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SAN DIEGO -- — The U.S. Border Patrol is installing razor-sharp concertina wire atop border fencing between San Diego and Tijuana, marking a major shift in approach along a frequently violent stretch of the frontier. The triple-strand wire, meant to keep smugglers from attacking agents, will stretch five miles when completed this summer -- the longest expanse of this type of wire ever used on the Southwest border. Federal authorities in the past have avoided using fortifications with such negative symbolism. Hundreds of miles of barriers going up in other areas have had to meet "aesthetically pleasing" federal design standards....

Members of the Texas Border Coalition yesterday said Department of Homeland Security officials "lied" about reaching out to Texas landowners over the U.S.-Mexico border fence, and filed a class-action lawsuit against Secretary Michael Chertoff demanding he give landowners more say before the fence is built. Under the suit, filed in U.S. District Court in Washington, the group of border mayors, county judges and community leaders said the federal government violated the rights of landowners and intimidated them into signing away, for a $100 payment, rights to come on their land and prepare for building the fence. "What's being forced upon...

The Mexican peso was commonly used in early America. By a decree of July 6, 1785, the value of the United States dollar was even set to approximately match the peso. The first U.S. dollar coins were not issued until April 2, 1792, and the peso continued to be officially recognized and used, along with other foreign coins, until February 21, 1857. Since that period, the peso has at times taken on Banana Republic characteristics. Embarassingly, the U.S. dollar is now falling in value against the peso...

Some countries seem to never have to leave home to fight a war. Take Mexico. President Felipe Calderon has just sent thousands more troops into the northern state of Sinaloa to fight the drug cartels, which evidently have taken over both the Mexican side of the border with the United States and large swaths of Mexico proper near the border. In the past two weeks, six senior police officers across Mexico have been assassinated by the cartels. The latest was Edgar Millan, who had been acting director of the federal police for just 30 days before he was shot outside...

MONTERREY, Mexico - Suspected Mexican drug hit men dumped the head of a murdered man on top of a car in the street, police said on Friday, in a rare outrage in the wealthy city of Monterrey. The head, found on Thursday night on the roof of a car parked in a middle-class residential area, had a written message next to it signed by the Gulf cartel, the country's most violent drug organization. The ears were chopped off, a senior state police officer told reporters on condition of anonymity. Mexican drug gangs, engaged in a bitter fight with each other...

WASHINGTON — President Bush's attempt to win $560 million in aid this year to assist Mexico's anti-narcotics efforts has run into a rebellion from some Texas Republicans worried about corruption, inefficiency and now defections among Mexican police officials. Wednesday's disclosure that three Mexican police chiefs are seeking asylum in the United States prompted the Texans to push Thursday for congressional hearings on the bloody border war among Mexico's drug cartels and a reassessment of U.S. anti-drug assistance to the country. "Our first priority must be to secure our own border and equip our own personnel before we even discuss sending...

MIDI - DRINK, DRINK, DRINK

WASHINGTON — As many as 200 U.S.-trained Mexican security personnel have defected to drug cartels to carry out killings on both sides of the border and as far north as Dallas, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Humble, told Congress on Wednesday. The renegade members of Mexico's elite counter-narcotics teams trained at Fort Benning, Ga., have switched sides, contributing to a wave of violence that has claimed some 6,000 victims over the past 30 months, including prominent law enforcement leaders, the Houston-area Republican told the House Foreign Affairs Committee. The slaughter has gained urgency amid high-profile assassinations of law officers in Mexico since...

CULIACAN, Mexico, - Suspected drug hitmen threw grenades and opened fire on a police station in Mexico's Sinaloa state on Wednesday, just hours after the government sent thousands of troops to fight a powerful drug cartel there. A group of 10 to 12 heavily armed men shot at the station with machine guns and attacked three other houses, killing one person, in the town of Guamuchil, about an hour away from Sinaloa's capital of Culiacan. "They fired shots and threw (two) grenades and both of them exploded," a local policeman at the Guamuchil station told Reuters by telephone, asking not...

