TRLA offices in the Rio Grande Valley will be CLOSED tomorrow, July 24, due to Hurricane Dolly.

As of 6:45pm Central Time, all other TRLA offices will be OPEN.  In the event that weather conditions worsen, the TRLA website, blog, and twitter will update as soon as possible.

Opponents raised numerous legal arguments, but in the end, it was politics that convinced the politicians to kill Bexar County’s self-help center for people who file their own lawsuits.

County commissioners voted 4-1 Tuesday to rescind their January decision to set up the center in the public law library, throwing three people out of work and scoring a victory for lawyers who felt that its designers had not included them in the process.

The decision means more than 2,000 people who file their own civil cases each year in Bexar County won’t get extra guidance as they navigate the court system.

To read the entire article, click here.

UPDATE (4:58pm)

TRLA offices in the Valley will be CLOSED tomorrow, July 23rd, due to Hurricane Dolly.

TRLA is monitoring the development of Tropical Storm Dolly as she heads towards the Rio Grande Valley.  As of 8:30 am Central Time, TRLA offices in the Rio Grande Valley will be OPEN on July 22, 2008.

TRLA will continue to monitor the weather situation and make plans as necessary.  Updates can be obtained from this blog post, the main TRLA website (www.trla.org), or TRLA’s Twitter page (twitter.com/TRLA).

The latest editon of the LSC Updates newsletter features TRLA’s recent success in reuniting Ana Maria Cegledi with her two sons two years after the boys were kidnapped by their father.

To read the story and the rest of the LSC Updates, click here.

Four community groups sought clarification in federal court Wednesday on whether authorities will conduct immigration checks in the event of a hurricane evacuation.

The activists filed a petition Wednesday asking a judge to order the U.S. Border Patrol to clearly outline its policy on what documents, if any, will be needed to pass through checkpoints should a storm hit the Rio Grande Valley.

“To prevent a Hurricane Katrina-type catastrophe, residents must know what is going to happen when an evacuation is called,” said Juanita Valdez-Cox, Texas director of La Union del Pueblo Entero, one of the groups that filed the petition in U.S. District Court in McAllen. “We must have answers to make sure residents of the Valley find safety.”

To read the entire article, click here.

To view the broadcast, click here.

TRLA’s Bi-National Project Helped Reunite a mother with her two sons who were kidnapped and taken to Argentina.  The Rio Grande Valley’s KRGV shared the mother’s story yesterday:

A mother was reunited with her sons two years after they were kidnapped.

Ana Maria Cegledi says she still feels angry. She tells us her husband robbed her of her boys, their birth certificates, and her spirit.

The boys’ father took to them to Argentina.

Cegledi says her sons thought they were on their way to school. They ended up on a bus to Matamoros. Then they got on a plane to Argentina.

“It was very difficult. I got sick, fell into a depression,” she says.

To read the entire article and view the news broadcast, click here.

A group of nonprofit agencies in the Rio Grande Valley said Wednesday they were suing the U.S. Border Patrol for clear answers on whether there would be document checks of residents fleeing a hurricane.

The lawsuit, to be filed Wednesday in federal court in McAllen, claims conflicting statements by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have brought fear and confusion to a region where many families are split between unauthorized immigrants and U.S. citizens or legal residents.

Those families have said they would not evacuate if there were reason to fear deportation as they board buses or pass immigration checkpoints north of the Valley.

To read the entire article, click here.

Confusion over immigration policy in the event of a hurricane evacuation prompted four community activism groups to seek clarification in federal court.

In a petition filed Wednesday, the activists asked a judge to order the U.S. Border Patrol to clearly define whether or not they will be asking for documents that prove citizenship or legal residency should a storm hit the Rio Grande Valley’s coast.

To read the entire article, click here.

A humble family from the Valley is fighting the federal government. They’re taking a stand in a New Orleans courtroom against plans to build the border wall on their land.

Pamela Rivas and her three sons drove almost 700 miles to reach the courtroom. They’re trying to stop the government from taking land the family owns on both sides of the historic Los Ebanos Ferry.

Rivas says their land was part of a Spanish land grant. It’s been in their family since the early 1900s.

She tells us she feels the odds are stacked against them, but they have to try.

To read the entire article and watch the news broadcast, click here.