Free Republic

Appearing before Mexico's drug-fighting Federal Police, John McCain promised Thursday that as president, he would quickly implement a U.S. aid package to give the officers more helicopters, technology and training. Mr. McCain, visiting the federal force's new command center as he concluded a three-day trip to Colombia and Mexico, paid his condolences to the hundreds of officers who have died in the drug fight since President Felipe Calderón took office 19 months ago. Those deaths, Mr. McCain said, "will not be in vain." "I want to thank President Calderón and the people of Mexico for their efforts in making our...

MEXICO CITY — Three decapitated corpses were discovered in Mexico's northwestern Sinaloa state Friday, bring to a total of seven headless bodies found and 11 police assassinated in a bloody week of often drug-related violence in the country, officials and news reports said. The three headless corpses were found in a car in Culiacan, Sinaloa, together with a note critical of one of the Beltran Leyva brothers, heads of a faction of the divided Sinaloa drug cartel, state judicial officials said in a statement. The Beltran Leyva brothers are in a fight with Sinaloa-based Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman, the country's...

...now broadcasters worry about communicating with Spanish-speaking listeners during emergencies. 1030 AM is the only talk and information station of its kind in Charlotte. “And we were that venue. So a lot of the sorrow we feel today comes mostly from that and that link to the community was lost,” Lozano said. The community calls Aura Maria Gavilan-Posse "Charlotte's Spanish Oprah". She too worries listeners will suffer. “We were like a 911, like a 311 and went to the people in the cold helping a lot. More than journalism or reporter we were human beings tried to help the other...

WASHINGTON — Besieged Texas sheriffs have vowed to press the White House and Congress to deliver emergency assistance to law enforcement officers battling drug cartels along the Mexican border to match the $400 million on its way to Mexico. The sheriffs said they were frustrated that President Bush and Congress agreed to provide assistance to Mexico as part of the Merida Initiative, without offering additional federal help to their departments. The officers said they'd seek direct federal assistance, as well as changes in Department of Homeland Security restrictions to permit local law enforcement departments to use homeland security funds to...

Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush will join presumptive Republican presidential nominee John McCain in Mexico City Thursday morning on the last day of McCain's three-day visit to Latin America. Gov. Bush was in Mexico City on business and wanted to spend time with the candidate. He will not spend the day with Sen. McCain, R-Ariz., who has several other events today, including a media availability this afternoon. Gov. Bush's name has been floated in Republican veepstakes chatter. On Good Morning America Wednesday, however, McCain pushed back on any talk of his vice presidential pick.

MEXICO CITY - The severed heads of four men were found dumped on a Mexican street on Wednesday with a message accusing a drug gang kingpin of treachery, police said. Neighbors in the northern city of Culiacan found the men's bodies wrapped in plastic sheets and a blanket, with their heads stuffed into white plastic bags. An obscenity-laden note scrawled onto a piece of cardboard invited Joaquin "El Chapo" (Shorty) Guzman -- the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel -- "to see what his stupid acts had caused." Guzman, who is considered Mexico's most-wanted man, is battling a rival gang...

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...

PACHUCA, MEXICO - THREE suspects confessed to strangling and cutting into pieces a woman and her three-month old daughter because they feared they were witches, police in this central Mexican town said on Tuesday. Pachuca police spokesman Ms Norberto Munoz said the remains of the woman and her infant were found 'with signs of having been strangled, quartered and burned.' The three female suspects - who police have not named - were arrested 'and declared that they committed the crime to stop supposed acts of witchcraft of the mother and her daughter,' Ms Munoz said. The remains of the victims...

As pointed out by this representative of the Florida Attorney General's office, it is impossible to separate national security issues from illegal immigration, and one of the most important illegal immigration issues in Florida is the issue of human trafficking. And as Jake at Freedom Folks notes (thanks for the tip), this story doesn't appear to have been covered by the news wires. Here, a horrifying story is described of a little girl who, after being taken to the Florida panhandle from Mexico, resisted while being raped, and was subsequently made an example of by being beheaded in front of...

