Free Republic

Here they come: Migrants bound for the U.S. border ride on top of a train in Ixtepec, in Oaxaca, southern Mexico (AP).- For months, Stand With Arizona has been reporting (most recently here, here and here) on the massive increase in border crossings since Obama and the 'Gang of Eight' started promising amnesty for millions of illegal aliens. And I have been interviewed by two dozen media outlets from the Washington Post and L.A. Times to CNN and even FoxNews. Each time I begged them to report the truth about what border agents were telling me - that a tidal...

McALLEN — Asked Wednesday about the Second Amendment, longtime U.S. Rep. Rubén Hinojosa fumbled for an answer. “There are so many people in Washington who come and talk to us about the Constitution and the rights that they want kept sacred and that not do anything about them. (sic) That we not change them. That we not amend them,” said Hinojosa. “And I can tell you that — I’m drawing a blank on the Second Amendment, but I think it’s the weapons, isn’t it? The NRA?” Hinojosa recovered after a brief pause, recalling how the 1999 Columbine High School massacre...

American students now pledge allegiance to Mexico. They sing its na- tional an- them. And it is sanctioned by the state of Texas. Sound absurd? It is. Last month in a Spanish class at Achieve Early College High School in McAllen, Texas, students recited the Mexican pledge of allegiance and were instructed to memorize the Mexican anthem. Moreover, they had to wear red, white and green - the colors of the Mexican flag - as they fulfilled their class assignment. Public high schools no longer promote American patriotism, but they are doing a superb job of cultivating loyalty to Mexico....

Students in a Texas public high school were made to stand up and recite the Mexican national anthem and Mexican pledge of allegiance as part of a Spanish class assignment, but the school district maintains there was nothing wrong with the lesson. Wearing red, white and green, students had to memorize the Mexican anthem and pledge and stand up and recite them in individually in front of the class. That didn’t go over well with sophomore Brenda Brinsdon. The 15-year-old sat down and refused to participate. She also caught it all on video. I just thought it was out of...

Mexico sent hundreds of soldiers and federal police to a drug-violence plagued northern region Friday, the same day cartel gunmen fired on a military convoy with a grenade launcher and hit a bus carrying employees of a U.S.-owned assembly plant. The attack on the army convoy underscored the growing boldness of Mexico's drug cartels. The army said attackers believed to be working for the Zetas cartel opened fire on the army vehicles with guns and a grenade launcher from a highway overpass on the outskirts of the northern city of Monterrey. One soldier and five people in passing vehicles were...

Brownsville and McAllen are among America's least intelligent cities, according to a survey released late last week. A survey by the website portfolio.com, ranked the two Rio Grande Valley cities among America's dumbest. Using new data released by the U.S. Census bureau, the website look at the average level of higher education obtained by the residents in 200 cities or metropolitan statistical areas. Education levels were matched to income. Boulder, Colorado ranked number 1 in the USA in terms of intelligence while Modesto, California ranked number 200. Brownsville ranked 198 out of 200 while McAllen-Edinburg ranked 199 out of 200....

McALLEN — Confessions given by suspects arrested in a recent carjacking ring suggest the alleged robbers are targeting luxury vehicles ordered by Gulf Cartel members in Reynosa. The Monitor obtained copies of the confessions from McAllen police officials this week. McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez said more arrests are pending in the case, which involves at least two carjackings in McAllen and Mission, and one in Edinburg. "It’s troubling that again we are dealing with illegal aliens, ones arrested two or three months ago and they are back again," the chief said. "They rob and victimize our community at will."...

Note: The following text is a quote: March 30, 2010 Eritrean man pleads guilty to alien smuggling WASHINGTON - Samuel Abrahaley Fessahazion, 23, an Eritrean national, has pleaded guilty to helping smuggle illegal aliens to the United States for private financial gain, following an investigation by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and U.S. Custom and Border Protection (CBP). Fessahazion, aka "Sami," aka "Sammy," aka "Alex" and aka "Alex Williams" pleaded guilty on March 29, 2010, in Houston to one count of conspiracy and two counts of encouraging and inducing aliens to come to, enter or reside in the United...

McALLEN — Police have detained one man suspected of a drug cartel-related kidnapping and shooting near a Walmart store Sunday night. Two men were shot and possibly kidnapped during the incident, which occurred about 10:30 p.m. Sunday near the 1200 block of Jackson Avenue, said McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. "We're still piecing together information," Rodriguez said. "It appears to obviously be organized crime." Investigators believe the two men voluntarily left with the suspected kidnappers in a Chevrolet Tahoe at the parking lot outside Walmart on the 1200 block of Jackson Avenue. When one of the men worried he was...

McALLEN — U.S. federal authorities continue to question a man who was kidnapped from a local coffee shop and held for ransom in Mexico for nearly a week. Raul Alvarado’s abductors allegedly demanded a ransom of $30,000 and two luxury vehicles. But it remains unclear whether any payments were made before Mexican police discovered him bound and beaten in a Reynosa stash house Friday. Alvarado, 36, of McAllen, told Mexican officials that he had intended to meet a business contact from Reynosa at the Starbucks Coffee near the intersection of Expressway 83 and South 10th Street on Nov. 23, when...

