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Maria Celeste interviews Lou Dobbs

WASHINGTON, July 8, 2009 – The commander of a U.S. Marine brigade in southern Afghanistan is cautiously optimistic at progress made in the first week of an offensive there, but says more Afghan forces are needed.“We're still very early into this operation. … [I’m] very cautiously optimistic that things have gone well,” Marine Corps Brig. Gen. Lawrence Nicholson, commander of the 2nd Marine Expeditionary Brigade, said in a conference call from Marine Camp Leatherneck in Helmand province with reporters at the Pentagon. Some 4,000 Marines and 650 Afghan security forces launched the ongoing Operation Khanjar, which translates to Strike of...

WASHINGTON, July 3, 2009 – U.S. Marines and Afghan security forces are continuing Operation Khanjar in Afghanistan’s Helmand province, NATO officials said today. Almost 4,000 personnel from the Marine Expeditionary Brigade Afghanistan have moved into cities and towns along the Helmand River and are digging in for the long haul. The addition of nearly 22,000 American personnel in Afghanistan will allow the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force to institute a “clear, hold, build” counterinsurgency strategy. Before, small numbers of coalition forces would enter an area and clear it of Taliban, but the shortage of forces meant that when they pulled...

Madison - The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee approved measures Friday that would let some illegal immigrants pay in-state college tuition, and provide limited legal protections to same-sex couples. Democrats who control the committee pushed through the measures over Republican objections, on party line votes of 12-4. The provisions were folded into the state budget the panel plans to send to the full Legislature. The committee also approved establishing new schools of freshwater science and public health at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. It did not provide funding. Wisconsin high schools graduate 400 to 650 illegal immigrants annually, and they must pay...

HAMDEN — Less than a week after a town woman was brutally attacked, allegedly by a co-worker, friends and strangers are coming forward to help her. Two bank accounts for her needs have been set up, and a nurse who works at Yale-New Haven Hospital said she wants employees from 65 area bars and restaurants to donate a portion of their tips May 1 to help the woman with what the nurse believes will be enormous medical bills. Eli’s on Whitney, 2392 Whitney Ave., has agreed to be the dropoff point for the one-day event. The victim, 25, was released...

OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) - Illegal immigrants in Oklahoma prisons for nonviolent crimes would be subject to deportation under legislation overwhelmingly approved by the Oklahoma House. In a rare late-night session tonight, House members voted 90-0 for the bill by Rep. Randy Terrill. The Moore Republican says the bill will save the state millions of dollars in incarceration costs. The measure allows the Department of Corrections to send illegal immigrant inmates to the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The bill applies only to inmates who are incarcerated for nonviolent crimes who have served at least half their sentence in state...

TACOMA, Wash. – A judge has sentenced a mother to three months in jail for hitting a convicted sex offender with an aluminum baseball bat. Before her sentencing Friday, Tammy Lee Gibson told Pierce County Superior Court Judge Susan Serko that laws were needed to keep convicted sexual predators away from children. Gibson, 40, who has two daughters, pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of third-degree assault in January. She initially was charged with second-degree assault and felony harassment, which could have meant an eight-month jail sentence if she'd been convicted. Court papers said Gibson hit William Allen Baldwin, a...

A 20-year-old man died in a late Thursday night one-car collision near the Broken Arrow Expressway, said Tulsa Police Cpl. T.J. Campbell. According to police, 18-year-old Joel Jaimes was driving westbound at about 10 p.m. Thursday near 5000 E. 31st. St. with two passengers when he lost control of the vehicle. The vehicle rolled several times before hitting a light pole and coming to a stop upside down, Campbell said. One passenger riding in the front seat, a 20-year-old man, died at the scene, Campbell said. The victim was still wearing his seatbelt in the vehicle when police arrived. However,...

Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio says scrutiny of racial and ethnic profiling by incoming President Barack Obama and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder will not deter his get-tough approach to illegal immigration. “I’m not stopping,” said Arpaio. The Republican sheriff said he plans to continue crime sweeps and raids aimed at illegal immigrants and businesses that employ them. The Obama administration and Holder are expected to increase the focus on racial and ethnic profiling by police. Critics of Arpaio’s immigration enforcement argue the sheriff’s office targets Hispanics and such actions take away from more serious investigations. Arpaio said his immigration...