(RTTNews) - Presidential hopeful John McCain is heading to Latin America this week to discuss a free trade, a touchy subject for many workers in the United States whose jobs have been shipped to countries with cheaper labor costs. He has said he wants to thank Latin American countries for their efforts in fighting drug trafficking, part of the reason he supports the Colombian Free Trade Agreement. "I want to go to Colombia as it is a vital ally in our struggle against the scourge of drugs, a great amount of cocaine that comes into the United States of America,...

The state Supreme Court upheld the death sentence today for Ramon Salcido, who murdered his wife, two daughters, three other relatives and his supervisor at a Sonoma County winery during a three-hour rampage in 1989. The justices unanimously rejected defense challenges to Salcido's arrest and transfer from his native Mexico to the United States, his seven murder convictions and his death sentence. Salcido can appeal the ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, and has another case pending before the state's high court raising separate issues. Salcido, now 47, used a gun and knife to murder his wife, Angela Richards Salcido,...

REYNOSA - The family of a Pharr man brutally murdered last week could be linked to his death, Mexican authorities said Monday. Ramiro Torres Hernández, 25, was with his wife and cousin when he was kidnapped by two men, according to authorities. But neither the wife or cousin reported the kidnapping when it occured after midnight Wednesday, they said. The wife's and cousin's names were not released. A family member told investigators Torres had gotten off his vehicle at a Super 7 in the Luis Donaldo Colosio neighborhood of Reynosa when he was kidnapped, homicide unit chief Fernando Miranda Guerrero...

McALLEN - A local resident was found wrapped, tortured and shot execution-style in Reynosa on Friday, according to a Mexican news report released Sunday. Ramiro Torres Hernández, 24, - a manager of a Burger King in McAllen - was found inside an abandoned vehicle's trunk in a rural field heading toward Rio Bravo in Ejido El Porvenir, El Universal wire service reported. Tamaulipas state police identified Torres as a Pharr resident. His visibly tortured body was wrapped in a blanket inside the trunk of a white 2000 Buick sporting Texas license plates, El Universal reported. He had been shot in...

For more than thirty years, Steve Foster has been living his life partially paralyzed, but he hopes a recent trip to Mexico is going to change that. "I want this...bad," said Foster, an adult stem cell patient. Foster traveled south to undergo the adult stem cell transplant procedure, in an effort to gain back what he once had. "I'm tired of this life, and the way it is now," he said. Julie Hood, a human biology assistant professor at Central Oregon Community College, says although the treatment isn't performed in the U.S., it has been performed successfully in other countries....

Maize (Corn) May Have Been Domesticated In Mexico As Early As 10,000 Years AgoVarious unusually colored and shaped maize from Latin America. (Credit: Photo by Keith Weller / courtesy of USDA/Agricultural Research Service) ScienceDaily (June 27, 2008) — The ancestors of maize originally grew wild in Mexico and were radically different from the plant that is now one of the most important crops in the world. While the evidence is clear that maize was first domesticated in Mexico, the time and location of the earliest domestication and dispersal events are still in dispute. Now, in addition to more traditional macrobotanical...

It is a steel and concrete corridor that will run right through the Old Pueblo, connecting Mexico City to Edmonton, Alberta. Its purpose is to facilitate trade among the three countries and minimize traffic and congestion for residents. Or is it evidence of a move afoot to intertwine the three North American countries and blur the lines of sovereignty? That's a matter of opinion.

As if our military didn't have its hands full in Iraq and Afghanistan, the head of the Minuteman Project border security group seems to think Minutemen might make good narcotics cops. Minuteman co-founder Jim Gilchrist suggested in recent radio interviews that the U.S. give Mexico 12 months to corral its criminal drug cartels and rising violence, particularly in border towns such as Juarez and Tijuana—or deploy the U.S. Army to do the job. That's the Minutemen. Their remedies for the drug war next door sound simplistic, but at least they're paying attention. While most of us north of the border...

