tagged w/ Mexican border
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Nearly all of us are descended from immigrants, of course. But in recent years, as living standards have stagnated or declined for all but the wealthiest and most fortunate Americans, the political pressure to choke off illegal migration has exploded. Billions of dollars are spent on higher, stronger fences, sophisticated sensing technology and more border patrol agents.
Tighter security has pushed would-be migrants to try more and more remote and treacherous areas along the nearly 2,000-mile US/Mexico border. Fewer get through. More die on the way. Yet hundreds of thousands try it every year. This year, officials say, more people have died in the desert on American soil than ever before.
To understand what crossers go through for a shot at the American dream, I went to the small Mexican town of Altar, a hotbed of human smuggling, where migrants pay coyotes—smugglers—to take them across. On assignment for Current TV’s documentary series, Vanguard, I found a coyote willing to allow me to accompany him across the border and into southern Arizona desert.
The trip frequently takes three or four days to reach a road north of the border. The coyotes restrict each traveler to two gallons of water, which often isn’t enough to survive. Authorities have found the remains of more than 250 people already this year, and they estimate that for every body they discover many more lie unfound under the brutal southern sun.Nearly all of us are descended from immigrants, of course. But in recent years, as... more
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Federal authorities are investigating why a Mexican drone was in Texas airspace and what caused the unmanned surveillance aircraft to crash into a backyard in El Paso.
The crash occurred after sunset Tuesday behind a house in a former agricultural area, the El Paso Times reported Friday. Police Detective Mike Baranyay said no one was injured.
U.S. officials did not release the exact location of the crash. The neighborhood is separated from Mexico by the Rio Grande, floodlights, the 15-foot to 18-foot tall border fence, a chain-link fence, a line of poles with surveillance cameras and a highway, according to the newspaper.
"We responded to a concerned citizen's call and recovered a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV), which belonged to the Government of Mexico," said Jenny L. Burke, a spokeswoman for Homeland Security, in a statement.
Keith Holloway, spokesman for the National Transportation Safety Board, described the drone as a mini orbiter unmanned aerial vehicle.
The El Paso Times reported Friday that Border Patrol Agent Ramiro Cordero says numerous agencies were involved in returning the unmanned drone to Mexico on Wednesday.
Holloway described the equipment as a mini orbiter aerial vehicle.
Full Story: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/12/17/national/main7159594.shtmlFederal authorities are investigating why a Mexican drone was in Texas airspace and... more
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20 tons of pot seized, eight arrested in San Diego and Tijuana.
Reporting from San Diego —
Federal authorities have unearthed another cross-border tunnel in a San Diego warehouse district, the second major tunnel discovery and multi-ton seizure of marijuana believed to be from Mexico's most powerful drug cartel in a month.
The tunnel, which started in a residence in Tijuana, stretched nearly half a mile and split into two passageways, with the branches emerging at separate warehouses nearly 800 feet apart.
The tunnel was within a block of a subterranean passage found three weeks ago, where authorities seized more than 25 tons of marijuana, the second-largest marijuana seizure in U.S. history.
With Thursday's haul of 20 more tons, authorities said they had dealt a significant double blow to Mexican organized crime groups. The amount seized was the equivalent of about 17 million marijuana joints, said Ralph Partridge, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration office in San Diego.
"This has a huge impact," Partridge said.
Authorities believe the drugs found in the tunnels this month belonged to separate cells of the Sinaloa drug cartel, which has long used northern Baja California as staging ground for smuggling drugs into California. The discovery on Thursday morning came after U.S. agents stopped a tractor-trailer loaded with marijuana bales that had just left a warehouse on Marconi Drive.
Inside the empty warehouse space where a "For Rent" sign hung out front, agents found an opening cut into the concrete floor. They traversed the tunnel to the second opening in a warehouse a few blocks away on Via de la Amistad.
To find the opening on the Tijuana side, Mexican Army soldiers traversed the entire 2,200-foot passage, which featured lighting and ventilation systems. They surfaced in the kitchen of the residence where a family lived. Authorities said six people were arrested in Mexico.
