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DALLAS (AP) — The leader of an historic church in downtown Dallas nearly destroyed by a fire told congregants on Sunday that they will rebuild the iconic structure.

Services for First Baptist Dallas were held at the nearby Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center, where senior Pastor Robert Jeffress said they will rebuild the sanctuary, which now appears as a charred shell, with its stained glass windows ruined and virtually everything inside its brick walls destroyed.

“If we allow that thing to remain in ruins, it will look to the whole world like we’ve been defeated by the evil one, so we’re going to rebuild,” Jeffress said. “I’m not saying we’re going to duplicate every square inch of that worship center. … We’re going to remember that historic place of worship and do everything we can to honor it.”

Jeffress added that insurance will cover the costs to rebuild.

No deaths or injuries were reported after the blaze broke out Friday evening in the Texas Historic Landmark, a Victorian-style red brick church built in 1890. It took firefighters about three hours to contain the blaze.

Interim Fire Chief Justin Ball said Friday the fire appeared to have started in the building’s basement.

Dallas Fire-Rescue Capt. Robert Borse said Sunday the investigation into how the blaze started was ongoing and that there were no updates on that probe.

DALLAS (AP) — A Dallas Fire-Rescue engine crashed off an expressway bridge on Sunday and landed on a railway track below, injuring four firefighters, officials said.

The crash happened just after 6 a.m. on the I-345 Expressway, Dallas Fire-Rescue Capt. Robert Borse said. He said it was not immediately known Sunday what caused the accident or if other vehicles were involved.

All four firefighters were taken to the Baylor University Medical Center, where they were listed in stable condition Sunday morning, Borse said.

Portions of the expressway and the Dallas Area Rapid Transit rail system were shut down after the crash.

Images of the scene show the engine on its side in the middle of the DART tracks, surrounded by firefighters. On the rain-slickened pavement above, a massive highway sign structure collapsed over four lanes of the highway.

MCALLEN, Texas (AP) — As allegations of sexual abuse built up at the largest housing provider for unaccompanied migrant children in the U.S., officials continued placing children in their care in a system that lacks adequate oversight, advocates say.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by the Justice Department alleges employees of Southwest Key Programs Inc. sexually abused and harassed children in their care for at least eight years. During that time, the nonprofit organization amassed billions of dollars in government contracts and continued to house thousands of unaccompanied migrant children entering the U.S.

It remained unclear Friday how many children are currently in Southwest Key shelters, and federal officials did not respond to questions about whether any actions would be taken in response to the lawsuit. Critics say it reflects a system that has lacked accountability for years.

“The whole point of this complaint is that there’s this pattern and practice,” said Leecia Welch, deputy legal director at Children’s Rights. “If they’re bringing this complaint that they saw a pattern and practice of sexual harassment and violating these kids while still placing kids at Southwest Key during the same time period, that’s why I have such a disconnect.”

Southwest Key, which operates under grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through the Office of Refugee Resettlement, has 29 child migrant shelters — 17 in Texas, 10 in Arizona and two in California — with room for more than 6,300 children.

The department did not respond to emailed requests for comment asking whether children will continue to be placed there. A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment beyond the lawsuit announcement Thursday. Southwest Key did not respond to an additional emailed request for comment Friday.

“ORR continued to contract with Southwest Key despite knowing of some of these issues, so right now there isn’t in another place to put all these kids,” said Diane de Gramont, an attorney with the National Center for Youth Law. “And we would be extremely concerned if kids then ended up in border patrol facilities for longer periods of time because ORR didn’t have enough beds for them.”

The Border Patrol must transfer custody of unaccompanied children within 72 hours of arrest to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which releases most to parents or close relatives after short stays at Southwest Key or shelters operated by other contracted providers.

The Young Center for Immigrant Children’s Rights, a nonprofit organization that advocates for immigrant children, called for children in custody to be immediately reunited with family members and have access to attorneys as well as “independent courts who will hear their claims of harm.”

Previous abuse at some Southwest Key shelters led to their closure, including two large facilities in Arizona in 2018. The state revoked their licenses for not properly conducting background checks on their employees, and further investigation revealed several cases of physical and sexual abuse, including accusations from the government of El Salvador.

The abuse reflects the important role of state oversight, something that is now lacking in states like Texas and Florida, where Republican governors revoked state licensing of facilities that house migrant children.

