Today is
Thursday June 04, 2026
FORNEY (KETK) – The Forney Police Department has confirmed that three people were injured when their plane crashed during an emergency landing on Saturday morning.
According to Forney PD, Forney police officers and Forney Fire Department firefighters responded to the area of Sage Hill Parkway and Helms Trail at just after midnight on Saturday after a single-engine aircraft crashed in a field while attempting to make an emergency landing.
Three people were on the plane and two of them had to be taken to a local hospital for treatment, while the third person was treated for their injuries at the crash scene. Forney PD said they’re working closely with the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Texas Department of Public Safety to investigate the crash.
The FAA identified the crashed aircraft as a Bellanca Downer 14-19-3 single-engine plane. The Dallas Police Association Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 716 said the three passengers were all off-duty police officers traveling together in the plane while returning a personal trip.
The lodge said two of the officers received minor injuries while one officer has significant injuries that they are still being treated for.
TYLER – A new lithium mining project planned in Northeast Texas has received the green light from the Trump Administration.
“What’s exciting about East Texas in particular is the lithium grade there,” CEO of Standard Lithium, Jesse Edmondson, said.
According to our news partner KETK, parts of the East Texas region will be home to Standard Lithium’s second commercial project to extract the precious mineral from saltwater thousands of feet underground.
” We see most of the growth of our company over the next decade will be in East Texas,” Edmondson said.
The Canada-based company went through a federal permitting review process in the U.S., which determined a very minimal environmental impact to our water, air, and landscape.
“You’re talking about on the order of a dozen to two dozen well pads, each one of which can have multiple wells drilled off of them. Then the surface disturbance is really limited to those well pads themselves and then the central processing facility,” Edmondson said.
The company’s flagship projects in the U.S. are located in what’s called the ” Smackover Formation.” It focuses on the areas in Franklin County and parts of Hopkins and Titus counties.
The average grade for our Franklin project is just over 600 milligrams per liter, but we’ve actually drilled a hole in that project area that was as high as is 800 milligrams per liter, so these are truly globally significant world class numbers and it’s really exciting for the company, we think for East Texas and for our country that we’re currently reliant on China for lithium and for lithium chemicals, so which are critical for modern battery technology,” Edmondson said.
Edmondson said the project is different from Lithium-ion battery storage facilities and focuses on extraction.
Most recently, a storage project was halted by a district judge in Van Zandt County.
“We don’t have the capacity to fight those kinds of fires, so if they don’t comply with the fire code, they should be redesigned,” Van Zandt Co. Precinct 2 Commissioner Cliff Williams said.
Williams hopes the new mining project will comply with state and national codes and not kick people out of their homes.
“That [mining project] is done in such a way that it respects the property ownership of those owners that live out there next door to where these operations are going to be taking place,” Williams said.
The extraction project is still in the early stages, and construction wouldn’t begin until at least 2030. Standard Lithium said this massive project will bring hundreds of jobs to the area.
LAREDO (AP) – Six people who were found dead in a rail yard shipping container in Laredo were from Honduras and Mexico and included a 14-year-old boy, all part of a human smuggling effort on a freight train, authorities said Thursday.
Police released more details about the discovery made Sunday in Laredo, near the U.S. border with Mexico, but said federal authorities were leading the investigation.
“They did not pass away in our city, but they were discovered here after hours of suffering,” Laredo Mayor Victor Treviño said at a news conference. “We are demanding justice for these lives lost. It doesn’t matter where they came from.”
The bodies were discovered by a Union Pacific employee. The Webb County medical examiner suspects the deaths were caused by hyperthermia, or heat stroke, a conclusion repeated by the mayor on Thursday.
The six people were put in the shipping container on Saturday in Del Rio, Texas, two days after the train departed from Long Beach, California, Laredo Police Chief Miguel Rodriguez Jr. said.
He said the train traveled to the San Antonio area from Del Rio before arriving Sunday in Laredo. Laredo is a busy land port for trade on the U.S.-Mexico border and a common nexus for the illegal movement of people.
“We did not know what we had at the beginning. We did not know that it was a human smuggling situation,” said Rodriguez, who declined to release further details about the route.
