Free Republic

Note: The following text is a quote: December 11, 2009 286 arrested in ICE's largest ever enforcement surge targeting criminal aliens 2 convicted rapists and armed robber among those captured in 3-day California operation LOS ANGELES - Nearly 300 foreign nationals with criminal records have been removed from the United States or are facing deportation following a three-day enforcement surge in California, making it the biggest operation targeting at large criminal aliens ever carried out by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). During the operation, which concluded late Thursday, ICE officers located and arrested a total of 280 criminal aliens...

STERLING, Va. - A close inspection by Customs and Border Protection officers at Dulles International Airport turned up something unexpected. Inside a fully-cooked chicken they found cocaine with an estimated street value of $4,300. The 60.4 grams (2.3 ounces) of coke was found inside two small, clear plastic bags inside the chicken's cavity. Officers discovered the white powdery substance during a secondary inspection after a flight from El Salvador arrived shortly after midnight Saturday. It tested positive for cocaine. "CBP officers have seen many unique narcotics concealment methods, and they all present the same challenges to discover them. Our officers'...

Three Houston residents have been arrested and accused of transporting illegal immigrants after a pickup truck carrying the people plunged 40 feet from a roadway and injured them in Jim Wells County in South Texas. Patricio Rebollar Jr., 28, Herman Valdez, 29, and Nancy Martinez, 25, are charged in a criminal complaint with transporting undocumented immigrants, according to federal authorities. Of the 17 undocumented immigrants in the accident, five remain hospitalized with serious injuries and the others have been treated at hospitals and released into federal custody. Rebollar, who was allegedly driving the pickup, was hospitalized with unknown injuries.

Guatemala City, Guatemala) 11/26/09 Guatemala’s immigration reform plan is expected to be considered in the U.S. [Sub-headline]: The National Council for Guatemalan Migrant Affairs (CONAMIGUA) produced a migratory reform proposal which could be strengthened by the inclusion of other Central American countries; the proposal has great possibilities of being taken into account regarding the highly desired reform which is being lobbied in the United States. Erick Maldonado, executive secretary of CONAMIGUA, stated that they are approaching leaders of Guatemalan migrants in the United States and Congressmen of that country [the U.S.] to be able to influence the approval of the...

TODOS SANTOS CUCHUMATAN, Guatemala (Reuters) – Despite a drinking ban mayhem erupted at a traditional Mayan horse race on Sunday with riders falling off their horses and drunken spectators stumbling through the mountain village. Hundreds of tourists and locals gathered for the annual spectacle in Todo Santos Cuchumatan on Sunday to cheer the dozens of riders charging back and forth along a 330-foot (100-meter) length of road for up to seven hours. But the macho test of stamina was marred, as it has been in the past, by the copious amount of homemade spirits the riders consume, sometimes for days...

Note: The following text is a quote: Three Convicted in International Truck Theft Conspiracy Sentenced to Prison HOUSTON—Three men who conspired to steal and transport millions of dollars of truck tractors, trailers and other heavy equipment to Central America have been sentenced to prison, United States Attorney Tim Johnson announced today. Rito Jasso-Zorilla, 32, Victor Antonio Garcia, 27, and Orlando Gonzalez Huerta, 29, all citizens of Mexico, were sentenced by United States District Judge David Hittner this morning for their respective roles in assisting Yuri David Melendez, 42, of Houston, with the far-reaching scheme. Beginning in 2001, Melendez received requests...

Note: The following text is a quote: September 30, 2009 O'Hare Airport temporary staffing employees sentenced for harboring illegal aliens who were given access to secure areas Assisted illegal workers in obtaining unauthorized airport security badges CHICAGO - The owner of a Bensenville temporary employment agency and her assistant were sentenced in federal court Wednesday for harboring illegal aliens and assisting those workers in obtaining unauthorized access to secure areas at O'Hare International Airport, including the tarmac. The sentences resulted from a multi-agency federal investigation conducted in 2007 and led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Mary Gurin, 38,...

(English-language translation) How future events develop in Honduras rests on Roberto Micheletti's and Manuel Zelaya's prudence and sense, and their first task is to ensure that the deposed President's surprise return does not become the reason for any type of violence, as several governments, the Organization of American States (OAS), and the European Union have unanimously requested. However, there is the possibility that things get out of control. Therefore, Brazilian President Lula asked Zelaya yesterday not to take actions that may provide a pretext for government forces to intervene, and not to put the Brazilian Embassy installations in harm's way....

