Warden who gunned down 2 migrants was the warden of ICE's West Texas Detention Facility [View all]

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Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
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Sep 29, 2022
@ReichlinMelnick
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Oh my GOD. The warden who gunned down two migrants (and maybe a third) was the warden of ICE’s West Texas Detention Facility.

I was there in 2018 when it was housing parents separated from their kids. It is a bleak, awful, place—where the water is foul and the treatment fouler.

Ryan Devereaux
@rdevro
Replying to @rdevro
NEW: Texas jail warden charged with killing migrant was previously accused of serious abuses

The warden who was arrested yesterday and the jail he ran have a long dark history — read more here https://interc.pt/3dRdI8k

Aaron Reichlin-Melnick
@ReichlinMelnick
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Warden Sheppard, who was just arrested for murdering and migrant and shooting at least one other, had a reputation as a harsh and racist warden at ICE's West Texas Detention Facility, a jail owned by the county and run by private prison company LaSalle.

Ryan Devereaux
@rdevro
Replying to @rdevro
These were some of the words attributed to Sheppard by African immigrants in his custody.

“Shut your black ass up. You don’t deserve nothing. You belong at the back of that cage”

“Boy, I’m going to show you. You’re my bitch.”

“now you belong to me, boy”
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6:54 PM · Sep 29, 2022

https://theintercept.com/2022/09/29/ice-mike-sheppard-abuses/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/92D0j

THE WARDEN OF one of the nation’s most notorious immigration detention facilities was arrested this week after allegedly killing one migrant and wounding another in the desert of rural West Texas.

Michael Sheppard — who until this week oversaw U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement’s West Texas Detention Center in Sierra Blanca, Texas — and his twin brother, Mark, were arrested late Wednesday night, the New York Times reported.

According to affidavits filed Thursday, at least four people were walking along a roadway deep in the desert when the 60-year-old Sheppard brothers approached in a pickup truck around 7 p.m. on Tuesday.

The group of migrants took cover near a water tank. According to the surviving witnesses, the men in the vehicle shouted profanities at them and told them to come out in Spanish. They revved their engine. The driver leaned across the hood and fired at least two shots. One man was struck in the head and killed. A woman was shot in the gut but survived.

In interviews with authorities, the Sheppards said they were simply out hunting — at first claiming that they were looking for grouse, and later that they were after javelina. They said they made no effort to determine what they had shot and left the scene for a county board meeting. The pair were arrested the following night and charged with manslaughter.

*snip*