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(10-25) 17:05 PDT MOUNTAIN VIEW -- A Mountain View woman who fled a violent husband and entered the United States illegally in 1995 faces imminent deportation to El Salvador, where her husband has been looking for her, her lawyer said Monday. Irma Medrano, 44, is being held by immigration authorities at a jail in Yuba City (Sutter County) and could be deported as soon as today, said attorney Aubra Fletcher. She said the government has refused to delay Medrano's case to let her apply for political asylum and has disputed her claim that her life would be in danger in...

"I'm in a gang, and I'm going to kill you if you call the police," Lopez said, according to police.

MEXICO CITY (AP) -- A survivor has told police that 72 people found dead at a ranch near the Mexican border with Texas were migrants kidnapped by an armed group, a federal official said Wednesday. The bodies of 58 men and 14 women were discovered Tuesday when Marines manning a checkpoint on a highway in the northern state of Tamaulipas were approached by a wounded man who said he had been attacked by gang gunmen at a nearby ranch.

Politics: President Obama hit a new low in using a recess appointment to name Maria del Carmen Aponte as U.S. envoy to El Salvador. The radical has consorted with Cuban spies but will be taking no questions. Dismissing three congressional holds on Aponte's ambassadorial confirmation as "playing politics," Obama used his vacation to slip Aponte through to represent the U.S. to the strategic Central American country, without a vote in Congress. That gives Aponte, a campaign contributor aligned to the immigration lobby, access to top-secret information as a political reward. But Aponte's past is one big red flag. From 1982...

This is huge news coming on the heels of Barack Obama’s support for the Ground Zero Mosque. He has appointed Maria del Carmen Aponte to be Ambassador to El Salvador. Three United States Senators have a hold on her nomination. Why? Because she had a longterm relationship with a top Cuban spy. She withdrew as a Clinton appointee back in the 90’s because of it. Senators questioned whether or not Aponte knew about her lover’s spying on the United States and had other serious concerns related to that relationship. How will the American public react when they learn Barack Obama...

Chandra Ann Levy (April 14, 1977–ca. May 1, 2001) was an intern at the Federal Bureau of Prisons in Washington, D.C., who disappeared in May 2001 and is presumed murdered after her skeletal remains were found in Rock Creek Park in May 2002. The investigation led to media allegations of an extramarital affair with then-U.S. Representative Gary Condit,[1] a Democrat representing California's 18th congressional district and a senior member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. Condit was never named a suspect by police and was ultimately cleared of involvement, however the cloud of suspicion raised by the...

A Harris County jail inmate awaiting trial on a murder charge allegedly beat a young illegal immigrant accused of robbing and fatally shooting a 14-year-old girl in the back as she was walking home on Aug. 6. Melvin Alvarado, 22, one of two men charged with capital murder in the death of Shatavia Anderson, was beaten Thursday evening, sustaining serious enough injuries to be hospitalized and receive stitches, said Alan Bernstein, of the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Accused in Alvarado's beating is Robert Williams, 38, Bernstein said. A volunteer inmate crew at the county's jail on San Jacinto entered Alvarado's...

NOTE The following text is a quote: August 11, 2010 ICE arrests 14 men in southern Indiana during operation targeting foreign-born gang members INDIANAPOLIS - Agents with the local U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Office of Homeland Security Investigations (HSI), in close partnership with other federal, state and local law enforcement partners, arrested 14 foreign-born gang members and gang associates during a two-day operation ending Tuesday. This is the latest joint local action of an ongoing national ICE HSI effort to target foreign-born members of violent street gangs. These arrests were made Aug. 9 and 10 in the Indiana...

The suspect in the fatal shooting of a 14-year-old Houston girl was an illegal immigrant from El Salvador who previously was deported twice by immigration officials, authorities said. Melvin Alvarado, 22, was convicted of two separate intoxicated driving offenses in Harris County in 2006 and 2007, criminal records show. He was sentenced to 60 days in jail in connection with the last arrest in November 2007. Gregory Palmore, an Immigration and Customs Enforcement spokesman, said immigration officials removed Alvarado from the country in April 2008 and again in May 2009. Palmore said it was unclear from his records whether Alvarado...

LA JOYA — Police found 11 suspected illegal immigrants in an abandoned tool shed Sunday morning. Officers responded to an "old, dilapidated house" at the intersection of 12th Street and Perales Martinez at 10:39 a.m. Sunday after neighbors said they heard people on the property, said Joe Cantu, a La Joya police spokesman. No one was inside the house, but officers found 11 people crowded in a small tool shed littered with soda cans on the property. Two of the immigrants told police they are residents of Nepal, police said. The other nine people, aged between 18 and 44 years...