Texas News
Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said he believes a seventh person in the group also died. The body of a 49-year-old Mexican man was found Monday in the San Antonio area, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Laredo.
“He may have been either thrown from the train after being found deceased or fell from the train and (died) as a result,” Salazar told reporters earlier this week.
The sheriff also disclosed that San Antonio police took a call Saturday from a relative of someone in the shipping container who had been informed about the oppressive conditions. Salazar said police were dispatched but didn’t find the container.
“This is my estimate: 120, 150 degrees inside these things,” he said of heat (topping 48 degrees Celsius).
Smuggling on trains has long been a concern, partly because trains headed to the United States often slow or stop in Mexico before crossing the border. That creates an opportunity for smugglers or immigrants to climb aboard or hide drugs or other contraband on a train before it enters the U.S.
Two smugglers last year were sentenced to life in prison for what remains the nation’s deadliest human smuggling attempt across the U.S.-Mexico border. They were convicted of the deaths of 53 migrants found in the back of a sweltering tractor-trailer in Texas in 2022.
About 40 people were encountered daily in March crossing illegally by Border Patrol agents in Laredo, making it the third busiest sector among nine along the border with Mexico, according to the agency’s statistics.
AUSTIN (AP) — The small plane that crashed while carrying four pickleball players to a tournament near Austin last month had problems with freezing instruments before it broke apart midair, according to a preliminary federal investigation report released Friday.
The Cessna 421C took off from Amarillo on April 30 at 9:10 p.m. and crashed at about 11 p.m. in Wimberley, a city about 40 miles (64 kilometers) southwest of Austin. Pilot Justin Appling and passengers Hayden Dillard, Brooke Skypala, Stacy Hedrick and Seren Wilson died.
The National Transportation Safety Board report said that during the flight, the pilot reported problems with the plane’s anti-icing system that protects onboard instruments.
He later reported an instrument that measures airspeed had “iced up” and that he was using backup gauges. He was cleared to descend to 4,000 feet (1,200 meters) and told air controllers he wanted to get to a lower altitude to try to “warm back up.”
Over the last 15 minutes before the crash, the plane flew at altitudes where temperatures hovered just below freezing, according to the report.
The pilot’s last radio transmission with air controllers was made at 10:59 p.m. The plane then made a series of descending left and right turns before crashing to the ground.
Investigators found pieces of the plane over a 1.25-mile (2-kilometer) debris field, distribution consistent with an “inflight breakup,” the report said.
It was mostly cloudy in the area shortly before the crash, and there was a thunderstorm two hours later, the National Weather Service said.
A second plane traveling with the group landed safely in New Braunfels.
AUSTIN (AP) – The nation’s largest children’s hospital has agreed to a legal settlement with Texas and the Trump administration over gender-affirming care for transgender youth that includes a $10 million payment to the state, the administration and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Friday.
Texas Children’s Hospital, based in Houston, said in a statement that it had agreed to the settlement “to protect our resources from endless and costly litigation.” The hospital, which serves more than 1 million patients annually, said Paxton’s office and the U.S. Department of Justice has investigated its care for three years, forcing it to “navigate an unconscionable campaign of mistruths and mischaracterizations.”
The hospital announced in 2022 that it would stop gender-affirming hormone treatments for minors after Paxton issued a legal opinion calling such care “child abuse” and Gov. Greg Abbott directed the state’s child welfare agency to investigate reports of care as abuse. In 2023, Texas became the most populous state to ban gender-affirming care for minors — at least 27 ban or restrict it — and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June 2025 that states can do so.
Paxton said the settlement will require Texas Children’s to set up a “detransition clinic” to provide free care to transgender patients for five years to “reverse the damage” from gender-affirming care. He described it as the first “detransition clinic” of its kind in the nation, although that could not immediately be confirmed.
“This historic settlement reflects an institutional and fundamental shift away from radical ‘gender’ ideology,” Paxton said in announcing the settlement.
Paxton’s office did not release a copy of the agreement, and the statement from Texas Children’s did not discuss its specific terms.
The leader of the LGBTQ rights group Equality Texas said Texas Children’s “has lost its integrity and put politics over patients” and called the settlement “embarrassing.”
