October 25, 2016


News and Views


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/cary-heath-fort-worth-middle-school-science-teacher-accused-of-killing-2-neighbors/

Middle school science teacher accused of killing 2 neighbors
By CRIMESIDER STAFF CBS/AP
October 25, 2016, 11:54 AM


FORT WORTH, Texas -- A Dallas-area middle school teacher has been arrested and charged with capital murder in the slayings of two men in Fort Worth who are reportedly his neighbors.

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1st period gets underway at Permenter M.S. in #CedarHill at 7:30. Some students will learn their teacher here is in jail for murder.
7:42 AM - 25 Oct 2016
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A Fort Worth police statement says Cary Joseph Heath, 35, was arrested Monday at Permenter Middle School in Cedar Hill, where he has been a teacher. Bond is set at $1 million.

According to an arrest affidavit obtained by CBS DFW, Heath, an eighth-grade science teacher, allegedly admitted to the slayings to two people before teaching a class. He was later arrested at the school after students had left for the day, the station reports.

Police haven’t released much information on the shootings, which happened about 4 a.m. Sunday. Officers arrived to find two men dead on the driveway of a house. CBS DFW reports Heath lived nearby.

Cedar Hill Independent School District told the station Heath is on administrative leave.

A bio on the district’s website that’s since been removed said Heath was an Air Force veteran. Investigators removed items from his home Monday night that included rifles and other weapons, sources told the station. Sources also told CBS DFW an assault rifle was used in the deadly shootings.

No attorney is listed in jail records for Heath.



Here we go again with another assault rifle murder. It is my personal opinion that people who surround themselves with guns, especially assault rifles, are not psychologically normal. It’s like those who keep a houseful of snakes. When my husband was in grad school for zoology, one of the other students said, “All herpetologists are crazy.” While that’s an overstatement, it goes in the direction of truth. The ownership of assault rifles should be banned, and the accumulation of what I call “an arsenal” should also.




Can past tense of a transitive verb be used to modify an abstract noun? Example :”beleaguered reputation?”


http://www.cbsnews.com/news/wiggins-mississippi-high-school-noose-incident-town-state-image/

Wiggins, Mississippi high school noose incident another blow to state image
CBS/AP
October 25, 2016, 9:01 AM

Photograph -- President of the Stone County branch of the Mississippi State Conference of the NAACP, Rev. Robert James, right, talks with Wiggins City Police Officer, Cpl. Thomas Reynolds in front of the Stone County Courthouse in Wiggins, Miss., Monday, Oct. 24, 2016. MAX BECHERER, AP
Play VIDEO - "Mississippi Burning" investigation closes after decades
Play VIDEO -- Miss. murder considered a possible hate crime
Play VIDEO
Related: Mississippi legislator advocates removing Confederate design from state flag


WIGGINS, Miss. - Stone High School’s football team was making a name for itself as the Tomcats turned around years of mediocrity with a winning season under the school’s first-year coach.

But now the south Mississippi school’s football program is known for something else - a black junior varsity player who says as many as four white students put a noose around his neck during an Oct. 13 football practice.

The incident piles on to a beleaguered reputation for the state of Mississippi as an ongoing bastion of intolerance and divisiveness.

At a Monday news conference, the Mississippi NAACP demanded a federal hate crime investigation.

“No child should be walking down the hall or in a locker room and be accosted with a noose around their neck,” state NAACP President Derrick Johnson said during a news conference in Wiggins. “This is 2016, not 1916. This is America. This is a place where children should go to school and feel safe in their environment.”

Hollis and Stacey Payton, parents of the alleged victim, attended the news conference but didn’t speak. Their son, an unnamed sophomore, wasn’t present.

The NAACP said the incident happened during a break in football practice and that the noose was “yanked backward” while on the student’s neck.

Johnson wouldn’t say whether the noose left marks. State NAACP spokeswoman Ayana Kinnel said the family indicated the student returned to practice after the incident.

Stone High has about 800 students, about a quarter of whom are black, according to state figures. The school is the only public high school in the 18,000-resident county.

Mississippi has struggled with a history of racial division. It is the last state that still incorporates the Confederate battle emblem in its state flag. In 2014, two out-of-state students at the University of Mississippi placed a noose on the campus’ statue of James Meredith, the black student who integrated Ole Miss in 1962. Both pleaded guilty to using a threat of force to intimidate African-American students and employees. Neither attends the school anymore.