Critics say there exists no equivalent system to report and investigate child abuse and neglect through the Health and Human Services Department’s Office of Refugee Resettlement, which oversees the housing of migrant children.

“If there is an incident of abuse, when the state is there, there’s a clear hotline for anybody to call,” de Gramont said. “There’s a mandatory investigation … there’s a strict series of events that’s supposed to happen there.”

Some experts also wondered why the complaint was filed as a civil lawsuit where no one would be held criminally liable.

Daniel Hatoum, a Texas Civil Rights Project attorney whose experience includes defending children subject to the work of immigration contractors, said a criminal lawsuit could come later.

“Corporate liability can be a lot harder for the Department of Justice than civil liability and especially individual criminal liability,” he said. The civil lawsuit is seeking a jury trial and requesting monetary damages for the victims of the alleged abuse.

The Justice Department’s lawsuit comes less than three weeks after a federal judge granted its request to lift special court oversight of the Health and Human Services Department’s care of unaccompanied migrant children, known as the Flores agreement. This gave attorneys representing child migrants broad authority to visit custody facilities and conduct interviews with staff and other migrants, as well as register complaints with the court.

President Joe Biden’s administration argued that new federal safeguards rendered special oversight unnecessary 27 years after it began. In one court document, Health and Human Services Department official Toby Biswas painted a rosy picture of the new regulations’ numerous protections for unaccompanied children as well as independent accountability for their custody conditions.

Advocates instead saw a void in oversight.

Carrie Van der Hoek, deputy program director for the Young Center’s Child Advocate Program in Texas, said in an affidavit opposing the termination of the Flores agreement that her staff reported approximately 10 instances of alleged abuse and neglect to the state’s Department of Family and Protective Services since Texas revoked its licensing in 2021.

“When we have made these reports, in some cases, DFPS officials told us that they would not investigate the complaint because DFPS did not have jurisdiction over ORR facilities,” Van der Hoek said. “In other cases, we received no response and were not aware of any actions taken by DFPS or any other state agency to investigate the report.”

Van der Hoek also said that if a child called preprogrammed telephones in the Office of Refugee Resettlement, facilities that allow them to reach the state child abuse and neglect hotline, they would get the same response.

Biswas said they began conducting “in-depth reviews” of abuse allegations at Texas facilities beginning March 2022 and will begin its own investigations of alleged child abuse and neglect in Texas “or in any other state if it ceases to perform such investigations” as of July of this year.

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Associated Press journalist Elliot Spagat contributed to this report.

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A previous version of this story incorrectly reported the Justice Department filed the lawsuit on Thursday.

TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — Posters inside a complex of giant, white tents tell migrants in English, Spanish, Mandarin and Hindi they should tell an officer if they fear being deported and “your claim will be heard.” On a side wall where migrants are seated in a processing area, a video conveys the same message on a loop.

Breaking from a practice in effect since 1997, Border Patrol agents at the holding facility in Tucson, Arizona, and throughout the country no longer ask migrants if they fear deportation. President Joe Biden’s administration temporarily suspended asylum at the border June 5 and, as part of that move, agents do not ask about fears. Migrants must bring it up themselves.

Immigration advocates call it the “shout test” — suggesting migrants must shout their fears — though agents are taught to respond to other signs of distress, such as crying, shaking or a change in tone of voice and to refer migrants for screening if the behavior appears genuine. Anyone not screened can be immediately deported.

It is unclear to what extent the “shout test” is responsible for a decline in border arrests of more than 50% since asylum was halted, a welcome development for Biden as he faces Republican attacks of letting the border spiral out of control.

But administration officials said it is a critical change because migrants are more likely to say they fear deportation if prompted with a question.

Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said strong guidelines are in place for agents to identify migrants exhibiting any signs of fear. Posters at holding facilities explain the new procedures and videos are shown at larger ones, such as Tucson.

“We train, we refresh the training, we are in constant dialogue with our personnel,” Mayorkas said in an interview. “We are abiding by our international and humanitarian obligations.”

If they pass screening at a higher standard, migrants can stay in the U.S. to pursue protections similar to asylum, like those under the United Nations Convention Against Torture. In doing so, the administration argued it is complying with U.S. and international law prohibiting sending people to countries where they face persecution or torture.

Immigration advocates say migrants showing signs of fear can easily be overlooked. The Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, which has sued the administration over the asylum halt, said 51 of the 97 families it interviewed in 2020, when the “shout test” was briefly in effect during the COVID-19 pandemic, said they spoke to agents about fears of deportation and another 21 expressed nonverbal cues but none were screened.