The El Paso sector Border Patrol chief, a UTEP professor and the special agent in charge of the El Paso FBI spoke about the cartel war in Juarez and Mexico. The deadly cartel war responsible for dozens of deaths a week in Juarez is liable to go on for another two years, the El Paso’s Border Patrol Chief Victor Manjarrez said at today’s El Paso Press Club Meet the Press forum. UTEP Professor Tony Payan blamed the former governor of the state of Chihuahua and mayor of Juarez for allowing the lawless atmosphere that led to the armed struggle between...

On Monday, the Supreme Court refused to take up the appeal lodged by environmental groups that focused on a two-mile stretch of border fence in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area near Naco, Ariz. The fence, which has been built since the petition was filed, is a vital part of the Bush administration’s drive to secure the border between the United States and Mexico. The Supreme Court’s decision is a welcome and needed victory in the war against illegal immigration and efforts to preserve the unique character that is America. The environmentalists based part of their challenge on claims...

Gwinnett County authorities are working with federal agencies to extradite a Mexican man wanted for the murder of his four-year-old daughter. District Attorney Danny Porter said he expects to receive and sign a provisional arrest warrant from the FBI. It will say the county will pay the costs to extradite Mexican citizen Christian Vasquez, 23, from Mexico back to Gwinnett to be tried. Vasquez is accused of killing four-year-old Prisi Vasquez. He did so, police believe, with a blow to the head, sometime in early 2007, and then fled to Mexico. With him were his wife, Amy Yesemia Ruiz, 20,...

As organized crime galvanizes their hold on Mexico, their network infiltrates our colleges, street gangs, and our communities. Our country is being raped and ravaged as our elected leaders remain insulated and uncaring within the halls of Congress.

PIEDRAS NEGRAS, Mexico, The first of 400,000 trees are being planted to form a ``green wall' in protest of the fence the U.S. is building along the border with Mexico. The treeline will eventually stretch for 512 kilometres along the border between the Mexican state of Coahuila and Texas. Coahuila Gov. Humberto Moreira Valdes says ``our wall is of life, and it competes with shame and hate.' The U.S. government says the fence is critical to security. Critics say it fuels animosity between the two countries and raises environmental and private property concerns. The mayor of a Texas border town...

AUSTIN — The Texas Transportation Commission on Thursday selected San Antonio's Zachry Construction Corp. and a Spanish toll road developer to plan a superhighway from Texarkana to Brownsville. The $5 million contract calls for Zachry American Infrastructure and ACS Infrastructure to create a financial plan for the Interstate 69 segment of the Trans-Texas Corridor. "This team represents the best in the balance of local and global expertise necessary to complete a project of this scope," said David Zachry, chief operating officer of Zachry Construction Corp. The private developers' plan calls for seven new loops around Corpus Christi and other cities...

MONTERREY - Drug hitmen shot dead six Mexican policemen on patrol in the marijuana-producing state of Sinaloa, the latest in a growing stream of attacks on police, the local attorney general's office said on Friday. A group of armed men blocked a busy road in Sinaloa's state capital Culiacan on Thursday night and shot at the police with automatic weapons from two vehicles, a spokesman for the state attorney general said. "We believe the killers were drug hitmen. The police were from different local and state units traveling together in the same vehicle," he said. The attack came hours after...

Suspect in Harlingen police shooting, Abraham Mar, has been (Captured) The suspect in the shooting of a Harlingen police officer was transferred to U.S. custody from Mexican authorities Thursday evening, officials said. Abraham Mar, 18, of Harlingen, was in the custody of U.S. Customs and Border Protection as of 7 p.m. Thursday, authorities said. Earlier in the evening police confirmed he was in the custody of Mexican authorities in Matamoros, Mexico, police spokesman David Osborne said. Mar faces a charge of attempted capital murder in the Wednesday night shooting of Officer Carlos Diaz, who was shot multiple times during a...

