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In an entirely expected development considering the poisonous hatred being spewed by leading MAGA Republicans about immigration and immigrants, two men have been arrested in the Thursday shootings of two undocumented migrants in rural west Texas. One of the migrants was killed and another is recovering in a hospital in El Paso. According to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS), the migrants were attacked while they were among a group getting water near a road in Hudspeth County, roughly 90 miles east-southeast of El Paso.
One of the suspects, Mike Sheppard, had been the warden of a private immigration jail, the West Texas Detention Center, run by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison company based in Louisiana. The jail operates under contract with the federal government. The company said Sheppard had been fired from that position following the shootings. The other suspect, Mark Sheppard, was the twin brother of the former warden.
And here’s another surprise that also isn’t the least bit surprising: The detention center has been the subject of multiple allegations of abusive and violent treatment of immigrants, according to The Intercept.
As of yet, the accused killers, who have inexplicably only been charged with manslaughter, haven’t been guests on Tucker Carlson’s show, perhaps because producers are still arranging to have an appropriately grand parade float built for them.
We’ll just go with the account of Thursday’s shootings in the New York Times, which is based on investigators’ affidavits. The migrants had been crossing through the desert about 16 miles north of the US-Mexico border, walking
in a group along a roadway near Sierra Blanca around 7 p.m. when they stopped at a water tank, according to the affidavits. As the pickup truck approached, the group, which included at least four people, tried to hide. The truck drove by and then stopped and backed up, according to the filings.
The driver then left the pickup truck, according to the affidavits.
During interviews with federal agents, the migrants said that they had heard one of the men shout in Spanish for them to “Come out,” peppering his language with profanity, before revving the engine of the truck, according to the affidavits. The revving of the engine led the migrants to believe that the truck was leaving, at which point, they told investigators, the two shots were fired, according to the affidavits.
The driver leaned on the truck’s hood and fired two shots at the group of migrants before climbing back in and driving away, according to the affidavits. One shot hit one of the migrants in the head, killing him; another shot hit a female migrant in the stomach, the official said. She was taken to a hospital, where she was recovering, according to a statement from the Texas Department of Public Safety, which is investigating the case.
The Bad Sheppards told police that they had been out hunting for animals to shoot, and that they pulled over because they thought they’d seen javelina, desert-dwelling critters similar to wild boars that are native to the Southwest.
Mark Sheppard said that they had stopped the truck because they believed they had spotted a javelina, according to the affidavits, and he said his brother had left the truck with a shotgun and had fired two times. Neither of them went to check on whether they had struck anything, he said, according to the affidavits.
He denied to the police that either man had yelled anything before opening fire, according to the affidavits, and afterward, the men left to attend a county water board meeting.
All very innocent-like because when you go shooting at wild game that you don’t necessarily care about eating, you don’t even look to see if you hit anything, especially if it screams like a human, we would assume.
In a press statement for the ages, LaSalle Corrections spokesperson Scott Sutterfield managed to say that Mike Sheppard had been shitcanned following the shootings, although you wouldn’t know that from the statement, which didn’t name Sheppard or mention anything about a shooting, migrants, or death. Sutterfield “explained” that
the warden at the West Texas Detention Center (WTDC), Sierra Blanca, TX has been terminated due to an off-duty incident unrelated to his employment.
The TexasTribune also summarizes what a fine operation Mike Sheppard ran until he was fired literally yesterday, because apparently you can keep running a private immigration jail no matter what you’re publicly accused of, as long as there’s no criminal charges:
A 2018 report found officials at the Sierra Blanca facility had grievously abused 80 men who were detained at the center. Over a week, the men faced beatings, racial taunts and sexual abuse at the hands of the center’s officials who were under the leadership of Mike Sheppard at the time. The Intercept reported the allegations more than four years ago.
Mike Sheppard was accused of punching a man in the face and kicking him while he was handcuffed on the ground in solitary confinement, according to The Intercept.
Before the 2018 incident, the West Texas facility came under scrutiny from Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s Office of Detention Oversight, citing health services deficiencies and a lack of training on how to use nonlethal weapons. Inmates at the time resorted to using plastic bags for toilets and had to kill a rattlesnake found in their sleeping quarters when officials failed to respond.
That 2018 report that sparked the Intercept story was investigated and written jointly by RAICES, the Texas A&M Law School’s Immigrant Rights Clinic, and the U of Texas Law School’s Immigration Clinic. It details numerous human rights abuses against the African migrants, including sexual assault, beatings, indiscriminate use of pepper spray, denial of medical and mental health care, and retaliatory use of solitary confinement — in one case after a man had asked for socks and underwear. The same man said he’d been locked in a “cage” for one or two hours, wearing only boxer shorts, after “talking too loud to the Warden” — again, Mike Sheppard.
The report also says Sheppard regularly used racist language toward the migrants:
For instance, the warden told Tafia, “Shut your black ass up. You don’t deserve nothing. You belong at the back of that cage” when he asked for underwear and socks. The Warden also picked Dalmar out a group of detainees that had been pepper sprayed and threatened, “Boy, I’m going to show you. You’re my bitch.” Yuusuf also reported hearing the Warden say “now you belong to me, boy” to another Somali detainee.
Other officers also regularly used racial slurs, because of course they did.
The Tribune notes that its reporters hadn’t been able to determine, as of late yesterday, “what, if any, action federal officials took after the report was released and published.” Sheppard certainly managed to keep his job.
Also unclear at this point is why the brothers were only charged with manslaughter in the killing; law enforcement agencies just aren’t saying much of anything so far.
We’re sure that the nonstop demonization of migrants by rightwing officials and media figures had nothing to do with this incident, which couldn’t possibly be predicted after years of undocumented immigrants being called invaders who are literally making war on the USA. And certainly not after Donald Trump himself fantasized on multiple occasions about shooting people at the border. Just rogue lone wolves, wholly disconnected from a rightwing media environment that dehumanizes undocumented immigrants. Besides, they illegally crossed the border, which is a misdemeanor, making them criminals.
Now all we have to wait for will be Tucker Carlson getting very resentful that anyone would suggest that patriots like him, Greg Abbott, Ron DeSantis, and Donald Trump are in any way responsible for the actions of a crazy racist who happens to agree with them, the end.
[Texas Tribune / NYT / The Intercept / Texas A&M Law – RAICES – Texas Law report]
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