Morning Briefing: Shooting Death of Mexican Farmworker and the Threat of Vigilante Violence by Far Right Extremists on the Border
Morning Briefing: Shooting Death of Mexican Farmworker and the Threat of Vigilante Violence by Far Right Extremists on the Border
The shooting death of a Mexican farmworker by a former jail warden for a private prison company highlights the threat of vigilante violence by far right extremists on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Morning Briefing: Mike Thomas Sheppard allegedly fired a shot gun at group of undocumented immigrants, and a “man in the group was killed, and a woman was shot in the abdomen. The brothers allegedly drove away without checking to see whether anyone had been hit.”
Mike Sheppard and his brother Mark Sheppard were arrested on “manslaughter charges for their alleged roles in the shooting near Sierra Blanca, Texas.” The Sheppard brothers were released “after posting $250,000 bond each.”
The truck “linked to the shooting belonged to LaSalle Corrections,” and “Border Patrol helped trace the truck and investigators discovered the vehicle was assigned to Mike Sheppard.”
Mike Sheppard was reportedly previously employed as a “jail warden for the West Texas Detention Center in Sierra Blanca — a privately owned detention facility that used to contract with the federal government to detain migrants.”
Family members of Jesús Iván Sepúlveda Martínez, who was killed in the shooting, have travel from Mexico to demand justice.
RAICES, a nonprofit that provides “low-cost legal services to underserved immigrant children, families, and refugees,” released a statement that “ICE’s failure to hold Sheppard accountable emboldened him to continue his pattern of abuse towards migrants, culminating in Sheppard and his brother harassing migrants in the street, shooting into a group of migrants, killing one man and wounding a woman. The tragic reality is that xenophobic attacks like this happen every day.”
Beto O’Rourke, the Democratic candidate for Texas governor, said during the gubernatorial debate with Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that anti-immigrant rhetoric contributes to violence against migrants and far-right incidents of mass violence, “This hateful rhetoric, this treating human beings as political pawns, talking about invasions and Texans defending themselves–that's how people get killed at the Walmart in El Paso.”
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Must Reads
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