A detention center, via CBP.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

Attorneys visiting a crowded Border Patrol facility in Texas made a startling discovery – a teenage girl in a wheelchair holding a tiny, prematurely born baby.

The lawyers said the baby, wrapped in a dirty towel and looking listless, was barely a month old, The Associated Press reports. The mother was in severe pain because of complications from an emergency cesarean section in Mexico.

“You look at this baby and there is no question that this baby should be in a tube with a heart monitor,” said Hope Frye, a volunteer with an immigrant advocacy group.

Since being in Border Patrol custody, the baby received no medical attention, the lawyers said.

The case sheds more light on the inhumane conditions that have been reported under the Trump administration by advocates and the Inspector General.

Since late last year, five children have died after being detained by the Border Patrol.

Photo via Border Patrol

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

So many bees covered a Guatemalan mother protecting her child that a Border Patrol agent believed he saw a bundle of clothing.

What the agent actually witnessed were thousands of bees covering a mother who had been curled over her 8-year-old son to protect him in Texas.

“Upon closer investigation, the agent realized the bundle was a person curled up in the fetal position,” CBP said in a statement to CNN.

The agent called for the woman to seek shelter in his patrol car. At that point, the agent realized “the person was covering a small child.”

The woman and her son ran into the patrol car while waiting for an ambulance to arrive. Once the child began vomiting, the unnamed agent rushed the mother and child to a hospital, where they were placed in an intensive care unit.

The mother and child are expected to recover and then be processed by immigration officials upon their release from the hospital.

Border marker, via Border Patrol.

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

When Mexican teenagers are shot at the American border, can American families sue in U.S. courts?

The U.S. Supreme Court will try to answer that question, it announced Thursday in deciding to take a case involving a Border Patrol agent who was in Texas when he shot across the border and killed a 15-year-old boy in Mexico, The Associated Press reports.

The family of Sergio Adrián Hernández Güereca said the teenager was playing a game with friends when he was shot in the head by Agent Jesus Mesa Jr.

Mesa said he pulled the trigger because he was under attack by rock throwers.
The Supreme Court took the case in February 2017 but sent it back to a lower court for more proceedings.

At the time, the Trump administration argued the right to sue in U.S. courts “should not be extended to aliens injured abroad.”

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

A former DEA task force officer, who worked for the McAllen, Tex. police department, has pleaded guilty to providing false statements in connection with a federal conspiracy case.

On Thursday, Ricardo Ruiz Jr. agreed to plead guilty to one count of giving false statements to federal agents, in exchange government prosecutors agreed to dismiss the remaining four counts against him, including two counts of interference with commerce by threat or violence, one count of impersonating an officer, and the remaining count of making false statements to federal agents, The Monitor  reports. 

The former McAllen officer and three others originally faced conspiracy charges in connection with an incident in May 2017, when Ruiz and the others allegedly orchestrated the seizure of a 2013 Cadillac ATS from an unnamed San Juan resident, the paper reports.

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Juan David

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

The U.S. Border Patrol agent accused of being a serial killer likely used his government-issued weapon to murder four women in September.

The .40-caliber casings found at the scene of each murder “were consistent with the agency issued .40-caliber HK p2000 semiautomatic pistol” that police found in Juan David Ortiz’s truck when he was captured on Sept. 15, the USA Today reports, citing the district attorney involved in the case.  

The Texas Department of Public Safety’s crime lab in Laredo is examining the handgun and casings to determine whether the match is precise.

Ortiz, 35, was arrested after a woman escaped his truck after suspecting that he had killed her friend.

Police said Ortiz drove four women between the ages of 28 and 42 to the side of rural roads and shot them in the head.

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Juan David

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

A supervisory Border Patrol agent accused of being a serial killer was tracked down after a sex worker’s daring escape at gunpoint in Laredo, Tex.

Juan David Ortiz, a 10-year veteran of the agency who worked in intelligence, confessed to four September murders, including two in a five-hour span early Saturday morning, the Washington Post reports.

“We consider this man to be a serial killer who was preying on one victim after another,” Webb County Sheriff Martin Cuellar said. 

A sex worker who suspected Ortiz had killed her friend was in a white pickup truck with the alleged killer when he pulled out a gun and grabbed her shirt. She managed to escape, and he fled.

The woman flagged down a state trooper, and after a pursuit, police found the 35-year-old hiding in a hotel parking lots at 2:30 a.m. Saturday.

Ortiz faces life in prison on four counts of murder, aggravated assault and unlawful restrain.

All of the victims are believed to be sex workers, some of whom may not have been chosen at random.

KGNS captured video of the aftermath of the shooting.

By Steve Neavling
Ticklethewire.com

The FBI is investigating an alleged Border Patrol-involved shooting in Rio Bravo, Texas that left one woman dead.

The agency confirmed to KGNS a Border Patrol agent used a service weapon Wednesday after agents said they were attacked with blunt objects while investigating possible illegal activity. 

At least one round was fired at the suspects, killing 20-year-old Claudia Patricia Gomez Gonzalez from Guatemala

One of the men detained in video captured by Texas resident.

In a Facebook live video, a woman named Martha V. Martinez is heard accusing agents of shooting and killing a woman while two men were detained near her home. 

The Texas Rangers also are investigating.

Paul “Scott” Ragsdale of Rockwall

By Allan Lengel
ticklethewire.com

ATF Agent Paul “Scott” Ragsdale of Rockwall, 41,  died Thursday from an apparent heart attack during training in Coppell, Tex., NBC 5 News reports. He was a senior operation officer in the Dallas Division and joined ATF 16 years ago

Rockwall was learning arrest techniques when he suffered an apparent cardiac arrest, ATF said.

He was rushed by ambulance to Baylor Scott & White Medical Center in Grapevine where he was pronounced dead. , the ATF said in a statement.

“If you knew Scott, you knew laughter, you knew how much he loved his family, you knew a great guy,”  Jeffrey Boshek, ATF’s agent in charge in Dallas, said, according to the station. “Scott wasn’t just a colleague, he was a friend.”