TIJUANA, Mexico — Firefighters found six bodies inside a burning car in Tijuana, and 15 people were killed in three separate shootings in another northern Mexican border town besieged by drug violence, authorities said Tuesday. Near Mexico's southern border, meanwhile, the bullet-ridden bodies of eight men suspected to be drug traffickers were found in a Guatemalan frontier town. In Tijuana, across the border from San Diego, four bodies were found in a burning compact car's seats and two in the trunk, according to a police report Tuesday. The victims' identities and the motive for the killings were not released, but...

(English-language translation) Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a state of "public calamity" as a measure to face the food and nutrition crisis that affects 54,000 families and has claimed the lives of some 25 children. The declaration will allow the Guatemalan government to accept international aid for these cases and to mobilize resources from the national budget more promptly, according to the president's official address to the nation. "I have decided to use the public-order law and declare a state of public calamity throughout the entire national territory, since the consequences of food and nutritional insufficiency will affect not only...

EL MIRADOR, Guatemala (Reuters) - One of Guatemala's greatest ancient Mayan cities may have died out in a bloody battle atop a huge pyramid between a royal family and invaders from hundreds of miles away, archaeologists say. Researchers are carrying out DNA tests on blood samples from hundreds of spear tips and arrowheads dug up with bone fragments and smashed pottery at the summit of the El Tigre pyramid in the Mayan city of El Mirador, buried beneath jungle vegetation 8 km from Guatemala's border with Mexico. Many of the excavated blades are made of obsidian which the archaeologists have...

REYNOSA — Soldiers on Thursday freed more than 100 persons who were being held against their will by a group of alleged kidnappers, authorities said. Military personell discovered the sequestered group's location through an anonymous tip, the Mexican Defense Ministry said in a news release issued Saturday. Soldiers checked out the area at Callejón Golondrinas about 11:30 p.m. and discovered a house with about 123 persons crammed inside. Soldiers interviewed several victims who told officials they had been abducted. The people found inside the house, all Central American, were described as follows: >> 94 Honduras nationals (24 females) >> 15...

<p>The case against a South Florida hospital that quietly chartered a plane and sent a seriously brain injured illegal immigrant back to Guatemala over the objections of his family and legal guardian was in the hands of a jury Thursday.</p>

GUATEMALA CITY — Guatemalan drug boss Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon was summoned by Mexican traffickers for what he was told was business. Instead, dozens of attackers ambushed his entourage with grenades and assault rifles, killing Leon and 10 others in a brazen demonstration of power. Mexican drug traffickers are branching out as never before — spreading their tentacles into 47 nations, including the U.S., Guatemala and even Colombia, long the heart of the drug trade in Latin America. The expansion comes amid a military crackdown in Mexico and the arrests of major Colombian suppliers and poses a new challenge for...

03:13pm Guatemala. El presidente venezolano aseguró hoy que está en marcha un plan para derrocar a su colega guatemalteco Alvaro Colom, que los adversarios de ese gobernante estarían en la búsqueda de militares dispuestos a hacerlo. English translation: Guatemala. The Venezuelan president said today that a plan is underway to overthrow the Guatemalan colleague Alvaro Colom, the opponents of this ruling would be in search of soldiers ready to do so.

Note: The following text is a quote: June 24, 2009 46 street gang members and associates arrested in New Jersey-wide operation ICE works with local law enforcement agencies to make arrests NEWARK, N.J. - Forty-six gang members and associates were arrested as a result of a statewide public safety initiative in New Jersey led by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of Investigation in Newark. The operation ended June 20. Each of those arrested were targeted for their membership, participation or association with violent street gangs. The success of the operation dubbed "Community Shield" was the result of an...

Guatemala Murder Scandal Could Threaten the PresidencyThe scandal surrounding accusations that Guatemala's president orchestrated the murder of a prominent lawyer is intensifying  deepening divisions in a country still recovering from a 36-year civil war. It is also, according to some analysts, handing the country its greatest threat to democracy since that war ended in 1996. Tens of thousands of Guatemalans have taken to the streets since a video emerged in which Rodrigo Rosenberg, the lawyer, accused Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom and three others of murder and corruption. Mr. Rosenberg, who was shot dead while riding his bike on May...