“Paxton is blackmailing a hospital system into creating a resource that no one is asking for,” CEO Brad Pritchett said in a statement. “It ignores the actual science and years of data about the overwhelming benefits of gender-affirming care.”
Under Trump, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has moved to use its regulatory power to block gender-affirming care for minors, and the DOJ has demanded access to providers’ records. Acting U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche said in a statement Friday that the DOJ would “use every weapon at its disposal” to stop gender-affirming care for children.
Paxton is running for the U.S. Senate, and he announced the settlement less than two weeks before a May 26 runoff with him locked in a tight race to unseat GOP incumbent Sen. John Cornyn. President Donald Trump — who has aggressively sought to roll back transgender rights — has not publicly endorsed a candidate in the race.
Most major medical groups see access to gender-affirming care as important for people with gender dysphoria. Transgender youth, parents and providers have described it as life-saving for youth who are depressed or suicidal because their gender identities do not match the sex assigned them at birth.
Gender-affirming care may include counseling, medications that block puberty, hormone therapy to produce physical changes or surgeries to transform chests and genitals, although those are rare for minors.
The hospital said it fully cooperated with Paxton’s office and the DOJ, produced more than 5 million documents and did its own internal investigations. All of them showed that it never violated the law, the hospital said.
“These efforts have required significant staff time and financial resources to defend ourselves,” its statement said. “This settlement will allow us to redirect those precious resources to focus on the life-saving care and groundbreaking discoveries of our exceptional clinicians and scientists.”
Paxton said the agreement also requires Texas Children’s to fire — “and never again hire” — five doctors who provided gender-affirming care, agree never to provide such care and to change its bylaws so that any doctor violating the state law automatically loses any privileges at the hospital.
The $10 million payment will go to the state’s Medicaid program. Paxton had accused the hospital of submitting false billings, an allegation it rejected.
AUSTIN (AP) — The Texas Supreme Court on Friday refused to declare that Democratic lawmakers who briefly fled the state in 2025 to block a vote on new congressional maps pushed by President Donald Trump had vacated their office.
The all-Republican court dealt a blow to Gov. Greg Abbott and state Republicans in their efforts to severely punish the more than 50 Democrats who bolted for New York, Illinois and Massachusetts in a bid to stop a vote on the maps during a special session.
The Texas redistricting effort kick-started cascading efforts by both parties across the country to redraw voting maps ahead of this year’s midterm elections: Republicans, pushed by Trump, seek to hold their slim majority in Congress as Democrats try to counter them.
Those efforts have gained new intensity after the U.S. Supreme Court further weakened the Voting Rights Act by no longer allowing race to be considered in how congressional and other districts are drawn.
In Texas, Abbott had argued in a lawsuit filed directly to the state’s highest civil court that state Rep. Gene Wu, the leader of the House Democratic caucus, and others had effectively abandoned their office.
If successful, they hoped to wield a new hammer to threaten lawmakers considering any future quorum breaks.
Wu had argued that he was not abandoning his office, but was exercising a right to dissent.
In denying Abbott’s request, the court opinion written by Justice James Blacklock noted that the Republican-majority Legislature had adequately resolved the problem itself through measures such as fines against the missing lawmakers, and it noted they eventually returned on their own within a few weeks.
“In the end, a quorum was restored in two weeks’ time, without judicial intervention, by the interplay of political and practical forces,” Blacklock wrote.
“Courts have uniformly recognized that it is not their role to resolve disputes between the other two branches that those branches can resolve for themselves,” the opinion said.
If the issue rises again and the Legislature cannot effectively compel lawmakers to return, the court may someday consider whether the courts should step in, the opinion said.
“When Greg Abbott threatened to arrest and expel us for denying him a quorum, we told him he should ‘come and take it.’ He tried!” Wu said in a statement Friday. “Abbott was wrong, weak, and after all his bluster, he couldn’t come and take a damn thing.”
Wu and the other lawmakers eventually returned to Texas, and the new map was passed and signed into law by Abbott.
Wu had argued that because he had returned to the Capitol and the map was eventually signed into law, there was no longer any reason for the court to weigh in.
If lawmakers leave again, the governor will bring the same issue back to the court, Abbott spokesman Andrew Mahaleris said Friday.
