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FEDERAL COURT
STATE GOVERNMENT
Attempt gets three indicted
Judge: still available
Immigrants came through Zapata, indictment states
Ruling lets Planned Parenthood stay in health program By GARY SCHARRER SAN ANTONIO EXPRESS-NEWS
AUSTIN — A judge granted Planned Parenthood a temporary restraining order Friday, prevent-
ing the group’s exclusion from participating in the Women’s Health Program. A trial is set for Nov. 8 with 201st state District Judge Amy Clark Meachum of Austin to hear on
Planned Parenthood’s claim that Texas’ effort to bar the group from the program is invalid under Texas law. Nearly 50,000 women rely on Planned Parenthood for basic health care through
the Women’s Health Program, “and the lawsuit today is to preserve their access to health care,” said Rochelle Tafolla, a Planned Parenthood vice president in Houston. “We are point-
ing out that there is language on the state books that says the state cannot do this when it jeopardizes
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COLLEGE LIFE
By CÉSAR G. RODRIGUEZ THE ZAPATA TIMES
Three people accused of smuggling a large group of people through Zapata were indicted in federal court in Laredo this week. Laredoan Hilaria Ruby Escareño and Everardo Urbina-Ruiz and Cesar Eduardo Elias-Zapata, both of Nuevo Laredo, exico, face charges of conspiracy to transport illegal immigrants within the United States and conceal, harbor and shield illegal immigrants from detection, according to an indictment dated Tuesday. The case dates back to Oct. 2, when Homeland Security Investigations special agents received information from the Laredo North U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint about the apprehension of 27 illegal immigrants inside a false compartment of a box truck. Undocumented immigrants held as material witnesses said they had been smuggled to the U.S. side near Zapata about one month prior to the arrest. After crossing the river near Zapata, the illegal immigrants were transported to Laredo in a motor vehicle. A complaint states a total of 27
WALKING LIKE A ZOMBIE
Photo by Cuate Santos | The Zapata Times
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A group of students make their way to the main plaza at Laredo Community College’s Fort McIntosh Campus as they participate in a Zombie Walk on Wednesday morning.
ANTIQUITIES A clay statue, one of many seized artifacts returned to Mexico, is displayed during a news conference at the Mexican Consulate in El Paso, on Thursday, More than 4,000 artifacts looted from Mexico and seized in the U.S. were returned in what experts say is one of the largest repatriations between the two countries.
4,000 archaeological relics returned to Mexico By JUAN CARLOS LLORCA ASSOCIATED PRESS
Photo by Mark Lambie/The El Paso Times | AP
EL PASO — More than 4,000 archaeological artifacts looted from Mexico and seized in the U.S. have been returned to Mexican authorities in what experts say is one of the largest such repatriations between the countries. The items returned
Thursday mostly date from before European explorers landed in North America and include items from hunter-gatherers in pre-Columbian northern Mexico, such as stones used to grind corn, statues, figurines and copper hatchets, said Pedro Sanchez, president of the National Archaeological Council of Mexico.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents seized the relics in El Paso, Phoenix, Chicago, Denver, San Diego and San Antonio, though most of the artifacts — including items traced to a 2008 theft from a museum in Mexico — turned up in Fort Stockton, a Texas town about 230 miles southeast of El Paso. More than two dozen
pieces of pottery were seized in Kalispell, Mont., where Homeland Security agents discovered that a consignor had paid Mexican Indians to loot items from burial sites deep in the Mexican Copper Canyon in Chihuahua, Mexico, authorities said. Although most of the
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