Drugs, Violence and Lawlessness on the American Border
Mexican forces kill top drug lord
From Rafael Romo, CNN 12/11/2010
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Nazario Moreno Gonzalez was a key leader of "La Familia Michoacana"
Five police officers and three civilians have also been killed in two days of shootouts
Joint operation with police, armed forces is aimed at pressuring the cartel
(CNN)
-- A top drug lord has been gunned down in Mexico after two days of
shootouts between armed forces and members of a criminal organization, a
national security spokesman said Friday.
Nazario Moreno Gonzalez,
also known as "El Chayo" or "El Doctor" was killed as part of an
operation in the Mexican southwestern state of Michoacan, according to
spokesman Alejandro Poire.
Poire also said that members of the
federal police, army, air force and navy participated in the joint
operation centered in the city of Apatzingan and the surrounding
mountainous region.
Moreno was one of the main leaders and founders of the drug cartel known as "La Familia Michoacana," according to Poire.
"This
drug cartel began operations under the name of 'La Empresa' (The
Enterprise) around the year 2000 and has terrorized the population in
Michoacan ever since, not only trafficking and producing drugs, but also
extorting, kidnapping, and murdering people," he said.
The
national security spokesman said that five federal police officers and
three civilians have died during the joint operation, still under way as
of Friday afternoon. He also said that three members of La Familia were
killed and three others have been captured.
"During the retreat
and escape of these criminals, they have been picking up those members
of the criminal group who have been wounded and presumably died," said
Poire, who said it is too soon to provide an accurate number of deaths
and arrests.
"It's time to intensify the pressure on this
organization in order to diminish crime in the (Michoacan) region in an
efficient and permanent way," said Poire. He said the Mexican government
is sending more armed forces to the conflict zone.
La Familia's
stronghold is in the state of Michoacan -- also the home state of
Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who sent thousands of federal troops
there after declaring a crackdown on cartels at the beginning of his
presidency.
Gunfire from high-powered weapons greeted police when
the operation began Wednesday, Poire said. From there, the violence
escalated.
Two minors were killed during the
operation, when gunmen shot at civilian cars and later used the vehicles
as barricades, Poire said Thursday. Nearby, suspected members of the
cartel set trucks and buses ablaze on highways to block approaching
federal police.
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US trains Mexican marines in drug war: report
AFP/File – Mexican marines keep watch in Mexico City in June
2010. The United States is supplying intelligence and …
–
Sat Dec 4, 3:52 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) – The United States is supplying
intelligence and crucial training to elite units of Mexican marines who
are engaged in an operation against drug cartels, The Washington Post reported late Friday.
Citing unnamed diplomats and law enforcement officials, the newspaper
said the effort includes more information-sharing and training than
previously known.
A wave of suspected drug-related violence has left more than 28,000 dead across Mexico since 2006, according to official figures.
More than 2,700 people have been killed this year alone in Ciudad Juarez, a city of some 1.3 million.
More than 50 killings in the border city in the past two years were of US citizens.
The US assistance has enabled the Mexican marines to carry out the kind
of rapid-strike operations undertaken by US forces against Taliban
leaders in Afghanistan, the report said.
Based in the US embassy in Mexico City and in consulates along the
US-Mexican border, for example in Matamoros, agents of the Drug
Enforcement Administration deliver "intelligence packages" about the
location of drug bosses to the Mexican marines, The Post said.
The marines then go into action, sometimes capturing, sometimes killing
their targets in spectacular urban firefights often within hours, the
paper noted.
Mexican officials deny that the US military is training Mexican marines,
and the Pentagon declines to discuss the training, The Post said.
But US officials and recently leaked diplomatic cables confirm that the
US military is conducting urban-combat and counterinsurgency instruction
in Mexico and the United States, the report pointed out.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry has long called for more federally paid National Guard troops on the border and has cited the state's efforts to try to fill the void caused by what he describes as the failed federal effort on border security. File photo
AUSTIN — GOP Gov. Rick Perry, who continues to insist he's not interested in the presidency, is nevertheless always ready to tell the federal government how to do a better job on such matters as border security — including indicating the U.S. should be open to sending military into Mexico to help fight the drug war.
Appearing on MSNBC on Thursday, Perry was asked, “Would you advocate military involvement in Mexico on the Mexico side of the border to help Mexico in this drug war?”
Perry answered: “I think we have to use every aspect of law enforcement that we have, including the military. I think you have the same situation as you had in Colombia. Obviously, Mexico has to approve any type of assistance that we can give them.
“But the fact of the matter is, these are people who are highly motivated with money. They are vicious. They are armed to the teeth. I want to see them defeated. And any means that we can to run these people off our border and to save Americans' lives we need to be engaged in.”
Perry has long called for more federally paid National Guard troops on the border and has cited the state's efforts to try to fill the void caused by what he describes as the failed federal effort on border security.
Thursday's answer reflected a difference in tone, though not in substance, from one he gave in an interview this summer with the San Antonio Express-News and Houston Chronicle, when he was asked whether the U.S. should consider sending the military into Mexico as it did in 1916 after border violence.
Perry said then, “I would suggest to you in that almost 100-year period of time, that idea of loading up and riding across the border to clash with the cartel members might be ill-conceived. In the late '80s and early '90s, the United States, in a coordinated effort with the Colombian government, we were able to defeat the drug cartels in that country to a great degree. Hopefully, Mexico understands that 28,000 of their citizens murdered since 2006 by the drug cartels is unacceptable. If they are responsive to our assistance, then I would think our federal government should give them that assistance.”
Perry spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said Perry's point is that the U.S. must consider all options to secure the border.
“Certainly Texas is doing its part,” Cesinger said. “We need to consider all of our options when combating this drug war that's happening right across the river from Texas.”
Perry's reference to Colombia appears similar to comments by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in September, when she said Mexican drug cartels' activities look like an insurgency. The Los Angeles Times reported then, “She said the United States, Mexico and Central American countries need to cooperate on an ‘equivalent' of Plan Colombia — the multibillion-dollar military and aid program that helped turn back Colombia's insurgents.”
Perry gave Thursday's interview while on a trip to San Diego for a meeting of the Republican Governors Association. He was elected chairman, a post he's held previously.
Perry was also asked again about running for president — with the added query of whether his negative answer is “Shermanesque.”
Perry asked, “Shermanesque? Help me on that one.”
Told it was a reference to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman's 1884 declaration that he wouldn't run if nominated or serve if elected, Perry stuck to his own words, guaranteeing the questions will continue.
“How about Perryesque?” Perry asked. “The fact of the matter is, I'm not running for the presidency of the United States. Don't want to be the president of the United States. I've got the best job in America.”
Drug war sends bullets whizzing across the border
AP – FILE - In this Aug. 21, 2010 file photo, federal police officers stand next to one of their vehicles …
By ALICIA A. CALDWELL, Associated Press Writer Alicia A. Caldwell, Associated Press Writer
– August 24, 2010.
EL PASO, Texas – The first bullets struck El Paso's city hall at the end of a work day. The next ones hit a university building
and closed a major highway. Shootouts in the drug war along the
U.S.-Mexico border are sending bullets whizzing across the Rio Grande
into one of the nation's safest cities, where authorities worry it's
only a matter of time before someone gets hurt or killed.
At least eight bullets have been fired into El Paso
in the last few weeks from the rising violence in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico,
one of the world's most dangerous places. And all American police can
do is shrug because they cannot legally intervene in a war in another
country. The best they can do is warn people to stay inside.
"There's really not a lot you can do right now," El Paso County Sheriff Richard Wiles said. "Those gun battles are breaking out everywhere, and some are breaking out right along the border."
Police say the rounds were not intentionally fired
into the U.S. But wildly aimed gunfire has become common in Juarez, a
sprawling city of shanty neighborhoods that once boomed with
manufacturing plants. It's ground zero in Mexico's relentless drug war.
More than 6,000 people have been killed there since 2008, when the Sinaloa
and Juarez cartels started battling each other and Mexican authorities
for control of the city and smuggling routes into the U.S. Nationwide,
more than 28,000 people have been killed since President Felipe Calderon
launched his offensive against the cartels shortly after taking office
in December 2006.
Until now, communities on the U.S. side of the border
have been largely shielded from the violence raging just across the
river. But the recent incidents are the first time that live ammunition
has landed in American territory.
On Saturday, as gunmen and Mexican authorities
exchanged gunfire in Juarez, police in El Paso shut down several miles
of border highway. Border Patrol spokesman Doug Mosier said his agency
asked for the closure — a first since the drug war erupted — "in the interest of public safety."
No one was injured on the U.S. side, but one bullet
came across the Rio Grande, crashed through a window and lodged in an
office door frame at the University of Texas at El Paso. Police are also
investigating reports that another errant round shattered a window in a
passing car. Witnesses at a nearby charity said at least one bullet hit
their building, too.
El Paso police spokesman Darrel Petry said
authorities have only confirmed the single bullet found at the
university, but it is possible that several other shots flew across the
border.
"As a local municipality, we are doing everything we
can," Petry said. "Looking where we're at, the community we live in,
that's all we've got. It's the reality of life here in El Paso for right
now."
Officers say the types of bullets used in the drug war can travel more than a mile before falling to the ground.
In Saturday's shooting, the bullet that hit the
campus building may have flown just under a mile before lodging in a
door jam. Back in June, at least seven shots fired from Juarez flew more
than half a mile before hitting City Hall.
In some places, El Paso is separated from Juarez by little more than a few yards of riverbed.
Andrew Kunert was napping Saturday when police
started banging on his door at an apartment building just feet from the
border. He said officers with high-powered rifles slung across their
chests warned him to stay inside and away from windows until the
shooting stopped.
The rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire to the south is nothing new, but bullets coming north is a worrisome new development, Kunert said.
"About once a week, you can hear gunfire," he said.
He worries about the children who live at the Old Fort Bliss apartment
building and routinely play outside when gunmen are trading shots across
the river.
At the Rescue Mission of El Paso, kitchen manager
Bill Cox said several bullets hit a pair of old silos on the charity's
property, which is down a hillside from the university campus.
Volunteers and homeless people coming to the mission for food or other
help could easily be in the line of fire, he said.
"Someone can be walking down the street out here and be hit," Cox said.
In a letter to President Barack Obama after the City Hall shooting,
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott said it was "good fortune" that no
one was injured and insisted the shooting was evidence of the need for
more border security.
"Luck and good fortune are not effective border enforcement policies,"
Abbott wrote. "The shocking reality of cross-border gunfire proves the
cold reality: American lives are at risk."
