Texas

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — A man seen on surveillance video wearing an American flag bandanna when he threw a Molotov cocktail into the headquarters of the county Democratic Party in Austin was arrested in Texas, a fire official said.

Ryan Faircloth, 30, was booked Friday in the Travis County jail. He was charged with arson and possessing a prohibited weapon — the Molotov cocktail — according to Austin Fire arson investigator Capt. Jeffrey Deane.

HOUSTON (AP) — A former student of a Houston public charter school shot and wounded the campus principal Friday before quickly surrendering to police, authorities said.

The 25-year-old man shot through a locked, glass door at YES Prep Southwest Secondary, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said. No students were hurt.

Police initially identified the wounded as a school employee, but a statement from the YES Prep charter system later identified him as Principal Eric Espinoza.

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — No migrants are left at a Texas border encampment, about a week after nearly 15,000 people — most of them Haitians — huddled in makeshift shelters hoping for the chance to seek asylum.

Some will get that chance, while the others will be expelled to their homeland. The Department of Homeland Security planned to continue flights to Haiti throughout the weekend, ignoring criticism from Democratic lawmakers and human rights groups who say Haitian migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago.

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — Haitian migrants waited to learn their fate at a Texas border encampment whose size was dramatically diminished from the almost 15,000 who gathered there just days ago in an effort to seek humanitarian protection in the U.S. but now face expulsion.

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — For the final leg of his journey from Chile to the United States, Haitian migrant Fabricio Jean followed detailed instructions sent to him via WhatsApp from his brother in New Jersey who had recently taken the route to the Texas border.

His brother wired him money for the trip, then meticulously mapped it out, warning him of areas heavy with Mexican immigration officials.

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — Many Haitian migrants camped in a small Texas border town are being released in the United States, two U.S. officials said, undercutting the Biden administration’s public statements that the thousands in the camp faced immediate expulsion.

Haitians have been freed on a “very, very large scale” in recent days, according to one U.S. official who put the figure in the thousands. The official, with direct knowledge of operations who was not authorized to discuss the matter Tuesday and thus spoke on condition of anonymity

LAKE WORTH, Texas (AP) — A military training jet crashed Sunday in a neighborhood near Fort Worth, Texas, injuring the two pilots and damaging three homes.

Both pilots managed to eject from the plane before it crashed in Lake Worth, which is just west of Fort Worth, authorities said at a news conference.

“This incident could have been much worse,” Lake Worth Fire Chief Ryan Arthur said of the crash, which authorities were alerted to shortly before 11 a.m..

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — The U.S. is flying Haitians camped in a Texas border town back to their homeland and blocking others from crossing the border from Mexico in a massive show of force that signals the beginning of what could be one of America’s swiftest, large-scale expulsions of migrants or refugees in decades.

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — Haitian migrants seeking to escape poverty, hunger and a feeling of hopelessness in their home country said U.S. plans to speedily send them back will not deter them as thousands of people remained encamped on the Texas border Saturday after crossing from Mexico.

People continued wading across the Rio Grande on Saturday afternoon, re-entering Mexico to purchase water, food and diapers in Ciudad Acuña before returning to the Texas encampment under and near a bridge in the border city of Del Rio.

DEL RIO, Texas (AP) — The Biden administration plans the widescale expulsion of Haitian migrants from a small Texas border city by putting them on on flights to Haiti starting Sunday, an official said Friday, representing a swift and dramatic response to thousands who suddenly crossed the border from Mexico and gathered under and around a bridge.