YOU ARE HERE: IVPress Home→Collections→Imperial County

Stories of the Past: August 8, 2009 >> 50 years ago ? MEXICALI ? Assured of election victory after the seizure of more than 50 ballot boxes, the official government party pushed its drive today to erase the opposition party.

August 08, 2009

More than 150 Partido Accion Nacional leaders and supporters remained in jail in this Baja California capital city and at Tijuana. The arrests were part of an apparent move to lop off the leadership of an organization which in Sunday’s election handed Partido Revolucionario Institucional so stiff a challenge that soldiers were ordered to cart away ballot boxes in PAN precincts.

>> 40 years ago ? A six-year career ended in 20 minutes last night as the Imperial Valley College Board of Trustees quietly accepted the resignation of Jack Holley.

Holley, the man who built Imperial Valley College into a national basketball power, tendered his resignation in a short letter to board president Milton Carr, and after a brief executive session the board voted unanimously to accept it.

“I am not leaving for a better job and I am not leaving to go home. I am just leaving,” Holley said later. Although reluctant to discuss the reasons for his decision, he said he did not think he could be a part of a program directed toward intramural athletics.

>> 30 years ago ? Two FBI agents and a local man described by friends a “revolutionary activist” were found shot to death early today just outside the FBI office on the second floor of the Security Pacific Bank building in El Centro.

Local police and Federal Bureau of Investigation officials in Washington, D.C., have termed the shooting a murder-suicide.

Early reports from investigators at the scene indicate James Anthony Maloney, 30, a former CETA employee who resided in Holtville, shot and killed both federal agents then turned a .38-caliber handgun on himself.

Dr. John Compton, director of Mental Health Services for Imperial County, said a one-and-a-half page suicide note had been left by Maloney and was discovered shortly after the shooting among some personal effects.

>> 20 years ago ? Hundreds of Imperial County residents could be affected by a federal court ruling that reopened the amnesty process this week for thousands of undocumented workers who were wrongfully discouraged from applying for amnesty under the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

The ruling, issued Monday in Sacramento, says immigration officials improperly interpreted provisions of the immigration reform that excluded from the amnesty program aliens who were likely to become public charges.

An estimated 50,000 people in the Western states did not apply for amnesty because of an INS regulation that implied that any applicant whose children had ever received Aid to Families with Dependent Children or other forms of public assistance would not be eligible for legalization, according to the plaintiffs in the case.

|

|

|