“No elected official has the right to abandon their duties, flee the state and shut down the people’s business,” Mahaleris said. “Governor Abbott’s legal action is what brought derelict Democrats back to Texas to do their jobs and pass the Big Beautiful Map.”
The state constitution requires that at least 100 of the 150 House members be present to conduct business, and the quorum break effectively shut down a special legislative session Abbott had called to address redistricting and other issues.
And Texas has a history of walkouts.
In 2021, the court ruled that the Texas Constitution enables the possibility of a quorum break but also allows for consequences to bring members back.
Last year’s Democratic walkout was the third since 2003, when lawmakers bolted to stop a vote on a redistricting bill. They did it again in 2021 over an elections bill. In both cases, they were temporary victories as Democrats eventually returned and the Republican majority in the Legislature ultimately passed both measures into law.
FORT BLISS (AP) – The wife of a U.S. Army sergeant has been released from federal immigration custody after spending a month in detention.
Sgt. Jose Serrano, an active duty soldier stationed in Texas who served three tours in Afghanistan, previously told The Associated Press that immigration agents arrested his wife, Deisy Rivera Ortega, during an April 14 appointment with immigration services to advance her application for permanent residency.
U.S. Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat and combat veteran, told the AP that she personally contacted Department of Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin on Wednesday to advocate for Rivera Ortega’s release after learning of her situation from advocacy groups. Rivera Ortega returned home Thursday evening.
“Rivera-Ortega has been released from ICE custody with a GPS tracking device, mandatory home visits, and ICE office check-ins. She will receive full due process,” said the DHS, which oversees U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The family of Rivera Ortega did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Serrano, who is stationed in the Fort Bliss area, and Rivera Ortega have been married since 2022. According to the DHS, Rivera Ortega entered the U.S. illegally in 2016 and a judge issued a final order of removal for her in December 2019.
Rivera Ortega, an El Salvador native who was employed by two hotels, held a military spouse ID card and a valid work permit, according to Duckworth’s office. She had been applying for the parole-in-place program designed to shield the immediate relatives of military family members from immigration enforcement as they take steps to adjust their legal status.
Last April, DHS eliminated a 2022 policy that considered military service of an immediate family member to be a “significant mitigating factor” in deciding whether or not to pursue immigration enforcement. The administration’s new policy states that “military service alone does not exempt aliens from the consequences of violating U.S. immigration laws.”
Advocates for military families have warned that detaining spouses of active duty soldiers is a national security threat because it prevents soldiers from remaining focused on their military service.
“Our active duty service members, some of whom are deployed themselves, should not have to worry about whether or not their spouse, who oftentimes is the primary caregiver for their children, is going to be detained, and then who’s going to look after the children,” Duckworth told the AP. “Our war fighters need to be talking and thinking and solely focused on the enemy who would do us harm and who would attack the United States, and they should not have to worry about the well-being of their family members back at home.”
According to DHS, more than 100 immediate family members of military veterans have been placed into removal proceedings under the Trump administration’s mass deportation agenda. The administration said it has also placed 34 military veterans in removal proceedings as of Jan. 26.
Following public outcry and intervention from congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle, spouses of veterans and active duty U.S. soldiers have been released from federal immigration custody in some cases.
EAST TEXAS (KETK) — Attorney General Ken Paxton has notified more than 130 Texas cities on Thursday that they are barred from raising property taxes above the no?new?revenue rate after his office determined they failed to meet state audit and transparency requirements under a new law.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, more than 1,000 Texas municipalities were asked to provide documents showing whether they complied with SB 1851, which requires every city to complete annual financial audits and meet state transparency standards. After reviewing those submissions, investigators identified more than 130 cities that allegedly failed to meet the required benchmarks for the upcoming fiscal year.
Thirteen East Texas cities appear on the AG’s list:
* Berryville
* Chireno
* Corrigan
* Elkhart
* Eustace
* Huntington
* Livingston
* Mount Enterprise
* Red Lick
* Redwater
* Rusk
* Tool
* Yantis
Letters sent by the state warn those municipalities that they may face enforcement actions and penalties under SB 1851 and cannot legally approve property tax increases beyond the no-new-revenue rate until compliance issues are resolved.
