A shooting in the border town of Yuma, Arizona, on Saturday night left two people dead and five others injured, police said.
When police officers arrived at the scene, they found several subjects with gunshot wounds. A 19-year-old man was transported prior to police arrival and was pronounced dead at Yuma Regional Medical Center (YRMC) a short time later. Another victim, a 20-year-old man, was also pronounced dead after being sent to the YRMC.
The third victim, a 16-year-old boy, was transported to the YRMC and later flown to Phoenix with life-threatening injuries. The other gunshot victims, men aged 15, 19, 18, and 16, had non-life-threatening injuries. The names of those individuals have not been released.
The police are investigating the double homicide, and so far don’t have a suspect in custody, according to Franklin.
Yuma Braces for End of Title 42
With public health order Title 42 lifted on May 11, an overwhelmed border authority released hundreds of illegal immigrants in Yuma without fully processing them, according to a new report.Three buses were spotted on May 12 dropping off 141 illegal immigrants near the Yuma Public Safety Training Facility, close to the city’s airport, the Daily Mail reported. Earlier that day, some 140 people were released at two other sites, one in Yuma and one in San Luis.
“This is decompressing and the federal government is relying on the local and state government to do its job,” said Yuma County Supervisor Jonathan Lines. “It’s another failure of the Biden Administration to manage a problem they created with their open border policy.”
On May 11, Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls told residents that those released had been “vetted,” insisting that none of them would be criminals.
“These are people that have been vetted to at least to the point where Border Patrol has issued them notice to appear papers wherever they end up living in the country,” the mayor said at a press conference. “They are to follow up through the judicial process. Unfortunately, that process is years three to seven years to get through that whole process.”
“I ask everyone, all of our citizens to remain calm. There’s not people that have that are convicted of crimes that are being released.”
Invoked in 2019 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Title 42 allowed federal border officials to rapidly process and expel illegal immigrants on the grounds that they pose a threat to public health. The order expired on May 11 at midnight alongside the COVID-19 public health emergency.
Prior to Title 42’s expiration, Nicholls urged President Joe Biden to issue a federal emergency declaration in response to the anticipated surge in illegal immigration.
“It’s time the president announced a declaration of national emergency,” Nicholls said at a press conference, noting that he sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking for money and resources “on the ground that we can protect our border the way it should have been protected from the beginning.”
“We live under the fear of street releases, but the president has done nothing to aid us here and now,” he said.
Biden on Saturday delivered a commencement speech to Howard University, a prominent historically black institution whose alumni include Vice President Kamala Harris. He spent the rest of the weekend in his Delaware beach home.
