Free Republic

A so-called “NAFTA Superhighway” earned support from the city’s mayor and discussion among residents Monday during a public hearing on the Texas Department of Transportation’s I-69 project. TxDOT held a public hearing at the Brownsville Events Center Monday to explain the progress of the Trans-Texas Corridor, a future segment of Highway I-69, which will link the U.S.-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canada border. After a short presentation, the floor was open for comments. Among the local politicians, college students and retirees at the hearing there was a wide range of opinion on the project. According to Mario Jorge, district engineer for...

McALLEN - Authorities continue to investigate the life-threatening kidnapping and ransom of a McAllen resident, which police officials called unique because the victim has no ties to drugs or organized crime. Authorities exchanged a $250,000 ransom, and the victim returned with injuries to family earlier this week, said McAllen Police Chief Victor Rodriguez. Police would not say the extent of the injuries. Police are releasing limited details about the incident citing an ongoing investigation and fear for the victim’s safety. They only say that he or she is an adult and has a wealthy family. The alleged kidnappers apparently targeted...

McALLEN, Tex. -- During the first nine months of this year, Sen. Barack Obama raised just $2,086 for his presidential campaign from people who live in and around this border town of stucco bungalows and weed-covered farm lots, and most candidates raised even less. But Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, has already raised more than $640,000 here, and her campaign expects to collect even more. Clinton's success in this unlikely setting is based almost entirely on her friendship with one man, McAllen developer Alonzo Cantu. A self-made millionaire who once picked grapes on the migratory farm labor circuit,...

During this year's legislative session, Texas had an "oh, wait, hold on, don't do that" moment on privately funded tollways. Fair enough, but now it's time to figure out what the state should do, including how to pay for what the state's highway czar calls a $100 billion shortfall in money needed for essential highway projects. Ric Williamson, the Weatherford businessman who is chairman of the Texas Transportation Commission, says "the entire future of the state transportation system" depends on potential revenue from private toll road investors. Without it, staffers with the Texas Department of Transportation told commission members at...

McALLEN — Three recent bomb threat hoaxes against McAllen-Miller International Airport, including one Monday afternoon, originated from the same location in northern Mexico, authorities said. The latest incident, which occurred just after 4 p.m., forced passengers and airport employees out into the parking lot while bomb-sniffing dogs swept the terminal. All arriving and departing flights were delayed for more than 30 minutes. Police say airport officials received an e-mail written in Spanish claiming one bomb was hidden inside the terminal and another was set to go off aboard a Continental Airlines flight arriving from Houston. “We cleared the building and...

MONTERREY — A billboard in Monterrey hangs high above the highway to Reynosa, alerting motorists that not everyone on this side of the border agrees with putting a wall between the two countries. The billboard reads “McAllen rechaza el muro fronteriza” or McAllen rejects the border wall. It’s just part of a multi-pronged attack city and business officials in the Rio Grande Valley are mounting to convince neighbors in Mexico that the area is still open to their visits — and their money. With the background of a "No Border Wall" poster, McAllen Mayor Richard Cortez visited Monterrey Wednesday to...

Give us your 2 cents at www.themonitor.com/2cents. McALLEN — The Minutemen plan to conduct surveillance on city construction sites Saturday and recruit volunteers for a month-long border watch in April. "We will try to confirm that there is illegal activity going on," said Olivia Garces, the Minutemen’s local director. "Once we do establish that, we will be putting up a form on the building that says that they are breaking the law." This is the first time the group, formally known as the Minutemen Civil Defense Corps, has conducted an operation in McAllen. The group was founded in 2004 to...

McALLEN, Texas -- A 42-year-old Mexican woman is accused of trying to smuggle 13,000 rounds of ammunition into Mexico, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Balbina Morales-Oscoy, of Posa Rica, Veracruz, was arrested at the Pharr international bridge Aug. 4 after U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers said they found 19 boxes of .22-caliber ammunition and about 2,500 rounds of .38 Super ammunition concealed in soft drink boxes in the vehicle she was driving. She was charged with conspiracy to export defense articles, a felony. A federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement investigation began Aug. 2, after ICE agents received information from the...

Family, friends cheer on McAllen astronauthttp://www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA071806.1A.valley.space.169b85e.html http://tinyurl.com/zs9yd Web Posted: 07/17/2006 11:02 PM CDT Jesse Bogan Rio Grande Valley Bureau McALLEN — The recent e-mail from outer space informed the small group the voyage had been safe and rewarding. Their supporting role was almost over. "Now the shuttle is just about packed and ready to come home," astronaut Mike Fossum, 48, who grew up in McAllen, wrote them from the space shuttle Discovery on Sunday. "We're all ready, too — our objectives have been met." Hours later, on Monday morning, they gathered before a large television screen in Fossum's boyhood home,...

Mexican authorities haven't ruled out kidnapping McALLEN - The last time anyone saw attorney Mario Perera Riveroll was two weeks ago outside a Reynosa courthouse, colleagues said. The 43-year-old lawyer has been missing since he left the Junta de Consilacion y Arbitraje, Reynosa's labor court, at about 11 a.m. June 27. Perera, a partner for more than a year at Matulewicz & Perera in McAllen, told colleagues he would be back for a 1:30 p.m. hearing. But that night, one of the firm's lawyers notified state police in Reynosa that he was missing. Perera had not shown up at the...