The Attorney General’s Office said the list of cities currently identified as non-compliant is preliminary and that additional municipalities could face similar restrictions as the investigation continues.
Paxton said the effort is intended to protect Texas taxpayers from unlawful tax increases and ensure local governments follow state law. State officials indicated that further enforcement actions may follow if additional cities are found to be out of compliance with the financial reporting requirements outlined in SB 1851.
“Cities cannot ignore state audit and transparency requirements without consequences,” Paxton said in a statement. “My office will continue enforcing the law to protect taxpayers across Texas.”
Statements from East Texas cities:
City of Tool
“We respect and understand the Attorney General’s determination regarding the City of Tool’s current audit status. To date, the City of Tool is completing its 2024 audit and have already corresponded with our third-party auditors in regards to our 2025 fiscal year audit, expected to be completed by the end of this fiscal year. We are committed to being fiscally responsible and strive to not only be in compliance with state law, but to continue to provide a level of transparency and commitment with taxpayers’ money.”
City of Huntington
We were notified by the Attorney General’s office yesterday afternoon that we were in violation of the provisions of SB 1851, which will effectively prevent the city from adopting a tax rate that exceeds the no-new-revenue rate for 2026.
As you are surely aware, the effective date on those provisions was September 1, 2025. The City’s 2026 fiscal year budget and 2025 tax rate had already been adopted by ordinance before that effective date, so the provisions did not apply for the setting of the 2025 tax rate.
Public hearings were published and held in accordance with the Public Meetings Act prior to those ordinances being adopted.
Our financial records have been in the hands of Mr. David Godwin and his capable staff since February 2026, but the audit was not completed by the required deadline of March 30, 2026. We are still awaiting the completed audit and expect that to be submitted for Council review in the near future. City officials are absolutely aware of the provisions that will restrict this year’s tax rate and plan to abide by the letter of the law.
As far as transparency is concerned, the City’s 2026 fiscal year budget and the audit for fiscal year 2024 are on the City’s website – http://www.cityofhuntington.org – under the Finance Department tab. As soon as the audit is completed and received by our office, it will be posted on the website posthaste.
City of Rusk
The City of Rusk has received notice from the Texas Office of the Attorney General regarding the City’s compliance with Local Government Code Chapter 103 and related requirements f fiscal year 2025.
The City understands that, based on the Office of the Attorney General’s determination, the City has been found not to have complied with the audit and financial statement requirements applicable under state law and is therefore subject to the enforcement provisions set out in Local Government Code 103.055(c).
The City has been diligently working to resolve the issue and recently completed its 2024 audit.
The City remains committed to transparency, fiscal responsibility and full compliance with Texas law.
Under the applicable statute, the City may not adopt an ad valorem tax rate that exceeds its no-new-revenue tax rate until compliance is achieved. The City intends to be in compliance as soon as possible.
The City will continue working diligently to address this matter.
KETK News has contacted additional East Texas cities for comment and is awaiting their responses.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is offering a $200,000 reward for information leading to capture and prosecution of a former U.S. Air Force counterintelligence specialist who defected to Iran in 2013 and was later charged with revealing classified information to the Tehran government.
Monica Elfriede Witt, 47, was indicted by a federal grand jury in February 2019 on charges of espionage, including transmitting national defense information to the government of Iran. She remains at large.
Witt “allegedly betrayed her oath to the Constitution more than a decade ago by defecting to Iran and providing the Iranian regime National Defense Information and likely continues to support their nefarious activities,” Daniel Wierzbicki, special agent in charge of the FBI Washington Field Office’s Counterintelligence and Cyber Division, said in a news release Wednesday.
“The FBI has not forgotten and believes that during this critical moment in Iran’s history, there is someone who knows something about her whereabouts.”
It wasn’t immediately known why the FBI was bringing attention to Witt’s case. The United States and Iran have been at war since Feb. 28.
Witt served in the Air Force between 1997 and 2008, where she was trained in the Farsi language and was deployed overseas on classified counterintelligence missions, including to the Middle East. She later found work as a Defense Department contractor.
The Texas native defected to Iran in 2013 after being invited to two all-expense-paid conferences in the country that the Justice Department says promoted anti-Western propaganda and condemned American moral standards.