IT COULD have been a scene from Gabriel García Márquez’s novella, “Chronicle of a Death Foretold”. But there was nothing magical about the realism of the video recorded by Rodrigo Rosenberg, a Guatemalan lawyer, four days before he was shot dead on Sunday May 10th while cycling on a busy avenue. “If you are hearing this message,” he intoned, “it is because I, Rodrigo Rosenberg Marzano, was assassinated by the president’s private secretary, Gustavo Alejos, and his partner, Gregorio Valdez, with the approval of Álvaro Colom and Sandra de Colom [Guatemala’s president and first lady]”. Political murders are sadly nothing...

Several have sent word that a YouTube video of recently assassinated lawyer Rodrigo Rosenberg has sent Guatemala into a tailspin. The video of Rosenberg claims that if you are watching, he has been murdered by President Alvaro Colom with help from presidential secretary Gustavo Alejos. "The video spread across the Internet after family members handed it out during Rosenberg's funeral on Monday. In the 18-minute tape, a seemingly calm Rosenberg, sitting behind a desk and microphone, alleges that Colom, the First Lady and two associates were involved in murder, corruption and money laundering. The group, he says, filtered public funds...

LIMA -- Public health authorities of South American countries took precautionary measures to fend off a possible pandemic after a deadly swine flu virus claimed dozens of lives in Mexico and infected at least 11 people in the United States. In Peru, experts with the Health Ministry said the ministry had initiated a nationwide precautionary plan to deal with potential threats, though no suspicious cases have been reported so far in the country. The Chilean Health Ministry expressed concern over the situation and drafted a contingency plan for epidemic prevention. It also ordered a public health alert that included health...

Just two days after US President Barack Hussein Obama shared a controversial and landmark handshake with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez at the Summit of the Americas, the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center has released a study analyzing the flowering alliance between the increasingly anti-Western Latin America and the virulently anti-Israel Iran. The study was conducted at the Israel Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center (IICC), a non-governmental organization dedicated to Israeli intelligence and terrorism issues. According to the study, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is using anti-Western Hugo Chavez as a springboard into several Latin American countries, such as Bolivia, Nicaragua, and...

Guatemala - After several months of debate, the Guatemalan Congress approved the Weapon and Ammunition Control Law, considered essential to reduce violence. The regulation reduces to one the four licenses previously granted to each citizen to buy armaments, and they are able now to buy three weapons instead of 12, as previously established. It also stipulated several requirements before granting the permit, including a clean criminal record and passing psychological assessment, income certification and proof of employment. The legislation also set between five and 15 years of imprisonment for crimes like possession, export, import, or illegal sale of weapons and...

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Guatemalan security forces have discovered a camp run by Mexico's most violent drug gang where traffickers trained dozens of gunmen, police said on Friday. Security forces were tipped off about suspicious activity at a ranch in Quiche, in the central highlands, by residents who said men in ski masks were asking villagers to join their ranks, police chief Marlene Blanco said at a news conference. Two commanders of the Zetas, the armed wing of Mexico's Gulf cartel, and 37 recruits fled the camp before the police and army arrived, leaving behind 500 grenades, six rifles and...

GUATEMALA CITY — A hitman training camp for Mexico's infamous Gulf cartel was found in northern Guatemala, along with 500 grenades, police said Friday. In a news conference, police director Marlene Blanco said officials also seized six rifles, three motorcycles and several boxes of ammunition during Thursday's operation. People at the site fled before authorities arrived because they "heard the noise of the helicopters" used in the raid, said Nery Morales, a spokesman for Guatemala's Interior Ministry. "We searched the area, but didn't find anything," he said. Mexican drug cartels often use grenades in attacks, and many of the weapons...

Note: The following text is a quote: https://www.osac.gov/Reports/report.cfm?contentID=99242 YOU ARE HERE: Home > Reports > Consular Affairs Bulletins > Report Warden Message: Guatemala City Violent Incidents CONSULAR AFFAIRS BULLETINS Americas - Guatemala 24 Mar 2009 Printer Friendly Email Article RELATED REPORTS 9 Mar 2009 WARDEN MESSAGE: GUATEMALA PASSENGER BUS CRIMES 20 Jan 2009 WARDEN MESSAGE: GUATEMALA SAFETY REMINDER; RECENT SPATE OF INCIDENTS 8 Dec 2008 WARDEN MESSAGE: GUATEMALA CITY HUMAN RIGHTS MARCH, DECEMBER 9 25 Nov 2008 WARDEN MESSAGE: GUATEMALA INCREASED CRIMINAL ACTIVITY U.S. Embassy Guatemala City issued the following Warden Message on March 24: The U.S. Embassy has received...

