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Deputy who shot and killed toy gun-carrying teen, 13, allegedly pulled gun Deputy who shot and killed toy gun-carrying teen, 13, allegedly pulled gun on a driver during traffic stop two months earlier A driver has come forward saying the deputy who shot dead a 13-year-old California boy after mistaking his fake AK-47 as real pulled a gun on him also, after he failed to signal a lane change during a carpool. Jeff Westbrook, 57, of Santa Rosa said he was mistreated by Deputy Erick Gelhaus after being pulled over Aug. 21 in Cotati, so much so that at one...

Antony Piazza is stopped at Pierre Trudeau Airport during security screening early Sunday morning. Piazza was stopped at Pierre Trudeau Airport during security screening early Sunday morning when bomb components -- but no actual explosives -- were found in his carry-on luggage, and his duplex in the Montreal suburb of La Salle was searched, according to media reports from Montreal. Antony Piazza, who changed his name from Houshang Nazemi in 1986, ... A native of Tehran, Iran, Piazza moved to Canada in 1979. In 1985, he was sentenced to 10 years in prison for drug trafficking, according to CBC News...

MECCA - Authorities arrested 34-year-old Esmeralda Gonzalez Martinez from Thermal for voluntary manslaughter and willful harm to a child. She was identified as the mother of the deceased newborn found at Mecca Community Park on Coahuilla Street. Detectives from the Thermal Station and the Riverside Sheriff's Central Homicide Unit responded to the scene Monday around 7:25 a.m. where they found a lifeless baby boy on the playground, next to the community center and Mecca Elementary School. They believe the boy was born and died at the location. Authorities also found Gonzalez Martinez at the scene, and she was transported to...

A Northern California school that banned a handful of students from wearing T-shirts that showcased the U.S. flag on the Hispanic-based holiday, Cinco de Mayo day, is headed to court Thursday, to defend their order that the now-graduated individuals go home and change. The school’s argument during the 2010 matter was that racial tensions and gang problems plagued the student body at Live Oak High School in Morgan Hill, located 20 miles outside of San Jose, The Associated Press reported.

Protections for people who entered the country illegally but don’t have documentation and for LGBT foster youth are among the bills California Governor Jerry Brown recently signed into law. Most of the bills are effective January 1. Among the pieces of legislation that Brown approved before the October 13 deadline was Assembly Bill 4, the Transparency and Responsibility Using State Tools Act - more commonly known as the TRUST Act. The bill, authored by gay Assemblyman Tom Ammiano (D-San Francisco), addresses issues with the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency’s Secure Communities program, widely known as S-Comm. According to Ammiano,...

Undocumented immigrants may practice law under new California legislation spurred by Sergio Garcia's long, tortured quest It was not Sergio Garcia's decision to head north. His father made that choice. He was 17 months old when a couple with U.S. citizenship carried him across the border from Mexico, pretending he was their baby. It had somehow been arranged by Garcia's father, Salvador, who was in Northern California eking out a living by picking almonds. "We were so poor in Mexico, my father decided to head north, to find the American dream," said Garcia, now 36, who still breaks into tears...

The wife of an 80-year-old man who was shot dead by deputies in a mistaken meth lab bust is suing the county for $50million, it emerged today. Eugene Mallory was shot six times in a June 27 raid by Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department who arrived at the property with a search warrant because it allegedly smelled of the ingredients used to make methamphetamine. No evidence of a meth lab was ever found at the Littlerock home but marijuana and marijuana-growing equipment were said to have been found. Police also found two guns on the property. The report says that...

A plea for asylum by an HIV-positive transgender individual is providing a rare glimpse into the complexities of deportation cases and the harsh realities facing federal immigration detainees. Wilfrido “Perla" Lopez-Roque, who is an undocumented Mexican immigrant, has been detained in the Santa Ana Jail since being caught last year by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement or ICE at a freeway check in San Diego County. Most undocumented immigrants detained by federal officials are immediately deported under a “voluntary removal” process that sends them back to their country of origin. Some, such as Lopez-Roque, request a judicial hearing for asylum....

"Gunman who took hostages at Louisiana bank posted chilling Facebook messages" SNIPPET: "The gunman who took three hostages at a Louisiana bank Tuesday -- killing one of them before being shot and killed by police -- recently posted chilling messages on Facebook, including a cartoon strip about hostages.   In a post on Sunday, 20-year-old Fuaed Abdo Ahmed displays a cartoon strip that focuses on an apparent hostage situation." SNIPPET: "Ahmed's final post, made Tuesday just hours before the hostage standoff began, is of a photo of a man with a sword attacking a tank.Under the photo is a quote...

