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WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama has picked up support from nearly all the Hispanics who voted for his rival Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primaries, giving him a nearly 3-1 lead over John McCain, according to a new poll. Results of the Pew Hispanic Center survey show Obama with 66 percent of the Hispanic vote to McCain's 23 percent. The results represent a ''sharp reversal'' in Obama's fortunes from the primaries, when he lost the Latino vote to Clinton by nearly 2-1, prompting speculation that Hispanics were leery of voting for a black candidate, said Susan Minushkin, the center's deputy director....

It is not often that undocumented immigrants sneak into the United States and then alert authorities to their whereabouts, but three men trapped in a sweltering rail car had little choice and used a cell phone to call 911. Smugglers had stashed two Mexicans and a Guatemalan in a grain hopper in the Rio Grande Valley and told them they would ride further north, said Daniel Doty, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's McAllen Sector. As the temperature climbed Tuesday, the dehydrating men feared for their lives and reached for the phone. "It gets hot very fast in those places,"...

MATAMOROS, Mexico — Usually, the 9,000 people on Officer Arcadio Escobar’s beat aren’t too happy to see him go by. But as the deluge from Hurricane Dolly turned the rough Independencia neighborhood here into a nasty brown lake that filled people’s houses Wednesday, he suddenly became one of the most popular guys around. Escobar had exactly 12 hours and 10 gallons of gas — his allotment for the day — to follow a single order: Evacuate people. But the gas ran out before his city police shift did, and the floodwaters, already up to the doors of the patrol pickup,...

Mexican officials say a concrete barrier constructed by the U.S. Border Patrol in a storm-water tunnel beneath Nogales appears to be on Mexican soil and was the main cause of serious flooding July 12 in Nogales, Sonora. The flooding caused about $8 million in damage in Nogales, Sonora, the officials say. The 5-foot-high wall on the floor of the tunnel in front of a gate was put in without notifying the International Boundary and Water Commission, said Sally Spener, spokeswoman for the U.S. section of the commission. The commission requests that any agency doing work on the border that could...

Agency says getting all people, legal and illegal, to safety is its top priority The U.S. Border Patrol said today it is not checking the documents of individuals who are fleeing Hurricane Dolly, and it has no intention of using natural disasters as a pretext for rounding up and deporting illegal immigrants, 1200 WOAI news reports. Officials in the Rio Grande Valley have been worried about Border Patrol actions ever since a reporter spotted a Border Patrol official conducting a document check during a hurricane evacuation drill in McAllen in May. Some officials had expressed concern that Rio Grande Valley...

Despite plummeting mortality rates for most infectious diseases over the last century, a group of largely overlooked bacterial, viral and parasitic infections is still plaguing the nation's poor, according to a report released this week. Many of the diseases are typically associated with tropical developing countries but are surprisingly common in poor regions of the United States, according to the analysis, published in the Public Library of Science journal PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

Five Koreans ― four men and one woman ― had been abducted by several unidentified kidnappers who had disguised themselves as police officers in a U.S.-Mexico border city on July 14, an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade said Tuesday. The official, asking not to be identified, said the abductors have demanded $30,000 in ransom, but declined to give details about the whereabouts of the South Korean nationals and their condition. "As far as I know, the kidnappers have contacted one of the families of the hostages and asked if they were willing to meet their demands...

MERCEDES - An illegal immigrant tasked with guarding a convenience store shot and killed a teenager who attempted to burglarize it, Hidalgo County Sheriff Lupe Treviño said Monday. Silvestre Delgadillo, 28, remained on the run and authorities had "no idea" whether he fled to Mexico, Treviño said. Delgadillo, who was convicted in 2005 on a felony drug charge, has been charged with unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon, a third-degree felony. But the actual homicide is complicated by Texas' castle law, which allows people to use lethal force to defend themselves and their property. Delgadillo is accused of...

McALLEN - The strain of salmonella that sickened people across the country was detected in jalapeños distributed by a Rio Grande Valley company, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reported Monday. Peppers from Agricola Zaragoza carried the saintpaul strain of salmonella. This is the first time the agency found the strain in food since the outbreak was announced in June. The FDA has not determined how or where the peppers were contaminated, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. It has been testing produce from distributors all over the country. Agricola Zaragoza is recalling jalapeños it has shipped...

