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IMMIGRANT CHILDREN
Did US separate families? Moises Castillo / AP
Dominga Vicente shows a photo of her niece, 20 year-old Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez, who was killed by an agent of the U.S. Border Patrol in Rio Bravo, Texas.
Woman fatally shot by agent came seeking work 20-year-old was unable to find a job in Guatemala By Christina Caron N EW YORK T I ME S
The aunt of the woman shot and killed by a Border Patrol agent last week after crossing the border illegally near Laredo, Texas, has a message for the United States: “Don’t treat us like animals.” The aunt, Dominga Vicente, spoke at a news conference Friday, the same day the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Guatemala identified her niece, Claudia Patricia Gómez González, 20, of San Juan Ostuncalco, Guatemala, as the victim of the shooting. “This is not the first person dying in the United States,” Vicente said at the news conference in Guatemala City. “There are many people that have been treated like animals and that isn’t what we should do as people.” Vicente said her niece had left Guatemala “out of necessity”
to try to earn money in the United States. Gómez had studied accounting but was unable to find a job in Guatemala, according to the Guatemalan television station Guatevisión. Gómez’s mother, Lidia González Vásquez, told Guatevisión in an interview posted Friday that she wanted her daughter’s body returned to her. “She left home 15 days ago, saying: ‘Mamita, we’re going to go on ahead, I’ll make money. There’s no work here,’” González said. “But shamefully they killed her. The migration killed her.” Carlos Narez, the secretary of the National Council for Migrant Assistance in Guatemala, on Friday called for an “exhaustive, impartial investigation.” “Guatemala is saddened by whatever violence and excess use
Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-News
A group of immigrants, including children, walk along a road minutes after smugglers rafted them across the Rio Grande into the U.S. at a site called El Rincon, in Hidalgo County, Texas. The area is known as a place where human smugglers drop off Central American immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S.
Authorities may have lost track of more than 1,000 By Amy Harmon NEW YORK TIME S
President Donald Trump over the weekend falsely blamed Democrats for a “horrible law” separating immigrant children from their parents. In fact, his own administration had just announced this policy earlier this month. His comments followed days of growing alarm that federal authorities have lost track of more than 1,000 immigrant children, mostly from Central America, giving rise to hashtags like #WhereAreTheChildren and claims that children are being ripped from their parents’ arms at the border and then being lost. But the president is not the only one spreading wrong information. Across social media, there have been confusing reports of what happened to these immigrant children. Here are some answers. Q: Did the Trump administration separate nearly 1,500 immigrant children from their parents at the border, and then lose track of them? A: No. The government did realize last year that it lost track of 1,475
Jerry Lara / San Antonio Express-News
Border Patrol agents question immigrants near Anzalduas Park, southwest of McAllen. A wave of Central American adults with children and unaccompanied minors has overwhelmed U.S. detention centers.
migrant children it had placed with sponsors in the United States, according to testimony before a Senate subcommittee last month. But those children had arrived alone at the Southwest border — without their parents. Most of them are from Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala, and were fleeing drug cartels, gang violence and domestic abuse, according to government data. Officials at the Department of Health and Human Services, which
oversees refugee resettlement, began making calls last year to determine what had happened to 7,635 children the government had helped place between October and the end of the year. From these calls, officials learned that 6,075 children remained with their sponsors. Twenty-eight had run away, five had been removed from the United States and 52 had relocated to live with a nonsponsor. The rest Children continues on A10
Woman continues on A10
CHRISTIAN LAW FIRMS BORDER PATROL
Description of fatal shooting revised A S S OCIAT E D PRE SS
RIO BRAVO, Texas — The U.S. Border Patrol has revised its description of an agent-involved shooting in Texas that killed a woman who was part of a group that illegally entered the country. The agency initially said Wednesday that the lone agent fired his gun after being attacked “by multiple subjects using blunt objects.” But Border Patrol said Friday that the group ignored the agent’s demands to get on the ground and “rushed him.” The first statement describes the woman killed as “one of the assailants,” while the second calls her “one member of the group.” Agency spokeswoman Sara Melendez says she can’t address specific questions about the releases but notes they usually do a follow-up statement after the initial one. Guatemala’s foreign ministry identifies the woman killed as Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez.
Conservatives gain influence By Paul J. Weber ASSOCIATED PRE SS
AUSTIN — Lawyers who espouse a conservative Christian agenda have found plenty of opportunities in Texas, suing on behalf of Bible-quoting cheerleaders and defending a third-grader who wanted to hand out Christmas cards that read in part “Jesus is the Christ!” But for the First Liberty law firm, the last few years have been especially rewarding: Their attorneys have moved into powerful taxpayer-funded jobs at the Texas attorney general’s office and advised President Donald Trump, who nominated a current and a former First Liberty lawyer to lifetime appointments on federal courts. Another attorney went to the Department of Health and Human Services as a senior adviser on religious free-
Eric Gay / AP
David J. Hacker, special counsel for AG, right, and Brantley Starr, deputy first AG, left, take part in a meeting on religious freedom laws at the Texas Capitol.
dom. It’s a remarkable rise for a modest-sized law firm near Dallas with 46 employees, and it mirrors the climb of similar firms that have quietly shifted from trying to influence government to becoming part of it. The ascent of the firms has helped propel a wave of anti-LGBT legislation and so-called religious-freedom laws in statehouses nation-
wide. “First Liberty just struck gold with a Republican president and the Texas attorney general. It’s pretty incredible and definitely unusual,” said Daniel Bennett, a professor at John Brown University in Arkansas and author of a book on the conservative Christian legal movement. Since 2015, First Liberty and a conservative Chris-
tian law firm, the Alliance Defending Freedom, have moved prominent lawyers to top jobs in attorney general’s offices in Texas and elsewhere. In the process, they have shifted from outsiders suing government to insiders pushing religious-freedom issues. Their influence is widening under the Trump administration as it attempts to deliver on his pledges to evangelicals and other religious supporters. Their work includes a pending U.S. Supreme Court case involving Colorado baker who refused to make a cake for a same-sex couple and another case involving a rural Texas high school whose cheerleaders were prohibited from writing inspirational Bible verses on banners during games. The organizations have also drafted bills introduced Christian continues on A8