Warden, brother arrested after shooting 2 migrants near Mexico border in U.S. Texas

HOUSTON, Sept. 29 (Xinhua) -- A warden of a detention center and his brother have been arrested after opening fire on a group of migrants who stopped to drink water along a farm road in western Texas near the U.S.-Mexico border, Texas authorities said on Thursday.

One male migrant was killed and a female wounded in the shooting on Tuesday evening near the town of Sierra Blanca, about 140 km southeast of El Paso, a border city.

The wounded is recovering at the Del Sol Medical Center in El Paso, according to the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS).

"The preliminary investigation shows that a truck with two men inside pulled over and shot at a group of illegal immigrants standing alongside the road getting water," said DPS Lieutenant Elizabeth Carter.

The twin brothers aged 60 are facing manslaughter charges. One of them, a warden of a West Texas federal jail for immigrants in Sierra Blanca, has been fired in the wake of the shooting, according to local media reports.

"This killing was not vigilante justice," Texas Democratic Party Chairman Gilbert Hinojosa said in a statement on Thursday. "It was a murder, and it was a hate crime."

U.S. Customs and Border Protection said earlier this month that it recorded 203,597 migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border in August alone and expected the total number of encounters to rise to about 2.3 million by the end of the fiscal year on Friday.