Boy Scouts Hoped Shuttle Discovery Would Have Launchedhttp://www.team4news.com/Global/story.asp?S=5105676 July 2, 2006, 05:49 PM Reported by Anabel Marquez McAllen Space shuttle Discovery is on the launch pad in Florida. But it isn't going anywhere. As people waited to see the discovery's lift-off Saturday, NASA officials called off the expedition due to bad weather. In the Valley, members of McAllen Boy Scout Troop 7 gathered at one of the boy scouts' houses to watch the launch. They were excited about Astronaut Michael Fossum, a former Eagle Scout from their troop - leap into space. "It's just such a small world that he...

McALLEN, Texas (AP) -- A Texas employment agency was sentenced to five years of probation for hiring illegal immigrants to work at the nation's top producer of military battlefield rations, federal prosecutors said Thursday. The Tollin Group was also fined $20,000 and ordered to pay $414,000 in civil penalties Wednesday. It has been barred from Department of Defense contracts for three years. The San Antonio-based company, which does business as Remedy Intelligent Staffing, pleaded guilty in January to hiring illegal immigrants and trying to cover it up by falsifying employment eligibility forms. The workers were hired for Wornick Co., which...

MCALLEN — Illegal immigrants from Brazil, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and other nations routinely descend on the bus station just steps from the New World discount store in this bustling, sweltering city 10 miles from a U.S.-Mexico bridge. They openly gather in groups, make phone calls and buy bus tickets to cities across the United States. They have little fear of being arrested — most already have been. Happily. Many, in fact, illegally crossed the border hoping to get caught right away and slip through a crack in the nation's immigration system known as "catch and release.' While Mexicans can...

McALLEN — As long as the Trans Texas Corridor has been in the works, Project Manager Jack Heiss has been answering questions about what’s taking so long. "I get that question from people sometimes," he said. "What people need to understand is that this is 4,000 miles. For a project of this size, it’s a very short period of their lives." The corridor project has remained locked in the environmental survey phase for close to three years and will remain so until the summer of 2006. But on Tuesday night, Heiss and other TxDOT representatives fielded questions at a public...

Brownsville vies for major highway corridors McAllen, Laredo also in running for interstate linking Canada to Mexico By Gilberto SalinasThe Brownsville Herald March 6, 2005 — Brownsville is among three South Texas cities playing a game of musical chairs for two major highway corridors. When the music stops, one city will come out empty-handed in its bid to land Interstate-69 and Trans-Texas Corridor-35. Both projects remain in the planning stages, but state transportation officials have already narrowed the competitors to McAllen, Laredo and Brownsville. “There’s two legs and three locations. In the Rio Grande Valley, we’re going to get at...

The Mexican Attorney General's office thinks the "Zetas" gang (ex-army commandos and the muscle of the Gulf Drug Cartel) may have come into possession of the SA-7 Grail missile.

Posted on Tue, Jan. 25, 2005 Hundreds of officers join border patrol Goal is to curb Mexico's violence MEXICO CITY — Hundreds of federal police and soldiers were patrolling two Mexican border cities on Monday, marking a new chapter in Mexico's deadly war against drug traffickers. Over the weekend, an estimated 600 federal officers and at least six military tanks assumed posts in Reynosa and Matamoros. The two cities are across the border from McAllen and Brownsville, Texas. The deployments were in response to the abduction and execution of six prison employees last week in Matamoros by suspected drug smugglers,...

The American Consulate office in Matamoros, Mexico (across the border from Brownsville, Texas) has issued a new travel advisory to Americans travelling to the Mexican Border State of Tamaulipas. It urges travellers to use caution as 30 drug-related murders in the first 20 days of 2005, including the torture and murder of six federal prison workers Thursday.

It is a book with graphic sexual references and descriptions of male anatomy, and an 11-year-old girl checked it out from a school library in McAllen, Texas. The title: "Lady: My Life as a Bitch" In the book, Sandra (a.k.a. Lady) is dismayed at first, but quickly discovers the pure joys of unfettered freedom to do whatever she wants and have sex with whomever she pleases--a seemingly perfect scenario for a devil-may-care young woman who would "have shagged [Wayne] up against the wall for a bag of jelly beans a month ago." (Amazon.com) The librarian offered these quotes (off-camera) as...

An employment agency pleaded guilty to falsifying forms to get illegal immigrants jobs at the nation's top producer of U.S. military battlefield rations.James Echensberger, vice president of San Antonio-based Tollin Group Inc., on Tuesday pleaded guilty on the company's behalf to one count of conspiracy to provide false and fictitious statements during an FBI investigation.Investigators found that Tollin, which does business as Remedy Intelligent Staffing, was trying to cover up hundreds of fraudulent "I-9" employment eligibility documents. The illegal workers were hired by Wornick Co., which packages high-calorie "meals ready to eat" for troops in Iraq.The FBI initiated the investigation...