The ongoing criminal trial related to the botched law enforcement response to the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting is facing delays due to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) refusal to provide testimony. This impasse has been a point of contention for both the defense and the prosecution.
Local prosecutors have spent nearly a year attempting to compel federal agents to testify. Pete Arredondo, the former police chief of Uvalde schools and a central figure in the case, is now pursuing a federal lawsuit to resolve the issue. Filed on March 12, Arredondo’s suit seeks the testimonies of 19 CBP employees who were present during the shooting, aiming to counter claims that he delayed law enforcement’s response. Previously, his legal team had formally requested these testimonies, but CBP denied the request, stating that the needed information could be sourced elsewhere.
“They’re all witnesses of what Pete did, right?” said Paul Looney, Arredondo’s attorney. “We’ve got to have them. We can’t have a fair trial without them.” Looney emphasized that Arredondo has a constitutional right to these testimonies and anticipates that the lawsuit will take several months to resolve. “We’ve got a better case than [local prosecutors] do,” he added.
CBP and the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees the agency, have not commented on the situation. In a previous correspondence from February, CBP claimed that the request for agent testimonies could potentially disclose “confidential law enforcement techniques and procedures.”
Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell, who is prosecuting Arredondo, expressed support for his decision to file his own lawsuit. She had previously initiated a federal lawsuit in May to compel CBP agents to testify, asserting that the information is crucial for both the prosecution and defense. According to her ongoing lawsuit, CBP has similarly maintained that much of the information requested could be obtained from alternative sources.
“It is unfortunate that the state and the defense have had to engage in formal litigation to obtain necessary evidence in such a horrific case as a mass shooting,” Mitchell stated. “My intention has always been to obtain all necessary and correct information and evidence to properly assess, under the laws of the state of Texas, the crimes, if any, that occurred in the Robb Elementary mass shooting.”
Arredondo faces 10 counts of child endangerment due to the inadequate response to the shooting on May 24, 2022, which resulted in the deaths of 19 students and two teachers. A total of over 370 officers from various agencies were deployed to the scene, with 188 of them being CBP personnel. However, they waited 77 minutes before confronting the gunman, who was ultimately subdued by CBP agents. A report from the Justice Department later revealed that the delays stemmed from “cascading failures of leadership, decision-making, tactics, policy and training.”
Aside from Arredondo, former Uvalde schools police officer Adrian Gonzales was the only other responding officer to face indictment. Gonzales was acquitted of all 29 counts of child abandonment and endangerment in January after a trial that spanned nearly three weeks in Corpus Christi.
“It’s very, very difficult to understand how they’re being prosecuted,” Looney remarked. “I don’t have any reasonable expectation that we’re facing a conviction.”
Currently, the scheduling of Arredondo’s criminal trial remains uncertain, and it has been moved from Uvalde to Corpus Christi, as noted by Looney.
