Police: 3 killed in shootout involving outlaw biker gangs at New Mexico motorcycle rally - Associated Press
Three men killed in a weekend shootout at a New Mexico motorcycle rally were members of rival outlaw biker gangs, and the violence stemmed from a previous altercation between them in Albuquerque, authorities said Sunday.
New Mexico State Police said three other bikers are facing charges and two of them were among the five wounded in Saturday's shooting involving the Bandidos and the Waterdogs in the mountain resort town of Red River.
Those killed were identified as 26-year-old Anthony Silva of Los Lunas, 46-year-old Damian Breaux of Socorro and 46-year-old Randy Sanchez of Albuquerque. Two were declared dead at the scene and the third at a hospital, New Mexico State Police Chief Tim Johnson said in identifying them.
Johnson said 30-year-old Jacob Castillo of Rio Rancho will be charged with an open count of murder when he's released from a hospital while 39-year-old Matthew Charles Jackson of Austin, Texas, is facing a charge of unlawful carrying of a firearm inside a liquor establishment.
State Police said 41-year-old Christopher Garcia, also of Texas, has been arrested on suspicion of cocaine possession after being treated at a hospital.
Three other men belonging to motorycle gangs were injured in the shootout, but their names haven't been released yet, authorities said.
"It's very tragic," Red River Mayor Linda Calhoun said. ""It's the first time we've ever had anything like this."
The town's calendar touted the 41st annual Red River Memorial Motorcycle Rally, saying "Get ready for the rumble as 28,000 bikers from all different backgrounds line Main Street for one crazy party."
Most of Main Street closed to the public on Sunday as part of the State Police's investigation and law enforcement requested businesses in the area remain closed.
"The shooters have all been apprehended," Calhoun said. "There is no threat to the community."
The wounded were transported to hospitals in Denver, Albuquerque and nearby Taos.
"Our law enforcement was incredible. The first State Police officer was there within 30 seconds," Calhoun said.
Albuquerque Police Chief Harold Medina was in Red River on Saturday afternoon, eating dinner and posting online photos of himself and his smiling wife.
Another of his posted pictures showed motorcycles lining the town's main drag as bikers and others socialized.
Thirty minutes after posting the two photos, Medina said the shootout occurred.
"What a helpless feeling not having a badge, gun or radio as State Police officers and others enter the restaurant and slowly everything closes down and you don't even know if you can get to your car or if it's in the scene," Medina wrote in Twitter. "This wave of gun violence impacts all of New Mexico large or small."
New Mexico shooting victims mourned by their children, 64 grandchildren - By Rio Yamat And Morgan Lee Associated Press
Gwendolyn Dean Schofield hoped to live to 100, and she was nearly there.
But on May 15, in what appeared to be a final act of kindness, Schofield and her daughter pulled over on a residential street in the northwestern New Mexico city of Farmington to help a woman who was shot at random, and they, too, were hit by gunfire and died.
"I guarantee they would have stopped in that situation 10 out of 10 times," said Dallin Dean, Schofield's grandson.
Schofield, who grew up in the Great Depression and became a teacher during World War II, was a month shy of her 98th birthday. Daughter Melodie Ivie, who ran a preschool with the catchy name "Ivie League," was 73. The woman they stopped to help, Shirley Voita, was a 79-year-old retired school nurse and regular at morning Mass who volunteered to help people file their taxes.
Each of the women led active professional and civic lives, centered around their families and faith, leaving indelible marks on a city of 50,000 near the point where New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado and Utah meet.
Altogether they had 64 grandchildren.
They were laid to rest this week during two days of memorial services in a community still grieving from the impacts of a rampage by an 18-year-old on the eve of his high school graduation that left six others wounded, including two police officers. Officers shot and killed the gunman.
At a joint memorial service Thursday for Schofield and Ivie, Dean looked out into the crowd and told them his aunt and grandmother would have been the first to forgive the gunman had they survived.
Schofield began teaching in the remote lakeside town of Valier, Montana, amid a shortage of teachers during World War II. There she met her first husband, Raymond Dean, a crop-duster pilot. They married in 1946 and had four children.
Schofield moved on to other teaching jobs, gravitating to small towns in Wyoming and Idaho before settling in Farmington to be closer to her family after Raymond Dean died in the 1990s. She remarried but became a widow again 20 years later in 2020.
