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MCALLEN - The U.S Consul General at Matamoros visited McAllen today. U.S. Consul Michael Barkin says Mexico is a safe place visit, but security is also the number one concern for Americans traveling there. Barkin was honored today at a reception at the McAllen Chamber of Commerce. He has been on the job as U.S. Consul General in Matamoros since September. CHANNEL 5 NEWS asked him, given the ongoing shoot-outs and violence in Mexico, is it safe to visit? We wanted to know what people who call his office are most concerned about. Barkin says, "People are concerned about the...

U.S. Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison has secured $4.85 million in funding to be used by border sheriffs to stop drug and human trafficking. The money is coming from the fiscal year 2010 Omnibus Appropriations bill. It will help border sheriffs pay for overtime, hire additional deputies, and purchase equipment. This project supports Operation Linebacker, an initiative of the Texas Border Sheriff's Coalition. "Our law enforcement personnel along the border are regularly under assault, and drug and human traffickers continue to threaten the safety of our communities," Hutchison said in a news release. "Sheriffs patrolling the border need additional reinforcements to...

HAVANA — Suspected drug smugglers used spikes to deflate the tires of a U.S. Border Patrol unit during a pursuit Tuesday night — at least the second incident in which area authorities have discovered the devices in a week. Border Patrol would not confirm whether the spikes deflated the tires of an agency vehicle Tuesday night, but court documents reveal agents also found the homemade devices after an agent fired gunshots during a confrontation last week. Meanwhile, authorities are concerned the spikes could cause further incidents on Rio Grande Valley roadways. The spikes, or caltrops, consist of several metal points...

Honduras' interim government says it has authorized ousted President Manuel Zelaya to leave the country and go to Mexico. Foreign Ministry spokesman Milton Mateo says the safe-conduct pass was signed and would be delivered to the Brazilian Embassy, where Zelaya has been holed up since sneaking back into the country Sept. 21. Mateo said Wednesday night that the Mexican government has sent an airplane to pick up Zelaya and his family. Another official of the interim government's Foreign Ministry said Mexico requested that Zelaya be given safe conduct to leave. A Mexican government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, says...

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico — Mexican prosecutors say gunmen shot and killed a university student in the deadly border city of Ciudad Juarez. Chihuahua state prosecutor's spokesman Arturo Sandoval says the student's body was found in a truck Tuesday at an intersection. He is the second student from the Autonomous University of Chihuahua to be killed since Saturday.

FALLS CITY -- A group of 14 suspected illegal immigrants apprehended north of here Dec.4 is now in the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs enforcement officials, said Trooper Craig Semlinger of the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Highway Patrol. Semlinger said nine of the men and women captured by DPS troopers, sheriff's deputies from Wilson and Karnes counties, and some local ranchers are from Mexico. The remaining five, the trooper said are from China. Three others said to be with the group were still at large as of press time Dec. 7.

Presumed members of Los Zetas staged a brazen prison raid Dec. 4 in Escobedo, Nuevo Leon state, killing two state police officers guarding the prison and freeing 23 inmates. At the same time in nearby Juarez, Zetas engaged a Mexican military unit in a firefight in an apparent attempt to distract the superior security force away from the prison. While details are still coming in, the incident highlights the uphill battle the Mexican government is fighting as it tries to professionalize its law enforcement ranks. Los Zetas have shown before that they will go to great lengths to protect and...

Millions of undocumented people in the U.S. should be given a path to legal status after the country finds a way to stop illegal immigration, business and government leaders said in a report Wednesday. The University of Denver report argues that legalizing as many of the estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants as possible could strengthen the economy and national security. But it should come with conditions, such as requiring new immigrants to learn English, pass criminal and medical background checks, and pay any taxes that they owe, the document states. The report is the product of a year of discussions...

Shepard BarbashHelping Mexico Help Itself A more prosperous, democratic southern neighbor would reduce crime and illegal immigration. Autumn 2009 Two crises have deepened America’s anxieties over immigration since Congress tried to reform the law two years ago: the global recession and an outburst of murder and mayhem in northern Mexico. The recession has aroused antipathy for foreigners who compete for jobs. The violence along the border, which stems from a high-stakes campaign by Mexican president Felipe Calderón to bust apart several large drug cartels, has inflamed fears that our borders aren’t secure. Americans differ on what to do about...

NUEVO PROGRESO — Mexican authorities refused to release details Monday of the deadly weekend shooting that sent hundreds of American tourists scurrying for cover as at least two people were gunned down. No U.S. casualties have been reported in the Saturday afternoon gun battle that erupted at the end of a city-organized celebration to welcome Winter Texans back to this popular tourist spot. While two people were reportedly killed, it is unclear whether rumors of higher death tolls are unfounded or if any bystanders were harmed in the volley of gunfire. U.S. authorities offered few details of their own, saying...