Names of the students alleged to have assaulted the Paytons’ son weren’t immediately released.

Wiggins football coach John Feaster, who is black, told the Sun Herald newspaper that one of the white students involved was a football player who was kicked off the team as soon as school officials were able to pinpoint who was involved.

He said he feels “terrible” for the victim, “a tough kid who’s hanging in there.”

“He knows I love him and his teammates love him and the coaching staff loves him and he isn’t going to be treated any differently,” Feaster told the Sun Herald. “He’s one of my favorite kids on this team.”

Stone County Sheriff’s Capt. Ray Boggs said officials believe something close to what the Paytons described did happen and he’s still investigating. He said all the students involved are younger than 17 and he expects any charges would be filed in youth court, where records are closed to the public.

“It’s probably one of the hardest cases I’ll ever handle in my career, because of the nature of it,” said Boggs, who is black. “Have I ever had to deal with something like this? No, not from a high school.”

Johnson said he wants the teenagers charged as adults, as Mississippi law allows in some cases for children older than 13 and younger than 18. Johnson cited federal prosecutions of young people from Rankin County for hate crimes following the 2011 death of a black man run down in the parking lot of Jackson motel as an example of what federal involvement could bring. Most of those people were charged as adults. It turned out in that incident that a group of young white men and women had periodically roamed the city that spring, attacking African Americans at random, and police either never heard about it or dismissed it.

“There is absolutely a role for federal law enforcement,” Johnson said.

Johnson said Stacey Payton was advised against filing a police report because the father of one of the alleged assailants is a former law enforcement officer. Boggs said he talked to Stacey Payton and that’s not true. He said he told her that pursuing criminal charges could result in hard feelings among students that could make her son’s life more difficult at school.

Stone County Superintendent Inita Owen, in a statement to CBS Biloxi affiliate WLOX-TV, said she wouldn’t “address a matter of student discipline in the press.”

“I can assure everyone that the Stone County School District takes all matters involving students very seriously and will do everything within its power to make sure that all policies and procedures were adhered to and that all of its students have a safe place to receive an education,” Owen said.

WLOX reports that, according to the Stone High Student Handbook, the superintendent has the authority to expel any students who commits an act of violence on campus.

Johnson said the Paytons have received no official word about punishments from school officials. He said school district policy calls for immediate expulsion of students who commit assault.

Carissa Bolden of Wiggins, the mother of a middle school student, attended the NAACP news conference Monday and said white students have been flying the Mississippi flag from their vehicles. The upper left corner of the state flag used since 1894 has the Confederate battle emblem - a red field topped by a blue X with 13 white stars. Bolden said she sees a connection between the flag and the noose incident.

“I feel like it escalated from them allowing kids to bring Confederate flags” to school, Bolden said.

The state of Mississippi has clung to its Confederate symbols and ties, which many say furthers its negative reputation nationally and leads to incidents like that in Wiggins.



“No child should be walking down the hall or in a locker room and be accosted with a noose around their neck,” state NAACP President Derrick Johnson said during a news conference in Wiggins. “This is 2016, not 1916. This is America. This is a place where children should go to school and feel safe in their environment.” . . . . “I can assure everyone that the Stone County School District takes all matters involving students very seriously and will do everything within its power to make sure that all policies and procedures were adhered to and that all of its students have a safe place to receive an education,” Owen said. WLOX reports that, according to the Stone High Student Handbook, the superintendent has the authority to expel any students who commits an act of violence on campus.”


“Johnson said the Paytons have received no official word about punishments from school officials. He said school district policy calls for immediate expulsion of students who commit assault.” The school district should definitely have acted “immediately.” I think both a lawsuit and the intervention of the DOJ (or whoever investigates hate crimes) should definitely be brought into the matter. And as for the “beleaguered reputation,” of Mississippi, they absolutely deserve the distrust and intense dislike of Black people everywhere. Payton’s mother is correct. The fact that the high school has allowed state and confederate flags on campus makes the school liable to the hilt.