The Gladys Porter Zoo will welcome today six tiger cubs that were confiscated June 15 in McAllen. Authorities seized the Bengal tigers, an endangered species, after the cubs' owners allegedly tried to sell them in a Wal-Mart parking lot. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service informed the zoo's facilities director Jerry Stones last week that the cubs could be formally added to the zoo's permanent collection, allowing staff to make preparations for their arrival. The public can view the six animals beginning at 9 a.m. today when they will make their public debut in the Small World exhibition space, where...

Responding to concerns that a superhighway project running from East Texas to the border with Mexico could cut through private lands, state transportation officials said Tuesday that they will only consider putting it along existing roads. State officials have held almost 50 public meetings and received about 28,000 responses from residents about the proposed Interstate 69 project, which would be part of the so-called Trans-Texas Corridor network of toll roads. The "overwhelming sentiment" of the comments from the public was that the state should focus on using existing roads instead of carving new ones out of the countryside, said Amadeo...

McALLEN -- State senators on Tuesday ordered transportation officials to assess Texas' highway system and prioritize which regions are most in need of new roads. "We're expecting a full report, not some two-page letter," said state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Transportation and Homeland Security. "You can't begin addressing the funding problems until you know when the roads are expected to come on line." The transportation committee, which met Tuesday morning at McAllen City Hall, has been at odds with the Texas Department of Transportation since earlier this year, when the agency announced the halt...

Despite the uproar over the state's proposal to build Trans-Texas Corridor 69 through East Texas, Lufkin's mayor says he supports the highway — as long as it follows the path of the current U.S. Highway 59. The Trans Texas Corridor/I-69 project is a statewide network of transportation routes in Texas that will incorporate existing and new highways, railways and utility right-of-ways. Anyone wishing to comment on the proposed road can go online to www.keeptexasmoving.com. TxDOT has expanded its public comment period for TTC-69 to Friday, April 18. Gov. Rick Perry appointed Gorden, along with 17 other Texans, to an I-69...

McALLEN - Increasing numbers of Mexican nationals are purchasing homes in Greater McAllen since Mexican soldiers were deployed to northern Tamaulipas in January, local real estate agents said. "They don't come right out and say it but you can tell that's the reason," said Michael Check, a sales agent with Keller Williams Realty in McAllen. "They say, ‘I consider this a safer environment for my kids.'" While no publicly available records track the nationalities of home buyers, numerous real estate professionals reported a heightened interest from northern Mexican buyers in homes in this area ranging from $120,000 to nearly $1...

Officials with the Spanish toll road operator Cintra have announced that the company has secured $430 million in loans from the U.S. government to build and operate two segments of a toll road in central Texas. Cintra officials announced the company’s financial plan for the $1.36 billion Highway 130 segments on Monday, March 10. OOIDA Senior Government Affairs Representative Mike Joyce told Land Line that the Association does raise red flags when federal dollars are used to subsidize private investors. Officials with the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association are not, however, categorically opposed to a state using future toll revenue to...

Heated comments flew around the room as more than 175 citizens gathered to voice their opinions at the TxDOT open house and public hearing on the I-69/Trans-Texas Corridor held at the Humble Civic Center on Feb. 28, 2008. Congress designated I-69 as a high priority corridor in 1991 and again in 1998. In 2002, TxDOT unveiled the Trans-Texas Corridor project to accommodate Texas' future transportation needs. The TTC is a part of a 4,000-mile system of rail lines, truck and car lanes and concentrated utility routes to improve international and intrastate movement of goods and people from Canada to the...

McALLEN — In other parts of the state, transportation officials try to allay property owners' fears that a superhighway from Laredo north to Texarkana will result in a massive land grab. But in the lower Rio Grande Valley, the state's road builders spend more time assuring local leaders that they have a shot at being included. People in the fast-growing border area between Brownsville and McAllen have developed something of an inferiority complex about being the state's largest metropolitan area without an interstate highway. One after another, Valley leaders stepped to a microphone at public meetings last week and made...

ROBSTOWN, Tex. — Leon Little’s farm here near Corpus Christi would not be seized for Texas’s proposed $184-billion-plus superhighway project for 5 or 10 years, if ever. But Mr. Little was alarmed enough to show up Wednesday night with hundreds of his South Texas coastal neighbors to do what the Texas Department of Transportation has been urging: “Go ahead, don’t hold back.” Don’t worry. Texans have gotten the message, swamping hearings and town meetings across the state to grill and often excoriate agency officials about a colossal traffic makeover known as the Trans-Texas Corridor, a public-private partnership unrivaled in the...

Is the U.S. Failing in Afghanistan? It was malice in wonderland at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday as Bush Administration envoys insisted things are getting better in Afghanistan, while angry lawmakers from both parties cited facts and figures showing just the opposite. Even the senior Republican on the panel, Senator Richard Lugar, found the Administration's claims wanting. "I'm not sure that we have a plan for Afghanistan," he said. Long seen as the "forgotten war" eclipsed by Iraq in U.S. priorities, Afghanistan is in the Washington spotlight this week with the release of three independent reports concluding...