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DRUG CARTEL VIOLENCE
Killers dissolved 12 victims in acid
DEFERRED ACTION FOR CHILDHOOD ARRIVALS
SUIT MAY PUSH DACA TO SUPREME COURT
Additional DNA found at crime scene A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
MEXICO CITY — A drug cartel's assassins who killed three film students apparently mistaken for members of a rival gang and dissolved their bodies in acid did the same thing to nine other people, authorities said. Interior Secretary Alfonso Navarrete said investigators had detected DNA from 12 separate people in residual fats found at a location where one of the killers confessed to having dissolved bodies in sulfuric acid. Navarrete did not say whether any of the DNA profiles matched those of the three film students who were abducted March 19 on the outskirts of the western city of Guadalajara. He did say that three of four suspects in the students' abduction and killing had been arrested. The three students were unwittingly working on a film project for school at a house that was apparently being watched by members of the Jalisco New Generation drug cartel. The house had once been used by a rival drug gang, and the Jalisco
cartel apparently suspected the students were part of that gang. One suspect said the cartel killed the students after interrogating them and then dissolved their bodies. The DNA findings lent more credence to the tale told by a young rapper who said he had been employed by the cartel to dissolve bodies. That suspect, Christian Omar Palma Gutierrez, is a 24-year-old rapper who built a YouTube channel with more than a halfmillion views based on songs describing an anguished, violent life of drugs and crime. Palma Gutierrez confessed to working for the Jalisco New Generation cartel, Mexico's fastestgrowing and most violent gang, as what the gang calls a "cook." By his account, for 3,000 pesos a week, he dumped bodies head-first into acid baths set up in water tanks in the yard of a cartel safe house. He would come back after two days — after the acid had done its work — and open drain valves to release the fluid into the storm drain, and remove Acid continues on A5
Andrew Harnik / AP
In this Jan. 23, 2018, file photo, immigration advocates hold a rally on Capitol Hill in Washington. Three judges have ordered the Trump administration to continue a program that has shielded hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. Now, a lawsuit filed last week in Texas seeks to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and may create a legal clash that could speed the issue’s path to the Supreme Court.
Experts say motion filed by state may create legal clash By Jessica Gresko ASSOCIATED PRE SS
WASHINGTON — Three judges have ordered the Trump administration to continue a program that has shielded hundreds of thousands of young immigrants from deportation. Now, a lawsuit filed last week in Texas seeks to shut down the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and may create a legal clash that could speed the issue's path to the Supreme Court. President Donald Trump's decision in September to phase out the Obama-era program, called DACA, resulted in protests and a failed
OIL & GAS
congressional effort to salvage it. Experts say it's a matter of when, not if, the Supreme Court will rule on the program. It could be the second opportunity for the high court to weigh in on a high-profile decision of the president's, with a ruling on Trump's travel ban expected before the end of June. Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law Houston, said the Texas lawsuit filed May 1 tees up "a fast pass to the Supreme Court." If Texas and six other states persuade a judge to issue a nationwide order barring the government from continuing DACA, that decision could conflict with existing judges' orders telling the govern-
ment it must partially continue the program. That's the kind of conflict the Supreme Court generally steps in to address. The high court has already finished hearing arguments ahead of its summer break at the end of June, and it's rare for the court to hear arguments again before October. But if judges issue conflicting orders on what the government must do with DACA, the court might be asked to make an interim, procedural decision, said Stephen Yale-Loehr, who teaches immigration law at Cornell University's law school. The Texas lawsuit "creates even more uncertainty in what is going to happen," he said. DACA continues on A5
TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE
Stalled oil market recovery Judge hears complaints leaves many Texans jobless about settlement over
heat in prison
A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
HOUSTON — Skilled workers in Texas are still looking for jobs as U.S. employment in the oil and gas industry continues to lag behind rising oil prices. Job seekers hoping for an oil market recovery will likely have to continue waiting before companies increase hiring, the Houston Chronicle reported. The country's oil and gas extraction industry has recovered fewer than 6,000 of the nearly 60,000 jobs lost in the 2014 oil bust, according to the U.S. Labor Department. Oil extraction companies shed an additional 2,000 jobs in Houston in March compared with a year earlier, the agency said. Oil field workers are
By Michael Graczyk ASSOCIATED PRE SS
Gary Fountain / Associated Press
A May 1, 2018 photo shows a general view of the exhibition floor at a recent Offshore Technology Conference held at NRG Park, Houston, Texas. Skilled workers in Texas are still looking for jobs as U.S. employment in the oil and gas industry continues to lag behind rising oil prices.
finding jobs easily in the booming shale plays of West Texas, but scientists, engineers and other knowledge-based professions are finding more trouble.
Thousands of job seekers attended the Offshore Technology Conference in Houston this month to network, hand out resumes and meet with oil Jobs continues on A5
HOUSTON — About 1,300 inmates who'd been sweltering in the Texas summer heat and humidity are getting air conditioning in their housing areas as a federal judge heard objections to a settlement of a lawsuit over their treatment. The tentative settlement, announced in February, resolved a lawsuit filed in 2014 by six inmates who contended the oppressive heat at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Wallace Pack Unit, about 95 miles (153 kilometers) northwest of Houston, was unconstitutionally cruel
Rose Baca / Associated Press
It is officially swelter season in Texas, and for most of the 150,000 inmates in the state's prison system, it means another summer of cells where temperatures can climb north of 100 degrees.
punishment. U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison on Tuesday considered objections to the agreement from about 20 inmates at what's known as a fairness hear-
ing, according to Jeff Edwards, the lead attorney for the prisoners who filed suit. Ellison would make a formal ruling in the case Prison continues on A5