SATURDAY, JANUARY 9, 2016
THE ZAPATA TIMES 11A
JOSE ANCIRA July 7, 1936 – Jan. 4, 2016 Jose Ancira 79, passed away on Monday, Jan. 4, 2016 at Laredo Medical Center in Laredo, Texas. Mr. Ancira is survived by his wife, Delia L. Ancira; sons, Jose L. (Sandra) Ancira, Rosmal (Monica) Ancira; daughters, Maria D. (Victor M.) Guzman, Irasema (Marco Antonio) Nava; grandchildren, Daniel L. (Perla) Ancira, Carlos Ancira, Daniela Ancira, Monica Ruby (Wander) Lantigua, Victor M. Jr. (Amanda) Guzman, Delia C. Guzman (Adam Morgan), Joel U. Nava, Lesly E. Nava, Julian A. Nava; great-grandchildren, Ruy Armando Sanchez, Victor Guzman, III, Julie Guzman and by numerous other family members and friends. Funeral services will be held in Rosenberg, Texas.
Constitutional convention eyed By PAUL J. WEBER ASSOCIATED PRESS
Funeral arrangements are under the direction of Rose Garden Funeral Home Daniel A. Gonzalez, Funeral Director, 2102 N. U.S. Hwy 83 Zapata, Texas.
AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sought to lure Republican support Friday for calling the first U.S. constitutional convention since 1787, a new a priority for his administration that has bemoaned federal courts blocking state laws over gay marriage, abortion restrictions and voting rights. Conservative calls for states to get together and ratify new amendments to the Constitution are hardly new. Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio has even vowed to push for a convention if elected, though the idea is generating little buzz in the 2016 presidential race. Abbott is now hoping
INDICTED Continued from Page 1A cious activity. Garcia allegedly agreed to make post-arrest statements to authorities, records state. “Garcia stated that an unknown man approached him at Riverview grocery store in Roma, Texas, and
offered to pay him to guide undocumented (people),” states the criminal complaint filed Dec. 18. “Garcia stated he was going to get paid $100 … for each person … he guided from the lake to
Highway (U.S.) 83. After being placed under oath, Garcia willfully admitted that he was guide of the group.” (César G. Rodriguez may be reached at 728-2568 or cesar@lmtonline.com)
Photo by Rebecca Blackwell | AP
Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto arrives for a press conference following the capture of fugitive drug lord Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, in Mexico City, Friday. Peña announced that Guzman had been recaptured six months after escaping from a prison.
‘EL CHAPO’ Continued from Page 1A “Given that ’El Chapo’ has already escaped from Mexican prison twice, this third opportunity to bring him to justice cannot be squandered,” Rubio said. According to the U.S. Justice Department, the U.S. submitted full extradition requests after he was arrested in February 2014. But Guzman’s lawyers already filed appeals on those and were granted injunctions that could substantially delay the process. Mexico said after the first capture of the cartel boss that he would be tried in his home country first, with officials promising they would hang on to him. After his escape in July, the talk on Friday about keeping and trying Guzman almost as a matter of national pride wasn’t so overt. Pena Nieto gave a brief live message Friday afternoon that focused heavily on touting the competency of his administration, which has suffered a series of embarrassments and scandals in the first half of his presidency. “The arrest of today is very important for the government of Mexico. It shows that the public can have confidence in its institutions,” Pena Nieto said. “Mexicans can count on a government decided and determined to build a better country.” Guzman was apprehended after a shootout between gunmen and Mexican marines in Los Mochis, a seaside city in Guzman’s home state of Sinaloa, said a federal official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to be quoted by name. He said Guzman was taken alive and was not wounded. Five people were killed and one Mexican marine wounded in the clash at a house in an upscale neighborhood of Los Mochis. It was unclear if Guzman was there or nearby when the raid was underway. A law enforcement official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said Guzman was captured at a motel on the outskirts of