Before that, Witt had been warned by the FBI about her activities, but told agents that she would not provide sensitive information about her work if she returned to Iran, prosecutors said.
According to the indictment, Witt placed at risk “sensitive and classified U.S. national defense information and programs,” the news release said.
“Witt allegedly intentionally provided information endangering U.S personnel and their families stationed abroad. She also allegedly conducted research on behalf of the Iranian regime to allow them to target her former colleagues in the U.S. government,” it said.
HUNTSVILLE (AP) — A man who experts for both prosecutors and defense attorneys had said was intellectually disabled became the 600th person executed in Texas since 1982, put to death Thursday evening for the killing of a 77-year-old retired college professor.
Edward Busby Jr. was pronounced dead at 8:11 p.m. following a lethal injection at the state penitentiary in Huntsville, hours after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay over his disabilities claims. The execution capped a series of last-minute legal efforts by Busby’s attorneys seeking to spare his life.
Busby was condemned for the suffocation death of Laura Lee Crane, a retired professor from Texas Christian University. Prosecutors said she was abducted from a grocery store parking lot in January 2004 and left to suffocate in the trunk of her car with duct tape wrapped heavily around her face, covering her mouth and nose.
The execution was the 600th in Texas since it resumed carrying out the death penalty in 1982. Busby also was the fourth person executed this year in Texas and the 12th nationwide. Earlier Thursday, Oklahoma executed Raymond Johnson for killing his ex-girlfriend and her 7-month-old daughter nearly 20 years ago.
When asked by the warden if he had a final statement, Busby repeatedly apologized and asked for forgiveness.
“I am so sorry for what happened,” he said while strapped to the death chamber gurney. “Miss Crane was a lovely woman. I never meant anything bad to happen to her.” He said he wished he could “take it all back” and added he had “no right to get in that car.”
“I’ll take the blame if that helps.”
He said he had surrendered his life to God and urged a sister, who was praying and watching through a window a short distance away, to find a church and “pick up your cross.”
“I’m here because this is the will of God,” he said before the injection got underway.
As the lethal dose of the sedative pentobarbital began flowing, he took a sharp breath, closed his eyes and gasped. Then he made snoring sounds that got progressively quieter. Within 40 seconds, all movement and sounds ceased. He was pronounced dead 38 minutes afterward.
Busby’s execution had been in doubt after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last week issued a stay of execution to further review his claims of intellectual disability. But the Supreme Court overturned the stay Thursday at the request of the Texas Attorney General’s Office. The attorney general’s office had argued that similar appeals were previously rejected and were “meritless” and based on “conflicting evidence.”
Busby’s lawyers quickly sought another stay but it was denied by a lower court.
The Supreme Court in 2002 had barred the execution of intellectually disabled people. But it has given states some discretion to decide how to determine such disabilities.
Busby’s attorneys had argued against putting him to death because a defense expert as well as one hired by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office, which prosecuted the case, both found he was intellectually disabled.
The district attorney’s office had previously recommended Busby’s sentence be reduced to life in prison. But the trial judge in Busby’s case disagreed with the findings of intellectual disability and in 2023 upheld the death sentence.
In a statement Wednesday, the district attorney’s office said it requested Thursday’s execution date because it believed that under current law Busy was not intellectually disabled.
Two other prior execution dates for Busby had been delayed by courts.
Prosecutors have said Busby and his co-defendant, Kathleen Latimer, abducted Crane in her car from a Fort Worth grocery store parking lot and later put in her vehicle’s trunk as they drove around. Prosecutors said she died in the trunk after suffocating from having 23 feet (7 meters) of duct tape wrapped over her entire face.
Busby was subsequently arrested in Oklahoma City driving Crane’s car and led authorities to her body in Oklahoma just north of the state line with Texas.
Latimer is in prison serving a life sentence for murder.
Bryan Mark Rigg, an author and historian who represented the Crane family as a witness to the execution, said they “neither support or oppose the death penalty. However, they are united in their respect for the rule of law.”
Rigg said as a child he was a student of Crane, who for decades helped children overcome learning disabilities and “was discarded in a field like a piece of trash.” He said the execution was not about vengeance but “accountability under the law and about remembering the life of an extraordinary educator.”
