Free Republic

Release on bond sometimes leads to deportation bid Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials planned to deport a Mexican woman accused of kidnapping and forcing a teenager to work as a prostitute even though she faces charges that could potentially carry a sentence of life in prison. Gregoria Vazquez, 58, and her son, 27-year-old David Salazar, are accused of forcing a 16-year-old girl from Mexico to have sex with men in a northeast Houston bar, according to police and court records. Vazquez was booked into Harris County Jail March 10 on felony charges of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault of...

Authorities had several chances to get José Carranza off the streets. They didn't...... and so three innocent college kids were brutally murdered .....How was an illegal immigrant arrested for felony assault and twice on 31 counts involving the repeated sexual assault of a 5-year-old girl - on the street in the first place?

Every day, smugglers guide hundreds of undocumented immigrants across the U.S.-Mexico border. Coyotes are now charging more than ever for the trip. However, it's not just the price that's gone up — so has the risk of losing your life. Freeways and back roads are the battlefields. "They will shoot, attempt to stop a vehicle," said Alonzo Peña, with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. They are armed bandits who stake out these areas, smuggling routes that lead from the border to cities like Tucson, Ariz. "They don't want to take the risk of smuggling the load themselves," Peña said. The load...

AUSTIN, Texas — The Civil War ended nearly 142 years ago, for most of the country anyway, but bitter battles over how zealously that war should be remembered are erupting in Austin, the Texas capital. First, rock musician Ted Nugent wore a T-shirt featuring the Confederate battle flag — a banner sometimes employed by Southern white-supremacist groups — at the Jan. 16 inaugural ball for Texas Gov. Rick Perry, prompting criticism from civil-rights groups. A few days later, the state's elected land commissioner, arguing for a more "balanced" view of history, marked Confederate Heroes Day — an official state holiday...

AUSTIN (AP) - Brothels in the Austin area and Oklahoma City that used immigrant women and catered mostly to undocumented workers were part of a multistate prostitution ring federal agents have partially broken up, court documents say. Women from Mexico and Central and South American countries worked in the prostitution houses and in some cases reported being held against their will, documents show. The brothel near Austin was the second in that area run by the same man, officials allege. Juan Balderas-Orosco, 34, escaped capture when authorities raided the first one four years ago, but he was arrested June 29...

PALOMINAS, Ariz. (AP) -- Bud Strom knows darn well how outsiders have pegged ranchers like him, those whose land serves as America's front porch to illegal immigration. When reporters flock in from their big-city offices, they want to know: Is he packing heat? Can they get the pistol on camera? (Even if it's loaded with snake shot meant for vermin.) Then, when he answers "no" to the second question, they ask: Isn't he ticked off about all the "illegals" traipsing through his brush? The answer to that one: Well, yes and no. Along the same stretch of border where Strom...

The shadowy routes of modern-day slavery rings may run through El Paso, say members of a local human trafficking task force formed earlier this year. Human trafficking is not the same as human smuggling. Smugglers get paid a fee to sneak someone across a border. In the global phenomenon of human trafficking, men, women and children are held to work against their will. "Basically, human trafficking is modern-day slavery," said Paul Piñon, the El Paso Human Trafficking Task Force coordinator. "They are not free to come and go. They are forced to work in everything from brothels (to) sweatshops and...

While all the anti war cowards were screaming for Bush to cut and run and our willing accomplice main stream media acting like kids in a candy store. I heard someone on talk radio say that during the civil war Lincoln had his media detracters thrown in the bottom of a war ship until the war was over. But I can't find any facts on-line to back it up. Does any one know where I might go to find information on this? I mentioned this to a (left wing co-worker) and he thinks I made it up. I sure would...

LOS ANGELES- Florencia Molina's personal hellhole was a dressmaking shop on the outskirts of Los Angeles. She worked there up to 17 hours a day, seven days a week, and lived there, too, without the option of showering or washing her clothes. Other victims of American-style human trafficking have had very different venues for ordeals as bad or worse _ brothels and bars in New Jersey, slave-labor farms in Florida, a small-town tree-cutting business owned by a New Hampshire couple. Trafficking is a stubborn problem and a staggering one worldwide, affecting an estimated 600,000 to 800,000 victims a year. Federal...

Islam stands for universal peace Human dignity has been proclaimed in the Holy Quran : "And surely we have honoured the children of Adam...." (17:70) Fraternity and unity of mankind has also been proclaimed : "Mankind was one single nation....."(2:213) "Verily this brotherhood of yours is a single brotherhood..." (21:92) "Mankind was but one nation, but differed (later)." (10:19) There are other verses in the Quran on unity, integrity and solidarity of humanity. The Holy Quran marks the friends of division and conflict in the human race, which lead to human disaster and destruction : "But people have cut off...