And Monday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a statement demanding more security.
"It's time for Washington to stop the rhetoric and immediately deploy a
significant force of personnel and resources to the border to protect
our homeland," Perry said.
Katherine Cesinger, a Perry spokeswoman,
said the governor believes that more security — in the form of federal
agents and even troops — could all but shut down the border to smuggling
and help put Mexico's warring cartels out of business.
The only way cartels "are being successful is by being able to operate
on both sides of the border," Cesinger said. "If you shut down that
border, they are out of business. They are not able to continue."
Obama has ordered about 1,200 National Guard troops to the border in
California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas to help the Border Patrol and
officials from Customs and Border Protection.
But the federal government has insisted that the troops will only help
federal agents with intelligence, surveillance and other duties that do
not involve actually arresting anyone.
Sheriff Wiles says more security in El Paso won't solve the problem because the war is in another country.
"Juarez is experiencing a major wave of violence, and we are feeling
some of that," Wiles said. "I don't know of any way around that. Until
that issue is resolved in Juarez, we are going to be dealing these kinds
of things."
AP – Graphic shows murders per 100,000 people in Mexico since
2 hrs 23 mins ago
MEXICO CITY – The severed heads of eight men were found left in pairs along highways in the northern Mexico state of Durango, state prosecutors said Tuesday.
The bodies had not yet been located, but the victims appeared to have been between 25 and 30 years old, officials said.
Durango has been the scene of brutal turf battles between drug gangs.
Prosecutors said over the weekend that officials at a Durango prison
let drug cartel gunmen to leave penitentiary and lent them guns and
vehicles to carry out executions.
Also Tuesday, prosecutors in the central state of
Puebla reported that three federal police agents were shot to death on a
highway in a confrontation with gunmen. The assailants escaped.
In the northern border state of Chihuahua,
prosecutors said a second cousin of Gov.-elect Cesar Duarte was shot to
death by attackers in the city of Parral. The victim, lawyer Alberto
Porras Duarte, was slain while waiting in a vehicle outside his office.
One of Duarte's nephews was killed earlier this month
in the Chihuahua state capital in what appeared to be a failed
kidnapping attempt. The state has been the scene of some Mexico's
bloodiest drug violence.
In the border state of Tamaulipas,
army officials reported Monday that they had captured nine Guatemalan
citizens during patrols against drug trafficking organizations and
seized seven grenades and two guns from the suspects.
A day earlier, troops in Tamaulipas detained 11 people believed to work for the Zetas drug gang and seized five rifles.
Almost 25,000 people have died in drug-related
violence since President Felipe Calderon launched an offensive against
the cartels in late 2006.
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CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico (AP) - Mexicans are seething over the second death of a countryman at the hands of U.S. Border Patrol agents in two weeks, an incident near downtown El Paso that is threatening to escalate tensions over migrant issues.
U.S. authorities said Tuesday a Border Patrol agent was defending himself and colleagues when he fatally shot the 15-year-old as officers came under a barrage of big stones while trying to detain illegal immigrants on the U.S. side of the Rio Grande.
About 30 relatives and friends gathered late Tuesday to mourn Sergio Adrian Hernandez Huereka, whose shooting Monday evening came along the border with Texas. He died on the Mexican side of the river.
"Damn them! Damn them!" sobbed Rosario Hernandez, sister of the dead teenager, at a wake in the family's two-room adobe house on the outskirts of Ciudad Juarez.
Preliminary reports on the incident indicated that U.S. officers on bicycle patrol "were assaulted with rocks by an unknown number of people," Border Patrol Special Operations Supervisor Ramiro Cordero said Tuesday.
"During the assault at least one agent discharged his firearm," he said. "The agent is currently on administrative leave. A thorough, multi-agency investigation is currently ongoing."
The shooting happened beneath a railroad bridge linking the two nations, and late Tuesday night a banner appeared on the bridge that said in English: "U.S. Border Patrol we worry about the violence in Mex and murders and now you. Viva Mexico!"
Less than two weeks ago, Mexican migrant Anastasio Hernandez, 32, died after a Customs and Border Protection officer shocked him with a stun gun at the San Ysidro border crossing that separates San Diego and Tijuana, Mexico. The San Diego medical examiner's office ruled that death a homicide.
Mexican President Felipe Calderon said Tuesday that his government "will use all resources available to protect the rights of Mexican migrants."
The government "reiterates its rejection to the disproportionate use of force on the part on U.S. authorities on the border with Mexico," the president added in a statement.
On an unpaved street, gathered around Hernandez's gray metal casket, the teen's family called for justice.
"There is a God, so why would I want vengeance if no one will return him to me. They killed my little boy and the only thing I ask is for the law" to be applied, said the boy's father, Jesus Hernandez.
His mother was less hopeful. "May God forgive them because I know nothing will happen" to them, Maria Guadalupe Huereka said.
Above the casket was a photo of the youth wearing his soccer uniform and his junior high school grade cards, which showed A's and B's.
His mother said he was a good student who never got in trouble. He was the youngest of five children, played on two soccer teams and had just finished junior high school, she said.
The case took a testy turn when U.S. and Mexican officials traded suggestions of misconduct in the incident.
Arturo Sandoval, a spokesman for the Chihuahua state Attorney General's office, said a spent .40-caliber shell casing was found near the body - raising the question of whether the fatal shot was fired inside Mexico, although he did not explicitly make that allegation. That would violate the rules for Border Patrol agents, who are supposed to stay on the U.S. side of the border.
A U.S. official, meanwhile, said video shows the Border Patrol agent did not enter Mexico.
The official, who agreed to discuss the matter only if not quoted by name, said the video also shows what seem to be four Mexican law enforcement officers driving to the edge of the dry but muddy bed of the Rio Grande, walking across to the U.S. side, picking up an undetermined object and returning to Mexico near the area where the boy's body was. Like their U.S. counterparts, Mexican law officers are not authorized to cross the border without permission.
According to the FBI, Border Patrol agents were responding to a group of suspected illegal immigrants being smuggled into the U.S. near the Paso Del Norte bridge, across from Ciudad Juarez around 6:30 p.m. Monday.
One suspected illegal immigrant was detained on the levee on the U.S. side, the FBI said in a statement. Another Border Patrol agent arrived on the concrete bank where the now-dry, 33-foot (10-meter) wide Rio Grande is, and detained a second person. Other suspects ran back into Mexico and began throwing rocks, the FBI said.
At least one rock came from behind the agent, who was kneeling beside a suspected illegal immigrant whom he had prone on the ground, FBI spokeswoman Andrea Simmons said.
The agent told the rock throwers to stop and back off, but they continued. The agent fired his weapon several times, hitting one who later died, said the FBI, which is leading the investigation because it involved an assault on a federal officer. The agent was not injured, Simmons said.
Chihuahua state officials released a statement demanding a full investigation into the death.
The boy was shot once near the eye, Sandoval said. Authorities were still investigating the bullet's trajectory, he said.
Sandoval said he couldn't comment on the video reported by the U.S. official because he didn't know anything about it. "I am unaware about those hypotheses," he said.
Sandoval said Mexican investigators were questioning three teenagers who were with the victim at the time of the shooting.
The boy's sister, Rosario, told Associated Press Television News that her brother was playing with several friends and did not plan to cross the border.
"They say that they started firing from over there and suddenly hit him in the head," she said.
The boy's mother said he had gone to eat with his brother, who handles luggage at a border customs office. While there, he met up with a group of friends and they decided to hang out by the river, she said.
"That was his mistake, to have gone to the river," she said in an interview with Mexico's Milenio TV. "That's why they killed him."
Mexico's Foreign Relations Department said its records indicate the number of Mexicans killed or wounded by U.S. immigration authorities rose from five in 2008 to 12 in 2009 to 17 so far this year, which is not half over.
T.J. Bonner, president of the union representing Border Patrol agents, said rock throwing aimed at Border Patrol agents is common and capable of causing serious injury.
"It is a deadly force encounter, one that justifies the use of deadly force," Bonner said.
Feds Issue Terror Watch for the Texas/Mexico Border
By Jana Winter
Published May 26, 2010
FOXNews.com
The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com.
The warning follows an indictment unsealed this month in Texas federal court that accuses a Somali man in Texas of running a “large-scale smuggling enterprise” responsible for bringing hundreds of Somalis from Brazil through South America and eventually across the Mexican border. Many of the illegal immigrants, who court records say were given fake IDs, are alleged to have ties to other now-defunct Somalian terror organizations that have merged with active organizations like Al Shabaab, al-Barakat and Al-Ittihad Al-Islami.
In 2008, the U.S. government designated Al Shabaab a terrorist organization. Al Shabaab has said its priority is to impose Sharia, or Islamic law, on Somalia; the group has aligned itself with Al Qaeda and has made statements about its intent to harm the United States.
In recent years, American Somalis have been recruited by Al Shabaab to travel to Somalia, where they are often radicalized by more extremist or operational anti-American terror groups, which Al Shabaab supports. The recruiters coming through the Mexican border are the ones who could be the most dangerous, according to law enforcement officials.
Security experts tell FOXNews.com that the influx of hundreds of Somalis over the U.S. border who allegedly have ties to suspected terror cells is evidence of a porous and unsecured border being exploited by groups intent on wrecking deadly havoc on American soil.
The DHS alert was issued to police and sheriff’s deputies in Houston, asking them to keep their eyes open for a Somali man named Mohamed Ali who is believed to be in Mexico preparing to make the illegal crossing into Texas. Officials believe Ali has ties to Al Shabaab, a Somali terrorist organization aligned with Al Qaeda, said Joan Neuhaus Schaan, the homeland security and terrorism fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, who has seen the alert.
An indictment was unsealed in Texas federal court earlier this month that revealed that a Somali man, Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane, led a human smuggling ring that brought East Africans, including Somalis with ties to terror groups, from Brazil and across the Mexican border and into Texas.
In a separate case, Anthony Joseph Tracy, of Virginia, who admitted to having ties to Al Shabaab, is currently being prosecuted for his alleged role in an international ring that illegally brought more than 200 Somalis across the Mexican border. Prosecutors say Tracy used his Kenya-based travel business as a cover to fraudulently obtain Cuban travel documents for the Somalis. The smuggled Somalis are believed to have spread out across the United States and remain mostly at large, court records show.
Somalis are classified by border and immigration officials as “special interest” — illegal immigrants who get caught trying to cross the Mexican border into the U.S. who come from countries that are considered a high threat to the U.S., Neuhaus Schaan explained.
DHS did not respond to multiple e-mail and phone requests for comment.
