Free Republic

WASHINGTON, D.C. - Sara Carter of the Daily Bulletin was honored Friday for her work covering immigration in the past year. At a panel luncheon ceremony near Capitol Hill, Carter was presented with the Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in the Coverage of Immigration, presented annually by the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington think tank. CIS Executive Director Mark Krikorian praised Carter for her willingness to pursue stories in border regions few reporters have visited, and noted her reporting had attracted the attention of readers all over the country, including members of Congress. Krikorian noted that Carter's reporting affected...

Border Patrol fears run-ins with Mexican military In the Sonoran desert along the Texas border, Border Patrol agents say they're often confronted by corrupt Mexican military units in the employ of violent drug smugglers. These run-ins have become so regular that the Department of Homeland Security eventually issued written directives a "what to do" list, of sorts" that agents carry with them while patrolling the area.

It's a widespread belief, one reinforced by public officials including President Bush: ``Illegal immigrants do the jobs Americans won't do.'' But it's being challenged in a five-year study that concludes millions of undereducated Americans are without work in a labor market oversaturated by illegal immigrants. Steven Camarota, director of the Center for Immigration Studies, a think tank that favors reduced immigration, released the findings Wednesday in Washington, D.C. The study calls into question the theory that America is desperately short of underskilled workers, Camarota said. More importantly, he added, the research concluded that illegal immigration had a direct effect on...

A Mexican official suggested Thursday that it was American soldiers disguised as Mexicans who were involved in an armed standoff Monday along the Rio Grande with U.S. law enforcement officers. Foreign Secretary Luis Ernesto Derbez said in a news conference that U.S. soldiers have helped drug traffickers in the past, but offered no specific examples. "Members of the U.S. Army have helped protect people who were processing and transporting drugs," Derbez said. "And just as that has happened ... it is very probable that something like that could have happened, that in reality they were members of some of their...

Critics of U.S. border security policy already contend the nation's borders are porous -- lacking in sufficient manpower and technology -- yet the federal government spends hundreds of millions of dollars to help secure other countries' boundaries. More than 1,000 Customs and Border Protection officers and agents are deployed to Iraq, Honduras, Ecuador, Guatemala and Mexico to train military and law enforcement personnel in securing their borders, tracking people through rural terrain, and anti-terrorism, according to the Department of Homeland Security, U.S. Customs and Border Protection. Over the past 10 years, nearly $400 million was allocated to Mexico from the...

With lawn chairs, binoculars and water bottles in tow, civilian volunteers will begin patrolling California's southern border today with hopes of drawing further attention to illegal immigration. But their arrival is being met by serious opposition. Chris Simcox, co-founder of the Minuteman Civil Defense Corps, a civilian border watch group that began patrolling the Arizona/Mexico border in April, announced Friday the expansion of the controversial project to California and New Mexico as well as three states along the northern U.S. border with Canada. "In the name of public safety and national security something needs to be done," Simcox said, speaking...

SIERRA BLANCA, Texas - Sheriff Arvin West sat behind his desk, winced and realized he was up against one of the biggest battles of his life. He is heading to Washington next week to testify before the Subcommittee on Homeland Security far from his home on the Texas plains -- far from the cotton fields, Rio Grande Valley and the small town that he holds dear. Arvin, a small-town sheriff, is considered a giant in his neck of the woods, and he'll need all his strength to battle the international incident that has landed at his front door. "It's a...

Chertoff plays down border incursion reports By Mason Stockstill, Staff Writer Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff on Wednesday played down reports outlining hundreds of border incursions by the Mexican military over the last 10 years. Chertoff, speaking to reporters in Washington, D.C., acknowledged that the Border Patrol has long known of crossings by uniformed troops, which some agents in border states say shows a level of collusion between Mexican military officers and drug-smuggling cartels. But he suggested that many of the incursions could have been innocent mistakes -- such as authorities in Mexico crossing into the United States in desert...