Fayetteville, N.C. — Cumberland County investigators arrested an illegal immigrant from Honduras in connection with the death of a 64-year-old woman Tuesday. Julio Cesar Ramos, 45, who claims to be homeless and unemployed, is charged with beating Paulette Locklear outside her house Tuesday afternoon. He was being held without bond Wednesday in the Cumberland County Detention Center. Investigators said Ramos had been deported at least a dozen times over the last 20 years but kept getting back into the U.S. Barbara Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Charlotte, could confirm only one deportation – from Houston...

For two decades, Anaheim businessman Erkan Aydin has taken on a task unimaginable for most immigrants like himself: trying to convince the U.S. government that he was here illegally. Aydin, 50, arrived in the United States from his native Turkey with a valid student visa in 1981, but fell out of legal status when he failed to enroll in school, he said.The customer service representative has a powerful reason why he wants to be considered an illegal immigrant. It would make him eligible for the amnesty offered to 2.7 million illegal immigrants under the 1986 immigration reform law. Thanks to...

The crush of illegal aliens has brought us a variety diseases. For the first time we have seen cases of Chagas disease a parasitic illness that is the leading cause of heart failure in Central and South America where as many as 18 million people are infected with this deadly sickness. Transmitted by insects, Chagas, which was unknown here ten years ago is now in 23 states. The open borders crowd from George Bush down are responsible for bring this and other diseases into our lives, because “they do the jobs Americans won’t do.” What a pile of dung! Tuberculosis...

Labor unions are poised to go after Hispanic workers in states like Arizona and sectors such as services and health care if new union rules are put in place by the Barack Obama administration and Democratic Congress next year. Unions and pro-union Democrats want Congress and Obama to pass card-check legislation. The plan would allow unions to organize in workplaces if they get a majority of workers to sign cards supporting unionization. It would scrap 73-year-old unionization laws that require secret ballots for workers to decide whether they want their work forces represented by a trade union. Card-check legislation is...

WASHINGTON -- On January 20, hundreds of thousands of people will welcome a new president and his administration as Barack Obama takes his official post in the White House. The next day-- his first full day on the job--could also be eventful. Immigration policy groups announced Tuesday that they will organize a mass mobilization of immigrant families and supporters in Washington, on Jan. 21, 2009, in part to welcome the Democratic president, but also to also ensure that humane immigration reform is at the top of his agenda. The National Capital Immigrant Coalition and the Fair Immigration Reform Movement—the two...

KNOXVILLE — Groups representing Hispanic immigrants in East Tennessee joined together Friday in downtown Knoxville to explain their missions and outline their goals to members of other civic-minded groups in the community. It is safe to say everyone present had an accent — the native East Tennesseans as well as the Hispanics. The meeting was sponsored by the East Tennessee Foundation and initiated by Gladys Pineda, chair of the Latino Task Force of CEDnet (Community Economic Development Network of East Tennessee). The Latino Task Force is dedicated to linking Hispanics with businesses and organizations in hopes of unifying to create...

Covington, LA Police report that an illegal alien ran an SUV into a Lee Road church and told officers he was trying to teach himself how to drive. Covington Police Capt. Jack West says that 48-year-old Roman Mateo Zeferino, an illegal alien showing a Covington address, has been cited for careless operation of a motor vehicle, no driver's license, and operating a motor vehicle without lawful presence. It happened shortly after 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 15, in the 1200 block of North Lee Road in Covington. Capt. West says that officers responded to a call where an SUV was...

More than a few pundits and commentators have called the Oct. 7 debate between Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama a snoozer because the two candidates didn't go at each other. Whether you concur or not with their assessment, one thing is certain, the candidates are not being grilled on the issue of illegal immigration and its inextricable link to our economic well-being and our national security. Exhibit A is a violent snapshot from Mr. McCain's home county, Maricopa County, Ariz. It unveils, in brutally honest facts and candid law-enforcement comments, what happens when sanctuary and amnesty policies tied...

