This is one of the most disturbing stories that I have covered. It was revealed to the public on April 20th, 2011. The video was recorded during an undercover investigation by the animal advocacy group Mercy for Animals (MFA) at E6 Cattle Co, a cattle company located in the small town of Hart, in Castro County, Texas.
According to MFA for two weeks during March they documented how calves were being tortured to death. The video shows workers bashing calves in their heads with hammers and pickaxes. The calves were also being pulled by the ears during transportation; they were kicked, had opened wounds and did not receive medical attention. There is also video of a worker kicking a dying calf and stepping on its neck.
As I was watching this video it was hard for me to believe that people are capable of treating animals in such a cruel way. Most shocking of all was the response that I got from Kirt Espenson, the owner of E6 Cattle Co, when I called the company requesting comment on the alleged abuse. He said: “We take full responsibility of what happened here. All of the employees involved in the mistreatment of the animals have been terminated”. He blamed the abuse seen on the video on lack of training. He said that due to the snow and ice storms of February they were shorthanded and needed to get new people who were not trained for euthanizing the cows. He added that the company had been audited in the past and that they had gotten favorable certifications from three independent parties. Finally Espenson said, “I will do everything in my power to make sure this does not happen again”.
After I talked to him I had a gut feeling that something didn’t make sense. Espenson sounded very remorseful and admitted immediately full responsibility for the workers’ behavior on the video. Still, it was hard for me to believe that he had not known of the abuse until it was revealed by the undercover investigation. Later that day at a press conference in Dallas, members of MFA presented the video to the media. Eddie Garza, Texas campaign coordinator for MFA, said that on the video the owner himself is seen telling workers that some of the abused calves were still not dead.
MFA has turned the results of their undercover investigation to Castro County authorities. They are asking for the owner to face charges and that E6 cattle be shut down. Unfortunately, said Garza, this is not an isolated incident. MFA has done about a dozen undercover investigations around the country, all of them found evidence of animal abuse.
If you watch the video, I would like to know what you think.
Picture of Jose Arreola courtesy of Dallas County Jail.
Yesterday I spent most of the day at the Dallas County courthouse. I was covering the story of Mary Ann Escamilla, a woman that according to court documents was severely beaten and sexually assaulted by Jose Arreola, her ex-boyfriend.
A bail request form describes the attack. It states that the suspect brutally beat the victim. After she was knocked unconscious the suspect sodomized her and cut her in her vagina and rectum with a sharp object. Mary told me that she remembers praying to God during the attack, asking him to end her pain and her life. She said she does not know how is she still alive. She received 500 stitches to close her wounds.
Now she is terrorized by the possibility that Arreola could be a free man. He was first arrested and charged with aggravated assault, but was able to get out of jail after posting a $350,000 bond. Then he was arrested one more time and charged with aggravated sexual assault. Yesterday, Judge Fred Tinsley set bail for his release in the amount of $750,000.
While these pretrial proceedings take place Arreola has also filed a motion to restrict publicity of this case. He said that media coverage could have a prejudicial effect when his case goes to trial. He asked that neither the defense, prosecutors, witnesses, court staff nor enforcement officers involved should be permitted to talk about the case.
What happened to Mary is another example of the need in our society to be aware and talk about the devastating effects domestic violence has.
Stay connected for continuous coverage on this case.
A couple of weeks ago I received a call from Ana, who was complaining of mistreatment at the Dallas Northpark Terrace apartments, located at 8662 Park Lane. She had been living there for almost a year and she said was tired of the way the new manager Emanuel Costas treated her and a dozen Hispanic residents. She also said that her husband, a maintenance employee at the apartments, and some of his co-workers were being harassed and mistreated by Costas.
I went out there and found a group of about 15 people ready to tell me their complaints. Lets start with the residents:
Alma said she was desperate to move out. After a fire in January damaged her apartment management moved her to another unit. She was paying $450 dollars a month for a one-bedroom apartment that had a hole in the wall, another hole in the bathroom wall, a broken stove and a filthy and stinky carpet. She had been living there for more than 2 months and had asked management several times to fix the apartment but they had not. She said the smell that was coming from the carpet was so bad that she had to pull it out of the living room herself, leaving nails and tack strips exposed. She even had to place her bed in the living room because they couldn’t stand the smell of the carpet in the bedroom. She has a little boy and was concerned that the nails could injure him or that he could suffer health problems due to the exposed insulation in the shower wall.
Another resident who was also moved to another unit after the January fire showed me the conditions of her apartment. There were clear signs of humidity damage on some parts of the ceiling, the bathroom needed repairs, and the closet doors had fallen. With little kids in the apartment she worried that these doors could end up falling on top of her kids.
Aby was complaining because she got fined $150 dollars for having kids toys in the balcony. She said there was nothing in the lease saying they could not have toys in the balcony. She felt that if the new management wanted to start implementing new rules, the residents should at least be given a warning before they are issued a $150 fine.
Now lets talk about some of the workers. When I got there I saw a group of about eight of them trying to fix a roof in the complex. This is what they told me:
Jose said that they lacked the training and the proper tools or safety gear to fix the roof. He said he had been hired to do maintenance work not to fix roofs.
Santos also complained about working on the roof. He also said that the new manager did not pay them all the hours that they worked.
Oscar said that he used to work there but that he had recently been let go. He was told: “you are too old for this job”. He made a living picking up litter around the complex.
