The Brownsville Herald from Brownsville, Texas (2024)

All three of the congressional representa- tives voted in favor of the appropriations bill last month, including U.S. Reps. Henry Cuellar, D-Laredo, and Monica De La Cruz, R-McAllen, according to voting records posted to the of U.S House Representatives website. The money will be divid- ed among the cities of McAllen and Brownsville, as well as seven nonprofit aid organizations. McAllen will receive just over $3.9 million, while Brownsville will receive a little more than $1.9 mil- lion.

As for the aid groups, Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley will get the largest share of fund- ing at more than $4.2 mil- lion. Another $1.1 million will go to La Posada Providencia, a migrant and refugee shel- ter located in rural San Benito. The Salvation Army Corps Center in McAllen will receive $615,000. Meanwhile, four aid organizations headquar- tered in Brownsville will receive the remainder of the funding, including: $1,636,235 for the Good Neighbor Settlement House $360,000 for Team Brownsville $350,000 for the Bishop Enrique San Pedro Ozanam Center $216,000 for Iglesia Bautista West Brownsville The $17.7 million appro- priation follows a similar tranche of funding Gonzalez and other Democrats voted for in 2023. In May 2023, Gonzalez announced the approval of more than $38.2 million in migrant funding for the Valley, including $13.16 million for Catholic Charities, more than $6.2 million for the city of Brownsville and just over $5.7 million for the city of McAllen.

At the time, Title 42 had just recently come to an end. The federal immigra- tion policy, which had been implemented during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic under then-Pres- ident Donald Trump, allowed immigration offi- cials to block migrant entry into the country citing the public health threat posed by the pandemic. However, though the Valley has historically been one of the busiest regions for migrant crossings along the Southwest bor- der, those trends have changed after the end of Title 42. For fiscal year 2024, which began in October 2023, migrant encounters in the Valley have gone down more than year- to-date, according to data published by U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Crossings in other Texas regions have also dropped significantly compared to the same timeframes, including a nearly decrease in the Big Bend area, in El Paso, in Laredo and nearly in Del Rio. Meanwhile, encounters have skyrocketed in Arizona, where the Tucson region has seen encounters with CBP increase by near- ly In the immediate after- math of Title end, migrant crossing numbers here dropped significantly, according to local data. McAllen reported less than 200 migrants per day were coming into the city just two weeks after Title 42 ended, with fewer than 100 people being held at the temporary holding facility at Anzalduas Park. As recently as October 2023, the city remained poised to accept high influxes of migrants, with the Anzalduas shelter set up to receive as many as 2,000 migrants. Meanwhile, Catholic Charities, which operates a respite center in downtown McAllen, had worked with the Texas Department of Emergency Management, or TDEM, to facilitate buses to transport migrants outside the region.

date, a total of 16 TDEM busses have depart- ed from Anzalduas Park headed to either New York City (12 busses), Chicago (2 busses), Denver (1 bus) or Los Angeles (1 McAllen city officials stat- ed in a September 29, 2023 report of the migrant activity. The city produces such reports biweekly. At the time of that report, some 450-500 migrants were passing through McAllen per day. Since then, migrant numbers have again gone down. 214 Approximately migrants per day were arriving in McAllen as of the most recent migrant report, dated March 28.

And the city has reduced the since Anzalduas Park holding capacity from 2,000 to 750. The next report is expected to be included as part of McAllen City Commission meeting agenda. 7A For J.D. Power 2023 award information, visit jdpower.com/awards Ranked in Customer Satisfaction 6 Years in a Row Add Highspeed Internet as low as FREE Google Voice Remote Streaming INCLUDED, stream live TV on up to 5 devices Free Next Day Professional Installation (where available) Enjoy thousands of shows and movies included On-Demand J.D. Power Award For Customer Satisfaction 6 Years In A Row Never watch another commercial during your favorite primetime shows CALL US NOW! 1-888-603-3750 DTV Switcher Offer is provided by DISH, all other gift card offers are courtesy of PlanetDISH, call for full offer details.

1-888-603-3750 Call us now! Friday, April 19, 2024 myRGV.com BY EDITH M. LEDERER ASSOCIATED PRESS UNITED NATIONS The United States vetoed a widely backed U.N. resolution on Thursday that would have paved the way for full United Nations membership for Palestine, a goal the Palestinians have long sought. The vote in the 15-member Security Council was 12 in favor, the United States opposed and two absten- tions, from the United Kingdom and Switzerland. U.S.

allies France, Japan and South Korea supported the resolution. The resolution would have recommended that the General 193-member Assembly, where there are no vetoes, approve Palestine becoming the 194th member of the United Nations. Some 140 countries have already recognized Palestine, so its admission would have been approved, likely by a much higher number of countries. U.S. deputy ambassador Robert Wood told the coun- cil the U.S.

veto not reflect opposition to Palestinian statehood, but instead is an acknowledg- ment that it will only come from direct negotiations between the Before the vote, U.S. deputy State Department spokes- man Vedant Patel said the United States has very clear consistently that prema- ture actions in New York even with the best intentions will not achieve statehood for the Palestinian This is the second Palestinian attempt for full membership and it comes as the war in Gaza has put the more than 75-year-old Israeli- Palestinian conflict at center stage. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas first deliv- ered the Palestinian application for U.N. membership in 2011. That bid failed because the Palestinians get the required minimum support of nine of the Security 15 members.

The Palestinians then went to the General Assembly, and by more than a two-thirds majority succeeded in having their status raised from a U.N. observer to a non-member observer state in November 2012. That opened the door for the Palestinian territories to join U.N. and other inter- national organizations, including the International Criminal Court. The strong support the Palestinians received Thursday reflects not only the growing number of countries recognizing their statehood but almost certainly the wide- spread global support for Palestinians caught in the war in Gaza, now in its seventh month.

