Dudley Bernard

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A Customs and Border Protection officer has been charged with murder after police say he shot his wife, also a CBP employee, at their Texas home on Thanksgiving night.

Dudley Bernard, 40, was arrested in his front yard after police responded to reports of gunshots at the League City house just after 11 p.m.

Police said Chauntelle Bernard, 42, was found dead at the front door of the home.

Dudley Bernard was an agriculture specialist who oversaw the Houston Seaport environment. Chauntelle Bernard was a supervisor CBP officer in Houston, according to a CBP statement.

“No words can express the sense of loss SCBPO Bernard’s death brings to her colleagues and friends in CBP,” a CBP spokesperson said.

Border Patrol agent makes an arrest. Photo via Border Patrol.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A record number of undocumented immigrants were arrested by Border Patrol’s Del Rio Sector so far this year.

The sector, which covers 210 miles of land between the Rio Grand River and Lake Amistad in Texas, apprehended migrants from more than 30 countries since Oct. 1, more than twice the number this time last year, The Epoch Times reports.

“The apprehension of migrants from countries such as Brazil, Haiti, China, and countries of Africa have increased significantly this fiscal year,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul L. Ortiz said.

He added, “We continue to work with our law enforcement partners to combat threats in an effort to protect our country and the community.”

FBI sketches of D.B. Cooper.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz jokingly confessed that he is the notorious skyjacker D.B. Cooper.

“I did it,” Cruz said, retweeting a post from the FBI on Sunday that read, “#OTD in 1971, a man calling himself Dan Cooper parachuted from a plane he had just hijacked, clutching a bag filled with stolen cash. Who was Cooper? Did he survive the jump? What happened to the stolen money? Read about this unsolved mystery.”

I did it. https://t.co/xNA9CGCmxT

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) November 24, 2019

But why would the conservative Texas senator crack the joke?

For at least a year, people on Twitter have suggested Cruz bears a striking resemblance to FBI sketches of D.B. Cooper. Around the same time, Twitter users jokingly suggested Cruz was the Zodiac Killer.

In case you don’t know about Cooper, he boarded a plane in Portland, Ore., and claimed to have a bomb and had the plane fly to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, where he got the ransom money. He subsequently parachuted from the plane and was never found.

Here’s what Cruz looks like. You be the judge.

Sen. Ted Cruz

Luis M. Quesada

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

Luis M. Quesada, who began his career in law enforcement as a Miami police officer, has been named special agent in charge of the FBI’s El Paso Field Office in Texas.

Quesada, who most recently he served in the Training Division in Quantico, joined the FBI as a special agent in 1995 and began working in the Miami Field Office, where he investigated violent crimes with a focus on bank robberies, extortion, and kidnappings. In 1998, Quesada voluntarily transferred to the San Juan Field Office in Puerto Rico before returning to Miami in 2001 to investigates drugs. In both offices, Quesada served on the SWAT teams.

Quesada was promoted in 2003 to supervisory special agent and began working in the Counterterrorism Division of the Terrorist Screening Center, which manages and operates the nation’s terrorist watch list.

In 2005, he transferred to the FBI Academy in Quantico as a defensive tactics instructor. Quesada returned to Miami two years later as the supervisor of the violent gang and high-intensity drug trafficking area task force. He later became the acting assistant special agent in charge of Miami’s Criminal Branch.

In 2010, Quesada became the assistant legal attaché in Buenos Aires, Argentina, where he promoted FBI interests in Argentina, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

In 2012, Quesada was promoted to a unit chief position in the Criminal Investigative Division at FBI Headquarters in Washington, focusing on counter-narcotics efforts in Latin America and the U.S. Southwest border.

In 2014, Quesada became legal attaché of Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina, focusing on counterterrorism threats throughout the Balkans and the U.S.

A year later, Quesada became the assistant special agent in charge of the Criminal Branch in the Jackson Field Office in Mississippi. In 2017, he was appointed to assistant section chief in the Training Division, and a year later was promoted to section chief of the division’s Training Services Section.

Quesada earned a bachelor’s degree in liberal studies from Florida International University.

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

The FBI is offering a $15,000 reward for helping tracking down the arsonists responsible for setting fire to three Catholic Churches in El Paso that primarily serve Hispanics and migrants.

The first fire broke out May 7, when someone tossed an “incendiary device” at St. Matthew Catholic Church.

On May, another “incendiary device” was thrown at St. Patrick Cathedral. And on June 15, “an incendiary device” was into the San Judas Tadeo Catholic Church.

Authorities have yet to make any arrests.

No one was injured in the fires.

“We are counting on assistance from members of the community to keep our city safe,” the FBI said in a press release. “We are asking everyone to please remain vigilant for suspicious or unusual activity to include events and persons around you. To date, we have received numerous tips regarding this investigation and multiple law enforcement agencies are involved. Every lead will be thoroughly investigated. Regardless of how insignificant you think your information might be, we strongly encourage you to come forward and welcome your information and assistance. You do have the option to remain anonymous when providing assistance to this investigation.”

Photo via Border Patrol

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

A Border Patrol agent was shot during a routine traffic stop Friday night near the U.S.-Mexico Border in Texas.

The agent’s partner returned fire, killing the suspect at the scene, ABC News reports.

The two agents and a deputy with the Kinney County Sheriff’s Department had pulled over a car near Brackettville, Texas, when a passenger opened fire.

The agent was hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

CBP did not identify the agents or the suspects by name, but said the gunman was a 25-year-old man. The driver was a 32-year-old woman. Both are U.S. citizens.

“The agents and sheriff’s deputy requested medical assistance and rendered first aid, however the passenger of the vehicle was pronounced dead at the scene,” CBP said in a statement Saturday. “The injured agent was taken to a local hospital for treatment of a non-life threatening gunshot wound, and later transported by AirFlight to a San Antonio hospital.”

Seth Ator

By Steve Neavling

ticklethewire.com

The 36-year-old gunman who killed seven people in West Texas on Saturday called the FBI before his rampage began.

Seth Ator called the FBI national tip line after he was fired from him job and made “rambling statements about some of the atrocities that he felt that he had gone through,” FBI Special Agent Christopher Combs said at a news conference.

About 15 minutes later, Arto was driving his car and failed to use a turn signal, prompted a Texas state trooper, who was unaware of the FBI call, to try to pull over Ator. Ator responded by firing an AR-style rifle at the trooper, which triggered a police chase in which the gunman fired his weapon at passing cars and shopping plazas.

Ator hijacked a mail truck and killed a U.S. Postal Service employee.

Combs said the firing was not what the cause of Ator’s rage.

“He was on a long spiral of going down,” Combs said. “He didn’t wake up Saturday morning and walk into his company and then it happened. He went to that company in trouble.”

By Steve Neavling
ticklethewire.com

The FBI and Homeland Security are investigating after shots were fired at two ICE offices housed at a building in San Antonio early Tuesday morning.

Bullets pierced a window of an ICE office and Removal Operations Field Office inside the Jefferson Bank building about 3 a.m., KENS-5, a CBS affiliate, reports.

No injuries were reported.

The FBI was at the building Tuesday morning to process the scene and review surveillance footage.

“These shootings were cowardly, brazen, violent acts, absolutely without justification and a threat to our entire community,” said Christopher Combs, special agent in charge of the FBI’s San Antonio Division.

FBI officials said at a press conference they were “concerned there could be additional attacks” on federal offices in San Antonio.