Too many people/communities/states push and shove and then when someone decks them they claim to have been wronged. If it weren’t so insulting and genuinely threatening it would be funny. I would like to point out that “immediate expulsion,” didn’t happen, and that should be grounds for the firing of the School Superintendent as well as the punishment of the “boys.” The problem with a 17-year-old “boy” is that he is ready to sire children, so he’s a man.



INVALIDATING SS PAYMENTS, VOTER REGISTRATION, ETC., WITHOUT DUE DILIGENCE

http://www.cbsnews.com/news/analysis-by-voter-group-finds-dead-people-likely-registered-in-indiana/

Analysis by voter group finds dead people likely registered in Indiana
AP October 25, 2016, 3:47 PM

Play VIDEO -- N.C. floods cause voting challenges


INDIANAPOLIS -- A data analysis firm hired by a voter registration group said on Tuesday that Indiana’s voter database is riddled with errors, including thousands of people over the age of 110 who would likely be deceased but are still on the registration list.

TargetSmart conducted a review of the state voter file maintained by Republican Secretary of State Connie Lawson’s office on behalf of Patriot Majority, a voter registration group with deep ties to the Democratic Party that says it was trying to register black voters in Indiana. Patriot Majority has been the focal point of a state police probe of possible voter fraud. The group said the discovery of numerous problems in the voter database does not necessarily mean this was the result of fraud.

Lawson’s spokeswoman Valerie Warycha said there is a simple explanation for why some voters might be listed as over the age of 110. She said some people, including judges or those who have taken out orders of protection, have their dates of birth listed in the year 1900 as a means of protecting their identities.

Early voting begins in a number of states

TargetSmart said it also found 837,000 voters with out-of-date addresses when compared to the United States Postal Service address database, or roughly one-in-five of all Indiana registered voters. The review found 4,556 duplicate registrations, 3,000 records without dates of birth and 31 records of registered voters who are too young to cast a ballot. More than 2,500 people on the rolls were listed over the age of 110.

The analysis comes after Lawson’s office last week raised the possibility that “thousands” of changes to voters’ first names and dates of birth in her records could be cases of voter registration fraud. She later acknowledged that many of the changes could come from voters rushing to update their online information ahead of the Nov. 8 election.

“There is clearly bad, missing and incomplete data,” said Tom Bonier, the CEO of TargetSmart, which is affiliated with the Democratic Party. “So if you’re seeing a lot of names changing or dates of birth changing, that’s likely because the information she had on the file is incorrect.”

Warycha said inconsistencies with the database will not prevent anyone from voting during the Nov. 8 election.

ap-16293805895369.jpg
In this Jan. 7, 2015 file photo, Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson speak in Indianapolis. A day after warning of potential widespread voting fraud in the state, Indiana’s secretary of state acknowledged Wednesday, Oct. 19, 2016, that many of the thousands of altered registration forms she flagged might just be residents rushing to correct their names or birth dates ahead of the election. DARRON CUMMINGS, AP

State police launched the investigation of Patriot Majority in late August after a clerk in Hendricks County, near Indianapolis, flagged roughly a dozen registration forms that had missing or suspicious information. Since then it has expanded to 56 counties in the state. It has also become highly politicized both in Indiana as well as on the national level, where Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and his running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, have raised the possibility of a “rigged” election without offering proof.

Experts say cases of actual voter fraud are low and Indiana has a voter ID law that requires people to show photo identification before casting a ballot.

Indiana state police Superintendent Doug Carter said in an interview last week with RTV6-TV that he believes “there’s voter fraud and voter forgery in every state of America.” Thus far, both Carter and Lawson have declined to release specifics, including any confirmed cases of voter registration fraud or approximate estimates of how many suspicious cases they are reviewing.

Carter, a former Republican sheriff elected in Hamilton County north of Indianapolis, served as a GOP county commissioner before Pence appointed him to the state police job.

TargetSmart’s analysis also identified inconsistencies in the state’s voter file over the last year, including names, middle initials and dates of birth that either appeared or disappeared after an update.

Warycha said the secretary of state took control of maintaining the state’s voter database in 2014 and has launched a highly publicized campaign to get voters to update their records. Warycha said individual counties previously were in charge of updating their voter files, but not all regularly did so. By federal law, Warycha said purging out-of-date registrations takes at least four years.

“We’ve been very proactive in making sure that Hoosiers’ voting information is up-to-date,” she said.

This is not the first time Indiana’s voter database has come under scrutiny.