WEST ALLIS - An illegal immigrant convicted of running down a West Allis mother and daughter faced sentencing Thursday. The child died in a West Allis intersection four months ago Thursday. The maximum sentence for causing death while driving with a revoked license is only nine months. That's what Jose Rodriguez got…but there's a catch. It was an extremely emotional time for the Maddox family. Thursday was the first time Andrea Maddox saw the man charged with killing her daughter and injuring her as the two crossed the street in West Allis

<p>MCMINNVILLE, Tenn. (AP) -- Authorities in Warren County have issued arrest warrants for a man who fled to Atlanta after he was allegedly involved in a double fatality wreck.</p> <p>Sheriff Jackie Matheny said 21-year-old Herlin "Gato" Alvarez of La Vergne is an illegal immigrant and being sought on a charge of leaving the scene of the Sept. 30 accident near Centertown.</p>

NEW HAVEN — Mayor John DeStefano Jr. and supporters lashed back at the Community Watchdog Project, an anti-illegal immigration group, releasing e-mails Thursday sent to city staff members from across the country in opposition to a Mexican flag flying on the Green flagpole. "We do not tolerate hate," DeStefano said, standing in front of the flagpole and backed by representatives of the Irish, Polish and Italian communities, as well as the NAACP and the Anti-Defamation League. "A lot of people have cultural amnesia. They forget they were the sons and daughters of immigrants, and they criticize the next group that...

HOUSTON (Reuters) - The men gather early on street corners here in storm-battered Houston, ready for the jobs they know will come their way, sweeping up broken glass and clearing downed trees and debris from city streets. They speak mostly Spanish, while looking warily at strangers. And these undocumented, also called illegal, immigrants worry that instead of a job and a day's wages, they might instead find themselves arrested and deported. Indeed, in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, which left a trail of destruction across southeast Texas, America's ongoing debate over U.S. immigration policy is again aflame. On the one...

In L.A. County, 75% of inmates who reenter the U.S. engage in more criminal activity within a year. The rate is less for illegal immigrants who have never been ordered to leave. Illegal immigrants who have been deported at least once from the United States are far more likely than other immigrants to repeatedly commit crimes, according to a study by the nonprofit Rand Corp. The data indicated that illegal immigrants, overall, were not a greater crime risk, according to the study, which looked at all inmates released from Los Angeles County Jail for a month in 2002. But among...

Agriprocessors, the Brooklyn-based company that is the nation’s largest kosher meat producer, is well known for the labor troubles at its meatpacking plant in Iowa — federal agents detained 389 of its workers as illegal immigrants in May, and labor officials in Iowa have accused it of employing 57 under-age workers. But Agriprocessors is also having labor troubles closer to home, with the company asking the United States Supreme Court to overturn a vote to unionize at its distribution center along the Brooklyn waterfront. If successful, the company’s appeal could have repercussions at companies across the country: it is trying...

[Phoenix] - John McCain made it clear who his daddy was Monday morning. Daddy Yankee, the hip-hop star from Puerto Rico, endorsed the Republican candidate Monday morning. Wearing black aviator shades in the library of Central High School here, Daddy Yankee said, “I believe in his ideals and his proposals to lead this nation…He’s been a fighter for the Hispanic community.”

A predominantly Latino audience trickled into the half-filled venue as Jorge Hernandez, “El Guero (Blondie),” took the stage just after 7 p.m. Sunday at the Nebraska State Fair. In contrast, people had packed around the fence surrounding the Open-Air Auditorium Friday before country musician Miranda Lambert had played her first note. A capacity crowd of 6,200 had filled the benches on Friday, and 5,800 came Saturday to hear two other country artists. Theories on why Sunday’s crowd was smaller and slower to form ranged from fear of immigration officials to the different cultural tradition of Latinos. Hernandez, the performer, speculated...