So, whatever happened to immigration as a presidential campaign issue? In the early caucus and primary states – Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina – the media assured us that immigration was foremost on the minds of voters. You couldn't watch a Republican debate without the issue dominating a good chunk of the discussion. And when Hillary Clinton appeared to endorse a proposal in New York state to give driver's licenses to illegal immigrants, it was considered a major stumble, and the senator spent weeks trying to clarify her remarks. The public, we were told, was fed up with illegal immigrants,...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mWW0P1d-v40 Video footage of the Mexican Consulate creating programs for it's neglected citizens (illegals) at the Arkansas State Capitol.

We breathed a sigh of relief the day the Senate defeated the Amnesty Bill, but the USA is still being invaded! We discovered one of the biggest layups we have ever found. This layup is on an 'illegal super - highway' from Mexico to the USA (Tucson) used by human smugglers. This layup area is located in a wash area approximately .5 of a mile long just south of Tucson.

Diplomacy: When a neighbor's house is on fire, it makes sense to send water, not argue about building codes. Except to Democrats. As Mexico reels from its drug war, Congress is withholding critical help. It's a lethal logic. The Merida Initiative, proposed to Congress by President Bush after consultations with Mexico last fall, is a three-year, $1.4 billion program to help Mexico wipe out drug traffickers and terrorists. For years they've scourged Mexico, but never as now, since President Felipe Calderon dispatched 36,000 troops to fight them in 2006. Taking these barbarians on is critical to Mexico's future and an...

MEXICO CITY — A federal police commander escaped killers near Monterrey on Tuesday as authorities in Mexico City pursued leads in a plot to assassinate more top police officials. For the first time, Mexico's warring drug gangs are training their guns on the heads of the nation's security forces. Under siege from an unprecedented federal anti-narcotics campaign, the gangs are switching from bribes to bullets in defending their lucrative smuggling routes to the United States. The result is three police commanders killed in the capital since May 1, including Edgar Millan, who as commissioner of the 30,000-member federal police led...

WASHINGTON — Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press. In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. "They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases," Ahern told AP. Ahern said the Mexican officials — whom he didn't name — are being interviewed and their cases...

WASHINGTON - Three Mexican police chiefs have requested political asylum in the U.S. as violence escalates in the Mexican drug wars and spills across the U.S. border, a top Homeland Security official told The Associated Press. In the past few months, the police officials have shown up at the U.S. border, fearing for their lives, according to Jayson Ahern, the deputy commissioner of Customs and Border Protection. "They're basically abandoned by their police officers or police departments in many cases," Ahern told AP. Ahern said the Mexican officials — whom he didn't name — are being interviewed and their cases...

May 9 The local governments of Tijuana and Mexicali, Baja California state, asked the federal police to send a special anti-kidnapping task force to the cities in order to combat the increasing incidence of extortion-related abductions there. A former political leader in Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas state, was abducted by a group of armed men. Some reports indicate that a current government official who was with him at the time was wounded during the kidnapping. Police in Navolato, Sinaloa state, reported the discovery of seven bodies with signs of torture. At least one of the victims was a police officer. A...

DEMING, N.M. (AP) - Governor Richardson says he's concerned about violence along New Mexico's border with Mexico. Authorities say seven men have been killed in the Mexican border town of Palomas in a turf war among drug cartels. The Luna County Sheriff's Department says 162 gun shells were found where five men were killed Sunday in Palomas, across the border from Columbus, New Mexico. Another 67 casings were found where a man and his son were fatally shot Friday. A spokesman for Richardson says the governor has directed New Mexico public safety officials to be vigilant to ensure the problems...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The United States said Monday it was shocked at escalating attacks on police officers in Mexico, adding organized crime posed a "serious threat" to democratic institutions there. "We're shocked by the escalating violence against Mexican law enforcement officials," State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said in a statement read out at the daily press briefing. "The recent murders of three high-level police officials by criminal syndicates and drug trafficking cartels are a brutal reaction to President (Felipe) Calderon's determination to fight organized crime," he said. "They illustrate the serious threat these organizations pose to democratic institutions in Mexico,"...

