By Kanishka Singh
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two migrants were shot, one of them fatally, along a Texas highway as two men in a pickup truck opened fire on a group of people who had stopped for drinking water, authorities said on Thursday.
The incident took place on Tuesday near the West Texas town of Sierra Blanca. The victims were attacked by the suspects near a water tank along a farm road. The deceased victim was male. The wounded victim, a woman, was recovering at the Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, state authorities said. They did not identify the victims.
An ABC affiliate in El Paso reported that two brothers, Mike and Matthew Sheppard, were taken into custody in relation to the shooting. The report identified Mike Sheppard as the warden of a private detention center.
The Texas Department of Public Safety in El Paso said the suspects faced manslaughter charges, adding that the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Border Patrol were involved in the investigation.
The Texas Democratic Party said that such attacks on migrants were the result of the Texas Republicans’ “violent fearmongering of undocumented migrants.”
There has been a record number of migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border in recent years, and Republicans have criticized the border policies of President Joe Biden, a Democrat, ahead of the November mid-term elections.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Mica Rosenberg and Christopher Cushing)