Mexico will soon bestow its highest honor upon liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) for his work in “defending the rights of immigrants.” The Mexican government announced last Friday that it intends to present Kennedy with the Order of the Aztec Eagle. Ricardo Alday, a spokesman for the Mexican Embassy in Washington, D.C., told Cybercast News Service that the award, the highest that Mexico gives to foreigners, will be presented “at a time that is convenient to the senator.” The presentation will laud Kennedy for his work on immigration, and “for (promoting) full political participation and increased access to health and...

TIJUANA – Badly hit by declining tourism revenues, Mexico's northern border states are joining forces with Mexico's federal government in a plan to revive the region. Baja California Gov. Jose Guadalupe Osuna Millan hosted a meeting Monday at an upscale coastal development in Tijuana attended by Mexican tourism secretary Rodolfo Elizondo Torres and the governors of Sonora, Nuevo Leon and Tamaulipas. The governors of Chihuahua and Coahuila sent representatives. Over the next two months, the states agreed to draw up a plan outlining measures to reverse the tourism decline. While tourism across Mexico is up more than 8 percent since...

MIAMI (Reuters) - A hurricane watch was issued for the southern portion of the Texas coast on Monday as Tropical Storm Dolly emerged from the Yucatan over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and appeared likely to become a hurricane, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.

BROWNSVILLE — The border barrier that soon will be built in the Rio Grande Valley hardly fits the Berlin Wall image conjured by its opponents. Rather, it’s a patchwork of permeable structures riddled with apertures for animals and people, with lots of gates and lots of keys. The Homeland Security Department’s Environmental Stewardship Plan for the Valley shows the agency has settled on locations for 21segments totaling about 70 miles, scattered from Brownsville to Roma. Seven segments will be 18-foot-tall cuts into existing river levees, reinforced with concrete. Three segments will be movable in case of hurricane-induced flooding. And one...

MEXICO CITY - MEXICO has awarded US Democratic Sen Edward Kennedy the country's highest honour for his work defending the rights of immigrants during his decades in Congress. The Mexican government said in its official gazette it presented the 'Aztec Eagle' honour to Mr Kennedy in Washington on Friday. 'He has denounced injustices suffered by immigrants,' and 'promoted initiatives to promote full political participation and increased access to health and education services for the Mexican-American community,' the official announcement said. The veteran Massachusetts senator fought for an immigration reform bill in the US Congress that failed to pass last year....

Woman allegedly handed over fake documents to be screened for a job. HAMILTON — An illegal immigrant was arrested this week in the lobby of the Butler County Sheriff's Office when she allegedly passed fake identification while trying to get a background check for a job, according to sheriff's officials. Genesis Mahelet Garcia-Garcia, 25,(photo) of Sixth Avenue in Hamilton was arrested Wednesday, July 16. She is charged with two counts of forgery and one count of identity fraud. She is in the country from Mexico illegally, according to deputies. Garcia-Garcia is being held in the Butler County Jail and faces...

REYNOSA -- Two Rio Grande Valley residents remained in a Reynosa jail Wednesday, accused of kidnapping a local businessman, Mexican authorities said. Police arrested the two Valley residents along with a Reynosa resident Tuesday after the trio retrieved a $50,000 ransom for the man, whom police suspect they kidnapped July 9 in Reynosa. The ransom was left at a mall on the city's south side. Authorities declined to identify the victim but said he was a Reynosa resident. Once in police custody, the three suspects led investigators to the hostage, who appeared badly beaten and malnourished, said Ernesto Eduardo Saenz...

Father of victim says U.N. body's order 'don't mean diddly' Texas is refusing to bow to yesterday's World Court order to stay the Aug. 5 lethal injection of convicted rapist-killer and illegal alien Jose Medellin. (snip) Texas Gov. Rick Perry's office rejected Mexico's complaint. "The world court has no standing in Texas, and Texas is not bound by a ruling or edict from a foreign court," Perry spokesman Robert Black said. "It is easy to get caught up in discussions of international law and justice and treaties. It's very important to remember that these individuals are on death row for...