NOTE The following text is a quote: Fugitive Captured at Border with Counterfeit Document (Wednesday, July 07, 2010) contacts for this news release Blaine, Wash. – U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers apprehended a Salvadoran man who was wanted in Dallas, Texas, for alleged assault causing bodily injury to a family member on July 3 as he attempted to enter the U.S. at the Pacific Highway port of entry. CBP officers immediately became suspicious of Francisco Oswald Gallardo, 45, when he presented a counterfeit permanent resident card for identification. Often referred to as a green card, a permanent resident card...

SNIPPET: "SAN SALVADOR — Eleven people were killed and eight left wounded after suspected gang members set fire to a public bus on the outskirts of San Salvador, police officials said. Arsonists thought to be members of the Mara 18 gang set fire to the minibus, but "there are no clear motives" for the attack, Roberto Villalobos, a top commissioner with the national civil police, told AFP."

Note: The following text is a quote: May 28, 2010 Charlotte ICE gang operation yields 12 arrests CHARLOTTE, N.C. - U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents assigned to the Charlotte Gang Unit continue making arrests in North Carolina with its recent weekend effort yielding 12 arrests and the seizure of cocaine, marijuana and brass knuckles. Among the 12 arrests last weekend were four gang members and affiliates: one Asian Boyz gang member, two MS-13 gang members and one MS-13 affiliate. All four are foreign-born nationals from Vietnam, Uruguay and Honduras. One is a naturalized U. S. citizen, one has...

Note: The following text is a quote: North Carolina MS-13 Gang Member Convicted of Racketeering Charges Related to Murder; First MS-13 Member Sentenced to Death Defendant Shot and Killed Two Brothers in December 2007 in Guilford County, N.C. WASHINGTON—A 12-person federal jury in Charlotte, N.C., today voted unanimously to impose the death penalty against Alejandro Enrique Ramirez Umana, aka “Wizard,” 25. Umana was convicted by the same jury on April 19, 2010, for the murders of Ruben Garcia Salinas and his brother, Manuel Garcia Salinas, on Dec. 8, 2007, in Guilford County, N.C. The jury also found that Umana was...

El Salvadoran officials are worried that a Mexican drug trafficking organization may be forming an alliance with a feared Central American gang. Mexico’s El Universal newspaper is reporting that members of the Zetas are in El Salvador where they may be working on an alliance with the Mara Salvatrucha gang. El Salvador’s President Mauricio Funes told reporters the Zetas are believed to be in his country and working on forming the alliance. El Universal reported that the Zetas and other Mexican drug trafficking organizations are vying for control of cocaine smuggling routes through Central America. Click here to watch the...

One person is murdered every two hours in Venezuela. The murder rate in the South American country has more than quadrupled since Hugo Chávez came to power in 1999. There were 54 homicides per 100,000 people last year, a rate only exceeded on the continent by El Salvador, where there were 70 homicides per 100,000 citizens. "The problem is not so much the criminals, but rather the government's inaction and lack of policies," Briceño blames an ineffective justice system and high rates of corruption. The capital city, Caracas, has the highest murder rate on the continent

LAREDO, TX—Rigoberto Torres-Gomez, a native of El Salvador illegally in the United States, has pleaded guilty to assaulting a Border Patrol (BP) agent, United States Attorney Tim Johnson announced today. Torres-Gomez, 29, entered his guilty plea today before United States District Court Judge Micaela Alvarez. On Feb. 15, 2009, two BP agents were on foot inside the Triple S Ranch near mile-marker 35, north of Laredo searching for illegal aliens. The agents then received information that a group of illegal aliens were heading east toward IH-35. Both agents jumped the fence and began running east toward IH-35 to apprehend the...

President Barack Obama has nominated Mari Carmen Aponte to become the next ambassador of El Salvador, a decade after she was forced to withdrawal her name from consideration for a similar post following concerns about alleged ties to Cuba, Newsmax.com reports. A former FBI official told Fox News that Aponte’s 1998 nomination by president Clinton began receiving attention after the foreign relations panel questioned her about a past relationship with Roberto Tamayo, who was alleged to have "possible ties to the Cuban government" and made "repeated trips there." Current White House spokesman Tommy Vietor responded, "as has been previously reported,...

Note: The following text is a quote: FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASEThursday, December 17, 2009 Guyanese National Charged with Smuggling Indian Nationals to the United States A Guyanese national has been indicted on charges of conspiracy and alien smuggling in connection with her role in the smuggling or attempted smuggling of four Indian nationals to the United States. Annita Devi Gerald, aka Annita Rampersad, 52, was charged in a nine-count indictment returned yesterday by a federal grand jury in the Southern District of Texas. Gerald was arrested by ICE special agents in Houston on Nov. 17, 2009, and has been held without...

A leftist La Raza activist previously forced out of a U.S. ambassadorship for her close ties to a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government has been nominated by President Obama to a key administration post. Mari Del Carmen Aponte, a former director at the extremist Mexican group National Council of La Raza (see the press release applauding her nomination) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, has been handpicked by Obama to be the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. That means Aponte, an attorney and independent consultant, will represent the State Department in the civil war-ravaged Central American country. In 1998...