Immigrant-rights advocates demanded Thursday that the nation's largest Spanish-language television network publicly apologize for an e-mail they say was distributed throughout the company asking employees not to participate or promote the planned nationwide "Day Without a Latino" event on May 1. Plans to boycott Univision Communications Inc. and its affiliates were set to go forth Monday if the demands for a retraction were not met. Univision did not return phone calls for comment. The e-mail was distributed at a Riverside meeting by Armando Navarro, a UCR professor and immigration activist, who said that an executive with Univision distributed the memorandum...

Texas law enforcement officers and Border Patrol agents engaged in an armed standoff with Mexican military personnel and drug smugglers just inside the United States along the Rio Grande yesterday afternoon. According to a report in the Inland Valley Daily Bulletin of Ontario, Calif., both Texas law enforcement and the FBI stated nearly 30 American agents were part of the incident. Chief Deputy Mike Doyal of the Hudspeth County Sheriff's Department told the paper Mexican military Humvees were towing what appeared to be thousands of pounds of marijuana across the border into the United States. Border Patrol agents called for...

Members of a violent international gang working for drug cartels in Central and South America are planning coordinated attacks along the U.S. border with Mexico, according to a Department of Homeland Security document obtained by the Daily Bulletin. Detailed inside a Jan. 20 officer safety alert, the plot's ultimate goal is to "begin gaining control of areas, cities and regions within the U.S." The information comes from the interrogation of a captured member of Mara Savatrucha, or MS-13, a transnational criminal syndicate born from displaced El Salvadoran death squads from the 1980s. The MS-13 member, who claimed to have smuggled...

Hudspeth County Sheriff Arvin West, whose law enforcement officers had an armed standoff with men dressed in Mexican military uniforms last week, said he is pleased congressional leaders are finally calling for an investigation. West said he has been told to appear before the investigations subcommittee meeting Tuesday. "There is no doubt in our minds that we confronted Mexican military personnel on the border," West said. "I'm not gratified that we had to back (the Congress) into a corner and carry video equipment instead of our guns to the operation." West, who was at the scene of the Jan. 23...

A loophole in the U.S. immigration system is allowing some citizenship applicants to go forward in the naturalization process and receive immigration benefits without complete FBI criminal background checks, according to government documents obtained by the Daily Bulletin. If the interview happens first, applicants can sue for immigration benefits if 120 days pass and the agency has not made decisions on their applications. Immigration benefits include citizenship, asylum, lawful permanent residency, employment authorization, refugee status, family and employment-related immigration and foreign student authorization.

Daily Bulletin reporter Sara Carter was named the winner of the 2006 Eugene Katz Award for Excellence in Coverage of Immigration the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Immigration Studies. This award "is intended to promote informed and fair reporting on this most contentious and complicated issue," according to the center. In announcing the award, the center cited stories, which Carter broke, about U.S. officials alerting the Mexican government to the activities of civilian border patrols and stories about drug cartels placing bounties on Texas law enforcement officers. "The body of her reporting over the past year is an important example of...

Twenty-one congressional leaders have called for an independent investigation into reports that officials from the Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Customs and Border Protection were providing information to the Mexican government about civilian patrol groups. The lawmakers are asking the Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan investigative arm of Congress, to look into the relationship between Homeland Security and the Mexican Foreign Consulate. In a letter sent Monday to David M. Walker, comptroller general of the United States, the congressional leaders expressed concern that the Mexican Foreign Ministry is unduly influencing the federal law enforcement agency. "Additionally, with reports that...

While Minuteman civilian patrols are keeping an eye out for illegal border crossers, the U.S. Border Patrol is keeping an eye out for Minutemen -- and telling the Mexican government where they are. According to three documents on the Mexican Secretary of Foreign Relations Web site, the U.S. Border Patrol is to notify the Mexican government as to the location of Minutemen and other civilian border patrol groups when they participate in apprehending illegal immigrants -- and if and when violence is used against border crossers. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman confirmed the notification process, describing it as...