GUADALAJARA, Mexico — Organizers of the Mexican tour of the "Walking With Dinosaurs" show say someone has walked off with a robotic baby Plateosaurus. Spokeswoman Karla Arrollo says the 1.5-meter (5-foot), remote-controlled dinosaur worth $25,000 disappeared after Friday's performance. Police say they are investigating the alleged theft. Arrollo says the show — which features 10 species of large, mechanized dinosaurs lumbering across an arena stage — will continue touring.

El Paso, Texas - A Mexican Army Humvee with a machine gun and several soldiers on foot entered into the U.S. through the Columbus Port of Entry early Saturday morning. The incident happened at about 2:35 a.m. Saturday when the Mexican soldiers were chasing three U.S. citizens, according to Customs and Border Patrol spokesperson Roger Maier. The group of soldiers was confronted by CBP inspectors and the soldiers quickly turned around on orders from one of their officers. A few minutes later, a Mexican Army commander arrived and apologized to the U.S. inspectors, claiming the soldiers had been pursuing a...

MEXICO CITY — A pair of shootouts between troops and gunmen in northern Mexico have killed 13 people, including a bystander and a drug trafficker linked to the killing of a retired army officer. Navy spokesman Adm. Jose Luis Vergara said troops were searching a villa Friday in a suburb of Monterrey named Juarez when they were ambushed by a group of heavily armed men. Eight gunmen were killed and nine more were arrested in the initial shootout, Vergara said. Television images showed a garden littered with bloodied corpses. Several handcuffed men sat on the ground with shirts pulled over...

Unconfirmed reports of fatalities but no reports of American casualties PROGRESO —The international bridge here was closed Saturday afternoon after a shooting across the border in Nuevo Progreso. There were unconfirmed reports from witnesses crossing back from Mexico that one to five people were dead after gunfire among soldiers and other armed individuals. Identities of the victims remain unknown. A representative at the U.S. Consulate in Monterrey confirmed there was gunfire in Nuevo Progreso and said the consulate had received unconfirmed reports of two fatalities. However, the consulate had received no notification of any American casualties as of about 6...

In an indictment handed down Nov. 20 ....accused 15 individuals of being involved in the trafficking of cocaine and other narcotics in the Chicago area. .... aimed at dismantling the drug trafficking network of La Familia Michoacana (LFM), a mid-sized and relatively new drug cartel based in Michoacan state in southwestern Mexico. The U.S. investigation of LFM has revealed many details about the operation of the group in the United States and answered some important questions about the nature of Mexican drug trafficking and distribution north of the border. .....leaders are known to distribute documents to the group’s members that...

Seven women were murdered in Mexico, including one who was beheaded in the southern beach resort of Cancun, authorities reported Monday. Four of the women were killed in Ciudad Juarez, where two were shot to death, another beaten with a baseball bat and a fourth, a school teacher, also was beaten to death. The northern border city is at the center of a raging drug war that has claimed 2,300 lives so far this year. In Baja California state, two women were found shot to death in Mexicali, also on the US border, the Attorney General's office said. In the...

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.

REYNOSA, Mexico - A Reynosa teen kidnapped on her way to school is back at home. Officials say the 15-year-old was walking to school when two men forced her into their car. We're told the men used the girl's cell phone to contact her parents and ask for about $20,000. The family managed to get nearly $4,000 and contacted the kidnappers, as well as police. They all agreed to meet at a local supermarket. Authorities say they tried to arrest the kidnappers trying to collect the money. But the men drove off. A short while later, the suspects crashed into...

A few days ago I asked a good friend of mine if he had any idea what part of the Mexican economy could be classified as "informal" ­ the term used in Mexico when referring to people who are "flying under the radar" of the tax-collector. He told me he had recently read that 50 to 60% of the Mexican economy is "informal". I was pleasantly surprised. The official representatives of Mexican Business always oppose government moves for higher taxes and one of their arguments is: "Don't increase taxes on those who are already paying, while there are so many...

MEXICO CITY — Gunmen burst in to a Starbucks coffee shop Tuesday and killed a former policeman who was a protected witness in a drug corruption case, the second death of a high-profile witness in Mexico in less than two weeks. Edgar Bayardo was gunned down in the upper middle-class Del Valle neighborhood of the capital, and a man with him was severely wounded, city prosecutor Jaime Slomianski Aguilar said. Another customer who apparently had nothing to do with Bayardo also was wounded. Shell casings — numbered by police at up to 23 — lay on the shop floor between...