NUEVO LAREDO - There were at least 15 "express kidnappings" of Central Americans in January and February in this border city, civil rights officials said Wednesday. All were released after family members in the United States met ransom demands. The figures were released at a news conference by José Luis Manso Ramírez, coordinator of the Centro de Derechos Humanos del Migrante (center for immigrant human rights), and Father Francisco Pellizari, director of Nuevo Laredo's Casa del Migrante. "I have documents with testimony from victims of express kidnappings in this city," Manso said. "They were deprived of their freedom up to...

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) – Archeologists have uncovered carved stucco panels depicting cosmic monsters, gods and serpents in Guatemala's northern jungle that are the oldest known depictions of a famous Mayan creation myth. The newly discovered panels, both 26 feet long and stacked on top of each other, were created around 300 BC and show scenes from the core Mayan mythology, the Popol Vuh. It took investigators three months to uncover the carvings while excavating El Mirador, the biggest ancient Mayan city in the world, the site's head researcher, Richard Hansen, said on Wednesday. The Maya built soaring temples and elaborate...

Note: The following text is a quote: http://www.ice.gov/pi/nr/0903/090309la.htm Leader of ring that moved thousands of illegal aliens across U.S. sentenced to more than 6 years in prison LOS ANGELES - A Guatemalan national who helped run a Los Angeles-based organization that harbored and transported more than 9,000 illegal aliens was sentenced today to 78 months in federal prison. Francisco Andres-Francisco, 40, was sentenced by United States District Judge George H. King in Los Angeles. Andres-Francisco has been in custody since he was arrested 14 months ago in Pennsylvania after being found driving a van allegedly loaded with illegal aliens. Andres-Francisco...

The leader of the Three Franciscos, a ring accused of transporting more than 9,000 illegal immigrants through Los Angeles and around the country, was sentenced to six years in federal prison Monday. Federal officials called the organization the most prolific of its kind ever uncovered in Los Angeles, collecting fees as high as $3,700 from relatives of immigrants who were packed into cramped vans and safe houses. "We estimated they were moving about 100 a week," said Jennifer Silliman, deputy special agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Los Angeles. The group was known as the Three...

Guatemalan soldiers and police burned some 1,700 acres (700 hectares) of fields growing marijuana and poppies used to make heroin in the country's biggest drug operation, the president's office said on Sunday. The street value of the marijuana and heroin that could be processed from the destroyed crops is estimated at $12 billion, twice the size of Guatemala's national budget, said Fredy Portillo, a spokesman for the president's office. The weeklong operations deployed around 400 security forces to the mountainous state of San Marcos near the border with Mexico, where powerful Mexican cartels distribute seeds and pay high prices for...

Guatemalan girl describes alleged enforced prostitution She testifies in federal court how a group of immigrants duped her into coming to the U.S., forced her to sell herself and kept her captive. By Scott Glover January 9, 2009 When Sandra agreed to make the perilous trek from her native Guatemala to the United States in 2006, she said, she was lured by the prospect of a job as a housekeeper that would enable her to send money to her impoverished family back home. Her father had a hernia that prevented him from working, and money was so tight that she...

Mexican military officials said they rescued 189 undocumented immigrants from a Reynosa stash house during a Sunday night raid. An anonymous tip reportedly led authorities to a home off Calles Doctor Plata and Rio Purificacion in the Colonia Doctores. Mexico's El Universal newspaper reported that officials found 157 men and 32 women inside the house around 11 p.m. Sunday. The newspaper said the immigrants were all from Brazil and Central America. Many of the immigrants told investigators reported that had paid as much of $1,500 to be smuggled into the United States. El Universal reported that it took some of...

Christmas is about Christ, not gifts, cardinal reminds Catholics Guatemala City, Dec 12, 2008 / 08:00 pm (CNA).-  The Archbishop of Guatemala, Cardinal Rodolfo Quezada Toruno, called on the faithful in that country not to reduce Christmas to the mere “exchanging of gifts” and to keep in mind that “Christ must be the irreplaceable and only focus of our Christmas celebrations.” In his pastoral exhortation for Advent and Christmas, the archbishop stated, “It is not possible to reduce it to an occasion for extraordinary purchases, to the exchanging of gifts, to a children’s festivity or a simple excuse for profane...