We all heard about the person who sat next to traffic and pointed a hair dryer at oncoming cars to see their reactions.I tried it with illegal aliens and a throw away camera. I went to the local gathering places, Circle K, Home Depot, wherever they gather waiting for an early morning pick-up. The minute they saw the camera, they dispersed. Some ran, some wandered away, but the outcome was undeniable. They left!I decided to expand the experiment and took the camera to Wal-Mart. It worked there too! The illegals got out of the store and walked away. Some around...

Hartford Mayor Eddie A. Perez signed an ordinance Monday that stops police from arresting or detaining anyone solely because of their immigration status. The ordinance, passed last week by the city council, also prohibits other city employees from asking anyone seeking services about their immigration status. Perez was previously lukewarm to the idea, maintaining that an order issued by Hartford Police Chief Daryl K. Roberts in March was adequate. It said that city police would not make immigration arrests unless there was also a criminal investigation. In a letter to the city council, Perez also expressed concern about "codifying standards...

National security trumps an immigrant's right to a speedy naturalization process, a Manhattan federal judge ruled yesterday......a group of New Yorkers who hoped to vote in this fall's election sued to force approval of backlogged citizenship applications in time for Election Day. Judge Lawrence McKenna dismissed the lawsuit, filed by the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund; the Judge said he couldn't authorize the FBI to hurry "name checks" - a comprehensive vetting process expanded after 9/11.

REDDICK - Marion County sheriff's deputies arrested an undocumented immigrant from Guanajuato, Mexico, on Sunday evening on charges of molesting an 8-year-old girl. The victim's grandmother entered a bedroom and found Martin Ramirez Garcia, 43, with the girl, sheriff's Detective Mariam Diaz said. "She didn't see the actual touching, but she saw him on top of her," Diaz said. "The grandmother beat him off of her." According to the arrest affidavit, the victim told an investigator that Ramirez Garcia touched her inappropriately over her clothing on several occasions and exposed himself to her. Diaz said the victim's 5-year-old sister also...

The name of the nation’s most visible, self-defined Latino civil-rights organization, the National Council of La Raza, translates as the National Council of The Race. The official website denies it, of course, but we have dictionaries. That controversial term — La Raza — is gaining currency: Some K-12 public schools now teach something called “Raza Studies.” Like those in Tucson, for example. The Tucson Unified School District (TUSD) has, in fact, welcomed Raza Studies in its classrooms for about a decade, but it’s been mighty secretive about the association. What, exactly, is Raza Studies? Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom...

The U.S. authorities must prevent the mass deportation because there are records that over 56% of those deported were sentenced for crimes in the United States, explained the owner of the Procuraduría General de Justicia del Estado (PGJE). Rommel Moreno Manjarrez manifestó que en el 2006 la Agencia de Aduanas y Emigración del sector de San Diego deporto a 16 mil 476 personas y el 56% había sido condenado por delitos en la Unión Americana. Rommel Moreno Manjarrez said that in 2006 the Customs Agency and emigration sector of San Diego deport 16 thousand 476 persons and 56% had been...

Dissatisfied with teaching in Spanish 85 percent of the time, a North Carolina superintendent is pushing for a $10 million budget that includes a plan for a school where only Spanish is spoken. Superintendent Peter Gorman pitched his proposal to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school board today, with provisions to turn Collinswood Elementary into a Spanish program. Nora Carr, chief communications officer for Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District, told WND the facility will help to preserve Hispanic culture. We find that a lot of kids who go there have parents who might be English-speaking immigrants, and they might be very successful," she said. "They...

WASHINGTON (Map, News) - A wave of burglaries is spreading across the Washington area, and police say illegal immigrants, hit by police crackdowns and the drop in new construction, are likely playing a key role. “The immigrant community is at a tipping point,” said Montgomery County police community liaison Officer Luis Hurtado. “The poor economy is pushing more immigrants to turn to crime.” In the first five months of this year, burglaries climbed 10 to 20 percent in many jurisdictions. The District of Columbia had the greatest increase, jumping 20 percent from 1,370 in the first five months of 2007...