<p>MEXICO - Mexico's central bank says the money migrants sent home fell nearly 36 percent in October compared to the same month last year.</p>

<p>TIJUANA, Mexico — Tijuana's public security spokesman says a fleet of brand new patrol cars has been burned in a Molotov cocktail attack.</p>

McALLEN — U.S. federal authorities continue to question a man who was kidnapped from a local coffee shop and held for ransom in Mexico for nearly a week. Raul Alvarado’s abductors allegedly demanded a ransom of $30,000 and two luxury vehicles. But it remains unclear whether any payments were made before Mexican police discovered him bound and beaten in a Reynosa stash house Friday. Alvarado, 36, of McAllen, told Mexican officials that he had intended to meet a business contact from Reynosa at the Starbucks Coffee near the intersection of Expressway 83 and South 10th Street on Nov. 23, when...

"Another symptom of the U.S.' political collapse, [also linked] to our burning region... "Abu Mazen counted on his friendship with the U.S. when he [tried to] persuade its leaders to pressure Israel to at least freeze the Zionist settlements in the occupied Palestinian territories... "Another collapse was in Somalia... The Somali president, whom the U.S. considers [politically] desirable, promised that he would regain control of the capital Mogadishu from the armed Islamic movements. This is a news item that should be noticed, because it is a man-bites-dog situation. It makes sense to see the end of the attacks by these...

Seven minute clip features rare FLIR footage from aerial platforms on the southern border of the US. Footage shows illegals hiking and hiding in small groups and large. Aerial personnel vector ground BP officers to illegals unseen. Radio chatter shows a lack of efficient terms and SOPs for flyer control arresting officers on foot. Sometimes groups of 30 or more are seen scattering into the desert, upon realization of their discovery & impending arrest. Encouraging, but who knows how soon we'll see them again...? We don't know what happens to them after their arrest.

WASHINGTON — After several years of fighting the U.S.-Mexico border fence, a coalition of Texas elected officials is working with the Obama administration on ways to improve border ports and facilitate trade while fighting drug smuggling. The Texas Border Coalition's involvement with policymaking comes after a bitter tangle with the federal government over construction of the fence that Congress and the White House approved, but border business leaders and human rights groups opposed. “We've got to work together,” said Chad Foster, Eagle Pass mayor and the coalition's chairman. “But that is where the wheels came off the cart — when...

A U.S. citizen from Brownville has died of a gunshot wound she reportedly suffered across the Rio Grande in the Mexican border city of Matamoros. "We are in contact with the corresponding Mexican authorities, who we hope will conduct a thorough and expeditious investigation," Quigley said. Matamoros newspapers quoted witnesses as saying that Marin was at a friend's home in Matamoros when she was struck by a stray bullet accidentally fired by a Mexican army soldier participating in a nearby drug raid. One newspaper said the soldier's gun went off as he climbed into a vehicle. Authorities in Tamaulipas state...

Driving into Mexico has been a largely hassle-free experience for decades: There were few customs inspectors, even fewer gates, and for most border crossers, no questions asked. That's about to change. The Mexican government is modernizing its ports of entry along the border, including its biggest crossing in Tijuana. The new infrastructure -- which includes gates, cameras and vehicle scales -- is meant to help curtail the flow of drug money and weapons to Mexican organized crime groups. But bolstered security means more border-crossing logjams, and business and trade groups fear that the new measures will deal another blow to...

Disillusionment with Woodrow Wilson changed the American Left forever. In 1916, German saboteurs destroyed Black Tom Island in New York Harbor.Click for Bettmann/Corbis pic. Today’s state-oriented liberalism, we are often told, was the inevitable extension of the pre–World War I tradition of progressivism. The progressives, led by President Woodrow Wilson, placed their faith in reason and the better nature of the American people. Expanded government would serve as an engine of popular goodwill to soften the harsh rigors of industrial capitalism. Describing the condition of his fellow intellectuals prior to World War I, Lewis Mumford exclaimed that “there was scarcely...

U.S. Border Patrol agents have arrested 57 people discovered packed into a Pirtleville house they believe was used by smugglers to hide undocumented immigrants. U.S. Customs and Border Protection said Monday that the stash house was discovered Friday. The federal agency says 56 people are Mexicans and one person is from El Salvador. The group consists of 19 females and 38 males. The group was taken to the Douglas Border Patrol Station for further processing. The agency says stash houses are used by smugglers to hold undocumented immigrants while they wait for a chance to transport them farther into the...