Mexican narcotraffickers are gaining an increasing presence in Guatemalan territory. That was made clear Sunday, when at least 18 people were killed in a face-off between members of a local cartel and a Mexican cartel in a frontier zone between Mexico and Guatemala. At the crime scene, police found vehicles that were registered in Tamaulipas, a state in northeast Mexico, and documents that indicate the Mexican origins of some of the dead. "We are studying the arrival of many Mexicans, specifically members of the Zeta group, who have wanted to come to take advantage of the Guatemalan territory, a situation...

EDINBURG — Mario Olivares Cifuentes thought he understood the risks of illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border. Tales of migrants drowning in the Rio Grande or succumbing to the oppressive South Texas sun spread frequently among those hoping to make the trek. But for Olivares, a Guatemalan migrant, the real danger emerged only after passing those natural perils. For almost a day, he and 20 of his countrymen were allegedly kidnapped, tortured, raped and held for ransom in a stash house east of Edinburg before federal agents rescued them last week. Their purported tormentors — a group of Mexican nationals believed...

GUATEMALA CITY -- Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers arguing about a horse race in a rural border town began a series of gunbattles in which 17 people died, police said Monday. National police spokesman Donald Gonzalez said the traffickers were drinking in the town of Santa Ana Huista on Sunday afternoon when an argument broke out over bets on a horse race, leading to a pursuit in which the gunmen shot at each other with automatic weapons from trucks racing down roads near a remote part of the Mexican border. Gonzalez said police even found grenade-launchers at the scene of...

Got a tip? Call the Rio Grande Valley Border Patrol at 1-800-863-9382. EDINBURG -- Authorities found 26 undocumented immigrants during a Tuesday raid. Border Patrol agents and Hidalgo County sheriff's deputies found the group at a house near the intersection of Tower Road and Texas Road. The case is being handled by Immigration and Customs Enforcement pending a human smuggling investigation. Among the group were: >> 20 Guatemalan nationals (14 adult males, 1 juvenile male, 4 adult females) >> 6 Mexican nationals (5 adult males, 1 juvenile male) -- Ana Ley covers law enforcement and general assignments for The Monitor....

(English-language translation) Taipei - Taiwan awaits the arrival to the island of a Guatemalan business delegation that will conduct commercial consultations with island businessmen to strengthen cooperation, the Taiwan Foreign Trade Development Council reported today. The delegation will visit the island on October 6-17 and will tour Taipei, Taichung, and Kaohsiung to speak to businessmen from all parts of Taiwan. According to Council officials, the Guatemalans' objective is to promote exports from their country to the island, especially coffee, lumber, medications, and crafts. Taiwan is interested in strengthening its commercial ties with Guatemala, one of the island's 12 political allies...

175 Alleged Gulf Cartel Members and Associates Arrested in Massive International Law Enforcement Operation "Project Reckoning" Leads to the Seizure of $60 Million and More Than 40 Tons of Illegal Drugs From One of Mexico's Largest Drug Trafficking Cartels NEW YORK - Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey announced that 175 individuals were arrested on Sept. 16, 2008, on charges related to an international drug trafficking cartel in a coordinated enforcement action by hundreds of international, federal, state and local law enforcement officials throughout the United States and Italy. Including the operations announced today, a long-term investigation of one of Mexico's...

It is not often that undocumented immigrants sneak into the United States and then alert authorities to their whereabouts, but three men trapped in a sweltering rail car had little choice and used a cell phone to call 911. Smugglers had stashed two Mexicans and a Guatemalan in a grain hopper in the Rio Grande Valley and told them they would ride further north, said Daniel Doty, a spokesman for the Border Patrol's McAllen Sector. As the temperature climbed Tuesday, the dehydrating men feared for their lives and reached for the phone. "It gets hot very fast in those places,"...

It's something no parent wants to hear, their child telling them someone sexually abused them. But one Augusta mother says those are the words she woke up to this morning. Deputies arrested a man accused of molesting the woman's 11-year-old son. Edwin Hernandez is behind bars, and accused of molesting an 11 year old boy! Richmond County investigators were called out to a home on Heather's Way in South Augusta early Wednesday morning. The child's mother called 911 after her son told her Hernandez performed a sex act on him. She then chased him out of her home with a...