In addition to the Somali immigration issue, Mexican smugglers are coaching some Middle Eastern immigrants before they cross the border – schooling them on how to dress and giving them phrases to help them look and sound like Latinos, law enforcement sources told FoxNews.com.
“There have been a number of certain communities that have noticed this, villages in northern Mexico where Middle Easterners try to move into town and learn Spanish,” Neuhaus Schaan said. “People were changing there names from Middle Eastern names to Hispanic names.” Security experts say the push by illegal immigrants to try to fit in also could be the realization of what officials have feared for years: Latin American drug cartels are helping jihadist groups bring terrorists across the Mexican border.
J. Peter Pham, senior fellow and director of the Africa Project at the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, said that for the past ten years there’s been suspicion by U.S. law enforcement that drug cartels could align with international terrorist organizations to bring would-be-jihadists into the U.S.
That kind of collaboration is already being seen in Africa, said Dr. Walid Phares, director of the Future Terrorism Project at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies.
“Al Qaeda could easily say, “Ok, now we want your help getting these guys into the United States,” Phares said. “Eventually the federal government will pay more attention, but there is a window of time now where they can get anyone they want to get in already.”
Experts also say the DHS alert and recent court case highlights the threat of terrorists penetrating the Mexican/Texas border — and the growing threat of Somali recruitment efforts to bring Americans of Somali descent back to Somalia for jihadist training, creating homegrown terrorists. Pham says the DHS alert comes too late. “They’re just covering themselves for the fact that DHS has been failing to date to deal effectively with this,” he said. “They’re already here.”
Michael Weinstein, a political science professor at Purdue University and an expert on Somalia, said, “In the past year, it’s become obvious that there’s a spillover into the United States of the transnational revolutionaries in Somalia.”
“It’s something that certainly has to be watched, but I don’t think it’s an imminent threat,” he said. “This has to be put in context with people smuggling — everybody and their brother is getting into the United States through Mexico; I read last week that some Chinese were crossing, it’s just a big market.”
Pham disagrees. “The real danger is ‘something along the lines of jihadist version of ‘find a classmate,’ he said, referring to Al Shabaab’s potential to set up sleeper cells in the U.S. “Most of them rely on personal referral and association. That type of social networking is not beyond their capabilities.”
Pham says the DHS alert is too little, too late.
“This is like shutting the barn door after the horses got away,” he said.
AP IMPACT: Deadly, ultra-pure heroin arrives in US
ALICIA A. CALDWELL The Associated Press Monday, May 24, 2010; 1:51 PM
WINFIELD, Mo. -- Mexican drug smugglers are increasingly peddling a form of ultra-potent heroin that sells for as little as $10 a bag and is so pure it can kill unsuspecting users instantly, sometimes before they even remove the syringe from their veins.
An Associated Press review of drug overdose data shows that so-called "black tar" heroin - named for its dark, gooey consistency - and other forms of the drug are contributing to a spike in overdose deaths across the nation and attracting a new generation of users who are caught off guard by its potency.
"We found people who snorted it lying face-down with the straw lying next to them," said Patrick O'Neil, coroner in suburban Chicago's Will County, where annual heroin deaths have nearly tripled - from 10 to 29 - since 2006. "It's so potent that we occasionally find the needle in the arm at the death scene."
Authorities are concerned that the potency and price of the heroin from Mexico and Colombia could widen the drug's appeal, just as crack did for cocaine decades ago.
The Latin American heroin comes in the form of black tar or brown powder, and it has proven especially popular in rural and suburban areas.
Originally associated with rock stars, hippies and inner-city junkies, heroin in the 1970s was usually smuggled from Asia and the Middle East and was around 5 percent pure. The rest was "filler" such as sugar, starch, powdered milk, even brick dust. The low potency meant that many users injected the drug to maximize the effect.
But in recent years, Mexican drug dealers have improved the way they process poppies, the brightly colored flowers supplied by drug farmers that provide the raw ingredients for heroin, opium and painkillers such as morphine. Purity levels have increased, and prices have fallen.
Federal agents now commonly find heroin that is 50 percent pure and sometimes as much as 80 percent pure.
The greater potency allows more heroin users to snort the drug or smoke it and still achieve a sustained high - an attractive alternative for teenagers and suburbanites who don't want the HIV risk or the track marks on their arms that come with repeated injections.
"That has opened up heroin to a whole different group of users," said Harry Sommers, the agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Agency office in St. Louis.
Among the drug's casualties was William Henderson, a 29-year-old welder from rural Missouri who died in his sleep in 2009, hours after snorting heroin. A bear of a man at 6-foot-1 and 300 pounds, he had tried the drug only a few times.
His wife recalled waking up to find the alarm buzzing. Her husband's body had turned blue, and his stomach was cold to the touch.
"I kept telling him, 'Will, you're late - get up!" said Amanda Henderson of Winfield, Mo., northwest of St. Louis. "But he wasn't moving, wasn't breathing. I called 911, but I knew it was too late." She and her three small boys were left destitute.
An increasing amount of the deadliest heroin appears to be coming from Mexico. Although the vast majority still arrives from overseas, Mexican dealers appear to be chipping away at the U.S. market.
As recently as two years ago, state and federal drug agents saw heroin arriving from Colombia, Asia and Mexico. But as the availability and quality of cocaine and methamphetamine have declined, Mexican smugglers have stepped up heroin shipments to the U.S.
Independent Mexican smugglers have the market largely to themselves because the major drug cartels only dabble in heroin, preferring to focus on locally grown marijuana and Colombian cocaine, according to a DEA official in El Paso, Texas. The agent spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing security concerns and his ongoing role in active drug investigations.
Heroin metabolizes in the body so quickly that medical examiners often cannot pinpoint the drug as a cause of death unless there is other evidence to back it up - say, a needle or a syringe found near the body. Also, many victims use multiple drugs and alcohol, so citing a specific substance is often impossible.
At the start of the decade, roughly 2,000 people a year died from heroin overdoses nationwide, according to records kept by the Centers for Disease Control. By 2008, the drug was blamed for at least 3,000 deaths in the 36 states that responded to records requests from the AP. Deaths from 2009 have not yet been compiled.
The AP contacted agencies in all 50 states, as well as officials in the District of Columbia and New York City, including medical examiners, coroners and health departments. The survey showed that heroin deaths rose 18.2 percent from 2007 to 2008, and 20.3 percent from 2006 to 2008.
Law enforcement officials and drug-treatment experts believe those statistics woefully undercount the actual number of deaths. And they fear the problem is getting worse: Seizures of heroin along the U.S.-Mexico border quadrupled from 2008 to 2009, from about 44 pounds (20 kilograms) to more than 190 pounds (86 kilograms).
In the Minneapolis-St. Paul area, more than 20 deaths were blamed on heroin in 2009. DEA analysis of heroin purchased undercover found the drug was nearly 60 percent pure - the highest average purity in the U.S. At the same time, the price was among the lowest.
"This is consistent with how crack cocaine was introduced in the 1970s, when it was a high-purity product sold at a low price," said Carol Falkowski, director of the alcohol and drug abuse division for the Minnesota Department of Human Services.
To hook new users, dealers are selling heroin cheap - often around $10 a bag. The new users included Billy Roberts, the 19-year-old son of a retired Chicago police officer. Last September, he slumped over dead of a heroin overdose at a friend's house.
John Roberts had moved his family to Will County when Billy was just entering high school.
"I thought I was moving away from problems like that," Roberts said. "These kids out here are being introduced to real serious drugs, dirt cheap, and they don't know how pure and dangerous they are."
Roberts now speaks to high school and civic groups about the dangers of heroin.
Independent Mexican smugglers like Jose Antonio Medina Arreguin pay the cartels for access to lucrative trade routes used to sneak drugs across the border and along U.S. highways.
Medina, also known as "Don Pepe," was arrested earlier this year in Mexico on suspicion of running a $10 million-a-month heroin smuggling business from the western Mexico state of Michoacan. With the permission of the area's powerful La Familia cartel, he is believed to have shipped as much as 440 pounds a month into the U.S. for street sales from San Diego to San Jose.
Glendale, Calif., often ranks among the safest cities of its size. But police are concerned about a growing heroin problem tied to Mexican street gangs from nearby Los Angeles. Gang members make the quick drive up Interstate 5 to deliver heroin straight to high school kids.
"They tell them, 'Just smoke it. It's just like smoking a cigarette. It's just like smoking marijuana,'" said Glendale police Sgt. Tom Lorenz. Once the kids are hooked, "they've got a customer forever."
The trip up I-5 also leads to Oregon, where state Medical Examiner Karen Gunson said the heroin problem is worst in communities along the interstate. The state had 131 heroin-related overdose deaths last year - 42 more than three years earlier.
The dead simply didn't know the risks of the heroin they used, she said.
"We're seeing it sometimes 80 percent pure," Gunson said. "There's no FDA approval on this stuff. If you're using it every day, your chances grow and grow that it's going to kill you."
That's what happened to Nikki Tayon. A decade ago, she helped lead the high school softball team from Winfield to second place in the state. But it wasn't long after high school that she began using drugs such as marijuana and meth. A couple of years ago, she turned to heroin.
Last April, her mother, Sue Tayon, got a call from a ranger at Cuivre River State Park. Nikki's purse and cell phone had been found, and rangers were looking for her. Hours later came the gruesome news: Nikki's body was discovered in a ditch. She was 28.
She had overdosed on heroin that was 90 percent pure, her mother said. Police said her boyfriend panicked and dumped Nikki from the car. No charges were filed.
"I know she was doing it," Sue Tayon said. "But she didn't deserve to die this way."
Border States Deal With More Illegal Immigrant
Crime Than Most, Data Suggests
FOXNews.com
Arizona
lawmakers say their new immigration enforcement law will them fight an
illegal immigrant crime wave that is sweeping the state, a claim that is
backed by studies and statistics that suggest border states have a
disproportionately high number of criminals who are illegal immigrants
A Guatemalan illegal immigrant prepares to board
a plane at the Phoenix-Mesa Gateway airport during his deportation
process July 10, 2009. (Reuters Photo)
Arizona lawmakers say their new immigration enforcement law
will help them fight an illegal immigrant crime wave that is sweeping
the state, a claim that is backed by studies and statistics that suggest
border states have a disproportionately high number of criminals who
are illegal immigrants.
"We've been inundated with criminal activity. It's just -- it's been
outrageous," Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer told Fox News.
"Crime is off the chart in this state," added Pinal County Sheriff
Paul Babeu, president of the Arizona Association of Sheriffs.
