IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A top Republican fundraiser whose firm works for several prominent immigration hardliners is the partial owner of the land where the Mexican man accused of killing Iowa college student Mollie Tibbetts lived rent-free, a farm spokeswoman said Friday. Nicole Schlinger has long been a key fundraiser and campaign contractor for GOP politicians in Iowa and beyond, including this cycle for Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Virginia Senate candidate Corey Stewart.

Schlinger is the president of Campaign Headquarters, a call center that makes fundraising calls, identifies supporters and helps turn out voters for conservative candidates and groups. Her business is one of the largest in Brooklyn, the central Iowa town where Tibbetts disappeared while out for a run on July 18.

Schlinger is married to Eric Lang, the president of the family-owned dairy that has acknowledged providing employment and housing for the last four years to Cristhian Bahena Rivera, the man charged with murder in Tibbetts’ death. The couple — along with her husband’s brother Craig Lang and his wife — own farmland outside Brooklyn that includes trailers where some of the dairy’s employees live for free as a benefit of their employment, farm spokeswoman Eileen Wixted confirmed.

She said Rivera lived there for the duration of his employment, and about half of the farm’s other 10 workers do so as well. Under the arrangement, the farming company pays the couples to rent the land but workers do not have to pay, she said.

In an email Friday, Schlinger said that she was “shocked and deeply saddened” by Tibbetts’ death and had never met Rivera. “The perpetrator should be punished to the fullest extent of the law, and when he meets his maker, suffer the consequences he deserves,” she wrote. She said that she was gifted an ownership interest in the land many years ago from her husband’s family and that she has no role in the farming operation.

Still, the fact that one of its own operatives has indirect ties to the case could complicate GOP efforts to highlight the gruesome slaying in its political messaging ahead of the November midterm election. Dairy co-owner Craig Lang also was a Republican candidate for Iowa agriculture secretary, finishing third in a five-way race in the June primary.

Republicans such as President Donald Trump and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds called for stricter immigration laws and enforcement almost immediately after Rivera, who is suspected of being in the country illegally, was charged Tuesday. Some have blamed Democratic policies for the slaying, even though studies have disputed the notion that those in the country illegally are more likely to commit violent crime.

“Every victim below would be alive today if we enforced our immigration laws,” U.S. Rep. Steve King of Iowa tweeted Friday, above a picture of Tibbetts and other victims. “Leftists sacrificed thousands, including their own, on the altar of Political Correctness.” Schlinger’s business calls itself “the best conservative call center in America.” Her biography claims she is the most prolific fundraiser in Iowa GOP history, having brought in more than $50 million for politicians and causes. She has said her business has made millions of phone calls for candidates seeking offices ranging from president to city council since its founding in 1999. Her firm’s client list includes several politicians who routinely call for stricter immigration enforcement.

Federal Election Commission records show that Cruz’s re-election campaign has paid CampaignHQ nearly $1.7 million since the beginning of 2017. A Cruz campaign spokeswoman had no immediate comment. Stewart, who has made stepping up deportations of immigrants in the country illegally a major campaign theme, has also employed the firm, along with the campaigns of Sen. Mike Lee of Utah and Rep. Joe Wilson of South Carolina. The now-defunct Stop Sanctuary Cities PAC paid the firm $3,449 for its services in March.

In an interview Friday, Stewart said he had no problem with Schlinger’s property ties to the suspect, saying her firm does a “great job” raising money. “I hire people for their ability to do the work for my campaign,” he said. “Whatever she does in her personal life is her business.” After Rivera was charged, Reynolds denounced an immigration system that “allowed a predator like this to live in our community.” CampaignHQ was a top vendor for the campaigns of former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, who selected Reynolds as his running mate in 2010, and has also done some work directly for Reynolds’ campaigns, state records show.

Investigators say that Rivera came to the country from Mexico illegally several years ago when he was in the late teens. He is accused of stalking Tibbetts while she was out for a run a few miles from his home, killing her after she threatened to call police on him, and dumping her body in a cornfield. Preliminary autopsy results show that Tibbetts died from multiple “sharp force injuries.”

Schlinger and her husband have managed to largely avoid the intense media spotlight that has followed the case. They did not speak at a press conference Wednesday when farm manager Dane Lang said Rivera presented an out-of-state identification and Social Security number with a different name when he was hired in 2014. Dane Lang said he was shocked to learn to that Rivera’s allegedly not in the country legally.
But others around town, including Rivera’s defense lawyer, question whether the family had to have had suspicions, if not known, about Rivera’s immigration status.

“They are taking a blind eye to what’s going on,” said defense lawyer Allan Richards. “At some point a reasonable person would have been more diligent in determining whether or not these folks are legal.”

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Two young black men filed a lawsuit Friday alleging that they were racially profiled by two white Des Moines police officers who pulled over their car for no apparent reason and handcuffed one of them while searching the vehicle without a warrant or probable cause.

The stop and search were captured on squad car and body camera video , which has been viewed more than 9 million times since being released to a public advocacy group on Aug. 15 and posted online. It shows Officer Kyle Thies take an aggressive tone from the outset, telling the driver, 23-year-old Montray Little, to get out of the car or he’d go to jail and then handcuffing him even though Little was fully cooperating.