Gov. Jerry Brown this morning signed into law the TRUST Act, which will prevent police from handing over many nonviolent jail inmates to immigration authorities for possible deportation. The governor also signed seven other immigration-related bills into law, including one that allows undocumented immigrants to practice law in California. “While Washington waffles on immigration, California’s forging ahead,” Brown said in a statement. “I’m not waiting.” The signings came as immigrant-rights supporters in the Inland area and across the country are rallying to push the House to pass a comprehensive immigration-reform bill with a path to citizenship. A San Bernardino march...

SAN JOSE -- A month before authorities say he killed his wife, 40-year-old Mario Chavez was in jail after a heated domestic argument that ended with him threatening their 6-year-old son with a knife. His family got a protective order. He made bail. When a judge later raised the amount, so did Chavez. In the weeks since the Sept. 7 slaying that left three San Jose children virtually orphaned, some of the sadness gave way to a pointed question: Should Chavez -- who was in the country illegally -- have been able to post bail in the first place? Immigration...

Nine Alleged Members of Hobos Street Gang Indicted in RICO Conspiracy for Murders and Other Violent, Drug-Related Crimes CHICAGO—Nine defendants who allegedly directed or participated in a violent, drug trafficking street gang known as the Hobos were charged today in a federal racketeering conspiracy (RICO) indictment with engaging in murders, attempted murders, robberies, and narcotics distribution. The five-count indictment returned by a federal grand jury alleges five murders, solicitation of a sixth murder, four attempted murders, three robberies, and the operation of “drug spots” and “drug lines” on the city’s south side among a pattern of criminal activity between 2004...

Police in California would be prohibited from helping deport some illegal immigrants under a bill being considered by Gov. Jerry Brown, in a proposed change some say would violate federal law. The so-called Trust Act would bar police from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers on a variety of cases. Proponents say the bill is narrowly focused and only applies to those illegal immigrants arrested for minor crimes. Prosecutors and sheriffs disagree. "If you or I were victimized by someone stealing our identity, selling drugs in our community, burglarizing our home or embezzling our money, that's okay? That's a...

The six brothers and sisters ambled down the hill in this ranching village, singing, laughing and kicking rocks, serenaded by cock-a-doodle-doos and baaa-baaas. There were Omar and Teresa and Noe and Maria and Carlos and Marcos, followed by their mother, Gabriela Ireta, who shooed away stray dogs and steered her children around the puddles and potholes. "Here comes the mama duck and her ducklings," the villagers liked to say. In their cluttered one-room house, six backpacks hung from a wall, six plates of chicken and beans lined the table at dinner, six bikes and helmets crowded a corner. The boys...

A police officer at Modesto Junior College in California told a patriotic libertarian student that it was against college rules for him to hand out copies of the U.S. Constitution on campus. Ironically, this flagrant violation of the student’s Constitutional rights took place on September 17th: Constitution Day. The exchange between student Robert Van Tuinen and a campus police officer was captured on video. Tuinen told the officer that he wished to start a Young Americans for Liberty chapter on campus, and hoped that passing out copies of the Constitution would generate interest in that. The officer, however, maintained that...

An immigration enforcement activist says he expects illegal aliens in the state of California will be more empowered thanks to a new law in the state. The bill that would allow illegal immigrants to become lawyers passed the state Assembly last week in the waning hours of the legislative session. It would authorize the California Supreme Court, which finalizes applications to become licensed as a lawyer in the state, to admit qualified applicants regardless of their immigration status. The legislation was prompted by the case of an illegal alien from Mexico, Sergio Garcia, who was brought to the United States...

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- The uncertainty of a U.S. led strike in Syria has shifted Congress' focus to the international crisis, and that has pushed many national issues like immigration reform out of the spotlight.

EAST LOS ANGELES (KABC) -- The 67th Annual Mexican Independence Day Parade kicked off with plenty of fanfare in East Los Angeles on Sunday.

A director at the Homeland Security agency charged with immigration enforcement has publicly guaranteed that illegal aliens arrested by local police and reported to the feds won’t automatically be deported. It may seem preposterous but this is reality in the Obama Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The story comes out of King County in Washington State. Under a federal agreement virtually all illegal aliens held at the county jail are put on immigration holds for up to 48 hours. This presumably gives federal authorities the opportunity to initiate deportation procedures. But lawmakers in the sprawling Puget Sound county of about...

ADELANTO • Local religious leaders have come to the defense of an undocumented immigrant who was arrested in Hesperia and may be deported, forcing him to be separated from his three U.S. citizen children. Hugo Magna Mendoza, originally from El Salvador, was granted a temporary stay on Aug. 26 under the recently approved Parental Interests Directive, but still faces possible deportation. Though members of the activist network Campaign for Citizenship are celebrating what they see as a temporary victory, they remain determined to free Magna, who is currently being held at Adelanto Detention Facility-East. “Hugo has been a resident of...