The nation in brief

44 aliens in 2 trucks detained at border

FALFURRIAS, Texas — More than 40 aliens smuggled inside two refrigerated truck trailers were detained after the rigs were searched at a South Texas checkpoint.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection statement said 19 people were located early Friday at the Falfurrias checkpoint. Border Patrol agents, hours later at the same site, searched another trailer and found 25 more.

Supervisory Border Patrol Agent Robert Rodriguez on Saturday said both drivers were arrested. Investigators were trying to determine if the smuggling attempts are related.

Temperatures in the trailers were about 45 degrees, although none of the aliens required medical attention because of the cold.

Rodriguez said the 44 people would be processed in accordance with to their immigration statuses. He declined to release further details on the people, who were from Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala.

Sources: Mueller got Trump camp emails

WASHINGTON — Special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian contacts with President Donald Trump’s campaign has gained access to thousands of emails sent and received by Trump officials before the start of his administration, according to several people familiar with Trump’s transition organization.

But the investigators did not directly request the records from Trump for America, and instead obtained them from the General Services Administration, a separate federal agency that stored the material, according to several people.

That prompted an attorney for Trump for America to claim that Mueller was not authorized to obtain the organization’s emails.

“This morning we sent a letter to Congress concerning the unauthorized sharing of private and transition emails with the Mueller team,” lawyer Kory Langhofer said in an interview Saturday.

The General Services Administration has provided office space and other aid to presidential transitions in recent years and typically houses transition records in its computer system. But Trump for America claims legal ownership of those records, saying they are not government property.

According to those familiar with Trump for America, a top General Services Administration official assured the transition group in June that any request from Mueller’s office for the records would be referred to the transition group.

Man indicted in 1997 slaying in Texas

ANGELTON, Texas — A serial killing suspect has been indicted in the slaying of a North Texas college student nearly two decades after she disappeared.

A Texas grand jury indicted William Lewis Reece late Thursday on a charge of capital murder in the 1997 disappearance and death of 20-year-old University of North Texas student Kelli Cox.

Reece was charged this summer in three other cold-case killings in Texas and Oklahoma. Cox, 19-year-old Tiffany Johnston, 17-year-old Jessica Cain and 12-year-old Laura Smither all disappeared over a four-month period in 1997.

Reece was serving a 60-year sentence in Texas for kidnapping when he led police last year to the graves where Cain and Cox’s remains were buried.

Reece has pleaded innocent in Oklahoma, where prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty.

N.D. police protest-gear tops $600,000

BISMARCK, N.D. — North Dakota law enforcement officials purchased more than $600,000 worth of body armor, tactical equipment and crowd control devices during the height of protests against the Dakota Access oil pipeline, state invoices show.

The purchases, tallied by The Associated Press from invoices obtained through a public records request, included pepper spray, flash-bang and smoke grenades, riot helmets, gas masks, night-vision goggles, and more than 2,000 rounds of non-lethal ammunition.

The equipment ultimately made up a small share of the $35 million in policing costs associated with the pipeline, and state officials defended the purchases as reasonable for a protest that attracted thousands of people to southern North Dakota who skirmished — sometimes violently — with law enforcement officers.

Most of the purchases were in September, October and November last year, when confrontations near a protest encampment grew most heated. Authorities established their own operations center a short distance away and manned it for months, making 761 arrests.

Upcoming Events