"They were very surprised," said Tim Durst, an assistant special agent from Immigration and Customs Enforcement who heads the multi-agency San Diego Tunnel Task Force. The bust culminated an eight-month investigation, built largely on tips from informants.
Authorities seized four tons of marijuana in the Tijuana residence and another location in Mexico; three tons in the tunnel; and about 13 tons in the tractor trailer. Two men were arrested in California, including the driver of the tractor-trailer.
The tunnel was one of the longest ever discovered and had several unique features that highlighted traffickers' evolving approach to ferrying drugs under the border. The floor of the passageway was lined with tongue-and-groove wooden boards that served as a level surface for the cart and rail system. There was an underground room, roughly 10 by 20 feet, where smugglers off-loaded the marijuana bales from the cart before hoisting them to the surface.
The most unusual feature was the construction of two tunnel branches, which authorities speculate allowed smugglers alternate exit points in case of surveillance.
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-tunnel-20101127,0,416000.story20 tons of pot seized, eight arrested in San Diego and Tijuana.
Reporting from San... more
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Rupert Murdoch wants “amnesty” for millions of illegal aliens. On Thursday, appearing before the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Immigration, Murdoch said he supports amnesty for “law abiding” illegal immigrants. He did not explain how millions of people who have crossed the border and entered the country illegally may be considered “law abiding.”
Murdoch said legalizing illegals will grow the nation’s tax base. He declined to point out that illegals have instead imposed a net deficit on federal and local governments.
In 2002 alone, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, illegal aliens imposed more than $26.3 billion in costs on the federal government and paid only $16 billion in taxes, creating a net fiscal deficit of almost $10.4 billion, or $2,700 per illegal household. Illegals are a drain on Medicaid, food assistance programs such as food stamps, the federal prison and court systems, and federal aid to schools. CIS notes that although legalization would increase average tax payments by 77 percent, average costs would rise by 118 percent.
“I joined Mayor [Michael] Bloomberg in organizing the Partnership for a New American Economy because I believe that all Americans should have a vital interest in fixing our broken immigration system so we can continue to compete in the 21st century global economy,” Murdoch said.
In other words, legalizing a massive influx of illegal immigrants taking jobs away from legal Americans and imposing a financial a social burden on the federal government and the states is part of the globalization process, according to Murdoch.
“Our system of immigration, I think it fair to say, is broken,” Bloomberg testified. “I think it’s undermining our economy, it is slowing our recovery, and it really is hurting millions of Americans. And we just have to fix it.” He went on to say that legalizing nearly 40 million illegals “will strengthen our economy,” an assertion at odds with reality.
Murdoch said following the law and securing the border is fiscally unfeasible. “It is nonsense to talk of expelling 12 million people,” testified Murdoch. “Not only is it impractical, it is cost prohibitive.”
According to Californians for Population Stabilization, the actual number of illegal immigrants in the United States is closer to 40 million. However, according to James Walsh, the former associate general counsel to the INS, there is no accurate way to come up with a reliable figure. “No exact head count exists for the ghost population of illegal aliens…. Guessing the number is like playing the lottery.”
Walsh arrives at the figure of 38 million illegals in the country by calculating “a conservative annual rate of entry (allowing for deaths and returns to their homeland) of three illegal aliens entering the United States for each one apprehended.”
“Official estimates are somewhat suspect and may represent significant undercounts, as they are produced by the very entity responsible for the tidal wave of illegal aliens entering our nation,” explains Fred Elbel, a computer specialist from Colorado who is an expert in methodologies and data analysis. “Based on [my] analysis… it is likely that up to 20 million illegal aliens presently reside in the United States, with up to 12,000 additional illegal aliens entering every day.”
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In 2001, it was reported that data from the 2000 Census and other sources suggested the government has long underestimated the number of illegal aliens living in the United States.