In their speeches this week to the National Council of La Raza, Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain illustrated why the American public holds Congress — and politicians in general — in such low regard, particularly on the issue of illegal immigration.

Excerpt - Acting on a claim by Mexico’s government that the U.S. government has not done enough to assure the treaty rights of Mexican nationals facing execution for murders in the U.S., the World Court on Wednesday ordered the U.S. — by a 7-5 vote — to stop five imminent executions in Texas. Leaving it up to the U.S. to choose the way to carry out the order, the international tribunal — formally, the International Court of Justice that sits in The Hague, Netherlands — told the U.S. only to “take all measures necessary to ensure” that Texas does not...

Mexican authorities arrested two Rio Grande Valley residents for their alleged involvement in a kidnapping ring that terrorized the border city of Reynosa. Tamaulipas State Police told Action 4 News that three suspects were arrested in a kidnapping case on Tuesday evening. Police recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars, jewelry and other valuables. The group was allegedly arrested following an investigation into the July 9 kidnapping of a Reynosa businessman. The suspects were identified as: Agustín Edmundo Torres Flores (San Juan, Texas) Cantalicia Cantú (McAllen, Texas) Francisca Dianey Martínez Hernández (Reynosa, Tamaulipas) Action 4 News reporter Victor Castillo will have...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Suspected drug gang hitmen shot dead a senior police commander in the violent Mexican state of Sinaloa on Wednesday, despite the arrival of hundreds of police reinforcements as killings surge. Gunmen shot dead Sinaloa's state police commander Salomon Diaz as he drove through a suburb of Culiacan, the state's capital and home to one of the country's main trafficking cartels. "He was shot in the stomach by gunmen with AK-47s," said a police spokesman who declined to be named. President Felipe Calderon has sent some 25,000 troops across Mexico to fight drug gangs but it has failed...

Recent attacks are a troubling sign innocents aren't off-limits MEXICO CITY — Many Mexicans have long shrugged off the violence shaking their country by telling themselves it only affects those involved in the narcotics trade and corrupt law enforcement officers. But innocent civilians, once considered largely off-limits, now find themselves increasingly targeted. In the past five days, two attacks in the Pacific Coast state of Sinaloa claimed the lives of perhaps more than a dozen people with no apparent connection to the drug trade — including at least four teens, a 12-year-old girl and a father-and-son team of university accounting...

A downtown Laredo street bearing the name for more than a century of a Mexican hero was changed by the Laredo City Council on Monday to remove offensive connotations it may have against Arabs or Muslims.Since moving to Laredo nearly 30 years ago, Kamel M. Shrek has studied the meaning of "Matamoros," which means Moor killer or Moor slayer. The phrase was used as a battle cry by the Spaniards during the battle of Clavijo in 844 AD, according to Shrek's research, meant to encourage killing of Muslims. After becoming a nickname in Spain related to killing Catholic Spain's Arabic...

EDINBURG - The Texas National Guard is set to end a two-year border security mission this week. And while the guardsmen's arrival in South Texas was met with concern from civil liberties groups, the soldiers have departed with relatively little fanfare. Most of the more than 500 guardsmen once stationed in the Rio Grande Valley have already been released from border duty even though their mission isn't set to expire until Tuesday, said Dan Doty, a local spokesman for the U.S. Border Patrol. "I still see one or two of them around occasionally," he said. "But most of them have...

MEXICO CITY – Gunmen killed eight youths and a police chief and took dozens of restaurant patrons hostage for hours in two attacks in the drug gang-ridden state of Sinaloa, officials saidSunday. A group of hitmen sprayed four cars with bullets on a busy street in the city of Guamuchil in the early hours of Sunday, killing five young men and three female minors, a police source told Reuters. Advertisement In an earlier attack on Saturday, six other armed men caused pandemonium in the Pacific port city of Mazatlan by taking refuge in a shopping mall to escape security forces...