Critics have called Arizona officials racist, intolerant and
downright unconstitutional for passing the law, which makes illegal
immigration a state crime and allows police to demand documentation from
anyone they suspect is an illegal immigrant.
While the correlation between illegal immigrants and crime is almost
impossible to quantify precisely, the available numbers indicate that
Arizona -- as well as California and Texas -- are dealing with increased
crime as a result of high illegal immigrant populations and activity.
Part of this is because some of those immigrants are being arrested
based on immigration-related charges. A Pew Hispanic Center report last
year said "increased enforcement" of immigration laws accounts for part
of the trend.
But there are other crimes, many of which are drug-related.
Furthermore, illegal immigrants and smuggling organizations have been
linked to some specific violent crimes in Arizona. Local officials
frequently cite the rash of kidnappings in their state in defending the
new law. The Department of Justice's latest National Drug Threat
Assessment says there were 267 kidnappings in Phoenix last year and 299
in 2008. The report said the victims usually have a connection to
immigrant smuggling groups or drug traffickers.
The report also showed that assaults against U.S. law enforcement on
the southwestern border are on the rise. The report found that the
number of attacks on Border Patrol agents increased 46 percent to 1,097
incidents in fiscal 2008. The report said the assaults were mostly
related to immigrant smuggling.
Together, Arizona, California and Texas are now home to 4.7 million
of the 11 million illegal immigrants the Department of Homeland Security
estimates are in the country.
Other states with high illegal immigrant populations -- like Illinois
-- do not have a lot of illegal immigrant prisoners. Federal statistics
show the illegal immigrant population is actually underrepresented in
Illinois prisons.
But a comprehensive study released late last year from the Center for
Immigration Studies cited federal law enforcement data showing that
illegal immigrants made up a disproportionate share of the state prison
populations in California and Arizona.
In 2004, the year when the data was most recently available, 12.4
percent of California prisoners were illegal immigrants, as compared
with an estimated 6.9 percent of the state population. In Arizona, 11.1
percent of the prison population was undocumented, compared with 7
percent of the overall state population. In Texas, the percentage was
also slightly higher in the prisons than it was statewide.
A Government Accountability Office study from 2005 also found that
most illegal immigrant arrests were happening in California, Texas and
Arizona. The study sampled a prison population of more than 55,000
illegal immigrants, and found that 80 percent of all the arrests were in
those three states.
But overall, it's hard to say that illegal immigrants have triggered a
crime explosion in any of these states, though the recent killing of
Arizona rancher Robert Krentz by a suspected illegal immigrant has
served as a rallying cry for advocates of tougher enforcement.
FBI statistics show California and Texas had a violent crime average
slightly higher than the national average 2008, while Arizona's average
was slightly lower.
Jessica Vaughan, a co-author of the Center for Immigration Studies
report and policy director at the think tank, said the bottom line is
that connections between illegal immigrants and crime are hard to draw.
"We didn't find any evidence to support the idea that either
immigrants are more prone to crime or less prone to crime than ...
legally resident Americans," she said. "It's very tricky."
Vaughan said part of the problem is that no federal database keeps a
dependable count of how many illegal immigrants are convicted of crimes.
Federal prison data, for instance, breaks out non-citizens in its data,
but that covers several groups and not just illegal immigrants.
Some jurisdictions do keep track, though, and with the data that is
available, Vaughan said it's apparent that there is a connection between
illegal immigrants and certain types of crimes, like drug trafficking
and identify theft. And, she said, illegal immigrants have a tendency
toward recidivism.
The GAO report found that of the undocumented residents surveyed,
almost all of them had more than one arrest. They averaged about eight
arrests per person. Nearly half of the offenses were for drug crimes or
immigration violations.
But for those immigrants who are being caught and convicted, their
immigration status itself is often the offense.
The Pew Hispanic Center study from February 2009 found that even
though Hispanics make up 13 percent of the adult population, they
accounted for 40 percent of sentenced federal offenders in 2007. Almost
half of those offenses were immigration-related.
Cornyn
wants $300 million for local cops on border
EL PASO, Texas
— With threats of spillover violence from Mexico's deadly drug
cartel war looming, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn is proposing new border
security legislation that would give local and state police access to
about $300 million in federal grants.
Cornyn, a Texas Republican, told reporters Wednesday that his
Southern Border Security Assistance Act would give law enforcement
within 100 miles of the Mexican border a shot at millions for extra
equipment, overtime and new hires.
The announcement of the fast-track legislation comes just days
after Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law one the nation's strictest
local immigration laws. That law makes it a state crime to be in the
country illegally and requires police to question people about their
immigration status if they suspect they are an illegal immigrant.
Cornyn insisted Wednesday this his bill, which would fast-track
security money to local and state authorities, has been in the works for
some time and was prompted by the federal government's failure to
adequately secure the border.
"This is something that has been a long-standing problem," Cornyn
said of security issues.
The senator also said he was working with the Department of
Homeland Security and the Department of Defense to get more equipment,
including unmanned aerial vehicles, to federal agents on the border.
"We need to do everything in our capacity to bring security to
our border," Cornyn said.
He said he has long supported comprehensive immigration reform
but insisted that border security had to come first.
Three Democratic senators — Harry Reid of Nevada, Charles Schumer
of New York and Robert Menendez of New Jersey — are developing an
immigration proposal that would call for more federal agents and other
border security measures to be implemented before illegal immigrants
could gain legal status in the U.S.
The security goals "must be met before action can be taken to
adjust the status of people already in the United States illegally,"
according to a copy of the draft legislation, obtained Wednesday by The
Associated Press.
Associated Press Writer Suzanne Gamboa, in Washington, D.C.,
contributed to this report.
Mexico drug violence prompts U.S. border crackdown
Randall Mikkelsen
WASHINGTON
Tue Mar 24, 2009 7:20pm EDT
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With Mexico gripped by rampant drug violence, the United States on Tuesday announced steps to crack down on smuggling of narcotics, guns and money by gangs that threaten security on both sides of the border.
The strategy aims to fight the growing power and violence of Mexican cartels, which ship billions of dollars worth of drugs into the United States and bring back weapons and cash.
The $184 million plan adds 360 federal security agents to border posts and the Mexican interior. It will intensify inspections of southbound traffic, with 100 percent inspections of rail lines, mobile X-ray units for cars, and advanced license-plate readers to identify smugglers.
"What we want to do is to better secure the border area against further violence and make it a safe and secure area where the rule of law is upheld and enforced," said Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano who unveiled the plan at the White House.
She spoke a day before Secretary of State Hillary Clinton leaves on a trip to Mexico to discuss border, economic and climate-change issues.
Turf wars between the cartels and battles with law enforcement killed more than 6,000 people in Mexico last year. They spread fear in much of Mexico and raised U.S. concerns for the stability of Mexican President Felipe Calderon's government and over violence spilling into the United States.
Calderon has made controlling the violence his top priority and sent 45,000 troops across the country to fight the gangs.
The U.S. plan adds to $700 million already handed out by Congress to help Mexican law enforcement and military.
Some said the new strategy did not do enough to stem illegal immigration.
"With hundreds of federal law enforcement officers being relocated to the border, we must ensure that we do not undercut our national security and immigration enforcement responsibilities," said Republican congressman Lamar Smith.
Also on Tuesday, a U.S. official said the administration wants to complete a proposal to resolve a trucking dispute with Mexico before Obama's visit, an increasingly prickly trade issue between the neighbors.
Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg told the White House news conference that U.S.-Mexican ties were "as important as any bilateral relationship that we have."
Mexico is the United States' second largest export market and third largest overall trading partner. Trade between the two totaled $367.5 billion last year.
After Clinton's trip, Napolitano, Attorney General Eric Holder and President Barack Obama are all planning to visit Mexico next month.
SMASHING THE SYNDICATES
Deputy Attorney General David Ogden said a U.S.-Mexican prosecution effort would be modeled after successful efforts to smash Mafia crime syndicates in the United States.
"If you take their money and lock up their leaders, you can loosen their grips on the vast organizations," he said.
Calderon's government has offered rewards of up to $2 million for information leading to the capture of the country's drug kingpins, including Mexico's most wanted man, Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman.
Investigators say nine out of 10 guns retrieved from crime scenes in Mexico are traced back to the United States. Napolitano said the United States intercepted 997 firearms and $4.5 million in cash bound for Mexico in the last week alone.
Separately, the Obama administration is still considering contingency plans to send U.S. troops, probably National Guard reserves, to the border area in case of a broad outbreak of cross-border violence, Napolitano said.
Texas Governor Rick Perry, who has requested an immediate deployment of 1,000 guard troops, said on Tuesday he was pleased with the Obama administration's
attention.
But "what we really need are more border patrol agents and officers at the bridges ... as well as additional funding for local law enforcement," he said.
The U.S. plan would allocate $59 million to local U.S. enforcement authorities for border efforts. Moody's rating agency said a spike in violence could scare some investors away from Mexico.
An increase in drug-related kidnappings has already been noted in some southern U.S. cities, including Phoenix.
The Drug Enforcement Administration said three illegal immigrants from Mexico pleaded guilty this week to holding a drug dealer hostage near Atlanta for a week and regularly beating him in an attempt to collect a $300,000 debt.
Thomas Mangan, with the bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives in Phoenix, said more U.S. law enforcement aid on both sides of the border would be welcome.
Arizona Sheriff Says Cops Are Being Killed by Illegal Aliens; Joins Call for U.S. Troops at Border Tuesday, April 20, 2010 By Penny Starr, Senior Staff Writer
Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu says violence in Arizona by criminal illegal aliens has reached "epidemic proportions." He spoke at a Capitol Hill news conference on Monday, April 19, 2010. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
(CNSNews.com) – Law enforcement officials from the Arizona counties hardest hit by illegal immigration say they want U.S. troops to help secure the border, to prevent the deaths of more officers at the hands of criminals who enter the country illegally.
“We’ve had numerous officers that have been killed by illegal immigrants in Arizona,” Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said Monday at a Capitol Hill news conference. “And that shouldn’t happen one time.”
Babeu said the violence in Arizona has reached “epidemic proportions” and must be stopped. “In just one patrol area, we’ve had 64 pursuits -- failure to yield for an officer -- in one month,” Babeu said. “That’s out of control.”
The recent murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz, who was shot to death last month on his own property, apparently by an illegal alien, also has fueled public outrage.