In a sign that the Hispanic vote in the West could hold the key to the November election, Republican presumptive nominee John McCain launched his first local campaign ad, a Spanish-language radio spot, in Nevada this week. The 60-second commercial touts McCain, a senator from Arizona, as a nonpartisan problem-solver on the economy. "When we are buying groceries, we don't have a political party," the ad states, according to a translation provided by the campaign. "When we are filling up the gas tank, we are not Republicans, Democrats or independents. We are Hispanics, and we are all hurting together in...

Due mainly to a slump in the construction industry, the unemployment rate for Hispanics in the U.S. rose to 6.5% in the first quarter of 2008, well above the 4.7% rate for all non-Hispanics. As recently as the end of 2006, the gap between those two rates had shrunk to an historic low of 0.5 percentage points--4.9% for Latinos compared with 4.4% for non-Latinos, on a seasonally adjusted basis. The spike in Hispanic unemployment has hit immigrants especially hard. Their unemployment rate was 7.5% in the first quarter of this year,2 marking the first time since 2003 that a higher...

WASHINGTON-The United Nations plans to examine Prince William County’s aggressive crackdown on illegal immigrants during a visit next week. Jorge Bustamante, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on migrants’ rights, plans to tour Manassas and Woodbridge, receive briefings on local enforcement measures, and attempt to meet with local officials. He contacted immigrant leaders in the county two months ago to begin preparing for a visit, saying he was interested in the landmark nature of the county’s actions. Special rapporteurs are tasked with reviewing human-rights issues of international concern to raise political pressure and shape public opinion, but cannot issue sanctions. The...

The Live Oak County Sheriff's Office searched for as many as 19 undocumented immigrants from Honduras on Tuesday after they fled from police a day earlier, according to a county law enforcement official. As many as 22 illegal immigrants were inside of or in the bed of a Toyota four-door pickup that rammed a county deputy's patrol car and ran through a fence on Farm-to-Market Road 623 on Monday, Live Oak County Sheriff's Office chief deputy Glenn Thompson said. Thompson said Deputy Nick Chaviz was patrolling the area alone and fired multiple shots at the Toyota after the truck rammed...

There was no one thing that caused Hector Salinas to pack his bags and give up for good on the trials of life as an illegal immigrant in South Florida. But the reasons he enumerates are echoed by increasing numbers of Latin American immigrants, both legal and not, who appear to be souring on their job prospects and going home: It was the scant money he made at a menial restaurant job, Salinas said, just enough for food and rent, with barely anything left for his family in Mexico -- the reason he came in the first place. It was...

A large segment of the American Hispanic community has historically shared conservative Republican values, even though today many of them vote Democrat. In fact, a close look at US history demonstrates that Hispanics have traditionally been closer to conservative Republican values than to those of the Democrat Party. The GOP needs to establish a clear agenda to reach and mobilize these millions of American Hispanics who are not getting the conservative Republican message. Their presence in the party and their vote is critical and it is still today a swing vote up for grabs. Democrats should not assume that American...

(Burlington, NC) Twelve men were arrested in connection with charges of kidnapping and assaulting three women Saturday and authorities will still trying to sort out the "convoluted mess" on Sunday. The women say they were held against their will at gunpoint in a mobile home at Seamster's Mobile Home Park at 2111 N.C. 49 North, near Sandy Cross Road, north of Green Level, overnight Saturday. A list of names and charges against the men remained unavailable Sunday, as deputies and interpreters were still interviewing the suspects and victims. At least four men had been formally charged with a range of...

MATTAWA, Grant County — Nearly everyone in this small farming community speaks Spanish — nearly everyone except those in city government and the police department, where English is spoken. And almost everyone who speaks one language does not speak the other. It is a language barrier that has engulfed the community, which has grown over the past 20 years from 300 to about 3,200 year-round residents. Nine of every 10 Mattawa residents speak Spanish at home, and eight of every 10 adults speak English "less than very well," according to the 2000 U.S. Census. The Columbia River basin community, surrounded...