DEMING -- Authorities in southern New Mexico are worried American students living in Palomas, New Mexico may get caught in the crossfire of drug cartel-related shootings. "You feel in danger," said a student who crosses the border everyday to go to school in Deming. Monday, was the first day students went back to school since seven people were killed in drug-related shootings over the weekend. District officials in Deming say more than 400 students walk across the border from Palomas into Columbus, where they load into buses and go to schools in Deming. District school buses then return the students...

President Bush weighed in as well at a White House meeting Wednesday with Republicans. But Hunter’s stance reflects what has been a steady undercurrent of criticism on the right. In trying to pull together the wartime spending bill and still meet other budget priorities, Democrats argue that it is unrealistic for Rice to expect the full $500 million at this time. In his letter to Bush, for example, Hunter argues that the $500 million has no place in the bill “much like other programs not intended to support military operations in the combat theaters of the global war on terrorism.”...

MEXICO CITY — Assassins gunned down a senior police official in the border city of Ciudad Juarez early Saturday as Mexico's gangsters pressed their counteroffensive against the country's security forces. Municipal Police Chief Juan Antonio Roman was shot about 2 a.m. in front of his house on the outskirts of the city, which is across the Rio Grande from El Paso. Another of Roman's police commanders was shot shortly before he was killed. Roman's was one of more than 100 deaths, including those of at least 20 police officers, attributed to organized crime last week across Mexico. Among those killed...

Zack Taylor, who is a former Border Patrol agent, says a bill being proposed by a member of the Congressional Hispanic caucus would make it very difficult for law enforcement agents to operate in areas along the U.S.-Mexico border where illegal immigration and drug smuggling is rampant. H.R. 2593 is called the Borderlands Conservation and Security Act of 2007. Sponsored by Representative Democrat Raul Grijalva (D-Arizona), it would create new public lands wilderness areas along the southern border, especially in Arizona -- which is the largest point of entry for illegal immigration and drug-smuggling traffic in the United States. Zack...

The ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee asked the White House Friday to withdraw its $500 million request for aid to Mexico as part of the new Merida Initiative to fight drug-trafficking into the U.S. California Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), who chaired Armed Services for years under Republican rule, said Congress should first debate and authorize the multiyear commitment which has been a top priority for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The House Foreign Affairs Committee is scheduled to mark up an authorization bill next Wednesday. But mindful that its own power is running out, the Bush administration...

NUEVO LAREDO - A highly respected former city councilman was gunned down near his downtown office Thursday night, renewing concerns that violence may be returning to the Sister City. Rolando Montante, an engineer and owner of a construction company that often does business with local government, was a well-known political activist with the Partido Revolucionario Institucional, or PRI. He had been mentioned as a possible candidate to head the city's waterworks system. Montante was shot twice with a .40-caliber weapon sometime Thursday night, according to results of the autopsy. The gun believed to have been used in the killing was...

MEXICO CITY (AFP) — Gunmen assassinated a commander of Mexico City's anti-kidnapping police Friday, the fourth top police authority slain in 10 days here as the toll from a rising organized crime wave hits top brass. One day after acting federal police chief Edgar Millan was brutally murdered, four gunmen in a truck shot and killed anti-kidnapping commander Esteban Robles, authorities said. Robles was rushed to hospital after the attack Friday but did not survive. The violence, believed to be mostly related to the government's stepped up fight against drug trafficking, saw a new grim chapter Thursday in Mexico City...