Dean said his grandmother — affectionately referred to as "Grandma Dean" by her 26 grandchildren — was self-reliant. She loved gardening and growing her own food and always kept a stockpile of canned goods.
At 97, Dean said, his grandmother remained vibrant. Relatives at the memorial service said Schofield did so by living with a "loving mind devoid of anger and criticism" and a "forgiving heart."
Dean said his family had already been talking about her 100th birthday party before the shooting.
Ivie followed in her mother's footsteps as an educator. For decades, "Mrs. Ivie" welcomed hundreds of Farmington children into her home, where she ran the Ivie League preschool and prepared generations of kids for kindergarten.
Neighbor Sheldon Pickering, 42, said he grew up a few houses from the Ivie family home and was there often, playing the piano for Ivie whenever she asked to hear a song.
"She really made you feel like part of the family," Pickering said.
When Pickering became a parent, he enrolled his daughter and son at the Ivie League preschool, where they learned to tie shoes and count, and where Ivie taught Pickering countless lessons that he says changed the way he views parenthood.
On one occasion, Pickering recalled feeling embarrassed after buying his daughter a pack of gum and sending her to school, where gum was forbidden. When Pickering apologized, saying he should have said no when his daughter asked for the candy, Ivie reassured him that a parent should say yes to the little things.
"That's what your kids will remember," Pickering remembered Ivie saying. "So say yes to the little things when you can."
Ivie and her husband, Dennis, raised their eight children in Farmington.
Later in life, the couple served as senior missionaries for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Ghana and offered to support students afterward, relatives said. Ivie's husband died last year.
Ivie and Schofield had grown especially close in recent years after Ivie moved her mother into her home, Dean said.
On the morning of the shooting, they drove together to pick up one of Ivie's grandchildren from school, Dean said. They never arrived.
Police have said the gunman did not appear to be targeting anyone. Rather, he shot indiscriminately from outside his home before walking around the neighborhood, perforating cars and houses using three different guns. Video recently released by police included a voice authorities believed to be the shooter urging police to kill him.
On Friday, police released a new trove of body and dash camera videos that paint a vivid picture of the shooting. Authorities also provided audio recordings from hundreds of frantic calls to emergency dispatchers by witnesses to the rampage and its aftermath, including a call from one of Voita's daughters.
Voita, who was hit by gunfire while in her car, started the day with morning Mass at St. Mary's Catholic Church, part of a routine involving a deep commitment to faith and community service, friends and acquaintances said.
Her memorial service was held at Sacred Heart Catholic Church, where she had been a member for nearly 50 years. Relatives of Ivie and Schofield were among those who gathered to remember her.
Voita and her husband of 57 years had five children, including the current elected tax assessor for San Juan County, 14 grandchildren and one great-granddaughter.
Mary Johnson, a friend of Voita's for 25 years through community service events and prayer groups, said Voita "did everything she could to help people."
That included volunteering at a senior center to help residents file taxes and participating in anti-abortion marches. She also enjoyed skiing, tennis, pickleball and trips to Vallecito Lake in Colorado.
Voita talked with ease about mortality and redemption, Johnson said.
"She just always expressed her love for Jesus and how we all really need to be ready, all the time, that you never know when our time is coming," Johnson said.
Judge says fire retardant drops are polluting streams but allows use to continue - By Matthew Brown Associated Press
The U.S. government can keep using chemical retardant dropped from aircraft to fight wildfires, despite finding that the practice pollutes streams in western states in violation of federal law, a judge ruled Friday.
Halting the use of the red slurry material could have resulted in greater environmental damage from wildfires, said U.S. District Judge Dana Christensen in Missoula, Montana.
The judge agreed with U.S. Forest Service officials who said dropping retardant into areas with waterways was sometimes necessary to protect lives and property.
The ruling came after came after environmentalists sued following revelations that the Forest Service dropped retardant into waterways hundreds of times over the past decade.
Government officials say chemical fire retardant can be crucial to slowing the advance of dangerous blazes. Wildfires across North America have grown bigger and more destructive over the past two decades as climate change warms the planet.
More than 200 loads of retardant got into waterways over the past decade. Federal officials say those situations usually occurred by mistake and in less than 1% of the thousands of loads annually.
A coalition that includes Paradise, California — where a 2018 blaze killed 85 people and destroyed the town — had said a court ruling that stopped the use of retardant would have put lives, homes and forests at risk.
