AP News in Brief 08-12-19

El Paso shooting suspect said he targeted Mexicans

EL PASO, Texas — The man accused of carrying out last weekend’s deadly mass shooting at a Walmart in the Texas border city of El Paso confessed to officers while he was surrendering and later explained that he had been targeting Mexicans, authorities say.

The suspect, a 21-year-old male, emerged with his hands up from a vehicle that was stopped at an intersection shortly after last Saturday’s attack and told officers, “I’m the shooter,” Detective Adrian Garcia said in an arrest warrant affidavit. (West Hawaii Today does not print the names of mass shooters.)

The alleged shooter later waived his Miranda rights and agreed to speak with detectives, telling them he entered the store with an AK-47 assault rifle and multiple magazines, and that he was targeting Mexicans.

Twenty-two people were killed and about two dozen were injured. Most of the dead had Hispanic last names and eight were Mexican nationals.

Authorities believe that shortly before the attack, the suspect posted a racist screed online that railed against an influx of Hispanics into the U.S. The document parrots some of President Donald Trump’s divisive rhetoric about immigration, but the writer said his views predate Trump’s rise, and that any attempt to blame the president for his actions was “fake news.”

Documents: Plant owners ‘willfully’ used ineligible workers

JACKSON, Miss. — Six of seven Mississippi chicken processing plants raided Wednesday were “willfully and unlawfully” employing people who lacked authorization to work in the United States, including workers wearing electronic monitoring bracelets at work for previous immigration violations, according to unsealed court documents.

Federal investigators behind the biggest immigration raid in a decade relied on confidential informants inside the plants in addition to data from the monitoring bracelets to help make their case, according to the documents.

The sworn statements supported the search warrants that led a judge to authorize Wednesday’s raids, and aren’t official charges, but give the first detailed look at the evidence involved in what Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials have described as a yearlong investigation.

Officials arrested 680 people during Wednesday’s operation. Three Democratic congressmen on Friday demanded that the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice produce information. They want to know the cost of the raids, whether employers face criminal charges, whether any U.S. citizens were detained, how many parents were separated from children and whether any still remain separated.

Documents: Epstein ducked sex-abuse questions in deposition

NEW YORK — Confronted with allegations that he orchestrated a sex trafficking ring that delivered girls to him and his high-profile acquaintances, financier Jeffrey Epstein repeatedly refused to answer questions to avoid incriminating himself, according to court records released Friday.

Epstein’s responses emerged in a partial transcript of a September 2016 deposition stemming from a defamation lawsuit. The transcript was included in hundreds of pages of documents placed in a public file by a federal appeals court in New York.

The deposition happened almost three years before Epstein’s July 6 arrest on sex trafficking charges in a case that has brought down a Cabinet secretary and launched fresh investigations into how authorities dealt with Epstein over the years. The 66-year-old has pleaded not guilty.

Epstein was asked in the videotaped deposition whether it was standard operating procedure for his former girlfriend, Ghislaine Maxwell, to bring underage girls to him to sexually abuse.

Epstein replied “Fifth,” as he did to numerous other questions, citing the Constitution’s Fifth Amendment that protects people against incriminating themselves.

From wire sources

From wire sources

The statements unsealed Thursday allege that managers at two processing plants owned by the same Chinese man actively participated in fraud. They also show that supervisors at other plants at least turned a blind eye to evidence strongly suggesting job applicants were using fraudulent documents and bogus Social Security numbers.

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Virginia transgender bathroom case: Judge favors ex-student

NORFOLK, Va. — A federal judge in Virginia ruled Friday that a school board’s transgender bathroom ban discriminated against a former student, Gavin Grimm, the latest in a string of decisions nationwide that favor transgender students who faced similar policies.

The order issued by U.S. District Judge Arenda Wright Allen in Norfolk is a major victory for the American Civil Liberties Union and for Grimm. His four-year lawsuit was once a federal test case and had come to embody the debate about transgender student rights.

The issue remains far from settled as a patchwork of differing policies governs schools across the nation. More court cases are making their way through the courts.

The Gloucester County School Board’s policy required Grimm, a transgender male, to use girls’ restrooms or private bathrooms. The judge wrote that Grimm’s rights were violated under the U.S. Constitution’s equal protection clause as well as under Title IX, the federal policy that protects against gender-based discrimination.

“(T)here is no question that the Board’s policy discriminates against transgender students on the basis of their gender noncomformity,” Allen wrote.

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China waiting out Hong Kong protests, but backlash may come

BEIJING — China’s central government has dismissed Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters as clowns and criminals while bemoaning growing violence surrounding the monthslong demonstrations.

That’s partly out of concern that protesters’ demands for expanded democracy could inspire like-minded officials and intellectuals on the mainland.

Yet, Beijing shows no signs of preparing for a major crackdown, content instead to ignore the protests in the hopes that frustration will lead to further violence that will eventually turn the territory’s silent majority against the movement, according to experts.

“Hong Kong poses a serious problem for the Chinese government. It can’t allow the protesters to challenge its authority or deface symbols of its authority unpunished but it also does not want to attempt a military crackdown,” said Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies.

Under those circumstances, Beijing would prefer to “isolate and undermine the protesters so the movement in Hong Kong fizzles out,” Tsang said.

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Armed man at Walmart says he was testing right to bear arms

SPRINGFIELD, Mo. — Prosecutors on Friday filed a terrorist threat charge against a 20-year-old man who said he walked into a Missouri store wearing body armor and carrying a loaded rifle and handgun to test whether Walmart would honor his constitutional right to bear arms.

The incident, just days after 22 people were killed during an attack at another Walmart in El Paso, Texas, caused a panic at the Springfield, Missouri, store. Dmitriy Andreychenko walked through filming himself with his cell phone Thursday afternoon.

No shots were fired and Andreychenko was arrested after he was stopped by an armed off-duty firefighter at the store.

“Missouri protects the right of people to open carry a firearm, but that does not allow an individual to act in a reckless and criminal manner endangering other citizens,” Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Dan Patterson said in a statement announcing the charge. Patterson compared the man’s actions to “falsely shouting fire in a theater causing a panic.”

If convicted, the felony charge of making a terrorist threat in the second degree is punishable by up to four years in prison and a fine of up to $10,000, according to the prosecutor’s office. The charge means he showed reckless disregard for the risk of causing an evacuation or knowingly caused fear that lives were in danger.

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EPA won’t approve warning labels for Roundup chemical

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The Trump administration says it won’t approve warning labels for products that contain glyphosate, a move aimed at California as it fights one of the world’s largest agriculture companies about the potentially cancer-causing chemical.

California requires warning labels on glyphosate products — widely known as the weed killer Roundup — because the International Agency for Research on Cancer has said it is “probably carcinogenic.”

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency disagrees, saying its research shows the chemical poses no risks to public health. California has not enforced the warning label for glyphosate because Monsanto, the company that makes Roundup, sued and a federal judge temporarily blocked the warning labels last year until the lawsuit could be resolved.

“It is irresponsible to require labels on products that are inaccurate when EPA knows the product does not pose a cancer risk,” EPA Administrator Andrew Wheeler said in a statement. “We will not allow California’s flawed program to dictate federal policy.”

California’s Safe Drinking Water and Toxic Enforcement Act, approved by voters in 1986, requires the government to publish a list of chemicals known to cause cancer, as determined by a variety of outside groups that include the EPA and IARC. The law also requires companies to warn customers about those chemicals.