MEXICO CITY – Mexico's acting federal police chief was shot dead early Thursday outside his home – a brazen attack as drug traffickers increasingly lash back at a nationwide crackdown on organized crime. Edgar Millan Gomez was shot 10 times after opening the door to his Mexico City apartment complex, where at least one gunman was waiting for him before dawn, the Public Safety Department said. Two bodyguards were also wounded. Millan died hours later at a hospital. SNIP Garza urged U.S. lawmakers to approve the Merida Initiative, a US$500 million (euro326 million) proposal that would help fight drug crime...

<p>MEXICO CITY — An official says the acting chief of Mexico's federal police has been shot dead.</p> <p>The Public Safety Department says Edgar Millan Gomez was shot 10 times and died hours later in a Mexico City hospital. Two of his bodyguards were wounded.</p>

CHIHUAHUA, Mexico — New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson said Wednesday that he has seen an improvement in security along the U.S.-Mexico border. Problems remain, but increased policing by state and federal authorities has significantly helped, said Richardson, a former U.N. ambassador and former Democratic presidential candidate. "In my opinion, there has been a dramatic improvement in the last two months," Richardson told reporters in the Mexican border state of Chihuahua, across from New Mexico, where he met with Chihuahua Gov. Jesus Reyes Baeza. Richardson said he would ask U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Tony Garza to reevaluate a travel alert, issued...

DALLAS — Mexico has agreed to extradite a man accused of killing a Dallas-area college student whose burned body was found behind a suburban office complex, officials said. Ernesto Reyes of Denton will not face the death penalty as a condition of his extradition from Mexico, the Dallas County District Attorney's Office said in Wednesday's editions of The Dallas Morning News. He will probably be in Dallas by the end of the month, officials said. Melanie Goodwin, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of North Texas, suffered several blunt-force injuries. The Arlington teenager's body was set on fire and found...

MONTGOMERY The state Senate may have been locked down for most of the year, but it did find time to endorse a widely discredited urban legend spread by the John Birch Society. The upper chamber passed a joint resolution April 10 sponsored by state Sen. Rusty Glover, R-Semmes, claiming that Canada, Mexico and the United States are moving toward a "North American Union" and working on construction of a "NAFTA Superhighway" to link the countries and report edly destroy their sovereignty. "It's about retaining independence," said John McManus, the president of the John Birch Society, in a phone interview Mon...

California Assembly Speaker Fabian Nunez is leading a delegation of lawmakers to Mexico, a week before he gives up his leadership post. The Los Angeles Democrat was invited by Mexican President Felipe Calderon. Nunez described the four-day trip as a working visit to strengthen ties with California's most important trading partner. He is scheduled to meet with Calderon, business leaders and Mexico's top education and health officials. Last year, Nunez was criticized for spending about $70,000 from his campaign account to pay for luxury goods and meals at high-end restaurants while traveling abroad. He told reporters during a news conference...

Medellin's lawyer hopes to stop it, saying client didn't get to talk to consulate A Houston man who was convicted of capital murder 14 years ago for the gang rapes and slayings of two teenage girls received a death date Monday after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for his and other killers' executions. Jose Medellin, 33, is set to die by injection on Aug. 5 for the 1993 murders of Jennifer Ertman, 14, and Elizabeth Peña, 16. The girls were beaten, raped and killed after they happened upon a drunken midnight gang initiation rite in T.C. Jester Park...

Cinco de Mayo (5th of May) festivities are to Mexican-Americans what St. Patrick’s Day festivities are to Irish-Americans—a joyful expression of ancestral pride and a celebration of the rich diversity of American culture. Mexican-Americans, like Irish-Americans, migrated to the United States because of dismal economic prospects at home. Both have prospered here; both love to party. Indeed, that unquenchable love of party shows great courage of spirit. It persisted despite many generations of grinding poverty in “the old country.” Party on, amigos! Cinco de Mayo commemorates a resounding victory of Mexican troops over French invaders in Puebla, Mexico, on May...