Arizona Sens. John McCain and John Kyl, both Republicans, called Monday’s news conference to announce a 10-point plan to secure the border between Arizona and Mexico. They are requesting the immediate deployment of 3,000 National Guard troops and a permanent increase of 3,000 more Custom and Border Protection Agents along the state’s border by 2015.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called a press conference on Monday, April 19, 2010 to announce a 10-point plan to secure the border between Mexico and Arizona, including the immediate deployment of 3,000 National Guard troops to the region. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
McCain, who faces a tough primary election against conservative Republican JD Hayworth in September, sponsored an immigration-reform bill in 2000 that would have established a guest-worker program and a “pathway to citizenship” for illegal immigrants. The bill was opposed by many conservatives. He also supported immigration-reform bills in 2006 and again in 2007.
But on Monday, McCain was talking only about enforcement: "The lesson is clear: First we have to secure the border," McCain said. "If you want to enact some other reforms, how can that be effective when you have a porous border?”
Later on Monday, McCain told Fox News’s Bill O’Reilly that he changed his stance on immigration over a year ago. McCain also made that point at Monday’s press conference:
“Let me just say that one of the requirements is absolutely that we need to send 3,000 National Guard troops along the Arizona Mexico border – something that Senator Kyl and I called for well over a year ago,” McCain said.
Kyl said the effort to make sure the government fulfills its responsibility to enforce federal immigration law goes back to the days when Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was still governor of Arizona. But Napolitano has not responded to the latest request for troops through the proposed 10-point plan.
Sen. Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) has long been an advocate for securing the border between Mexico and Arizona by using armed troops. (CNSNews.com/Penny Starr)
“Every one of these recommendations has been recommended to us by people who are on the front line,” Kyl said. “And many of these recommendations are not new. They have been part of what we have been writing to the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security about for a long time.”
The senators’ plan includes a wide range of tactics for securing the border, including funding and supporting Operation Streamline, which calls for criminal charges against and incarceration of individuals who enter the U.S. illegally.
“If you come into America and you’re here illegally, guess what? There is no catch and release. You should be detained for 14 to 21 days and then formally deported,” Babeu said of Operation Streamline. “You come back, guess what? You’re going to prison. That’s what we’ve got to do,” Babeu said.
The plan also calls for the federal government to reimburse the state for the cost of enforcing immigration laws, the installation of fencing in strategic areas, increasing surveillance capabilities and installing a federal magistrate in the state to oversee immigration cases.
McCain and others at the press conference said that more than half of the 1 million illegal aliens apprehended in the U.S. last year were arrested in Arizona and that 17 percent of those are known to have criminal records in the United States.
“Folks, your cops, your sheriffs cannot do this alone,” Babeu said. “We’re doing our best and we’re overwhelmed. We’re stressed and things are out of control. We need the help of troops that are deployed along the border, additional resources for our border patrol and a zero tolerance policy.”
Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever said he believes the porous southern border is not only dangerous to Arizona but to the entire nation, since terrorists could slip through just as easily as drug dealers. “To me, therein lies the real threat to our homeland security,” Dever said.
The senators announced their 10-point plan on the same day the Arizona Legislature sent a tough new immigration bill to Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer, who has not yet said whether she will sign it.
The bill, championed as a law-and-order measure by its supporters, would make it a misdemeanor to be in the state illegally, and it would require police to question people about their immigration status if there's reason to suspect they're in the country illegally.
Sheriff: 282 arrested in San Diego County sweep
(AP) – 4/19/10
SAN DIEGO — San Diego County sheriff's officials say more than 280 people have been arrested in a crackdown on gangs and drug and human smuggling at the U.S.-Mexican border.
Sheriff Bill Gore said Monday that 24 documented gang members and eight gang associates have been booked on suspicion of various offenses following the two-day multi-agency operation called "Allied Shield."
Gore says the operation focused on San Diego gangs allegedly involved in cross-border crime.
Officials say some of the arrests were for smuggling activities that were not gang-related and others were for outstanding warrants, parole violations, probation violations, suspected drunken driving and other offenses.
About 165 pounds of marijuana, 21 pounds of methamphetamine, six pounds of cocaine, heroin and weapons were also seized.
US senators: 3,000 more troops needed on
US-Mexico border
AFP/Getty Images – Senator John McCain (R) and Senator Jon Kyl
participate in a news conference on the border situation …
Mon Apr 19,
5:02 pm ET
WASHINGTON (AFP) –
Two Republican senators proposed Monday sending 3,000 more US National Guard
soldiers to quell violence spilling over the border between their
home state of Arizona and Mexico.
In a 10-point plan for beefing up security in the area, Senators John McCain and John Kyl also called for
permanently adding 3,000 US Custom and Border Protection Agents to the
Arizona/Mexico border by 2015.
They also called for completing construction of 700 miles of fencing
along the border and beefing up unmanned aerial vehicle patrols so that they
could be run 24 hours a day.
"Violence has dramatically increased over the last two years," McCain
said at a joint press
conference with Kyl and two sheriffs from Arizona border areas.
Of the roughly one million people detained after illegally crossing into
the United States from Mexico, 600,000 were nabbed in Arizona, and 17
percent of them had existing criminal records in the southwestern state, said
McCain.
Moreover, "those crossing
the border are increasingly armed," he warned.
"You can't live in Arizona
and not have this problem everyday in the newspapers. People are fed
up," said Kyl.
McCain, once an ardent supporter of overhauling US immigration laws, faces
an unusually vigorous challenge for the Republican Senate nomination
this year from conservative former representative JD Hayworth.
Arizona lawmakers on Tuesday passed one of the toughest pieces of immigration-enforcement legislation in the country, which would make it a violation of state law to be in the U.S. without proper documentation.
It would also grant police the power to stop and verify the immigration status of anyone they suspect of being illegal.
The bill could still face a veto from Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer. A spokesman for Ms. Brewer said she has not publicly commented on the bill. Ms. Brewer, a Republican, has argued for stringent immigration laws.
Under the measure, passed Tuesday by Arizona's lower house, after being passed earlier by the state Senate, foreign nationals are required to carry proof of legal residency.
Immigrants' rights groups roundly criticized the bill. "The objective is to make life miserable for immigrants so that they leave the state," said Chris Newman, general counsel for the Los Angeles-based National Day Laborer Organizing Network. "The bill constitutes a complete disregard for the rights of nonwhites in Arizona. It effectively mandates racial profiling."
The bill's author, State Sen. Russell Pearce, was in a committee session Tuesday and couldn't be reached, his offices said. Mr. Pearce, a Republican, represents the city of Mesa, in Maricopa County, whose sheriff, Joe Arpaio, has gained a national reputation for his tough stance on immigration enforcement. A spokesman for Mr. Arpaio didn't return a request for comment.
The bill is different from an earlier version, giving protections for church and community organizations from criminal prosecution for transporting or harboring illegal immigrants.
In a statement, Tuesday Rep. John Kavanagh (R-Fountain Hills) called the measure "a comprehensive immigration enforcement bill that addresses the concerns of our communities, constituents and colleagues."
"This updated version gives our local police officers the tools they need to combat illegal immigration, while protecting the civil rights of citizens and legal residents."However, human rights groups are certain to challenge the measure in court, said Joe Rubio, lead organizer for Valley Interfaith Project, a Phoenix-based advocacy group, calling it "an economic train wreck." He added that "Arizona's economic recovery will lag way behind the country's if we keep chasing away our workforce. Where do the legislators think business will find workers?"
The bill in some ways toughens up a situation that the Obama administration had tried to roll back. Under a program known as 287g, some local law enforcement agencies were trained to enforce federal immigration laws by checking suspects' immigration status.
Mr. Arpaio, the Maricopa county sheriff, had been one of the most aggressive enforcers of 287g. However, the Obama administration in recent months has sought to scale back that program, and had reduced the resources it made available to Mr. Arpaio's office and others.
The US-Mexico border: where the drugs war has soaked the ground blood red
Cartels have murdered thousands in the past four years as they fight over the spoils of hugely lucrative trafficking. American policy has only fuelled the carnage. The chaos will not change without fresh thinking
By Hugh O'Shaughnessy
Sunday, 21 March 2010
AP
A forensic officer investigates the shooting of a man in Ciudad Juarez
The border between Mexico and the United States is chaotically reverting to historical type, the place of horror it was for most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Nearly 19,000 people in Mexico have been slaughtered in drug violence since 2006, the year the conservative Felipe Calderon was elected president and began deploying some 50,000 troops and federal police in support of the US-convened struggle against street drugs. The line between the two countries – marked on the US side with the remains of what was to have been an electronic version of the Berlin Wall – is once again the world's most lawless and blood-soaked frontier.
Four decades ago President Richard Nixon proclaimed that the US was launching a "war on drugs" and started a strategy to fight on foreign – and particularly Latin American – territory the battles against his compatriots' use of narcotics at home. Today, despite the efforts of the White House to pretend the war is a thing of the past, hostilities with all their incalculable profits, extreme violence, double-dyed treachery and political confusion are blowing back on to US territory. The toll in dead, injured and refugees is climbing swiftly to Colombian or even Iraqi levels.
Gangs are using increasingly indiscriminate violence to intimidate their rivals, the security forces and innocents alike. A US couple were killed in crossfire between gangs while returning from a party in Ciudad Juarez, while their six-month-old daughter cowered on the back seat. A 23-year-old woman bystander was cut down in the resort town of Acapulco as feuding cartels settled a score on the streets, killing eight gunmen in the process. A human rights activist, Josefina Reyes, was killed in Ciudad Juarez shortly after celebrating the New Year. And, most gruesome of all, the face of a 36-year-old, Hugo Hernandez, was found stitched on to a football and dumped outside a government building in Sinaloa state, along with a note reading "Happy New Year, because this will be your last". The murder of Hernandez, whose body parts were found scattered around the town, was a warning to members of the Juarez drug cartel, according to state prosecutors.
But the present focus of attention is the border city of Ciudad Juarez where more than 400 have been killed so far this year. (In 2009, the total came to 2,600.) On 31 January, 16 young people were shot dead at a party and last weekend 50 people were killed, including two men and a woman linked to the US consulate-general. The murders prompted a cry of anguish from Barack Obama and the American staff have been allowed to flee north across the frontier to the US city of El Paso.
Juarez used to make a living by providing liquor and sex to gringos, particularly to GIs from Fort Bliss beside El Paso airport. A railway used to meander southwards from its outskirts towards Mexico City, across the cactus-filled Chihuahuan desert; sleeping cars used to ride it with the sort of balconies on the rear from which Mexican and US presidential candidates harangued voters on the original whistle-stop tours. It no longer runs and Juarez is now an armed camp, a battlefield between rival drug cartels.