Organized and increasingly violent criminals are helping Cuban emigrants make their way into the United States through Mexico, prompting Havana and Mexico City to open negotiations on a treaty to try to control the human trafficking. Those negotiations were given fresh impetus by an incident last month in which armed men intercepted a Mexican immigration service bus carrying 33 captured illegal Cuban immigrants in southern Mexico and made off with the Cubans. Within days, 18 of the Cubans turned up at a U.S. Border Patrol station at Hidalgo, Texas, to apply for residency in the U.S. Illegal immigration to the...

EDINBURG -- Hundreds of people chanting "No border wall" marched to the Hidalgo County Courthouse on Saturday evening seeking to persuade local politicians to abandon their support for the planned barrier. Protesters specifically targeted Hidalgo County Judge J.D. Salinas and other county officials for linking the building of the wall to the repair of the county's deteriorating levee system. Salinas has consistently said he opposes the border wall. But when it began to seem the barrier's construction was inevitable, he and other officials started lobbying the federal government to combine the project with levee repairs to better leverage federal money...

MEXICO - Gunmen killed 16 people, including a police chief, in a spate of separate shootouts across Mexico, which is grappling with a spike in drug-related violence, local officials said Thursday. Six of the murder victims in Culiacan were inside a car repair shop, while three others were killed outside, the state attorney's office said. Reporters said the three victims outside the shop were police officers who rushed to the scene of the gunfire. At practically the same time and also in Culiacan, one police officer was shot and killed at the wheel of his pickup truck. Another officer was...

Amnesty for Abortion by: Ben Giles, July 11, 2008 Amnesty International recently addressed the Supreme Court of Mexico, urging the high court to uphold an April 2007 decision legalizing abortion in Mexico City, according to reports by Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute. “Fulfilling its duty to respect, protect, and fulfill the right to life does not require the Mexican state to restrict women’s access to safe abortion services,” AI wrote in a statement to the court. Mexico has traditionally outlawed abortion but for exceptional cases such as rape and illness. A majority of Mexican provinces still follow laws which...

A local man is drawing criticism after driving around town with an anti-illegal immigration sign mounted on a trailer. The sign reads "Build the wall, deport them all," and Davi Rodriguez says it's part of an attempt to educate residents on illegal immigration. Davi drives the sign up and down the streets of Sacramento where day laborers wait for work, sometimes videotaping the reactions and uploading them to YouTube. Workers we talked to say they feel harassed, and they're losing jobs. "The people who come down here to hire us go away," said one worker, who did not wish to...

AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The World Court said on Friday it will rule next week on a Mexican request that it seek a delay of the imminent U.S. executions of five of its citizens, who Mexico argues were denied consular assistance. One of the five on death row, Jose Medellin, is due to die on August 5 in Texas, prompting Mexico to make its petition last month for urgent action. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) will issue its decision on July 16. The ICJ in The Hague ruled in 2004 that the United States had violated international law by failing...

---snip--- One thing is clear: renewable energy is not going to save the U.S. anytime soon. I don't know why or how people see renewable energy as a short-term answer. Think about it, even with federal subsidies, tax breaks, and record high energy prices, renewable energy still has not made a dent in the energy market. Renewable energy might be a long-term answer, I can't say. I'm just amazed that people look at it as such an option without realizing how incredibly expensive it is. The federal subsidies and tax breaks still haven't made it very competitive and people still...

Want pico de gallo on your fajita taco? You just might have to settle for chopped onion. Jalapeño and serrano chiles, as well as cilantro, have been implicated in the multistate outbreak of salmonella infections. They join the list that began with tomatoes — and all are ingredients in the enormously popular Tex-Mex relish, pico de gallo. San Antonio’s hundreds of Tex-Mex restaurateurs are faced with some important decisions this week. Blanca Aldaco, owner of two local Aldaco restaurants, said she’s not serving pico de gallo at this time. “We’re only using our cooked salsa,” she said. Tomatoes, connected with...

A comic-book character popular in Mexico for generations has run into a cultural barrier at the border, where Americans see him as a racist caricature. For more than 60 years Mexicans have followed the adventures of "Memin Pinguin." But the dark-skinned Memin's exaggerated features in "Memin for President" came as a shock to Houston, Texas, Wal-Mart shopper Shawnedria McGinty. "I was like, OK, is that a monkey or a boy?" McGinty said. "To me it was an insult." She'd never heard of "Memin Pinguin." She bought a Spanish-English dictionary and tried translating but still didn't like what she saw. "So...