Philip Romero, former economic adviser to Gov. Pete Wilson of California, estimates that “the average illegal immigrant receives eight to twelve dollars in services for every dollar they pay in taxes, roughly twice the disparity found in 1994… Illegal immigrants impose a ‘tax’ on legal Californian residents in the tens of billions of dollars. Their costs, net of taxes, consume about 20 percent of the entire state budget, crowding out vital services or lower taxes for legal residents.”
http://www.prisonplanet.com/fox-news-boss-murdoch-calls-for-legalizing-40-million-illegals.htmlRupert Murdoch wants “amnesty” for millions of illegal aliens. On... more
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Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said requests by Arizona law enforcement personnel and Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Jon Kyl (R-Ariz.) for 3,000 National Guard troops along the state’s border with Mexico have been answered so far with 1 percent of that number deployed there this week.
“We have a whopping 30 [National Guard troops] this week that are showing up,” Babeu told CNSNews.com. “It’s less than a half-hearted measure designed to fail.”
But the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) has placed 15 signs along a 60-mile stretch of Interstate 8 that links San Diego with Phoenix and Tucson warning travelers of drug cartels and human trafficking operations.
“DANGER – PUBLIC WARNING, TRAVEL NOT RECOMMENDED,” read the signs placed along Interstate 8. “Visitors May Encounter Armed Criminals and Smuggling Vehicles Traveling at High Rates of Speed. Stay Away From Trash, Clothing, Backpacks, and Abandoned Vehicles.”
“BLM Encourages Visitors To Use Public Land North of Interstate 8,” the signs say.
“I think the American people are outraged that we can fight wars half-way around the world, send our nation’s treasury and our most precious resources – our American heroes that serve in the military -- and yet here in our own country somehow they believe it’s okay for us not to have a secure border,” Said Sheriff Babeu.
“And that it’s okay to put up signs in my county and parts of America to surrender parts of our country to foreign born criminals,” Babeu added, “warning our own American citizens to stay out.”
In May, President Barack Obama said he would deploy 1,200 National Guard troops to the U.S.-Mexico border to help quell the violence there, which is less than half of the 3,000 troops requested by Babeu, Cochise County Sheriff Larry Dever, Sen. McCain and Sen. Kyl for Arizona’s border during a press conference on Capitol Hill in April.
The Obama administration has said it will deploy National Guard troops to the southern border incrementally to eventually have 1,500 troops in place. In addition, $600 million in “emergency border protection funding” was approved in legislation the president signed into law in August.
Babeu said the warning signs are 70 to 80 miles from the border and just 30 miles from Phoenix, the fifth largest city in the United States.Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu said requests by Arizona law enforcement personnel... more
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by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Anti-immigrant forces have adeptly shaped the ongoing immigration debate into an issue of crime and punishment. Now, the pending passage of a $600 million border security bill could breathe new life into the narrative of the criminal immigrant – despite the increasing safety of our border communities.
The sentiment is familiar, if false: Crime in Mexico fuels migration, which breeds violence on the border, which must then be combated within our cities. The undocumented must be punished for stealing our jobs, stealing our services and ruining our neighborhoods. In Arizona, lawmakers like state senator Russell Pearce (who claims that his ring finger was shot off by a Latino gang member) used just that rhetoric to justify the passage of SB 1070 and other anti-immigrant laws.
The reality is far different. Not only do Mexicans and immigrants experience the worst of drug-related border violence, immigration enforcement programs have shifted their resources from combating trafficking to deporting non-criminal immigrants.
Securing the border against non-criminals
At ColorLines, Julianne Hing reports that a border security bill passed by the Senate last Friday would provide $600 million in funding for unmanned aerial drones, communications equipment and 1,500 new enforcement agents on the U.S.-Mexico border. The sum is in addition to $701 million recently approved by the House for similar militarization efforts at the border.
The Obama administration quickly affirmed its support of the bill, which was re-introduced in the House and will go before the Senate for another vote today. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Secretary Janet Napolitano reiterated the president’s assurances that the new resources would primarily target “transnational criminal organizations” in an effort to reduce “the illicit trafficking of people, drugs, currency and weapons.”
Experts argue that this renewed emphasis on border security may encourage Republicans to cooperate in passing comprehensive immigration reform – a suggestion that some lawmakers, including Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), have been quick to endorse.
