Suspect dead after opening fire on entrance of Texas Border Patrol building
Obtained by ABC News
(MCALLEN, Texas) — A suspect is dead after opening fire at the entrance of the Border Patrol sector annex in McAllen, Texas, on Monday morning, authorities said.
The suspect, identified as 27-year-old Ryan Louis Mosqueda, fired at the federal building that houses the U.S. Border Patrol offices at the McAllen International Airport, McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said at a news conference. The suspect never made it inside the building but fired “many, many rounds at the building,” Rodriguez said.
A photo of the door of the building showed the damage from bullets striking the glass.
Mosqueda was “neutralized” by Border Patrol agents and local police, according to McAllen police and the Department of Homeland Security.
Two officers and a Border Patrol employee were injured, including one officer who was shot in the knee, DHS said. He is expected to be fine, police said.
There is no known motive, Rodriguez said.
Mosqueda was reported missing from a Weslaco, Texas, address at 4 a.m., police said, adding they don’t have more details on the missing person’s report.
Mosqueda has a Michigan address and arrived in a car with Michigan tags, Rodriguez said. His car had additional weapons and ammunition inside, Rodriguez said.
City officials said all flights at McAllen International Airport were delayed following the incident.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Treasury Department says it will phase out production of new pennies early next year after President Donald Trump asked the agency to stop producing the coin that has been part of the American currency for more than 230 years.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that the U.S. Mint, which it oversees, will stop producing new pennies once it runs out of blank templates used to make the mostly copper and zinc coins. The agency confirmed that it made its final order of penny blanks this month.
The retirement of the penny, which was first reported by the Wall Street Journal, is expected to save the Treasury Department around $56 million annually in reduced material costs, according to the department’s statement.
“Additional savings will accrue as facility usage is adjusted and other efficiencies are achieved with the reduced production,” the Treasury Department said.
The agency announced the move just months after Trump criticized production of the coin in February as being “wasteful.”
In an announcement in February on his Truth Social platform, Trump said the cost of minting the coin featuring the profile of the country’s 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, is more than twice the currency’s face value.
“For far too long the United States has minted pennies, which literally cost us more than 2 cents. This is wasteful!” Trump wrote. “I have instructed my Secretary of Treasury to stop producing new pennies. Let’s rip the waste out of our great nation’s budget, even if it’s a penny at a time.”
According to the U.S. Treasury Department, the cost of producing a single penny has more than doubled in the past 10 years, from 1.3 cents to 3.69 cents in 2024.
Printing a paper $1 bill is cheaper than producing a penny, which, according to the U.S. Mint, is comprised of 97.5% zinc and 2.5% copper and requires a smelting process to mold the metals. According to the Federal Reserve, it costs Treasury’s Bureau of Engraving and Printing 3.2 cents to print a $1 note – less than the cost of minting a penny.
The U.S. Mint reported losing $85.3 million on making pennies in fiscal year 2024, according to the Mint’s annual report to Congress.
The one-cent piece has been part of the fabric of America since 1792. Lincoln’s portrait has been embossed on it for 116 years, according the U.S. Mint’s website.
There are about 114 billion pennies currently in circulation in the United States, but they are severely underutilized, according to the Treasury Department.
“Given the cost savings to the taxpayer, this is just another example of our administration cutting waste for the American taxpayer and making the government more efficient for the American people,” the Treasury Department said in it’s statement.
The move would usually require the approval of Congress. Even though it’s part of the U.S. Treasury, “Congress authorizes every coin and most medals that the U.S. Mint manufactures and oversees the Mint’s operations under its Public Enterprise Fund,” according to the Mint’s website.
However, Laurence H. Tribe, the Carl M. Loeb University professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard Law School, told the Associated Press in February that the U.S. Code, a list of general and permanent federal statues, gives Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent the authority to scrap the penny.
“This action seems to me entirely lawful and fully constitutional,” Tribe said.
The penny will become the 12th U.S. currency denomination to be retired, joining the half-cent coin, the 2-cent coin, the 20-cent piece and the “trime” – a silver three-cent piece issued from 1851 to 1873, Caroline Turco, assistant curator of the Money Museum in Colorado Springs, Colorado, told ABC News.
“We retired them for multiple different reasons, but normally because they were not being used or they just became too expensive to produce,” said Turco.
Is it a good idea
Mark Weller is executive director of Americans for Common Cents, a Washington, D.C., organization that provides research to Congress and the executive branch on the benefits of the penny. He told ABC News that he believes eliminating the coin “is an absolutely horrible idea.”
“It would be bad for consumers and it would be bad for the economy. It really would, in fact, not save money, but it would increase government losses and have some unintended economic consequences,” Weller said.
Weller – who disclosed to ABC News that he is also a lobbyist for companies in various industries, including Artazn, a Tennessee-based manufacturer of zinc products, some of which are used in making pennies – said doing away with the penny would prompt the U.S. Mint to increase production of the nickel.
According to the U.S. Mint, the cost of minting a single nickel is nearly 14 cents, almost three times the coin’s face value and more than three-and-a-half times the cost of minting a penny.
“Without the penny, nickel production could nearly double, which would increase the Mint’s losses,” Weller said. “So, it’s just hard to understand how you could produce more nickels that are losing more money than the penny and say you’re going to save money.”
Weller further said that ditching the penny could lead to the cost of goods going up for American consumers.