The north-south line has recently been used by traffickers to move vast quantities of illicit drugs into the US. Last year, the US Department of Justice fined the Union Pacific railroad $37m for failing to prevent the smuggling of 4,200lb of marijuana and 260lb of cocaine from Mexico into Calexico and Brownsville, California, aboard its trains. The operator claims that it is defenceless against gangs hiding drugs behind false floors and in the moving parts of its trains because neither the Mexican nor the US authorities will allow the train company's staff to inspect cars before they become the responsibility of American border police.
The violence in Juarez is such that 16,000 dwellings have been abandoned, more than a quarter of the city's housing stock. It is estimated that up to 400,000 people have left the city. Calderon has just made his third emergency visit there this year. A middle-aged man asked by a TV reporter what he thought about what the head of state had said answered, "Why did he talk about opening new hospitals? We don't need them – 500,000 people have left this city."
Today, Mexico's impatience with President Obama is becoming tetchily evident. "Organised crime has its origin in two phenomena which affect both countries," the Mexican leader said in Juarez on Wednesday. "They are the consumption and the trafficking of drugs in, and towards, the United States; and the trafficking of arms coming from the United States." There is no doubt in Felipe Calderon's mind who are the bad guys.
The outlawing and criminalising of drugs and consequent surge in prices has produced a bonanza for producers everywhere, from Kabul to Bogota, but, at the Mexican border, where an estimated $39,000m in narcotics enter the rich US market every year, a veritable tsunami of cash has been created. The narcotraficantes, or drug dealers, can buy the murder of many, and the loyalty of nearly everyone. They can acquire whatever weapons they need from the free market in firearms north of the border and bring them into Mexico with appropriate payment to any official who holds his hand out.
And drug-related bribery is gnawing deep into US institutions, as Calderon has long alleged. Thomas Frost of the US Department of Homeland Security says that last year the department accused 839 of its own agents of corruption. In evidence to a US Senate committee this month, Kevin Perkins of the division of the FBI charged with fighting corruption within the US government said his – presumably honest – staff had deployed some 120 agents along the border. They dug up more than 400 public corruption cases that resulted in well over 100 arrests and more than 130 state and federal prosecutions.
A multiplicity of US government agencies, some of them deeply infiltrated by narcos with their deep pockets, are falling over themselves in efforts to bring order to a chaotic situation: the Department of Customs and Border Protection, the Transportation Security Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
A century ago, President Alvaro Obregon used to say, "There is no [Mexican] general who can withstand a cannonade of 50,000 pesos." Though the US media are reticent in their references, it is clear that the habit of generalised corruption has moved northward. Dr Tony Payan, of the University of Texas in El Paso, said the effect of a heavy charge of dirty money is the same on both sides of the line.
The narcos have penetrated the US embassy in Mexico City (as they had previously the one in Colombia's capital, Bogota), their funds allowing them to siphon out a stream of intelligence about future operations against the narcos.
A dozen people were tortured and murdered between August 2003 and mid-January 2004 in a house in Juarez by a capo in a local drug gang. US officials in the Immigration and Customs Enforcement field office in El Paso were told about the killings but did nothing to stop them since their informant was in a criminal syndicate. The US team wanted to maintain his cover and continue using him to capture others. When a whistleblower alerted the government, he was soundly told off.
Down the Rio Grande, in Matamoros and Reynosa, the drug cartels are taking over the prerogatives of the state. Cars of the local Gulf drug cartel cruise with darkened windows and no number plates, displaying transfers with the letters CDG, standing for Cartel del Golfo. According to the Mexico City daily El Universal, the drivers collect protection money from businessmen and shopkeepers, and fine other drivers for speeding or running through a red light.
On Friday came further evidence of the impunity with which the cartels operate. In Monterrey, one of the country's leading business centres, armed men linked to drug gangs blocked motorways with lorries in an attempt to hamper army operations near the US border. Gunmen pulled truck and bus drivers out of their vehicles in the wealthy business city and used them to set up more than 30 blockades on major four-lane motorways, sometimes slashing tyres to make it harder to tow them away.
The Mexican media and NGOs are critical of Calderon's policy of militarising the northern border. He has used increased dollops of US subsidy to do so, totalling some $1,300m since he became president. One Mexican paper proclaimed this week: "The US puts in the money, Mexico puts in the corpses."
Obama looking to give new life to immigration reform
In an effort to advance a bill through Congress before midterm elections, the president meets with two senators who have spent months trying to craft legislation.
By Peter Nicholas
6:18 PM PST, March 4, 2010
Reporting from Washington
Despite steep odds, the White House has discussed prospects for reviving a major overhaul of the nation's immigration laws, a commitment that President Obama has postponed once already.
Obama took up the issue privately with his staff Monday in a bid to advance a bill through Congress before lawmakers become too distracted by approaching midterm elections.
In the session, Obama and members of his Domestic Policy Council outlined ways to resuscitate the effort in a White House meeting with two senators -- Democrat Charles E. Schumer of New York and Republican Lindsey Graham of South Carolina -- who have spent months trying to craft a bill.
According to a person familiar with the meeting, the White House may ask Schumer and Graham to at least produce a blueprint that could be turned into legislative language.
The basis of a bill would include a path toward citizenship for the 10.8 million people living in the U.S. illegally. Citizenship would not be granted lightly, the White House said. Undocumented workers would need to register, pay taxes and pay a penalty for violating the law. Failure to comply might result in deportation.
Nick Shapiro, a White House spokesman, said the president's support for an immigration bill, which would also include improved border security, was "unwavering."
Participants in the White House gathering also pointed to an immigration rally set for March 21 in Washington as a way to spotlight the issue and build needed momentum.
Though proponents of an immigration overhaul were pleased that the White House wasn't abandoning the effort, they also wanted Obama to take on a more assertive role, rather than leave it to Congress to work out a compromise.
Immigration is a delicate issue for the White House. After promising to revamp in his first year of office what many see as a fractured system, Obama risks angering a growing, politically potent Latino constituency if he defers the goal until 2011.
But with the healthcare debate still unresolved, Democrats are wary of plunging into another polarizing issue.
"Right now we have a little problem with the 'Chicken Little' mentality: The sky is falling and consequently we can't do anything," Rep. Raul M. Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said in an interview.
Republicans are unlikely to cooperate. On Capitol Hill, Republicans said that partisan tensions had only gotten worse since Obama signaled this week that he would push forward with a healthcare bill, whether he could get GOP votes or not.
Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said in an interview, "The things you hear from the administration won't be well received."
Schumer, speaking as he walked quickly through the Capitol, said he was having trouble rounding up Republican supporters apart from Graham. "It's tough finding someone, but we're trying," Schumer said.
On Thursday, Schumer met with Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, who oversees the government's immigration efforts, to strategize over potential Republican co-sponsors.
"We're very hopeful we can get a bill done. We have all the pieces in place. We just need a second Republican," Schumer said in a statement.
Among proponents, there is a consensus that a proposal must move by April or early May to have a realistic chance of passing this year. If that deadline slips, Congress' focus is likely to shift to the November elections, making it impossible to take up major legislation.
"There's no question that this is a heavy lift and the window is narrowing," said Janet Murguia, president and chief executive of the National Council of La Raza, a Latino advocacy group.
When it comes to immigration, Obama's strategy echoes that of healthcare. He has deferred heavily to Congress, leaving it up to Schumer and Graham to reach a breakthrough with the idea that he would put his weight behind the resulting compromise.
A multibillion-dollar "virtual fence" along the southwestern border promised for completion in 2009 to protect the U.S. from terrorists, violent drug smugglers and a flood of illegal immigrants is a long way from becoming a reality, with government officials unable to say when, how or whether it will ever be completed.
More than three years after launching a major border security initiative and forking over more than $1 billion to the Boeing Co., the project's major contractor, Homeland Security Department officials are re-evaluating the high-tech component of the plan in the wake of a series of critical Government Accountability Office (GAO) reports warning lawmakers that the expensive undertaking is deeply flawed.
The program now places the Obama administration in a quandary, foretold by lawmakers who witnessed Boeing and Homeland Security publicly mischaracterize the nature of the contract, according to GAO, after government officials, watchdogs and contractors privately discovered that it was destined to fail.
"Regrettably, the partnership between [Homeland Security] and Boeing has produced far more missed deadlines and excuses than results," Rep. Bennie Thompson, Mississippi Democrat and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in September 2008. "It will become the 44th president's problem."
Since February 2007, according to a review of federal records by The Washington Times, GAO has been telling Congress and Homeland Security that its high-tech border protection system needed better oversight and accountability, and that it lacked realistic measures of cost, timing and benefits.
Early on, GAO found that Boeing had failed to show how the $1.1 billion high-tech system would meet the objectives of the Secure Border Initiative (SBI), a comprehensive, multiyear, $4 billion Homeland Security proposal to secure the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border, and urged revisions to the company's lucrative contract.
Despite such warnings, based on GAO's detailed evaluations of the root causes of major problems, the goals of the high-tech project, dubbed "SBInet," were not realized and deadlines were pushed back. In September, GAO reported to Congress that the virtual fence scheduled for completion in 2009 will not be ready until at least 2016 — if it goes forward at all.
Meantime, the Obama administration has announced significant budget cuts for U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) programs that depend on costly manpower, fencing, infrastructure and technology. While Homeland Security has described the virtual fence project as a critical element of increased border security, the administration has requested $574 million for the program for fiscal 2011 — a cut of nearly 30 percent compared with the $800 million that Congress approved in fiscal 2010.
"How can Congress even contemplate the administration's substantial cuts to SBInet when the investment plans and oversight reports required by law have been completely ignored?" Rep. Harold Rogers, Kentucky Republican and a member of the House Appropriations subcommittee on homeland security, said last week.
Mr. Rogers is not the only one asking questions. The GAO has asked repeatedly how much more the government is willing to spend on a failed initiative.
"There's a trillion-dollar budget deficit and you're looking for programs that don't work?" said Richard M. Stana, GAO's director of homeland security issues. "This one hasn't proven yet that it's workable."
The White House, in an e-mail response from Tom Gavin, a spokesman at the Office of Management and Budget, said that while SBInet has faced a series of "well-documented challenges," the fiscal 2011 budget supports continued investment in technological improvements at the border.
"Currently, the technology is undergoing field testing prior to operational deployment," he said. "The administration will take a hard look at [Homeland Security] assessments of the most effective ways to deploy security technology along the borders."
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was before Congress last week defending a 3 percent cut to the CBP budget, a proposal that has concerned Border Patrol Chief David V. Aguilar, now serving as acting CBP deputy commissioner. In a Dec. 18 confidential memo to his sector chiefs, a copy of which was obtained by The Times, he said, "As you know, we have been going through some painful budget exercises and … unfortunately it is going to get more painful."