EL PASO — County commissioners are opposing construction of a wall along the nation's southern border with a resolution. The El Paso County Commissioners Court voted 3-1 Monday in favor of a resolution that calls for stopping the building of the border wall and says local law enforcement officials should not enforce federal immigration laws. The resolution also emphasizes placing a moratorium on immigration raids, ensuring the enforcement of labor laws and civil protection regardless of a worker's immigration status and stopping programs that criminalize immigrants. Commissioner Veronica Escobar said the commissioners aren't advocating having open borders or not enforcing...

SAN DIEGO -- Border Patrol officials said Monday that they arrested more than 60 illegal immigrants over the weekend during a traffic stop.Authorities said they stopped the semi truck in East County at a checkpoint near the Kitchen Creek Road exit on Interstate 8 on Saturday at about 9:15 p.m. Border Patrol officials said they interviewed the driver, who admitted being an illegal immigrant. Border Patrol agents brought in a K-9 to search the truck, and officials said they found 61 illegal immigrants hiding behind bales of cardboard. Investigators said they believe the immigrants entered the trailer through a trap...

Drivers along Interstate 85 on Monday saw an unusual site along the side of the road. Numerous people were lying face down along I- 85 just after the Highway 9 exit. A News Channel 7 photographer was on the scene as 16 people were taken into custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Washington D.C. tells News Channel 7 that a Spartanburg County Deputy stopped a van on I-85 and called the ICE team to investigate. 14 men and two women were taken into custody. Immigration and Customs Enforcement says all are from Mexico and Quatemala and appear to be in...

MEXICO CITY — Sixty gunmen stormed a ranch, killing 10 people, as a surge of organized crime across Mexico left at least 21 dead. Gunmen with automatic weapons stormed the ranch of prominent landowner Rogaciano Alba Alvarez, who was the target of two attacks in two days, authorities said. Six people were wounded in the assault on the ranch in Petatlan, Guerrero state. "Early this morning (Sunday), shortly after midnight, some 60 gunmen launched an assault on the home of Rogaciano Alba Alvarez, head of the Guerrero Cattlemen's Association, with at least nine people killed and another six seriously injured,"...

Anyone watching this spectacle right now (on HBO)? The participants: Oscar De La Hoya vs. Steve Forbes (no, that that Steve Forbes). Venue: Carson, CA. Both fighters are and have have been American citizens, yet the Mexican national anthem was played before the bout. That would be expected if one of the fighters were a Mexican citizen or if the bout were held in Mexico, but neither is the case in this instance. I've seen some nutty things at So. Cal sporting events. ...like the American national anthem booed at a U.S.A. vs. Mexico soccer match at the Coliseum in...

U.S. Wary Of Small Boat Terrorism As boating season approaches, the Bush administration wants to enlist America's 80 million recreational boaters to help reduce the chances that a small boat could deliver a nuclear or radiological bomb somewhere along the 95,000 miles of U.S. coastline and inland waterways. According to an April 23 intelligence assessment obtained by The Associated Press, "The use of a small boat as a weapon is likely to remain al Qaeda's weapon of choice in the maritime environment, given its ease in arming and deploying, low cost, and record of success." While the United States...

After renewing his push to get District Attorney Ron Sutton to seek a warrant in Mexico for a fugitive wanted on a murder charge in the death of his wife in 1991, Kerr County Sheriff Rusty Hierholzer said Friday he'll foot the bill to translate the required documents into Spanish. ‘It needs to be done,' Hierholzer said of expanding the search across the border for Jose Garcia DeLaFuente, 67, aka Jose Isaac DeLaFuente. The children of the victim, Mirella DeLaFuente, have criticized years of delay in seeking the Mexican warrant for their stepfather, and Sutton for not paying to translate...

The last of six illegal immigrants charged with picking up a 13-year-old girl at a dollar store, then sexually assaulting her multiple times pleaded guilty. Vincente Rodriguez, 26, a Mexican citizen, admitted through a Spanish-speaking translator that he fondled the victim during the August 2006 abduction...... 19-year-old Edson Leontes was sentenced to state prison after pleading guilty to aggravated sexual assault. Both were farm laborers at Brookside Nursery, one of three locations where prosecutors believe the underage victim was assaulted. The nursery owner reported that both men signed working papers claiming they are in the country legally. Rodriguez's attorney said...