PORT ISABEL (AP) — Until recently, young children ran in and out of their public housing homes in this Gulf Coast town, playing on sun-dappled lawns as mothers looked over their shoulders for the school bus to drop off their older kids. Suddenly, couches, dressers and refrigerators started appearing curbside for movers or garbage collectors.
Within weeks, the neighborhood was a ghost town and the playground was empty.
What prompted the mass exodus was a bungled message from the housing authority in Port Isabel, a South Texas community of 5,000 people, many of whom are immigrants working at hotels and restaurants on the beaches of nearby South Padre Island. The Port Isabel Housing Authority indicated a Trump administration proposal was about to take effect that would end housing assistance to families with at least one member in the country illegally. The events that followed provided a glimpse of what could happen in communities across the U.S. if the proposed rule is actually finalized.
“The impact was not limited to undocumented immigrants, but really to immigrants who are here legally as well as people within their families who are citizens,” Marie Claire Tran-Leung, senior staff attorney at National Housing Law Project, said.
For decades, families with at least one legal or eligible resident have been allowed to live in public housing provided those who are here illegally or are otherwise ineligible due to their immigration status pay a full, unsubsidized share of rent. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development wants to reverse that.
Advocates estimate up to 80,000 people would be kicked out of their homes nationwide under the measure that is part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown. They include U.S. citizens, many of them children born in this country but whose parents were not.
A message from the Port Isabel Housing Authority
On Feb. 3, the Port Isabel Housing Authority sent residents a letter saying that the Trump administration wanted every household member to prove legal status within 30 days or face eviction. Three weeks later, the agency sent a note of “clarification” that no such proof was required.
It was already too late.
Half of residents living in Port Isabel public housing left within a month of receiving the first letter. The occupancy rate plunged from 91% in January to 43% in May, far below the national average of 94%.
The proposed rule from HUD still has not taken effect.
The housing authority gave no explanation for the initial misunderstanding and officials did not respond to repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press.
Rumors and panic
Fears about eviction and rumors that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement might get involved prompted panic among some residents.
“My kids and I spoke and wondered what we were going to do, but then we said it’s better to leave and avoid any retaliation,” a single mother from Mexico raising two teenagers who are U.S. citizens told The Associated Press. She, like other former residents, spoke on condition of anonymity due to fears of being deported.
She turned to legal service organizations that told her and others they could stay in public housing. But she and her children decided it was too risky and left their home of nearly a decade, finding an apartment within the same school district that costs about $500 more per month.
The move also added about 10 minutes to the commute to the island, where both the mother and her daughter work. The 18-year-old gets home from school at 4:30 p.m. and grabs a quick dinner before her mom drives her to a job that starts at 5 p.m. The daughter is a top student in her senior class and plans to go to college in the fall with help from scholarship offers, but she worries how her family will make ends meet. Her brother was laid off, and their mom underwent cancer treatment last year, depleting her energy and straining their finances.
Other families face even greater challenges.
A mother of three said she moved her family into a one-bedroom trailer home illegally parked between two other trailer homes. Her oldest son sleeps in the living room.
Another family of three sold beds and other furniture so they could squeeze into a small trailer home, only to find out the landlord wouldn’t let them use the mailing address, affecting her children’s school and health insurance.
“Since we got the letter, everything changed from one day to the next. It wasn’t the same anymore. Before the letter, the kids were happy, playing outside,” the mother of two said.
A preview of a Trump administration proposal
The Trump administration proposed in February that any household with one ineligible resident would disqualify an entire family, estimating that 24,000 recipients were ineligible in 20,000 households.
“We have zero tolerance for pushing aside hardworking U.S. citizens while enabling others to exploit decades-old loopholes,” HUD Secretary Scott Turner said at the time.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, which advocates for low-income families, estimates that 79,600 people could be forced to leave their homes, with a disproportionate impact on children and Latinos.
The rule drew more than 16,000 public comments, many of them critical, including from city leaders across the U.S.
For example, the New York City Council told HUD that an estimated 12% of city of households have at least one member who lacks legal status. Some 240,000 children are in those homes.
“This proposed rule will unequivocally lead to increased displacement, homelessness, poverty, and decreased educational and health outcomes,” the council wrote.
