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AUSTIN (AP) — Texas’ state police chief who came under scrutiny over the hesitant response to the Robb Elementary school shooting in 2022 and has overseen Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s aggressive efforts to stop migrant crossings on the U.S.-Mexico border said Friday he will retire at the end of the year.

Col. Steve McCraw has been the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety since 2009. He announced his retirement while addressing a new class of state troopers at a graduation ceremony in Austin.

McCraw did not elaborate during his remarks on the decision to step down. In a letter to agency employees, he praised their courage but did not mention Uvalde or any other specific police action during his tenure.

“Your bravery and willingness to face danger head-on have garnered the admiration and support of our leadership, Legislature and the people of Texas,” McCraw wrote.

McCraw was not on the scene during the May 24, 2022, school attack in Uvalde that killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. He called the police response an “abject failure” but resisted calls from victims’ families and some Texas lawmakers to step down after the shooting.

About 90 state troopers in McCraw’s ranks were among the nearly 400 local, state and federal officers who arrived on scene but waited more than 70 minutes before confronting and killing the gunman inside a classroom. Scathing state and federal investigative reports catalogued “cascading failures” in training, communication, leadership and technology problems.

State Sen. Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde, said McCraw should have been forced out soon after the massacre. McCraw’s troopers were “armed to the teeth” but “stood around and failed to confront the shooter,” said Gutierrez, who blamed him for the delay.

“McCraw’s legacy will always be the failure in Uvalde, and one day, he will be brought to justice for his inaction,” Gutierrez said.

At a news conference a few days after the shooting, McCraw choked back tears in describing emergency calls and texts from students inside the classroom. He blamed the police delay on the local schools police chief, who McCraw said was the on-scene incident commander in charge of the response.

Former Uvalde schools police chief Pete Arredondo and former school police officer Adrian Gonzales have been indicted on multiple counts of child abandonment and endangerment, but they remain the only two officers to face charges. They both have pleaded not guilty.

Arredondo has said he has been “scapegoated” for the police response, and that he never should have been considered the officer in charge that day.

Last month, McCraw reinstated one of the few DPS troopers disciplined over the Uvalde shooting response. A group of families of Uvalde victims has filed a $500 million lawsuit over the police response.

The DPS also has been at the center of Abbott’s multi-billion border “Operation Lone Star” security mission that has sent state troopers to the region, given the National Guard arrest powers, bused migrants to Washington, D.C., and put buoys in the Rio Grande to try to prevent migrant crossings.

The agency also led a police crackdown earlier this year on campus protests at the University of Texas over the Israel-Hamas war.

Abbott called McCraw “one of the most highly regarded law enforcement officers,” in the country and called him the “quintessential lawman that Texas is so famous for.”

AUSTIN – Annual prices for Texas State Parks passes will not increase in 2024, as previously announced, according to the Dallas Morning News. Current Texas State Park pass holders who have a pass expiring after Sept. 1, can continue to purchase their annual pass for $70. The Youth Group Annual Pass, which permits free state-park entry for nonprofit youth group members, will not increase from $100 to $150. According to a statement from the Texas Parks and Wildfire Department, which oversees the state parks, the Texas State Park Pass and the Youth Group Annual Pass are the only passes that were changing their prices for the next season, but the decision has been reversed.

With the opening of half a dozen new state parks in coming years, the the passes promote accessibility and enjoyment of Texas’s natural environments. There are multiple benefits of the Texas State Park Pass. Those with passes receive discounts of 50 percent on the second night of camping when visitors stay two or more consecutive nights in the same campsite or screened shelter. Pass holders also get 10 percent off of most retail and rental items and park stores, among other perks. “Garner State Park hosts a dance every night through the summer from 8:30-11 p.m. until mid-August,” Kreindler said. “At Palo Duro Canyon State Park, the TEXAS Outdoor Musical runs Tuesdays through Sundays at the Pioneer Amphitheater at the park. The show tells the stories, struggles and triumphs of early settlers through song, dance, fireworks and lots of Texas humor.”

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that Halliburton, one of the largest oil field service companies in the world, was targeted in a cyberattack Wednesday, according to Reuters. Reuters reported that the attack impacted Halliburton’s North Houston campus and had impaired global operations. An employee at the North Houston campus could not confirm the alleged attack, but said the location was currently suffering from a network outage. In a statement to Reuters, the company, which maintains a headquarters in Dubai and Houston, said it was working with “leading external experts” to solve the issue.

The alleged attack came just days after the FBI released a statement warning the public of Iranian hackers’ efforts to undermine the upcoming presidential election. The FBI accused Tehran of attempting to shape the outcome of the election through various phishing attacks and other methods. This year, the World Governments Summit warned of a general increase in cyberattacks on energy companies located in the U.S. and Canada. Between 2021 and 2022, attempts to undermine the security of these companies increased by 71%, according to a report from the organization. Costs associated with cyberattacks are projected to balloon in the coming years. The WGS expects costs associated with security and damages caused by cyberattacks to multiply by more than 10 times in the coming years.

AUSTIN – Opponents are suing to end a federal program that could potentially give nearly half a million immigrants without legal status who are married to U.S. citizens a path to citizenship.

Sixteen Republican-led states filed suit Friday to halt the program launched by President Joe Biden in June, saying in court filings that the Biden administration bypassed Congress to create a pathway to citizenship for “blatant political purposes.”