<p>Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff issued a strongly worded statement Wednesday on the release of a Mexican man suspected of killing a Yuma Sector Border Patrol agent in the Imperial Sand Dunes west of Winterhaven. SNIP The 22-year-old Navarro Montes, an alleged narcotics smuggler, is suspected of running over 32-year-old Agent Luis Aguilar in a Hummer while fleeing agents on the morning of Jan. 19.</p>

Amid fierce U.S. government protests over the release of a suspect in the killing of a U.S. Border Patrol agent, Mexico yesterday pledged close cooperation with U.S. authorities. But Mexican officials said they have yet to receive a request for his extradition or arrest. Jesús Navarro Montes, who is suspected of drug smuggling, is accused by U.S. authorities of driving a sport utility vehicle over agent Luis Aguilar in January near the U.S.-Mexico border west of Yuma. Navarro was released from a Mexicali prison earlier this month after Judge Laura Serrano Alderete, of the Baja California 12th District, cleared him...

WASHINGTON (AFP) — Republican White House hopeful John McCain is heading to Colombia and Mexico next week for talks with their presidents on trade and narcotics, aides said Thursday. Burnishing his foreign policy credentials against Democrat Barack Obama, McCain will be in the Colombian city of Cartagena on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to a brief campaign statement. The Arizona senator will meet Colombian President Alvaro Uribe to discuss a bilateral free-trade pact that Democrats have held up in Congress, campaign aides said. They will also talk about US support for the Uribe government's fight against "narcoterrorism," McCain spokeswoman Hessy Fernandez...

A woman who sneaked into Houston this week after hiking miles through one of the most brutally hot and deadly stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border is frantic for help, but scared to ask for it. While evading U.S. Border Patrol checkpoints in South Texas, she left behind the body of another woman who collapsed and died, perhaps from a scorpion sting or snake bite. The woman, who gave her name as Karina and insisted on anonymity, said she tried to help her friend walk when they fell far behind a larger group led by a smuggler. Now she is carefully...

U.S. authorities helped facilitate a $32,000 ransom payment in Mexico for a relative of a U.S. congressman who was kidnapped last week by gunmen in Ciudad Juarez..... Erika Posselt, a Mexican national described only as "a relative of the wife" of Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Texas Democrat and powerful chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, was abducted June 19 ......in Juarez. Held for three days, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents - at Mr. Reyes' request - helped arrange her safe return. ........ the kidnappers negotiated with Mrs. Posselt's brother in Juarez and agreed to release her...

Mexicans urged to reclaim a piece of Texas By Tom Leonard Last Updated: 9:11PM BST 26/06/2008 Mexicans are being encouraged to reclaim a piece of Texas, more than 150 years after they lost the Lone Star state to the United States. Texan estate agents are heading south of the border to drum up the interest in buying cut-price land and property in the foreclosure-hit state. Thanks to a rising Mexican peso and an economy which is growing faster than that of the US, a country that has previously been looked on by America as a source of cheap labour is...

Ten people have been indicted in connection with a killing prosecutors allege was a botched kidnapping attempt carried out by members and associates of the Texas Syndicate prison gang on behalf of the Zetas. Juan Manuel "Pugs" Marquez Rodriguez, 27, is charged in the indictment with murder in the Dec. 21, 2006, death of Julio A. Serrano. He and nine others were indicted last week in state district court. Only Marquez is charged with murder. All 10 face charges of criminal conspiracy and engaging in organized criminal activity involving the attempted kidnapping of Serrano, which resulted in Serrano's death. The...