In 2006, the state reached an agreement with the Justice Department intended to bring the state into compliance with the National Voter Registration Act by purging its voter rolls of those who had died or were listed more than once. That agreement came after the Justice Department found that Indiana had hundreds of thousands of ineligible voters on its registration lists, including possibly 29,000 dead people, and 290,000 duplicates.

Two voter watchdog groups, Judicial Watch and True the Vote, then sued Indiana in 2012, accusing the state of failing to maintain clean voter registration lists as required by the National Voter Registration Act. The two groups dropped their suit in June 2014 after state lawmakers approved changes in Indiana’s election laws the groups had sought.

In May 2014, a month before the suit was dropped, Secretary of State Connie Lawson announced that her office had started a postcard drive to identify invalid voter registrations that she said would help restore “integrity” to the state’s voter rolls. She said at the time that “it is estimated that at least one in eight voter registrations (nationwide) contains inaccurate information.”



http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/05/26/va-has-declared-thousands-living-vets-dead-stripped-benefits-in-last-five-years.html

VA has declared thousands of living vets dead, stripped benefits in last five years
Published May 26, 2016 The Wall Street Journal


The Department of Veterans Affairs has mistakenly declared thousands of veterans to be deceased and canceled their benefits over the past five years, a new snafu to emerge at the embattled department.

The VA has made the error more than 4,000 times over a half-decade because of employee mistakes or erroneous cross-checking of data by the department’s computers, among other reasons, according to correspondence between the VA and the office of U.S. Rep. David Jolly (R., Fla.) reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The VA changed its procedures to address the issue, but it isn’t yet clear whether the new system is effective.

“Although these types of cases represent a small number of beneficiaries in comparison to the millions of transactions completed each year in our administration of benefits, we sincerely regret the inconvenience caused by such errors and work to restore benefits as quickly as possible after any such error is brought to our attention,” a VA spokesman said in a statement.

It wasn’t immediately clear whether the latest data represented an increase in the error rate or what prompted the VA to tackle the problem.

Every year, about 400,000 veterans or others receiving VA benefits die and their awards are canceled, according to department statistics. Of the roughly two million veterans declared deceased in the past five years, 4,201 cases involved incorrect declarations that the VA eventually corrected before resuming payments to the still-living beneficiary.

The VA noted that such errors make up less than 1% of all benefits terminations each year and that the accuracy rate of terminations because of death is 99.83%, according to the department’s most recent figures. The department said it doesn’t keep records of the causes of the errors.

Over the past decade, the VA has used what is called the death match program to prevent people from cashing benefits checks sent to deceased veterans. In 2010, the VA’s inspector general said the program had led to 382 arrests and recovery of $40 million in fraudulent payments.

Under a new system instituted late last year, the VA sends a letter to the beneficiary believed to have died and waits 30 days for a response before terminating the benefits and declaring the person dead. The department said it doesn’t have statistics on whether the new system has reduced such errors.

Difficulty keeping track of veteran deaths poses other problems. In September 2015 the VA’s Office of Inspector General issued a report noting that about 35% of the department’s approximately 870,000 pending applications for enrollment into the VA health-care system as of September 2014 were for people reported as dead by the Social Security Administration.

The report noted that most of the pending records are likely outdated, though the record system makes it unclear. Such a convoluted system helps “create unnecessary difficulty and confusion in identifying and assisting veterans with the most urgent need for health-care enrollment,” the report said.

In March, the enrollment system updated more than 130,000 dates of death in conjunction with Social Security’s official rolls to cut back on pending applications.



http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865661035/Roy-woman-declared-wrongfully-dead-by-federal-government-struggling-to-prove-shes-alive.html?pg=all

Roy woman wrongfully declared dead by federal government struggling to prove she's alive
By McKenzie Romero@McKenzieRomero
Published: Aug. 25, 2016 5:45 p.m.

ROY — Barbara Murphy isn't dead. But the federal government thinks she has been deceased for two years.

"This is the walking dead," she chuckles as she answers the phone at her Roy home.

She cracks similar jokes as she welcomes visitors into "the house of the living dead" or comments on how good she feels, considering her "condition."

Murphy says she has tried to see the humor in the situation that began two weeks ago. It keeps her from worrying about the potentially devastating consequences.