The chief said the Border Patrol needed to cut new expenditures below commitments it made for the fiscal 2009 budget, adding that while "significant cuts" already had been made, additional reductions would be necessary. He directed the sector chiefs to do more with less.
Chief Aguilar also said he "had to shut down" some pending and ongoing programs involving the Border Patrol's Enforcement and Information Technology (EIT) Division, which the agency has described as a key component in its ability to secure U.S. borders.
Critics of the border project contend that the Bush administration had two possible goals in launching SBInet, both of which it failed to meet: to build a well-planned, functional, high-tech system of sensors, cameras, radars and a Border Patrol command center; or to move quickly and tout the border security effort as a means of negotiating immigration reform.
"Those two forces are not in harmony," Mr. Stana said. "The dilemma for the department now is how far does it go with a multibillion-dollar program, or are there other more reliable options at a comparable cost?"
William K. Moore, a former political consultant and now a lobbyist whose clients include the Texas Border Coalition, a group of local officials and community leaders who represent more than 6 million people who live along the Mexican border, described the project as a "political strategy" by the Bush administration to shore up immigration reform.
"The department either pursued it for a political purpose that had nothing to with homeland security, or pursued it without any strategy whatsoever," Mr. Moore said.
Others contend that even after spending more than $1 billion, Homeland Security cannot demonstrate that SBInet or the 370 miles of pedestrian fencing and 300 miles of vehicle barriers being built along the 2,000-mile U.S.-Mexico border are responsible for the apprehension of illegal immigrants or contraband.
The department's budget report for fiscal 2011 does not disclose actual apprehension rates of illegal immigrants for fiscal 2009 or target numbers for this fiscal year, labeling such figures: "For Official Use Only."
Despite Homeland Security's recent decision to re-evaluate SBInet, department officials and lawmakers charged with oversight were told long ago that the virtual fence was being built on a shaky foundation.
"GAO was on this right from the start," Mr. Stana said of SBInet, which was launched in 2006. "The first problem was the government never came up with detailed requirements for the system; they never talked to the Border Patrol."
In February 2007, GAO already knew SBInet needed better oversight and accountability. In a detailed report, GAO recommended to Congress that Homeland Security take a closer look at what Boeing was promising concerning the capabilities, schedules, costs and benefits associated with the program.
Earlier that month, the department had convened a panel of high-ranking government officials, including Homeland Security's inspector general and the U.S. comptroller general, to discuss how to ensure that the government gets what it pays for from outside contractors.
The discussion centered on SBInet and Deepwater, a much-maligned program to develop new ships for the U.S. Coast Guard — an obvious cautionary tale for the border program: One of the panelists that day was Greg Giddens, then director of the SBI program who also headed Deepwater. He could not be reached for comment.
But GAO reports on SBInet kept coming, 14 in all. Congress was told that there were no management controls in place; there were no specifics on staffing levels, goals or status of the project; and there was a risk of cost and schedule overruns and performance problems.
By October 2007, GAO found that Boeing had delivered radars, sensors and cameras to a 28-mile test site near Tucson known as "Project 28," yet the project was incomplete more than four months after it was to become operational. Homeland Security was unable to specify a date when the entire system would be operational, GAO said.
The SBInet contract called for a fixed-price pilot project that, Mr. Stana said, was "intended to be an off-the-shelf application to be replicated up and down the border by 2009." Some of the most basic equipment, in other words, was commercially available at places like Radio Shack.
But as Project 28 bogged down in the often brutal climate of the southwestern border and as the system confused animals and windblown vegetation for suspicious activity, GAO grew more concerned.
"When they missed the first deadline in June 2008, an expectations gap became apparent between what Boeing and the department were telling Congress and what was on the ground," Mr. Stana said. "It's a shame that gap was never addressed by Homeland Security or Boeing."
Boeing spokeswoman Deborah Bosick said in an e-mail that the company's goal "is to deliver a system that will help agents do their jobs more safely and effectively." She referred further questions to CBP.
By September 2008, Homeland Security and Boeing began telling Congress that the virtual fence was a "prototype," meaning glitches were to be expected as the new technology was refined for actual use.
"That is not borne out by the documents," Mr. Stana said. "You didn't start hearing about prototypes until difficulties arose."
Mark Borkowski, current SBI director, responded, "Pilot, prototype, it's a distinction without a difference."
But SBInet remained mired in an ambiguous but consistent state of flux, GAO found, which pushed back deadlines to 2011 and, eventually, 2016. Its September 2008 report said it was "unclear and uncertain" what SBInet was capable of detecting once the program was fully deployed.
The report said the absence of "clarity and stability" impaired Congress' ability to oversee the program or to hold Homeland Security accountable. It said SBInet operational requirements either could not be traced or were "unaffordable and unverifiable."
GAO told Congress and Homeland Security that Boeing would have to engage in a costly re-engineering of the failed off-the-shelf technology if it expected the system to ever work. In spite of a growing number of critical reports, Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security in the Bush administration, accepted the project.
By late 2008, two Boeing vice presidents delivered optimistic reports to Congress. A year later, in September 2009, on the same day the GAO released yet another critical report on the project, a third Boeing vice president similarly told Congress that SBInet was under control.
"There wasn't anything in that report that wasn't in our last report to the previous administration in 2008," Mr. Stana said, adding that in September 2009 he told a House committee that taxpayers were not getting their money's worth out of SBInet.
Mr. Chertoff did not return calls for comment.
Glenn Spencer, president of the American Border Patrol, a private organization that uses airplanes and high-tech equipment to monitor the U.S.-Mexico border, said the virtual fence failed because Homeland Security "did not set measurable goals for the system."
"Boeing didnt really know what to build and [Homeland Security] had no way of knowing if it was working or not," said Mr. Spencer, whose board includes two former Border Patrol chiefs. "The axiom reads: If you cant measure it, you cant improve it."
Ms. Napolitano first announced that the program was under review on Jan. 8, the Friday before a report on SBInet aired on CBS' "60 Minutes." On Wednesday, she signaled in testimony to a Senate committee that SBInet was hanging in the balance, saying that "before we say we're going to do this along the entire border, we need to re-evaluate and see if there's better technologies that will pair with our actual boots on the ground in a more effective way."
A day later, Mr. Borkowski sounded more committed to SBInet: "I am optimistic that this is a good system that will pass our evaluation tests by the end of 2010."
Mr. Thompson said the Homeland Security Committee will continue its "careful oversight" of SBInet, adding that the "American taxpayers expect a return on their investment." He urged Ms. Napolitano to "ensure that SBInet delivers as promised, or examine whether other reliable, cost-effective technology can help secure America's borders."
Send California inmates to Mexico, says Schwarzenegger
AFP/Getty Images/File – The California Institution for Men prison is seen in Chino, California. A riot took place at the prison …
Mon Jan 25, 8:45 pm ET
SAN FRANCISCO (AFP) – Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger suggested California could ease its crowded prison system by sending thousands of undocumented inmates to specially built jails in Mexico.
Speaking to reporters at the Sacramento Press Club, Schwarzenegger said California could ease its strained finances by a billion dollars if 20,000 illegal immigrants currently held in the state were housed across the border.
"I think that we can do so much better in the prison system alone if we can go and take, inmates for instance, the 20,000 inmates that are illegal immigrants that are here and get them to Mexico," Schwarzenegger said.
"Think about it -- if California gives Mexico the money. Not 'Hey, you take care of them, these are your citizens'. No. Not at all.
"We pay them to build the prison down in Mexico. And then we have those undocumented immigrants down there in prison. It would half the costs to build the prison and run the prison. We could save a billion dollars right there that could go into higher education."
Schwarzenegger's remarks come as California prepares for the latest in a long line of state budget crises.
Schwarzenegger declared a fiscal emergency earlier this month, warning severe cuts were necessary to stem a 19.9-billion-dollar deficit.
California has some of the most overcrowded prisons in the United States, with an estimated 170,000 inmates housed in facilities designed for 100,000 people, according to 2007 figures.
Schwarzenegger said he believed the financial burden of California's prisons could be eased if the private sector moved into the industry.
"I think that there is no reason why we should have just state employees and public prisons," Schwarzenegger said. "Why shouldn't we have private prisons and private prisons competing with public prisons?
"I don't want to go and get rid of public prisons, not at all. It's not an attack on their labor union even though they may take it as such.
Immigration reformers see parallels in MLK's work
ByDEEPTI HAJELA, Associated Press Writer Deepti Hajela, Associated Press Writer– 1 hr 23 mins ago Jan. 14, 2009.
NEW YORK – After almost nine years, Nigerian immigrant Emakoji Ayikoye is on the brink of becoming an American, just waiting to say the words of the citizenship oath.
But Thursday's ceremony is weighted with more symbolism than usual for the 32-year-old college math teacher. It's one of several being held nationwide in honor of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Another, on Friday in Atlanta, will feature a speech from his daughter Bernice King.
Honoring the slain civil rights leader via a naturalization ceremony makes perfect sense to Ayikoye. And around the country, immigration reform advocates also are connecting their efforts to the work of King and the civil rights movement, looking for inspiration and a way to gain support in hopes of passing legislation in 2010.
King would have turned 81 on Friday. The holiday honoring him is Monday.
It's not unusual for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to hold naturalization ceremonies around holidays such as July 4 or at places with ties to immigrant history such as Ellis Island. But the week of events honoring King is a first for the agency.
"When we greet new citizens into the United States we speak of the open opportunities that our country presents to everyone around the world who qualifies for the benefits our agency administers," said Alejandro Mayorkas, the USCIS director. "Martin Luther King helped define those hopes and opportunities for everyone."
Ayikoye said King "fought for the equality of people." He pointed out that the reform of immigration laws that allowed more people from all over the world to come to America took place as the civil rights movement was going on.
"His work paved the way for me to become a citizen," Ayikoye said. "Without him, there is absolutely no way I would become a citizen today."
The efforts of King and others in the civil rights movement created a political atmosphere in the 1960s that helped those who were trying to change the country's immigration laws, said David Canton, associate professor of history at Connecticut College in New London.
"The whole '60s were about democracy and reform," he said.
Immigration laws at the time were extremely restrictive and were biased in favor of people from places such as northern Europe.
Those who wanted that changed "made people realize that it's not fair, it's not democratic," Canton said.
The current basic framework, that all countries get the same number of visas, was put into place through the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965.