The government’s demonstrated border policing priorities don’t gel with the administration’s assurances that increases in border security will solely focus on organizing crime and trafficking. As the Immigration Policy Institute points out, federal prosecutions of smugglers and drug traffickers have gone down significantly as resources have shifted to the prosecution of non-criminal immigrants crossing the border illegally.
Policing the innocent instead of the criminal
As Elise Foley reports at the Washington Independent, newly released records show that a significant portion of those deported through the Secure Communities program — which requires local law enforcement to share fingerprints with federal authorities — had no criminal records.
That number constitutes one-fourth of deportees nationally, but the proportions are much higher county-to-county. In Maricopa county, Arizona — the home of Sheriff Joe Arpaio — 54 percent of deportees were non-criminals, while in Travis county, Texas, the figure was 80 percent.
Immigration advocacy groups argue that the new data defies DHS’s stated commitment to prioritizing dangerous illegal immigrants over non-criminals. “ICE has blatantly misrepresented the program by saying it focuses on high-risk illegal immigrants,” Sarahi Uribe, an organizer with National Day Laborer’s Organizers Network, told Foley.
Given ICE’s admitted lack of resources and the inhumane conditions documented in many detention centers, prioritization of non-criminal immigrants is a troubling reminder that the anti-crime rhetoric of the anti-immigrant Right is nothing more than a ruse.
U.S. border communities are safer than ever
Yet, despite the ugly picture painted by mass deportations and massively-funded border security bills, communities along the U.S.-Mexico border are actually quite safe.
As Elena Shore reports at New America Media, a new poll commissioned by the Border Network for Human Rights found that 87 percent of people living in 10 different U.S. border towns feel safe in their communities— a finding supported by other statistics:
An FBI report obtained by the Associated Press found that the four big U.S. cities with the lowest rates of violent crime are all along the border: San Diego, Phoenix, El Paso and Austin. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection report obtained by AP also found that being a Border Patrol agent is much less dangerous than being a street cop in most cities.
No asylum for Mexicans fleeing cartel violence
The relative safety of U.S. border communities stands in stark contrast, however, to that of their Mexican neighbors. While Americans live comfortably on the north side of the border, places like Ciudad Juarez (El Paso’s seedy sister city) are wracked by cartel violence.
At the Texas Observer, Susana Hayward examines the strained relationship between the two cities: one threatened by escalating drug violence, the other a gateway to largest drug market in the world. Chronicling the stories of Mexicans affected by the drug war, Hayward reminds us that while the U.S. repeatedly reaffirms its commitment to combating drug trafficking and to keeping the border safe, it offers no recourse to the scores of Mexicans who seek refuge from the violence.
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Catherine A. Traywick, Media Consortium blogger
Anti-immigrant forces have... more
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A high-profile Arizona law-enforcement officer who has been outspoken about his support for the state's controversial new immigration law is receiving death threats.
Some of the threats against Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu were from the Mexican mafia and drug cartel members.
Outside law enforcement teams brought in to investigate the threats found them credible.
Babeu was very outspoken about the need to secure the state's border with Mexico -- a known entry point to the U.S. for drug smugglers and illegal immigrant traffickers -- and supports law SB1070, which makes illegal immigration a state crime.
Despite the threats, Babeu declined a personal security detail because the county resources were already stretched.
"I understand this threat, yet I will not run in fear or change my support for SB1070 and my demands for President Obama to secure our border with 3,000 armed soldiers in Arizona and start building the fence again," he said.
"I'm always armed, and as every law enforcement member knows, we always have to be aware of our surroundings and possible threats."
Pinal County is nearly 5,400 square miles and much of the desert is known as a drug and human trafficking corridor.A high-profile Arizona law-enforcement officer who has been outspoken about his... more
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by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday that he would be deploying 1,200 National Guard troops to the Mexican border to beef up security along the Río Bravo. This surprise move has garnered criticism from immigrant rights supporters, who argue that it will dehumanize and endanger immigrant and Latino communities.