HOUSTON — Juan Martinez has seen drivers doze off from fatigue while he's taking a bus from Houston to his hometown in San Luis Potosi, Mexico. "This is very dangerous," Martinez said, waiting with suitcase in hand in front of Autobuses Lucano, one of the many smaller bus companies that offer service from the United States to Mexico. But Martinez and the thousands of riders, mostly Mexican immigrants, looking for a cheap way to get home aren't deterred by recent crashes and the recent drug smuggling indictments involving several of these bus companies. "There is just no other way for...

NUEVO LAREDO - A gunfight between military forces and alleged drug traffickers that lasted more than an hour in the predawn hours Wednesday left one soldier dead and at least three others injured, authorities confirmed Thursday. An unknown number of traffickers also were killed and injured, authorities said. The assault occurred in Ciudad Mier, about 60 miles east of Nuevo Laredo, at about 1 a.m. Wednesday, said Gen. Rigoberto García Cortés, head of the border military forces headquartered in Nuevo Laredo, at a news conference Thursday. The national Defense Department reported that after the gunfight, soldiers searched two sport utility...

BOISE — U.S. Rep. Bill Sali of Idaho has asked Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to delay opening a Mexican consulate in Boise until the government can assure Idahoans that the office will not foster the continued presence of illegal immigrants in Idaho. The request came in a letter sent Wednesday following a meeting Sali had with senior State Department officials. In the meeting, department officials expressed considerably more concern about whether the consular office would follow local zoning laws than whether it would aid people in breaking federal immigration laws, according to a prepared statement from Sali’s office. The...

SASABE, Mexico: The sandy streets of Sasabe are empty. Migrant smugglers have to hunt for business at border-town shelters. Deported migrants give up after one try, taking their government up on free bus rides home. A U.S. crackdown is causing the longest and most significant drop in illegal migration from Mexico since the Sept. 11 attacks. Officials say the U.S. economic downturn, tighter security and a more perilous and expensive journey are persuading many who try to sneak into the U.S. to give up sooner. Border Patrol arrests are down 17 percent so far this year along the U.S.-Mexico border...

Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of illegal immigrants are expected to join supporters in a four-mile march through downtown Seattle at the height of rush hour today, proclaiming they're not illegal or undocumented — but workers. And at the same time, many more are expected to stay away, fearful of drawing the attention of immigration authorities or frustrated by the failure of Congress to fix the immigration system even as raids and deportations continue. "Two years ago, there was legislation in Congress and a tangible reason to turn out," said Louis DeSipio, an expert on Latino politics and associate professor of political...

County commissioners reaffirmed their stance against the Trans-Texas Corridor, and they took another step toward keeping county government transparent when they met Tuesday. First up on the court's agenda, commissioners heard a presentation by Connie Fogle on behalf of the newly formed Pineywoods Sub-Regional Planning Commission. According to Fogle, the Texas Local Government Code, Chapter 391, requires state agencies to coordinate with local commissions to "ensure effective and orderly implementation of state programs at the regional level." "Critical in the code is the word 'coordinate,'" she said. "This does not mean the commission has to cooperate. The intent is to...

HURON, Calif. - Weary of waiting for Congress to overhaul the nation’s immigration laws, the United Farm Workers hopes to recruit Mexican laborers to pick crops on U.S. farms. The union’s efforts to import temporary workers under an existing government program follows similar moves by lawmakers in Arizona and Colorado, who are also trying to create new pathways to bring in foreign field hands without approval from Washington. This month, UFW President Arturo Rodriguez signed an agreement with the governor of the Mexican state of Michoacan to help recruit local residents to apply for temporary jobs on U.S. farms, all...