"This case was very personal for us," Paradise Mayor Greg Bolin said. "Our brave firefighters need every tool in the toolbox to protect human lives and property against wildfires, and today's ruling ensures we have a fighting chance this fire season."
State and local agencies lean heavily on the U.S. Forest Service to help fight fires, many of which originate or include federal land.
Fire retardant is a specialized mixture of water and chemicals including inorganic fertilizers or salts. It's designed to alter the way fire burns, making blazes less intense and slowing their advance.
That can give firefighters time to steer flames away from inhabited areas and in extreme situations to evacuate people from danger.
"Retardant lasts and even works if it's dry," said Scott Upton, a former region chief and air attack group supervisor for California's state fire agency. "Water is only so good because it dries out. It does very well to suppress fires, but it won't last."
The Oregon-based group Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics argued in its lawsuit filed last year that the Forest Service was disregarding the Act by continuing to use retardant without taking adequate precautions to protect streams and rivers.
Christensen said stopping the use of fire retardant would "conceivably result in greater harm from wildfires — including to human life and property and to the environment." The judge said his ruling was limited to 10 western states where members of the plaintiff's group alleged harm from pollution into waterways that they use.
After the lawsuit was filed the Forest Service applied to the Environmental Protection Agency for a permit that would allow it to continue using retardant without breaking the law. The process could take several years.
Such a permit could require tighter restrictions on when retardant could be used or for officials to use less-toxic chemicals, said Andy Stahl with Forest Service Employees for Environmental Ethics.
"It's certainly a good first step," Stahl said.
Christensen ordered federal officials to report every six months on their progress.
Forest Service spokesperson Wade Muehlhof said the agency believes retardant can be used "without compromising public health and the environment."
"The Forest Service is working diligently with the Environmental Protection Agency on a general permit for aerially delivered retardant that will allow us to continue using wildfire retardant to protect homes and communities," Muehlhof said.
Climate change, people moving into fire-prone areas, and overgrown forests are creating more catastrophic megafires that are harder to fight.
Almost 150 million gallons (567 million liters) of fire retardant were dropped on National Forest lands between 2013 and 2022, according to the Department of Agriculture. Retardant drops onto forests in California accounted for 49% of the total volume.
Health risks to firefighters or other people who come into contact with fire retardant are considered low, according to a 2021 risk assessment.
But the chemicals can be harmful to some fish, frogs, crustaceans and other aquatic species. A government study found misapplied retardant could adversely affect dozens of imperiled species, including crawfish, spotted owls and fish such as shiners and suckers.
Forest Service officials said they are trying to come into compliance with the law by getting a pollution permit but that could take years.
To keep streams from getting polluted, officials in recent years have avoided drops inside buffer zones within 300 feet (92 meters) of waterways. Retardant may only be applied inside those zones when human life or public safety is threatened. Of 213 instances of fire retardant landing in water between 2012 and 2019, 190 were accidents and the remainder were necessary to save lives or property, officials said.
Many areas of the Western U.S. experienced heavy snowfalls this past winter, and as a result fire dangers are lower than in recent years across much of the region.
Asylum-seekers say joy over end of Title 42 turns to anguish induced by new US rules - By Julie Watson And Gisela Salomon Associated Press
The day that President Joe Biden's administration ended a public health measure blocking many asylum-seekers at the Mexican border during the coronavirus pandemic, Teodoso Vargas was ready to show U.S. officials his scars and photos of his bullet-riddled body.
Instead, he stood frozen with his pregnant wife and 5-year-old son at a Tijuana crossing, feet from U.S. soil.
He was unsure of the new rules rolled out with the change and whether taking the next few steps to approach U.S. officials to ask for asylum in person could force a return to his native Honduras.
"I can't go back to my country," said Vargas, a long scar snaking down his neck from surgery after being shot nine times in his homeland during a robbery. "Fear is why I don't want to return. If I can just show the proof I have, I believe the U.S. will let me in."
Asylum-seekers say joy over the end of the public health restriction known as Title 42 this month is turning into anguish with the uncertainty about how the Biden administration's new rules affect them.
Though the government opened some new avenues for immigration, the fate of many people is largely left to a U.S. government app only used for scheduling an appointment at a port of entry and unable to decipher human suffering or weigh the vulnerability of applicants.