U.N. Ambassador Amar Bendjama, the Arab rep- resentative on the council who introduced the resolution, called admission critical step toward rectifying a longstanding and said that will come from inclusion, not from its In explaining the U.S. veto, Wood said there are solved on whether Palestine meets the criteria to be considered a state. He pointed to Hamas still exert- ing power and influence in the Gaza Strip, which is a key part of the state envisioned by the Palestinians. Wood stressed the U.S.

commitment to a two-state solution where Israel and Palestine live side-by-side in peace as the only path for both sides to live with secu- rity and for Israel to establish relations with all its Arab neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. US vetoes UN resolution backing full UN membership for Palestine U.S. Deputy Ambassador Robert Wood votes against resolution during a Security Council meeting at United Nations head- quarters, Thursday, April 18, 2024. YUKI IWAMURA AP FUNDING FROM PAGE A1 As jury selection contin- ued Thursday morning, half of a new panel of pro- spective jurors 48 of the 96 total people said they could not be impartial toward the former presi- dent and were excused. As they left the courtroom, Trump turned his head to stare at them.

Nine additional jurors were excused after they said they serve on the jury for other reasons. Shortly after Trump arrived at the courthouse with his Secret Service entourage for the third day of his trial Thursday, Assistant District Attorney Christopher Conroy told the court that Trump had violated a gag order pre- venting comments about jurors, witnesses and other trial participants seven times since he last got in trouble for doing so. ridiculous, it has to Conroy said. the prosecutor said, was a post that went up on Truth Social account Wednesday night quoting Fox News host Jesse Watters commenting on the jury. Merchan, on Monday, scheduled a hearing for next week to address other potential violations of the gag order.

Conroy said the prosecu- tion was seeking monetary sanctions and consid- ering our In response to the pros- request, Trump lawyer Emil Bove, who has been handling his appeals, said the posts in question including description of the panelists as and links to articles calling wit- ness Cohen a per- did not any willful The attorney said Trump was criticizing Cohen from the perspective of defend- ing himself as a political candidate, not a defendant. He countered that Trump reposting something was not violating the gag order. The case so far Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 counts of falsi- fication of New York busi- ness records alleging that throughout 2017, after win- ning the presidency, he dis- guised reimbursem*nt to his former lawyer, Cohen, for facilitating a hush money scheme to defraud the 2016 electorate that vio- lated election laws. Among the alleged recipients of the scheme expected to testify are p*rn star Stormy Daniels who Cohen went to pris- on for paying off and former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who each allege Trump cheat- ed on Melania Trump with them in 2006, soon after they wed. Trump denies the allegations.

Prospective jurors have faced questions such as: you have any strong opinions or firmly held beliefs about whether a for- mer president may be criminally charged in state and you have any opinions about the legal limits governing polit- ical The presumptive Republican presidential nominee is set to spend the next two months in his native New York to attend the case as his campaign schedule and court calen- dar collide. The Manhattan charges are among 88 battling inside state and federal courtrooms across four states. They contain allega- tions dating from the year before he took office when Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg alleges the hush money scheme started with a meeting at Trump Tower to the year he left. Trump has pleaded not guilty to all charges and says he is a victim of politi- cal persecution akin to the African late South President Nelson Mandela. TRUMP FROM PAGE A1 The periodic study by Commonwealth Fund, a national independent health care research firm, reveals deep-seated racial and ethnic dispari- ties continue across the nation in health care access, quality and out- comes, with a stark racial divide in premature deaths.

The 2024 disparities report offers a comprehen- sive analysis of how well health care systems are functioning for people in every state by evaluating disparities in health and health care across racial and ethnic groups. The Commonwealth Fund uses 25 measures to evaluate states on health care access, quality, service use, and health outcomes for Black, white, Hispanic, American Indian and Alaska Native and Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations. simply, and on average, our report shows that disparities exist in every state in our nation. Even in states that have strong overall health sys- tems, racial and ethnic health disparities can be said Joseph Betancourt, president of The Commonwealth Fund. Decades of policy choices at the federal, state and local levels, along with inequita- ble investment in health care systems, has had a discrimi- natory impact on people of color, leading to poorer health outcomes than white Americans, Betancourt said.

The longstanding inequi- ties found in the study are intertwined with socioeconomic status, said David Radley, a senior scien- tist at the Commonwealth Fund. TEXAS HEALTH OUTCOMES Texas is one of several Southwestern and Mountain states including New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Wyoming in which premature death rates for Hispanic residents are higher than other U.S. regions where Hispanic rates more closely align with rates for white residents, the report found. Nationally, Hispanic peo- ple generally have lower premature mortality rates compared to Black and white people, despite having higher uninsured rates and worse access to health care than these groups. The researchers noted that the U.S.

Hispanic popu- lation is highly diverse, and health care access and out- comes can vary, particularly by immigration status. Lower rates of prema- ture death could also stem from the relative youth of Hispanic populations and their lower rates of risky health behaviors, such as smoking, the report explained. Recent research never- theless shows rising mortal- ity and prevalence of chron- ic conditions over time with- in Hispanic populations. A report published this month by Episcopal Health Foundation, a Texas non- profit addressing health dis- parities, found preventable health differences for peo- ple of color and those with lower incomes in Texas. Black and Hispanic children are more likely to grow up in neighborhoods with high poverty levels, and families with lower incomes are less likely to say in good health, the report said.

These families are more likely to be uninsured and have higher rates of diabetes and obesity, the report found. HEALTH FROM PAGE A1.