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TEXAS
DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY
Crime rates drop 5 of largest cities saw a 6.5 percent decrease By JOLIE MCCULLOUGH THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
Urban crime rates are at historic lows across the country, and in Texas they are still dropping, according to an analysis of crime rates in the 30 largest U.S cities. Between 2014 and 2015, the five largest cities in Texas saw an average drop of 6.5 percent in the overall crime rate per 100,000 residents, according to the analysis by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. Among the nation’s top cities, crime rates remained stagnant during this time, dropping by only 0.1 percent. With an almost 10 percent drop in its crime rate, Austin saw the sharpest de-
Photo by Russell Contreras | AP file
In this Jan. 4, 2016 file photo, a U.S. Border Patrol agent drives near the U.S.-Mexico border fence in Sunland Park, N.M.
crease in Texas and the nation. “Austin is just a safe city,” said Lt. Justin Newsom of the Austin Police Department’s Violent Crimes Unit. “It has its moments where bad things happen, obviously, but overall, with the population growth that we’ve had, we’ve been real fortunate.” The city’s murder rate also had the largest decline, falling 33 percent while the average murder rate of all 30 cities in the study grew, the report states. While unable to pinpoint a cause for Austin’s decrease, Newsom said several city initiatives might be helping. “APD’s very responsive to real-time data,” Newsom
See CRIME PAGE 10A
Color security system denied A coded alert proposal to measure border protection has been rejected By ELLIOT SPAGAT ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Shelby Tauber | Texas Tribune
Crime rates in Texas’ big cities dropped last year, according to a new report.
SAN DIEGO — Five years ago, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security dropped its color-coded terror threat index developed after the 9/11 attacks amid widespread confusion and ridicule. So what
did it do when tasked by Secretary Jeh Johnson in 2014 with measuring security along the country’s borders? Agency staff proposed another system of reds, yellows and greens. The Institute for De-
See SECURITY PAGE 10A
STARR COUNTY
ROMA: A SMUGGLER’S PARADISE The busiest illegal crossing point on the border By JAY ROOT THE TEXAS TRIBUNE
ROMA — If everything goes according to plan, Alejandra will no longer feel like her mother is a stranger. She’ll go to a good school in Houston, not one lacking basic supplies. She’ll eat a real breakfast, not the bread and water she was fed on the bus from Guatemala. On a rainy evening in early March, Alejandra, 14, joined a dozen undocumented immigrants, mostly women and kids, who turned themselves in to a busy unit of the U.S. Border Patrol in deep South Texas.
They were picked up and “processed” — some field paperwork here, an inventory of belongings there — in a wildlife refuge a stone’s throw from the river-border they’d just illegally crossed. Alejandra stood beneath a drizzling rain next to a Border Patrol van while she calmly recounted the brief but scary passage across the Rio Grande, which she knew by the name it’s given on the south side: El Río Bravo. Her smuggler, she said, left her, her 12-year-old brother and their 9-year-old cousin on the Mexican riverbank. The sudden aban-
See PARADISE PAGE 10A
Photo by Martin do Nascimento| Texas Tribune
Border Patrol Agent Isaac Villegas looks out over the Rio Grande and into Ciudad Miguel Alemán, Mexico, on March 8, 2016. Roma, a popular smuggling corridor in the Rio Grande Valley, is the busiest illegal crossing point by far on the U.S-Mexico border.
MEXICO
24 dead in oil plant explosion By FELIX MARQUEZ ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Felix Marquez | AP
Mexican army soldiers wearing protective face masks stand guard at an entrance of the Pajaritos petrochemical complex.
COATZACOALCOS, Mexico — The death toll from an explosion that ripped through a petrochemical plant on Mexico’s southern Gulf coast is now 24, state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos reported. Pemex raised the toll late Thursday from the 13 fatalities previously known and said eight workers remained missing. It also said 19 people re-
mained hospitalized, with 13 of them in serious condition. In a statement, the company said 12 of the bodies had been identified and eight of them delivered to family members. Earlier in the day, President Enrique Pena Nieto toured the facility in the industrial port city of Coatzacoalcos and met with relatives desperate for word on the fate of loved ones still unaccounted for. “I understand the anxie-
ty, the worry, the anguish you are going through,” Pena Nieto said, assuring them that both Pemex and the Mexichem company, which co-operated the plant, would fulfill their responsibilities and compensate those hurt by the accident. About 30 families gathered at a plant entrance road, where a sharp chemical smell still hung in the air about 2 kilometers (a mile) from where the explosion occurred Wednes-
day afternoon. Many wore facemasks to ward off the pungent odor. Shoving broke out as people unsuccessfully tried to force their way into the installation. Some shouted at marines and soldiers who were called in to guard the facility, and they threw rocks at a white government SUV when it arrived at the scene. Rosa Villalobos traveled about four hours by bus
See PLANT PAGE 10A