Team rescued 120 women from grim conditions when it dismantled the operation in Houston The farewell party was in full swing at midnight when police came for Maximino "El Chimino" Mondragon, his accomplices and his victims — scantily dressed women and girls he forced to sell beers and sexual favors under the flashing lights of a revolving crystalline disco ball inside his strip mall bar off Hempstead Highway. Mondragon was celebrating his retirement at El Potrero de Chimino bar, also known as the Wagon Wheel. He had a one-way ticket back to his native El Salvador and blueprints in the...

Leftist ideology may be gaining ground in Latin America. But it will never set foot on the manicured lawns of Francisco Marroquin University. For nearly 40 years, this private college has been a citadel of laissez-faire economics. Here, banners quoting "The Wealth of Nations" author Adam Smith -- he of the powdered wig and invisible hand -- flutter over the campus food court. Every undergraduate, regardless of major, must study market economics and the philosophy of individual rights embraced by the U.S. founding fathers, including "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." A sculpture commemorating Ayn Rand's "Atlas Shrugged" is...

MEXICO CITY -- Police say they have found 154 illegal migrants inside a semitrailer. Federal police official Arturo Herrera says many of the migrants were suffering from severe dehydration after spending nearly a week cramped inside the semitrailer. Herrera says police stopped the rig along a highway in the Gulf state of Tabasco. Inside the tractor-trailer, authorities found 140 Guatemalans, seven Ecuadoreans, four Hondurans, two Salvadorans and one Chinese. The driver was detained and the migrants were turned over to immigration authorities for deportation.

Guatemala plans to send hundreds of troops, elite presidential guards and anti-drug police to its border with Mexico to stem growing drug violence, the government said on Saturday. "The unit should be ready within about 90 days. We are talking about 500 troops" and members of the presidential guard, Interior Ministry spokesman Ricardo Gatica said. Gatica declined to say how many counternarcotics police would be sent to the border, where drug smuggling into southern Mexico, bound for the United States, goes unchallenged. In southern Mexico, suspected drug gunmen dumped a man's head outside a newspaper in Tabasco state on Saturday...

(English-language translation) After meeting with different social sectors of the country, U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John D. Negroponte pointed out yesterday that the impunity and weakness of the Guatemalan state prevail as the major problems in fighting organized crime and drug trafficking. Negroponte declared that his country is willing to aid the Central American region in fighting criminals and announced that Guatemala will play an active role in the Mérida Plan towards that purpose. The Mérida Plan is a U.S. assistance program for Mexico, Central America, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic to fight drug trafficking, transnational crime, and terrorism....

(English-language translation) WASHINGTON - The Department of State cleared the way yesterday for the United States to provide military education and training to the Guatemala Air Force, Navy, and Corps of Engineers. An announcement published in the Federal Register reports that these institutions respect human rights and cooperate with civil judicial investigations of military personnel who "have been the object of credible accusations of having committed human-rights violations." This "certification" was a requirement towards activating half a million dollars the United States will dedicate to those ends, according to the so-called Foreign Operations Law of 2008. The [Guatemala] Army is...

LA JOYA, Texas — Local police are accustomed to dealing with illegal border crossings, but they were astounded by the video of 15 Chinese immigrants unfolding themselves from the back of a red Suburban near this small border town. The vehicle appeared abandoned when police rolled up early on a recent Saturday morning. But when Border Patrol agents arrived and swung open the double rear doors, the Chinese immigrants tumbled out, squinting in the sunlight. "They were in bad shape," said La Joya Police spokesman Joe Cantu. The immigrants were silent, able to communicate only with hand gestures. One man...

I'm surprised nobody posted this. I rarely listen to Laura, although I always enjoy when I do. Today on her show she announced she has just adopted a 3 year old Guatemalan girl. Just a little late night nice story. I'm so tired of the other ones...

The first defendants from the April 16 immigration raid at the local Pilgrim's Pride chicken processing plant appeared before Federal Magistrate Susan Kerr Lee on Tuesday. She ordered that all five of the men, who are citizens of Guatemala, continued to be detained. They are all represented by the federal defender's office. One man faces up to 10 years in federal prison, while those with only illegal re-entry charges face up to two years. Roberto Gabriel-Ramirez, 40, said he has a third-grade education. He is charged with illegal re-entry into the country and use of a fraudulent Social Security card....