Rise in kidnappings prompts more who cross regularly to seek training Security training companies in Texas and elsewhere, bolstered by an alarming increase in kidnappings and violence in Mexico, are finding a new niche in clientele: Americans and Mexicans living, visiting and working across the border. “Mexico has been very good for business lately,” said Dan Johnson, who holds a senior position for consulting and training with ASI Group, a Houston-based private intelligence and global risk-management company. Mexico is often seen as the kidnap capital of the world, with the State Department reporting in an advisory for travelers that dozens...

How nine Houston men were assaulted and robbed in the ranchlands of Mexico MEXICO CITY — Like generations of Texans, nine Houston hunters traveled each autumn into northeastern Mexico's wildlife-rich ranchlands for a few uninterrupted days of shooting game, far removed from the workday world. But that ended abruptly last month after the men were rounded up, robbed and terrorized by well-armed marauders. The nine were wrapping up an afternoon of white-wing dove hunting about 100 miles south of the Rio Grande when a dozen men, armed with assault rifles, roared into the grain field in pickup trucks. The businessmen,...

MATAMOROS — Mexican newspapers are reporting the death of a Brownsville woman after a Mexican army soldier in Matamoros accidentally misfired his weapon Lizbeth Marín Garcia, 36, was pronounced dead early Saturday morning at the Alfredo Pumarejo General Hospital. According to various newspapers including El Diario, El Bravo and Contacto, Marín was inside a friend’s house at approximately 11 p.m. Friday at the corner of Primera and Solernau streets when a stray bullet went through a window, through the couch where she was sitting and struck her in the back piercing a lung. The shot was an accidental misfire from...

Is Congress, behindhand on Barack Obama's deadlines on health care and cap-and-trade legislation, and flummoxed by the failure of the stimulus package to hold unemployment below 10.2 percent, prepared to address the immigration issue next year? Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano says it better be. The current situation, she told the Center for American Progress on Nov. 13, "is simply unacceptable." We need a "three-legged stool," with provisions to strengthen enforcement, legalize some illegal immigrants and improve "legal flows for families and workers." Ironically, the push for legalization in 2006-07 resulted instead in stronger enforcement measures. Some 600 miles of...

On Wednesday, a Charlotte, NC man and woman -- illegally residing in the U.S. -- were charged in federal court with conspiracy to kidnap two children in Mecklenburg County, NC in 2009, according to reports obtained by the National Association of Chiefs of Police from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department. According to the indictment, Ruben Garcia-Rosario, 25, and Linda Gonzalez, 21, aided and abetted one another in the attempted kidnapping through the use of cellular telephones and a motor vehicle. Garcia-Rosario is also charged in three additional counts alleging possession of a firearm by...

Five police officers were killed yesterday in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico in a two separate incidents. In the first attack, two officers were killed while on patrol. Witnesses say gunmen killed one officer in his vehicle and the other as he tried to escape. In the second attack, four police officers were shot at while filling up their vehicles at a gas station. Two died on the scene, another died at a local hospital, and the fourth officer is being treated for his injuries. The total number of police officers killed to 47 this year, making it one of the most...

Note: The following text is a quote: Dallas Resident Uriel Palacios Sentenced to 30 Years in Federal Prison for His Role in Cocaine Trafficking and Money Laundering Conspiracy Related to Mexico's Gulf Cartel DALLAS—Uriel Palacios, 23, of Dallas, was sentenced this morning by Chief U.S. District Judge Sidney A. Fitzwater to 360 months (30 years) in federal prison, announced U.S. Attorney James T. Jacks of the Northern District of Texas. Palacios pleaded guilty in June to one count of conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and to distribute more than five kilograms of cocaine and one count of conspiracy...

A federal judge in Pittsburgh on Tuesday sentenced an illegal immigrant to time served in jail for his 10th illegal entry into the country. Uziel Jesus Lopez-Jiminez, 28, of Mexico has been deported nine other times between 1998 and 2007, prosecutors said. He was last deported in March, re-entered the country in May or June and was arrested in Beaver County on Aug. 16.

HOUSTON — The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals has refused to allow additional DNA testing requested by a Mexican national condemned for the gruesome killing of a 16-year-old girl in San Antonio. Thirty-six-year-old Humberto Leal, from Monterrey, Mexico, wanted more testing to try to clear him of the May 1994 bludgeoning death of Adria Sauceda. Her body was found on a dirt road not far from a party they both attended.