As Thies searches the car, Officer Natalie Heinemann questions 21-year-old passenger Jared Clinton. The search found nothing and the men were eventually allowed to drive away. Clinton’s mother, Laural Clinton, said she cried when she saw the video. She said she’s taught her sons to empty their hands and comply with police orders. “I thank God my son listened. He made it home that night, but I just really felt they were trying to provoke him in a negative manner that could have endangered his life,” she said.

Little and Clinton’s attorney, Gina Messamer, said Friday that they’re suing the police department and the city of Des Moines, which already faces several lawsuits alleging constitutional violations against citizens, including several cases in which officers acted violently but were permitted to remain on the force.

The lawsuit, which names Thies, Heinemann, police Chief Dana Wingert and the city, alleges that the plaintiffs’ civil rights were violated, that they were illegally searched and that the police engaged in illegal racial profiling. It names Wingert and the city for “failing to monitor and address racially-disproportionate actions taken by City of Des Moines police officers and “failing to adopt a system to identify, track, and monitor problematic police behavior and patterns of unconstitutional conduct.”

Bridget Fagan-Reidburn, an organizer with the group that obtained the videos, Iowa Citizens for Community Improvement, said police records show that Thies arrested 236 people last year. She said 49 percent of the people he arrested were black, in a city where blacks make up slightly more than 10 percent of the population.

“We can’t let this style of policing continue,” said Fagan-Reidburn, whose group focuses on civil rights, immigration and environmental issues. “We need a policing system that builds relationships with our communities, not tears them apart.”
Police spokesman Sgt. Paul Parizek said the department is conducting an administrative review of the stop and others by Thies to see if allegations of racial profiling are founded. “It’s a serious allegation and it’s something we’re looking into,” Parizek said. “You can’t tell by looking at one video that it’s racial profiling. There are a lot of different things going on there.”

He said police have received 34 complaints from the neighborhood about activity in the park that Little and Clinton were leaving when the officers stopped them, and that the officers “didn’t just select that car because of the occupants.”

Des Moines City Councilman Josh Mandelbaum said the videos are troubling, but that he wouldn’t discuss them further until the police department reports on its internal investigation. “I think we need to take citizen concerns seriously and we constantly need to be working to improve throughout what we do in the city,” he said.

Des Moines police already face several lawsuits relating to the way officers have treated citizens. A man in 2013 ended up with broken teeth and injuries to his face, back, ribs, legs, and testicles at the hands of off-duty officers including Greg Wessels who has been reprimanded and suspended several times for inappropriate behavior, court documents show. A federal court trial is scheduled for November.

In a separate case, Charles Edward Young, a black 63-year-old Army veteran, sustained cracked ribs after officer Cody Grimes attacked him in a 2016 incident in his own apartment after he’d called police for help evicting unwanted guests. Grimes was fired in 2014 after he choked his girlfriend and threw her down a flight of stairs and was charged with domestic abuse. However, he was reinstated in 2015 after a civil service commission concluded the firing was too severe a punishment. A federal civil trial for his attack on Young is set to begin in December.

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — Iowa officials say they’re giving a $344 million raise to two companies that manage the state’s Medicaid program. The state’s share is nearly $103 million, or a 7.5 percent increase. The federal government will cover the remainder.
The Iowa Department of Human Services, which oversees the health care program for 680,000 poor and disabled Iowans, said Friday the additional funding is “a manageable increase.”

Medicaid Director Michael Randol says the new contracts improve oversight of services provided by UnitedHealthcare and Amerigroup. Senate Democratic Leader Janet Petersen calls the increased cost a gut punch to Iowa taxpayers.

Former Republican Gov. Terry Branstad privatized the program in 2016 and Gov. Kim Reynolds supports it despite questions about whether it is saving the promised millions of dollars and complaints that services have deteriorated.

CHICAGO (AP) — Federal health officials say they’ve confirmed more than 500 cases of people who became sick with an intestinal illness after eating McDonald’s salads.
The illnesses reported earlier this year are linked to the cyclospora parasite, which can cause diarrhea, intestinal pain, nausea or fatigue. The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that 507 cases have been confirmed in 15 states and New York City.

McDonald’s stopped the sale of salads at 3,000 restaurants last month until it could find a different supplier. The FDA says it’s still investigating the supplier of romaine lettuce and carrots.

States with cases include: Iowa, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Ohio, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Officials also said people sickened in Connecticut, Florida, New York City, Tennessee, and Virginia had traveled in Illinois and Kentucky.

(Radio Iowa) — A young man is in custody after a deadly shooting in southeast Iowa Thursday night. Ottumwa Police were called just before 10 p.m. to a home on the city’s south side (at 137 North Ward Street) where the caller said one person had been shot and the suspect left in a car. Officers arrived to find a man found suffering from a gunshot wound. He died at the hospital. His name has not been released.

The suspect was arrested a little over two hours later. Police say 18-year-old Jacob Heckethorn was taken into custody at his home (at 311 North Birch Street) in Ottumwa. He’s charged with first-degree murder and attempted murder. Heckethorn is being held in the Wapello County Jail with no bond.