Araceli Martinez, 32, told The Associated Press that she feared returning home with her 14-year-old daughter to a physically abusive husband, but no one asked her at the Tucson facility about why she came and she didn’t know that she had to speak up until it was too late. She was deported to Nogales, Mexico, last month.

Another Mexican, Christian Gutierrez, said he told officials he wanted to claim asylum during three days in custody in San Diego but it was futile.

“They completely ignored me,” Gutierrez, 26, told the AP while sitting on a bench in Tijuana, Mexico, after being deported. “They didn’t give me an opportunity.”

Those who consider Biden’s policies too soft play down the “shout test” — and the asylum halt broadly — as too little, too late. Robert Law, director for homeland security and immigration at the America First Policy Institute, said the test may have limited impact but not for long.

“Eventually the word will get out to those who are coaching those who are trying to take advantage of the asylum system,” said Law, who dealt with asylum as chief of policy at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services during former President Donald Trump’s administration.

Even those who get a screening interview face new hurdles. Aside from higher standards, they get four hours to call an attorney from a holding facility, compared to a previous 24-hour window to prepare.

Those who don’t have attorneys get a list of free legal service providers. The four-hour windows are from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. including weekends, when many providers don’t answer phones. Even on weekdays, they may be overwhelmed.

On a Saturday morning after asylum was halted, a woman’s voicemail began calmly with her name, birth date, email address, booking number and date of arrest for crossing the border illegally with her 6-year-old daughter. After a 20-second pause, she started to cry, “Why? Why? Why? My God, please.” A guard asked if she was finished and she said yes.

RAICES, a group providing free legal advice to migrants in Texas that obtained the voicemail, found the woman in custody days later after she failed the screening but was waiting on an appeal. An immigration judge reversed the decision, saying she should have been interviewed in her native language, not Spanish, and that her fear was justified. She was released to pursue her case in heavily backlogged immigration courts.

A 22-year-old woman from Guatemala with a year-old son told her attorney she didn’t understand the video instructing migrants to express any fears of being deported and felt confused and scared. She said she contacted RAICES when the Border Patrol gave her a list of attorneys after failing the screening.

The woman told the attorney in a recorded phone call that she fled to the U.S. to work and escape “those cartels.” Fighting tears, she said her son had barely eaten in days.

“He wants to walk, he wants to go out and play games, but they won’t let him,” the woman said. An immigration judge denied her appeal and she was deported with her son.

RAICES said it has been able to respond to 74 of 1,215 calls received from people in Border Patrol custody since asylum was suspended June 5. The organization provided recordings from their clients to the AP on the condition that their names and other identifying information not be published due to concerns for their safety.

In Tijuana, the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, which provides free legal advice to migrants detained in San Diego, has been spreading word of the changes. Directing attorney Melissa Shepard said callers seeking help often have only an hour left to prepare for their interview.

“You are the one who has to say I’m afraid,” Shepard said at a migrant shelter last month. The audience appeared to listen closely but didn’t ask questions.

HOUSTON (AP) – Longtime U.S. Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee of Texas, who helped lead federal efforts to protect women from domestic violence and recognize Juneteenth as a national holiday, has died. She was 74.

Lillie Conley, her chief of staff, confirmed that Jackson Lee, who had pancreatic cancer, died in Houston Friday night with her family around her.

The Democrat had represented her Houston-based district and the nation’s fourth-largest city since 1995. She had previously had breast cancer and announced the pancreatic cancer diagnosis on June 2.

“The road ahead will not be easy, but I stand in faith that God will strengthen me,” Jackson Lee said in a statement then.

Jackson Lee was “a towering figure in our politics,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday. “Always fearless, she spoke truth to power and represented the power of the people of her district in Houston with dignity and grace.”

Biden said Jackson Lee’s spirit was unbreakable.

“I had the honor of working with her during her nearly 30 years in Congress,” Biden said. “No matter the issue — from delivering racial justice to building an economy for working people — she was unrelenting in her leadership.”

Vice President Kamala Harris called her a dear friend for many years, as well as a fellow member of the Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority and the Congressional Black Caucus.

“She was relentless—one of our nation’s fiercest, smartest, and most strategic leaders in the way she thought about how to make progress happen. There was never a trite or trivial conversation with the Congresswoman. She was always fighting for the people of Houston and the people of America,” her statement said.