Los Mochis. That official said Friday’s raid on the house was related to the later capture of Guzman at the hotel. Guzman may have been at the house and fled while his gunmen and bodyguards provided covering fire from the house, the official said. Marines checked the storm drain system, though it was unclear if Guzman had once again fled through the drains. In 2014, he escaped capture by fleeing through a network of interconnected tunnels in the drainage system under Culiacan, the Sinaloa state capital. After his first capture in Guatemala in June 1993, Guzman was sentenced to 20 years in prison. He reportedly made his 2001 escape from the maximum security prison in a laundry cart, though some have discounted that version. His second escape last July was even more audacious. He slipped down a hole in his shower stall in plain view of guards into a mile-long tunnel dug from a property outside the prison. The tunnel had ventilation, lights and a motorbike on rails, illustrating the extent to which corruption was involved in covering up the elaborate operation. In the United States, the Drug Enforcement Administration hailed the capture as proof of the close relationship between the two countries. “The arrest is a significant achievement in our shared fight against transnational organized crime, violence, and drug trafficking,” a DEA statement said. The U.S. Justice Department commended the working relationship as well. “I salute the Mexican law enforcement and military personnel who have worked tirelessly in recent months to bring Guzman to justice,” Attorney General Loretta Lynch said. The Mexican law enforcement official said authorities located Guzman several days ago, based on reports he was in Los Mochis. Pena Nieto gave no details
in his televised speech, saying only that “careful and intensive intelligence work was carried out for months” leading up to the arrest. The Mexican Navy said in a statement that marines raided the home after receiving a tip about armed men at the home. They were fired on from inside the structure, it said. Five suspects were killed and six others arrested. The marine’s injuries were not life threatening. Marines seized two armored vehicles, eight rifles, one handgun and a rocketpropelled grenade launcher at the home, the statement added. Photos of the arms seized showed that two of the rifles were .50-caliber sniper guns, capable of penetrating most bullet-proof vests and cars. The grenade launcher was found loaded, with an extra round nearby. An assault rifle had a 40-mm grenade launcher and at least one grenade. Some in Mexico had doubted Guzman would allow himself to be captured alive, and others doubted that Mexico’s government — given the successive embarrassments of his two escapes from prison — would want to hold him again in a Mexican prison. “Many people had doubted he could be recaptured,” Mexican security analyst Raul Benitez said. “It is a big success for the government.” The United States filed requests for extradition for Guzman on June 25, before he escaped from prison. In September, a judge issued a second provisional arrest warrant on U.S. charges of organized crime, money laundering drug trafficking, homicide and others. Former Mexican Attorney General Jesus Murillo Karam had bragged earlier that Mexico wouldn’t extradite Guzman until he had served his sentences in Mexico. Benitez said such bragging “makes me ashamed.” “It would be better for the Americans to take him away,” he said.
his weight as governor of the nation’s biggest conservative state can revive momentum in an enduring but perennially unattainable dream of some Republicans. His vision also goes beyond the most common GOP desire for a convention — to tack a federal balanced budget amendment onto the Constitution — and outlines a flurry of new state protections that would nullify federal laws and weaken the U.S. Supreme Court. One of his nine proposals would require a supermajority of seven justices — out of nine — to invalidate any state law. “The Supreme Court is a co-conspirator in abandoning the Constitution,” said Abbott, the state’s former attorney general and
a former Texas Supreme Court justice. “Instead of applying laws as written, it embarrassingly strains to rewrite laws like Obamacare.” Texas in recent years has been a recurring defendant in major cases before the Supreme Court. In March, the court will hear oral arguments over the state’s sweeping abortion restrictions that would leave Texas with fewer than 10 abortion providers, down from more than 40 in 2012. Abbott unveiled his plan to a friendly audience of conservative policymakers in Austin, but outside, others called the prospect of a convention farfetched. “There is no remote possibility that is going to
take place,” said Lino Graglia, a conservative professor of constitutional law at the University of Texas at Austin. “Just to get any constitutional amendment is virtually impossible.” For states to call an assembly, it would require approval from 34 legislatures. Over the past four decades, 27 states have endorsed the idea at one time or another, including Texas at a time when the state was controlled by Democrats. Convention proposals were also introduced or discussed in about three dozen legislatures last year. Shortly after Abbott took office last year, the Texas Legislature failed to endorse a more narrowly focused convention on conservative ideals.
