Free Republic

MCALLEN, Texas – Border Patrol agents arrested a Middle-Eastern man as he tried to sneak into Texas by illegally crossing the border. The man’s country of origin was not readily available. The arrest took place earlier this week just south of the border city of Pharr, where an agent took into custody a man from a Middle Eastern country, a border patrol spokesman confirmed to Breitbart Texas. The man was then taken to the Weslaco station for processing and turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement for expedited removal, a prepared statement from the agency revealed. While not common,...

Dan from Squirrel Hill's Blog Attention Dr. Blake Armstrong of South Texas College: here’s why your comparison of the Tea Party to the Nazis is inaccurate The Blaze recently reported:Prof. Tells Students Not to ‘Tell Anybody’ About His Vexed Tea Party ‘Analogy’ — He Didn’t Know It Was Already Caught on VideoDec. 8, 2014A psychology professor at South Texas College in Weslaco, Texas, was seemingly caught on video last month comparing the tea party to the Nazis of the 1930s in Germany.He then told his students not to “tell anybody” about his remarks — but one of his students had already...

WESLACO - The Palm Aire Hotel and Suites will be turned into a housing complex for young illegal immigrants. Baptist Child and Family Services will take over the hotel on Interstate 2 and International Blvd. in Weslaco. The group says children will receive basic education, as well as mental and medical services at the site. BCFS officials say facility will allow for faster transfers from Border Patrol custody. The project is part of the relocation and expansion of the BCFS location in Harlingen. They expect to have the facility operational by Oct. 1.

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

WESLACO — Nearly 80 people filled a lecture hall here Thursday for a town hall forum with Texas Department of Transportation officials on a potential interstate highway designation in the region. The forum at South Texas College’s Mid-Valley Campus was the first of four planned public meetings in the Rio Grande Valley addressing the state’s Trans-Texas Corridor plan for an Interstate 69 extension linking South Texas to points north. TxDOT is developing plans for the first interstate in eastern Texas to connect Texarkana to one of three points in the south: U.S. Highway 281 in Hidalgo County, U.S. Highway 77...

Some Texans are afraid of losing their land to the Trans-Texas Corridor while others loathe the thought of a quarter-mile-wide swath of toll roads and railway lines transforming the countryside into a superhighway. People continue to turn out in droves at public meetings concerning the controversial Trans-Texas Corridor proposal, specifically the portion known as the TTC-69 proposed from Brownsville to Texarkana. A meeting Monday, Jan. 28, at the fairgrounds in Austin County was no exception, drawing more than 1,000 people. Opposition to the proposed corridor has come from people in all walks of life, said Chris Steinbach, chief of staff...

Gov. Rick Perry's ambitious Trans-Texas Corridor plan, and his advocacy of toll funding for future roads, hit the skids in a skeptical Legislature last spring. The road shows no signs of getting any smoother as state transportation officials try to sell the plan to Houston-area audiences. "This will wipe me out," Dee Bond told a panel of corridor advocates at a town hall meeting in Rosenberg last week. The panel, which included Texas Transportation Commissioner Ned Holmes of Houston and Steve Simmons, deputy executive director of the Texas Department of Transportation, was there to explain and gather comment on a...

Man arrested, wanted in connection with 1989 shooting death WESLACO - A man who police say spent 17 years on the run as a murder suspect was captured Monday morning. Alfonso A. Villarreal, 62, was arrested at a family member's home after the FBI's Rio Grande Valley Violent Crimes Task Force - which focuses its efforts on arresting fugitives and investigating crimes such as kidnappings and robberies - tracked him to a house on North Mile 9 Road in Weslaco, said local FBI spokesman Supervisory Special Agent Jorge Cisneros. Villarreal was wanted in connection with the August 1989 shooting death...

AUSTIN — Former Hidalgo County election judges filed a petition on Friday with the Texas secretary of state asking for poll inspectors to visit Weslaco precincts on Nov. 2, saying inexperienced judges could compromise the election. "I feel the integrity of this race might be at risk," said Marcos Hernandez, former election judge for voting Precinct 112 in central Weslaco, who filed the petition. Election inspectors from the secretary of state’s office were already planning to be in Hidalgo County and other Rio Grande Valley counties on Election Day because of previous petitions filed by other groups, said Bill Kenyon,...