WASHINGTON, (AP) -- Texas mayors and business leaders filed a class-action lawsuit Friday alleging Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff hoodwinked landowners into waiving their property rights for construction of a fence along the Mexican border. Members of the Texas Border Coalition said Chertoff did not fairly negotiate compensation with landowners for access to their land for six-month surveys to choose fence sites. The coalition of mayors and business and community leaders is seeking an injunction to block work on the fence. They also want a federal judge to rescind all the agreements with landowners and to order Chertoff to start...

The nation's largest single immigration raid, resulting in nearly 400 arrests earlier this week, violated the constitutional rights of workers at a meatpacking plant, a federal lawsuit says. The lawsuit accuses the government of arbitrary and indefinite detention. It seeks to prevent the government from moving the arrested workers out-of-state as their cases wend through the system. A spokesman for the U.S. attorney's office said he couldn't comment on the lawsuit filed Thursday on behalf of about 147 of the workers rounded up Monday at an Agriprocessors Inc. meat processing plant. The lawsuit was filed against the Immigration and Customs...

The raid today at Agriprocessors, Inc. meat packing plant targeted individuals who were using stolen Social Security numbers. Officials say at least 300 have been arrested but that the number could go as high as 700. The raid was the largest of it's kind in Iowa according to Claude Arnold of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Federal Immigration agents on Monday arrested more than 300 people during a raid at a Postville meat processing plant. The raid by agents from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement was the largest in Iowa history, Matt M. Dummermuth, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Iowa, said at a news conference. Dummermuth said the raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. plant in northeast Iowa came after months of planning, beginning in October 2007. Federal agents were helped by state and local police. Authorities said more than 300 workers were arrested on a variety of charges included fraudulent use of Social Security...

At eleven years old, a Douglas elementary school girl finds herself pregnant and under the protection of Child Protective Services. The name of the girl was not released due to her age. In late January or early Februar 2008, when her homeroom teacher and the school nurse noticed the slight swell of her tummy, the girl dismissed her girth as a tumor, a Douglas police report stated. When her grandparents, who have legal custody of the girl, were questioned, they told Douglas detectives that she ate too much and that’s why she was gaining weight. By the middle of March,...

ST. ANTHONY, Idaho -- A man has been charged with raping a 10-year-old girl who later gave birth in eastern Idaho. The girl gave birth less than two weeks ago by caesarian section at Madison Memorial Hospital in Rexburg, Fremont County Sheriff Ralph C. Davis and other authorities said. Officials would not disclose the gender, date of birth or paternity of the baby. "I wouldn't have believed a 10-year-old could conceive in the first place," Davis said. A hospital spokeswoman would not discuss the condition of the girl or the baby and would not say whether either was still in...

E-mail Father Jonathan Yesterday, May Day, we witnessed some of the largest demonstrations of immigrants on American soil. The masses of mostly brown skinned activists and their followers were protesting what they consider unjust immigration policy and practice in the United States of America. Strewn conspicuously throughout the congregants, one couldn't help but notice church banners, crosses and other religious symbols. It would seem we are witnessing faith-based immigration reform activism. Does this mean God is on the side of the protesters? Seeing these demonstrations on television, my thoughts darted back and forth between the immigration arguments of social conservatives,...

As if Katie Couric didn’t already have enough problems. Weighed down by record-low ratings at the anchor desk of “CBS Evening News,� and by reports suggesting she will leave that post two years before her multimillion-dollar contract expires, Couric now has civil rights groups — mostly Hispanic — on her back. And for good reason. The CBS newscast that carries her name recently aired a one-sided and inaccurate report about illegal immigrant women who give birth to their children in the United States. The news story challenged the broader constitutional law of birthright citizenship and stated — without providing the...

An illegal alien accused of sexually molesting two underage girls in Carthage two years ago entered Alford pleas Monday on both felony counts he was facing in Jasper County Circuit Court and was ordered turned over to immigration officials for deportation to Mexico. Salomon A. Jiminez, 55, entered the pleas to counts of first-degree statutory rape and first-degree statutory sodomy in a plea agreement with the county prosecutor’s office. The agreement limited the length of sentences he could be assessed to 10 years for each conviction and called for the sentences to run concurrently. Circuit Judge David Dally sentenced Jiminez...