MEXICO CITY — Unknown assailants shot to death a Federal Police commander and his bodyguard in a Mexico City restaurant at mid-day on Thursday, Mexican officials said. Igor Labastida, head of the Traffic and Contraband office of the Federal Preventive Police (PFP), was shot dead along with one of his bodyguards, spokesperson Minerva Amado with the attorney general's office (PGR) said. "Two subjects got out of a black vehicle, entered a restaurant where the commander was eating and opened fire on him and his escorts," said Amado. Two other Labastida bodyguards were wounded and hospitalized, Amado said. Police are searching...

Mexico City - An estimated 500,000 illegal immigrants from South America, the Caribbean and Central America pay Mexican gangs to help them transit Mexico and cross into the United States every year, Mexico's National Human Rights Commission said Wednesday. This illegal trade brings 'extraordinary earnings' since each person pays 4,000 to 15,000 dollars. In total, this would mean some 2 to 7.5 billion dollars a year, the commission said. The commission, which also said Mexican officials deport an estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants every year, released the report just two weeks after a high profile illegal transit case made headlines. An...

Six men in police tactical clothing are suspected of shooting a man to death, firing more than 100 rounds into his Phoenix home in what some are calling a Mexican drug cartel hit. Special Assignments Units heard shots coming from a nearby neighborhood and began to drive toward the noise Sunday. Detectives said once police gained entry into the home, they found the body of Andrew Williams, 30, shot numerous times, according to Arizona Daily News. "We have seen an increasing amount of these type of violent crimes in the past five months," Phoenix Police Sgt. Joel Tranter said. "We...

The suspects may have been hired by drug cartels to perform home invasions and assassinations in the U.S Police reports show that three men arrested in a Phoenix home invasion and homicide Monday may have been active members of the Mexican Army. While on the J.D. Hayworth show, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association President Mark Spencer said that the men involved were hired by drug cartels to perform home invasions and assassinations. The Monday morning incident at 8329 W. Cypress St. resulted in the death of the homeowner. Between 50 and 100 rounds were fired at the house. Spencer said a...

Police reports show that three men arrested in a Phoenix home invasion and homicide Monday may have been active members of the Mexican Army. While on the J.D. Hayworth show, Phoenix Law Enforcement Association President Mark Spencer said that the men involved were hired by drug cartels to perform home invasions and assassinations. The Monday morning incident at 8329 W. Cypress St. resulted in the death of the homeowner. Between 50 and 100 rounds were fired at the house. Spencer said a police officer told him that one of the men captured said they were completely prepared to ambush Phoenix...

The bloodshed in Ciudad Juarez being fueled by the drug war must have triggered a major alarm in Washington, D.C., this past weekend when the sister-in-law of a prominent U.S. Congressman was kidnapped while on a shopping excursion in the Mexican border town.

HIDALGO -- In a sign of the times for a federal agency that routinely announces million-dollar cocaine and marijuana busts: Customs and Border Protection has issued a news release about a $400 fine because of an extra tank of fuel. The fine was levied Sunday against a 22-year-old Edinburg man who crossed the border with an extra tank of diesel in the bed of his pickup. Because of Mexican government subsidies, diesel fuel currently sells at about half the U.S. price across the border. Customs agents have noticed a sharp rise in the number of people trying to bring full...

A Maryland judge sentenced an illegal immigrant to more than seven years in prison for coercing a 14-year-old girl into prostitution and forcing her to engage in sex with more than 25 men a day, according to federal prosecutors in Maryland. Javier Miguel Ramirez, 35, a Mexican national living in Hyattsville, was sentenced Monday to 87 months in prison, followed by five years of supervised release for sex trafficking of a minor girl. He had pleaded guilty in March. U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein said the case was one of the most shameful human trafficking cases he’s seen. “Javier Miguel...