CARRIZO Continued from Page 1A draft an action plan, which will be presented to congress some time in April. Cuellar said he would not know the cost of the project nor how long it will take to get rid of the Carrizo cane until a plan is in place. Johnny Oswald, program administrator of the Rio Grande Carrizo Cane Eradication Program, which is led by the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board, said in a statement that the program will need funding from various sources. Cuellar says the plan will include project strategies; how stakeholders can work together to make progress on the project; and propose how the U.S. can work with the Mexican government to address Carrizo cane on the Mexican side of the river. According to the Department of Homeland Security’s website, Carrizo cane traveled from Europe’s Iberian Peninsula to the U.S.-Mexico border several hundred years
The U.S. House of Representatives’ fiscal year 2016 omnibus appropriations bill also directs CBP to work with Texas Conservation Board and other federal, state and local stakeholders to draft an action plan, which will be presented to congress some time in April. ago. Carrizo cane also chokes waterways, erodes banks and water canals, damages bridges and inhibits biodiversity, the department says. This effort is not the country’s first to get rid of Carrizo cane along the border. Cuellar said around 2006 state and federal agencies decided to release a specific breed of wasps into areas where Carrizo cane flourished, but the wasps did not do enough damage to annihi-
late the cane stalks, he said. In 2008, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security planned to annihilate Carrizo cane with imazapyr, an herbicide meant to tackle a broad range of weeds. The herbicide would have been sprayed onto the plants from helicopters, but the plan didn’t sit well with Laredo locals, who sued. The spraying scheme later died. (Kendra Ablaza can be reached at 728-2538 or kablaza@lmtonline.com)
OBAMA Continued from Page 1A raped by an intruder and now feels that owning a gun “seems like my basic responsibility as a parent ... I refuse to let that happen again.” Obama didn’t hold back when asked by CNN moderator Anderson Cooper about the notion that the federal government — and Obama in particular — wants to seize all firearms as a precursor to imposing martial law. He blamed that notion on the NRA and like-minded groups that convince its members that “somebody’s going to come grab your guns.” “Yes, that is a conspiracy,” Obama said. “I’m only going to be here for another year. When would I have started on this enterprise?” Obama defended his support for the constitutional right to gun ownership while arguing it was consistent with his efforts to curb mass shootings. He said the NRA refused to acknowledge the government’s responsibility to make legal products safer, citing seatbelts and child-proof medicine bottles as examples. Taking the stage at George Mason University, Obama accused the NRA of refusing to participate in the town hall despite having its headquarters nearby. “Since this is a main reason they exist, you’d think that they’d be prepared to have a debate with the president,” Obama said. NRA spokesman Andrew Arulanandam said beforehand that the group saw “no reason to participate in a public relations spectacle orchestrated by the White House.” Several NRA members were in the audience for the event, which was organized and hosted by CNN. And the NRA pushed back on Twitter in real time, noting at one point “none of the president’s orders would
The plan has drawn intense criticism from gun rights groups that have accused the president of trampling on the Second Amendment and railroading Congress by taking action on his own without new laws. have stopped any of the recent mass shootings.” The White House has sought to portray the NRA, the nation’s largest gun group, as possessing a disproportionate influence over lawmakers that has prevented new gun laws despite polls that show broad U.S. support for measures like universal background checks. Last year, following a series of mass shootings, Obama pledged to “politicize” the issue in an attempt to level the playing field for gun control supporters. The American Firearms Retailers Association, another lobby group that represents gun dealers, did participate Thursday. Asked how business had been since Obama took office, Kris Jacob, vice president of the group, replied: “It’s been busy.” “There’s a very serious concern in this country about personal security,” he added. Obama’s actions on guns have drawn major attention in the presidential campaign, with the Democratic candidates backing Obama and the Republicans unanimously voicing
opposition. Donald Trump, addressing a rally in Vermont just as Obama was holding the town hall, said he would eliminate gunfree zones in schools on his first day if elected to the White House. “You know what a gunfree zone is for a sicko? That’s bait,” Trump told the crowd. Obama’s broadside against the NRA came two days after his unveiling of a package of executive actions aimed at keeping guns from people who shouldn’t have them. The centerpiece is new federal guidance that seeks to clarify who is “in the business” of selling firearms, triggering a requirement to get a license and conduct background checks on all prospective buyers. The plan has drawn intense criticism from gun rights groups that have accused the president of trampling on the Second Amendment and railroading Congress by taking action on his own without new laws. Just after his 2012 re-election, Obama pushed hard for a bipartisan gun control bill that collapsed in the Senate, ending any realistic prospects for a legislative solution in the near term. Ahead of the town hall, Obama put political candidates on notice that he would refuse to support or campaign for anyone who “does not support common-sense gun reform” — including Democrats. All the candidates running for the Democratic presidential nomination support stricter gun laws, so Obama’s declaration in a New York Times op-ed isn’t likely to have an impact on the race to replace him. Instead, it appeared aimed at Democratic congressional candidates from competitive districts who might want Obama’s support on the campaign trail this year.