But the most troubling complaint that I heard was this: Miguel said that the manager would make remarks suggesting that they were illegal immigrants and that he was going to call immigration on them. He said that one day, when he went to pick up his check, the manager told him and another group of workers: “next week you guys have a date with immigration”. He said his family and some neighbors lived in fear and felt harassed because they were immigrants.
When I first tried to talk to the manager, Emanuel Costas, he was very confrontational. Then he agreed to see me in his office but did not want to talk on camera. I asked him about the poor conditions of some of the apartments and he said those units were “move in ready” when they were assigned to the residents. He said the complex was undergoing a major renovation and that they were trying to resolve residents’ complaints within a week. He also said that he had told the workers when he hired them that they had to bring their own tools. He said he had been paying them for all of their worked hours, he even showed me the pay stubs and added: “If they think that I am not paying them fairly, they should not sign the checks”.
What about the worker that said he had lost his job because he was too old? I asked. Costas said that he was let go after being issued several warnings that he was underperforming. Lastly, he denied any claims that he had threaten to call immigration on them.
This story aired on Telemundo Dallas on Wednesday March 30th, 2011. The next day Miguel and Santos lost their jobs. The manager told them that they did not have any more work for them at the Northpark Terrace apartment complex. He offered them work at another complex but Miguel and Santos declined. As a result they received notices to vacate the property. The notes explained that because they did not work for the complex any more they had lost the right to live there. I asked Claudia Cano, a lawyer with Legal Aid of North West Texas if this was legal and at least in Miguel’s case it was. Miguel and his wife Ana were living in an apartment that had been leased out to another family member, their names were not on the lease. They had to be out in 48 hours or face eviction.
I went back on Friday April 1st and talked to Miguel and his wife Ana. Needless to say they were very upset.Ana said that Costas also told the neighbors: “you are a bunch of ignorant Indians, beggars, I will make you sign your death sentence”. I called the apartments office and tried to talk to Costas but two of his assistants told me he was not going to talk to me. They also threaten to call the police on me if I dared coming back to Northpark Terrace apartments. But as you might guess it takes more than that to scare a reporter.
The last time I talked to Miguel and Ana they said they were glad they had moved out. Now they had peace of mind. On top of that, they were told that the Texas Workforce Commission and the Department of Labor were investigating the apartments’ management. Apparently prior to me working on this story a former employee of the complex had had his own issues with management.
"The immigration system is a joke", Aurelia. on PhotoPeach
Aurelia left her native Romania looking for better opportunities; she wanted to be able to put her only daughter, Rodica, through college. Years have past and now as a US citizen living in Richland Hills, Texas, her only desire is to be able to be reunited with her daughter in the States. However, she feels that the US immigration system may keep her from being with her daughter for as many as 10 years.This is why: in 2008 Aurelia filed a petition for alien relative (type F1) with the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services department, as a US citizen it was important for her to bring her daughter the right way. But she never imagined the price she would have to pay for it.
Dallas attorney Juan Carlos Peñaflor estimates that the State Department would not have a visa available for Rodica for another 7 years. He explained that there are a limited number of visas available every year for every type of visa, and that especially for petitions to bring relatives who are older than 21 years of age, like Rodica, the waiting period can be very long. Right now the State Department is processing the F1 visas filed back in May of 2004.
Aurelia is aware of this but her frustration has grown because, she says, she calls every two weeks to check on the status of her case and she gets conflicting information. For instance, she called in October of 2010 and was told they were processing the visas filed in 2005, then she called in February of this year and she was told they were processing cases filed in 2004.“This is a joke”, Aurelia told me.
“Having to wait another seven years to be able to bring my daughter legally to the US would be devastating”, she said. She added that her daughter couldn’t have a normal life, because if she gets married, she said, she would have to start her immigration process all over again.
Unfortunately there is not much else that Aurelia can do but to be patient and wait, said attorney Peñaflor. While the waiting period for visas for alien relatives of citizens of European countries and some Latin American countries seems very long, the case is even worst for Mexican nationals, Peñaflor said. The State Department is currently processing the visas filed in 1993, which means that those cases could take up to 18 years to be resolved.
The only other alternative for Aurelia and Rodica to be together in American soil seems to have vanished too. Rodica applied for a student visa but was denied it. She was also told at the US embassies in Colombia and Romania that because she has a pending resident visa case, it is very unlikely that she can be granted a visitors visa.
Unsure of why she was told this, I called the State Department to get an explanation. Via E-mail an official with the department explained the following:
"Nonimmigrant visa applicants must demonstrate to a consular officer that they do not intend to use their visitor visa to remain indefinitely in the United States, and that they have the means and intention to pay all the costs associated with their stay in the United States.
The Immigration and Nationality Act (INA) does not automatically deny a non-immigrant visa (NIV) to someone with an immigrant visa (IV) petition pending. However, as noted, all non-immigrant visa applicants must demonstrate they will not use the visa to remain in the U.S. In general, having an immigrant visa petition on file, which implies a desire to immigrate, makes it much harder for the applicant to demonstrate this. "
For Aurelia having to wait seven more years is heartbreaking. She said the last time she saw her daughter in person was in December of 2001 when she left Europe. If she has to wait another seven years to be reunited with her daughter in the United States they would have spent almost 18 years apart.
