In the News
HOUSTON - Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced the details of the next city's gun buyback event.
The second gun buyback event will take place on Saturday from 8 a.m.- 12 p.m. at the METRO Park & Ride at 11050 Harwin Drive. The event is one tool of the city's One Safe Houston initiative to reduce violent crime.
--
Mayor Turner was joined by U.S. Rep. Al Green, U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia, Harris County Precinct One Commissioner Rodney Ellis, City Council Member Tiffany Thomas, and METRO Chair Sanjay Ramabhadran.
The disappearance and killing of Vanessa Guillén, a U.S. Army specialist stationed in Fort Hood, Texas, in 2020 shook the nation and led to widescale changes in how the military protects victims of sexual violence.
--
In the wake of the deadly shooting of a migrant in West Texas, U.S. Rep. Al Green responded Tuesday to Gov. Greg Abbott blaming the incident on the Biden administration's border policies, urging the governor to be "forceful" on the issue of gun violence.
"Governor, when things are done with intentionality, it's more than a simple tragedy," Green said. "You've gotta be forceful, be as forceful as you would be if an undocumented person had taken a life. Given this circumstance, coupled with what happened at Uvalde, Abbott needs to call a special session of the Legislature immediately to address the issue of gun violence."
…
WASHINGTON — The League of United Latin American Citizens has filed a complaint with the Department of Justice, calling for investigation into the transit of migrants last month from San Antonio to Martha's Vineyard, specifically the involvement of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who took credit for the move.
…
After the arrival of migrants at Martha's Vineyard, lawmakers including San Antonio Rep. Joaquin Castro, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, two Massachusetts lawmakers and 44 members of Congress led in part by Houston Rep. Sylvia Garcia called for the DOJ to investigate
EL PASO, Texas (KFOX14/CBS4) — El Paso Congresswoman Veronica Escobar (TX-16) sent the Department of Justice a letter on Thursday asking the department to investigate the deadly migrant shooting in Hudspeth County as a hate crime.
The migrant shot and killed was identified as Jesús Sepúlveda Martinez and the woman migrant shot and injured was identified as Berenice Casias Carrillo.
"This attack on a group of migrants stopping for a water break is just the most recent manifestation of the rising racist and xenophobic sentiment for those who have come to the United States seeking a better life," the lawmakers stated in the letter.
--
Paul Bettencourt – once joined by Democrat Sylvia Garcia, now a congresswoman and then a state senator – has repeatedly filed bills to rein in TIRZs.
Letter to the Inspector General, Joseph V. Cuffarin (excerpt)
The Government Accountability Project and Project South, along with the 73 undersigned organizations, seek a status report on the ongoing investigations by your office into to the whistleblower disclosures and retaliation complaint of nurse Dawn Wooten, along with the complaints of multiple women detained in ICE custody at the Irwin County Detention Center (ICDC), submitted to your office in September 2020. This month marks two years since these women disclosed health and safety violations at ICDC, including failures to protect workers and immigrants from COVID-19 as well as nonconsensual invasive gynecological procedures performed on detained women.
EL PASO — After a group of 13 Mexican immigrants had crossed the U.S.-Mexico border, they stopped on Tuesday evening to drink out of a reservoir south of Sierra Blanca, a small town in the Chihuahuan Desert nearly 100 miles east of El Paso.
"It's hard not to imagine that the victims were attacked in cold blood by two men who looked at the color of their skin and decided to make them targets," U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-San Antonio, said during a press conference, joined by Reps. Sylvia Garcia and Al Green of Houston and Lloyd Doggett of Austin. They also denounced the "invasion rhetoric" they say Texas Republican leaders have used to describe migrants coming into the country, which they said has fueled violence against Hispanics.
In celebration of Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month, ABC Owned Television Stations presents "Our America: (IN)VISIBLE." The hourlong news special examines what Hispanic and Latino visibility looks like across three sectors of society: business, entertainment and politics with special focus on how the community's quality of life is impacted.
The special takes a closer look at the political world into bipartisanship and where the Latino electorate stands with Democrat U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia and Republican former Texas Supreme Court Justice Eva Guzman. New York State Senator Jessica Ramos walks viewers through her district, the most diverse in the country, sharing her thoughts about the importance of Hispanic representation in government.
U.S. Rep. Sylvia Garcia plans to introduce a bill this week that aims to significantly change the way veteran women's cancer care is handled by Veterans Affairs.
If the Houston Democrat's legislation becomes law, VA health centers will need to increase their gynecological services to meet the needs of the growing female veteran population, which tripled between 2000 and 2015. These changes would start as a pilot program.