<p>The former head of U.S. Customs and Border Protection called Monday for the U.S. to reinstitute the ban on assault weapons and take other measures to rein in the war between Mexico and its drug cartels, saying the violence has the potential to bring down legitimate rule in that country.</p>

EL PASO, Texas -- The widespread violence in Juarez is affecting a lot of things in El Paso, including the UTEP athletic program. The basis of UTEP's athletic teams are formed by recruiting student-athletes from across the state and country to study and play in El Paso. And now many of them, especially their parents, are now expressing concern about what is going on across the border. UTEP's campus is located just a few football fields away from Juarez, where thousands have been murdered this year, and that is not easy to hide. "I just recruited a girl from Sweden...

MANAGUA – An arsenal of military weaponry seized over the weekend in the province of Matagalpa belonged to a cell of Mexico’s Sinaloa drug cartel, Nicaraguan authorities said Monday. The National Police said Monday in a communique that the arsenal – including 58 assault rifles, two mortars, 10 grenades, 30 sticks of TNT and 19,236 rounds of ammunition – “were being transported by members of the Sinaloa cartel” in a pickup truck with Nicaraguan plates. The shipment of arms, ammo and explosives was confiscated on Sunday in a joint operation involving the police and the army, the statement said. The...

The Texas Department of Public Safety is warning parents across the state that violent Mexican cartels and transnational gangs are actively recruiting Texas youngsters in schools and communities. These criminal organizations are luring teens with the prospect of cars, money and notoriety, and promise them that if they are arrested, they will receive light sentences. The gangs are responsible for massive drug deals and related slayings, and authorities say that they will often use youths in their crimes because juveniles are typically treated with more leniency by the criminal justice system.

A shootout at this hospital in Mexico claims two more lives — victims of the country's bloody drug war. The hospital is in Ciudad Juarez — the epicenter of the drug cartel violence convulsing Mexico. Two gunmen burst into the emergency room looking to finish off two rival gang members wounded in an earlier shootout. Witnessess said the pair fired their weapons as they roamed the corridors, looking for their targets. Patients and staff fled the building in terror. Police rushed to the scene, shooting dead two gunmen outside the hospital and arresting several others inside. The men being hunted...

During the best of the times, Miguel Salcedo’s son, an illegal immigrant in San Diego, would be sending home hundreds of dollars a month to support his struggling family in Mexico. But at times like these, with the American economy out of whack and his son out of work, Mr. Salcedo finds himself doing what he never imagined he would have to do: wiring pesos north. ==snip== Still, poverty is a relative concept. It is easier to get by on little in Mexico, especially in rural areas, allowing the poor to help the even more precarious.

A total of 15 people were killed in separate incidents in Juarez Friday. State prosecutor's spokesman Arturo Sandoval said a university professor, three women and a 7-year-old boy were among those who were killed.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and environmentalists reached an agreement Friday that scraps a rule the agency had used to kill or permanently remove any wolf that killed three heads of livestock in a year. Fish and Wildlife spokesman Tom Buckley said the three-strikes rule "will no longer stand." Ranchers said the policy targeted wolves that grow accustomed to preying on cattle. Several environmental groups sued in May 2008, asking a U.S. District Court in Arizona to stop the removal policy on the Mexican gray wolf, a subspecies of the gray wolf. Buckley said agency officials hope a judge...

Consulting firm AlixPartners has found Mexico to be the cheapest place in the world to manufacture products for the U.S. market. India comes in second, while China and Brazil are the third and fourth cheapest places. This isn't news for some Chinese companies, who have been setting up manufacturing capacity in Mexico for years as a way to reduce their production costs. It's important to remember that costs, even wages, have been rising rapidly in China over the years. Combined with transportation and other factors, it all eventually adds up and apparently has. Moreover, Mexico's competitive position vs. China is...

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Obama administration has met many of the border security benchmarks Congress set in 2007 as a prerequisite to immigration reform and now it's time to change the law, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Friday. Napolitano, designated by President Barack Obama to lead the administration's immigration reform efforts, said many members of Congress had said they could support immigration reform, but only after border security improved, Napolitano said. "Fast forward to today, and many of the benchmarks these members of Congress set in 2007 have been met," she said in a speech to the Center for...

MEXICO CITY (November 12, 2009)--Some business groups in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, are calling on the United Nations to send peacekeepers to quell the drug-related violence. Groups representing maquiladora plants, retailers and other businesses said yesterday they'll submit a request to the Mexican government and the Inter American Human Rights Commission. The Mexican government has sent more than 5,000 soldiers to the city across the border from El Paso, but killings, extortions and kidnappings continue. Ciudad Juarez has had 1,986 homicides through mid-October this year - averaging seven a day in the city of 1.5 million people. Soledad Maynez with the...