Roswell Daily Record
Vol. 123, No. 167 75¢ Daily / $1.25 Sunday
THE VOICE OF THE PECOS VALLEY
July 12, 2014
400-plus Central Americans now at FLETC
SATURDAY
www.rdrnews.com
Additional detention facilities planned, DHS secretary says BY TIMOTHY P. HOWSARE RECORD EDITOR
ARTESIA — While visiting a detention facility in Artesia for Central American women and children who have illegally entered the United States Friday, U.S. Homeland Security SecreJeh Johnson tary announced that the agency is working rapidly to open new detention facilities to house more illegal immigrants. Along with the family residential facility at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Artesia — which houses mothers or female guardians with children who illegally cross the
southern border — there is a similar facility operating in Pennsylvania. When asked by reporters during a press conference Friday at FLETC, Barbara Gonzalez, press secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), could not say where and when additional centers would open, stating that plans for additional centers are still very preliminary. Unaccompanied children entering the U.S. are turned over to Health and Human Services, she said. But without more beds, Gonzalez said, immigrants caught entering the country illegally are being released by Border Patrol on their own recognizance while
awaiting their deportation or asylum hearings. Gonzalez and other ICE officials, including a medical doctor, responded to questions from about 30 television and newspaper reporters. Several of the reporters were from the border city of El Paso, Texas. As of Friday, there were 438 Central Americans from 191 family units housed in Artesia, but the numbers can fluctuate daily, ICE officials said. The center can hold up to 672 temporary residents. A few reporters asked questions about the state of health of the Central Americans and whether they were bringing in communicable
Photo courtesy of the El Paso Times
Barbara Gonzalez, press secretary for Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leads reporters on a tour Friday of a detention center in Artesia where more than 400 Central American women and children are now staying while they await deportation or an asylum hearing.
diseases such as tuberculosis. Gonzalez referred those questions to the doctor, who said he is seeing the
usual minor ailments associated with young children, such as runny noses and diarrhea. When pressed by one reporter about the chil-
City considers new convention center BY JEFF TUCKER RECORD STAFF WRITER
Jerry Heck Photo
Police Service Aide Joe Scott writes a traffic citation Thursday for parking in fire lane at Walmart. The drive came out and a warning was given instead of a ticket.
Police Service Aides serve with courtesy BY JERRY HECK RECORD STAFF WRITER
“You gotta like what you’re doing. You gotta like meeting people,” said Joe Scott, 62, a Roswell Police Service Aide, or PSA. Scott is retired federal
employee who worked various posts for the Internal Revenue Service in both Roswell and upstate New York. “This is the perfect job for me. Like I said, if you don’t like talking to people this isn’t the job for you.” While patrolling the Walmart
dren bringing in lice, the doctor responded yes, but no worse than in any day
parking lot for handicapped parking or fire lane violations, Scott worked the crowd more like a goodwill ambassador than an enforcer. “See that gentleman over there?” he pointed. “I gave him See PSA, Page A2
The Roswell City Council inched toward a multi-million dollar renovation of the Roswell Convention, Civic & Visitors Center — or possibly toward building an entirely new and even larger convention center. The City Council voted 9-0 Thursday night to issue requests for proposals to plan and design improvements at the convention center. The action follows a June 26 city council workshop at which Mayor Dennis Kintigh questioned the fiscal rationale of expanding the convention center. City Councilor Steve Henderson chaired the workshop and has championed the proposal to double the convention center’s square footage with an expansion to the west of the exhibit hall. That project was estimated a few years ago to cost $7.7 million. “This RFP would do some preliminary planning,” Henderson told the City Council. Henderson said the proposal was explored by the City Council in 2008, when adding 12,250
See FLETC, Page A3
square feet of meeting room space at the convention center, 6,500 square feet to the exhibit hall, and improvements to the courtyard and a new entry were estimated to cost $7,698,050. Since then, the City Council has adopted an ordinance imposing a $2.50 daily “convention center fee” for every hotel/motel room rental in the city. Revenues from the convention center fees are separate from the city’s 5 percent lodgers tax, which is imposed at city hotels and motels and intended to promote tourism and conventions. Convention center fee revenues must, by state law, be used for improvements to a convention center. The convention center fee went into effect in November, with the city beginning to reap revenues in December. The city has collected a total of $357,028 since December. In June, the city reaped $56,960 of convention center fees. In May, the city collected $49,025 and in April the city received $56,350. Henderson said expanding the