HUD is expected to publish a final version of the rule after considering public comments.
It is almost certain to face legal challenges.
CROCKETT, Texas (KETK) – The Crockett Police Department arrested a member of a white supremacist gang after he allegedly stole from the local Walmart multiple times.
Noah Ray Scott, 28 of Houston, was identified by law enforcement as a suspect wanted for stealing from Walmart on at least two occasions after Crockett PD posted about the thefts on Wednesday. According to Crockett PD, Scott is a known registered member of the prison-based Peckerwood white supremacist gang.
Crockett PD said their officers were searching a local RV park on Wednesday when they found Scott living in the park’s bathroom with 42-year-old Brandy Nichole Teer of South Carolina.
Scott was arrested for theft of property less than $2,500, possession of drug paraphernalia and two counts of possession of between 4 and 200 grams of a controlled substance. He’s currently being held in the Houston County Jail on a total bond of $50,000. Read the rest of this entry »
ANGELINA COUNTY, Texas (KETK)– A traffic stop in Angelina County earlier this month led to a man being arrested after officers discovered he was in possession of over 300 images of child pornography and illegal narcotics.
According to the Angelina County Sheriff’s Office, a traffic stop was initiated on May 5 after deputies observed 33-year-old Wayne Cassels making several traffic violations while driving on U.S. Highway 59 south of Lufkin.
During the stop, deputies found two bags that were believed to contain 59 grams of methamphetamine inside the vehicle. Leading deputies to suspect Cassels was involved in drug trafficking, deputies opened an investigation.
Deputies were able to obtain a warrant to search Cassels’ cell phone after it was suspected that he was in possession of child pornography following a forensic interview. During the search of the phone, over 300 photos of child sexual abuse material were stored on his device, according to officials.
Cassels is currently being held in the Angelina County Jail and his bond has been set at $600,000 after being charged with the following offenses:
Five counts of possession or promotion of child pornography
Manufacture and delivery of a controlled substance
Tampering with physical evidence
AUSTIN (Nexstar) — Gary Grief, the former executive director of the Texas Lottery Commission who was accused of conspiring to defraud Texas lottery players, was indicted by a grand jury in Travis County last month on a felony charge for abuse of official capacity related to an April 2023 lottery win. But the Travis County district attorney’s office dismissed the case for “prosecutorial discretion.”
Assistant District Attorney Rob Drummond signed the motion to dismiss the case just three days after the grand jury indictment. Nexstar reached out to the Travis County DA’s office for an explanation for the dismissal and are waiting to hear back.
Nexstar also asked the office if District Attorney José Garza had any say about the motion to dismiss or if ADA Drummond acted on his own.
Grief retired in 2024 just before a Houston Chronicle investigation revealed a group of investors were able to purchase nearly every single number combination to almost guarantee a $95 million jackpot in an April 2023 Lotto Texas drawing. Lotto Texas is a draw game where players select six numbers between 1 and 54.
The indictment accuses Grief of “intentionally and knowingly misuse government property, services, personnel, or a thing of value belonging to the government” in the April 22, 2023 Lotto Texas drawing.
ANGELINA COUNTY (KETK) — The City of Lufkin Animal Services was recently awarded a $150,000 grant to expand its spay-and-neuter services across Angelina County.
According to the City of Lufkin, the grant was provided by the Texas Health and Human Services’ Public Health Region and will allow the shelter to provide low-cost sterilization services. The service will help reduce overpopulation and decrease shelter intake.
Through the grant, residents will only pay $25 to have their pets spayed or neutered, with the remainder of the treatment covered by the shelter, the city said. Along with making sterilization services more affordable for pet owners, the grant will also help in reducing the stray and unwanted animal population in Angelina County.
“This funding is a tremendous opportunity to make a lasting impact on animal welfare in our community and across the region,” Lufkin Animal Services Manager Morgan Williams said. “By increasing access to spay and neuter services, we are taking proactive steps to reduce homelessness among pets, improve public safety, and support healthier communities.”
Residents can schedule the first round of sterilization services by contacting the Lufkin Animal Shelter at 936-633-0218. A $25 deposit fee will be required for each appointment.