Bishop James Dixon, a longtime friend in Houston who visited Jackson Lee earlier this week, said he will remember her as a fighter.

“She was just a rare, rare jewel of a person who relentlessly gave everything she had to make sure others had what they needed. That was Sheila,” he said.

Jackson Lee had just been elected to the Houston district once represented by Barbara Jordan, the first Black woman elected to Congress from a Southern state since Reconstruction, when she was immediately placed on the high-profile House Judiciary Committee in 1995.

“They just saw me, I guess through my profile, through Barbara Jordan’s work,” Jackson Lee told the Houston Chronicle in 2022. “I thought it was an honor because they assumed I was going to be the person they needed.”

Jackson Lee quickly established herself as fierce advocate for women and minorities, and a leader for House Democrats on many social justice issues, from policing reform to reparations for descendants of enslaved people. She led the first rewrite of the Violence Against Women Act in nearly a decade, which included protections for Native American, transgender and immigrant women.

Jackson Lee was also among the lead lawmakers behind the effort in 2021 to have Juneteenth recognized as the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King, Jr. Day was established in 1986. The holiday marks the day in 1865 that the last enslaved African Americans in Galveston, Texas, finally learned of their freedom.

A native of Queens, New York, Jackson Lee graduated from Yale and earned her law degree at the University of Virginia. She was a judge in Houston before she was elected to Houston City Council in 1989, then ran for Congress in 1994. She was an advocate for gay rights and an early opponent of the Iraq War in 2003.

Top congressional Democrats reacted quickly to the news Friday night, praising her commitment and work ethic.

Rep. James Clyburn of South Carolina called her “a tenacious advocate for civil rights and a tireless fighter, improving the lives of her constituents.”

Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland said he had never known a harder-working lawmaker than Jackson Lee, saying she “studied every bill and every amendment with exactitude and then told Texas and America exactly where she stood.”

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California cited Jackson Lee’s “relentless determination” in getting Juneteenth declared a national holiday.

“As a powerful voice in the Congress for our Constitution and human rights, she fought tirelessly to advance fairness, equity and justice for all,” Pelosi said.

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he and his wife Cecilia will always remember Jackson Lee, calling her a “tireless advocate for the people of Houston.”

“Her legacy of public service and dedication to Texas will live on,” he said.

Jackson Lee routinely won reelection to Congress with ease. The few times she faced a challenger, she never carried less than two-thirds of the vote. Jackson Lee considered leaving Congress in 2023 in a bid to become Houston’s first female Black mayor but was defeated in a runoff. She then easily won the Democratic nomination for the 2024 general election.

During the mayoral campaign, Jackson Lee expressed regret and said “everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect” following the release of an unverified audio recording purported to be of the lawmaker berating staff members.

In 2019, Jackson Lee stepped down from two leadership positions on the House Judiciary Committee and Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the fundraising of the Congressional Black Caucus, following a lawsuit from a former employee who said her sexual assault complaint was mishandled.

In a statement, Jackson Lee’s family said she had been a beloved wife, sister, mother and grandmother known as Bebe.

“She will be dearly missed, but her legacy will continue to inspire all who believe in freedom, justice, and democracy,” the statement said. “God bless you Congresswoman and God bless the United States of America.”

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Associated Press writer Lou Kesten contributed to this story from Washington.

DALLAS – A fire all but destroyed the historic church sanctuary at First Baptist Dallas, sending smoke billowing over the city but causing no deaths or injuries, Dallas firefighters said.

The fire in the Texas Historic Landmark, a Victorian-style red brick church built in 1890, was reported about 6:30 p.m. Friday, and contained about three hours later, firefighters said.

“We think it may have started in the basement and then gone on to the second floor but until we clear it out and do an investigation we won’t know” the cause, interim Fire Chief Justin Ball told KDFW-TV.

A fire department spokesperson did not immediately return a phone call for comment Saturday morning.

“We are grateful that no one was injured … and are thankful for the first responders who helped contain the fire to our historic sanctuary,” senior Pastor Robert Jeffress said. “We just had 2,000 children and volunteers on campus for Vacation Bible School earlier in the day.”

The evangelical megachurch, with 16,000 members, now holds its main services in a modern worship center next door to the historic sanctuary. Jeffress, a close supporter of Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, told WFAA-TV that he intends to hold services there on Sunday.