Dispute over mouse 911 tapes depict response to collapse of vet spurs legal action
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — Environmentalists on Friday accused the federal government of not doing enough to protect a rare western mouse that’s already at the center of a dispute over access to national forest land and water rights. Native to New Mexico and parts of Arizona and Colorado, the New Mexico meadow jumping mouse was recently added to the list of endangered species as a result of a multispecies settlement with the Santa Fe-based environmental group WildEarth Guardians. The group has notified the U.S. Forest Service it will be suing for greater protections of the mouse’s streamside habitat, saying grazing authorized by the agency is a threat to the mouse’s existence. Bryan Bird, a biologist with the group, said the mouse’s populations have declined by at least 76 percent in the past 15 years
and the remaining mice are often found in areas actively protected from grazing. “The Forest Service has been building special habitat enclosures that allow access for small wildlife and recreationists for many years, but not enough,” Bird said. “They will likely have to fence out cattle from many more miles of streams to end the trampling of vegetation and stream banks.” WildEarth Guardians is asking the Forest Service to begin formal discussions under the Endangered Species Act to address the effects of grazing on the mouse in the Santa Fe and Lincoln national forests and the Apache-Sitgreaves forest, which straddles the Arizona-New Mexico state line. The Forest Service already has fencing up on the Lincoln forest, where local officials have asked the county sheriff to do whatever is necessary to remove the fencing or open the gate.
HIGH 89 LOW 67
TODAY’S FORECAST
ALBUQUERQUE (AP) — Newly released emergency dispatch tapes reveal further details about efforts to revive a Vietnam veteran who collapsed with a heart attack in a Veterans Affairs hospital in Albuquerque. Two calls were made while 71-year -old Jim Napoleon Garcia lay on the floor as an ambulance was called to take him to an emergency room 500 yards away, according to the tapes released Thursday to the Albuquerque Journal. In the first, a female caller described how the man was unresponsive and bleeding from his mouth and nose. She also expressed her frustration that doctors at a cafeteria table weren’t doing more to help. “We called our rapid response here at the hospital but unfortunately they won’t respond to him because he’s out of the main medical building,” said the caller, whose
• JAY W. HENKE • JO LYNNE PHINIZY • PAUL HENRY SCHNUCKER
See CENTER, Page A3
Men sit outside the Raymond G. Murphy VA Medical Center in Albuquerque, Thursday, July 3. A veteran who collapsed in an Albuquerque Veteran Affairs hospital cafeteria 500 yards from the emergency room, died Monday, June 30, after waiting 30 minutes for an ambulance, officials confirmed.
name was not provided. She added that the man was being hooked up to an emergency defibrillator. “Paramedics are already on their way out there,” the dispatcher told her. “There’s a table of doctors sitting right next to him and none of them are doing s—,” the woman continued.
• RALPH THOMAS • LYNN MURRAY DITTO • FRED L. GONZALES SR.
TODAY’S OBITUARIES PAGE B4
“OK, I’m sorry about that,” the dispatcher responded. Neither the caller nor the dispatcher elaborated. In a second call minutes later, a male caller said nurses were performing CPR but the man didn’t appear to be breathing. Hospital spokesman Bill Anderson said he could
CLASSIFIEDS ..........B6 COMICS .................B5 ENTERTAINMENT .....A8 FINANCIAL ..............B3
not confirm who was in the cafeteria. “Regardless of who was sitting at nearby tables, VA staff along with Kirtland AFB personnel immediately responded in providing basic life support to this veteran,” an email from Anderson said Friday. “The staf f were heroic in their attempts to save the life of this veteran.” VA spokeswoman Sonja Brown said the response to the emergency remains under investigation. Hospital emergency experts have said it’s standard for hospitals to require staff to call 911, even when patients are near an emergency room. The death of Garcia on June 30 prompted new outrage against the VA as it faces allegations that veterans have endured long wait times and died waiting to see a doctor around the country. The revelations have led to a major shake-up of VA operations.
INDEX GENERAL ...............A2
HOROSCOPES .........A8 LOTTERIES .............A2
OPINION .................A4
SPORTS .................B1
WEATHER ..............A8