"It's the only thing carrying me through this," Murphy says of her sense of humor. "I don't know what else to do but laugh."

Though Murphy is alive and well, a death certificate has been connected to her, leading the Social Security Administration to believe she died in July 2014. Now, the federal government has been attempting to take back two years' worth of Social Security payments and to recoup any Medicare or Medicaid dollars put toward Murphy's treatment during that time.

As of Thursday, efforts to correct the error had been fruitless, attempts to pull from Murphy's fixed income continued, pleas to Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, have gone unanswered, and the 64-year-old Roy woman was left with no idea what to do next.

"We're just definitely going downhill faster than heck," she said, echoing her husband's concerns about paying their bills.

Whatever the cause, Murphy believes bureaucratic lack of communication has perpetuated the problem. Her fear now is that it won't be resolved before the next time her bills are due, she fills a prescription or needs to see a doctor.

Cindy Malone, a regional spokeswoman for the Social Security Administration, told the Deseret News on Thursday that privacy laws prevent the agency from releasing information about Murphy's case, including details about what is done to correct her record.

"We may never know how it happened. We focus on fixing the issue," Malone said. "We post about 2.8 million new reports of death each year from many sources, including family members, funeral homes, financial institutions, postal authorities, states and other federal agencies, and around one-third of 1 percent are subsequently corrected."

Malone also provided a phone number for Murphy to call for assistance.

Murphy was out for a Friday night dinner with a granddaughter on Aug. 12 when the waitress first informed her that her card had been declined. Murphy's husband was able to pay for the meal, but she remained perplexed.

Their granddaughter, who works for a bank, called to ask about her grandmother's account and was told it had been frozen after the Social Security Administration issued notice of her death.

After proving to the bank she was alive and resurrecting her account Monday morning, Murphy got a call from the bank manager urging her to contact the Social Security Administration and warning, "This could be very serious."

At the agency's office in Ogden the next day, Murphy couldn't even request a wait ticket from the automated system because her social security number registered as invalid. After being assigned a spot in line and waiting for her turn, Murphy got to make her case.

"I said, 'Now would you like to take my pulse and see that I'm alive? Because you're showing me dead.' And I said, 'You've caused me heartache,'" Murphy recalls with a chuckle.

After going through a series of questions and meeting with a supervisor, Murphy signed a letter saying she was contesting being listed as deceased, was told her status would be returned to active and was promised a letter updating her on her case's progress.

"It was a joke," Murphy said. "Since that time, every facility I have ever visited, every doctor's office I have ever visited, has received requests for every payment they have received be refunded to Social Security."

Then, her bank was contacted again by the Social Security Administration asking that two years' worth of Social Security payments be pulled from the account Murphy shares with her husband. So far, Murphy says the bank, which asked not to be identified, has taken fantastic measures to help her.

"The only protection I've had is my wonderful bank, because they have worked so hard and diligently to help me," Murphy said. She went on to add, "The young man at the bank, I just can't applaud him enough. Every time something comes up, he'll pick the phone up and call me."

Murphy has also been visiting the health care offices that have treated her over the past two years, delivering a letter she drafted explaining the error and urging in capital letters: "DO NOT PAY THEM."

Murphy hopes to eventually discover exactly how she was declared dead — she hopes this isn't an act of fraud — and will insist that the responsible party face some kind of consequence for the stress this has caused her and her husband.

"Is it ever going to get corrected so that I can have a level life again and know where I stand?" she asked.

In the meantime, Murphy said she will continue to laugh at the situation when she can.

Email: mromero@deseretnews.com



https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/Article/4120/What-should-I-do-if-I-am-incorrectly-listed-as-deceased-in-Social-Security-s-records


What should I do if I am incorrectly listed as deceased in Social Security’s records? If you suspect that you have been incorrectly listed as deceased on your Social Security record, please visit your local Social Security office as soon as possible. Please make sure to bring one of the following pieces of identification.

Passport;
Driver's license;
Employee ID card;
Military record;
School ID card, record or report card;
Marriage or divorce record;
Adoption record;
Health insurance card (except a Medicare card);
Certified copy of medical record;
Life insurance policy;
Court order for name change; or
Church membership that establishes your identity.

Important: You must present original documents or copies certified by the agency that issued them. We cannot accept photocopies or notarized copies. All documents must be current (not expired). We cannot accept a receipt showing you applied for the document.