SAN JUAN - A group of nonprofit agencies in the Rio Grande Valley said Wednesday they were suing the U.S. Border Patrol for clear answers on whether there would be document checks of residents fleeing a hurricane. The lawsuit, to be filed Wednesday in federal court in McAllen, claims conflicting statements by U.S. Customs and Border Protection have brought fear and confusion to a region where many families are split between unauthorized immigrants and U.S. citizens or legal residents. Those families have said they would not evacuate if there were reason to fear deportation as they board buses or pass...

Customers ask Wal-Mart stores to remove book Beloved by Mexicans for his dim wits, street smarts and playful disposition, long-running comic book character Memín Pinguín — a little black boy whose face resembles a monkey — is at it again. His zany adventures chronicled in a hugely popular book series for decades are up for sale at your neighborhood Wal-Mart store in the Libros en Español section, right next to the store's cadre of African-American books. The latest issue: Memín para presidente. By Shawnedria McGinty's American standards, the image was shocking. The African-American woman who was shopping at the store...

The most recent outbreak of salmonella poisoning of produce caused much alarm across the country and cost American tomato growers millions in lost revenue. As of this writing, over 900 salmonella cases have been diagnosed in 40 states. While American farmers struggled as the CDC did their best to pin the tainted tomatoes on them, their crops rotted on docks and in warehouses as consumers refused to buy potentially contaminated goods. For those of us in Arkansas, it was a relief when our famous Bradley County pink tomatoes were cleared; harvesting had not begun when the outbreak occurred.

Whose idea was it to send John McCain down to Mexico the day before Independence Day and have him grovel for Latino votes south of the border by visiting the Basilica de Guadalupe–a famed Catholic shrine featuring the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which most Mexican politicians consider off-limits for campaigning? According to Frentes Politicos (hat tip - reader Edgar M.), the stunt was the brainchild of none other than McCain’s open-borders Hispanic outreach director and former Mexican cabinet official Juan Hernandez, who apparently survived the big campaign staff shake-up:

Mexico City, Official Residence The Presidency reported that President Felipe Calderón met Arizona Senator John McCain, who will be nominated as the US Republican Presidential Candidate in September, at the official Los Pinos residence today. The President remarked that Mexico trusts the United States will value the priority given to bilateral work on migration, trade, development, regional competitiveness and security as the means for promoting the well-being of both societies. President Calderón confirmed his government’s intention of continuing to collaborate on all issues of common interest, including the prevention of and response to natural disasters and pandemics, food security and...

Whose idea was it to send John McCain down to Mexico the day before Independence Day and have him grovel for Latino votes south of the border by visiting the Basilica de Guadalupe–a famed Catholic shrine featuring the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe, which most Mexican politicians consider off-limits for campaigning? According to Frentes Politicos (hat tip - reader Edgar M.), the stunt was the brainchild of none other than McCain’s open-borders Hispanic outreach director and former Mexican cabinet official Juan Hernandez, who apparently survived the big campaign staff shake-up: I. El truco para la buena imagen fue idea...

Presumptive Republican U.S. presidential nominee John McCain told Mexican leaders security at the border is a precondition of immigration reform. McCain ended a visit to Colombia and Mexico Thursday, The Arizona Republic reported. I believe we must have comprehensive immigration reform. The American people want our borders secured first, McCain said at a Mexico City news conference. That will require some walls. It will require virtual fences. It will require high-technology equipment. We must secure our borders, and then we will address the issue of comprehensive immigration reform. McCain was one of the authors of an immigration reform bill that...

MEXICO CITY — Three decapitated corpses were discovered in Mexico's northwestern Sinaloa state Friday, bring to a total of seven headless bodies found and 11 police assassinated in a bloody week of often drug-related violence in the country, officials and news reports said. The three headless corpses were found in a car in Culiacan, Sinaloa, together with a note critical of one of the Beltran Leyva brothers, heads of a faction of the divided Sinaloa drug cartel, state judicial officials said in a statement. The Beltran Leyva brothers are in a fight with Sinaloa-based Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the country's...

