With us, it’s several a day.” The legal tool federal authorities use to take custody of immigrants they want is the detainer. Around in some form or fashion since the 1950s, detainers are no-
tices sent to jails asking them to hold on to an immigrant once local authorities are done with them so federal agents can come by and get them. In its latest incarnation, the detainer is reserved for the most serious convicted immigrant criminals. This new, narrower restriction, imposed in November 2014, has caused the number of detainers to drop. As of October 2015, the latest monthly figure available, 7,117 detainers were issued. That’s down from an all-time monthly high of 27,755 in August 2011, according to voluminous Freedom of In-
See SHERIFFS PAGE 10A
Texas judge discloses death details By SAM HANANEL AND DAVID WARREN ASSOCIATED PRESS
WASHINGTON — The Texas county judge who decided no autopsy was needed following the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia
has disclosed new details about Scalia’s health in the days before he died. Presidio County Judge Cinderela Guevara told The Associated Press on Monday she spoke with
See DEATH PAGE 7A