When we correct your record, we will offer you a letter that you can give to banks, doctors or others to show that your death report was in error. This letter is called ­­­­the "Erroneous Death Case - Third Party Contact" Notice.
Give Us Some Feedback.



This is the second of these cases of legal facelessness that I’ve seen in the news. We can and should begin to employ real human beings to solve such problems post haste, rather than turning it over to yet another computer.

The prior case also was not “corrected” or even researched in a “reasonable” amount of time. Given the nature of the situation, “reasonable” seems like 24 hours to me, not weeks as in this poor lady’s case. In a WEALTHY society failing to receive a pension check wouldn’t do much harm, but this couple is being hounded to pay bills when they aren’t getting their money.

What about an “injunction” or a “cease and desist” order from a judge demanding that SS stop “notifying” creditors of ones’ untimely death? What about a lawsuit or a penalty for every letter that goes out? They’re quick to act to get their money back, so they should be made to be even quicker to avoid endangering the sustenance of an elderly couple like these.

I suggest people who have been declared dead in that manner go IMMEDIATELY to the police station for fingerprints – most people by the time they are 30 or so years old have had their fingerprints taken. Go, as the SS letter of instructions advised, carrying the fingerprints and ALL available personal documentation to the LOCAL SS office. Equip yourself beforehand with a good long novel, because you will have to stand in line.

If the real human being at your SS office does NOT give you your letter of explanation for banks, doctors, etc. IMMEDIATELY, send the local and the national office a registered letter stating that you plan to sue them and post a notice on Facebook and with CBS news if they don’t take your off their blankety blank death list. There also should be a consumer protection office at SS where you can speak to someone in person to get quicker action, or at least leave a recording explaining the situation.

If none of those don’t work and you feel like having a little excitement in your life, tell them what my old boyfriend said about his lost bank card. When he went to his bank to withdraw money one night at the teller machine it “ate” his card and didn’t give him any money. The next day he went to the bank to see about getting his card back and was told by a young and chipper lady, “It’s our policy to confiscate the card when it is found in the teller machine!” He said that he, judiciously, refrained from saying, “It’s my policy to send bombs through the mail.” A further suggestion, and this won’t upset any government departments, go to Google and search, ”List of Premature Obituaries.” website: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_premature_obituaries.






UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES

Surge of migrants illegally crossing U.S.-Mexico border ahead of election
By MANUEL BOJORQUEZ, CBS NEWS
October 25, 2016, 7:25 PM

Photograph -- bojorquez-border-and-elex-transfer.jpg, A migrant’s bus itinerary CBS NEWS
Photograph -- bojorquez-border-and-elex-transfer5.jpg, Migrants in McAllen, Texas CBS NEWS
Photograph -- bojorquez-border-and-elex-transfer2.jpg, Agent Chris Cabrera CBS NEWS


MCALLEN, Texas -- Every day, dozens of men, women and children stream through the streets of McAllen, Texas to a migrant center at Sacred Heart Catholic Church.

They have just illegally crossed into the U.S. and have been released by border patrol, with ankle monitors, while they file for asylum.

Brenda Aguilar, who fled violence in her home nation of Honduras, said she is a single mother, looking for work.

“We’re getting mass spikes of people crossing and turning themselves in,” said Agent Chris Cabrera, who is with the local border patrol union.

Cabrera said on some days, they’ve encountered up to a thousand immigrants along this stretch of the border. He said the election is partly to blame for the surge.

“The smugglers are telling them if Hillary gets elected, that there’ll be some sort of amnesty, that they need to get here by a certain date. They’re also being told that if Trump gets elected, there’s going to be some magical wall that pops up overnight and once that wall gets up, nobody will ever get in again,” Cabrera said.

The proposed border wall is something Edward Cerritos of El Salvador fears.

“If Trump wins, we won’t be able to come in and ask for asylum,” he said.

At the church, it’s time for a group to head to the bus depot. The routes scribbled on envelopes show they’re continuing the journey north.

The numbers are not expected to simply drop after Election Day. Experts say as long as violence and poverty persist south of the Rio Grande, smugglers will find another reason to convince people it’s time to cross.



I would like to laugh at this, but it’s too sad. Sigh.