“If there’s one thing most economists agree on is that private business has a profit motive. So, the assumption would be that they would price things in a way that they would round up, not round down,” Weller said.
Although digital payments are increasingly more common, Weller said cash remains a crucial tool, “especially for someone economically underserved and under-banked.”
The U.S. Mint produced 3.2 billion pennies in fiscal year 2024, according to the Mint’s annual report to Congress, with an estimated 250 billion pennies currently in circulation.
History of the penny
Turco, whose museum is the education branch of the American Numismatic Association, told ABC News that one big misconception about the penny is that, technically, it has never existed in the United States.
“The American system does not have a ‘penny.’ That is a misnomer,” Turco said. “We have a cent because when we rebelled against the British they had pennies and that is a British word.”
Turco said the 1-cent piece was first produced in the United States in 1792 and was originally the size of the present-day quarter.
Turco said Lincoln, whose likeness is also on the $5 bill, was added to the coin in 1909.
The United States wouldn’t be the first country to eliminate the coin, Turco said. Canada, for example, decided to phase out its penny in 2012. In the U.S., the Department of Defense stopped using pennies at its overseas bases in 1980 because it became too expensive to ship them.
Regardless of the penny’s fate, Turco said she believes it will always be a part of the United States, at least colloquially, adding that such phrases as “a lucky penny” and “a penny saved is a penny earned” will likely always be a part of the American lexicon. Perhaps, ironically, the penny’s value could increase if its discontinued.
“I think collectors will still enjoy having them,” Turco said. “But I don’t think that the value of a penny will just skyrocket overnight.”
(STUDIO CITY, Calif.) — Mexican boxer Julio Cesar Chavez Jr., son of the legendary fighter, has been arrested and is being processed for “expedited removal” from the United States due to alleged ties to the Sinaloa Cartel, the Department of Homeland Security announced Thursday.
Chavez was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on Wednesday in Studio City, California, DHS said. He is allegedly in the country illegally after overstaying a tourist visa, according to DHS.
Chavez lost to boxer and influencer Jake Paul in a fight on Saturday night in Anaheim, California.
He has an active arrest warrant in Mexico “for his involvement in organized crime and trafficking firearms, ammunition, and explosives,” DHS said in a press release.
“Chavez is also believed to be an affiliate of the Sinaloa Cartel, a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization,” DHS said.
The boxer entered the country in August 2023 with a B2 tourist visa that was valid until February 2024, according to DHS. He filed an application for lawful permanent resident status in April 2024, according to DHS.
“Chavez’s application was based on his marriage to a U.S. citizen, who is connected to the Sinaloa Cartel through a prior relationship with the now-deceased son of the infamous cartel leader Joaquin ‘El Chapo’ Guzman,” DHS said.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services flagged Chavez as an “egregious public safety threat” to ICE in December 2024, though his removal was not prioritized, according to DHS.
He was determined to be in the country and removable on June 27 after allegedly making “multiple fraudulent statements” on his lawful permanent resident application, DHS said.
“Under President Trump, no one is above the law — including world-famous athletes,” DHS Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said in a statement. “Our message to any cartel affiliates in the U.S. is clear: We will find you and you will face consequences. The days of unchecked cartel violence are over.”
According to DHS, Chavez has prior convictions in California for driving under the influence of alcohol in 2012 and illegal possession of an assault weapon and manufacture or import of a short-barreled rifle in 2024.
Chavez’s father, Julio Cesar Chavez Sr., is one of the greatest boxers of all-time and a huge celebrity in their native Mexico.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(TRILLA, IL) — Four people from Wisconsin were killed on Saturday when their private, single-engine plane crashed in a field near an airport in rural Illinois after reportedly striking powerlines, authorities said.
The Cessna 180G aircraft crashed about 10:16 a.m. local time Saturday in the unincorporated community of Trilla, Illinois, southeast of Coles County Memorial Airport in nearby Mattoon, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Preliminary information, according to the NTSB, indicated that the plane struck powerlines before crashing.
All of the plane’s occupants were pronounced deceased at the scene, according to the Illinois State Police.
The Coles County Coroner on Sunday evening identified the two men and two women killed in the crash. They are Ross R. Nelson, 46; Raimi A. Rundle, 45; Courtney L. Morrow, 36; and Michael H. Morrow, 48.
All four crash victims were from Menominee, Wisconsin, about 45 miles northwest of Green Bay, according to the State Police.
“My whole house shook,” Kynnedi Goldstein, who lives near the crash site, told ABC News.
Goldstein shared video footage she took in the aftermath of the crash, showing smoke billowing from the wreckage, which was strewn across a field and a two-lane road.
The cause of the crash is under investigation by the NTSB, which sent a team to Trilla on Sunday. The Federal Aviation Administration, which also sent personnel to the crash scene, is assisting in the investigation, the agency said.
The NTSB said the investigation involves three primary areas: the pilot, the aircraft and the operating environment.
As part of the investigation, the NTSB said it will review flight track data, recordings of any air traffic control communications, aircraft maintenance records and weather reports from around the time of the crash.
The agency said it is also reviewing the pilot’s license, ratings and flight experience. The NTSB is also conducting a 72-hour background check on the pilot “to determine if there were any issues that could have affected the pilot’s ability to safely operate the flight.”
The agency said it expects to release a probable cause report on the crash in 12 to 24 months.