WASHINGTON — Besieged Texas sheriffs have vowed to press the White House and Congress to deliver emergency assistance to law enforcement officers battling drug cartels along the Mexican border to match the $400 million on its way to Mexico. The sheriffs said they were frustrated that President Bush and Congress agreed to provide assistance to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative, without offering additional federal help to their departments. The officers said they'd seek direct federal assistance, as well as changes in Department of Homeland Security restrictions to permit local law enforcement departments to use homeland security funds to...

BROOKS COUNTY -- It's just before noon in the tangled woods of La Copa Ranch. U.S. Border Patrol Agent Rick Garcia makes his first discovery of the day. Through the web of mesquite brush and weeds, the footsteps of three immigrants crunch louder on the blanket of dead leaves as they approach the weathered ranch path. Garcia's partner, K-9 agent Chico, just found the immigrants struggling through the woods. Garcia asks the exhausted group in Spanish whether any of them have weapons, then how long they have been traveling on foot. "Two days," one woman replied in Spanish. The group...

Jeb Bush Joins McCain on Tour of Basilica in Mexico City Sen. John McCain, his wife Cindy McCain, and Sen. Joe Lieberman, listen as Monsignor Diego Monroy Ponce, left, discusses details from an image of the Virgin of Guadalupe at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, July 3, 2008. (Associated Press)By Juliet EilperinMEXICO CITY -- Paying homage to one of the holiest sites for Mexican Roman Catholics, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) visited the Basilica of the Virgin of Guadalupe this morning along with his wife and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.  The president's younger brother, who has been friendly...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will join presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain in Mexico City Thursday morning on the last day of McCain's three-day visit to Latin America. Gov. Bush was in Mexico City on business and wanted to spend time with the candidate. He will not spend the day with Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., who has several other events today, including a media availability this afternoon. Gov. Bush's name has been floated in Republican veepstakes chatter. On Good Morning America Wednesday, however, McCain pushed back on any talk of his vice presidential pick.

MEXICO CITY - The severed heads of four men were found dumped on a Mexican street on Wednesday with a message accusing a drug gang kingpin of treachery, police said. Neighbors in the northern city of Culiacan found the men's bodies wrapped in plastic sheets and a blanket, with their heads stuffed into white plastic bags. An obscenity-laden note scrawled onto a piece of cardboard invited Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman -- the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel -- "to see what his stupid acts had caused." Guzman, who is considered Mexico's most-wanted man, is battling a rival gang...

MISSION -- Police busted a stash house Tuesday after a Honduran woman said she was sexually assaulted there. Officers raided the house -- at 2113 Sierra Court, near Mission Veterans Memorial High School on Mile 2 North and N. Mayberry Ave. -- about 11:25 a.m. Police had found the woman wandering along a nearby road in the wee hours earlier that morning. Police pulled over to see if she was OK and she told them she had been sexually assaulted at the brick house, Mission police spokesman Lt. Martin Garza said. The house likely sheltered illegal immigrants traveling north, he...

PACHUCA, MEXICO - THREE suspects confessed to strangling and cutting into pieces a woman and her three-month old daughter because they feared they were witches, police in this central Mexican town said on Tuesday. Pachuca police spokesman Ms Norberto Munoz said the remains of the woman and her infant were found 'with signs of having been strangled, quartered and burned.' The three female suspects - who police have not named - were arrested 'and declared that they committed the crime to stop supposed acts of witchcraft of the mother and her daughter,' Ms Munoz said. The remains of the victims...

As pointed out by this representative of the Florida Attorney General's office, it is impossible to separate national security issues from illegal immigration, and one of the most important illegal immigration issues in Florida is the issue of human trafficking. And as Jake at Freedom Folks notes (thanks for the tip), this story doesn't appear to have been covered by the news wires. Here, a horrifying story is described of a little girl who, after being taken to the Florida panhandle from Mexico, resisted while being raped, and was subsequently made an example of by being beheaded in front of...