Greg Abbott Invoked Mental Illness After the El Paso Shooting. Where Is Evidence?

Greg Abbott Invoked Mental Illness After the El Paso Shooting. Where Is Evidence?

Hours after a white gunman walked into an El Paso Walmart on Saturday and killed nearly two dozen Hispanic shoppers, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott addressed a room full of reporters in the border city and expressed grief and support for the community.

As high-profile mass shootings continue to erupt across the country — three of which occurred in Texas in the last two years — a reporter asked the governor what he planned on doing to ensure one doesn’t happen again.

Abbott, a Republican, hesitated, then spoke at length about how the state Legislature reacted to the 2018 high school shooting in Santa Fe, eventually focusing on what he said was the most agreed-upon need: addressing mental health issues.

“Bottom line is mental health is a large contributor to any type of violence or shooting violence, and the state of Texas this past session passed a lot of legislation and provided funding for the state to better address that challenge,” he concluded, referring to bills aimed at improving children’s mental health care.

Behind him, U.S. Rep. Veronica Escobar, a Democrat from El Paso, visibly stiffened, shaking her head slightly as Abbott connected mental illness to what appears to be an act of domestic terrorism fueled by a white supremacist ideology.

The next day, before a downtown El Paso vigil for the victims, she put into words what had been apparent on her face.

“I would also call on those who use mental illness as an excuse to please stop. Please stop,” Escobar told reporters, to light applause from those beginning to arrive for the service. “It further stigmatizes those who truly suffer from mental illness, and the fact of the matter is people with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violent crime, not perpetrators.”

“This tragedy is not in vain if we can finally have a reckoning in this country as to what is really going on,” she added.

Rep. Lauren Underwood (D) Introduces Bill To Standardize Health Care Screenings At US Border

Rep. Lauren Underwood (D) Introduces Bill To Standardize Health Care Screenings At US Border

In the cage match between Trump and the Squad, it's easy to miss enlightened comments about the Mexico border migrant crisis like the one Democratic Congresswoman Lauren Underwood just delivered on 'Morning Joe'.

Congresswoman Underwood introduced The U.S. Border Patrol Medical Screening and Standards Act, which would standardized processes and training to ensure consistent medical screenings for migrants in US custody at the Mexico border, according to a news release.

"We progressive women aren't going anywhere," was her final statement. Underwood never embraced all of the Squad's positions or style; not did she try to separate herself from them. But as a Democratic woman of color who defeated a Republican in Illinois’s 14th congressional district in 2018, she's in that camp derided by our most left-wing voices. As if 'she' is the problem in executing the Democratic agenda and not Republicans!

Wayfair Corporate Boston Workers Protest Of Sales To Texas Detention Camps -- Square Offers Support

Wayfair Corporate Boston Workers Protest Of Sales To Texas Detention Camps -- Square Offers Support

As promised, employees at Wayfair’s corporate headquarters in Boston staged a walkout Wednesday over the company’s sale of about $200,000 worth of bedroom furniture to the global nonprofit BCFS (Baptist Children and Family Services), headquartered in San Antonio.

About 550 employees out of about 6000 working at the Boston offices signed a protest letter sent to the company’s leadership team last week, asking them to abort the sale The furniture is destined for a detention camp in Carrizo Springs, Texas that is expected to have capacity for 3,000 children writes The Daily Beast.

The employees took issue with a 2018 New York Times report that BCFS “has received at least $179 million in federal contracts since 2015 under the government’s so-called unaccompanied alien children program, designed to handle migrant youths who arrive in the country without a parent or other family member.”

U.S. Houses Passes $4.5 Billion Border Aid Bill Amid Mounting Concern For Detained Migrant Children

U.S. Houses Passes $4.5 Billion Border Aid Bill Amid Mounting Concern For Detained Migrant Children

By Adam Willis. First published in The Texas Tribune.

As reports of migrant children being held in squalid conditions at federal facilities near the border continue to draw outrage, Democrats successfully pushed a $4.5 billion humanitarian aid package through the U.S. House late Tuesday evening with a vote of 230 to 195.

The passage of the bill marks a narrow victory for Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who managed to coalesce a unified front after several days of uncertainty and division within the party. Ultimately, only four Democrats broke rank, none of them Texans. Among the Republicans from the state, U.S. Rep. Will Hurd, R-Helotes, was the only member to buck his party, voting in favor of the bill. Hurd's districts covers much of the state's border with Mexico.

Note: The Four Democratic women who broke with Pelosi are Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) and Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.).

‘Willful Recklessness’: Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention As Sanitary Crisis Mounts

‘Willful Recklessness’: Trump Pushes for Indefinite Family Detention As Sanitary Crisis Mounts

The Executive Office for Immigration Review (EOIR) has been tracking about 40,000 expedited family cases “regardless of whether they reflect a priority designation” in order to ensure they are completed “without undue delay” at ten immigration courts in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, New York City, and San Francisco. Nearly 8,000 of those cases have already ended with removal orders. These are some of the migrants ICE agents could now target.

The administration has buttressed its push to detain more families by arguing that few of them show up for their immigration court hearings if they are released. At a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on June 11, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Acting Secretary Kevin McAleenan said “family units” accounted for two-thirds of migrants processed at the Southwest border in May, and that 90 percent of families the EOIR was monitoring didn’t appear for court hearings. Several reports contradict this claim.

One case-by-case study of immigration court records showed “as of the end of May 2019 one or more removal hearings had already been held for nearly 47,000 newly arriving families seeking refuge in this country. Of these, almost six out of every seven families released from custody had shown up for their initial court hearing.”

The study further noted that “multiple hearings are [usually] required before a case is decided. For those who are represented, more than 99 percent had appeared at every hearing held.”

Texas Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks 'Sanctuary Cities' Law

Texas Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks 'Sanctuary Cities' Law

A federal district judge on Wednesday ruled against the state of Texas and halted a controversial state-based immigration enforcement law just days before it was scheduled to go into effect, writes The Texas Tribune. .

U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia granted a preliminary injunction of Senate Bill 4, one of Gov. Greg Abbott’s key legislative priorities that seeks to outlaw “sanctuary” entities, the common term for governments that don’t enforce federal immigration laws.