Julianne Hing at RaceWire offers more details on the plan, reporting that an extra $500 million has also been allocated to law enforcement along the border.
“Obama is reportedly asking for these troop increases in anticipation of Republicans’ demands on a war spending bill this week,” Hing writes. “But Obama’s already outpaced his predecessors in spending on border security and military presence at the border.”
With the militarization of the border there is a heightened sense of danger not only for immigrants, but also for residents. It’s happened before. Esequiel Hernández, a US citizen and high school student, was wrongfully killed by Marines 13 years ago, near the border in Texas after increased militarization.
The deportation race
Even more disheartening, John Morton, Assistant Secretary for the federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, boasted that deportations of undocumented immigrants had already increased by 40 percent this year alone, and were sure to surpass last year’s total of 400,000, according to Suzy Khimm at Mother Jones.
“At the same time, a breakdown of the deportation numbers makes it clear that it’s not just criminal immigrants that federal immigration officials are targeting,” Khimm writes. “There’s been a small decrease in the number of non-criminal immigrants who’ve been deported, but they still make up a large majority of deportations.”
A storm of civil disobedience
In response to inaction on immigration reform and the increased enforcement, a civil disobedience campaign to pressure ICE and the White House to stop deportations continues. At the Real News Network, Jesse Freeston documents the growing civil disobedience relating to immigration reform, which at the beginning of the month included a 35 protesters sitting down “ in front of the White House fence, where they were eventually arrested. This included [Democratic] Congressman Luis Gutiérrez of Chicago, who has been heavily critical of the president’s inaction on these issues.”
Immigrant rights advocates in New York City demonstrated outside of Federal Plaza this week, with more than 35 people peacefully arrested. These demonstrations follow arrests in Washington DC, Seattle and Arizona for similar actions.
AlterNet notes that those arrested in New York included state assembly member Adriano Espaillat, City Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito, and dozens of other reform allies with unions, churches and community groups.
Consequences looming large
Make no mistake—there are political consequences for states like Arizona, where ultra right-wing politicians have passed a new laws targeting undocumented immigrants. As Steve Benen writes in the Washington Monthly, Latinos voters in Colorado and Arizona are quickly moving to support Democratic candidates.
Benen reports that a new “NBC/MSNBC/Telemundo poll shows a similar trend at the national level, where ‘Latinos, once a semi-swing group of voters, now have swung overwhelmingly for President Obama and the Democratic Party, and younger Hispanics are moving to the Democrats in even greater numbers.’”
‘Skin heads and Nazis’
On a different front, former Colorado Congressman and anti-immigrant polemic Tom Tancredo is apparently too radical for many anti-immigrant groups. Americans for Legal Immigration PAC (ALIPAC), a national right-wing group that has linked Latinos and immigrants to rapists and murders on its website, parted ways with the ex-lawmaker.
ALIPAC has pulled out of June 5 anti-immigration rally in Phoenix, citing Tancredo’s supposed connections to white power groups, according to John Tomasic at The Colorado Independent.
Tomasic writes that “[ALIPAC director] William Gheen, who has battled accusations of racist associations in the past, explained that he had raised concerns with Tancredo about event organizer Dan Smeriglio, an activist with long unabashed ties to ’skin heads and Nazis,’ as Gheen put it.”
Great power, many responsibilities
In light of increased enforcement, The Uptake has video of Obama explaining his position on immigration reform. “Government has a responsibility to secure the border and enforce laws,” Obama said. “Washington has an obligation to set clear, common-sense rules, including rules that no longer punish and divide families that are doing the right thing and following the law.”
But Yes! Magazine columnist Kety Esquivel cites different responsibilities. “If history has taught us anything, it is that once human rights are eroded—once we allow ourselves to overlook the humanity of certain groups of people—we have stepped onto a slippery slope,” she writes. “If no one stands up to the injustice, the erosion of human rights continues.”
This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about immigration by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Diaspora for a complete list of articles on immigration issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, and health care issues, check out The Audit, The Mulch, and The Pulse . This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.by Erin Rosa, Media Consortium blogger
President Barack Obama announced on Tuesday... more
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