The CBP One app is a key tool in creating a more efficient and orderly system at the border "while cutting out unscrupulous smugglers who profit from vulnerable migrants," the Department of Homeland Security said in an email to The Associated Press.
But since its rollout in January, the app has been criticized for technological problems. Demand has far outstripped the roughly 1,000 appointments available on the app each day.
As a Honduran man, Vargas does not qualify for many of the legal pathways the Biden administration has introduced. One program gives up to 30,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans a month a shot at humanitarian parole if they apply online, have a financial sponsor in the U.S. and arrive by air. Minors traveling alone also are exempt from the rules.
Migrants who do not follow the rules, the government has said, could be deported back to their homelands and barred from seeking asylum for five years.
Vargas said he decided not to risk it. He has been logging onto the app each day at 9 a.m. for the past three months from his rented room in a crime-riddled Tijuana neighborhood.
His experience is shared by tens of thousands of other asylum-seekers in Mexican border towns.
Immigration lawyer Blaine Bookey said for many on the border "there seems to be no option right now for people to ask for asylum if they don't have an appointment through the CBP app."
The government said it doesn't turn away asylum-seekers but prioritizes people who use the app.
Bookey's group, Center for Gender & Refugee Studies, is one of the lead plaintiffs, along with the American Civil Liberties Union, challenging some of the new rules in federal court in San Francisco, including a requirement that people first apply for asylum in a country they crossed on the way to the U.S. They are asking the court to allow an asylum request by anyone on U.S. soil.
Texas Republican lawmakers also have sued. Among other things, they argue the CBP One app encourages illegal immigration by dispensing appointments without properly vetting whether applicants have a legal basis to stay.
The Biden administration said new measures, including the app, have helped reduce unlawful immigration by more than 70% since Title 42 ended May 11.
More than 79,000 people were admitted under CBP One from its Jan. 12 launch through the end of April. From May 12 to May 19, an average of 1,070 people per day presented themselves at the ports of entry after securing an appointment on the app, the government stated. It did not provide updated figures but said the numbers should grow as the initiative is scaled up.
The administration also has highlighted improvements made in recent weeks. The app can prioritize those who have been trying the longest. Appointments are opened online throughout the day to avoid system overload. People with acute medical conditions or facing imminent threats of murder, rape, kidnapping or other "exceptionally compelling circumstances" can request priority status, but only in person at a port of entry. The app does not allow input of case details.
Still, some asylum-seekers claim to have been turned away at crossings while making requests, lawyers say.
Koral Rivera, who is from Mexico and eight months pregnant, said she has been trying to obtain an appointment through the app for two months. She recently went to a Texas crossing to present her case to U.S. officials, but said Mexican immigration agents in Matamoros blocked her and her husband.
"They tell us to try to get an appointment through the app," said Rivera, whose family has been threatened by drug cartel members.
Priscilla Orta, an immigration attorney with Lawyers for Good Government in Brownsville, Texas, said one Honduran woman in the Mexican border city of Reynosa said a man whom she accuses of raping her tracked her down though her phone, which she was using to secure an appointment.
The woman was raped again, said Orta, who has not been able to reach her since.
"That is harrowing to realize that you're just going to have to put up with the abuses in Mexico and just kind of continue to take it because if you don't, then you could forever hurt yourself in the long term," the lawyer said.
Orta said she previously could ask U.S. border officials at crossings to prioritize children with cancer, victims of torture and members of the LGBTQ community, and usually they would schedule a meeting. But local officials informed her they no longer have guidance from Washington.
"They do not know what to do with these most extremely vulnerable people," Orta said, adding that migrants face tough questions. "Do you risk never qualifying for asylum? Or do you try to wait for an appointment despite the danger?"
Vargas, a farmer, has no doubt he could prove he and his family fled Honduras out of fear, the first requirement for U.S. entry to start the yearslong legal process for safe refuge. His iPhone is filled with photos of him lying in a hospital bed, tubes snaking out, his swollen face covered in bandages. He has knots of scar tissue on each side of his head from a bullet passing through his right check and exiting the left side of his head. Similar scar tissue dots his back and side.
His spirits were up after Title 42 expired and fellow asylum-seekers at a Tijuana shelter left with appointments. Two weeks later, he was dismayed.
"I can't find enough work here. I'm either going to have to return to Honduras, but I'll likely be killed, or I don't know," he said. "I feel so hopeless."