Houston can investigate ICE shooting, despite obstacles, experts say<\/a><\/p>\nRegardless, Alvarado said DPS has such a request \u2013 from herself and the 12 other lawmakers who wrote to the agency Wednesday. Their letter asked for a \u201cparallel investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are asking the Texas Rangers to do something they have done in the past,\u201d Alvarado said, pointing to the South Padre investigation. \u201cThey should abide by that and conduct the investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n
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M. George Eichenberg, a criminal justice professor at Tarleton State University, said state police have the authority to investigate any elements of the shooting that may violate Texas law. But he said state law \u201callows pretty much total discretion.\u201d<\/p>\n
“The bottom line is whether these agencies have the will, and that is a political decision rather than a truly criminal justice decision,” Eichenberg said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Under Gov. Greg Abbott\u2019s direction, state troopers are assisting ICE with President Donald Trump\u2019s mass deportation push. His office has directed questions about the shooting to the FBI.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Even if state police wanted to investigate the Houston case, it could be difficult. Federal agents appear to have been the only police on the scene of the shooting and control much of the direct evidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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The federal government has refused to turn over evidence in past ICE shootings, including in Minnesota, where state and local officials have sued to get federal authorities to comply with their investigations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A Texas Department of Public Safety trooper watches over a group of migrants who turned themselves in to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":367489,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[933,56,58,57],"class_list":["post-367488","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-austinlatest","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367488","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=367488"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/367488\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/367489"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=367488"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=367488"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=367488"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}