Those advocates who are hoping for reform to come again this year, with changes including a path to citizenship for the nation's undocumented population, are still looking toward King.
In Oakland, Calif., the Black Alliance for Just Immigration invokes King's efforts to bring people together as it works to build support among blacks for immigration reform.
The group tries to make links between what blacks have faced and what immigrants face, said Gerald Lenoir, director of BAJI.
"Even some of the migration experiences of African-Americans, coming from the South, leaving conditions of economic injustice and terrorism from both legal authorities and groups like the Ku Klux Klan, we see that same kind of movement in people across borders," he said.
In Houston, the Rev. Harvey Clemons Jr. wrote an editorial calling on people to follow King's guidance on reform, in terms of working toward a system that treats all who enter the United States with respect.
"Dr. King invoked the truth, the truth being that all humans ought to be treated with a certain dignity," Clemons told The Associated Press. "It would be natural for us to look to him as an example for fighting for a just cause."
Pro-immigration groups are more united, better-funded and, unlike the last battle in 2007, are ready to fight back against what they say is a wave of hatred from opponents as they gear up for another bruising immigration fight in Congress.
The groups range from businesses and Hispanic rights organizations to labor unions and religious denominations. They lost their fight for immigration reform three years ago after finger-pointing and disagreements between businesses and labor.
The groups also blame a Washington-centric strategy while their opponents ran a spectacularly successful grass-roots campaign.
"We're in much, much, much, much better condition than we were in 2007," said Eliseo Medina, executive vice president of the Service Employees International Union and one of the key organizers of the coalition. "We have a united labor movement, and we have, I think, a tighter-knit network of immigrant rights advocates, organizations, churches and others around the country."
Congress tried twice in recent years to reform immigration policy. The Senate passed a bill in 2006, though it was clear the House would never take up the measure. In 2007, with the House more open to a bill and with President Bush's encouragement, the Senate tried again, but failed in dramatic fashion, with a majority of senators voting to filibuster the measure.
One key problem was that labor unions and businesses were split over how to handle the future flow of workers. Businesses and the Bush administration wanted a high cap on visas but also wanted the workers to be temporary. Labor unions wanted little to do with guest-worker programs and wanted any immigrants to have the same path to citizenship that illegal immigrants were given.
The same division remains, but groups have approached the issue differently this year. While trying to forge an agreement among themselves in 2007, they only fractured. This time, labor unions are rallying the left-of-center troops, and businesses are working on the right-of-center side. The goal is to come together when a bill emerges.
Tamar Jacoby, president of ImmigrationWorks USA, which organizes business owners to push for immigration reform, said the coalition has become smarter and better funded.
"Especially on the left-of-center side, they've had unprecedented amounts of money in the past year, and they're organizing the field, coordinating among themselves, they're unrecognizable almost from what they were in 2006 and 2007," she said. "The business side hasn't had as much money pumped in and hasn't transformed as much, but it's also at a different level of the game."
She said the business coalition had a Washington-based operation in the past, but now farm and restaurant owners are telling their congressional representatives about the importance of immigration reform.
Dallas police ticketed 39 drivers in 3 years for not speaking English
Dallas police wrongly ticketed at least 39 drivers for not speaking English over the last three years, Police Chief David Kunkle announced Friday while promising to investigate all officers involved in the cases for dereliction of duty.
Pending cases will be dismissed, and those who paid the $204 fine for the charge, which does not exist in the city, will be reimbursed, Kunkle said.
"I was surprised and stunned that that would happen, particularly in the city of Dallas," Kunkle said. "In my world, you would never tell someone not to speak Spanish."
The citations were issued in several different patrol divisions by at least six different officers. One of those officers was responsible for five of the citations, Kunkle said.
The case that led to the discovery of all the others occurred Oct. 2, when Ernestina Mondragon was stopped for making an illegal U-turn in the White Rock area. Rookie Officer Gary Bromley cited Mondragon for three violations: disregarding a traffic control device, failure to present a driver's license and "non-English speaking driver."
In that case and perhaps the others, officials said, the officer was confused by a pull-down menu on his in-car computer that listed the charge as an option. But the law the computer referred to is a federal statute regarding commercial drivers that Kunkle said his department does not enforce.
Bromley, 33, is a trainee officer in the northeast patrol division, meaning he still works with a training officer during every shift. His training officer on that day was Senior Cpl. Daniel Larkin, 53.
According to department policy, a sergeant must also sign off on all citations. The supervisor who signed off on the Mondragon ticket was Sgt. David Burroughs, 50.
"In this case, the field training officer was aware of ultimately what the recruit officer had done," Kunkle said. "The field training officer is going to bear more responsibility than the recruit officer."
Mondragon, a native Spanish speaker, challenged the charge in court and it was dropped, her daughter said. Dallas police said they will drop all charges against Mondragon, who speaks limited English and does have a Texas driver's license.
Police officials did not release the names of the officers and supervisors involved in the other cases. Kunkle said he expected the investigation to last at least a few weeks and could reach back several years.
"An officer has to know the elements of an offense or what's necessary to constitute a crime," Kunkle said. "In this case it appears that officers did not understand."
It is unclear whether the erroneous tickets were reported by the courts. Administrative Judge C. Victor Lander said Friday afternoon that he would be surprised if such charges got past a judge. He said he would conduct a review.
"If there are any outstanding warrants as a result of these kinds of cases that have been inadvertently written, I'm going to direct that they be immediately held," Lander said. "If there are any cases in the prosecutorial pipeline, I'm going to request the city attorney to hold the case."
The citations amount to a small percentage of the roughly 400,000 tickets issued by Dallas police each year. But the total is large enough to have possible legal ramifications, said George A. Martinez, a professor at the Southern Methodist University Dedman School of Law.
"It sounds like a policy," Martinez said. "Discrimination on the basis of language ability, and that's targeting Latinos, and so that sounds pretty serious to me."
Attorney Domingo Garcia said he has been hired to represent the Mondragon family.
"The issue has nothing to do with whether people should learn English or not. I believe they should," Garcia said. "It's about not following the law and issuing citations against a law that doesn't exist, against a fairly voiceless and helpless population."
Beyond potential legal problems, some said the tickets send a troubling message to Hispanics.
"It's the principle of the matter that there are police officers out there representing our city who actually think that it's a crime not to speak English," said Brenda Reyes, a political consultant and member of the League of United Latin American Citizens.
Kunkle, who apologized repeatedly, said he recognized the incidents probably would damage the department's relationship with the Hispanic community.
"When we deal with crime victims ... our interest is not their immigration status," Kunkle said. "It's not something that we concern ourselves about. We want to serve all people."
U.S. to house detained migrants in converted hotels
PHOENIX (Reuters) - The United States, criticized for holding illegal immigrants in overcrowded and poorly run jails, on Tuesday announced plans to convert hotels to detain some noncriminal immigrants.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said illegal immigrants ranging from criminals to newly arrived asylum seekers would be held in different facilities according to the risk they pose.
"This is a system that encompasses many different types of detainees, not all of whom need to be held in prison-like circumstances," Napolitano told a conference call.
Referring to noncriminals such as newly arrived asylum seekers, Napolitano said, "We will begin efforts to house these populations near immigration service providers and pursue different options like converted hotels or residential facilities for their detention."
About 32,000 immigrants to the United States are held at any given time in about 350 local jails and private prisons, which have been criticized for providing poor medical care and oversight.
The Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency is part of the Department of Homeland Security.
Immigration reform has been a contentious issue in U.S. politics. Congress has failed to pass reforms amid differences over how to deal with about 12 million illegal immigrants in the country and demands border security first be addressed
The changes are part of a broader overhaul of the immigration detention system to "centralize, organize, provide oversight (and) ensure greater federal accountability," Napolitano said.
Other reforms include doubling the number of ICE employees at detention facilities that house about 80 percent of immigration detainees, to provide greater day-to-day oversight, and providing alternatives to detention, like ankle bracelets.
Napolitano said efforts are also under way to develop an online locater system for families and lawyers to find detainees, as well as efforts to centralize and oversee more than 300 immigration detention contracts, and improve medical care for detainees.
"These new initiatives will improve accountability and safety in our detention facilities as we continue to engage in smart and effective enforcement of our nation's immigration laws," she said.
IMMIGRATION REFORM
President Barack Obama is currently seeking support among Democratic and Republican lawmakers to overhaul the broken immigration system in the United States.
He supports offering illegal immigrants in good standing the chance to pay a fine and become citizens, at the same time cracking down on employers hiring undocumented workers and hardening security on the porous Mexico border.
The move to overhaul the immigration detention system -- in which more than 90 detainees have died since 2004 -- was welcomed by Democrats in the U.S. Congress, where they are a majority.
Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, said a review by the former director of detention planning and policy at ICE, Dora Schriro, which was used as a basis for the reforms, contained "several constructive recommendations."
"The perception of the United States around the world and our role as a champion of human rights is greatly diminished when we fail to treat those in our custody consistent with our values as a nation" he added.
When President Obama addressed Congress last month he made a promise. "There are also those who claim that our [health care] reform effort will insure illegal immigrants. This, too, is false - the reforms I'm proposing would not apply to those who are here illegally." Rep. Joe Wilson, South Carolina Republican, yelled, "You lie," which made that section of the president's speech a part of every newscast.
Illegal immigrants technically are not covered in the bill. However, the health care bill that the Senate Finance Committee likely will pass today does not contain any mechanism to keep illegals from receiving benefits. On a party-line vote, Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee rejected a proposed requirement that would require immigrants to prove their identity. Imagine Congress passing age restrictions on alcohol and not requiring merchants to check IDs. Such a law could be described in a word: toothless.
Democrats seem to think we can trust illegal immigrants not to abuse the system. As Sen. Jeff Bingaman, New Mexico Democrat, put it: "The way I see the amendment, it's a solution without a problem." Expecting those who enter the United States by breaking immigration laws to respect the medical ones could be described in another word: naive.
Mr. Bingamen's claim that there is no problem is, in Mr. Obama's terminology, "false." Illegal immigrants already receive federal medical benefits, according to the Congressional Research Service, some of them illegally. Indeed, illegals do lie to get health benefits, and we don't do much to catch them.
In response to a question from Sen. Charles E. Grassley, Iowa Republican, the Democrat-controlled Congressional Budget Office acknowledged that illegals are receiving government paid health care. Unfortunately, the CBO protected Democrats and refused to make an estimate of how many illegals would get benefits under the health care bill.
If Mr. Wilson was wrong when he said "You lie," now would be a good time for Mr. Obama to tell Democrats that he really meant no benefits for illegal immigrants.
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