"Suspected drug hitmen killed six people in Ciudad Juarez in northern Mexico on Tuesday, the latest in a killing spree that has left 41 people dead in the city since the start of the weekend, police said." "It was the fourth day in a new wave of gruesome shootings in the city bordering El Paso, Texas, that saw gunmen kill 17 people on Sunday alone." "Tuesday's murders take the death toll to over 500 people in Ciudad Juarez since the start of the year, making it the most deadly city in Mexico's drug war, despite a large deployment of well-armed...

home invasion suspects (3 caught) may be mexican military or police they may have been trying to ambush phx police the home invasion killed one, drug trade suspected at least one person, in full-body armor and up to three (3) still on the loose

Realigning Forces For More Than One Fight Fighting “over there” so we don’t have to “fight them at home” was aimed at the Islamist threat, but a real-live shooting war is no further away than our southern border: The intensifying warfare in Mexico between capitalist drug cartels and government troops has undermined the functioning of the government in that country, which has the second-largest population and economy in Latin America. Despite the deployment of thousands of police and army troops in the north and central regions, the powerful cartels have acted with increasing impunity, assassinating some top officials and controlling...

Today’s Illegals ‘Not Different, Just Newer’ by: Melinda Zosh, June 23, 2008 In 1750, Benjamin Franklin feared that German immigrants would de-Anglicize America. And 250 years later, in a nation where one in six young people under 18 are Hispanic, some politicians fear that Mexicans pose the same threat. But one man says today’s immigrants aren’t “different, they’re just newer.” Jason Riley, author of The Case for Open Borders, spoke at the CATO Institute on June 18 about letting more immigrants into the country. His research shows that Irish and German immigrants faced the same problems as today’s Mexicans. “Franklin...

Mexico City, Jun 22 (EFE).- Police found the bodies of five people who were killed with AK-47 assault rifles in Novolato, a city in the northwestern Mexican state of Sinaloa, in an apparent settling of scores between organized-crime groups, prosecutors told Efe. The bodies were found early Saturday lined up on the edge of an irrigation canal at the main entrance to the city's San Pedro neighborhood. "The five bodies had the hands tied behind their backs and were betweeen 25 and 30 years" old, a spokesman for the Sinaloa Attorney General's Office said. Police found 104 bullet casings from...

When the border fence is constructed along the Rio Grande, Fermin Leal will watch as the barrier slices through the backyards of his neighbors, bypassing his 500-acre farm in San Pedro. The fence's trajectory, incontiguous and largely unexplained, has left many border residents suspicious of the federal government's plans. "I'm still not sure how my land is different than theirs," Leal said. "They still haven't given us any answers." The fence will run nearly unabated through Brownsville before stopping at River Bend Resort and golf course. It will break again for nearly seven miles in San Pedro, where the federal...

In the meeting, attendees said McCain promised that, if elected, Congress would pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill.

The Bush administration's "extraordinary" effort to comply with an international court order granting new hearings for 51 Mexican nationals on death row has been stymied by federal laws, U.S. State Department lawyers said Friday. "The issue of capital punishment arouses deep feelings," said State Department legal adviser John B. Bellinger III, according to transcripts filed with the court. "But this is not about the death penalty." Bellinger told the International Court of Justice -- the principal judicial organ of the United Nations -- that while the administration understands its obligation to abide by the court's rulings, current U.S. law does...

<p>With nearly six million Mexicans living illegally in the United States, some Americans, particularly those in border states, are greatly worried about the costs of illegal immigration and have demanded that more be done to stem it. Modern-day "minutemen" patrol the border. Voters pass measures limiting the rights of illegal immigrants, and senators debate legislation to establish guest-worker programs. Certain elected officials and pundits focus on the perils of illegal immigration to score political points.</p>

Azteca Televsion Visits The Campo Minutemen TV Azteca is the second largest Mexican Television Network. The network also operates Azteca 13 Internacional, reaching 13 countries in Central and South America. Journalism is a dangerous business in Mexico, second only to Iraqi in violence toward the profession.The crew from Azteca was interested in the concerns of American Citizens and the situation in their country which is causing so many of their countrymen to flee. They were amazed at the absence of any physical barrier at the border. The Following Pictures feature Campo Minutemen Ray and Robin and Juan Rocha of Azteca...