Under the policy, which started taking applications Monday, many spouses without legal status can apply for something called “parole in place,” offering permission to stay in the U.S., apply for a green card and eventually get on a path to citizenship.

But the program has been particularly contentious in an election year where immigration is one of the biggest issues, with many Republicans attacking the policy and contending it is essentially a form of amnesty for people who broke the law.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said in a statement Friday that the plan “violates the Constitution and actively worsens the illegal immigration disaster that is hurting Texas and our country.”

The suit filed against the Department of Homeland Security, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and other Biden administration officials accuses the agency of attempting to parole spouses “en masse,” which the states contend is an abuse of power.

The Department of Homeland Security and the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.

The bipartisan immigration and criminal justice organization FWD.us noted the timing of the lawsuit, which was filed on the night Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for president, and said the program is in compliance with the law,

“The only motivation behind this lawsuit is the cruelty of tearing families apart and the crass politics of hoping a judge might do the bidding of the anti-immigrant movement,” the organization said in a statement.

To be eligible for the program, immigrants must have lived continuously in the U.S. for at least 10 years, not pose a security threat or have a disqualifying criminal history, and have been married to a citizen by June 17 — the day before the program was announced.

They must pay a $580 fee to apply and fill out a lengthy application, including an explanation of why they deserve humanitarian parole and a long list of supporting documents proving how long they have been in the country.

They apply to the Department of Homeland Security, and if approved, have three years to seek permanent residency. During that period, they can get work authorization. The administration estimates about 500,000 people could be eligible, plus about 50,000 of their children.

Before this program, it was complicated for people who were in the U.S. illegally to get a green card after marrying an American citizen. They can be required to return to their home country — often for years — and they always face the risk they may not be allowed back in.

FORT WORTH – The Fort worth Star-Telegram says recent stories of noncitizens registering to vote in the upcoming general election might have led some to believe the activity is rampant in North Texas. But the number of voter registration applications rejected in Tarrant County because the person is not a U.S. citizen tells a different story. So far this year, Tarrant County has received and processed around 53,000 voter registrations, according to county spokesperson Bill Hanna. Of those, 18 have been rejected for not providing proof of citizenship, he said. That number represents 0.0003% of this year’s voter registration applications in Tarrant County. The idea that noncitizens were registering to vote en masse in North Texas flared up earlier this week after Fox News personality Maria Bartiromo posted on X Sunday that there was a “massive line of immigrants” registering to vote outside a driver license office in Weatherford.

“None of it is true,” a spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, which operates the office, told the Star-Telegram on Monday, adding that the idea that a line of nonwhite people waiting to get their IDs were unauthorized immigrants was “kind of racist.” Brady Gray, chair of the Republican party in Parker County, looked into Bartiromo’s story on Monday and found that “there has been no large submission of registrants consistent with the claim.” He told the Star-Telegram on Wednesday, however, that his findings should not be taken as representative of Texas counties writ large. Bartiromo doubled down on her friend’s wife’s account Thursday on her morning show on Fox, citing other parts of the DPS spokesperson’s statement to the Star-Telegram: that there was a voter registration booth outside a Lake Worth DPS office on Friday, but not at the other two sites mentioned. “I’m told speaker Mike Johnson will move to attach the SAVE Act, which requires proof of citizenship to vote, to a continuing resolution to fund government when Congress returns in September,” she said.

TEXAS – The Houston Chronicle reports that Gov. Greg Abbott regularly credits his $11 billion border security crackdown with driving down border crossings in Texas. But a new analysis of federal data shows three of the four southwestern border states have seen crossings decline significantly this year, and Texas had the most crossings of any state in July. “Illegal crossings into Texas are DOWN 85% thanks to Operation Lone Star,” Abbott wrote on the social media site X earlier this month. In another post last week, the Republican governor wrote that hundreds of miles of razor wire the Texas National Guard has strung along the border has “helped to decrease illegal immigration by about 85%.” Crossings have dropped 86% in Texas since December, when the Border Patrol logged record apprehensions.

But they have also fallen 84% in Arizona and 55% in California, two states with Democratic governors and no comparable border initiatives, according to an analysis of federal data by Adam Isacson, a researcher at the Washington Office on Latin America, a human rights advocacy group. “Texas’s big border crackdown hasn’t deterred migration any more than other border states,” Isacson wrote on X on Tuesday. Abbott’s office said the governor launched Operation Lone Star to “fill in the dangerous gaps” left by the Biden administration, and that since its launch in 2021, crossings have similarly declined 85%. “Until President Biden and Border Czar Harris step up and do their jobs to secure the border, Texas will continue utilizing every tool and strategy to respond to the Biden-Harris border crisis,” Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said in a statement. The state-level analysis is the latest evidence that a major slowdown at the southern border this year has little to do with the state’s ongoing crackdown. The biggest declines came in January, after Mexico stepped up enforcement under pressure from the Biden administration, and in June, after President Joe Biden issued an executive order that shut off asylum processing when more than 2,500 migrants illegally cross into the U.S. in a single day. Border-wide crossings fell from 249,740 in December to 124,216 in January, according to the analysis. In May, the Border Patrol logged 117,905 apprehensions in the four border states. By July, they tallied just 56,408. Texas had the largest share of those, with 16,991, just ahead of California’s 16,471.